Hannah von Mettal

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Bellerivestrasse 7, where Hannah von Mettal sublet lived with Brun when she translated James Joyce's drama Exiles and where the Wehrle guesthouse was where Georg von Seybel committed suicide .

Hannah von Mettal (* May 7, 1884 , in Zdechovice near Pardubice , Bohemia ; † May 26, 1966 in New York ) was a translator and in 1918 made the first German translation of James Joyce's drama Exiles , which was premiered in 1919 at the Munich Schauspielhaus.

Life

Hannah Helene Adriena von Mettal was one of four daughters of the conservative politician, lawyer and economics professor Otto Mettal (from 1912 Otto Ritter von Mettal) and his wife Amalie. The family was not only wealthy - they owned the Zdechovice and Rozsochatec castles, among others - but they were also politically influential, as Hannah von Mettal's sister Marie was married to Emanuel Greif, the chief state official of Prime Minister Karel Kramář .

In 1915/16, Hannah von Mettal, who was successful as a translator, was also a singing student of the Italian music teacher and composer Alfredo Cairati at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, who taught there between 1908 and 1916 and moved with his family to Zurich in 1916, where he taught Accademia di Canto founded and worked as a music teacher and composer. Like Cairati, Hannah von Mettal moved to Zurich in 1916, which explains that the Zurich authorities, as a profession for the then 32-year-olds, “stud. mus. "," Private. " have cited.

On June 16, 1916 (a Bloomsday ) Hannah von Mettal registered in Zurich , where she was viewed with suspicion by German and Austrian authorities during the First World War until the end of the war, according to a report written at the end of November 1917: "The same applies of course also from politically suspicious persons. The German postal surveillance offices have repeatedly sent and intercepted espionage letters to the Czech Hanna von Mettal in Zurich. " In fact, there is an espionage letter addressed to Hannah von Mettal in the Baden-Württemberg State Archive , Main State Archive Stuttgart, which in the summer of 1917 led to intelligence investigations by the Württemberg Central Police Station.

In May 1920, Mettal signed off for about two weeks in Munich, where she lived again and again during the war. She then returned to Zurich, where her stay was limited to the end of June 1920, whereupon she left for Bohemia at the beginning of August 1920 , where the second and third edition of her Czech translation of Elinor Glyn's novel Drei Wochen was published in 1919 and the third in 1925 .

In her home country she got to know Jan Masaryk , one of her father's numerous guests, better. After her marriage to the engineer Moritz Maisner, she lived as Hannah Mettal-Maisner, Mettal-Mayzner and Hannah Mayzner in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Berlin, London and New York, from where she supported Masaryk, who was the Czechoslovak ambassador to between 1925 and 1938 Great Britain and from 1940 Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovak government in exile .

plant

In 1911 Mettal translated Elinor Glyns novel Three Weeks into Czech . Glyn's book on sexual adventure was so scandalous in 1907 that it was long banned in Great Britain and the United States .

In 1918 Mettal translated James Joyce's drama Exiles as Exiles into German. The translation was published in 1919 by Rascher Verlag in Zurich. The translation of Joyce's drama also took place on August 7, 1919 at the Münchner Kammerspiele . Directed by Erwin von Busse . Despite this literary historical significance, Hannah von Mettal has been so forgotten that little is known about her.

The assumption expressed by Richard Ellmann in his James Joyce biography that Stefan Zweig established the connection between Hannah von Mettal and Joyce was refuted not only by the fact that Mettal does not appear anywhere in Zweig's life and work, but also by a letter from Mettal in which she told Joyce on March 20, 1918, d. H. More than half a year before he met Zweig, says that she can only send him the first act of her Exiles translation for the time being because she was too busy. The letter also contains Mettal's Zurich address at the time: Bellerivestrasse 7.

On April 4, 1925, Hannah von Mettal , who was then living in Berlin (Lessingstrasse 39), asked Joyce's publisher Sylvia Beach about the conditions for the translation of Ulysses into German and Czech . In her letter, she emphasizes that she has very good contacts to publishers in Berlin and Prague, as well as a good name in Prague. She also mentions that she translated a play by Joyce some time ago, which apparently alludes to her transfer of Exiles .

