Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Leading Light in German Letters, Dies at 93

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It was additionally in Cuba that he started his epic narrative poem, “The Sinking of the Titanic,” which explores the lasting fascination with myths of disaster and considers the weaknesses of contemporary society. In it he wrote: “I noticed the iceberg, looming excessive/ and chilly, like a chilly fata morgana,/ it drifted slowly, irrevocably,/ white, nearer to me.”

Mr. Enzensberger returned to Germany in 1979 and settled in Munich, the place he began a publishing home, The Different Library, which helped develop younger authors, together with the German novelist W.G. Sebald and the Polish author and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Lots of his later essays and books targeted on the state of Europe after the autumn of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism within the Soviet bloc. He remained fiercely political, outspoken in his assist of the Persian Gulf Conflict, and created a stir when he in contrast Saddam Hussein of Iraq to Hitler.

In his ebook “Civil Wars,” which explored evolving concepts of nationalism and group by evaluating the bloodshed from the breakup of Yugoslavia to the city riots in america within the Nineties, Mr. Enzensberger described a world outlined by an “lack of ability to differentiate between destruction and self-destruction.” On this world, he wrote, “there is no such thing as a longer any have to legitimize your actions. Violence has freed itself from ideology.”

But whilst he contemplated humanity at its worst, he infused his writings with a sly wit that rendered them nearly comedian. In an essay revealed in The Instances in 1975, “A Brief Note On Doom,” he checked out what he referred to as the “secularization” of the Apocalypse within the fashionable world, calling Doom “the Final Phrase in Leisure, or “a commodity like some other.”

Regardless, he concluded that Doom was right here to remain, writing, “Immediately all the pieces will go on, slightly worse perhaps than final week, however not noticeably totally different.”

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