Life as art - a search for traces between finiteness and eternity
What remains of a life?
A memory. An encounter. A sentence. A wound. A decision. A person whose path touches our own. A story that is carried on, even though what happened seems long past.
The series BIOGRAPHY IN ART approaches life at the point where biography becomes more than the chronological sequence of events. Its books tell of people and their paths, of origin and turning away, attachment and freedom, loss and memory, dying and living on. Real, autobiographical, biographical, and literarily shaped life finds different forms of expression within them.
Biography becomes art when what happened leaves behind its mere chronology. When experience finds language. When memory is transformed. When a single life gives rise to a question that points beyond that life.
Six books follow such traces in different ways:
Volume I – REUNION IN A LOUD WORLD – The Finitude of Eternity – A book about a young man at the limit of his resistance, about farewell and memory, loudness and being overlooked, finitude and that connectedness which points beyond the visible. (published March 2023 · new edition December 2025)
Volume II – BIOGRAPHY OF LIFE – Leaving a Trace – A literary approach to otherness, belonging, and the question of what traces a person leaves in the world through their existence, their perception, and their encounters. (published August 2024)
Volume III – SIDDHARTHA’S SON – The Path That Cannot Be Passed On – A novel about father and son, origin and independence, closeness and turning away. About the experience that even the deepest insight cannot be inherited, and that a person must walk their own path themselves. (to be published 2026)
Volume IV – CRUSADE OF LOYALTY – The Turning Away from the Self – A novel about loyalty and deception, vows and masks, attachment and detachment. About cracks in the fabric, and a loyalty whose meaning changes when it breaks free from its former bonds. (to be published 2027)
Volume V – ACCOMPANIMENT IN THE EYE OF DEATH – Biography of a Young Man – The life story of a young man in the face of dying and death. A biographical approach to finitude, letting go, and that boundary where life loses its self-evidence. (to be published 2027)
Volume VI – VOICES OF FATHERS – Single Men, Emotional & Eloquent – Fathers speak of responsibility and overwhelm, closeness and distance, anger, grief, love, and the daily carrying of what they once did not know they would have to carry. Many voices come together in a multifaceted picture of fatherhood and manhood. (to be published 2028)
BIOGRAPHY IN ART follows the traces of human life: what was lived, remembered, lost, and carried on. What passes becomes history. What touches leaves a trace.
Some voices only become audible when the world around them falls silent.
When the view of life shifts into one different from the one we are used to, what once seemed self-evident changes as well. REUNION IN A LOUD WORLD follows the story of a young man whose path leads to those limits where resistance, vulnerability, and the questions of life and finitude interlock.
It is a story of being heard and going unheard, of the struggle for a place in a loud world, and of a sensitivity whose language cannot always hold its own against the volume. Highs and lows run through a path on which closeness and distance, this life and eternity touch again and again.
Here, death is not seen merely as an end. It forms a boundary at which the questions of life emerge more clearly: What remains? What connects? What can one person give to another to take along? And which voice keeps sounding when its source falls silent?
Eine Geschichte eines jungen Mannes an der Grenze seiner Widerstände – und über die Endlichkeit einer Ewigkeit, die sich dem Begreifen entzieht.
(First published March 14, 2023 · New edition December 2025)
A life leaves its trace not where it fits in, but where something of it remains.
Falling into the depths.
Theres hears a language in the voices of the silent. From early on, her perception does not seem to fit into those orders in which belonging arises through adaptation. What first appears as otherness increasingly becomes a way of seeing the world that is her own.
BIOGRAPHY OF LIFE follows this movement. Childhood and memory, strangeness and belonging, inner beauty and outer ascription interweave with the question of what truly makes a person who they are. Theres seeks her place less and less where others have intended it for her.
Her trace arises from encounters and ruptures, from the perception of in-between spaces, and from a distinctiveness that does not submit to any ready-made notion. Light and dark exchange their supposedly fixed roles. What seemed strange can become familiar; what seemed certain breaks apart.
Thus biography becomes the leaving of a trace: in one’s own life, in the lives of others, and in those barely visible changes that an encounter preserves beyond its time.
A literary exploration of otherness, belonging, and the trace of a life lived.
(published on 12/08/2024)
What a father has realized cannot spare his son from walking his own path.
Where paths touch and yet do not unite, that quiet movement between father and son begins. Siddhartha’s experience stands opposite his son’s independence. Closeness does not yet mean understanding, love does not yet mean agreement, and insight is not yet a truth that could be handed over to another.
SIDDHARTHA’S SON follows the boy beyond the turning away. What cannot be transferred demands to be experienced firsthand. Origin remains present in him, while each step of his own means both distance and approach at once.
The novel tells of defiance and connectedness, letting go and memory, of encounters and of those experiences that no one can take on for another. The son does not become a continuation of his father. His path begins precisely where his father’s path ends as a prescription.
Between origin and independence, a trace of its own thus emerges, and with it the question of what can be passed on from one person to another when insight itself remains impossible to inherit.
A philosophical novel about father and son, and about the path that becomes one’s own only by being walked oneself.
(to be published in 2026)
What remains of loyalty when that to which it was bound loses its name?
Great words can sustain. They can just as easily become vows whose weight at some point outweighs what they once promised. CRUSADE OF LOYALTY leads into a web of attachment and longing, promise and doubt, deception and devotion.
Masks gleam until the first cracks become visible. Certainties lose their wholeness. And with them, the self that has bound itself to ideas, people, roles, and promises comes under scrutiny.
The novel asks about a loyalty that changes its meaning once attachment can no longer be equated with truth. What happens to a person when holding on loses its strength? What remains when a given word, an image, or a belonging does not preserve its former shape?
Thus turning away becomes both a leaving and a movement inward, to the boundary where loyalty must redefine itself.
A novel about attachment, deception, and detachment, and about a loyalty that allows itself to be questioned all the way to the turning away from the self.
(to be published 2027)
In the face of death, life changes its measure.
Life has a boundary whose moment eludes the human being. With the knowledge of this finitude, closeness and distance, meaning and desire, holding on and letting go all change.
ACCOMPANIMENT IN THE EYE OF DEATH is devoted to the autobiographical story of a young man. His life and the experience of dying form the starting point of an engagement with that finality which belongs to human existence and yet eludes any complete preparation.
The before and after, arriving, being, and departing, the bonds of life and their gradual release enter into relation with one another. Biography here becomes accompaniment up to a boundary at which what can be told itself grows quieter.
Death stands at the edge of this story. At its center remains the life of a human being, and the question of how it is seen when its time has become finite.
Eine biografische Annäherung an Leben, Sterben, Loslassen und die Grenze des menschlichen Daseins.
(to be published 2027)
Where men speak of their experience, what has been carried also finds a voice.
VOICES OF FATHERS gathers father stories. Reflective and sad, angry and hopeful, challenging and fulfilled voices tell of an everyday life in which men bear responsibility, shape relationships, and at the same time are confronted with their own biographical imprints.
Looking at the growing child, they repeatedly encounter the child they themselves once were. Closeness and unapproachability, strength and vulnerability, responsibility and overwhelm can stand side by side.
The volume gives language to these experiences. The individual life stories remain independent, yet enter into relation with one another. In this way, personal voices come together in a multilayered picture of single fathers and their differing paths.
Some of them had once not expected to carry what they now carry. What they say about it makes visible how many different ways fatherhood can be experienced.
A biographical space of voices on fatherhood, responsibility, and the male experience between one’s own childhood and accompanying a child.
(to be published 2028)
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