The work of the philosopher Hans Blumenberg has grown by a number of thick books since his death. His daughter Bettina Blumenberg oversees the estate editions and also has individual quotes from unpublished newspaper articles presented to her. Blumenberg’s Zettelkasten is also kept in the German Literature Archive in Marbach.
Image: Chris Korner, DLA Marbach
Undesirable side effect of a law: Legal successors of deceased authors use copyright as a lever to direct and prevent research. There is a need for regulation here.
EFor a decade, a film team employed literary scholars and lawyers with a strange task: the experts were to rewrite a screenplay in such a way that copyright and personal rights would not be violated. “Tyrmand 59” was the working title of the film, which can now be seen as “Mister T.” The diaries of Leopold Tyrmand from the 1950s should form the basis: Observations of a poet in Stalinist Poland. Heirs and estate administrators intervened legally, as reported by Deutschlandfunk. The film solved the problem with fictional blurring. A work of art has emerged from the hand of a researcher.
Would it have been easier for the literary scholars hired by the film team if they had not used fictionalization as a protective measure, but had researched archives and planned a scientific biography of Leopold Tyrmand? no way. At best, they could have hoped that a brittle study that only reaches a specialist audience would have provoked the estate administrators less than a film that made its way into pandemic-stricken living rooms via Netflix. Paradoxically, the fact that we know so little reliable information about Leopold Tyrmand could not least be attributed to those who want to cultivate his legacy most faithfully.