Helmut von den Steinen

Helmut von den Steinen (also under the pseudonym Erich Weimar ; * December 6, 1890 in Marburg , † 1956 in Rhodes ) was a German essayist and literary translator from ancient and modern Greek .

Life

Helmut von den Steinen is the oldest son of the doctor, ethnologist and Americanist Karl von den Steinen . He had a younger brother, the medievalist Wolfram von den Steinen , and a sister, Marianne von den Steinen, the wife of the classical archaeologist Karl Schefold . Both siblings settled in Basel .

He studied with the sociologist Alfred Weber and the Germanist Friedrich Gundolf in Heidelberg and received his doctorate in 1912 with a dissertation in book studies . During this time his contact with the circle around Stefan George , whom he probably never met himself, began in the form of Friedrich Wolters , Wolfgang Frommel and Karl Wolfskehl . Further stations during this time were Berlin and Frankfurt am Main (collaboration with Leo Frobenius ). During the Weimar Republic he was mainly active as a journalist. During the National Socialist rule he emigrated to Italy ( Florence ), Greece ( Athens ), Palestine ( Jerusalem ), Egypt ( Cairo ), Uganda . During this time he began to deal intensively with the modern Greek language and literature . In the last decade of his life he resumed the broken professional contact to Germany, but at the same time negotiated an appointment to a professorship for German language and literature at the Technical University of Athens . Their conclusion came before an early death.

plant

Helmut von den Steinen was always known to a larger public for his congenial transcriptions of poems by Konstantinos Kavafis and novels by Nikos Kazantzakis and Stratis Myrivilis , some of them also through his essays in the Neue Rundschau . His dissertation, in which he deals with the development of the German book market at the beginning of the 20th century and contrasts cultural books with mass books, is still cited. Other early works deal with the German- Bulgarian cultural exchange, later Stefan George or the history of Western European music . Even before emigrating, he published a translation from ancient Greek, The Works and Days of Hesiod .

Due to his living situation, von der Steinen published comparatively little from his diverse work during his lifetime. The most important textual basis for the Inedita is his estate in the archive of his nephew Reimar Schefold ( Amsterdam ) as well as a small stock of mostly fragmentary translations in the Stefan George archive of the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart . Nevertheless, a number of known writings can no longer be traced by title.

The most important ineditum is a book of Plato , which transmits the dialogues Kleitophon , Theages , Menexenos , Symposion , Alkibiades I , Politeia I as well as epigrams , deviating from the translation tradition, in metrical form and dramatically pointed, with interpretative essays ( An introduction to Sokrates , The Socratic Revelation of Plato ) connects. These Plato translations are currently being edited by the dramaturge, literary translator and essayist Torsten Israel .

Fonts

The modern book. Diss. Phil. Heidelberg 1912, 72 pp.
The Bulgarians and us. Reflections on the internal relations between the two peoples. Berlin, D. Reimer 1917, 96 pp.
The shaping of the German cultural influence in Bulgaria. Lecture. Printing: Meissner, Richter & Co., Berlin 1918, 13 pp.
Leo Frobenius: Cultural History of Africa. Prolegomena to a historical theory of shape. Register by Helmut von den Steinen and Heinrich Wieschhoff . Phaidon Verlag, Zurich 1933 (Reprint: Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 1998)
The spiritual situation of the new Greece . In: Neue Rundschau 1952
Siegfried Hagen: Meditations . Victor A. Schmitz: To the old gods. Helmut von den Steinen: Stefan George . Max Kommerell : The magic of the tent . Castrum Peregrini, volume 134-135, Amsterdam 1978, 127 pp.

Transfers

Hesiod's works and days . Greek and German. Transfer from Helmut von den Steinen. Printed by: Mainzer Presse, Mainz 1930, 48 sheets.
Konstantin Kavafis: Poems . Translated from modern Greek and edited by Helmut von den Steinen. Suhrkamp Verlag , Frankfurt a. M. 1953 ( library Suhrkamp , vol. 15), 143 p. (Also under the title: Gedichte des Konstantin Kavafis . Ibid., 1960). That., Introduced and translated from Modern Greek by Helmut von den Steinen. 2nd, expanded edition, Castrum Peregrini Presse, Amsterdam 1962, 115 pp.
Nikos Kazantzakis: Freedom or Death. Herbig, Berlin 1954, reprinted: Rowohlt, Hamburg, 1989, Ullstein, Berlin 1991. Also as: Captain Michalis. Berlin, Volk und Welt publishing house, 1973.
Stratis Myrivilis: The Madonna with the fish body. Novel. Translated from modern Greek by Helmut von den Steinen. Manesse Verlag , Zurich 1955 (Manesse Library of World Literature).
Nikos Kazantzakis: My Francis of Assisi. Novel. Transferred from modern Greek by Helmut von den Steinen. Wegner Verlag, Hamburg 1956, reprints: Fischer, Frankfurt a. M., Hamburg 1964 (Fischer Bücherei 613).
Platonica I. An introduction to Socrates, Kleitophon, Theages. Edited by Torsten Israel. Queich Verlag, Germersheim and Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-939207-12-2 (metrically formed and scenically accentuated artistic transfer in connection with interpretive essays; will be continued).

literature

Chryssoula Kambas : Athens and Egypt. Helmut von den Steinen, translator for Kavafis. In: Understanding Hellas. German-Greek cultural transfer in the 20th century. Edited by Chryssoula Kambas and Marilisa Mitsou . Böhlau, Cologne 2010, pp. 286–327.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Together with Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht, Wolfgang Frommel is the founder of the Castrum Peregrini Foundation , whose publishing house was supposed to publish von den Steinen.

↑ See Birgit Kuhbandner: Entrepreneur between the market and the modern. Publishers and contemporary German-language literature on the threshold of the 20th century. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008 (Mainzer Studies on Book Studies, Volume 17), pp. 14–15, online .

↑ Various parts had already been published in the Bulletin de la Faculté des Arts of the University of Cairo in 1949, in the Neue Rundschau in 1952 and in the magazine Castrum Peregrini in 1959.

personal data
SURNAME	Steinen, Helmut von den
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Weimar, Erich (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German essayist and literary translator
DATE OF BIRTH	December 6, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH	Marburg
DATE OF DEATH	1956
Place of death	Rhodes

[1] Together with Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht, Wolfgang Frommel is the founder of the Castrum Peregrini Foundation , whose publishing house was supposed to publish von den Steinen.

[2] See Birgit Kuhbandner: Entrepreneur between the market and the modern. Publishers and contemporary German-language literature on the threshold of the 20th century. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008 (Mainzer Studies on Book Studies, Volume 17), pp. 14–15, online .

[3] Various parts had already been published in the Bulletin de la Faculté des Arts of the University of Cairo in 1949, in the Neue Rundschau in 1952 and in the magazine Castrum Peregrini in 1959.