West German Writer Hubert Fichte Dies

West German writer Hubert Fichte died Saturday after a tumor operation, his wife Leonore said. He was 50.

Fichte’s first book, “The Orphanage,” won the prestigious Hermann Hesse prize in 1965. His later works included “The Palette” and “Detlev’s Imitation Verdigris.” He was credited with helping establish interviews as a literary form in West Germany.

Fichte trained as an actor, studied at a French university, later studied agriculture in West Germany and Sweden, and was a shepherd in Provence, France, from 1959 until 1962. In 1963, he became a free-lance writer, journalist and art critic, earning scholarships from Rome’s Villa Massimo and the Ford Foundation. In the mid-1970s, he conducted anthropological research that resulted in the work, “Xango, Bahia, Haiti, Trinidad--The Afro-American Religions.”