Bodo Hell

“Bodo Hell is a chronicler, a collector, a recorder, a preserver of the animate and inanimate, which without him would perhaps fall into oblivion. Bodo’s texts are without exception declarations of love, occasionally to people, often to flora, fauna, things, names. There is probably nothing that can escape his literary passion for collecting.” (Wolfgang Kühn, Wiener Zeitung)

Bodo Hell’s work is deeply rooted in the Austrian literary landscape. His latest book, Begabte Bäume (2023), is a guidebook of a different kind: he collects diverse, curious and interesting facts about trees. From the maple to the Swiss stone pine, he gives botanical, historical, cultural-historical, religious, mystical and mythological, astonishing and funny to the best and leads us so through past and present.

In an extremely amusing way, he gives readers an insight into themselves and into the madhouse of our society.

Bodo Hell, born in Salzburg in 1943, studied organ at the Salzburg Mozarteum and philosophy, German language and literature, and history at the University of Vienna. His multifaceted avant-garde work includes not only texts but also photographs, films, radio plays, music and theater pieces. Today he lives as a poet, essayist and artist in Vienna – and in summer as a dairyman on a Styrian alpine pasture on the Dachstein.