Marcel Reich-Ranicki

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Marcel Reich-Ranicki (IPA: [maʁˈsɛl ˌʁaɪ̯ç ʁaˈnɪtski]) (born 2 June 1920) is a famous German literary critic, and a member of the literary group Gruppe 47 of German and Polish-Jewish origin.

1 Life
2 Works
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Life

Marcel Reich-Ranicki was born Marcel Reich on June 2, 1920, at Włocławek, Poland, to the family of David Reich, a Polish-Jewish merchant, and his wife Helene, née Auerbach, a German woman hailing from a traditional Jewish, Rabbinic family. Reich lived with his parents in Berlin from 1929; being Jewish the family was deported to Poland on October 28, 1938, and in November 1940 Reich and his parents found themselves behind the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. During his stay in the ghetto he worked for the Judenrat as a chief translator, and also contributed to the collaborative newspaper Gazeta Żydowska (The Jewish Newspaper) as a music critic. In 1943 he managed to escape to the "Aryan side", although his parents perished in concentration camps.

In 1944 he became a soldier of the Polish First Army where he worked in the censorship department. He joined the Polish Workers' Party in 1945, both out of ideological conviction and out of gratitude to the Red Army which, by defeating the Nazis, had saved him and his wife from extermination.

From 1948 to 1949 he was a Polish consul-general and intelligence worker (operating under the pseudonym ‘Ranicki') in London. He was recalled from London in 1949, sacked from the intelligence service and expelled from the Party on charges of "cosmopolitanism" and Trotskyism. He then took a position with the publishing house of the Polish Defence Ministry, where he established a section publishing literature by contemporary authors from the German Democratic Republic. Subsequently he developed a freelance career writing and broadcasting about German literature.

Increasingly frustrated by the curtailment of his liberty in Poland he emigrated in 1958 with his wife and son to the Federal Republic of Germany. Here he began writing for leading German periodicals, including Die Welt and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In Poland he had published under the pseudonym Ranicki, his intelligence codename. On the advice of the arts editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine he now adopted the name Reich-Ranicki for his journalism.

From 1960 to 1973 he was literary critic for the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit. From 1973 to 1988 he was head of the literature staff at the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. From 1988 to 2002 Reich-Ranicki hosted the literary talk show Literarisches Quartett on the German state television broadcaster ZDF. Through the show he became a household name in Germany.

In 1968 and 1969 he taught at American universities. From 1971 to 1975 he held a visiting professorship at Stockholm and Uppsala. Since 1974 he has been an honorary professor at the University of Tübingen. In 1990 he received the Heine visiting professorship at the University of Düsseldorf, and in 1991 he received the Heinrich-Hertz visiting professorship of the University of Karlsruhe.

Following the publication of Too Far Afield by his fellow Gruppe 47 member Günter Grass, Reich-Ranicki appeared on the cover of the magazine Der Spiegel, tearing the novel apart.

In February 2006 he received the Honorary degree (Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa) of the Tel Aviv University. The university will establish an endowed chair for German literature named after Reich-Ranicki. In February 2007 the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin awarded an honorary degree to Reich-Ranicki. This is the same university that Reich-Ranicki applied to in 1938 but his application was turned down due to his Jewish ancestry.

[edit] Works

Literarisches Leben in Deutschland. Kommentare u. Pamphlete. Munich: Piper 1965.
Deutsche Literatur in Ost und West Piper 1966.
Literatur der kleinen Schritte. Deutsche Schriftsteller heute. Piper 1967.
Die Ungeliebten. Sieben Emigranten 1968.
Über Ruhestörer. Juden in der deutschen Literatur. Piper 1973.
Nachprüfung, Aufsätze über deutsche Schriftsteller von gestern Piper 1977.
(Ed.) Frankfurter Anthologie. Volume 1–27, Frankfurt: Insel 1978–2004.
Entgegnung, Zur deutschen Literatur der siebziger Jahre Deutsche Verlags-Anstal 1981
Thomas Mann und die Seinen, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstal 1987, ISBN 3-421-06364-8
Lauter Verrisse, Munich: DTV 1993, ISBN 3-423-11578-5
Die Anwälte der Literatur Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1994
Mein Leben, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1999, ISBN 3-423-13056-3
Sieben Wegbereiter. Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2002, ISBN 3-421-05514-9
Meine Bilder. Porträts und Aufsätze. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2003, ISBN 3-421-05619-6
Unser Grass Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2003, ISBN 3-421-05796-6
Vom Tag gefordert. Reden in deutschen Angelegenheiten. DTV 2003, ISBN 3-423-13145-4
Meine Geschichten. Von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe bis heute. Insel, 2003, ISBN 3-458-17166-5
(Hg.) Der Kanon. Die deutsche Literatur Erzählungen 10 Bände und ein Begleitband. Insel 2003, ISBN 3-458-06760-4