A Flying Poet as Critical Companion: Hans Magnus Enzensberger's 80th Birthday
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- Hans Magnus Enzensberger in 2007
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For more than half a century Hans Magnus Enzensberger has been one of the leading intellectuals of Germany. His essays and poems mirror the political intellectual history of the country. On November 11, he celebrated his 80th birthday.
The sociologist Jürgen Habermas has described him as a "harlequin incomer"; his fellow poet Peter Rühmkorf as a "hummingbird". Hans Magnus Enzensberger likes to present himself as "flying Robert". He persistently hovers away from all attempts to define him politically. And so the "brand HME", as the media theorist Norbert Bolz has called him, represents that vast, open label "maverick".
"I don't need consistent views of the word"
Enzensberger was born on November 11, 1929 in Kaufbeuren. He studied literature and philosophy in Erlangen, Hamburg and Paris. In 1955 he received his PhD for a dissertation on the poetics of Clemens Brentano, after his initial plan, a work on Hitler's rhetoric, was rejected by his professors.
Enzensberger worked as a radio journalist in Stuttgart until 1957. He took part in several conferences of Group 47. He lived as a freelance writer in Norway and Italy, in America and in Cuba. For a time he was a reader for the Suhrkamp Publishers in Frankfurt. Today the poet and essayist, editor and translator, lives and writes in Munich-Schwabing and is regarded as one of the most versatile -- and important - German intellectuals.
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- Hans Magnus Enzensberger, with fellow German writers Günter Grass and Peter Rühmkorf, at the Günter Grass House in Lübeck in 2005.
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Language lighter than air
Enzensberger became known with his first volume of poetry, In Defence of the Wolves (verteidigung der wölfe, 1957). Fellow writer Alfred Andersch spoke of the angry young man's "light, Mozartian, weightless hand". His poetic style still packs cutting criticism of the times in an unadorned, clear language, mainly without rhyme and in free rhythms. Enzensberger is regarded as a master of a simple and yet suggestively ambiguous vocabulary, of virtuoso language games, and as "the Jürgen Habermas of German lyric poetry". In 1963 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize, and in recent decades he has been the recipient of numerous further awards.
In spring 2009 Enzensberger's twelfth volume of poetry, Rebus, was published. "Nur manchmal, nachts, holt die alte Wut / mich ein, hinterrücks. Wie früher hat sie / gewöhnlich recht. Aber merkt sie nicht, / daß es keinen Zweck hat, daß sie stört, / daß ich sie nicht haben will?" ("Only sometimes, at night, the old anger seizes me, slyly, from behind. As before, it is / usually right. But doesn't it notice / that it's useless to trouble me, / that I don't want it?"). The wrath of the early poems has subsided and given way to a longing for tranquillity. But Enzensberger's language still pulsates with weightlessness.
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- Hans Magnus Enzensberger in 1968
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"I prefer arguments to commitments"
Enzensberger's essays have critically followed the political and social developments of the German Federal Republic since the mid-1950s. He has sharply attacked the "economic wonder mentality" of the post-war years and, in his famous review of the Neckermann mail-order catalogue, the mindlessness of the masses. In his Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien (i.e., Construction Kit for a Media Theory, 1970), he formulates a vehement criticism of the media, which culminates in the dictum "Television as a null medium".
As long-time editor of the journal Kursbuch, Enzensberger is also regarded as having been one of the most important mentors of the student protest movement. He supported the extra-parliamentary opposition, but refused to be carried away into making an unambiguous commitment: "The moral rearmament of the Left can go hang," as he already put it in 1966.
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- Hans Magnus Enzensberger and his daughter Theresia at an event in Berlin.
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"I'm not an idealist"
In 1984 Enzensberger, together with the book artist Franz Greno, founded the bibliophile Andere Bibliothek (Other Library), for "Luxury is no crime". For nearly a quarter century as editor, he has lovingly helped to fashion the "most beautiful book series in the world". The two founders celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Andere Bibliothek together with the polymath Alexander von Humboldt. Their re-publication of his voluminous lifework, Kosmos, in a deluxe edition of 80,000 copies, was a huge success: a success that again shows the masterly manner in which Enzensberger knows how to attract the attention of the media.
One of Enzensberger's greatest passions is mathematics. His most successful book is his declaration of love for mathematical thought, The Number Devil (Der Zahlenteufel, 1997), whose purpose is to allay the fear of mathematics in adults as well as children. In 2009 he published another children's book, Bibs, about the power of wishes, with illustrations by Rotraut Susanne Berner.
"It's an odd sort of defamation to say of me that I meddle in everything," Enzensberger once said. "There are major aspects of the present that are completely foreign to me. For instance, I'm a pedestrian and don't know how to drive a car."
Instead of driving a car, the gifted essayist, courageous editor, cunning media star and subtle poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger opens his umbrella and rises into the air. And, in his own words from the poem Flying Robert (Der fliegende Robert): "I leave behind nothing more / than a legend".
Dagmar Giersberg works as a freelance journalist living in Bonn.
Translated by Jonathan Uhlaner.
