| Marcel Reich-ranicki |
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| 1920 births | |
| reich-ranicki, marcel | |
| living people | |
| german literary critics | |
| german jews | |
| polish jews | |
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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 an officer of the notorious communist secret police Urzad Bezpieczenstwa 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 ''. His sucessor was Frank Schirrmacher . Until today Reich-Ranicki edits the "Frankfurter Anthologie" in the newspaper. 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 . From 1988 to 2002 Reich-Ranicki hosted the literary talk show ''Literarisches Quartett'' on the German public television broadcaster ZDF . Through the show he became a household name in Germany. The show was followed by a similar show that consisted completely of him talking about old and new books in front of a studio audience. 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. The magazine included his unfavorable review of the book. However, Reich-Ranicki praised Grass' next book, Crabwalk . Having written about German literature for most of his life, Reich-Ranicki published a book each about American and Polish literature after cutting down on his television appearances. 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. Marcel Reich-Ranicki WORKS
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