Anna-Halja Horbatsch

Anna-Halja Horbatsch ( Ukrainian Анна-Галя Горбач ), née Anna-Halja Lutziak , (born March 2, 1924 in Brodina , South Bukovina ; † June 11, 2011 in Wald-Michelbach ), was a Ukrainian literary scholar, translator into German , Civil rights activist and publisher.

biography

Anna-Halja was born in 1924 as the daughter of Marija and Nikolaj Lutziak (Lucjak) in the southern Bukovinian village of Brodina. She attended grammar school in what was then Romania's Czernowitz until 1940 , then the family was able to relocate to Germany, and further schooling was completed in Paderborn in 1943 with the Abitur. This was followed by studies, initially medicine, then Slavic and Romance philology in Göttingen, and in 1950 he completed his studies with a doctorate in Munich on "The epic means of the [Cossack] Duma". In 1948 she married Olexa Horbatsch, whom she followed via the university cities of Munich, Göttingen and Marburg to Frankfurt, where he finally became Professor of Slavic Philology in 1965, and with whom she had three children: Katharina, Marina and Marko.

Civil rights activities

After her husband got his teaching position in Frankfurt in 1958, Anna-Halja Horbatsch began to work both as a translator and as a civil rights activist. Until perestroika , she informed the world public about the political oppression of Ukrainian culture from art and literature to the national Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches. She has been working with Amnesty International since it was founded in 1961. From 1972 onwards, as a result of the wave of arrests, she supported, in particular, protest actions in favor of the writers Mykola Horbal , Ihor Kalynez , Wassyl Stus , Jewhen Swerstjuk , Iwan Switlychnyj , Vyacheslav Chornovil , who were persecuted in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic , Myroslaw Marynowytsch as well as numerous clergy who lived in the so-called Catacomb Church or in the underground as Greek Catholic Christians. The Horbatschs' house in Beerfurth was a kind of salon in which Ukrainians from all over the diaspora came together and met. At the same time, it was also a Ukrainian ecumenism in nuce, because all the Greek Catholic and Orthodox church leaders who would later play a role in the re-establishment of the respective churches in Ukraine met here. Together they drove to the congresses of the Eastern Priest's work “Church in Need” in Königstein, in whose writings Anna-Halja Horbatsch, who belonged to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, often published. Individual Slavists such as Professor Hans Rothe also belonged to the Beerfurther district . Together, the Horbatschs traveled to the Ukrainian regions of Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland to research primarily the dialects and the Argot. Numerous publications by Olexa Horbatsch addressed this topic, some of which his wife had published posthumously in Lemberg at her own expense after his death. During the trips to the “socialist brother countries”, there were always opportunities at congresses to exchange ideas with people from the Ukrainian SSR.

Cultural mediation

At the same time, Anna-Halja Horbatsch was intensively involved in bridge-building translation work and cultural mediation. It culminated in a time when others have long been enjoying retirement: in 1995, at the age of 70, she founded Brodina-Verlag, in which she was actively supported by her daughter Katharina and in which she translated over a dozen volumes of Ukrainian literature into German issued. In addition to prose, she now increasingly turned to poetry, which she translated following more recent German translation traditions (such as Klaus Reichert ) without imitating rhyme and meter. Shortly before, in 1993, the Horbatschs traveled to Ukraine for the first time after World War II , where they immediately became members of various institutions. She was honored for her lifelong commitment. After the death of her husband in 1997, she worked for several years on the translation of Mychajlo Voznjak's enormous Ukrainian literary history of the 17th and 18th centuries. She also made sure that her husband's extensive research library would find new users in accordance with his will: at the University of Greifswald at the first chair for Ukrainian studies founded by Professor Manfred Niemeyer in 1995 , at which the East Berlin translator Rolf, who is also part of the Circle of Friends, was Göbner now taught; in Lemberg at the later Ukrainian Catholic University and, above all, in the Stefanyk library, in which a separate room was set up for Olexa Horbatsch's scientific work and his rich book treasures.

Characterization of the work

Anna-Halja Horbatsch, like many other Ukrainians, pointed out the independent culture of Ukraine. In particular, in her literary articles she drew attention to the influence of the graduates of the Kiev academies in the 17th and 18th centuries far into the Russian Empire. Her love and translation work was particularly true of the generation of the same age in the 1960s, who form their own literary movement. In their eyes, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was, in addition to the anniversary of Christianization in 1988, an essential impetus for national reconsideration and self-reflection in literature and in life. In the 20th century, Anna-Halja Horbatsch, like no one else in the German-speaking world, did something essential for the communication of Ukrainian literature and is therefore “a pioneer of a new period in German-Ukrainian literary relations” (M. Ivanytska).

