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»for means of brutal communication«

The Correspondence
Edited by Henning Marmulla and Claus Kröger. With illustrations
Suhrkamp | Insel

»for means of brutal communication« / »fuer Zwecke der brutalen Verstaendigung«
The Correspondence
Edited by Henning Marmulla and Claus Kröger. With illustrations

In 1959, just after Uwe Johnson’s relocation to West berlin and the publication of his debut novel Speculations About Jakob, the correspondence and friendship between Johnson and Hans Magnus Enzensberger commences. Over the course of eight years they communicate about the situation of literature and politics and discuss the scopes of political activism. At the same time, however, the 161 documents stand testament to an exchange about the possibilities and limits of...

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In 1959, just after Uwe Johnson’s relocation to West berlin and the publication of his debut novel Speculations About Jakob, the correspondence and friendship between Johnson and Hans Magnus Enzensberger commences. Over the course of eight years they communicate about the situation of literature and politics and discuss the scopes of political activism. At the same time, however, the 161 documents stand testament to an exchange about the possibilities and limits of friendship.


As early as October 1966, Uwe Johnson demands that they no longer »construct« their correspondence »towards future edition and provision for old age but for means of brutal communication.« The seemingly ordinary serves as a basis for fundamental observations and ultimately leads to a rift: The fact that Johnson offers his apartments in Berlin to Enzensberger’s first wife Dagrun and his brother Ulrich leads to aporias of trust, surety and responsibility. One year later even this arrangement is stretched to its limits – but leaves behind a correspondence in which neither party fails to deliver: leasr of all the hightly trenchant dialogue between two profoundly different characters. And their edition is now available.

2009, 342 pages
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Persons

Hans Magnus Enzensberger was born in Kaufbeuren in 1929. He died on November 24, 2022, aged 93, in Munich. As a poet, essayist, writer, biographer, editor and translator, he was one of the world’s most influential and internationally renowned German intellectuals.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger was born in Kaufbeuren in 1929. He died on November 24, 2022, aged 93, in Munich. As a poet, essayist, writer,...

Uwe Johnson was born in Kammin (today: Kamien Pomorski), Poland, in 1934 and died in Sheerness-on-Sea on February 22 or 23, 1984. His estate is kept at the Uwe Johnson Archive at the University of Rostock.

Uwe Johnson was born in Kammin (today: Kamien Pomorski), Poland, in 1934 and died in Sheerness-on-Sea on February 22 or 23, 1984. His estate is...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Light Poems
Year of Publication: 2023
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2023
»Light poems« in a time of severe global crises – can that work? And what are they trying to tell us? But in any case, having a poet and a visual artist as renowned as Enzensberger and Tripp present us with the illusion of life is certainly going to be entertaining. With great zest, the two disturb it, the dust of our earthly conditions in the form of people, animals and things....
Babel
Year of Publication: 2020
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2020

Babel! A word seemingly born from chaos in its alliterating, rolling urgency. The poet pulls several examples of how deception and self-deceit, misjudgements and failing routines determine...

Rights sold to:

Bengali rights (Parampara)

Windfalls
Year of Publication: 2019
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2019

»How’s the confidence of the financial astrologers doing? What does the gibberish of the daily papers tell us? How much reality is contained in the mythical models of contemporary physics and cosmology? Towards which ultimate goal is our contemporaries’ pathological mobility drifting? What is the ubiquitous craze for abbreviations hiding? And down which garden path are the fine arts trying to...

Poems 1950-2020
Year of Publication: 2019
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2019
Every five years, Hans Magnus Enzensberger presents once more the chance to discover his rich lyrical oeuvre. Enzensberger takes the opportunity to critically review his selection and enrich it with...
Rights sold to:

For further information regarding the rights status of the poems in your territory please contact the respective Rights Manager >>

An Expert Review in 89 Numbers
Year of Publication: 2019
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2019

Nature has treated people somewhat like a stepmother would. Other animals are stronger, can swim and fly better, give birth less awkwardly and do not need as much time to become adults. How can it be then that this weak creature came to be the strongest on earth? The answer, if you believe the author, has to do with the division of labour. Thanks to this trick every one of us, he believes,...

»Write down everything that is true«
Year of Publication: 2018

The hitherto unpublished and unknown correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Hans Magnus Enzensberger allows one to relive how, after the Second World War, two of the most prominent writers in the German language chose to depict and regard the world, literature and the publishing industry, but also how they wished to present and be regarded themselves.


One was...

A Handful of Anecdotes
Year of Publication: 2018
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2018

»It is hard to shake off one’s date of birth. M. drags his around with him, too.« The first twenty years of life are baggage that a person is forever stuck with. But...

Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Anagrama), France (Gallimard), Serbia (Laguna)

Sketches of an Accident/Sketches of an Accident Victim
Year of Publication: 2018
Max Frisch, Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2018
In his Sketchbook, 1966–1971, Max Frisch published fragments of a story under the title »Sketches of an Accident«. In these fragments, the doctor Viktor travels with his lover, Marlies, a specialist in Romance studies, to Provence. An accident occurs, and the woman dies. Viktor is never again involved in an accident, but the rest of his life is influenced by his...
Survival Artists
Year of Publication: 2018
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2018

The 20th century was the heyday of writers who had survived state terror and purges with all the ethical and political ambivalences that this entailed. How did they manage to do that? Were they...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Altamarea), France (Alma), Italy (Einaudi), Serbia (Laguna), Turkey (Iletisim)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Book Club rights (Büchergilde Gutenberg)

Sketch of an Accident Victim
Year of Publication: 2016
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2016
Johnson wrote this work as a 70th birthday present for Max Frisch, the “biographer”, the depicter of the irreconcilability of identity and the official image of an individual....
Rights sold to:

Sweden (Faethon)

Money, Money, Money!
Year of Publication: 2015
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2015
Every time Aunt Fé comes to visit, the rather ordinary daily life of the Federmann family is turned upside down. Elderly, jaunty Aunt Fé is a sly lady. She lead an adventurous life and...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Anagrama), Catalan rights (Edicions 62), France (Alma), Italy (Einaudi), Japan (Shobunsha)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag)

Tumult
Year of Publication: 2014
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2014

In 1963 the author took his first trip to Russia and unexpectedly became a guest at Khrushchev's dacha in Gagra. The result was a detailed portrait of the man and the Soviet »Thaw«...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Chinese simplex rights (Beijing Fonghong Books), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Todavia), France (Gallimard), Italy (Einaudi), Denmark (Gyldendal), Croatia (Disput), Greece (Hestia)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Malpaso)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag), German Entire Radio Reading (HR), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg)

Gone!
Year of Publication: 2014
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2014
What’s going on in Theresia’s grandparents’ house? More and more things continue to disappear in an inexplicable manner: from the corkscrew to an old radio with a magical eye to the massive oak buffet table – until the entire house goes up in flames. But has anything really disappeared or have people simply forgotten where those things have gone? Theresia follows events closely, at first as a...
Mr Zed's Reflections
Year of Publication: 2013
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2013
Who is this plump Mr., who shows up every afternoon at the same spot in the city park for almost a year, and who engages passers-by in quick-witted repartee? A wise man, a wisecracker, a clown, a...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Anagrama), France (Alma)

Domestic Rights Sales:German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag), German Radio Play (Hessischer Rundfunk)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Einaudi)

Panopticon
Year of Publication: 2012
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2012

In his new book, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, the master of the political and literary essay, discloses information about matters big and small, daily and commonplace themes, astounding his readers...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), France (Alma)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Malpaso), Italy (Einaudi), Korea (Orot)

Brussel, the Gentle Monster or the Disenfranchisement of Europe
Year of Publication: 2011
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2011
Who dictates that we should have thirty-four-digit bank transfer codes, questions the legal systems of apparently sovereign nations and sets up rescue systems of dizzying proportions that exceed the...
Rights sold to:

Chinese simplex rights (Beijing Fonghong Books), France (Gallimard),

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Anagrama), Catalan rights (Arcadia), Portuguese rights (Relogio d'Agua), Italy (Einaudi), Netherlands (Cossee), Denmark (Hovedland), Sweden (Karneval), Norway (Valdisholm), Croatia (Meandarmedia), Greece (Nefeli)

Album
Year of Publication: 2010
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2010
What is this »album« about?
»This is not a diary«, as it states at the very beginning of the book.
So what is it then?

A jumble, a jotter, a...
Rights sold to:

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Seagull), Italy (Einaudi)

My Favourite Flops, Followed by a Wealth of Ideas
Year of Publication: 2010
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2010
In this black book, Enzensberger sets his sights on a subject that many artistic contemporaries of his shun: failure.

»There are few experiences that I owe so much to; I would even...
Rights sold to:

Russia (selection; Obedinennoe)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Seagull), Spanish rights Latin America (Capital Intelectual), Italy (Einaudi)

I Didn’t Want to Leave Any Questions Unasked
Year of Publication: 2010
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2010

In Concomitants, Johnson's account of his experiences as a writer in both East and West, Uwe Johnson describes the failure of a book he had set out to write in 1963 and in which he wanted to document the work of Fluchthelfer (»escape helpers«), who aided people in fleeing the GDR. For that purpose, he conducted interviews about the Why and How of their work with members of...

Skirmishes and Scholia
Year of Publication: 2009
Hans Magnus EnzensbergerYear of Publication: 2009
They remained unpublished for decades: Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Frankfurt lectures on poetry from the winter semester of 1964/65. Using these extensive texts, Enzensberger's writings on...
Rights sold to:

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Denmark (Gyldendal)


DISCOVER

News
Suhrkamp Verlag mourns the loss of Hans Magnus Enzensberger.
News
11.11.2019
»One of Germany‘s leading public intellectuals.« London Review of Books