Johannes von Guenther

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Johannes Ferdinand von Guenther (* March 14th July / March 26th  1886 greg. In Mitau , Kurland ; † May 28, 1973 in Kochel ; also Johannes von Günther , Hans von Günther or Johannes Günther ) was a German translator , publisher and Writer.

life and work

Guenther was born in Mitau as the son of the local prison director. From 1888 to 1893 the family lived in Windau , where the father was the Imperial Russian Police Chief, and then returned to Mitau. Even as a schoolboy, Johannes wrote short dramas and poems that he had printed in local newspapers. Growing up multilingual as a Baltic German , he has been interested in modern poetry, especially (but not exclusively) symbolism , since his youth . He corresponded by letter with well-known German and Russian poets of his time, some of whom he later got to know personally, including Alexander Alexandrowitsch Blok , with whom he is said to have been friends. Since childhood he was friends with the painter and writer Herbert von Hoerner , who also came from Courland and who attended the Russian high school in Mitau with him. After graduating from high school, Guenther traveled to Germany, spent the years 1904–05 in Dresden and Munich , where his school friend, who was two years older than him, studied at the art academy , and moved among the Munich bohemian circles . There, in 1905/06 he published his booklet Schatten und Helle in Mitau , which was provided with illustrations by the Hoerners. Due to the political events, Guenther returned to the Baltic States during the revolution of 1905 . In 1906 he undertook his first trip to Saint Petersburg , where, according to his own judgment, he only really learned Russian . There Guenther was the German editor of the magazine Apollon from 1909 to 1913 and responsible for reporting on contemporary German literature. In 1910 he published a book in Russian about Stefan George , to whom he was addicted at the time. He traveled to Moscow and London, among others , converted to the Catholic faith in Riga in 1913 and married Elsie Wood from England in Graz in June 1914 . When the First World War broke out , he stayed in Germany and was unable to return to Russia as a member of the German-speaking minority. He lived in Munich, Leipzig and Berlin, where he worked as a translator, playwright, poet and narrator. He owed his entry into the German publishing and authoring landscape, as he explains in his memoirs, to Karl Gustav Vollmoeller :

“Vollmoeller, who had an elegant apartment on Pariser Platz ... was in his early thirties at the time, a European ... a rich man who could afford everything ... He had something fascinating for me ... He knew a lot about poetry, had an immense education and me superior in every way ... Vollmoeller was not only a poet ... but above all he belonged to the closest circle around Max Reinhardt ... He impressed me immensely ... Vollmoeller had a circle of very interesting people around him. This included above all Rudolf G. Binding ... Fritz von Unruh . "

- Johannes von Guenther: A life in the east wind , Biederstein, Munich 1969, pp. 341-345

Vollmoeller brought von Guenther together with the publishers Alfred Walter Heymel , Anton Kippenberg , Georg Müller as well as Max Reinhardt, Richard Dehmel , Stefan George, Ernst Hardt , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Melchior Lechter , Rainer Maria Rilke , Arthur Schnitzler and Karl Wolfskehl . In Munich, Günther headed the publishing house of the founder Georg Müller, who died in 1917, from 1916, later Langen Müller Verlag , and founded his own Musarion publishing house in 1919. In 1919 Vollmoeller transferred his authoring rights from Insel and S. Fischer Verlag to Georg Müller Verlag, headed by Guenther. From 1922 to 1924 von Guenther was editor of the Drei-Masken-Verlag together with Alexander Eliasberg ; From 1923 to 1927 he lived in Bichl near Bad Tölz and from 1927 to 1929 was the publishing director at Grethlein & Co. in Leipzig. From 1930 he worked as a publisher in Berlin and remained there from 1934 as a freelance writer. After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Guenther and 87 other writers signed a pledge of loyal allegiance to Adolf Hitler in October 1933 .

Guenther saw his main task in making as many sections of 19th century Russian literature as possible accessible to the German readership. He translated the works of Dostoyevsky , Gogol , Lermontow , Lesskow , Pushkin , Tolstoy , Turgenev and Chekhov , Ostrowski's dramas and more than 3,000 Russian poems with around 60,000 verses, with his poetry translations particularly praised. His life's work as a translator also inspired him to create his own literary productions.

