Rio Preisner
Rio Preisner (born November 13, 1925 in Mukačevo , Czechoslovakia , today Ukraine ; † August 2, 2007 in Indianola , Pennsylvania , USA ) was a Czech poet, philosopher, translator and scholar for Czech and German literature.
Life
Rio Preisner spent his childhood in the multicultural society of the then Czech Mukačevo, where Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Ukrainians, Hungarians and Jews lived side by side. He attended the only high school in Europe at the time that had Hebrew in the curriculum. In his youth he came to the Prague of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in National Socialist Germany . In 1944 he graduated high school with the Matura , and then worked in a tank factory. After the war he began studying German and English at the Charles University in Prague , where he received his doctorate in 1950 with a dissertation on Franz Werfel . He then received a license to teach German at this university and at the same time worked as a literary translator for the daily Mladá fronta (German: Junge Fronta) and the Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury (German: Staatlicher Literatur-Verlag).
In 1952, Preisner married the art historian Olga Wittová, but was arrested a month later, on October 1st, and sentenced to forced labor in a labor camp, without knowing how long his imprisonment would last. His imminent admission to a camp in Siberia was postponed due to the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953 and the subsequent thaw and was then no longer carried out. His total imprisonment lasted until November 28, 1954.
After Preisner was allowed to leave the labor camp, he took up a post as a German teacher at the Prague State Academy for Foreign Languages ( Státní jazyková škola ). He joined the Československá strana lidová (Czechoslovak People's Party). In 1968 he received the Mladá fronta literary prize for his Kafkaesque novella Kapiláry (Capillaries).
After the crackdown on the “ Prague Spring ” on August 23, 1968 by the Warsaw Pact troops , Preisner emigrated into exile with his wife and daughter Ruth, initially to Vienna and then to the USA in 1969. Due to the great success of his historical-critical work on Johann Nestroy, Preisner was offered a professorship at the Pennsylvania State University . From 1969 until his resignation in 1992, he worked as a professor of German studies at this university and also directed courses for students and graduates in German and Czech literature. After his final retirement , he moved with his wife to Pittsburgh , where he worked as a writer and translator. After two decades of being banned, his work was reissued in the Czech Republic with great interest from experts and the public . Preisner was admitted to the Svaz československých spisovatelů (Czechoslovak Writers' Association), the PEN Club in Vienna and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and received the rank of Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State . In 2000, the Czech President Václav Havel Rio Preisner awarded the Za zásluhy Medal of Merit for Culture and Science.
Rio Preisner died on August 2, 2007 in Indianola, Pennsylvania.
Works
- Kapiláry (capillaries), novella. 1968.
- Jan Nepomuk Nestroy: Tvůrce tragické frašky (Johann Nepomuk Nestroy. The creator of the tragic farce). Reference book. 1968.
- Kritika totalitarismu (criticism of totalitarianism). Reference book. 1973.
- Aspects of a provocative Czech German studies. , Technical books, 1st volume: Kafka, Nestroy, 2nd volume: Avantgarde 1977.
- Vídeňské veduty (Viennese vedute). Novella. 1994.
- O životě a smrti konzervatismu (life and death of conservatism). Reference book. 1999.
Writers translated by Rio Preisner:
- Erich Auerbach , Johannes Bobrowski , Hermann Broch , Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen , Hermann Hesse , Franz Kafka , Hans Hellmut Kirst , Jean Paul , Stefan Zweig
Poets translated by Rio Preisner:
- Gottfried Benn , TS Eliot , Friedrich Hölderlin , Gerard Manley Hopkins , Karl Kraus , Rainer Maria Rilke
Web links
- Biography on phil.muni.cz (accessed March 24, 2015; in Czech)
- Biography on slovnikceskeliteratury.cz (accessed March 24, 2015; in Czech)
- Daniel Fulda, Antje Roeben, Norbert Wichard: "Can't you be very serious while laughing?": Languages and games of laughter in literature. Walter de Gruyter, 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-023229-5 , p. 108. [1] (accessed on March 24, 2015)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Preisner, Rio |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Czech poet, philosopher, translator and scholar |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 13, 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mukačevo , Czechoslovakia , today Ukraine |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 2, 2007 |
| Place of death | Indianola , Pennsylvania , USA |