Naděžda Heinrichová Wohlstandskritik in der Lyrik Hans Magnus Enzensbergers

About this book deutsch english

Hans Magnus Enzensberger is one of the most important and influential living writers in Germany. He was born in the year of the great depression, 1929. In the time of Adenauer’s economic miracle, he began to write his poetry. In this book the aspects of the prosperity are analysed, on which Enzensberger commented critically in his lyric poetry since 1957. Almost every one of his poems has a polemical quality. Attention is dedicated especially to politics as an instrument of the powerful ones, the passive individual, media as means of manipulation and nature as future prospects.

On the occasion of Enzensberger’s 90th birthday on November 11, 2019, Florian Illies called him „a happy sceptic and realistic utopian“ in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, because Enzensberger knows „that there is no truth, only versions“ and everything „for him is only a question of perspective“. In this sense, he also looks at the prosperous (West) German society from various perspectives for decades. However, the angry tone and the criticism of prosperity have now disappeared from his poetry and have been replaced with new topics and perspectives.