Marcel Reich-Ranicki was always very firm in his critics’ judgments: he accepted the poet Wolf Wondratschek. But this author simply cannot tell, said Reich-Ranicki many years ago. So all of Wondratschek’s novels: unsuccessful.
Perhaps these two men weren’t so alien: argumentative, loudmouthed, apodictic in their judgments, hurtful and vulnerable, striving for uniqueness. And surrounded by the same trap: namely that they run the risk of being perceived only as performers of themselves, whose public appearance degenerates into a scam that serves an image. Great poetry and great poses belonged together for Wolf Wondratschek in the seventies and eighties. At some point he got tired of having to continue to meet the expectations he had raised himself.
Decades ago, Wondratschek therefore decided to take a radical step: moving from Munich to Vienna, withdrawing from the public eye. “I was fed up with my life in Munich,” says Wondratschek in retrospect: “I was fed up with myself.” He, who hardly ever appears in public anymore, met the journalist Corinne Orlowski, who portrayed him, who is now 80 years old, for her cultural feature With tinder and tenderness. Subtitle: The reinvention of the writer Wolf Wondratschek.
old age? To this day, Wondratschek does not give anything to conventions.
Orlowski is only marginally interested in the sufficiently well-publicized young author who has been passed around in the literary world as a powerful sensation. Rather, it revolves around the man who began to work largely quietly and extremely productively on his later literary work in Vienna. Wondratschek himself provides information, although he also has answers ready such as those to the question of what inspires him to write: “None of your business!” In addition, the photographer Jim Rakete, who later became a close friend of Wondratschek, has his say.
To this day, Wondratschek does not give anything to conventions. And the less Corinne Orlowski bothers him with conventional questions, the closer she comes to the dismissive writer. Who obviously manages the trick of being at peace with himself for a long time, without therefore exposing himself to the suspicion of mild old age.
With tinder and tenderness – the reinvention of the writer Wolf WondratschekWDR 3, August 12, 2023, 12:04 p.m. and August 13, 2023, 3:04 p.m.