Heddy Pross-Weerth

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Heddy Pross-Weerth (born September 1, 1917 in Detmold ; † June 21, 2004 in Mannheim ) was a German translator , literary critic , publicist and author . She published partly under the pseudonym Warja Saacke (the real name of her daughter).

family

She was the child of the classical philologist Karl Emil Ferdinand Weerth (1881-1960) and his wife Harriet Weerth, née Carius. There was a family connection to Russia and a general openness towards a left-liberal-bourgeois to socialist model of society and its cultural forms of expression, especially literature.

From 1955 to 1969 she was married to the journalist Harry Pross , who also worked as editor-in-chief of Radio Bremen .

School and study

Heddy Weerth attended grammar school in Detmold, which she left in 1935 with the Unterprimarreife ( middle school leaving certificate ). Then she began an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Marburg . She completed her compulsory year as a country teacher in Schleswig-Holstein , where she occasionally rode on the Octopus Blazer of the reform educator , bard and writer Martin Luserke (1880–1968), which served as a floating poet's workshop. In March 1939 she passed a special matriculation examination in Berlin , which qualified her to study educational science . With the professional goal of primary school teacher, she began her studies in 1940 in Munich-Pasing at the College for Teacher Training . However, she did not continue this, but instead decided to study Eastern European history, Slavic philology and German studies, which she did at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster , at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , in Königsberg and at Georg-August -University of Göttingen followed up. She spent four semesters up to the winter semester 1944/45 at the Albertus University in Königsberg , where she probably took Russian courses with Nikolai Sergejewitsch Arsenjew (Russian: Николай Сергеевич Арсеньев) (1888–1977), the head of the interpreting institute founded there in 1941 , and attended his lectures on Russian culture and literature. In 1941 and 1942, this was preceded by brief jobs as private tutor for the von Berg family in Königsberg. She met the East Prussian poet Agnes Miegel , with whom she corresponded. She also studied with the historian Herbert Grundmann , the Slavist and linguist Karl Heinrich Meyer , the historian Theodor Schieder and the Slavist Max Vasmer .

At the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen she completed her studies with a doctorate and in 1945 presented her dissertation on the subject of changes in Russian historiography and the view of history in the 16th and early 17th centuries .

Professional development

From 1949 to 1956 Heddy Weerth worked as an editor, translator and reviewer. She worked for the Information Service of the Allied High Commission in Germany (HICOG) and later by the American US embassy in Bonn published information leaflet East problems . In addition, she was active on a private basis as a Russian teacher.

She later worked as a freelance translator, literary critic and essayist. Her articles on Russian or Soviet literature and cultural history appeared, for example, in daily newspapers ( FAZ , Stuttgarter Zeitung , Die Zeit , NZZ ) and magazines ( Eastern Europe , Deutsche Rundschau , Neue Rundschau , Akzente ) or were broadcast by broadcasters ( Deutsche Welle , DLF , hr , NDR , RB , SDR , SWF , WDR ) broadcast, mainly by Radio Bremen , where she worked as a culture editor from 1971 to 1981 in addition to her freelance work. Numerous trips took her to the Soviet Union, some at the invitation of the Writers' Union of the USSR . At the invitation of the Soviet Committee for the Protection of Peace , she traveled in 1967 with Marion Countess Dönhoff , Martin Niemöller , industrialists and natural scientists.

With numerous translations and literary critical contributions, she endeavored well into old age to bring Soviet Russian literature closer to the German audience, which was "a single blank spot on the European literary map in 1954". She also devoted herself to anti-Soviet literature such as that of Efim Etkind , Lew Kopelew or Alexander Solzhenitsyn , under a pseudonym, in order to prevent any problems when re-entering the Soviet Union.

Weerth was a member of the PEN Center Germany . She died in June 2004 at the age of 86.

Honors

Works (selection)

  • Proserpine rules here. A sketch by the poet Ossip Mandelstam . With the rewriting of his verses by Paul Celan . German Literature Archive, Marbach 1959
  • In search of the avant-garde . In: Herbert Mochalski , Eugen Kogon (ed.): Soviet Siberia and Central Asia today . Frankfurt am Main 1967, pp. 151-155
  • Prague and Czechoslovakia . Walter-Verlag, Olten 1967; New edition 1990 ISBN 978-3-530-66607-6
  • Soviet prose in the Federal Republic since 1954 . In: Akzente (magazine) for literature. Vol. 21, 1974, pp. 486-491
  • From Stalin's death to the present . In: Gisela Lindemann (Ed.): Soviet literature today . Munich 1979, pp. 55-79
  • Opinion on Leonid Pasternak. German Literature Archive, Marbach 1980
  • Moscow . From the settlement in the forest to the capital of a world power . Insel Verlag , Frankfurt 1980; New edition 1989 ISBN 978-3-458-32167-5
  • Ed .: The Red Wheel. Texts, interviews, speeches by Alexander Solzhenitsyn . Piper Verlag , Munich 1986 ISBN 978-3-492-00894-5
  • Ed., Introduction: Life is beautiful and sad. Russian reading book . Piper, Munich 1990 ISBN 978-3-492-11025-9 pp. 7-18
  • Epilogue to Anton Chekhov : Thieves and other stories . Munich 2004, pp. 200-206

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heddy Pross-Weerth , in: Who's Who, on: whoswho.de, accessed on August 12, 2017.
  2. ↑ Aleksey Tashinskiy: Heddy Pross-Weerth, 1917–2004 , in: Germersheimer Translatorslexikon, on: uelex.de, accessed on August 12, 2017.
  3. ↑ Peter Lambrecht: Luserke-Gedenken , in: Mitteilungsheft Nr. 83 (1993) of the association of former students and teachers of the Meldorfer learned school / Traditionsgemeinschaft Greifenberger Gymnasiasten, Meldorf , Winter 1993, p. 10.
  4. ↑ Postcards from Agnes Miegel to Heddy Weerth (1941–1944; many of them destroyed as a result of the immediate war), in: Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach .
  5. ↑ Heddy Pross-Weerth in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors , accessed on August 12, 2017
  6. ↑ Heddy Pross-Weerth: The dangerous secrets , in: Die Zeit, No. 40 (1983), September 30, 1983.
  7. ↑ Heddy Pross-Weerth: Soviet prose in the Federal Republic since 1954 , in: Akzente. Journal of Literature . Vol. 21, 1974, p. 487.
  8. ↑ Killy Literature Lexicon, Vol. 9, 1991.
personal data
SURNAME Pross-Weerth, Heddy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weerth, Heddy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German translator, author and critic
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Detmold
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 2004
Place of death Mannheim