Rita Kuczynski


Rita Kuczynski is a German author, philosopher and editorialist.

Life

Rita Kuczynski grew up in East and West Berlin and studied music from 1956 to 1962. She undertook a master's in piano at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. From 1965 to 1970, she studied philosophy at the University of Leipzig and the University of Berlin. In 1971, she became an assistant at the Institute for Philosophy in the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin. In the following year, she married Thomas Kuczynski. She received the Promotion A from the Academy in 1975, with a doctorate on Hegel. From 1981 until 1990 she worked as a freelance writer.
In 1987, she became visiting professor for philosophy and literature at the University of Buffalo. She delivered lectures and papers at Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Maryland, as well as the German Studies Association. After the upheavals of 1989 she separated from her husband. They were divorced in 1998. In 1991 she served as visiting professor for languages at the University of Chile. During work on a monograph about Gabriela Mistral she undertook research trips to Santiago de Chile, Concepción, La Serena, Vicuña and.
Since 1998 she has worked as an independent journalist and editorialist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, the Tagesspiegel, the Berliner Zeitung, DeutschlandRadio Berlin and Radio Bremen.
Her contributions to the discussion of German Reunification focus on the mutual understanding of East and West. She participated in the general discussion after reunification as a moderator in the DeutschlandRadio Berlin radio series Tacheles, in the Berlin Runde and in political features on DeutschlandRadio. She has participated in several television debates and talk shows on Germany unity.

Awards

Fiction