Marcel Reich-Ranicki

Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Reich-Ranicki in 2007
Born	Marceli Reich (1920-06-02)2 June 1920 Włocławek, Poland
Died	18 September 2013(2013-09-18) (aged 93) Frankfurt, Germany
Occupation	Literary critic
Notable awards	Goethe Prize (2002)
Spouse	Teofila (m. 1942; d. 2011)

Marcel Reich-Ranicki (German: [maɐ̯ˈsɛl ˈʀaɪç ʀaˈnɪtski]; 2 June 1920 – 18 September 2013) was a Polish-born German literary critic and member of the literary group Gruppe 47. He was regarded as one of the most influential contemporary literary critics in the field of German literature and has often been called Literaturpapst ("Pope of Literature") in Germany.

Marceli Reich was born on 2 June 1920 in Włocławek, Poland, to David Reich, a Polish Jewish merchant, and his wife, Helene (née Auerbach) Reich, who came from a German Jewish family. Reich moved with his family to Berlin in 1929. As a Polish Jew he was banished to Poland in 1938. In November 1940, Reich and his parents found themselves in the Warsaw Ghetto, during which time he worked for the Judenrat as a chief translator, and contributed to the collaborative newspaper Gazeta Żydowska (The Jewish Newspaper) as a music critic.

He married his wife, Teofila, on 22 July 1942, the first day of the mass transports to the Treblinka extermination camp (Judenrat employees and their wives were excluded from the first round of deportations). Reich's translator work meant that he was an eyewitness to meetings between the Jewish and Nazi authorities. In 1943 Reich and his wife managed to escape the Ghetto. His parents and brother were killed in the Holocaust. His sister survived, having escaped to England shortly before the war.

In 1944 he joined the Polish People's Army, and became an officer in Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, Poland's intelligence service, where he worked in the censorship department. He joined the Polish Workers' Party after the war.