Category Archives: literature

New editions of Thomas Mann

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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?

Der Zauberberg, Thomas Mann

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I’m re-reading Der Zauberberg. It’s been a good fifty years since the last ‘read’, and I now know to take it slowly and with enjoyment.

The novel was published over 100 years ago, in November 2024. And two new translations are about to appear, one by Susan Bernofsky in the USA (translation only just finished), with W.W. Norton, and one by Simon Pare in the UK, Oxford World’s Classics, appearing on March 12th 2026. The Pare translation has an introduction by Ritchie Robertson, and detailed notes explaining the many cultural and historical references in the text. Sounds excellent, and I am looking forward to seeing what the reviewers say about the novel.

Continue reading →

The three dogs

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Die drei Hunde is a fairytale by, or collected by, Ludwig Bechstein, whose stories sold better than the Grimms’ in the 19th century.

The hero kills a dragon and wins the princess with the help of three dogs, who in the English version are called Salt, Pepper and Mustard. Their German names are Bring Speis’n, Zerreiß’n and Brich Stahl und Eisen (Bring Food, Tear Apart and Break Steel and Iron).

I wonder who thought of the English translation? I wonder if it was Anthea Bell. Bell, Anthea, tr. Fairy Tales of Ludwig Bechstein. Ill. Irene Schreiber. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1967. She did translate Asterix very wittily.

Anthea Bell, obituary

Flurbereinigung/Land consolidation

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It seems my blog has today been running (running down?) for 16 years so here is a birthday post.

Mittagsstunde by Dörte Hansen (2018), a novel full of Plattdeutsch with the theme of Flurbereinigung reminded me of this strange process. (Hansen’s first novel, Altes Land, has been translated as This House is Mine – one wonders how the dialect was handled). In East Germany small plots of land were joined to form collectives, but in West Germany (and Austria I gather – and also in France and the Netherlands) there was a similar consolidation of small plots but not for socialist reasons.

The process was enabled by a 1953 statute, the Flurbereinigungsgesetz. I don’t think it is done much or at all now.

Very small plots of land resulted from Realteilung, the physical partition of land when inherited by several people – I don’t think the system of inheritance always meant equal partitition, though. Land consolidation was agreed by a group of people and was accompanied by changes to roads and waterways.

Wikipedia (German)

Wikipedia (English)

The effects of this process in practice, both during and after the reorganization of land, are something we didn’t have in the UK.

One aspect that has become known here is the effect of consolidation on vineyards. Wikipedia:

A very negative example of Flurbereinigung occurred in the first half of the 70’s at Kaiserstuhl (Baden-Württemberg), when great terraces where created with an inclination in direction to the hillside. The idea was to store water in the area, but heavy rains in the Pentecost week in 1983 led to flooding. Moreover, due to the inclination of the terraces in springtime (blooming time of the wine) cold air was settles, leading to frequent frost damage to the crops. [3]

And here a 2014 article from the Daily Beast (whatever that is): Germany’s Wine Revolution is Just Getting Started:

Ulli is paving the way for a new wave of wine growers who are ignoring Flurbereinigung and looking to the Prussian tax maps to scout, purchase, and salvage historically great vineyard sites, work them by hand (as opposed to restructuring them to work with machines), and produce dry-tasting wines reminiscent of those created in the 19th century.

I’m afraid that’s all for today, folks.

Im Krug zum grünen Kranze

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This ‘folksong’ went through my mind after I saw a wreath on a house. Text from Projekt Gutenberg. 

Brüderschaft

Im Krug zum grünen Kranze
Da kehrt ich durstig ein:
Da saß ein Wandrer drinnen
Am Tisch bei kühlem Wein.Ein Glas war eingegossen,
Das wurde nimmer leer;
Sein Haupt ruht’ auf dem Bündel,
Als wär’s ihm viel zu schwer.Ich tät mich zu ihm setzen,
Ich sah ihm ins Gesicht,
Das schien mir gar befreundet,
Und dennoch kannt ich’s nicht.Da sah auch mir ins Auge
Der fremde Wandersmann,
Und füllte meinen Becher,
Und sah mich wieder an.Hei, was die Becher klangen,
Wie brannte Hand in Hand:
»Es lebe die Liebste deine,
Herzbruder, im Vaterland!«

Written, like so much else, by Wilhelm Müller (who died of a heart attack at the age of 32).

On YouTube.

The man sleeping in an alcoholic stupor in the in Krug zum grünen Kranze in Halle was Carl von Basedow, Müller’s future brother-in-law and the later discoverer of Morbus Basedow.

Morbus Basedow was discovered independently and 5 years earlier in England by Robert James Graves. We call it Graves’ disease (with or without the apostrophe).

Marty Feldman had Graves disease, as could be seen. So did Heino (hence the dark glasses) and many others. You can even her Heino singing it – did he know about the connection?

I won’t go into the history of Burschenschaft and Studentenverbindung.  English and German Wikipedia.