Photo by Stan Waldhauser, Gustavus Adolphus College
Horst Ludwig (born Horst Eberhard Julius Ludwig, May 10, 1936, Ritterswalde, Upper Silesia, Germany [now Domaszkowice, Poland]), American academic and haikai and tanka poet, writing in both English and German. He retired in 2012 as professor of German at Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, Minnesota. On two occasions he taught for a year at Kansai University of Foreign Studies in Japan and studied haiku with Yukio Kotani. Ludwig’s work won distinction in the International Kusamakura Haiku Competition (2000, 2002, and 2004), the Hoshi to Mori Tanka Competition (2002), and the Mainichi Haiku Contest (2011), and he was listed among the European Top 100 most creative haiku authors for 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016. He self-published two chapbooks of haiku: Minnesota-Herbst: Sechzig Haiku (Minnesota Autumn: Sixty Haiku; no date) and Wind im Bambusspiel: Sechsunddreißig Haiku (1981; reissued in 1991 as Wind in Bamboo Chimes: Thirty-six Haiku; while in 2005 Zwölf Monde — Twaalf manen / Twelve Moons: a bilingual rengay series with Max Verhart was published in the Netherlands. Horst Ludwig now resides in the Seattle, Washington, metropolitan area.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.