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The writer Otto Fritz Jickeli (1888-1960) turned to events of the 19th century in his unpublished story Die Kosakenbraut. The revolution of 1848 /49 forms the chronological axis for the events in the description, with their befor and after. The episodes do not lack the unusual moments that occur in times of revolutionary upheaval. As is well known, the Imperial Austrian troops were supported in their fight against Hungarian revolutionaries by the Tsarist Russian army, and the armies of the insurgents finally succumbed to this military alliance of the great powers. The changing fortunes of war, the events effecting private life are vividly presented, also with the help of a spontaneous love affair between a Cossack commander of the Russian army and a Transylvanian woman who, under problematic circumstances, becomes the „Cossack bride” and mother of a half-Cossack. It is both fluent and stimulating reading about the customs and moral concepts of the time, aprose work that testifies to the author’s expertise and also to this sense of humour.
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.
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 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.
Im Geflecht der Identitäten : Kulturgeschichtliches, dargestellt am Beispiel von János Bolyai
(2015)
The Transylvanian-born János Bolyai (1802-1860) never ceases to attract the attention of all those interested in the history of science, as he is one of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry. Bolyai also concerns the philosophy researchers, due to a social utopia, which he presents in his works, unpublished during his lifetime. From older and newer documentation, it is known that the Hungarian Bolyai nobility descent also has a German origin, from German Grafs. On the Calvaserului Valley, situated north of the Hârtibaciului Valley, lies the Buia parish, named Bolya by the Hungarians, Bell by the Germans, where the Bolyai family owned an estate and a castle. In this work, the author presents approaches concerning the genealogy of János Bolyai and reports about visits to the places where Bolyai has lived, such as Buia, Domald (Viişoara parrish) and Târgu Mureş.
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 author, attracted to the Romanian poetry written during the inter-war period, tried to translate into German some of the poems wirtten by Ion Pillat and Ion Barbu. From this pursuit he could learn a lot, not only thanks to his inclination towards the original text, by interpreting it from a semantic point of view, but also by searching the lexical equivalents established in the target-language. In the magazine, there are introduced poets that belong to the younger generation and so, he managed to approach their licirical creations more as a translator, especially those written by Nichita Stănescu and Ioan Alexandru. At the same time, the author narrates some of his experiences regarding the folklore poetry, his steps concerning the translation of the ballads written originally by Transylvanian Saxons in the literary German. Moreover, he does not fail to outline the realization of a short edition from the piece of work, created in Latin by the Transylvanian humanist Christian Schesäus, the poem Istoria Anei Kendi, translated with the help of a few contributors in Romanian, Hungarian and German.
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.