Yaak Karsunke


Yaak Karsunke is a German author and actor.
The son of an engineer and the procurer of a publishing house, he grew up in the borough of Pankow. In 1949 his family moved to Friedenau. Here Karsunke attended Gymnasium. In 1953 he passed the Abitur and studied jurisprudence for three semesters. From 1955 to 1957 he studied drama at the Max-Reinhardt-Schule, today known as the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts. From 1957 to 1964 he made a living doing odd jobs.
In 1964, Karsunke moved to Munich, where he became involved with the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, becoming a spokesman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1968. Along with other leftist authors, he founded the literary review Kürbiskern, for which he served as editor in chief from 1965 until August 1968, when he resigned as a protest against the Soviet repression of the Prague Spring.
In the early 1970s, Karsunke befriended Rainer Werner Fassbinder, appearing in his films Love Is Colder Than Death, Gods of the Plague, and Berlin Alexanderplatz. From 1976 to 1979 he served as Fassbinder's technical adviser at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. From 1981 to 1999 he taught creative writing at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Karsunke has also worked extensively as a lyricist. Since the late-1960s he has written many plays and radio dramas. In 1989 he published a crime novel, Toter Mann, for which he won the Deutscher Krimi Preis in 1990.

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