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Roger Willemsen's estate is intended to reflect his multifaceted work
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Jens Kalaene / picture alliance / dpa / dpa-Zentralbild
The estate of the intellectual Roger Willemsen, who died in 2016, goes to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
The institution announced on Monday.
The literary critic Insa Wilke, who is friends with Willemsen, has entrusted his artistic estate to the international community of artists.
Pocket calendar, photos and correspondence
According to the academy, Willemsen's estate includes 108 archive boxes and 151 files, including manuscripts, research material, transcripts from interviews and moderation preparations, as well as contributions for radio and television broadcasts.
There are also diaries and notebooks, pocket calendars, biographical documents, photos and his correspondence.
The publicist and television presenter was one of the best-known German intellectuals.
He achieved fame for example with essayistic travel books.
In 2010 he published the book "The Ends of the World".
In it he reported on 22 of his trips from Bombay to the Eifel, through brothels and idylls.
Most recently he landed a bestseller with his book “Das Hohe Haus” (2014).
For this he had followed the events in the Bundestag for a year as a listener.
Willemsen was particularly successful on television in the 1990s with the ZDF talk show "Willemsens Woche".
According to his own statement, he has interviewed more than 2,000 people in his career, including personalities such as Yasser Arafat, Madonna, the Dalai Lama and Mikhail Gorbachev.
According to the academy, the estate reflects the multifaceted work of the writer, publicist, essayist, film producer and literary scholar.
It will also show how much writing has always been the focus of his work.
The publicist died in 2016 at the age of 60 from complications from cancer near Hamburg.
evh / dpa