Manfred enzensberger biography

A Handful of Anecdotes

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

A Handful of Anecdotes / Eine Handvoll Anekdoten

Also Opus incertum

A childhood and young adulthood in a totalitarian state and beyond (1929-1955) – freely narrated

Witty, exuberant, with ellipses

»It is hard to shake off one’s date of birth. M. drags his around with him, too.« The first twenty years of life are baggage that a person is forever stuck with. But memory is a fragmentary and untrustworthy guide. That is why the author avails himself of the freedom of stage director and collage-maker, gathering together themes, images, and anecdotes into an Opus incertum.

That is how the ancient Romans referred to a particular...

Read more

»It is hard to shake off one’s date of birth. M. drags his around with him, too.« The first twenty years of life are baggage that a person is forever stuck with. But memory is a fragmentary and untrustworthy guide. That is why the author avails himself of the freedom of stage director and collage-maker, gathering together themes, image

German author Hans Magnus Enzensberger dies

Hans Magnus Enzensberger was a passionate smoker — something he had in common with former chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Above all, however, he was one of Germany's most important intellectuals. For more than 60 years he supplied the international literary world with thoughtful, poetic and highly sophisticated works. Alongside Günter Grass and Martin Walser, Enzensberger made up the power trio of German postwar literature.

He has now died at the age of 93.

Expelled from Hitler Youth organization

Enzensberger was born in Kaufbeuren, Allgäu, on November 11, 1929, as the eldest of four sons. His father was a telecommunications technician, his mother worked as a kindergarten teacher. 

He began writing as a young boy. He enjoyed his literary exercises more than the military drill of the Hitler Youth organization, from which the defiant boy was expelled.

At the age of 15, he was drafted to the Volkssturm, the Nazis' national militia, in 1944, but shortly before the end of the war, he managed to desert. "I was very lucky with my par

Enzensberger’s Rules for the Digital World: Defend Yourselves!

Published February 28th, 2014, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany (original here). Unauthorized translation by Florian Cramer.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Defend Yourselves!

For those who aren’t nerds, hackers or cryptographers and have better things to do than keep up with the pitfalls of digitalization every hour, there are ten simple rules to resist exploitation and surveillance:

1
If you own a mobile phone, throw it away. You had a life before this device, and the human race will continue to exist after its disappearance. One should avoid the superstitious worship that it enjoys. Neither those devices nor their users are any smart, but only those who market them  to us in order to accumulate boundless riches and control ordinary people.

2
Whoever offers something for free is suspicious. One should categorically refuse anything that passes itself off as a bargain, bonus or freebie. It’s always a lie. The dupes pay with their privacy, their data and often enough with their money.

3
On

Copyright ©rimpair.pages.dev 2025