Ralf-Rainer Rygulla is best known for his anthologies of German translations of American Beat Generation literature with Rolf Dieter Brinkmann in the late 1960s.

The court case to which Reed refers in this lot concerned the publishing rights to the songs on the first three albums by his band, the Velvet Underground. Many of these were originally credited to the band as an entity rather than Reed himself, despite the fact that he was the sole composer. The anthology of lyrics and poems under discussion in this correspondence was never completed, although Reed did eventually compile his own collection in the 1990s.