Texts and signs

Texts and Characters - a literary magazine
description	German literary magazine
publishing company	Luchterhand, Darmstadt
First edition	1955
attitude	1957
Frequency of publication	bi-monthly
editor	Alfred Andersch
ISSN	0563-3109

Texts and Characters was a literary magazine published by Alfred Andersch . It was published every two months from 1955 to 1957.

The first issue of the magazine was published on January 15, 1955 by Luchterhand Literaturverlag . Andersch had won over Arno Schmidt , whom he valued , who made his short novel Seelandschaft mit Pocahontas as well as a shorter literary theoretical text ( calculations ) available for first publication. Schmidt's text brought not only the author, but also the magazine, its editor and the publisher an advertisement for pornography and blasphemy.

The authors who were subsequently represented with texts in the magazine included, among others, Samuel Beckett , Pablo Neruda , Roland Barthes , Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernest Hemingway . There were also essays on contemporary literature in Sweden, reports on African and Latin American poetry and the literary development of the GDR.

The literature of West Germany was represented by texts by Wolfgang Weyrauch , Martin Walser , Helmut Heißenbüttel and others. Since Alfred Andersch was one of the founding members of Group 47 , texts and signs were viewed by some readers as the central organ of this group.

After 16 issues, the magazine was discontinued in 1957 due to “market economy considerations”. In 1978 the Verlag Zweiausendeins published a three-volume reprint of the magazine.

The texts and characters were already Andersch's second attempt to establish a magazine; immediately after the Second World War , he and Hans Werner Richter published the call .

Web links

• bookrix Karl Schön: In memory of Alfred Andersch and his magazine "Texte undzeichen " (1982)