Wendy Cope and German

Posted on by
Reply

Wendy Cope’s poetry is so popular that faber published her Complete Poems, first in hardback in 2024, then in paperback in 2025 (Upminster Library didn’t have a copy but it did have several copies of books by Pam Ayres). Her poems are easy to read and often witty, and show a mastery of verse forms. They are also autobiographical. Interviewing Wendy Cope.

In a Guardian article she wrote that in the 1980s she had a love affair with a German poet, who gave her a collection of Heine poems, the Penguin one with English prose translations at the foot of the page. I assume it was Harry Oberländer, who died in 2023, as there is a poem by him on page 215, “Lauda”, translated from the German by the author and Wendy Cope. And “Sonnet of ’68” also by Oberländer (which takes me back to my time as a student in Berlin in 1967/68). Oberländer studied sociology at Frankfurt am Main and met Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Joschka Fischer. Assuming several references are to him, he wrote his last book without capitalization.
Continue reading →

Hilla and Berndt Becher

Posted on by
Reply

This weblog is not very legal-translation-based any more – just ruminations about topics, often German, of a retired translator.

The Goethe Institut in London recently presented a film about Hilla and Berndt Becher, by Marianne Kapfer. Made in 2012 but seemingly showed last autumn in Germany. I would like to see it again but can’t find it online (yet). From the Tate:

Who are Hilla and Berndt Becher?

Hilla Becher was a German artist born in 1931 in Siegen, Germany. She was one half of a photography duo with her husband Bernd Becher. For forty years, they photographed disappearing industrial architecture around Europe and North America.

They won the Erasmus Prize in 2002 and Hasselblad Award in 2004 for their work and roles as photography professors at the art academy Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Continue reading →

Michael Moritz, Ausländer

Posted on by
2

Michael Moritz grew up in Wales as the son of Jews who left Germany in the 1930s but many of whose relatives did not escape the holocaust. He was diagnosed with a genetic form of cancer whose risk is greater for male Ashkenazi Jews. This perhaps concentrated his interest in the experiences and emotional life of his parents, which he had little considered when he was growing up. The book is an investigation of his history and life as a Jew.

There is a good extract at Granta.

The threat that so rapidly materialized in 1930s Germany is reflected for Moritz in Trump’s America. What he had heard as a young boy whenever his parents sensed disturbing political trends:

If it did happen, it can happen.
If it did happen, it will happen.
If it did happen somewhere, it can happen here.
It will happen here.

He is applying for German citizenship. One reason is the increasing anti-semitism in the UK, another the access to other EU countries he enjoyed before Brexit.

Part of it reminded me of Uwe Wittstock, Februar 33. Der Winter der Literatur, which shows how the literary life of Germany in Weimar was aggressively attacked in a period of a few weeks.

Cockney a language? Surely not!

Posted on by
Reply

When this blog was in an unintended hiatus, it was possible to retrieve the posts through a reader’s feed reader. But this one comment that appeared at that time was lost – but the commenter, the blogger of Language Miscellany, has now been found. His interesting post was about the possibility that Tower Hamlets council might declare Cockney one of the local languages – for International Mother Tongue Day on 21 February (not long to go now). This was reported in 2023. Cockney in Tower Hamlets is the post:

On 15 March 2023, Tower Hamlets Council discussed a petition started by Grow Social Capital CIC and Bengali East End Heritage Society and signed by 31 people. The petition asked the Council ‘to ensure that the Cockney language, identity, and its unique cultural heritage related to the East End of London be recognised as a community language and be celebrated annually on 21st February on International Mother Language Day, and for Cockney to be included in any community language provisions by the Council.’

It does not seem to me that Cockney is a language, and even Estuary English is not. I should say I may be a Cockney myself, as I was born in the Mothers Hospital in Hackney, just before the NHS came into existence, but at that time the bells of Bow Church were not actually ringing for a few years after WWII, or so I was told. The exact dates and which bells were ringing is confusing. But new bells were ringing from 1961.

Continue reading →

New editions of Thomas Mann

Posted on by
Reply

When I started re-reading Der Zauberberg last year, I was disappointed that I couldn’t get an edition with bigger print.  I have a Kindle version too. But it seems that now that Mann’s works are out of copyright, new editions have appeared. There is also an expensive volume full of notes (in German), and even a posh Reclam version. My edition was by S. Fischer Verlage, and now other publishers have appeared, and there are new translations coming out. I am not fully informed of the situation but here is a superficial account.

I saw ads for them when I was reading a Perlentaucher newsletter.

Suhrkamp Verlag Literaturklassiker von Thomas Mann in hochwertiger Neugestaltung

There are new covers by Andrew Davidson.

Der Zauberberg – Der Jahrhunder-Roman prachtvoll illustriert in einer exklusiven Schmuckausgabe (Reclam)

Thomas Manns Jahrhundertroman – erstmals als Retroausgabe im Taschenbuch (S. Fischer Verlage) – yes, there was no paperback before.

It can be read free of charge in Project Gutenberg too and in the German Projekt Gutenberg, which is apparently being restructured.

Is it normal for books to be so restrictedly available while in copyright?