Literary Critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki Dead at 93

Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Germany’s leading arbiter of literary taste and champion of many Jewish-German writers, died on Wednesday at age 93. Born in Poland, the Jewish Reich-Ranicki faced anti-Semitism throughout his adolescence in Berlin, culminating in his deportation to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1938. His parents were both sent to Treblinka. Self-educated—he was not allowed to attend German schools—Reich-Ranicki became a leading literary critic after moving to West Germany. The topic of much of his writing was his conflicted relationship with German culture. “The biggest anti-Semite in the history of German culture was Richard Wagner,” Mr. Reich-Ranicki once told an interviewer. “And the greatest opera I know is his Tristan and Isolde.”