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Marcel Reich-Ranicki's most important publication is his autobiography
"Mein Leben" ("The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki"), which appeared in German in 1999. With it he
became not only one of the most widely read authors in Germany. The
chapters on his experiences in the Third Reich, the Warsaw Ghetto and
the Polish underground are also among the most important writings to
have appeared recently in the German language.
In
1929 Marceli Reich came to Berlin from his native town of Wloclawek in
Poland, aged nine. In 1938 he was arrested and sent back to Poland. For
five years he and Teofila (or Tosia), who he married in the Ghetto in
1942, lived in constant fear for their lives. Reich-Ranicki does not
like to speak about this time. His parents were deported to Treblinka
and murdered there. His brother was killed by SS officers in the forced
labour camp at Poniatowa.
Still today he always sits facing the door in
cafes and restaurants. Still today he shaves twice daily, like he did
in the Ghetto when it was tantamount to a death sentence for
a Jew to appear before a German ghetto guard looking dishevelled.
In
"The Author of Himself", Reich-Ranicki describes how literature saved his life. After
escaping from the Ghetto, he and Tosia hid in the house of an
unemployed Polish typesetter and his wife. But they were never sure
they not be shown the door at any moment. During the day they hid in
the cellar, the attic or a hole in the ground. At night Reich-Ranicki
curried favour with his saviour by telling him stories from world
literature: "The Sorrows of Young Werther", "Cabal and Love", "Hamlet",
"Romeo and Juliet". His host didn't care whether the stories were
invented by Shakespeare or Schiller, as long as they were good. The
better they were, the bigger his reward: a piece of bread, two carrots
or the like.
Often the couple were faced with ruin, for example
in 1958 when they left Poland. Reich-Ranicki began his career as
literary critic in West Germany, where his colleagues in the leading
feuilleton sections tended to write in an academic, dry, moralising
tone understandable only to their peers. Reich-Ranicki set himself
apart by expressing himself in a clear, precise, witty way, in the
tradition of the best of German critics from Heine to Alfred Kerr.
In
his role as critic Reich-Ranicki became popular, and powerful. Year in,
year out, a regular stream of books now appears on his life and work.
Uwe Wittstock, author of the most recent biography released this
spring, calls him a "pop star among critics", which will certainly
flatter Reich-Ranicki, although he may never have listened to a pop
song of his own free will.
He admits openly that he fought to
gain the power he has now, above all as literary editor of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and later in the bi-monthly television
show "Das Literarische Quartett", conceived and dominated by him. "The
decisive thing", he says, "is who benefits from this power. The
authors? No, the readers." Today his popularity reaches well beyond the
reading class. Interviewer Julian Schütt put this to the test. His
hairdresser has never heard of Goethe, Thomas Mann or Nobel Prize
winner Günter Grass. But she has heard of Reich-Ranicki, and his
appearances on television are reason enough to stop her zapping for a
while.
Reich Ranicki's negative reviews were also the reason why
his name made such an impression on some authors. In 1980 Friedrich
Dürrenmatt sketched him throning over a throng of beheaded authors,
calling the picture "the killing fields". Peter Rühmkorf saw in him a
"renegade maker", who led the weakened Left down the Right-Liberal path
of virtue. For Günter Grass, Reich-Ranicki represents a downward slope
into fanaticism. Alfred Andersch compared him with Satan, and
versified: "no one says anything / he's protected by conservation
legislation / he was in the warsaw ghetto after all / but in poland
they call him 'back home to the reich-ranicki'". Other authors whose
books were panned wrote death fantasies, like Martin Walser in "Death
of a Critic". Nowadays these wounds have healed. Grass is fond of him
again, and Rühmkorf is happy that "the peace-pipe is lit once more."
*
The text originally appeared in German in Die Weltwoche, as an introduction to Julian Schütt's interview with Marcel Reich-Ranicki.
Translation: jab.
RSS
The headlines were stolen by Charlotte Roche's moist little sex shocker and Jonathan Littell's sprawling SS fantasies but only two books united the critics: one is good and the other, utterly objectionable. There was a flurry of interest in some fabulous comics and a resurgence of the political and the historical novel. A dip into the books published in Germany this spring.
The nonfiction books this spring look into life as a budding president, a kitchen slave, a prophet, a string quartet. They pick apart the world of the elites, of lust and taste and '68.
Travels through the dreams and nightmares of Europe, in a small land of great poets, torn between Balkan catastrophe and Brussels. A reportage on Croatia, this year's partner country at the Leipzig Book Fair. By Gregor Dotzauer 
An SS man reflects on mass murder - and there's a pigeon hole for every vile deed. Novelist Georg Klein on the Holocaust and the enlightened harmony of trivial realism in Jonathan Littell's novel "Les Bienveillantes" which has just been translated into German.
The 400-page German translation of Jonathan Littell's corpse-littered SS novel,"Les Bienveillantes," has put the German-language feuilletons into a critical frenzy, despite the general consensus that the book is bad. We have compiled a selection of the accusations hurled. 
Kurt von Hammerstein was head of the Reichswehr, a grand seigneur, and an implacable opponent of National Socialism. In his new book "Hammerstein oder Der Eigensinn" (Hammerstein or idiosycrasy), Hans Magnus Enzensberger engages in dialogues with the dead to deliver a literary and lunatic precipitate of German history.
This literary autumn belongs to two Russian writers: Vassily Grossmann and Varlam Shalamov, whose epic works have been published in German at long last. But older Germans and German Romantics, Polish queens, Romanian Mannerists, combative atheists, Neopolitan Camorristi, Catalonian knights and a glutton of glorious abandon have also come up trumps.
The literary event of the season is the inexplicably delayed publication of two Russian masterpieces: Vassily Grossmann's historic drama of the 20th century "Life and Fate" and Varlam Shalamov's collection of tales from Kolyma "Durch den Schnee". On the German side, we have seen older novelists flexing their muscles and reaching for the skies, biographers looking up to bygone giants, and the feuilletons rallying to defend religion against the air strikes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. 
The novel is blooming in the Urals, where the children of the former technology elite are letting their imaginations run riot. By Sonja Margolina
Polish author Andrzej Stasiuk's book "Dojczland" is a sophisticated portrait of German-Polish relations with flights of sarcasm and a fine sense of grotesque. Doused heavily in bourbon, it's a controversial bestseller in Poland. By Thomas Urban
Romanian literature is still a tiny niche in the German book
market. Mircea Cartarescu's latest novel to be published here,
"Die Wissenden," shows readers what they are missing. A visit to
Bucharest to meet the man who is probably Romania's most famous author. By Jörg Plath
Come cruising in the park they say is dead. In his
biography of Stefan George, Thomas Karlauf reveals the charismatic German poet's authoritarian practices and the homoerotic core of his work. By Alexander Cammann
Rüdiger Safranski has pulled off the improbable: his book on Romanticism is a genuinely exciting account of German intellectual history. By Ulrich Greiner
Germany's book market is being flooded this autumn by biographies of dead male writers. Ina Hartwig examines the whys, wherefores and potential pitfalls of this latest literary craze.
The German Book Prize 2007, an annual award for the best German language novel, has been awarded to Julia Franck. Read an English excerpt of her book, "Lady Midday", and of the other five on the shortlist.