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the complete review - interview

Bedeutungswelten

by
Giwi Margwelaschwili

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : good introduction and complement to life and work

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

[Note: Bedeutungswelten has not yet been translated into English, and this review is based on the German original; all translations are mine.]

       Bedeutungswelten ('Worlds of meaning') sees Giwi Margwelaschwili in conversation with Jörg Sundermeier, with short (generally one- to three-page) relevant selections of Margwelaschwili's own writings interspersed throughout; there is also an appendix with a chronology of Margwelaschwili's life (and some photographs), and a short glossary of some of the terms used.
       The conversation basically covers Margwelaschwili's life and career chronologically -- and an interesting life it was. His family -- father, mother, and older sister -- had gone into exile from Georgia in the early 1920s, and Margwelaschwili was born in Berlin in 1927 -- stateless, because the state of Georgia no longer existed, which proved advantageous at school, for example, where he was not obliged to show support for the Vaterland as the Nazis exerted increasing control.
       Margwelaschwili went to school in Germany, and he and his father escaped from Berlin as the Soviets advanced towards it, going to Salzburg, where the Georgian exiles gathered to plan their next moves. Margwelaschwili's father's next move was a foolish one: instead of heading on to Italy, where Margwelaschwili's sister already was, he took Giwi and headed back to Berlin, on the last train going there ..... It did not go well for him -- the Soviets were not welcoming -- though Giwi only got confirmation of his father's fate long later; Giwi was also detained, kept in a camp, though with no charges ever filed against him, before being bundled off to Georgia in the summer of 1947.
       Always a great reader, he describes withdrawing into a book -- Balzac's Eugénie Grandet -- helping him endure the time in the Soviet camp ("Das Zurückziehen in das rettende Buch" ('The retreat into the rescuing book')) -- and polishing up his French.
       Not fluent in Georgian, and somewhat suspect as a longtime (indeed lifelong, to that point) exile and as the son of a Georgian-nationalist activist, he nevertheless slowly established himself in his new home. Especially after 1953, with the death of Stalin, the Soviet apparatus was not quite as overwhelming in Georgia as elsewhere; once he had a 'room of his own' (well, apartment) he also dedicated himself to writing -- determinedly and quite obsessively. A cushy position in the philosophy department at the university, with no teaching requirements and little else asked of him (one publication per year) was an ideal place for him: "Weil man dort vollkommen frei war, es ging niemanden etwas an" ('Because one was completely free there, it was nobody's business').
       Margwelaschwili very much went his own way in his creative writing -- not least because he wrote in German while living in Soviet Georgia, with no chance or opportunity to actually publish it. (In the 1960s Heinrich Böll visited and offered to smuggle some of his writing to West Germany, but Margwelaschwili demurred.) Foreign influences did filter through -- Margwelaschwili describes tourists telling him about some of the theoretical stuff going on abroad and even leaving him some texts in the 1970s -- but his experimentation was done largely in this strange isolation.
       Much of Margwelaschwili's copious fiction -- much of it also using autobiographical elements -- plays with his concept of 'ontotextuality', characters understanding their existence in/as part of literary texts. Heavily influenced by the work of Heidegger and Husserl, his own texts and philosophy took theirs a step further.
       After the fall of the Soviet Union, Margwelaschwili moved to Germany, and in the early 1990s several of his works were published there. Poor sales meant publisher-interest dried up quickly, and it was only when Vebrecher Verlag picked up his works starting in 2007 that they became more widely available again; this volume is also published by Verbrecher.
       Aside from his interesting and peculiarly twisted life-path, Margwelaschwili is also a fascinating writer both because of the theoretical underpinnings to his fiction -- addressed here some, but which really has to be read to be fully appreciated -- as well as his complete, even obsessive dedication to and immersion (not least in that ontotextual sense) in his writing (which is also reflected in his fiction -- not least in the fact that there are apparently many volumes of it that have not yet been published).
       Amusingly, while mentioning some author-names, aside from the philosophers he acknowledges only Thomas Mann as having been an influence -- though he acknowledges a kinship with others who 'play with the reader, who bring the reader into the text they are reading and let them stroll around in there', such as Italo Calvino.
       Margwelaschwili does emphasize the importance of Heidegger: "Ich begriff mich erst mal als Lehrling von Heidegger, den ich gleich als meinen Maître anerkannt habe" ('I initially saw myself as an apprentice to Heidegger, whom I immediately recognized as my master'). Interestingly, the Soviet authorities didn't seem to show much concern about Margwelaschwili's philosophical interests -- though getting at the texts was sometimes an issue, with Margwelaschwili describing getting one Heidegger-book on loan from the Lenin Library in Moscow -- but only for a month, so he photographed the pages in order to have a copy to work with .....
       Bedeutungswelten serves as a good introduction to Margwelaschwili and his work -- though his life is certainly also full-biography worthy (though, again: much of his work is autobiographical, and so much is also well-related there). Still, it's the fiction, in particular, that is worth the attention, and has to be experienced first hand -- and one can only hope that, in time, all of his unpublished work sees the light of day as well.

- M.A.Orthofer, 27 September 2026

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Links:

• Verbrecher Verlag publicity page

• Süddeutsche Zeitung (German)

• Officer Pembry

• See Index of Interviews, conversations, and dialogues
• See Index of German literature
• See Index of Georgian literature

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About the Author:

       Giwi Margwelaschwili (გივი მარგველაშვილი) was born in Berlin in 1927, and lived in Soviet Georgia from the end of World War II to 1987; he died in 2020.

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© 2026 the complete review

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