Marcel Reich-Ranicki Research Articles

The author of himself: the life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki

The author of himself: the life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki

The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki

The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki

Shoah Business: Maxim Biller and the Problem of Contemporary German-Jewish Literature

Dem Markt entgeht keine Theorie mehr: eine jede wird als mogliche unter den konkurrienden Meinungen ausgeboten, alle zur Wahl gestellt, alle geschluckt. So wenig indessen der Gedanke dagegen sich Scheuklappen umbinden kann; so gewiB die selbstgerechte Uberzeugung, die eigene Theorie sei jenem Schicksal enthoben, in Anpreisung ihrer selbst ausartet, so wenig braucht Dialektik auf solchen Vorwurf hin and den daran haftenden ihrer Uberfliissigkeit, des Beliebigen einer von aulen aufgeklatschten Methode, zu verstummen. Ihr Name sagt zunachst nichts weiter, als daB die Gegenstande in ihrem Begriff nicht aufgehen, dabi these in Widerspruch geraten mit der hergebrachten Norm der adaequatio. Der Widerspruch ist nicht, wozu Hegels absoluter Idealismus unvermeidlich ihn verklaren mul3te: kein heraklitisch Wesenhaftes. Er ist der Index der Unwahrheit von Identitat, des Aufgehens des Begriffenen im Begriff. -Adorno, Negative Dialektik (16-17) American academics have paid considerable attention recently to a small group of authors of Jewish extraction writing in German about the Federal Republic. Along with Esther Dischereit, Barbara Honigmann, and Rafael Seligmann, this group includes Maxim Biller. Born in Prague in 1960, Biller emigrated at the age of ten with his family to Hamburg, studied journalism in Munich, and wrote in the 1980s as a regular columnist for Tempo magazine where he became known, in the words of one critic, as a grimmiger Talentpolemiker. (Biller, Die Tempojahre, cover) Thus far he has published two collections of short stories (Wenn einmal reich and tot bin [1990] and Land der Yater and Verrdter [1994]), a journalistic compilation (Die Tempojahre [1991]) and one novel (Die Tochter [2000]). As a writer of fiction Biller has the reputation of enfant terrible. While favorably inclined readers have compared him to Joseph Heller and Philip Roth, many important critics and German academia have greeted Biller's fiction with dismayed silence. As Marcel Reich-Ranicki put it in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ich mochte mich zu dieser Art Literatur lieber nicht auBern (cited in Biller, Wenn ich, cover). American interest in Biller stems from two sources: a continuing concern with Jewish-German issues in the wake of the Holocaust and the academic trend toward postcolonial criticism beginning in the 1980s. Nonetheless, for specific reasons, Biller has remained an author more often invoked than interpreted. Most critics merely name Biller together with the above-mentioned authors as part of a school of contemporary German-Jewish writers with a presumably somewhat coherent outlook and agenda. Those critics who have discussed Biller's works focus on a single short story from his first collection and are often motivated by the postcolonialist search for and valorization of hybrid identities and minority modes of discourse. I argue that, in so doing, they have missed those aspects of Biller's work that make him stand out as a uniquely challenging and perceptive writer. The purpose of the present essay is twofold. First, I shall offer an overview of Biller's fictional works with an eye toward the themes and tropes that recur throughout both collections of short stories and his recent novel. Of interest is not solely Biller's depiction of German-Jewish issues, but also his exploration and reflection of how such issues are constructed in mass culture-a heretofore neglected but absolutely central aspect of Biller's work. Second, I shall suggest an interpretative reorientation away from affirmative postcolonialism and toward negative identity critique as a more productive approach to Biller and the ethnic-discursive issues raised by his fiction. More so than any other contemporary writer, Biller depicts the commodification of German-Jewish issues by a mass culture that continually exploits the public's fascination with the Holocaust. Insofar as academia is part-if only a tiny part-of the culture industry and is governed by economic rationales similar to those in film, television, and commercial publishing, Biller's work has an important message for scholars who make their living writing about majority-minority interaction. …

Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins. Essays on Ethnic and Cultural Boundaries in German-Speaking Countries

Lorenz, Dagmar C.G., and Renate S. Posthofen, eds. the Center, Eroding the Margins. Essays on Ethnic and Cultural Boundaries in GermanSpeaking Countries. Columbia, SC: Camden House,1998. 324pp. $75.00 hardcover. To various degrees the volume is informed by the postmodern challenge of traditional notions such as margin and center, identity, otherness and self. More specifically, this compilation of twenty-one compact and often rather short articles examine[s] literature that deals with the experience of difference and its various expressions by Jewish, Arab, and women authors, German and Austrian writers who by all appearances are mainstream but nonetheless feel detached from or disenfranchised by the perceived centers of power(2). Based on the observation that problems of alterity and positionality are being revised in the most current literature but equally inform older texts, the selected contributions examine literary and cultural material from the last two centuries with an emphasis on material produced before, during, and after World War II. The first section focuses on the perceptions of alterity as an effect of exile, more specifically on gender-specific aspects of exile. While the first four articles are devoted to the work of Gertrud Kolmar, the last two contributions of fer more general observations on the female experience of exile. The second section, Transcending Ethnicity and Cultural Boundaries: History and Culture, offers studies of pre-- twentieth century literature, such as the work of Fanny Lewald, Alma Maximilian Karlin, and a comparison between Selig Paulus Cassel and Edith Stein. Also included are readings of Edgar Hilsenrath's work, and a portrait of the critics Alfred Kerr and Marcel Reich-Ranicki. The articles in the third section entitled Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins, deal with constructions of identity in terms of nationality, ethnicity, and gender. Included are articles on multiculturalism and identity, strategies of Jewish counter-memory, the relationship between Jewish, Yiddish, and Ashkenazic Studies and Germanistik, the work of Robert Menasse, Iman Kahil, as well as trends in post-wall writing in Germany. The last section examines literary (re-)configuradons of tradition and innovation in the work of Tristan Tzars, Hugo Ball, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Torberg, Leo Perutz, Frank Zwillinger, and Nelly Sachs. Aside from the thematic foci, the contributions fall into five basic categories: (1) the epistemological re-evaluation of older works (Kolmar, Lewald, Kafka); (2) readings of post-modern narrative strategies (Hilsenrath, Menasse); (3) survey articles expanding the mainstream canon (exile literature by women, post-wall writing, German-Arab authors); (4) discussions of recent theoretical and disciplinary configurations (multiculturalism, counter-memory, Jewish Studies/Germanistik, formations of identity, the position of the literary critic), and (5) presentation of lesser known authors or works (Goll, Karlin, Cassel, Stein, Torberg, Perutz, Zwillinger, Sachs). …

