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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 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.
Klingsoriana : Poetisches aus dem Umfeld einer Kulturzeitschrift und ihres Redakteurs Harald Krasser
(2016)
The term „Klingsoriana“ from the title of the article is a derivative of the name "Klingsor", the legendary minstrel of the Middle Ages; and of its cultural heritage, the magazine Klingsor. It appeared monthly in the years 1924-1939, first in Braşov, later in Sibiu, being the most significant interwar German cultural periodical in Transylvania for a decade and a half. The derivative describes the documentary background of the publications, sources, manuscripts, partly unpublished or inaccessible printed material, almost everything that was once in the gravitational field of the journal. References from the inheritance of the editor Harald Krasser are selected, particularly those pages that refer to native German poetry written during the last publication period of the magazine. Mentioned are names of poets of those times and of some connoisseurs and promoters of poetry, as well as of historiographers concerned with the literature of the first half of the twentieth century.
The fulfillment of a century since the birth of writer and philologist Georg Scherg (1917-2002) is a good opportunity to recall his life and work. Born in Brasov, Scherg arrived in Sibiu only accidentally. Only later in his life he stated here for a longer time. He was appointed Head of the German Department at the recently established University of History and Philology in Sibiu in 1970. For two decades, until 1990, he had a fruitful activity, both as a teacher and as a prolific author and laborious translator of Romanian literature. He participates in research projects and symposiums of philological literary history, his efforts in this field being rewarded by his appointment as doctor honoris causa of the University „Lucian Blaga“ (1997). He was also involved in Sibiu’s literary life, leading for a long period of time a circle of artists attracted to
the poetic creation.
„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.
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 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.