Charles Bukowski and Sybille Lewitscharoff - Germany's writers

The German Charles Bukowski Society will have an exibition in Bavaria starting 10 July to mark the 20th anniversary of his passing.

Born Heinrich Karl in a forgettable town on the Rhine river as the son of an American father and a German mother, he became Charles after his family moved to the U.S. when he was still a small child.

The rest is literary history.

And the German Charles Bukowski Society keeps his memory alive.

Which is really nice of them and a good thing, too, because if he had stayed, he would not have become a writer held in such high esteem in his country of birth.

From the perspective of the culture editor at the K-Landnews, German literature took a dive starting in the early 1950s and barely found some new original voices after German re-unification. To make sure that this statement is not taken as a wholesale condemnation of German literature, let us mention the fact that some East German writers found many readers during that period, that there were some lone bestsellers out of the West, and out of Austria and Switzerland. And there was a slew of popular authors for the reading but not chattering classes, with many of these authors writing bathroom and waiting room lit.

But most of what Germany's educated were reading came from the UK and the U.S., and that's when they discovered Charles Bukowski. There is a good chance that he will continue to have a wider audience here than in the States.

So, you know Bukowski, but have you heard of Sybille Lewitscharoff? Neither had we, so here is a page about her on Wikipedia (in German). Illustrating once again the speed of the crowd, a good one third of that page deals with a speech she held only a few days ago in Dresden, Germany. The speech rocked the German chattering classes because it contained a dismissal of test tube babies as "half breeds" and called the total ban of masturbation by the bible "wise". And, yes, she went as far as lobbing the N comparison at modern reproductive medicine.

Now, one thing to know about post World War II German literature is that, not always but generally, those holding the power to define "literature" in Germany appear to have gone with the overall yardstick: the less it sells, the greater it is.

Despite accepting that bestsellers out of the US or the UK could be "great literature", German lit heads held a more pedestrian view when it came to works out of their own culture. Ms. Lewitscharoff is one writer in that tradition, highly decorated and irrelevant to 99% of Germans.

Famous only for setting off her own Dresden firestorm with a few remarks in a longer speech. While apologizing for the tone of the speech, she stands by the underlying content.

And that's why most contemporary German literature is utterly forgettable.

And why Charles Bukowski has a great future over here.