Germans and Jews beyond Journalism: Essayism and Jewish Identity in the Writings of Karl Kraus

deste Beispiel von jtidischem Selbsthaf3 and as an Erzjude. For such prominent critics as Theodor Lessing, Anton Kuh, Wilma Abeles Iggers, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Walter Kaufmann, and, most recently, Sander Gilman, Kraus represents a spectacularly vociferous example of Jewish self-hatred.1 Kraus, the self-styled pillar of probity and language purist, attempts to distance himself from things Jewish by vilifying the unscrupulous capitalism and linguistic debauchery of assimilated Viennese Jews. This line of interpretation seems plausible enough, at least upon a first reading. For Kraus does in fact inveigh against Wienerjuden, Ringstrassejuden, and Schuhabsatzjuden, to use a few of his preferred formulations, with an incendiary violence and rhetorical excess that practically hector us into viewing him as driven by a deep-seated and irrational self-loathing. Kraus very often regards Viennese Jews as a major cultural liability. According to his first biographer, Leopold Liegler, Kraus sees in the Judenproblem the Kern und Herd des allgemeinen kulturellen Zerstirungsprozesses.'2 And, indeed, Kraus regards Jewish capitalists as the primary force behind German militarism. He has

Dankrede zum Grimmelshausen-Preis

The following is the text of a speech given by Ruth Klüger on her acceptance of the 1993 Grimmelshausen prize, awarded for her autobiographical account weiter leben: Eine Jugend (1992). Her prefatory remarks are addressed to Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who wrote about her award in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (16 October 1993).

The Humanism of Max Frisch: An Examination of Three of the Plays

One of the most puzzling authors writing in German today is Max Frisch. To many of his fellow-countrymen he is an annoyance: More patriotism-or at least more respect for Swiss institutions-might be expected from him. To foreign readers he is a scathing critic of the Swiss scene. Often provocative in the extreme, Frisch courts misunderstanding, at times deliberately concealing, under a veneer of satire, a very deep concern with basic human problems. Frisch's handling of these problems has not received the attention it deserves. Karl Schmid' and Kurt Marti2 have helped us to see Frisch against his Swiss background, but their discussions have tended toward the sociological and political, and his works as literature have been ignored. Literary critics such as Hans Mayer,3 Eduard Stauble,4 and Marcel Reich-Ranicki,5 directing attention mainly at the novels, have inclined to stress metaphysical aspects too much, leaving the reader in doubt as to the relevance of Frisch's problems to everyday life. Regard for the plays has been scant. Wilhelm Ziskovens and Hans Banziger,7 writing illuminating commentaries on Die chinesische Mauer (1947) and Graf Oderland (1951), are chiefly interested in Frisch as a disciple of Brecht, as an imitator or adapter of Brechtian technique; but they have not pointed out obvious similarities in their thought. Though Frisch is no Marxist, he is convinced the world's salvation does not lie in militant anticommunism. We shall consider him further as a

The Depersonalized World of Martin Walser

Martin Walser is a curious example of a contemporary novelist who, despite more than a decade of prolific writing, has failed to gain appreciable recognition from Germany's literary critics. Although the Preis der Gruppe (1955) and the Hermann-Hesse-Preis (1957) helped make him known to a larger audience, he has not gained the esteem comparable to that of other Gruppe 47 prizewinners (Eich, Bill, Ilse Aichinger, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Giinter Grass). Typical of the criticisms of the author is the comment of Marcel Reich-Ranicki regarding Walser's chief work, Halbzeit (1960): . vielleicht hat noch nie ein so schlechtes Buch so groB3e Begabung bewiesen.' There are two aspects of Walser's work that appear to disturb critics most: his apparent lack of concern for plot and for integration of detail into a unified whole,2 and his failure to present anything like a constructive alternative to the hypercritical and devastating picture he paints of postwar German society.3 With regard to the latter, it is true that Walser has not arrived at a synthesis of satire and the vision of a positive moral philosophy which has contributed in large measure to Heinrich B6ll's success. But a criticism leveled at the lack of architecture in Walser's works which, from the point of view of traditional poetic theory, is their most vulnerable aspect, fails to do justice to the author, inasmuch as it overlooks the real literary merit of the work: the unity of style and subject.