Welcome to the life of Oscar Wilde

News

Latest blog post

Summer Blog Post Two

Dear readers of my blog,

watching the highlights of the Nations League semi-finals with Portugal beating Switzerland and the Netherlands coming back against England to win following two decisive defensive blunders in extra-time, I thought that the old truth still holds: no matter how good you are up front, it is always the back four and the goalkeeper who make you lose a match and a title. You can never control Cristiano Ronaldo absolutely, nor can you prevent the Dutch from attacking, but as in 2018 when both Bayern Munich and Liverpool lost to Real Madrid for lack of cynicism, the team beaten on Wednesday or Thursday last failed to control the ball when in their own third of the ground.

Friday, 7th June 2019


Before uploading this post, let me briefly say that watching women’s football matches live at the World Cup in Germany in 2011 has made me a fan of their more playful variant as well. So I tuned in the first half of the France v. South Korea tie yesterday evening and have just followed the highlights of Germany v. China. The Équipe tricolore seem to justify their status as favourites in their home tournament, while the young German side, who beat France some months ago, had to work very hard to clinch the match by one goal to nil, showing some frightening weaknesses – similar to those blunders made by the English defence on Thursday – which, however, the Chinese failed to profit from, someone only prevented by a ball hitting the post from taking the lead.

Saturday, 8th June 2019

 

Read more …

All the World’s a Football (Summer Blog Post One)

 

Dear readers of my blog,

before you start to wonder about what I am doing now, let me briefly explain that opening my drawer of unpublished texts on football matches I do not intend to leave the literary sphere at all. Having decided early on, way before I had come of age that watching football would be the activity I might stick to rather than trying in vain to imitate my peers, I was glad one day to discover that Oscar Wilde had been a strictly non-playing member of an Oxford University Cricket Club. At least he was a club member. I never joined a football club. At the same time, as a man of letters with many favourite writers I also like many different football teams and ways of playing the game. So writing about it allows me to combine two passions, and since the book market in that respect does not like to accommodate books like the one I wrote five years ago I try my luck by dividing the diary entries into blog posts. Some of them will certainly include references to events taking place this summer, while the gist recalls impressions from the Brazil World Cup in 2014.

 

Read more …

European Elections, Britain and Oscar Wilde

Dear readers of my blog,

on day one after the latest European Elections I cannot but reflect on this event that has had eleven editions since 1979 when, just turned seventeen, I only could take part by counting votes in Unna, Westphalia, where I grew up.

Today, Monday, 27th May 2019, I did not wake up to see surprising banner headlines, as did Britons back in June 2016 who had gone to bed thinking that the Remainers would clinch the day only to wake up with the Leavers being the winners who have not, as it seems now, taken all.

 

Read more …

Opening of the Tanya Josefowitz exhibition at Norden

On Wednesday, 8th May 2019, the 74th anniversary of VE Day as well as the 70th anniversary of the vote taken by the "Parliamentary Council" that allowed the German Basic Law to be signed on 23rd May 1949, about 35 people attended the opening ceremony of the exhibition "Tanya Josefowitz and Anne Frank at 90. A Life of Resistance" in room F0 of the arts building of Ulrichsgymnasium Norden. The headmaster, Mr. Wolfgang Grätz, spoke briefly on the impossibility of finding words to sum up the horrors committed before and during World War Two. Then Frau Elke Scheiner read three passages chosen from "I Remember" in the translation originally made for the laying of stepping-stones in front of the house in Worms where the Kagan family had lived until February 1938.

Read more …

Tanya Josefowitz and Anne Frank at 90. A Life of Resistance

An exhibition of posters prepared by classes 9b (Anne Frank) and 10b (Tanya Josefowitz) is going to open in the arts building at Ulrichsgymnasium Norden on 8th May 2019. The opening ceremony is at 3.30 p.m. in Room F03, at Fräuleinshof, Norden. Frau Elke Scheiner, the initiator of the project and personal friend of Tanya Josefowitz is going to read passages from the memoir in German. Thereafter, the exhibition is open Monday to Friday to 24th May with special events to be announced for 17th May and for 12th June, the 90th birthday of either Tanya Josefowitz or Anne Frank.

 

Read more …

Wild(e) Ideas on Brexit Vote Day Three

 

Dear readers of my blog,

returning from Marseilles on Sunday last, where I had attended the spring conference of the Relais de la Mémoire, I had just a little bit of respite, staying at home for merely one or two hours more, only to learn the next day that my early train had been cancelled. This piece of news from one of the regular commuters to Norden immediately brought back the main hitch of our journey to the Mediterranean. We were only fifteen minutes late in Frankfort for the TGV to Marseilles, and at the information desk a friendly lady told us that we would be held up in Lyons that evening – only two hours by TGV from Marseilles!

We had not anticipated such an adventure, while having been kept in the dark by the very unfriendly conductor on the train to Frankfort about “such internal matters” not concerning the traveller as catching

 

Read more …

Wildes Hauptwerk

Alles über
"Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray"

Über mich

Jörg W. Rademacher (*1962), born and bred in Westphalia. Attended university at Münster, Dundee and Lille. State exam in 1988. Ph.D. In 1993. Scholar, language teacher as well as writer and translator at Münster until 2002. Since 2002 secondary school teacher, writer and translator in East Frisia. Working on Wilde since 1988. Publishing on Wilde since 2000 as biographer and editor and translator, on a regular basis with Elsinor Verlag since 2012, since 2015 also editor and translator of Oscar Wilde calendars.

Der neue Kalender

Interesse an einem Kalender?
Kontaktieren Sie mich.