Jörg Scherzer

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Jörg Scherzer (born January 21, 1945 in Hof (Saale) ; † August 18, 2019 in Berlin ) was a German Scandinavian scholar , historian and translator .

life and work

Jörg Scherzer grew up with his mother and grandmothers; his father died in World War II and his brother died of polio during the war. After graduating from high school, he earned money as a sleeper car attendant. In the 1970s Scherzer studied Scandinavian studies and history in Frankfurt am Main, among others with Klaus von See . He completed his studies with a dissertation on the proletarian Bildungsroman in Swedish literature. In Sweden he also met the mother of his only daughter. He lived in Berlin since the 1980s.

Jörg Scherzer translated works mainly from Swedish, but also from Danish and Norwegian literature. Together with Angelika Gundlach , whom he had known since his studies in Frankfurt, he published the biography Der Andere Strindberg in 1981 and at times worked with her for the large Strindberg edition at Suhrkamp , which, however, was not finished. He mainly translated for the publishing houses Suhrkamp and Amman , including Gentlemen by Klas Östergren (1985), Moorkönig's daughter by Birgitta Potsig (1990) and Die Autisten by Stig Larsson . Translated by Scherzer, the post-war report German Autumn by Stig Dagerman was published in the Suhrkamp library in 1987 . From Danish he translated, among others, the works of Sven Åge Madsen , Jens-Martin Eriksen and Solvej Balle as well as Hans Christian Andersen's forgotten novel The Improvisator from 1830. The novels Choral at the end of the journey of the Norwegian writer Erik Fosnes Hansen , who spoke of the sinking of the Titanic tells (1995), and Long John Silver by Sweden Björn Larsson , a pirate story ( 1996), became bestsellers in Scherzer's translation. Since the late 1990s and 2000s, he has translated the works of journalist Göran Rosenberg , the philosopher Fredrik Agell and the author Per Molander from Swedish, among others .

Jörg Scherzer died in Berlin in August 2019 at the age of 74 as a result of a heart attack.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Curriculum vitae in the obituary by Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke and Peter Urban-Halle , VdÜ 2019
  2. ↑ According to the entry in the DNB
personal data
SURNAME Scherzer, Jörg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German translator, historian and Scandinavian
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Hof (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH 18th August 2019
Place of death Berlin