Robert Schopflocher was born into an assimilated German-Jewish family. After the Nazis seized power, he was excluded from attending the humanistic grammar school in Fürth and instead attended a Jewish boarding school. In April 1937, his family fled to Argentina. There, Schopflocher attended the Pestalozzi School founded by August Siemsen. He published several articles in the exile magazine La otra Alemania edited by Siemsen. Yet, due to economic reasons, he was unable to begin a career as a journalist or author.

After completing his studies in Agronomy, Schopflocher worked as an agricultural administrator and import merchant. He wrote several textbooks and specialist works on agricultural topics. From the 1980s onwards, he also began to write literature – essays, criticism, stories and poems, all initially written in Spanish. The author was into his seventies before he began to write in German. The impetus for this came from his experiences of translating his own writings into German. By doing so, Schopflocher had the impression that he was removing a “Schicht” (“layer”) and revealing the „in der Muttersprache abgelagerte[n] Urtext“ (“original text deposited in my mother tongue”, ed. trans, Quotation based on Dirk Niefanger/Gunnar Och, Robert Schopflocher, der Erzähler [The Story-Teller], 2018) From that point on, he wrote his stories and novels in German. In essays and lectures, he engaged with his bilingualism as a writer.

Roberto Schopflocher was an honorary member of the PEN Centre of German-Speaking Writers Abroad. In 2008, the city of Fürth awarded him the Jakob Wassermann Prize.

Selected works:
Wie Reb Froike die Welt rettete (Erzählungen, 1998)
Wahlheimat und Heimatwahl (Essay, 2002)
Weit von wo. Mein Leben zwischen drei Welten (Autobiographie, 2010)
Das Komplott zu Lima (Roman, 2015)

Further reading:
Lubich, Frederick A. (Hg.) Transatlantische Auswanderungsgeschichten. Reflexionen und Reminiszenzen aus drei Generationen. Festschrift zu Ehren von Robert Schopflocher. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2014
Niefanger, Dirk/Och, Gunnar: Robert Schopflocher, der Erzähler, in: Schopflocher, Robert: Eine Kindheit. Erzählungen. Cadolzburg: ars vivendi 2018