Who invented the vowel alphabet? Did it come south from the Danube culture, did the Phoenicians bring it with them on their trade routes, or does it have its roots in the Semitic languages of the Middle East? Was it Homer who created it single-handedly when he wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey? What is clear is that around 800 BC, the vowel alphabet became established, starting in the eastern Mediterranean region. In many cultural theories, literacy and democratization are closely linked:
The massive reduction in the number of characters needed, coupled with an enormous expansion in what could be expressed with them, represents a turning point in history. Klaus Theweleit takes up the thread with precision and aggression. According to his speculative reconstruction, the vowel alphabet was invented by Greek merchants and pirates who could no longer sail to a fixed home port. On stormy seas, vowels simply carry better. The epics memorized in hexameter became the central means of communicating belonging. The Invention of the Vowel Alphabet at Sea is a fast-paced journey to the origins of European culture.
Non-fiction
Klaus Theweleit, born in East Prussia in 1942, studied German and English. Today he lives as a freelance writer with teaching assignments in Germany, the USA, Switzerland and Austria. Between 1998 and 2008, Theweleit was professor of art and theory at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. He became known for his monumental work Männerphantasien (1977/78), a new edition of which was published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin in 2019. Rudolf Augstein called it "perhaps the most exciting German-language publication of this year" in Der Spiegel after its initial publication.
