The paper discusses a representative sample of obituaries on Marcel Reich-Ranicki in ger-man-speaking daily and weekly newspapers. On the one hand it inquires to textlinguistic (main field of attention, extent, structure and linguistic formulation) and -pragmatic (construction of identity and memory) parameters of the obituary in its situational and media context; on the other hand it is interested in the phenomenon of ‚the‘ popular which was attributed to Reich-Ranicki due to his critical reviews in newspapers since the 1960ies and especially to his subsequent television appearance in Das literarische Quartett. The survey focuses both on the popular in obituaries on Marcel Reich-Ranicki – it describes its quantitative and qualitative features, the techniques of its construction/staging and the ambivalence of its valuation in the tradition of literary critics and -transfer – and on obituaries as an instrument of popularization. A deep interest is directed towards the twofold orientation of the obituary, which not only reconstructs a broad popular appeal for the deceased and his literary critics, his practices of distribution and conveyance, but also constitutes his popularity for the future.