Karl Dedecius | |
|---|---|
 Karl Dedecius in Frankfurt am Main, 2006 | |
| Born | 20 May 1921  |
| Died | 26 February 2016 (aged 94) |
| Awards |
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Karl Dedecius (20 May1921 inŁódź –26 February2016) - was a Polish-born German translator ofPolish andRussian literature.[1]
Dedecius was born toethnic German parents in the city ofŁódź, Poland, then a multicultural and multilingual city, which, though formerly ruled by theHouse of Romanov, at that time had only recently become a part of the newly foundedSecond Polish Republic. Dedecius attended the PolishStefan-Żeromski High School, where he received his high-school degree (Matura). After the Germaninvasion of Poland in theSecond World War, Dedecius was first conscripted into the Reich Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) and then into theGerman Army. He was severely wounded in theBattle of Stalingrad and became a prisoner of war. During his time as a prisoner of war in theGulag system of theSoviet Union, he taught himself Russian. Dedecius wrote, "I lay in my sick-bed, and the nurses brought me books byLermontov, for instance. For one year, I learned theCyrillic Alphabet and Russian by reading Lermontov andPushkin. Eventually, the guards asked me to write love-letters for them, because I wrote like Pushkin."[2]
Dedecius was finally released from Soviet captivity in 1950. He settled first with his fiancé inWeimar, inEast Germany. In 1952, he emigrated toWest Germany and became an employee of theAllianzinsurance company. In his free time, he occupied himself withPolish culture and with Polish literary translation, and maintained contact with anti-communist Polishdissident and émigré writers. Dedecius remarked ... "Only when I had gotten myself set up in life and enjoyed some stability was I able to turn to literature in a long-term and systematic way, although my career, you could say, had nothing whatever to do with writing." In the introduction to the Polish edition of "On Translating," Jerzy Kwiatkowski wrote: "Speaking formally, one could say that this translator’s great work came about on his evenings off, as a result of a hobby."[2]
In 1959, he published his first anthology,Lektion der Stille (Lesson of Silence). In the following years, he translated, so to speak in his free time, such well-known Polish writers asZbigniew Herbert,Stanisław Jerzy Lec,Czesław Miłosz,Tadeusz Różewicz andWisława Szymborska. He also published essays onPolish literature and his own literary translation techniques.
In 1980, he initiated the German Poland Institute inDarmstadt.[3] He served as the institute's director from 1980 through 1997.[1] Meanwhile, continued his literary activities. Dedecius’ main achievements were the 50-volume "Polish Library"canon, which appeared between 1982 and 2000 from theSuhrkamp Verlag publishing house and the 7-volume "Panorama of Polish Literature of the 20th Century" (1996–2000), whose final volume presented a kind of Dedecius autobiography.
Dedecius died inFrankfurt, Germany on 26 February 2016 at the age of 94.[1]
Dedecius received manyhonorary doctorates, prizes and awards. In 1967, he was awarded theJohann-Heinrich-Voß-Preis für Übersetzung. In 1990, he received theFriedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, in 1997 the Samuel-Bogumil-Linde-Preis. Since 2004, theRobert Bosch Stiftung, in cooperation with the German Poland institute, awards the Karl-Dedecius-Preis for translators, which is endowed with a prize of €10,000.[4]
This article is a translation ofthe equivalent German-language Wikipedia article (retrieved 17 August 2006). The following references are cited by that German-language article:
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