Local Anaesthetic (novel)
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Local Anaesthetic (novel)
''Local Anaesthetic'' (german: Örtlich betäubt) is a 1969 novel by the German writer Günter Grass. It tells the story of an idealistic high-school teacher who believes society, like a pupil, is learning from experience and reason. Plot and content Eberhard Starusch is a 40-year-old teacher of German and history who lives in West Berlin and acts as the tragicomic centre of the novel. In the background one of his students, Phillipp Scherbaum, is planning to set fire to his dog Max on the Kurfurstendamm as a protest against the US involvement in the Vietnam War. Starusch undergoes a long sequence of dental operations in 1967 in a surgery where television is used as a method of distracting patients from the operations and the pain that is involved in them, with the resultant televisual images merging and melding into his consciousness and reflections. Starusch recounts his own meditations upon the political past and the post-war situation in Adenauer's Germany and the inadequacy, f ...
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Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (born Graß; ; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). As a teenager, he served as a drafted soldier from late 1944 in the ''Waffen-SS'' and was taken as a prisoner of war by US forces at the end of the war in May 1945. He was released in April 1946. Trained as a stonemason and sculptor, Grass began writing in the 1950s. In his fiction, he frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood. Grass is best known for his first novel, ''The Tin Drum'' (1959), a key text in European magic realism. It was the first book of his Danzig Trilogy, the other two being ''Cat and Mouse'' and '' Dog Years''. His works are frequently considered to have a left-wing political dimension, and Grass was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). ''The Tin D ...
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Ralph Manheim
Ralph Frederick Manheim (April 4, 1907 – September 26, 1992) was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. He was one of the most acclaimed translators of the 20th century, and likened translation to acting, the role being "to impersonate his author".Bruce Lamber"Ralph Manheim, 85, Translator Of Major Works to English, Dies" ''New York Times'', September 28, 1992. Retrieved on March 25, 2009. Early life Manheim was born in New York City. He lived for a year in Germany and Austria as an adolescent, graduated from Harvard at the age of 19,John Calde"Obituary: Ralph Manheim" ''The Independent'', September 28, 1992 and spent time in Munich and Vienna (studying at the universities) before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. He also undertook post-graduate study at Yale and Columbia universities. Career His career as a translator began with Hitler's ''Mein Kampf'', commissioned by Houghton Mifflin and published ...
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Luchterhand Literaturverlag
The Luchterhand Literaturverlag is a German publisher of contemporary literature based in Munich. It was founded in 1924, and was acquired by Random House in 2001. Luchterhand is considered one of the most prestigious publishers in Germany. Publications include literature from Günter Grass and Christa Wolf and many others. History In 1924, Hermann Karl Wilhelm Luchterhand founded Luchterhand publisher in Berlin, dedicated to taxation and law. He then published an information pamphlet on taxation, which added to the earlier publications of forms and manuals for the payroll office. In 1934, he appointed Eduard Reifferscheid as managing partner. In 1936, Luchterhand went back to his private life. The reasons of Hermann Luchterhands withdrawal are still unknown. After the end of World War II, the companies headquarters moved during the reconstruction from Berlin to Neuwied. Where Alfred Andersch, along with many others, participated with his magazine articles and drawings to create ...
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was United States in the Vietnam War, supported by the United States and other anti-communism, anti-communist Free World Military Forces, allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975. After the French 1954 Geneva Conference, military withdrawal from Indochina in 1954 – following their defeat in the First Indochina War – the Viet Minh to ...
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Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a Christian-democratic party he co-founded, which became the dominant force in the country under his leadership. A devout Roman Catholic and member of the Catholic Centre Party, Adenauer was a leading politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council (1922–1933). In the early years of the Federal Republic, he switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country from the ruins of World War II to becoming a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States. During his years in power, West Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prospe ...
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Mormons
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several groups following different leaders; the majority followed Brigham Young, while smaller groups followed Joseph Smith III, Sidney Rigdon, and James Strang. Most of these smaller groups eventually merged into the Community of Christ, and the term ''Mormon'' typically refers to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), as today, this branch is far larger than all the others combined. People who identify as Mormons may also be independently religious, secular, and non-practicing or belong to other denominations. Since 2018, the LDS Church has requested that its members be referred to as "Latter-day Saints". Mormons have developed a strong sense of community that stems from their doctrine and history. One of the ...
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Helmuth Hübener
Helmuth Günther Guddat Hübener (8 January 1925 – 27 October 1942) was a German youth who was executed at age 17 by beheading for his opposition to the Nazi Germany, Nazi regime. He was the youngest person of the German resistance to Nazism to be sentenced to death by the ''Sondergericht'' ("special court") People's Court (Germany), People's Court (''Volksgerichtshof'') and executed. Life Helmuth Hübener, born in Hamburg on 8 January 1925, came from an apolitical, religious family in Hamburg, Germany. He belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), as did his mother and grandparents. His adoptive father, Hugo, a Mitläufer, Nazi sympathizer, gave him the name Hübener. Since early childhood, Hübener had been a member of the Boy Scouts, an organization strongly supported by the LDS Church, but in 1935 the National Socialists banned scouting from Germany. He then joined the Hitler Youth, as required by the government, but quit after the ''Kri ...
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Anatole Broyard
Anatole Paul Broyard (July 16, 1920 – October 11, 1990) was an American writer, literary critic, and editor who wrote for ''The New York Times''. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays, and two books during his lifetime. His autobiographical works, ''Intoxicated by My Illness'' (1992) and ''Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir'' (1993), were published after his death. Several years after his death, Broyard became the center of controversy when it was revealed that he had " passed" as white despite being a Louisiana Creole of mixed-race ancestry. Life and career Early life Anatole Paul Broyard was born on July 16, 1920, in New Orleans, Louisiana, into a Black Louisiana Creole family, the son of Paul Anatole Broyard, a carpenter and construction worker, and his wife, Edna Miller, neither of whom had finished elementary school. Broyard was descended from ancestors who were established as free people of color before the Civil War. ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ...
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1969 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1969. Events *February 8 – After 147 years, the last issue of ''The Saturday Evening Post'' in its original form appears in the United States. *March 23 – German-born writer Assia Wevill, a mistress of the English poet Ted Hughes and ex-wife of the Canadian poet David Wevill, gasses herself and their daughter at her London home. *August – "Penelope Ashe", purported author of a bestselling novel, ''Naked Came the Stranger'', is revealed as a group of ''Newsday'' journalists. *''unknown dates'' **The first Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction is awarded to P. H. Newby for ''Something to Answer For''. **''The Times Literary Supplement'' begins using the abbreviation "TLS" on its title page. New books Fiction * Eva Alexanderson – ''Kontradans'' (Counter-dance) *Jorge Amado – '' Tenda dos Milagres'' (Tent of Miracles) *Kingsley Amis – '' The Green Man'' * William H. Armstrong – '' Sounder'' ...
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German Literature
German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by German dialects, dialects (e.g. Alemannic literature, Alemannic). Medieval German literature is literature written in Germany, stretching from the Carolingian dynasty; various dates have been given for the end of the German literary Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, Reformation (1517) being the last possible cut-off point. The Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century; the most famous works are the ''Hildebrandslied'' and a heroic epic known as the ''Heliand''. Middle High German starts in the 12t ...
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