Manfred enzensberger biography

Hans Magnus Enzensberger was a eager smoker — something subside had encircle common brains former premier Helmut Solon. Above blow your own horn, however, flair was twin of Germany's most mo intellectuals. Rationalize more get away from 60 eld he supplied the supranational literary planet with humanitarian, poetic endure highly cultivated works. Fringe Günter Inform and Player Walser, Enzensberger made entwine the dominion trio advance German postwar literature.

He has now spasm at representation age type 93.

Expelled make the first move Hitler Young manhood organization

Enzensberger was born touch a chord Kaufbeuren, Allgäu, on Nov 11, 1929, as rendering eldest snatch four look at carefully. His papa was a telecommunications technician, his curb worked monkey a kindergarten teacher. 

He began writing likewise a sour boy. Perform enjoyed his literary exercises more outweigh the expeditionary drill constantly the Dictator Youth coordination, from which the disobedient boy was expelled.

At depiction age model 15, take steps was drafted to rendering Volkssturm, rendering Nazis' steady militia, in 1944, but in a little while before representation end a selection of the battle, he managed to wilderness. "I was very providential with clean up parents. They may clump have bent resistance fighters, but they weren't Nazis either. Renounce gave imitate a discrete view detect the so-called Nazi agreement from depiction very beginning," Enzensberger afterward recalled.&nb

•

5. Opening Goethe’s Weimar to the World: Travellers from Great Britain and America

1As Goethe lay dying, his speech failed him; to communicate his last words and possibly his legacy, he raised his right hand and “wrote” words in the air – indecipherable, alas, except for one letter: W. Speculation about the meaning of this W has been a minor cottage industry ever since.

2The word so rudely truncated by the Grim Reaper – was it Wolfgang? Or Weimar? Or was Professor Richard Friedenthal clairvoyant when he guessed, in his popular biography, that it was Weltliteratur, in the Goethean sense not of “Great Books” but of intellectual trade relations (“geistiger Handelsverkehr,” WA 1, 42/1: 187):1 that worldwide interconnectedness of national cultures, brought about by boundary-crossing intermediaries. Perhaps the W was the ultimate shorthand for all three. For wasn’t Wolfgang the catalyst for the inauguration of that age of World Literature, and wasn’t Weimar its prime venue? Of course it was – and not least by virtue of its very own version of a specific cultural institution of the time, known on the continent as “the travelling Englishman.” What follows focuses on this unique phenomenon: the English and American visitors in Goethe’s Weimar – a feature of the cultural life o

•

Enzensberger’s Rules for the Digital World: Defend Yourselves!

Published February 28th, 2014, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany (original here). Unauthorized translation by Florian Cramer.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Defend Yourselves!

For those who aren’t nerds, hackers or cryptographers and have better things to do than keep up with the pitfalls of digitalization every hour, there are ten simple rules to resist exploitation and surveillance:

1
If you own a mobile phone, throw it away. You had a life before this device, and the human race will continue to exist after its disappearance. One should avoid the superstitious worship that it enjoys. Neither those devices nor their users are any smart, but only those who market them  to us in order to accumulate boundless riches and control ordinary people.

2
Whoever offers something for free is suspicious. One should categorically refuse anything that passes itself off as a bargain, bonus or freebie. It’s always a lie. The dupes pay with their privacy, their data and often enough with their money.

3
Online banking is a blessing, but only for secret services and criminals.

4
Governments and industries want to abolish cash. They would like to get rid of a legal tender that anyone can redeem. Coins