Otto F. Babler

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Otto F. Babler 
Photographer: unknown
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Otto F. Babler , also Otto František Babler or Otto Franjo Babler (born January 26, 1901 in Zenica , then Austria-Hungary , now Bosnia and Herzegovina ; † February 24, 1984 in Olomouc , Czechoslovakia , now the Czech Republic ), was a Czech writer , Publisher , library director and translator who spoke many languages and is one of the most productive Czech translators with around 4,000 translations.

life and work

Babler was born to an old Austrian father and a Moravian mother in the Bosnian town of Zenica. His parents had moved to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy for work. After his father, an administrative officer, died early, Babler and his mother lived with relatives in nearby Sarajevo until the outbreak of the First World War .

Numerous languages ​​were spoken in parallel in Sarajevo at the beginning of the 20th century. This meant that the growing up there Babler next to Czech , German (by his parents) and Serbo-Croatian ( lingua franca in Sarajevo) in school French and Latin learned. Later, English , Italian , Polish and Russian added. Even later, Babler dealt with Kashubian , Provencal and Sorbian . Babler taught himself some of the Slavic languages ​​by himself .

As a result of the assassination attempt on the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie Chotek, Duchess of Hohenberg on June 28, 1914 , Babler moved with his mother and relatives back to the city of Olomouc / Olomouc in Bohemia the relationship was originally.

After high school in 1919 in the German Imperial State Gymnasium Babler started as a freelance translator to work. During his life, Babler saw himself as a “book worker” and as a mediator of cultures by overcoming language barriers . According to his own admission, the origin of this altruistic attitude was an experience in his childhood in Bosnia, when he saw how disadvantaged children there were because of a lack of language skills.

Otto F. Babler
Photographer: unknown
Link to the photo
(please note copyrights )

Since publishers showed little interest in his work at the beginning of Babler's work as a translator, he began to publish his works himself in small bibliophile editions of no more than 350 copies each, and thus became a co-founder of the Moravian Bibliophile Society. Babler's contact with Otokar Březina and Jakub Deml , important Czech writers of their time , also came from this period. He has translated into and from several languages, including German, Czech, English, Italian and Russian. He has translated works by Ivo Andrić , Achim von Arnim , Martin Buber , Josef Čapek , Franz Kafka , Ludvík Kundera , Edgar Allan Poe , Erich Maria Remarque , Rainer Maria Rilke , Adalbert Stifter and Anna Seghers , among others . The topics ranged from children's books such as stories of the little dog and the kitten , to poems such as Mozart in Prague or Karel Hynek Mácha's epic Máj , novels by Remarque and Seghers to The Raven by Poe. Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy , which he translated into Czech with Jan Zahradníček, is considered to be Babler's magnum opus . Along with Jaroslav Vrchlický and Jan Blokša, Babler was one of the leading Czech Dante researchers. He bequeathed his 400-volume Dante library to the Olomouc University Library.

In addition to these literary activities in the broadest sense, he was also the leading representative of the local bibliophiles and promoter of painters, sculptors and graphic designers in the region. With his wife Mary Mejsnarová, whom he married in 1928, he then moved to Samotišky , a small, lonely village near Olomouc, in order to be able to work in peace. In 1930 the only child, a son, was born. In 1936 he became librarian (and later library director) of the Olomouc Chamber of Commerce and in the 1940s he worked as a lecturer in Serbo-Croatian at the Palacký University in Olomouc . During this time, Babler published books from his edition Hlasy (voices) for several years and worked for various magazines, such as B. Journal for book lovers , Philobiblon , Notes and Queries , De Gulden Passer , Yearbook of the German Dante Society or Rivista de Letterature Slave . Babler had to stop this work after the German occupation of the Sudetenland as a result of the Munich Agreement of 1938. In the period up to the end of the war in 1945 he translated Dante's Divine Comedy . Since Babler was not a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party , it was not until 1952 that the all-controlling Czechoslovak Writers' Association granted permission to print and publish it. The Dante translation was so successful that it appeared in several new editions in the following years. From 1956 he only worked as a freelance translator. Since 1973 Babler was also a corresponding member of the Adalbert Stifter Institute in Linz . From the mid-1950s, his eyesight deteriorated and he had to retire early and receive a disability pension . At the end of his life, Babler was blind .

literature

  • Eva-Maria Hrdinová: Life and Work of a Citizen of the World. The Moravian translator, poet and publisher Otto F. Babler. In: Yearbook of the Adalbert Stifter Institute for 2005, NF 19, Munich 2004
  • Eva Hrdinová: Otto František Babler. Dissertation, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci 2008, ISBN 978-80-244-1838-4
  • Rudolf Michalik: About my friend Otto F. Babler. In: Das Antiquariat. Half-monthly publication for all areas of book and art antiquarianism. 19th year 1969, no. 2, p. 27
  • Hugo Rokyta: In memoriam O. F. Babler. In: Quarterly publication of the Adalbert Stifter Institute of the State of Upper Austria, No. 33, Linz 1984, volume 3/4, pp. 188–189

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Hugo Rokyta: In memoriam O. F. Babler. P. 188.
  2. ↑ a b c Otto Franjo Babler
  3. ^ Website of the Olomouc Scientific Library about O. F. Babler
  4. ↑ a b c d Rudolf Michalik: About my friend Otto F. Babler. P. 27.
personal data
SURNAME Babler, Otto F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Babler, Otto František; Babler, Otto Franz; Babler, Otto Franjo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech translator
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Zenica , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1984
Place of death Olomouc