Cologne mourns the loss of Klaus Willbrand: The antiquarian that became a star!

Cologne mourns the loss of Klaus Willbrand: The antiquarian that became a star!

Köln, Deutschland - What's up in Cologne? A look at the literary heritage of Klaus Willbrand, who died almost two years ago, reveals a fascinating story. The former antiquarian from Sülz became a social media star overnight when he started sharing videos about literature on platforms such as TikKOK and Instagram in spring 2024. This surprising turn in his life came late, but with a bang: on Instagram he quickly had around 150,000 followers, at Tiktok it was about 50,000, which established him in the literary world as a real "Bookfluencer". As the Welt , Klaus Willbrand celebrated his 82nd birthday on August 5, and his death on January 29, 2023 has a significant gap in Cologne's literary life leave.

Who was Klaus Willbrand? Born in Essen and raised in Leverkusen, his passion for literature grew up early, while he spent several weeks in the hospital as a child. He began his vocational training in the Witsch & Co. bookstore before he even founded his own publisher in the 1960s. His poem collection by Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann was only published in 500 copies due to pressure errors. With the founding of his antiquarian bookshop in Cologne in 2001, he set a sign of the love of literature. But the challenges that Covid-19 pandemic brought with it led to the closure of his shop until Daria Razumovych helped him to become visible again via social media.

a new book: simply literature

A highlight of Willbrand's estate is the recently published book "Simply literature - an invitation". It was compiled by Daria Razumovych and not only reflects his views and experiences, but also documents the development of his successful social media project. His autobiographical stories are about the authors who shaped him, including greats such as Franz Kafka, Robert Musil and Ingeborg Bachmann. In addition, the book offers insights into the challenges of antiquarian bookshops and tells the connection between arbitrary and the poet Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann.

The book conveys Willbrand's life story and lets us share how he lived the literature as an intermediary. Razumovych reflects in her articles about the friendship to Willbrand and the ups and downs of her journey through the world of literature.

The role of book marketing agencies

In a world in which online visibility is becoming increasingly important for books, the booming industry of the Book Marketing agencies is an interesting connection to Willbrand's legacy. Agencies such as Medialike offer support and authors to make readers aware of their work. Your services aim at online marketing, product optimization and the creation of target group-oriented texts. At a time when visual content is very popular, Klaus Willbrand's approach could be one of the key to success for literature brokerage in the digital age.

Klaus Willbrand may no longer be among us, but his heir lives on. Through his book and the numerous videos, he left a light of light in the literary company, which will not go out so quickly. The Cologne literary group will miss him and his influence on the next generation of literary enthusiasts remains.