Awards and memberships

Anna-Halja Horbatsch has received many awards for her commitment: She received

• 1993 the Wassyl Stus Prize
• 1994 the Ivan Franko Literature Prize,
• 2001 the Triumf Prize,
• 2004 Medal of Honor from the Ukrainian Free University of Munich
• 2006 Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany,
• 2006 Olga Order of the 3rd degree of the Ukrainian state
• 2009 the Olena Teliha Prize.

Furthermore she was

• Corresponding member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe,
• Member of the Göttingen working group,
• Honorary member of the Ukrainian Women's League, since 1992,
• Member of the National Association of Writers of Ukraine from 1993.

Bibliography (selection)

Anthologies and translations

• Blue November. Heidelberg 1959. [anthology]
• Michajlo M. Kocjubyns'kyj, Fata Morgana and other stories. Zurich 1962.
• Wassyl Karchut, The tenacious life. A wolf story. Wuppertal 1963.
• Andrij Tschajkowskyj, ride into the Tartar country. Wuppertal 1965.
• Mychajlo Kocjubyns'kyj, shadow of forgotten ancestors. A shepherd novella from the Carpathian Mountains. Goettingen 1966.
• Oxana Ivanenko, Ukrainian forest fairy tales. Wuppertal 1963 a. 1967.
• Hnat Chotkevyč, Robber's Summer. Goettingen 1968.
• Mychajlo Kocjubyns'kyj, Jalynka. The fir tree. Munich 1968.
• A fountain for the thirsty and other Ukrainian stories. Tubingen 1970.
• Andrij Tschajkowskyj, Daring Steppe Rider. Wuppertal 1972.
• Wild steppe. Adventure - Cossack stories. Goettingen 1974.
• (with W. Bassmann), Political Prisoners in the Soviet Union. Documents. Munich 1976.
• (Translated by A.-H. and K. Horbatsch) Leonid Pluschtsch, In the Carnival of History. Vienna et al. 1981.
• I. Switlychnyj / J. Swerstjuk / W. Stus, fear, I got rid of you. Ukrainian poems from exile. Hamburg 1983.
• (Translated by K. and A.-H. Horbatsch), Mykola Horbal ', details of an hourglass. Bern 1984.
• Igor Kalinec ', Balance of Silence. Modern Soviet Ukrainian poetry. Darmstadt 1975 a. Bern 1985
• Jurij Badzio, Valery Martschenko, Wassyl Stus, three Ukrainian prisoners of conscience. Bern 1985.
• Mykola Horbal ', Here one waits for the end. Hamburg 1986.
• Documents on the situation in Ukraine. Bern 1991.
• Vasyl 'Stus, you only dreamed your life. A selection from the collection of poems Palimpsests 1971–1979. Bern 1988.
• Jewhen Swerstjuk, years of apprenticeship to the eternal God? Hamburg 1990.
• Last visit to Chernobyl. Ukrainian contemporary storytellers. Kranichfeld 1994.
• Yuri Andruchowytsch, search for clues in July. Reichelsheim 1995.
• Voices from Chernobyl. An anthology. Reichelsheim 1996.
• Jurij Andruchowytsch (ed.), Hand me the stone lute. Ukrainian poetry of the 20th century. Reichelsheim 1996.
• Viktor Kordun, cryptograms. Reichelsheim 1996.
• Ihor Rymaruk, Golden Rain. Reichelsheim 1996.
• Lyudmila M. Skyrda, Rheinelegien. Bonn 1996.
• Valery Shevchuk, moonlight over the swallow's nest. Reichelsheim 1997.
• Ukraine in the mirror of its literature. Poetry as a people's way of survival. Reichelsheim 1997. 22002.
• Lina Kostenko, Landmarks of Life. Poems. Reichelsheim 1998.
• A rose fountain. Young storytellers from Ukraine. Reichelsheim 1998.
• Viktor Kordun, White Psalms and Other Poems. Reichelsheim 1999.
• The pumpkin princess. An anthology on women. Reichelsheim 1999.
• The voice of the grass. Fantastic stories from Ukraine. Reichelsheim 2000.
• Discover the Ukrainian literature. A German-Ukrainian reader with prose texts on cultural and literary history. Reichelsheim 2001.
• Wassyl Herassymjuk, the poet of the air. Hutsul narrative poems. Reichelsheim 2001.
• Mychajlo Voznjak, The History of Ukrainian Literature in Ukraine in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Volume III. Cologne u. a. 2001. (Building blocks for Slavic philology and cultural history A 32).
• Scores of time. Ukrainian poetry of the present. Reichelsheim 2003.
• Everything can be like in prayer. Ukrainian poetry with Christian motifs. Reichelsheim 2005.

