Marcel Reich-Ranicki, literary critic, dies

BERLIN -- Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who grew up in Poland and Nazi Germany, survived the Warsaw Ghetto and went on to become postwar Germany's best-known literary critic, has died at age 93.

The sharp-tongued Reich-Ranicki established himself as West Germany's premier arbiter of literary taste after arriving with no money in 1958 from communist Poland, where he had served as a diplomat and intelligence agent in the late 1940s.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, where he led the literature section for 15 years, said Reich-Ranicki died in Frankfurt on Wednesday. It didn't give further details.

Reich-Ranicki didn't shy away from hard-biting criticism of authors, saying once that "clarity is the politeness of the critic; directness is his obligation and his job."

In his 1999 memoirs, "My Life," he conceded that he had a reputation as "a man of literary executions." Initially part of the left-leaning literary circle known as Group of 47, along with Nobel laureate Guenter Grass, Reich-Ranicki wrote for the weekly Die Zeit, then led the literature section of the conservative-minded Frankfurter Allgemeine daily from 1973 to 1988. After that, he became the star of ZDF public television's "Literary Quartet," a popular book program.

Reich-Ranicki said he recommended German novelist Heinrich Boell for the Nobel Prize for literature. Boell won in 1972.

Reich-Ranicki's wife died in 2011. He is survived by their son, Andrew.