Alena Wagnerová was born 18. 5. 1936 in Brno, but after her departure for Germany in 1969 she gradually became a Czech-German author and she has also devoted much attention to the German literature of Prague, especially to Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenská.
She graduated in biology from Masaryk University in Brno (1959), but gradually added to that other fields of study – teaching, theatre studies (by correspondence course 1962–1964), German studies, and comparative literary science (1970–1972). In the ’60s she had a series of different jobs – she was a member of the teaching staff at the Dům pionýrů in Brno, and after being dismissed (for ideological reasons) was head of the laboratory of the Veterinary Faculty at the Agricultural University in Brno, then she was a script editor at the Divadlo Julia Fučíka in Brno, from 1965 she worked freelance, and from 1968–1969 she was editor of Studentské listy. In 1969 she married in the Federal Republic of Germany. She writes in Czech and German, works with Gender Studies in Prague (e.g. on the international project Paměť žen [Women’s Memories]). She addresses her thematic areas (cultural journalism in the Czech-German region, Czech-German relations, issues concerning the status of women in modern society) in various forms between fiction and non-fiction, from prose texts through fact-based literature and essays to radio plays.
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