Michael Krüger has edited countless books – and written quite a few as an author. A conversation on the occasion of the 80th birthday – about revolutionary Berlin in 1968 and the question of who actually came up with the title of Walter Kempowski’s “Tadellöser & Wolff”.
On December 9th, Michael Krüger, the eternal young man of the German literary world, will be eighty years old. He was an editor and publishing director at Hanser for 45 years, then served as President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts for six years and is also one of the most productive authors of today. He published Umberto Eco and Philip Roth, the magazine Accents published, translated a children’s book by Madonna and researched the history of the academy. To sociologists he would be an educational climber, to literary agents he was a tough businessman, to his countless friends around the world he is “Michel”. After Krüger survived a life-threatening illness, which affected his most recent volume of poetry “In the forest, in the wooden house” According to reports, he publishes one book after another. During a conversation in a Berlin café, he refers to a book title by Maurice Sendak and says: There has to be more than everything in literature.