Germany's overcrowded and bureaucratic university system has provoked one professor into a rather un-German line of attack - satire.
Dietrich Schwanitz, professor of English studies at the University of Hamburg, caused a sensation this summer when his provocative new novel, Der Campus, was serialised in the regional daily, Hamburger Abendblatt. Bricks were thrown through a bookshop window and one venue where he gave a reading provided bodyguards.Now as some 40,000 students return to Hamburg for the start of the winter semester this week, Professor Schwanitz has turned from fiction to fact to criticise the bureaucracy which he believes is blocking much needed university reforms.
Dietrich Schwanitz - Obituaries, News - The Independent
Few writers in Germany were as notorious as Dietrich Schwanitz, the professor of English whose vitriolic pen skewered the country's education system and and satirised an academic world ruled by political correctness and decisions by committee. As if his unconventional attitude and fame were not enough to incite his colleagues' distrust and even envy, Schwanitz also achieved apparently effortlessly what most academics can only dream of: writing books which became bestsellers.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten