Intellectual
«A great pleasure» – Roger Willemsen’s archive presented
Unforgotten: Roger Willemsen (2012). Photo: Jens Kalaene / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Many knew Roger Willemsen from television as an interviewer. But his life and work also had many other facets. This becomes clear in the Berlin Academy of the Arts.
His estate comprises 39 meters of archive and more than 150 files, he was considered a witty interviewer and narrator: friends and companions at the Berlin Academy of the Arts remembered Roger Willemsen (1955-2016).
Willemsen was a writer, television presenter and film producer, literary scholar, essayist and publicist. And he traveled a lot. Books, films, talk shows, letters, notes: how many facets the work he left behind became clear on Thursday evening when his archive opened.
Most of them knew Roger Willemsen as a moderator, but he identified himself as a writer, explained Gabriele Radecke, head of the Academy’s literary archive. “The estate shows that – that in the bottom of his heart he wrote permanently.” According to Radecke’s estimate, it will take at least five years for the estate to be accessed. That is an «intellectual challenge». She promised that the work would not disappear in the archive. A first extract from the estate was presented in a showcase exhibition.
Willemsen was one of the best-known German intellectuals. His books included, for example, “Das Hohe Haus” and “Momentum”, and he hosted programs such as “Willemsen’s Week” on television.
He died in 2016 at the age of 60 from complications from cancer. Today an artist’s house is housed in his villa in Wentorf near Hamburg. Founded by Mareverlag and publisher Nikolaus Gelpke, the foundation named after Roger Willemsen awards grants to creative people.
The literary critic Insa Wilke, who had been friends with him for many years, had entrusted the artistic estate to the academy. She led through the evening at the academy and talked to Willemsen’s companions, including about his involvement in Afghanistan. Old clips from radio and television were also shown, including a talk show with the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Among the guests at the academy was the musician Campino von den Toten Hosen.
The actor Matthias Brandt read from books such as “The Ends of the World” and remembered appearances together on stage. Even if these were always much longer than the 90 minutes preferred by Brandt: “It was a great pleasure.” What Willemsen did from his point of view: “He could think and feel at the same time.” That sounds more banal than it is. Wilke quoted a sentence that Roger Willemsen is said to have said as a seven-year-old boy: “How delicious is the food and life crunchy with it.”