Hans Joachim Schädlich und die niederländische Lyrik

The paper reveals the backstage of a modern Dutch poetry anthology Gedichte aus Belgien und den Niederlanden (1977), published by an East German publisher Volk & Welt. An analysis of the surviving correspondence, publishing reviews, and peritexts (afterwords) has shown the mechanisms of transfer in literary translation to the GDR. This historical-literary case study illustrates the ways in which the political and cultural function of anthologies enabled the introduction of formal/content innovations into the East German literary system.

Polish Music Published by Moeck 1958 to 1967 – a (Failed?) Transfer from East to West

From the end of the 1950s, the West German publisher Moeck officially represented the state-led music publishing house PWM ‘in the West’ with the permission of the Polish Ministry of Culture. Beside the distribution of score editions and orchestral performance materials by the PWM, Moeck also represented the interests of Polish composers in the Federal Republic of Germany directly in his own catalogue. Among the first authors of the new series of editions were Kotoński, Lutosławski, Penderecki, Serocki and Szalonek. They belonged to a circle that regularly participated in West German musical life in the 1960s. Despite the spirit of optimism and advantages for the composers, this cooperation also led to problems on several levels. These included the billing of performance materials and the handling of international copyright. This made the participants aware of various limits and led to conflicts – especially on the Polish side. Translation of Polish texts in vocal works into German and English was also not as straightforward as originally planned. The article offers new insights into Polish–German cooperation in the cultural field of music, which went on despite the difficult relationship between the two states then and also beyond the borders of the Cold War.

South goes East. Zuid-Afrikaanse literatuur bij Volk & Welt

The paper analyses the transfer of South African literature to the German Democratic Republic. In its historiographic/methodological dimension it presents findings on the statistics of (South) African literature(s) translations in the Verlag Volk und Welt (the major East German publisher in the area of contemporary world literature), and on the place of literary translations in the East German foreign cultural policy, as well as in the socialist solidarity discourse of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and the antiapartheid movement. Furthermore, findings are presented on the publisher-internal selection criteria applied to South African literature, based on the archival data from the Bundesarchiv in Berlin (i.e. applications for a print permit and internal/external reviews), on issues around the transformation and adaptation of literature translated in the realm of the East German Weltliteratur, and on the transfer of South African literature from the GDR, based on the English language series Seven Seas Books. Lastly, the function of this alternative canon, framed within the so-called ‘minor transnationalism’, is spelled out.

The Internationalization of the Catalan Novel

This article analyses the translation and reception within the German speaking countries of Maria Barbal’s novel Pedra de tartera (Stone in a Landslide). The article focuses on two main issues: on the one hand, external factors that determine the projection abroad not only of Maria Barbal’s work, but more generally of Catalan literature; on the other hand, literary factors that define the novel’s reception abroad. For the first set of factors, this study describes the role played in this process by the Institut Ramon Llull, several publishing houses, literary agencies and international book fairs. For the second set of factors, it analyses the reaction of academia, literary criticism and the media, and, equally important, the opinion of Heike Nottebaum, German translator of the book, and Rainer Nitsche German publisher.

A Blooming Flower

This chapter highlights the extent to which media featured as weapons in Thomas Mann's struggle against Nazism. Mann benefited from government–industry collaborations, for example, by acquiring access to American studios to record propaganda broadcasts that were then carried into Nazi-occupied Europe. His main intermediary on the continent, however, was his old German publisher Gottfried Bermann Fischer, who fought a battle of his own to keep Mann's books available in those countries that had not yet been conquered by the Nazis. Both forms of transmission—the transmission of Mann's voice via radio waves and the transmission of his books via increasingly convoluted distribution networks—were beset by all sorts of difficulties during wartime. But both were essential in keeping the author's influence alive in a time when he was unable to personally connect to his readership.

‘Much land and water have I and my sweet companion run over…’: newly discovered letters from Muzio Clementi to Gottfried Christoph Härtel

Three newly discovered letters from Muzio Clementi to Gottfried Christoph Härtel make a valuable addition to the known corpus of his correspondence with the Leipzig publisher. Held at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Mus. Slg. Härtel 28–30), these three letters originate in the early years of the second lengthy international trip that Clementi undertook, encompassing the end of 1804 and the first months of 1805, a period when he moved through Germany and settled for a while in Berlin before leaving for his honeymoon in Italy, prior to returning to Berlin. Since the bulk of the extant correspondence between Clementi and Härtel dates from between 1815 and 1822, these letters offer new knowledge about aspects of Clementi’s friendship and business relationship with the German publisher, and about some details of Clementi’s own private life.

