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"Eigensinn is a word that doesn't translate very well into English," Enzensberger explains while finishing off a third cup of coffee in his flat overlooking Munich's English Gardens. "It's not selfishness. It's not obstinacy. It's not intransigence. You might say it's a sense of having your own value system. That's a quality that I find very interesting, because it's almost beyond a person's control.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger talks to Phillip Ottermann about Hammerstein, oder der Eigensinn (tr. as The Silences of Hammerstein)