Michael Kellner (publisher)

Michael Kellner (* 1953 in Kassel ) is a German publisher, bookseller, literary translator and photographer. As a publisher and translator, he mainly made texts from Beat literature known in Germany.

Life

Waiter grew up in Kassel; through reading by JD Salinger and Jack Kerouac and through a dance performance of a poem by Allen Ginsberg at the Staatstheater Kassel , he became enthusiastic about American beat literature.

He has lived in Hamburg since 1975, where he worked as a bookseller in Buchhandlung Welt from 1977 to 1980 . The book Handlung Welt was operated by the painter Hilka Nordhausen “as a kind of total work of art”. She shared her vehement concept of "unsalable art" with Michael Kellner.

At the end of 1976 he founded the Kassel literary magazine "Loose Blätter Sammlung" , which mainly published new literature. In 1978 the magazine led to the founding of the Loose-Blätter-Presse, later the Michael Kellner publishing house. The TaschenTexte series first published poems by Ted Joans ( Blitzlieb poems ), Anna Rheinsberg , and Peer Schröder . The publishing house existed until 1998 under changing names and different legal forms (not to be confused with the Bremer Kellner Verlag ).

Kellner's publishing house published new German authors as well as American literature, Hamburg crime novels and non-fiction books. He has been a freelance translator, editor, photographer and occasionally curator since 2001 (sometimes the entry 2000 can also be found). In the Michael Kellner edition, he brought out a limited bibliophile edition of Allen Ginsberg's Howl , with a facsimile of the first version, as well as Ginsberg's comments and letters from the time of writing. Ginsberg's provocative text was symptomatic of the beat , of flower power and of the attitude towards life of rebellious youth in the 1950s and 1960s.

Kellner publishes beatnet.de, a page on beat literature. In 2009 he presented a new translation of the Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs , based on the 2003 new version from the manuscripts of the Columbia University Libraries. For his translation, he was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the translation category and received great reviews, e. B. in the FAZ : The greatest achievement of the German edition is the very successful new translation by Michael Kellner. Burrough's complex language is a tough nut to crack for translators, because accuracy alone is not enough. Rather, it is important to recompose a language music.

For his translation of the correspondence between Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: Glory kills everything , he received the Hamburg Prize for Literary Translations in 2012.

Translations (selection)

• Allen Ginsberg : Poems. Translation by Heiner Bastian , Michael Kellner a. a. Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-446-19791-5 .
• Harold Chapman : Beats à Paris. Paris and the poets of the beat generation 1957–1963. Edition Kellner, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-933444-12-8 .
• Barry Miles : Frank Zappa. Rogner and Bernhard at Zweiausendeins, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 .
• William S. Burroughs : Naked Lunch . The original version. Nagel & Kimche, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-312-00427-0 . (Also: rororo 25644. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-499-25644-8 ).
• Jack Kerouac: On the Road . The original version. Translated together with Ulrich Blumenbach . Reinbek near Hamburg 2010.
• Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: Fame Kills Everything. The letters. Rogner & Bernhard, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-95403-001-9 .
• Diane di Prima : Memoirs of a Beatnik. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-86150-909-7 . (Original title: Memoirs of a beatnik ).
• William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac: And the hippos were boiling in their tanks. Novel. Nagel & Kimche, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-312-00451-5 . (Original title: And the hippos were boiled in their tanks ).
• Neil Young : A hippie dream. The autobiography Waging Heavy Peace. Translated from the English by Stefanie Jacobs, Michael Kellner and Hans-Ulrich Möhring. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-462-04477-5 . (Original title: Waging heavy peace ).
• Nell Zink : nicotine . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2018, ISBN 978-3-498-07670-2 .
• Nell Zink: Virginia . Rowohlt, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-498-07672-6 .

Works (selection)

• Heart and soul. Poems. Tied together with The famous runaway hippopotamus by Peer Schröder . Verlag Peter Engstler, Ostheim / Rhön 1993, ISBN 3-929375-04-0 .

Prizes and awards

• 2012 Hamburg sponsorship award for literature and literary translations for fame kills everything.

Web links

• Literature by and about Michael Kellner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Page about waiters at "Hamburg Literature Awards"
• Homepage for the photographic work of Kellner ( Memento from March 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
• Page about waiters at "Szene Hamburg", September 2010, PDF
• Loose leaves collection : ZDB -ID 975616-4 , 1.1977 - 7.1979
• Reviews of his translations at perlentaucher

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "Reading the novels by JD Salinger and Jack Kerouac as well as the dance theater performance of Allen Ginsberg's poem" Howl "at the Kasseler Schauspielhaus 1970 shaped literary preferences and models." (Online at: literaturuebersetzer.de ) ( Memento from June 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ on Hilka Nordhausen, her work and the book Handlung Welt see http://www.hilkanordhausen.de/?q=node/559
3. ↑ Frank Keil: Attack on Reality. Hamburg, Markstrasse 12 - that became the address of the avant-garde in the seventies. A reminder of Hilka Nordhausen's legendary art project “Buch Handlung Welt”. In: Die Zeit of December 27, 2013.
4. ↑ Hans-Christian Dany, Ulrich Dörrie, Bettina Sefkow (ed.): Against -here. Texts, conversations and documents on strategies of self-organization since 1969. Hamburg 1998, p. 54.
5. ↑ see standard data of the publisher under GND 2088349-3 and GND 2151747-2 , partly also as Edition Kellner see DNB 962138592
6. ↑ see biography in "Hamburg Literature Awards" ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ see http://www.beatnet.de/index.php?aid=1
8. ↑ see page on this at literaturuebersetzer.de ( Memento from June 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
9. ↑ Review of the new translation Naked Lunch : Wolfgang Schneider: Der Kassenarzt der Vorhölle. In: FAZ of November 20, 2009. Retrieved November 21, 2013.