In 1939 the historical-biographical novel Rasputin was published , Guenther's most successful own work, in which he tries to depict "The Two Faces of Russia" using the figure of Grigory Efimowitsch Rasputin , who, like the members of the tsarist family , is characterized positively, while the Russian revolutionaries as little serious hotheads and dissatisfied appear. An audio version of the book with Guido Wieland as the narrator was produced in 1960 by the Swiss Walter Verlag in Olten. Guenther continued his work after 1945 in the communist-ruled eastern part of Germany and remained recognized in both parts of the country. His drama Der Kreidekreis was staged in January 1943 at the Staatstheater Berlin and in April 1956 at the Staatstheater Braunschweig . From 1940 to 1953 he lived in Kochel in Upper Bavaria, then in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg. He published his translations from Russian from 1948 to 1956 with the Berlin Aufbau-Verlag . In 1969 he published his memoirs under the title A Life in the East Wind. Between Petersburg and Munich .

According to Rolf-Dieter Kluge , von Guenther was probably the most productive Russian-German literary translator of the 20th century. Many of his translations were published by Reclam Verlag and Diogenes Verlag and were widely used. However, his translation, which was intended for a broad reading public and expressly not scientifically reflected, was not without controversy. Roman Braun, ZEIT's longtime literary critic for Russian literature, found the Chekhov edition of Guenther's work unsatisfactory not only because of the early work that was omitted without comment and the enthusiastic, but not very meaningful and sometimes gay and clichéd introductory texts from Guenther's own pen that were added instead. In addition to the complete lack of basic information on the author's life and work, he criticized the bulky, sometimes wooden and stilted-looking language of Guenther, which often does not do justice to the fluency of the Russian original, and which in particular determines the spoken text passages of the dramas. “Most of the other Chekhov translators are more adept at handling German than Johannes von Guenther.” Braun also considered the stylizing and emotional approach to the texts, which ignores fundamental scientific insights, to be questionable. Beata Hammerschmid and Martina Riemekasten also attest to Guenther's explicit and often strongly expanding translation style, sometimes doubling the source text in an effort to ensure grammatical completeness and linguistic over-correctness. In comparison with contemporary translations by other translators such as Richard Hoffmann or the Slavist Wolfgang Kasack , both reviews show that Johannes von Guenther is more recognizable in his translations as a Russian rather than a German native speaker, who in some cases recognizes the subtleties of the Russian source text more precisely than native German translators, However, it is not always able to transfer it adequately in the target language and is therefore sometimes lost in explanatory additions.

His private library is part of the Tübingen University Library .

Publications (selection)

In addition to his classic translations, Johannes von Guenther's work includes 5 volumes of poetry, 17 dramas and comedies and 3 novels, as well as popular introductory and collected works and his memoirs.

Own works
  • King Midas (1895)
  • Der Tannhäuser, a tragedy , self-published, Graz 1914
  • Martinian seeks the devil , Munich 1916
  • Trip to Thule , Munich 1916
  • Rasputin , Berlin 1939; Post-war editions by Keyser in Heidelberg (1948), Walter in Olten (1956) and Donauland in Vienna (around 1960)
  • The chalk circle , Potsdam 1942; Post-war editions in Reclam's Universal Library (1953 and 1966)
  • Alexander Block. An attempt at a representation , Willi Weismann Verlag, Munich 1948
  • The literature of Russia. In: The greats of art, literature and music: Russia , Union Verlag, Stuttgart 1964
  • I want to tell about Russia. The Dramatic Curriculum Vitae of Russian Literature, Südwest Verlag, Munich 1968
  • A life in the east wind. Between Petersburg and Munich , Biederstein Verlag, Munich 1969
as editor / editor
  • New Russian Parnassus. A lyric anthology. Selected, introduced and transferred by Johannes von Guenther. Title was drawn by Emil Preetorius , Oesterheld & Co., Berlin 1912 (new edition in Guenther's own Musarion publishing house, Munich 1921)
  • as editor and translator: Russian ghost stories. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1961, (12th edition 1975) ISBN 3-436-00434-0 .
  • Don Gil of the green pants . Free adaptation by Johannes von Guenther , Munich 1918; last hand: Potsdam 1943; Post-war edition at Reclam in Stuttgart (1966)
  • Immortal String Play - The Most Beautiful Poems , Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1962
  • The decameron . After the transfer by August Gottlieb Meißner, edited by Johannes von Guenther , PP Kelen Verlagsgesellschaft, Gütersloh 1966

