Niemiecki Kolakowski. 1943 - Intelligence - 1968

Abstract

Zajas examines the mechanisms of the Western German publishing sector around 1960s, when Leszek Kołakowski’s essay collection Der Mensch ohne Alternative was first published, against the political and cultural background. He tries to account for the fact that despite the commercial success of Kołakowski’s book, the publisher Piper- -Verlag decided not to launch a broader, systematic transfer of Eastern European Marxist thought to Western Germany. Zajas discusses Kołakowski’s correspondence with the publishing director Hans Rößner, a German literature scholar and former SS officer. In his hermeneutic reading Zajas refers to the continuity in Martin Heidegger’s thinking and argues that in Rößner’s case, too, his “poetics” as an editor were ideologically akin to his position during the period of National Socialism.