Berlin Things
Essays
Collected Works | Section: Writings. Volume 1 | Edited by Gary Lee Baker, Robert Gillett and Katja Leuchtenberger
Berlin Things / Werkausgabe in 43 Bänden
Essays
Collected Works | Section: Writings. Volume 1 | Edited by Gary Lee Baker, Robert Gillett and Katja Leuchtenberger
Texts of timeless currency
»By the way, everyone picks their own Berlin, everyone together ›only uses the same space‹.«
Berlin Things, published in 1975, is Uwe Johnson’s first volume of essays for which he compiled texts written between 1961 and 1971 that had largely been published elsewhere previously. Most of the texts were written on issues of day-to-day politics and they show Johnson as an alert intellectual who intervenes in politics with his journalistic research. Johnson carefully arranged 13 texts of varying length and form to create this volume that goes beyond...
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Berlin Things, published in 1975, is Uwe Johnson’s first volume of essays for which he compiled texts written between 1961 and 1971 that had largely been published elsewhere previously. Most of the texts were written on issues of day-to-day politics and they show Johnson as an alert intellectual who intervenes in politics with his journalistic research. Johnson carefully arranged 13 texts of varying length and form to create this volume that goes beyond statements on current affairs. Not all of them revolve around Berlin, nor even about issues immediately concerning the divided Germany. But all of them revolve around the possibility and impossibility of dialogue and are clearly in dialogue with one another, to be taken as an invitation for a conversation about and against the speechlessness of the divided Berlin. Johnson attempted to give a voice to Berlin.
In its explanations and commentary, the international team of editors addresses precisely this idiosyncrasy of Johnson’s selection: It is a look beyond the two German nations of timeless currency.
1975, 448 pages
Persons
Uwe Johnson
Author
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
Author
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...
© Michael Bengel
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2018
Max Frisch, Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2018
Sketches of an Accident/Sketches of an Accident Victim
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...
Year of Publication: 2016
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2016
Sketch of an Accident Victim
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)
Year of Publication: 2010
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2010
I Didn’t Want to Leave Any Questions Unasked
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...
Year of Publication: 2009
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2009
»for means of brutal communication«
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,...
Year of Publication: 1992
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1992
Speculations About Jakob
When Speculations About Jakob went to the presses in June 1959, its author moved from the GDR to West-Berlin. He was aware that this book, which contradicted the official...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), France (Gallimard), Chinese simplex rights (The Writers‘ Publishing House), Korea (Golden Bough), Bulgaria (Agata-A), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Mladinska knjiga)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Iter), Portuguese rights (Arcadia), Italy (Feltrinelli), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Japan (Hakusuisha), Poland (Czytelnik), Hungary (Horizont)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)
Year of Publication: 1983
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1983
Anniversaries
In Anniversaries, Uwe Johnson develops a unique panorama of German history in the 20th century – a »literary world trip« (Reinhard Baumgart) that starts with the story of a German...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (New York Review of Books Classics), Chinese simplex rights (The Writers‘ Publishing House), France (Gallimard), Italy (L'Orma), Netherlands (Van Oorschot), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Serbia (Laguna)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)
Year of Publication: 1965
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1965
Two Views
Two Views is set in the divided city of Berlin in 1961. Alternating between the two perspectives of East and West, the story is told through the eyes of West German photographer B. and East...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), UK (Jonathan Cape), Spanish world rights (Errata Naturae), France (Gallimard), Italy (Feltrinelli), Netherlands (De Bezige Bij), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Cappelen), Korea (Jeoungum-sha), Japan (Shuei Sha), Serbia (Prosveta), Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad)
Year of Publication: 1964
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1964
Karsch and Other Prose
It is time to revaluate Uwe Johnson's five prose texts contained in this volume, which were first published in 1964. Many readers and critics believed it to be a compilation of stories –...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Tiempo Contemporaneo), Sweden (Svenska Bokförlaget, Bonniers)
Year of Publication: 1961
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1961
The Third Book about Achim
In 1961, shortly before the construction of the wall that cut East and West Berlin off from each other and turned the border through Germany into a militarily guarded one, Uwe Johnson published...
Rights sold to:
Croatia (Ljevak)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), UK (Jonathan Cape), Spanish world rights (Plaza & Janès), Portuguese rights (Arcadia), France (Gallimard), Italy (Feltrinelli), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Tammi), Japan (Shuei Sha), Slovenia (Cankarjeva Zalozba), Greece (Indiktos)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)