Uwe Wittstock had met Heinrich Böll in Cologne, who asked him to do something for Marcel Reich-Ranicki at home in Frankfurt.
He should greet him and tell him he's an asshole.
Which the literary editor faithfully did in the boss's office.
Reich-Ranicki thanked him and said: "In Heinrich Böll's Landser jargon, that's a compliment."
Florian Balke
Culture editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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What is it about the critic who, quick-witted and keen to formulate, immediately turns criticism of him into praise?
What about the author and editor of more than 200 books?
how did he write
How does it read today?
And what about his slating at a time when literary criticism likes to accuse itself of velvet paws while reputations on social media are destroyed with a single emoji?
In the Frankfurt lecture hall of the German National Library, three men and one woman are seated on four black leather armchairs.
It is quite obviously a "literary quartet".
It didn't come together on the original furniture from the television show - they can be seen next door in the exhibition "Marcel Reich-Ranicki - One Life, Many Roles" in the German Exile Archive.
But the evening is intended to commemorate the television show, not in honor of the critic, but in honor of his work.
How could such texts come about?
On the stage next to Wittstock, who put together the exhibition together with the head of the exile archive, Sylvia Asmus: Elke Heidenreich, Hubert Spiegel and Volker Weidermann.
They all knew Reich-Ranicki, worked with him and continued what he started.
Just like in the past, everyone presents a book that is then discussed.
Not to celebrate the author, as Wittstock adds.
In terms of merits, everything is clear: "But maybe he also had tiny weaknesses.
It is quite possible that we will respond to that.”
Heidenreich brought a small volume from 1987 that Reich-Ranicki gave her, just two essays, one about doctors in literature, written as a lecture for the German Medical Association, about Schnitzler, Döblin, Chekhov, Bulgakov and others: "I I find him in this little writing just as I got to know him - funny, clever, well-read, evil and with rabid conclusions." But it also has something of a Wikipedia entry, Weidermann thinks, from 2015 to 2019 in the new edition of the Quartet in the ZDF and today head of the arts section of the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit".
How could such texts even come into being without Wikipedia, asks Spiegel, Reich-Ranicki's successor as publisher of the "Frankfurter Anthologie": "Was there a Zettelkasten?
Did he have all that ready?”
The critic can do the least with his critics with Lauter Verrisse from 1970, "almost a trademark", as Wittstock notes, generously incorporating a critique of Reich-Ranicki by Peter Handke, provided with a seminal essay on history and task of literary criticism.
The critic writes for the readers, it says.
Not for the authors, as Goethe quoted by Reich-Ranicki wanted, not for the colleagues, as Benjamin suggested.
"He simply didn't care about the opinions of his colleagues," says Wittstock.
The concentrated slating that followed amazed Weidermann: “There was something spooky about it.
This anger, this will to destroy.” The round refers to the influence of the controversial journalism of the Weimar Republic and the injuries of a man
for whom literature in the ghetto had taken on an existential dimension.
"When it came to the books, he knew no compromises," says Wittstock.
The intransigence of the tone of voice remains alien to the group.
"Who am I to throw a book in the bin in three minutes like Denis Scheck does?" Asks Heidenreich: "I think that's really terrible."
More vulnerability is revealed in the 1982 volume “My school days in the Third Reich” brought by Spiegel, previously a newspaper series.
"He wasn't just a television star, book author and reviewer, he was also an editor," says Spiegel: "He took that very seriously."
"He wanted to know who am I actually surrounding myself with?" says Weidermann: "And got people talking."
"The critic becomes the narrator," says Spiegel.
And pass confidently, adds Heidenreich.
In between, it's about "Thomas Mann and his family", selected by Weidermann: "A German novel, told as a family story." The Manns are "the royal family of Marcel Reich-Ranicki".
That Heidenreich ends the evening with "My life" staying, but not the "Quartet", is also questionable for this reason.
On the one hand, the evening in which she takes part picks up on the format that was declared dead.
On the other hand, the Reich-Ranickis are now part of the German novel as a family history.
There's more to it than you think.