Literary and cultural studies publications

• German-Ukrainian literary relations, in: Jahrbuch der Ukraine-Kunde 12 (1975) 13–27.
• The epic stylistic devices of the Ukrainian Duma. Diss. Munich o.O. 1950.
• Milestones of Ukrainian literature in the 20th century, in: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon 20 (1992) 395–399.
• Polish city and Ukrainian minority, in: Peter Fäßler au (ed.), Lemberg - Lwów - Lviv. Cologne, etc. 1993, 92-112.
• The Ukrainian cultural processes in the 20th century, in: Studies on nationality issues 9/1993, 83–100.
• Ukrainian cultural policy in post-Soviet times, in: Rainer Lindner (ed.), Ukraine and Belarus' in the transformation. Cologne 2001, 205-213.
• Ukrainian literature in German translations, in: Renata Makarska / Basil Kerski (eds.), Ukraine, Poland and Europe. Osnabrück 2004, 287-299.
• The literary elite of Ukraine and the "Orange Revolution", in: The citizen in the state 55.4 (2005) 168-170.

Publications on the churches of Ukraine

• The United Church of Ukraine, in: Kirche in Not 26 (1978) 80–93.
• The situation of the clergy in Ukraine, in: Wolfgang Kasack (ed.), The clergyman and his community in Eastern Europe. Berlin 1986, 51-64.
• A Thousand Years of Christianity in Ukraine, in: Der Christian Osten 43 (1988) 77–86.
• Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Hrušiv, western Ukraine, in: Informations and Reports 1/1988, 1–4.
• Admitted again soon? On the situation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, in: Der Fels 20 (1989) 293–296.
• The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the year of its legalization, in: Kirche in Not 39 (1991) 211–219.
• The Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, in: Kirche in Not 40 (1992) 214–226.
• The Greek Catholic and Orthodox Church in Ukraine, in: Der Donauraum 34 (1994) 72–80.
• (together with Mychajlo Kossiv), Church life in today's Ukraine. Koenigstein 1995.

Personal bibliography

• Yes. V. Zakrevs'ka, Anna-Halja Horbač. Bibliohrafičnyj pokažčyk. L'viv 1999.

literature

• Kürschner's German Literature Calendar 68 (2012/13) 457.
• Who is Who XLIII 2004/2005, 625.
• Encyclopedia of Ukraine 2 (1988) 219.
• Jevhen Popovyč, in: Encyklopedija sučasnoï Ukraïny 6 (2006) 185–186.
• Yes. V. Zakrevs'ka, in: Encyklopedija istoriï Ukraïny 2 (2004) 158.

• Rolf Göbner, Anna-Halja Horbatsch on her 80th birthday, in: The Ukraine. Past and present. Essays on history, language and literature. Greifswald 2004, 7–8.
• Marija Ivanyc'ka, Osobystist 'perekladača v ukraïns'ko-nimec'kych literaturnych vzaejemynach. Černivci 2015.
• Maria Ivanytska, The development of German-Ukrainian literary relations and the contribution by Anna-Halja Horbatsch, in: Die Welt der Slawen 59, 2 (2014) 268–292.
• Volodymyr Mokienko, Anna-Halja Horbatsch in memoriam, in: Bulletin of German Slavonic Studies 17 (2011) 37–38.
• Felicitas Rohder, Anna-Halja Horbatsch. Human rights activist and ambassador of the Ukrainian word, in: Pogrom 23, 165 (1992).
• Hans Rothe, Anna-Halja Horbatsch on March 2, 2000, in: Bulletin of German Slavonic Studies 6 (2000) 5-6.
• Petro Rychlo, Na schreščenni kul'tur: duchovna misija Anny-Hali Horbač, in: Slovo i Čas 7 (2005) 66–70.
• Valentyna Sobol ', Juvilej Anny-Haly Horbač, in: Warszawskie Zeszyty Ukrainoznawcze 17-18 (2004) 399-402.