From the August 2001 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 48, No. 8)

Hans Mayer: A Life for Literature

Tekla Szymanski
Associate Editor

“I never became the prey,” Hans Mayer used to say. He didn’t like to be cast in the role of the victim. Mayer, Germany’s most prominent literary critic and indefatigable writer, died May 19 at the age of 94. A German Jew and a homosexual, Mayer fled Germany in 1933 for Paris because of his involvement with the Socialist left. He survived the war in Switzerland, returned to Germany, and moved to Leipzig, in what was then East Germany, where he taught literature at the university. But after becoming disillusioned by the communist state, he remained in West Germany following a visit in 1963.

“Mayer was a witness to the century,” writes Peter Müller in Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger. “He was a brilliant orator.” Christoph Hein in Hamburg’s Der Spiegel adds, “He was a man with a backbone. He was a king—even while in exile. He was never bitter. But his pain was ever evident.” His friends formed the Who’s Who of German-language literature: Paul Celan, Anna Seghers, Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson (who was Mayer’s student in Leipzig), Thomas Mann, Max Frisch, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin. He was “a scholar with an ability to listen,” writes Matthias Wegner in Zurich’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung. His immense oeuvre included works about Wagner, Aragon, and Sartre; about Judaism, politics, his experiences and observations, but also about Marilyn Monroe.

“Mayer was driven by a vibrant mandarin self-awareness—he was an intellectual charged with historical and political responsibility,” observes Lorenz Jäger in Frankfurt’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “He saw himself in the role of the contemporary interlocutor in all things literary and political. Over time, the critical journal-style and contemporary history aspects in his writings melded into a completely unique writing style with only rare emotional outburst.”

Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Germany’s prominent literary critic, describes Mayer as “the unhappiest man. Exile never became his home, and his home became his exile. He was a scientist with the temperament of a journalist. He was a friend of discourse, an advocate of discussion, and a virtuous polemicist.”

On his 94th birthday in March, Mayer hinted that he was ready to die. The frail writer, who was nearly blind, had told his friends with a smile: “I am looking forward to seeing Brecht again.”