Harry Rowohlt - a reading by Alexander Solloch

"He will become what he is," his graduation certificate said. And it was true! Harry Rowohlt became everything he always was and wanted to be: a hilarious linguistic artist and a virtuoso master of digression, a brilliant translator of the untranslatable and a reader with a thousand voices, and to top it all off, "Penner Harry" in Lindenstraße.
Shortly before his death, he said: "I had a happy life!" In fact, however, this life turned out quite differently than he had planned, because he did not want to become what he was supposed to be - his father's successor as publisher - and for years he desperately tried to escape from Rowohlt-Verlag.
This biography tells the story of how Harry Rowohlt managed to find a kind of soul connection with Pu the bear - "We are both stupid, but we get along very well". It is based on countless conversations with his widow and many companions, as well as a thorough analysis of his enormous estate, and unearths many a surprise: Harry Rowohlt liked to talk a lot about himself - but not necessarily reliably. This is made up for here.

Alexander Solloch, born in 1978, grew up on the Lower Rhine, studied history and French in Leipzig and Aix-en-Provence. Alexander Solloch lives in Hanover.
r works as a freelance author and radio presenter. He was nominated for the German Radio Prize in 2011 and 2019. He has been a literary editor at NDR since 2014.