photo©Joerg Burger

Karl Markus Gauss [Austria]

Karl Markus Gauss was born in Salzburg in 1954. He obtained a honoury doctorate in German Philology and History from the University of Salzburg. Very early on, he published literary essays, primarily in the magazine Wiener Tagebuch (trL Viennese Diary). From 1991 to 2022, Gauss was editor in chief of the literary magazine Literatur und Kritik, published by the Salzburg publishing house Otto Müller Verlag.In addition, he writes articles and essays for Austrian, German and Swiss newspapers and magazines, such as Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Salzburger Nachrichten, and Die Presse. He focuses primarily on ethnic minorities, some of which aren’t sometimes known to the readers even by their name, such as the Aromanians, Roma, Arbëreshë and the Sephardim. His travel reports deal with cultural encounters, exchanges with intellectuals and writers as well as with people on the street and in inns. In his essays as well as in his travel reports and journals, Gauss presents Central and Eastern European writers who are often little known in Austria. In 2006, Karl-Markus Gauss was accepted as member of the German Academy of Language and Poetry. In 2022, Gauß received the Leipzing Book Award for European Understanding for his book Die unaufhörliche Wanderung (tr: The Perpetual Journey), for his important and needed focus on the diversity and complexity of the areas in the West of Russia, observing and describing an Europe of contradictions, oppositions, but above all an Europe of unity and humanity. Karl Markus Gauss lives in Salzburg.