50 Klassiker: Deutsche Schriftsteller von Grimmelshausen bis Grass

by Joachim Scholl

Joachim Scholl stellt die bedeutensten deutschsprachigen Schriftsteller vom Barock bis zur Gegenwart vor: voller Achtung für die Leistung der Einzelnen, aber auch mit Blick auf ihre Zeitgebundenheit.

- 50 spannende Essays
- 50 Faktenseiten
- Kurzwertung
- Register
- über 200 farbige Abbildungen
- viele "Links" zu Literatur, Film und Alltagskultur

Genres: Nonfiction

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was at an open-air theater performance in Tübingen recently. The piece was from Hölderlin and I realized that I know virtually nothing about one of Germany‘s most important poets. So I got this reference book and a short biography about Hölderlin at the library. The biography I put down again pretty quickly. This collection of essays about important German authors was quite entertaining. Each author is covered in a biography of three to five pages, mixed up with portraits of the author, photos of his home or family, a few quotes and summary of the most important work. Each entry was finished with a one-pager for the hurried reader, boiling down the biography to the essentials, offering a short rating and further reading recommendations.

You know what is the most frustrating thing about this book referencing the 50 most important German authors? They are all men. In the introduction the author announces a separate edition for female authors. Why a separate edition? And where is it, 13 years after this one here was published?

Let me give you some examples of female German-language authors that did indeed have an impact on literature:

- Bettina von Arnim (*1785-1859)
- Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (*1797–1848)
- Ricarda Huch (*1864-1947 ), nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times
- Else Lasker-Schüler (*1869–1945)
- Anna Seghers (*1900-1983)
- Ingeborg Bachmann (*1926 in Austria-1973)
- Christa Wolf (*1929-2011)

Further reading in German:
- Auch ein Land der Dichterinnen und Denkerinnen, https://www.54books.de/auch-ein-land-...

You are welcome!

Back to this book... informative, well-written. The one-pager was printed with black type on a red background, which made for bad contrast and was not easy to read. I am knocking off a star for that and another one for the male bias.

[Klaus Metzger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Viele Biographien unserer Klassiker beschreiben die Einsamkeit, die Selbstzweifel und die vielen Krisen, die sie durchleben mussten. Auch berühmte Schriftsteller zeigen menschliche Schwächen und politische Unzuverlässigkeiten. Ein ergänzendes Buch über das Schicksal der emigrierten Schriftsteller nach Pacific Palisades/USA kann empfohlen werden.