"After his 50th birthday, Robert Walser stopped writing and was satisfied with the life of a madhouse patient." That's what it said for many years on the dust jacket of the legendary book "Wanderungen mit Robert Walser" (1957).

The feature writer and philanthropist Carl Seelig tells of the Sunday excursions he took with Walser between 1936 and 1956.

Paul Ingenday

Europe correspondent for the feuilleton in Berlin.

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However, a new edition of this fundamental biographical source tells a much more exciting story, namely how the touchingly concerned Carl Seelig, who himself lacked the gifts of a poet, gradually took over the interpretive sovereignty over the life of his "silenced" friend and his own name forever with him associated with Robert Walsers.

helper syndrome?

assault?

Appropriation?

A conversation with the poet Durs Grünbein about walking, thinking, writing and the dark corners of biography.

The new edition of Carl Seelig's "Wanderungen mit Robert Walser" was published by Suhrkamp, ​​has 252 pages and costs 22 euros.

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