Career
He began his career as a journalist in 1975 with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, working initially for the Literature section and later for the newspaper"s weekly “FAZ Magazin” colour supplement. Between 1986 and 1992 he was chief literary editor of another leading (West) German newspaper, Die Zeit, for which he has continued to write subsequently. Since 1992 he has worked on Der Spiegel where he has served as Culture Editor (“Redakteur im Kulturressort”).
Volker Hage has written biographies of Max Frisch, Walter Kempowski, John Updike, Philip Roth and (together with Mathias Schreiber) of He has also been involved in rediscovering the ”realist” genre work of the writer Gert Ledig.
This came during the course of Hage’s contributions to the debates, initiated by Max Sebald, about the literary treatment of the bombing of German cities during the Second World War. Hage was particularly effective as an advocate for Ledig’s second novel, Vergeltung, a powerfully apocalyptical and autobiographical anti-war narrative.
In an engagingly two-edged assessment, fellow critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote that Hage’s style of literary criticism had the great advantage that you always knew in advance precisely what he wanted to say.