Joyce was probably not interested in a German or Czech translation of Ulysses by Hannah von Mettal. His rejection rubbed off on posterity, which is why after the Second World War, Friedrich Kremer's Exiles (1956) and Klaus Reichert's Exiles (1968), two more German translations of Exiles , appeared. As part of the Frankfurt edition, the latter has now become the widespread standard translation.

In 1929 he published Předčasné odpuštění Mettal's Czech translation of André Corthis' Le Pardon prématuré .

photography

Translations

  • Elinor Glyn : Tři týdny ( Three Weeks ). Translated from English into Czech by Hannah von Mettal (1911).
  • James Joyce : Exiles ( Exiles ). Play in three acts. Translated by Hannah von Mettal. Zurich: Rascher & Cie. 1919.
  • Rex Beach : Železná stopa ( The Iron Trail ). Translated into Czech by Hannah von Mettal. (1927).
  • André Corthis: Předčasné odpuštění ( Le Pardon prématuré ). Translated from French into Czech by Hannah von Mettal (1929).
  • Berta Ruck : Krádež perel ( The Pearl Thief ). Translated into Czech by Hannah von Mettal. (1930).
  • William Babington Maxwell: Musíme zapomenout ( We forget because we must ). Translated into Czech by Hannah von Mettal. (1932)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Malte Vogt: List of the students at the Stern Conservatory (1850-1936), letters L and M (PDF file; 646 kB).
  2. ^ Heinrich Aerni: inventory of Cornelio Giuseppe Cairati (1909 - 1991) (PDF file; 657 kB).
  3. ↑ a b Zurich City Archives VEc100., 1901–1933, 1934–1964 (Andreas Weigel communicated by Robert Dünki).
  4. ^ Czechoslovak Movement. In: Státní ústřední archiv v Praze: Sborník dokumentů k vnitřnímu vývoji v českých zemích za 1. světové války 1914-1918, Státní ústřední archiv v Praze, Rok 1917. 1996. pp. 216–219. 217. [= State Central Archives in Prague: Collection of documents on internal development in the Czech Republic during the First World War 1914-1918. The year 1917. Prague Central State Archives.]
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Mährle: A suspicious letter. The James Joyce translator Hannah von Mettal is targeted by the Württemberg counterintelligence. In: Eßlinger Zeitung from December 1, 2014. p. 8.
  6. ^ Zdechovický zámek
  7. ^ Andreas Weigel: Hannah von Mettal . James-Joyce-Austriaca · James Joyce and Austria. April 29, 2009.
  8. ↑ Harald Stockhammer: something on the family history of the Mettals . James-Joyce-Austriaca · James Joyce and Austria. August 19, 2009.
  9. ^ Jitka Greif, Hannah von Mettals grandniece, in an email from June 1, 2009 to Harald Stockhammer (Innsbruck).
  10. ^ Hannah von Mettal: Letter of March 20, 1918 to James Joyce.
  11. ↑ Hannah von Mettal: Letter of April 4, 1925 to Sylvia Beach.

Remarks

  1. ↑ In addition to the Pension Wehrle am See , where Anton von Webern was a guest, from the mid-1920s there was also the practice of the psychoanalyst Josef Bernhard Lang (1881-1945, who was friends with Hugo Ball and trained by Carl Gustav Jung) ), who treated Hermann Hesse between 1916 and 1919 and was on friendly terms with him until the end of his life, as evidenced by an extensive exchange of letters. In the pension Wehrle also lived Ruth Wenger , the early 1920s with Josef Lang romantically involved and married later with Hesse a few years, who in the Pension Wehrle has visited. Today the house is home to the architects Bétrix & Consolascio, among others .
personal data
SURNAME Mettal, Hannah from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-language translator of James Joyce's drama "Exiles"
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Zechowitz , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1966
Place of death new York