literature

  • Rolf-Dieter Kluge : Johannes von Guenther as a translator and mediator of Russian literature. In: Die Welt der Slaven 12 (1967), Heft 1, Wiesbaden 1967, pp. 77-96. Contains a bibliography of the works of Guenthers as well as a retelling of his account of his acquaintance with Alexander Blok (cf.Avril Pyman, in which. (Ed.): Alexander Blok: Selected Poems. Introduced and edited by Avril Pyman (Pergamon Oxford Russian Series) Pergamon Press, Oxford 1972, p. 355, footnote 82).
  • Heinz Setzer (ed.), Johannes von Guenther: "A life in the east wind". An exhibition from the estate of the translator and writer Johannes von Guenther (1886–1973) with the catalog of his Russian library, May 9 to June 14, 1996. University Library of Tübingen, Tübingen 1996 (exhibition catalog).
  • Guenther, Johannes (Ferdinand) von, writer. In: Vera Derschum, Ferdinand Leikam, Mike W. Malm, Tanja Nause, Sandra Schaeff, Wiebke Niede (Red.): The German-language press: A biographical-bibliographical handbook. KG Saur Verlag , Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-11710-8 , p. 378 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Carmen Sippl: Publishers and translators as Russian-German cultural mediators in the interwar period. In: Karl Eimermacher, Astrid Volpert (Ed.): Stormy departures and disappointed hopes. Russians and Germans in the interwar period (= West-Eastern mirroring. New series, Volume 2). Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7705-4091-3 , pp. 783-804 (on v. Guenther's activities between the wars, especially pp. 795-798, etc.).
  • Guenther, Johannes (Hans) Ferdinand von. In: Carola L. Gottzmann , Petra Hörner: Lexicon of German-Language Literature of the Baltic States and St. Petersburg . From the Middle Ages to the present. Volume 1, De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11019338-1 , pp. 507-513 ( limited preview in the Google book search). (In addition to the one-column curriculum vitae, it contains a detailed list of all translations, editorships, own works, arrangements and editions.)

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the baptismal register of the municipality of St. Trinitatis zu Mitau (Latvian: Jelgavas sv. Trīsvienības vācu pilsētas)
  2. ^ Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller. Hamburg: Tredition 2008. p. 392.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 . P. 215.
  4. ↑ Vier Falken Verlag, Berlin.
  5. ^ Subtitle of the 1956 edition, Walter Verlag, Olten .
  6. ↑ While the new edition of Guenther's novel Rasputin (Keysersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg) , published in West Germany in 1948, adopts Sergei Trufanov's well-known, diabolical characterization (“The Holy Devil”, 1917), the subtitle of the edition published in Austria (Buchgemeinschaft Donauland, Vienna , around 1960) Rasputin, according to Guenther's intention, more appropriate as "magician and prophet".
  7. ↑ Bibl. Notes cannot be displayed ( deep link ), accessed on October 7, 2016.
  8. ^ Rolf-Dieter Kluge: Johannes von Guenther as translator and mediator of Russian literature. Wiesbaden 1967, p. 88; The information is given by Beata Hammerschmid, Martina Riemekasten: Translation problems with 'God' and 'Devil'. Folklore and metaphysics in the German translations of NV Gogol’s Revizor. In: Ulrike Jekutsch, Fritz Paul, Brigitte Schultze, Horst Turk (eds.): Comedy and tragedy - translated and edited. Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1994, pp. 269-301 (here: p. 295 and note 74).
  9. ↑ Roman Braun: In the end the question mark remains. The satisfactory edition of Anton Chekhov's works is still missing. In: Die Zeit 10/1964 of March 6, 1964, feature section.
  10. ↑ Beata Hammerschmid, Martina Riemekasten: Opera has it better. AN Ostrovskijs Groza in German translations. In: Ulrike Jekutsch, Fritz Paul, Brigitte Schultze, Horst Turk (eds.): Comedy and tragedy - translated and edited. Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1994, pp. 405-430 (here: p. 418).
personal data
SURNAME Guenther, Johannes von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Mitau
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 1973
Place of death Kochel am See