Svetlana Geier

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Swetlana Geier (2008)

Swetlana Geier (born: Swetlana Michailowna Iwanowa ; born April 26, 1923 in Kiev , Ukrainian SSR , Soviet Union ; † November 7, 2010 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a literary translator who translated from Russian, her mother tongue, into German. She lived in Germany since 1943.

Life

Svetlana Geier was born in Kiev in 1923 to Russian parents . Her father was a scientist, a specialist in plant breeding, her mother came from a family of tsarist officers. Her father was arrested in 1938 as part of Stalin's Great Terror and died in 1939 after his release from the consequences of torture while in custody.

Svetlana Iwanowa had a sheltered childhood and received private lessons in French and German from an early age. In 1941, the year the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union , she graduated from high school with top marks and enrolled at the Faculty of Western European Languages ​​at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences . There she also worked as a translator at the Geological Institute.

After the German troops marched into Kiev, she took a job as an interpreter on the construction site of the Dortmunder Brückenbau AG . She had been promised a scholarship in Germany if she would work for the Germans for a year beforehand. In 1943, after the defeat of the German troops in the Battle of Stalingrad , the company had to cease operations in Kiev. Svetlana Ivanova was aware that because of her work for the Germans she was a collaborator for her compatriots and that she would never be able to study in the Soviet Union. Her mother no longer wanted to live with the "father's murderers" either. So they joined the bridge construction company returning to Germany. They were arrested and taken to a camp for Eastern workers in Dortmund , from which they were able to escape after six months with the help of friends.

After passing a talent test, Swetlana Iwanowa received a Humboldt scholarship , which enabled her to realize her dream of studying. She moved with her mother to Günterstal , a district of Freiburg , and in 1944 began studying literature and comparative linguistics at the University of Freiburg . Her family name changed to Geier through marriage . She was the mother of two children and lived in Günterstal until her death.

Swetlana Geier became a lecturer for Russian at the University of Karlsruhe in 1960 . Since 1964 she had an eight-hour teaching assignment there; until her death she took the train from Freiburg to Karlsruhe once a week. In addition, from 1964 to 1988 she was lecturer in Russian at the Slavonic Seminar at the University of Freiburg. From 1979 to 1983 she was teaching Russian language and literature at the University of Witten / Herdecke .

Swetlana Geier has also made a contribution to teaching the Russian language in schools: In Freiburg, she established Russian lessons as a compulsory elective at the Kepler Gymnasium in Freiburg , where she taught for many years. For 25 years she supervised Russian lessons at various Waldorf schools in Germany.

She began her work as a translator in 1953 as part of the then new Rowohlt Classics series .

She was a member of the PEN Center Germany .

Swetlana Geier died on November 7th 2010 at the age of 87 in her house in Freiburg- Günterstal. The house, which she has lived in for more than 50 years and belongs to the city, was to become a literary and translator center according to the will of a private initiative. These plans did not materialize; the city sold the house.

plant

Swetlana Geier was one of the most important translators of Russian literature in German-speaking countries. She translated works by Tolstoy , Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn , among others . She became known to a wider public through the new translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's great novels .

She did not hesitate to reformulate well-known titles. According to her statement, she only translated the titles from Russian. From Crime and Punishment (Преступление и наказание) was Crime and Punishment , from The Demons (Бесы) was evil spirits from the youth (Подросток) was a greenhorn . Most recently Dostojewski's Der Bauer Marej (2008) and The Player (2009) appeared. It should be noted, however, that the original Russian title of the most famous Dostoyevsky novel Schuld und Atonement can not actually be translated exactly and that Alexander Eliasberg in 1921 and Gregor Jarcho in 1924 translated the title as Crime and Punishment .

Through her work at the university, Swetlana Geier was never financially dependent on her work as a translator. This enabled her to take a lot of time for a translation and to immerse herself completely in the relevant text. She spent twenty years translating Dostoevsky's novels. What was unusual about the way she worked was that she dictated her translations.

Awards

Svetlana Geier received the following awards for her outstanding contribution to the mediation of Russian culture, history and literature:

literature

  • Swetlana Geier: A Life Between Languages. Russian-German souvenir pictures. Recorded by Taja Gut. Pforte, Dornach 2008, ISBN 978-3-85636-216-4
  • Swetlana Geier: Life is translation. Conversations with Lerke von Saalfeld. Ammann, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-250-30022-9

Movie

Web links

Wikiquote: Swetlana Geier  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bettina Schulte: Falling for words . In: Badische Zeitung of November 9, 2010, accessed on December 3, 2012.
  2. ↑ Bettina Schulte: A house for translators. In: Badische Zeitung of December 1, 2011, accessed on December 3, 2012.
  3. ↑ Bettina Schulte: On the 90th birthday of Swetlana Geier, her collection of texts was published posthumously . In: Badische Zeitung . April 26, 2013 ( online [accessed February 13, 2015]).
  4. ^ Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and punishment. German by Alexander Eliasberg. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1921.
  5. ^ FM Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment. A novel in six parts with an afterword. German by Gregor Jarcho. Propylaea, Munich 1924.
  6. ↑ Radetzkaja in the translator database of the VdÜ, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Geier, Svetlana
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Iwanowa, Swetlana (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian literary translator
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiev
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 2010
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau