Hilde Domin (1909 - 2006) and Clemens Greve (1966) co-edited "Nachkrieg und Unfrieden" in 1995, which was reviewed by Marcel Reich Ranicki as "one of the most important books of the postwar period on the genesis of German postwar poetry".
Domin and Greve met during a car ride in the Suhrkamp publishing house's "Authors' Volvo," which picked them both up for an invitation in Heidelberg and transported them to Frankfurt. The driver took them both to Frankfurt's Schauspielhaus early one Sunday morning, 15 December 1991, for a tribute to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the poet and Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sachs. Greve had been working on Nelly Sachs at the time, and Domin had an intense pen-pal friendship with Sachs.
The publisher's driver had to ask both of them out of the car several times in Frankfurt, after they had discussed Nelly Sachs and other authors and literary and political topics, sometimes louder and sometimes quieter, for over an hour - stopping in the no-parking zone in front of the Schauspielhaus. Domin, who, getting out of the car, was still discussing fiercely and unmistakably, arrived almost too late for her lecture and laughed on the podium, telling the Schauspiel audience about the car ride that had just taken place and a strange conversation with a student. From then on, Domin and Greve worked together regularly and met for years to talk together. But they also met with authors such as Günter Grass, Heinz Piontek, Durs Grünbein, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Elisabeth Borchers and also many unknown young writers, almost all of whom contributed to the joint book project "Nachkrieg und Unfrieden" and numerous readings that took place in connection with it.
That the city of her birth, Cologne, and her adopted home, Heidelberg, played a central role in the poet's life is known to all Domin readers. But the fact that she lived in Frankfurt, among other places, for several years in the 1950s after a 22-year exile is known only to a few. Her mother, whose death prompted the poet to write poetry, was born in Frankfurt. Her husband, the classical archaeologist Erwin-Walter Palm, was also born and raised in Frankfurt. Last but not least, Hilde Domin's work found its safe home at Frankfurt's S.Fischer Verlag in 1959.
Through the publisher Bermann-Fischer and especially through the important chief editor of S.Fischer Verlag, Rudolf Hirsch, the importance of Domin's poetry was recognized at Frankfurt's S.Fischer Verlag and published until today. Which of Domin's poems were written during the Frankfurt period, which important encounters she had in Frankfurt, and where she lived in Frankfurt will be presented this afternoon.
But the conversations Domin and Greve had about Domin's Frankfurt encounters will also be shared by Greve. A first conversation about Frankfurt took place at that time on the drive to Frankfurt in the Suhrkamp-Volvo, a never-ending conversation...
Source of text and further information about this event: http://www.frankfurter-buergerstiftung.de/node/2450
