Literature – Marbach am Neckar – The writer and the secret leave his works to the Archives of Literature – Culture

Marbach (dpa) – In the future, the works of Martin Walser will be stored, indexed and researched at the German Literature Archive (DLA) in Marbach. The 95-year-old writer (“A Fleeing Horse,” “A Dying Man”) officially left his purported legacy to the institution at Schillerhöhe on the banks of the Neckar on Sunday. In addition to the drafts and manuscripts of his narrative, dramatic, and essay works, which have survived nearly without flaw, there are also 75 diaries that Walser has kept since the 1950s, according to the DLA. These have so far only been partially released, they are considered an essential resource for life and work.

For DLA director Sandra Richter, the Walser Archive is “the complete fortune of the author’s life spanning more than 60 years.” On the occasion of the handover, Richter said that the writer from Oberlingen on Lake Constance is a combat historian of the Federal Republic and its society, and his documents are a very unusual source for literary and contemporary history.

According to the Literary Archive, the acquired will consisted of about 75,000 handwritten pages, including correspondence with Alfred Andersch, Rudolf Augustin, Ingeborg Bachmann, Heinrich Böll, Jürgen Habermas, Uwe Johnson, and publisher Siegfried Anseld. In addition, Walser’s working and working library has more than 7,800 folders as well as pictures and computer files.

One speaks of a legacy, as in this case, when archival material is made available during one’s life.