Uwe Wittstock

born in 1955 in Leipzig and raised in Cologne, he is a literary critic, editor, and author. He has worked as a literature editor at the »Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung«, an editor at S. Fischer Verlag, co-editor of the literary magazine »Neue Rundschau«, culture editor at the daily newspaper »Die Welt«, and until 2017 head of the literature section at the news magazine »Focus«. Since then, he has been working as an independent writer. He has published biographies of Franz Fühmann, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, and Karl Marx. In 2021, his book »February 33: The Winter of Literature« was released, recounting the first six weeks of Hitler’s regime from the perspective of writers and intellectuals. »February 33« has been translated into 13 languages. The writer Pankaj Mishra called it »a masterfully constructed kaleidoscope … it reads like a fast-paced novel« in the »New York Review of Books«. In 2024, he published »Marseille 1940«, which tells the story of German exiles fleeing through France and the rescue networks led by the American Varian Fry in the south of the country. The book remained on the »Spiegel« bestseller list for more than six months, including 14 weeks in the top five. Florian Illies wrote in »Die Zeit«: »Wittstock’s book impresses with its precision. He has studied countless refugee memoirs and carefully compared and interwoven them day by day.«