Olivia DrakeA commentary by Leo Lensing, chair and professor of German studies, professor of film studies, was featured in the Times Literary Supplement in January. The commentary focuses on Austria’s exploitation of Karl Kraus’s great anti-war drama, The Last Days of Mankind, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. Kraus first published the play in four special issues of his satirical journal Die Fackel (The Torch) in 1918–19. "The red wrappers and the documentary photograph of Wilhelm II used as the frontispiece of the epilogue initially lent it the explosive impact of a revolutionary pamphlet," Lensing writes in the commentary. "Kraus…
In 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic began constructing a 96-mile-long dividing wall in attempt to prevent Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state. The Berlin Wall, made of concrete and barbed wire, prevented emigration and more than 170 people were killed trying to cross or get around the wall. On Nov. 9, 1989, the head of the East German Communist party opened the checkpoint, allowing thousands of East and West Berlin residents to pass through. Elated residents, later known as "wallpeckers" used hammers and picks to break apart the wall. In 1990, East and West Germany reunified…
Bill FisherAt a special Reunion & Commencement appearance with all ticket sales going to financial aid, Amanda Palmer '98 played the piano and the ukulele and joyfully performed a set of her inimitable songs on the stage in Crowell Concert Hall on May 24. Her husband, Neil Gaiman, winner of writing honors from the Newbery Medal to the Hugo Award to the Will Eisner Comic Award, read from his work and joined Palmer in fielding questions from a rapt audience of alumni, parents and students. [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://youtu.be/v8GwhGkZauI[/youtube] More information about Wesleyan's THIS IS WHY campaign and upcoming events can be…
David LowKrishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, is the translator of Patrick Roth's Starlight Terrace, published by Seagull Books in 2012. In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building—the titular Starlite Terrace—Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth’s dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation. In “The Man at Noah’s Window,” Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In “Eclipse…
Krishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, will attend a translators working meeting with Günter Grass Feb. 10-14 in Lübeck, Germany. Grass, 85, is novelist, poet, playwright, artist and sculptor. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. Winston has translated several of Grass's works, including his 1990 diary, From Germany to Germany, which was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in November 2012. This will be Winston's fourth meeting with Grass and fellow translators. The group will focus the discussion on Grass's poetry, autobiographical writings and artwork. "It's a pretty special thing when translators can sit down with the author for several…
Gabe Rosenberg '16A group of Wesleyan students was featured in the Fall 2012 "Education Special" issue of the magazine German World. Shu Zhang ’13, Afi Tettey-Fio ’13, Oscar Takabvirwa ’14, Taylor Steele ’14, and Julius Bjornson ’14 were photographed in Berlin, while they studied abroad in Germany during the Spring 2012 semester. German World is distributed to classrooms across the United States.
Ulrich Plass, associate professor of German studies, presented a talk titled “Metaphysics and the Body: Adorno and Nietzsche on Living Rightly” at the Philosophy Department of the University of South Florida in April. His lecture compared Nietzsche’s philosophy of the body with Adorno’s attempts to ground an ethics of the good in somatic experience, i.e., in the spontaneous articulation of impulses.
Lauren RubensteinLeo Lensing, chair and professor of German studies, professor of film studies, is the co-editor of the book, Träume. Das Traumtagebuch 1875-1931, published by Wallstein Verlag in 2012. Träume is the dream journal of Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931). Schnitzler is the author of La Ronde, Fräulein Else and other classics of early 20-century Austrian literature. Prepared together with Peter Michael Braunwarth to celebrate Schnitzler's 150th birthday, the revised and expanded version of the dream texts originally included in Schnitzler's diaries can be read as an implicit challenge to Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. Schnitzler's Träume (Dreams) is both an "unconscious" autobiography of its author, whom Freud called his doppelgänger, and a dark, surreal reflection of…
Lana Lana ’12 and Jessica Spates ’12 received a Baden-Württemberg–Connecticut Exchange Grant for a one-year study in Germany. The Baden-Württemberg Exchange Program offers students an opportunity to earn college credits in one of Germany’s top nine universities. Students spend the academic year at the university they choose. The Baden-Württemberg Exchange originated from a legislative partnership formed between the State of Connecticut and the German state of Baden-Württemberg in 1989. The agreement invites all students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities in Connecticut to study at any institution of higher learning in Baden-Württemberg. With nine universities from which to choose and…
Jesse Friedman '11, Anya Olsen '11 and Catherine Steidl '11 received a Baden-Württemberg–Connecticut Exchange Grant for one year’s study in Germany. The Baden-Württemberg Exchange Program offers students an opportunity to earn college credits in one of Germany's top nine universities. Students spend the academic year at the university they choose. The Baden-Württemberg Exchange originated from a legislative partnership formed between the State of Connecticut and the German state of Baden-Württemberg in 1989. The agreement invites all students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities in Connecticut to study at any institution of higher learning in Baden-Württemberg. With nine universities from which to choose…
Eric GershonThis issue, we ask "5 Questions" of Krishna Winston, Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, dean of arts and humanities, on the art of literary translation. Winston has been the principal English-language translator for the works of the Nobel Prize-winning German author Günter Grass since 1990. Here Winston talks about the art of translation and working with a giant of 20th-century literature. Q: How did you come to be the English-language translator of Günter Grass’s books? A: I should explain that from 1960 until his death in 1992, the distinguished literary translator Ralph Manheim was responsible for…