Heinrich Böll e Hans Werner Richter, intellettuali a confronto. Quel che resta di un "habitus"

The essay focuses on the friendship and collaborative relationship between Heinrich Böll and the founder and mentor of the 'Group 47', Hans Werner Richter. The subject of the essay does not only entail the Group’s role in the career of the future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Heinrich Böll but above all, the different conceptions of Böll and Richter concerning the role of intellectuals in the Bundesrepublik society in the Fifties and Sixties of the Twentieth Century. Their visions become irreconcilable on the issue of politics, for example, in support of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and then-candidate Willy Brandt. Analysing the correspondence, the diaries and the essayistic production of both, it is evident that both established a 'habitus' (in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu) of German intellectuals in the literary field, which had left its mark on the world for the years to come.