Gert Jonke

*1946 †2009

The dramatist Gert Jonke was invited to the Stückemarkt in 1986 with the play “Wilder Rasen” and in 1991 with “Sanftwut oder der Ohrenmaschinist” (Gentle Rage or the Ear Engineer). He studied at the University of Vienna and the Film and Television University before making his literary debut in 1969. He was only acknowledged as a dramatist twenty years later. Among the awards he won were the Nestroy Theatre Prize for Best Play, the Kleist Prize, the Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature, the Berlin Prize from the Preußische Seehandlung Foundation and in 1977 he was the first awardee of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. The Gert Jonke Prize has been presented by the province of Carinthia and the city of Klagenfurt since 2011.