Malte Herwig
Malte Herwig (born 2 October 1972) is a German-born author, journalist, and literary critic. He grew up in Kassel and studied literature, history, and political science at the University of Mainz, Oxford, and Harvard. He was a fellow at Merton College, Oxford from 2000 to 2003 and earned his doctorate in 2002 with a thesis on Thomas Mann. In 2004 his dissertation won the Thomas Mann Prize.
Herwig has written for major outlets in the U.S., Britain, and Germany, including The New York Times, The Observer, Vanity Fair, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
In 2008 he was the first to publish some of Vladimir Nabokov’s original index cards for The Original of Laura, arguing the fragment shows Nabokov’s vintage style.
He has written a biography of Austrian poet Peter Handke and a study called Die Flakhelfer about the Nazi cover-up in post-war Germany, which was published in English in 2014.
As an interviewer, he is known for an empathetic but sometimes confrontational style. He has spoken with stars like Michael Douglas, Charlotte Rampling, and Rupert Everett, as well as politicians such as Helmut Schmidt and Nobel laureate Günter Grass. He was the only journalist to interview former SS captain Erich Priebke in Rome shortly before Priebke’s death in 2013. The New York Times quoted him when covering Adolf Eichmann’s trial, noting his aim to explore the idea of the “banality of evil” with a living person. Priebke, then 100, told Herwig that he had renounced Nazism and deeply regretted his war crimes.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 01:55 (CET).