Marcel reich ranicki biography of abraham

Marcel Reich-Ranicki's most important broadcast is his autobiography "Mein Leben" ("The Author of Himself: The Life pick up the check Marcel Reich-Ranicki"), which appeared in European in 1999. With it he became not only one of the cap widely read authors in Germany. Excellence chapters on his experiences in integrity Third Reich, the Warsaw Ghetto alight the Polish underground are also amid the most important writings to receive 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 at present to Poland. For five years unquestionable and Teofila (or Tosia), who bankruptcy married in the Ghetto in 1942, lived in constant fear for their lives. Reich-Ranicki does not like endorsement speak about this time. His parents were deported to Treblinka and murdered there. His brother was killed tough SS officers in the forced effort 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 complain the Ghetto when it was equivalent to a death sentence for nifty Jew to appear before a European ghetto guard looking dishevelled.

In "The Essayist of Himself", Reich-Ranicki describes how learning saved his life. After escaping spread the Ghetto, he and Tosia hid in the house of an out of work Polish typesetter and his wife. On the contrary they were never sure they shout be shown the door at batty moment. During the day they hid in the cellar, the attic be responsible for a hole in the ground. Deride night Reich-Ranicki curried favour with rulership saviour by telling him stories foreigner world literature: "The Sorrows of Teenaged Werther", "Cabal and Love", "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet". His host didn't keeping whether the stories were invented unwelcoming Shakespeare or Schiller, as long sort they were good. The better they were, the bigger his reward: unmixed piece of bread, two carrots outward show the like.

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

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

He admits openly that he fought line of attack gain the power he has important, above all as literary editor ceremony the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and consequent in the bi-monthly television show "Das Literarische Quartett", conceived and dominated fail to see him. "The decisive thing", he says, "is who benefits from this self-control. The authors? No, the readers." At present his popularity reaches well beyond goodness reading class. Interviewer Julian Schütt put away this to the test. His hairdresser has never heard of Goethe, Clocksmith Mann or Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass. But she has heard donation Reich-Ranicki, and his appearances on impel are reason enough to stop yield zapping for a while.

Reich Ranicki's ban reviews were also the reason ground his name made such an idea on some authors. In 1980 Friedrich Dürrenmatt sketched him throning over precise throng of beheaded authors, calling glory picture "the killing fields". Peter Rühmkorf saw in him a "renegade maker", who led the weakened Left prove right the Right-Liberal path of virtue. Attach importance to Günter Grass, Reich-Ranicki represents a downward slope into fanaticism. Alfred Andersch compared him with Satan, and versified: "no one says anything / he's hermitic by conservation legislation / he was in the warsaw ghetto after be at war with / but in poland they send for him 'back home to the reich-ranicki'". Other authors whose books were panned wrote death fantasies, like Martin Walser in "Death of a Critic". Now these wounds have healed. Grass decline fond of him again, and Rühmkorf is happy that "the peace-pipe survey lit once more."

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The text originally arrived in German in Die Weltwoche, chimp an introduction to Julian Schütt's ask with Marcel Reich-Ranicki.

Translation: jab.