Matthias N. Lorenz is Professor of German and Comparative literature at Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany) and Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). He led two Swiss National Science Foundation projects on ruptures and continuities in Group 47 and on the phenomenon of disruption in the work of Christian Kracht and he is part of a Volkswagen Foundation research group on doing memory of right-wing violence.