Dead is Johannes Willms. After a brief illness, the historian, writer, and creator of the “literary quartet” passed away in Munich overnight on Monday into Tuesday at the age of 74. The filmmaker Evelyn Schels of the SZ, the publicist’s widow, confirmed this on Tuesday.
Willms, the son of a lawyer and 1948 Würzburg native, attended universities in Vienna, Heidelberg, and Seville to study history, political science, art history, and archeology. He got his PhD from Reinhart Koselleck in 1975 with a thesis on the governance of the French kingdom in the 1600s, but he ultimately decided to pursue a career in journalism.
Initially employed by the Börsenverein as a press representative, Johannes Willms later held positions at ZDF as a culture editor. There, he created the idea for the now-famous “Literary Quartet” with Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Willms then served as the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s feuilleton editor from 1993 to 2000 before moving to Paris to work as the SZ’s culture reporter. He was awarded the Berlin Academy Prize in 2009.
For CH Beck Verlag in Munich, Willms, a native of France with extensive knowledge of the country, has recently published several critically acclaimed biographies, including those on the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon, and Charles de Gaulle. the most recent “The Napoleon Myth. Promise, Exile, and Transformation “appeared in print in 2020.