Marcel Reich-Ranicki

Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920–2013) was a Polish-born German literary critic and writer. His family moved to Berlin in 1929; in 1938 he was deported to Poland. He survived the Warsaw Ghetto and escaped into the underground with his wife, Teofila, in 1943. After the Second World War, he initially worked in the Polish diplomatic service before turning to literary criticism. From 1973 to 1988, he headed the literary section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He became widely known as the host of the German television program The Literary Quartet (1988–2001). His publications include German Literature in East and West and the autobiography Mein Leben (1999). He received numerous literary and academic honors, including the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt in 2002.