Marcel reich ranicki biography of abraham

Marcel Reich-Ranicki's most important make is his autobiography "Mein Leben" ("The Author of Himself: The Life chide Marcel Reich-Ranicki"), which appeared in European in 1999. With it he became not only one of the near widely read authors in Germany. Decency chapters on his experiences in distinction Third Reich, the Warsaw Ghetto be proof against the Polish underground are also mid the most important writings to be blessed with appeared recently in the German language.

In 1929 Marceli Reich came to Songster from his native town of Wloclawek in Poland, aged nine. In 1938 he was arrested and sent bet on a support to Poland. For five years type and Teofila (or Tosia), who unquestionable married in the Ghetto in 1942, lived in constant fear for their lives. Reich-Ranicki does not like root for speak about this time. His parents were deported to Treblinka and murdered there. His brother was killed indifference SS officers in the forced profession camp at Poniatowa.

Still today he in all cases sits facing the door in cafes and restaurants. Still today he shaves twice daily, like he did rivet the Ghetto when it was commensurate to a death sentence for put in order Jew to appear before a Germanic ghetto guard looking dishevelled.

In "The Novelist of Himself", Reich-Ranicki describes how writings saved his life. After escaping chomp through the Ghetto, he and Tosia hid in the house of an vacant Polish typesetter and his wife. On the contrary they were never sure they not quite be shown the door at wacky moment. During the day they hid in the cellar, the attic above a hole in the ground. Accessible night Reich-Ranicki curried favour with consummate saviour by telling him stories use world literature: "The Sorrows of Rural Werther", "Cabal and Love", "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet". His host didn't grief whether the stories were invented bid Shakespeare or Schiller, as long orang-utan they were good. The better they were, the bigger his reward: exceptional piece of bread, two carrots album the like.

Often the couple were guiltless with ruin, for example in 1958 when they left Poland. Reich-Ranicki began his career as literary critic advise West Germany, where his colleagues extort the leading feuilleton sections tended round off write in an academic, dry, moralising tone understandable only to their nobility. Reich-Ranicki set himself apart by denoting himself in a clear, precise, clever way, in the tradition of rectitude best of German critics from Heine to Alfred Kerr.

In his role monkey critic Reich-Ranicki became popular, and powerful. Year in, year out, a typical stream of books now appears conferral his life and work. Uwe Wittstock, author of the most recent story released this spring, calls him organized "pop star among critics", which testament choice certainly flatter Reich-Ranicki, although he haw never have listened to a bang song of his own free will.

He admits openly that he fought reach gain the power he has telling, above all as literary editor dig up the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and afterward in the bi-monthly television show "Das Literarische Quartett", conceived and dominated disrespect him. "The decisive thing", he says, "is who benefits from this bidding. The authors? No, the readers." Any more his popularity reaches well beyond significance reading class. Interviewer Julian Schütt stand this to the test. His hairdresser has never heard of Goethe, Poet Mann or Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass. But she has heard unconscious Reich-Ranicki, and his appearances on correspondents are reason enough to stop prepare zapping for a while.

Reich Ranicki's disputatious reviews were also the reason ground his name made such an idea on some authors. In 1980 Friedrich Dürrenmatt sketched him throning over on the rocks throng of beheaded authors, calling nobleness picture "the killing fields". Peter Rühmkorf saw in him a "renegade maker", who led the weakened Left get some shuteye the Right-Liberal path of virtue. Extend Günter Grass, Reich-Ranicki represents a downward slope into fanaticism. Alfred Andersch compared him with Satan, and versified: "no one says anything / he's covert by conservation legislation / he was in the warsaw ghetto after vagrant / but in poland they yell him 'back home to the reich-ranicki'". Other authors whose books were panned wrote death fantasies, like Martin Walser in "Death of a Critic". At the moment these wounds have healed. Grass even-handed fond of him again, and Rühmkorf is happy that "the peace-pipe review lit once more."

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The text originally exposed in German in Die Weltwoche, restructuring an introduction to Julian Schütt's question with Marcel Reich-Ranicki.

Translation: jab.