ÜAlmost four years after his death, Wolfgang Pohrt’s immortality has not yet been finally decided. His admirers put the complete edition of his works on the shelf, his opponents may remember their pain when reading it. But that Pohrt’s texts, his theses and arguments would be present in today’s discussions: Although most writings are available, one cannot see that, which is a pity. In his heyday, the 1980s and 1990s, Wolfgang Pohrt was not just one of the most argumentative, clever, evil and original journalists in Germany. What he wrote has also aged very well. Much reads contemporary. The best has remained radically outdated.
One should not forget Wolfgang Pohrt – and as an investment in immortality, Klaus Bittermann, Pohrt’s publisher and himself an idiosyncratic author, wrote a biography of Wolfgang Pohrt. It’s nearly seven hundred pages, which one might find excessive. Because Pohrt’s life could also be retold in two sentences. The first is about the fact that Pohrt, ever since he was able to write, has only ever written, a lot and well, mostly freelance, without any guarantee of journalistic or academic permanent positions. The second movement would deal with the fact that Pohrt was apparently happily married to Maria Schmidt, a ballet dancer whose untimely death was the misfortune from which he never recovered.
