Walter Boehlich Library

Walter Boehlich (1921-2006), born in Breslau on September 16, 1921, was a literary critic, journalist and translator. After studying German, Art History, and History, he was initially an assistant to the novelist Ernst Robert Curtius, and from 1951 on, he worked as a lecturer in Denmark and Spain. In 1959, he became editor-in-chief of Suhrkamp Verlag which he left in 1968 because of a dispute. As an editor, he significantly shaped the profile of the publishing house, which became known as "Suhrkamp culture". In the sammlung insel, he published source editions by Georg Gottfried Gervinus and Karl Gutzkow. His documentary book on the Berlin Antisemitismusstreit ("Antisemitism Controversy") surrounding Heinrich Treitschke (1879/80) shaped the term that is still commonly used in historical science today.

Walter Boehlich became one of the most important radical democratic critics of the postwar period. From 1950 until late into the 1990s, he wrote for Die Zeit, among others, worked for the radio, and commented on contemporary affairs in the magazine Titanic from 1979 onward.

Walter Boehlich worked as a devoted editor - for example, he edited the correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Eduard Silberstein - and made translations from seven languages of authors such as Sören Kierkegaard, Tanja Blixen, Hermann Bang, Marguerite Duras, Ramón José Sender, Virginia Woolf and others.

In cooperation with the Potsdam City and State Library, his library has been made accessible to the public since 2013 - also through the reading series "Boehlich's Books - World Literature Rediscovered." The Walther Boehlich Library contains approximately 14,600 volumes from the fields of History, Literary Studies and Literature.

Walter Boehlich Library

Further Reading