The literary coffee house
The literary coffee house was aradio program producedby the NDR between 1964 and 1967and broadcast by its and other radio programs. It was mostly broadcast live from the Wolf Weinhaus in Hanover , to which Gottfried Benn - a regular guest in the past - had already dedicated a story of the same name.
The literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki and the literary scholar Hans Mayer each discussed literature, culture and current topics with a famous writer or other cultural worker as guests. The guests included Theodor W. Adorno , Ernst Bloch , Heinrich Böll , Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Hans Magnus Enzensberger , Hans Werner Henze , Rudolf Augstein , Max Frisch , Günter Grass and Martin Walser . Since some episodes were also produced for television, the literary coffee house is nowadays often seen as the forerunner of Reich-Ranicki's later - much better known - television program The Literary Quartet . Like the episodes of this round of four, many years later, every episode of the literary coffee house ended with the quote "And again we see concerned / Close the curtain and all questions open.", Slightly modified from Brecht's The Good Man of Sezuan .
In retrospect, Reich-Ranicki described the collaboration with Mayer as extremely difficult. The literary scholar, who was more than 13 years his senior, would often have treated him disparagingly and questioned his intellectual and academic qualifications. In addition, as a native of Poland, he would have tried to have him only discuss Polish literature .
Web links
- Video of the June 1965 episode of the Literary Coffee House that was broadcast on television. Reich-Ranicki and Mayer talk to Friedrich Dürrenmatt on youtube.com ( YouTube ). Retrieved September 15, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frank Schirrmacher : "It was much easier than I had imagined" on June 4, 2008 on faz.net ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ). Retrieved January 13, 2013.