Yaak Karsunke


Yaak Karsunke was a German author and actor.
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Life and career

Born on 4 June 1934 in Berlin as son of an engineer and a procurer of a publishing house, Karsunke grew up in the borough of Pankow. In 1949, his family moved to Friedenau in West Berlin, where he passed the Abitur in 1953 and studied jurisprudence for three semesters. From 1955 to 1957, he studied drama at the Max-Reinhardt-Schule, today known as the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts.
In 1964, Karsunke moved to Munich, where he became involved with the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, becoming a spokesman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1968. Along with other leftist authors, he founded the literary review Kürbiskern, for which he served as editor-in-chief from 1965 until August 1968, when he resigned as a protest against the Soviet repression of the Prague Spring.
In the early 1970s, Karsunke befriended Rainer Werner Fassbinder, appearing in his films Love Is Colder Than Death, Gods of the Plague, and Berlin Alexanderplatz. From 1976 to 1979, he served as Fassbinder's technical adviser at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. From 1981 to 1999, he taught creative writing at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Karsunke has also worked extensively as a lyricist. Since the late-1960s, he has written many plays and radio dramas. In 1989, he published a crime novel, Toter Mann, for which he won the Deutscher Krimi Preis in 1990.
Karsunke died on 13 May 2025, at the age of 90.

Works

Kilroy & andere, Berlin 1967Reden und ausreden, Berlin 1969Hallo, Irina, Weinheim 1970 Die Apotse kommen, Munich 1972 Bauernoper, Frankfurt am Main 1973 Josef Bachmann. Sonny Liston, Berlin 1973Ruhrkampf-Revue, Frankfurt am Main 1975 Da zwischen, Berlin 1979Unser schönes Amerika, Frankfurt am Main 1979 Auf die Gefahr hin, Berlin 1982Nach Mitternacht, Frankfurt am Main 1982Die Guillotine umkreisen, Berlin 1984 Kinder der Liebe, Frankfurt am Main 1986Toter Mann, Berlin 1989Gespräch mit dem Stein, Berlin 1992Hand & Fuß, Munich 2004

In translation