Max Rychner - was a Swiss writer, journalist, translator, and literary critic, writing in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

. Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

 called him "[O]ne of the most educated and subtle figures in the intellectual life of the era"

Rychner published several books of poetry, short stores, essays, and autobiographical prose, and translated some of the works of Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...

 into German. For several decades, he was one of the most influential literary critics and reviewers writing in German. He admired, promoted, and published the works of Robert Walser

Robert Walser

Robert Walser may refer to:* Robert Walser , Swiss modernist writer* Robert Walser , American musicologist, author and professor...

, and corresponded with Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...

, Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

, Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution...

, Ernst Robert Curtius

Ernst Robert Curtius

Ernst Robert Curtius was a German literary scholar, a philologist and Romance language literary critic....

, and others.

He championed the young poet Paul Celan

Paul Celan

Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

 and published the memoirs of Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...

.

In 1956, Rychner won the Gottfried Keller Award

Gottfried-Keller-Preis

The Gottfried-Keller-Preis or Prix Gottfried Keller is one of the oldest literary awards of Switzerland.The prize was created by Martin Bodmer and is named after the Swiss author Gottfried Keller...

.

Published works

• Bei mir laufen Fäden zusammen. Literarische Aufsätze, Kritiken, Briefe. Literarische Aufsätze, Kritiken, Briefe. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 1998 Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 1998