Eva Weissweiler

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Eva-Ruth Weissweiler (born 14 February 1951 in Mönchengladbach) is a German writer, musicologist and non-fiction author.

She grew up in a music-loving family and studied music and languages from a young age. She attended Mönchengladbach State Girls’ Grammar School, finishing in 1969, and also studied at Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne and Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf. She won the Jugend musiziert competition twice on alto recorder and, at age 14, toured as a soloist, including a trip to England. After brief piano studies in Cologne, she began university in 1969/70 at Bonn, studying musicology, German and Islamic studies, and earned her doctorate in 1976. Her dissertation was published under her former married name Eva Perkuhn; she later resumed using Weissweiler.

Weissweiler worked as a radio editor and freelance writer. She writes biographies, novels, short stories, radio features and documentaries, and has contributed to many German outlets. She edited the correspondence between Clara and Robert Schumann and between Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. A major focus of her work is reexamining the Nazi era in musicology; she created documentaries for NDR and WDR. She is also active in migrant literature.

With her husband, she produced 10 portraits of authors about nationality for the former NRW Ministry of Culture, Urban Development and Sport. The couple also directed writing and photography courses for mentally ill people, shown in numerous exhibitions. Weissweiler received a state scholarship from North Rhine-Westphalia in 1994 and a Kunststiftung NRW scholarship in 1995.

She is a member of PEN Center Germany and later joined, and spoke out against, right-wing extremism within the Verband deutscher Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller. In May 2009 she founded AURA 09 (Action of independent Rhine-Ruhr authors) in Cologne to promote literary discussion in the region. AURA 09 connected literature and social work and became well known in Cologne. Weissweiler and her husband led writing and photography courses for mentally ill people through the association, with outcomes shown in many exhibitions. The association was dissolved in autumn 2016.