Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Dylan: big in Germany - encore

Thanks to Katrin Diez for her detailed account of Dylan’s visibility in Germany:

“I can tell you that Dylan is still very important in Germany, especially for better-educated people with good English knowledge. (Excuse my mistakes - I`ve been out of school for a very long time and am only used to reading, not writing).

We have in the town library of Frankfurt a lot of books about him
(Williams, Shepard, Klein, Detering ...) his Chronicles and several books with lyrics (the actual one and older works) and notes. And there are a lot of CDs.

It is not easy to get them, you have to order them because a lot of people are keen on reading or listening.

In the ‘70s a lot of teachers were fans and it was normal to discuss the songs during the lessons, but even now my daughter learned some songs and my son had to play Blowin’ in the Wind on flute in a school concert.

Nearly every big bookshop with a musical department offers books about Dylan. And you can order everything at amazon.de or jpc.de - there are about hundreds of entries. And you can buy nearly everything at ebay.de.

The popularity of Dylan is shown in the fact that Germany has held the only art exhibition of his drawings. And there were a lot of articles about it in the press.

On special occasions (Dylan’s birthday) they show Don`t Look Back or other movies on TV. These days there are a lot of ads for the new movie everywhere.

Here are some new German books about Dylan:

* Bob Dylan - Ein Kongress, Herausgeber; Axel Honneth, Peter Kemper & Richard Klein, Edition Suhrkamp 2007

* Richard Klein - My name it is nothing: Bob Dylan: Nicht Pop Nicht Kunst, Lukas Verlag 2006

* Olaf Benzinger - Bob Dylan Seine Musik und sein Leben, Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag 2006

* Heinrich Detering - Bob Dylan, Reclamverlag 2006.”