Life and career
Piwitt, the son of a civil servant, grew up in Frankfurt am Main. After graduating from high school, he studied sociology, philosophy, and literary studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, LMU Munich, and the Free University of Berlin. He was strongly influenced by the academic teachers Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Höllerer. In Frankfurt, Piwitt became friends with the photographer Abisag Tüllmann.
In 1967 and 1968, Piwitt worked as an editor at Rowohlt Publishing House, then in Reinbek near Hamburg. In 1968, he began contributing to the magazine konkret. From 1969 onward, he lived in Hamburg as a freelance writer, whose essays also appeared in journals such as Akzente and Sprache im technischen Zeitalter.
Piwitt, a member of the PEN Center Germany, received the Literature Advancement Award of the Berlin Art Prize in 1968 and a Villa Massimo Fellowship in 1971–72. In 1973, he became writer-in-residence at the University of Warwick in England, a position he held until 1974. In 1976, he received a teaching appointment at the University of Bremen. In 1999, he was writer-in-residence at the University of Wales in Swansea.
Piwitt distinguished himself with essays on political topics; his narrative works primarily illuminate the conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany and in Italy.
Piwitt died in Hamburg on 15 January 2026, at the age of 90.
