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The bibliography of the present volume has been composed by the writer, essayist, literary historian and translator Joachim Wittstock.
On August 13, 2010 Horst Schuller, university professor, former head of the German Studies Department of the University of Sibiu, Romanian-born German critic and literary historian reached the age of 70 years. The present article pays homage to the well-known scientist at reaching the venerable age.
The Chair of German Philology at the University of Sibiu delivered literary-historical studies on themes of the German Literature in Romania for several years. Together with the Forschungszentrum für Sozialwissenschaften (Research Centre for Social Studies), together with the local agency of the Romanian Academy Bucharest, denominated the Institute for Social and Humanistic Researches and together with other Chairs of the country there have been envisaged and performed community projects.
The contributor gives information on such projects on the basis of his knowledge of the involved staff, from the overview of agreements, methods and balances.
The Romanian poet and essayist Ion Pillat (1891-1945) ranks among the relatively often translated writers of his generation (authors who were active during the interwar period). His works have kept the attention of the German readership several times: Two volumes by Ion Pillat, which appeared in 1943 and 1976 (containing translations by Konrad Richter and Bernhard Capesius, respectively by Wolf von Aichelburg), as well as varied publications in anthologies and other publications have contributed to the spread of his work in Germany and Austria. The author offers an overview of the existing translations and, in the end, refers to his own attempts at translating Ion Pillat’s poetry into German.
This succint introduction to Radu Vancu, the young poet and university lecturer invited to the reading organized by the Department of German Studies as part of its annual scientific conference, offers some biographical and exegetical points of reference for the author’s literary and professional evolution. For instance, there is the apprenticeship (rather a “friendshipin-love”) with the venerated master: the poet, gifted translator and man of culture Mircea Ivãnescu, whom he praises in his doctoral thesis as ”the poet of absolute discretion”. Then there is his editing activity at the “Transilvania” Cultural Journal, a publication of original critical and essayistic writings. His forceful, resourceful and sensitive lyrical work shows two dominant themes: on the one hand, the traumatising early loss of his father, and on the other hand, the birth and growing-up of his son Sebastian, for whom the poet builds, with endless affection and humour, a magical livresque universe, populated by fabulous creatures.
The present interview is rooted in the diverse aspects of interculturalism and of Romanian-German literary convergence – landmarks of both the works of fiction and non-fiction of the German author hailing from Sibiu. Special emphasis is placed upon the collection of essays Einen Halt suchen (En. In search of stability) and upon its translations from the Romanian into German, the main scope of the interview being to highlight the author’s opinions about the aforementioned aspects.
The author starts from a study by Maria Fanache and Ilse Fels about Sibiu writers in the years of the „people’s democracy,” i.e. the period around 1960. The outlook and the stylistic structure were typical of socialist realism, while the criteria for the selection of the Romanian and German writers discussed were those of belles-letters adapted to propaganda purposes. The present paper rounds off the convenient aspects of the literature of the time with a series of aspects that had been kept silent or ignored for the sake of avoiding confrontation with certain factual contradictions which the socio-political changes of the „people’s democratic” dictatorship had brought about. In the summer of 1956, the state authorities considered a private literary meeting of over twenty persons an action meant to subvert the official ideology, an attempt to commit a conspiracy, and, later, some of those present came under investigation and served severe prison sentences.
„Leonore”, the debut novel of the writer Adolf Meschendörfer (1877-1963), is rightly considered to be proof of the modern Transylvanian spirit at the beginning of the XXth century. The novel had been released during the first year of publication (1907/08) of the periodical edited by the author himself, “Die Karpathen“, and as a volume in 1920, being repeatedly republished during the course of the century both in German and in Romanian translation. The novelty of this literary work consists in the detached vision concerning the traditionalist mentality with its obsolete conventionalism and in adopting an unusual stylistic register as compared to national prose types, Meschendörfer relying on dynamism and laconic depiction. However, the deficiencies specific to a beginner are evident, as observed by the author’s contemporaries, involving an excessive reliance on older and newer literary models, inconsistencies of the fiction and decreases concerning adequate expression.