Tauchnitz for Translators. The Circulation of English-language Literature in Finland

The article looks at book production and circulation from the point of view of translators, who, as purchasers and readers of foreign-language books, are an important mediating force in the selection of literature for translation. Taking the German publisher Tauchnitz's series ‘Collection of British Authors’ and its circulation in Finland in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a case in point, the article argues that the increased availability of English-language books facilitated the acquiring and honing of translators' language skills and gradually diminished the need for indirect translating. Book history and translation studies meet here in an examination of the role of the Collection in Finnish translators' work.

‘The Mind of the English Adversary Is Laid Bare’: Ernie O’Malley’s 'On Another Man’s Wound' in Germany and Irish Aspects of German National Socialist Propaganda, 1938-1943

Ernie O’Malley’s memoir of the Irish revolution, On Another Man’s Wound, was translated into German and published in Berlin in 1938, with further editions appearing during World War 2 in 1941 and 1943. While academics dealing with O’Malley have indeed shown awareness of this, depictions of the publication of O’Malley’s work in Nazi Germany have been devoid of wider context and not always factually correct. This article places the publication of O’Malley’s book within the wider context of Irish aspects of anti-British Nazi propaganda, while also recreating the intellectual context of the Metzner Verlag, the book’s German publisher. It is argued that O’Malley’s text, as a work depicting the workings of the British army in Ireland with a degree of authenticity, became an important source of antiBritish Nazi propaganda. While intercultural, global and European aspects of Irish Studies have indeed been examined for many years, this article also argues for the merits of a Cultural Transfer History strand within a Europeanist Irish Studies.

‘Parasitic publishers’? Tauchnitz, Albatross and the Continental Diffusion of Anglophone Modernism

In 1933, Ezra Pound deplored modernism’s transition from “small honest magazines” to large-scale publishing houses. He described Tauchnitz and Albatross as “parasitic publishers,” eager to exploit James Joyce’s fame to make money. But this story leaves aside a central element: the fact that Joyce and Pound had eagerly courted publishers of cheap editions. Only when the interest of these publishers was no longer in doubt did Pound dismiss them as parasites eager to cash in on the growing popularity of modernism. This chapter is organised chronologically, starting with Joyce’s early relationship with Tauchnitz. It shows that the transnational nature of Tauchnitz, a German publisher of Anglophone literature, particularly appealed to expatriate modernists such as Joyce. The chapter then turns to the period from 1929 to 1932, at the time when Max Christian Wegner was manager-in-chief of Tauchnitz and attempted to modernise the company before co-founding Albatross. Wegner understood that titles by Joyce, Woolf and Lewis could appeal to a wide audience in Europe. The last section is on Albatross, a publisher that not only helped to popularise modernist texts, but was also shaped by the modernist movement. Its stylish covers and intrinsic cosmopolitanism exemplify modernism’s growing influence on mainstream culture in the 1930s.

Ferdinand Oyono's Flüchtige Spur Tundi Ondua and Germany's Cameroon

Almost anyone who reads ferdinand oyono's une vie de boy (1956) in any language will conclude that the novel focuses on French colonialism. But is it only about colonialism by the French? An analysis of the many German resonances throughout the text—as well as an engagement with the German translation of Une vie de boy—suggests that it is about much more. Oyono's Une vie de boy enables the reader to reflect on Europan colonialism more broadly beyond the role of France. The novel offers a lens onto Germany's colonial history because Cameroon was a former colonial “protectorate” of the German empire. This historical context, therefore, places Une vie de boy in both national and transnational contexts. While my reading addresses possible connections or similarities between French and German colonialism, the publication in German itself adds an important layer to the understanding of Une vie de boy in Germany. In consideration of the political activism of the novel's German publisher, Johann (Hans) Fladung (1898-1982), the publication of Oyono's novel can be read as a criticism of German historiography in the 1950s, which frequently avoided Germany's colonial history, a history that has been linked with the crimes of the Holocaust (Zimmerer).