15 May 2020
Fairytales across borders
As part of its 15th anniversary celebrations and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) has launched a fairytale-inspired campaign called #LoveOverVirus. Members of the theatre company, as well as a number of famous figures including Stephen Fry and Juliet Stevenson, are reading extracts from their favourite fairytales and short stories every evening at 6pm until the end of May. In addition, BFT has opened up its archive to stream 24 productions between April and June. Each show can be accessed for 24 hours and English subtitles are available for performances in Russian and Belarusian. The theatre company is banned in Belarus; its co-founding artistic directors, Natalia Kaliada and Nikolai Khalezin, came to the UK as political refugees in 2010, and rehearse its underground performances in Minsk via Skype.
Stephen Fry’s contribution to the Love Over Virus project is a reading of The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. First published in 1888, the tale is part of Wilde’s collection of short stories for children and adults, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (a free digitised copy is available to download from Project Gutenburg). Influenced by traditional fairytales, the seemingly whimsical stories offer an astute social commentary on Victorian society, depicting poverty, suffering and cruelty, but also love, kindness and sacrifice.
Cover of Shchasʹlivy Prynts (The Happy Prince) translated by L. Khvalʹko (Watenstadt, 1947) 12256.dd.8.
The title-story from the collection, The Happy Prince, similarly aimed to bring solace to children and adults when it was translated into Belarusian as part of Displaced Persons (DP) camp publishing activities in 1947. At the end of the Second World War, approximately 11 million people had been displaced from their home countries, with seven million in Allied-occupied Germany. They included concentration camp survivors, and former forced labourers and prisoners of war. DP camps were set up in Western Germany, Austria and Italy, and largely organised by nationality.
Pages from Shchasʹ livy Prynts with illustrations
During the German occupation of Belarus between 1941 and 1944, approximately 380,000 Belarusians were deported to Germany as labourers. Thousands more subsequently fled the returning Soviet regime in 1944 (Silitski and Zaprudnik, pp. 135–136). Following the end of the war, Belarusian refugees lived in DP camps throughout Western Germany before they were resettled.
This translation of The Happy Prince (Shchasʹ livy Prynts in Belarusian) was reproduced from a typewritten copy and translated from the English by L. Khvalʹko. The text is accompanied by simple yet powerful pen and ink illustrations throughout. It was published in a camp in Watenstedt in the British zone (now incorporated into the city of Salzgitter) in Lower Saxony, Germany, by the Belarusian Relief Committee (Belaruski dapamahovy Kamitėt).
Photograph of a series of buildings at the A1 Heerte displaced persons camp in the Salzgitter region of Germany, 1946. Museums Victoria Collections [Accessed 11 May 2020]
Salzgitter had been the site of Reichswerke Hermann Göring, a state-owned iron and steel complex that used slave labour during the war. Prisoners were housed in concentration camps in the area. After the war, DP camps were established for the some 37,000 (mostly Polish) displaced persons in the city (Neumann, p. 28). Many DP camps were set up on the sites of former German concentration camps and conditions were extremely difficult. Nevertheless, political, educational, religious and cultural activities, including publishing, flourished.
The British Library holds a handful of other Belarusian publications produced in Watenstedt between 1946 and 1948. These include a collection of poems by Maksim Bahdanovich, considered to be one of the founders of modern Belarusian literature (011586.pp.27.); a religious book ‘for the Belarusian family and school’ (4385.c.13.); and copies of the periodical Shliakham zhytsʹtsia (P.P.7615.yh.). To find more items published in Watenstedt, search by place of publication in our online catalogue in Cyrillic and using transliteration. The Library also has a growing collection of other DP camp publications in Belarusian and a number of other languages, including Russian, Yiddish, Latvian, Ukrainian and Polish.
Katie McElvanney, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections
Further reading and references:
Jan-Hinnerk Antons, “Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany: Parallel Societies in a Hostile Environment.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 49, no. 1, Jan. 2014, pp. 92–114
Marc Buggeln, Slave Labour in Nazi Concentration Camps, translated by Paul Cohen (Oxford, 2014). YC.2016.a.2083
Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: the Nazi past in the new Germany (Ann Arbor, 2000). YC.2001.a.17690
Vitali Silitski and Jan Zaprudnik, The A to Z of Belarus (Lanham, MD., 2010).
https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/displaced-persons-camps.html
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/holocaust-refugees-displaced-persons-immediate-post-war-years/
09 April 2020
PhD Studentship Opportunity - Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune
We are delighted to announce that The British Library, in collaboration with The Department of History at Royal Holloway, is offering a fully-funded PhD studentship (fees and maintenance) on the theme: Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, 1870-71. The project will be co-supervised by Sophie Defrance and Teresa Vernon (British Library), and Robert Priest (Royal Holloway).
French caricature from the Franco-Prussian War, British Library Collections
The British Library holds a world-class collection of (mostly) French and (some) German caricatures in three separate collections bound in 55 volumes. There is also a small number of war-themed Italian, Swedish and Dutch illustrations and caricatures. The successful student will develop a PhD project that draws on this rich resource of over 5,000 caricatures and images produced during the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune. Part of the collection was discussed in two blog posts here and here.
This fascinating primary material represents a wealth of visual sources dealing with the War and the Commune. The caricatures, most of them coloured, touch on a wide variety of subjects, making fun of famous people and politicians, soldiers and civil populations. The project will add a new dimension to our understanding of several processes at key moments in French (and German) history: the development of French (and German) national identity, the creation of a modern popular culture, and the development of caricature as a medium. The forthcoming 150th anniversary of the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune in 2020-21 offers us the chance to promote and foster scholarship based on an exceptional collection of visual primary sources. Students will be invited to propose a project that uses one or more of the following themes to bring this rich collection into a wider European context, such as ‘Prints as sources for a Franco-German history of 1870-1’ or ‘the international public for printed satire’. The project will also investigate the provenance and formation of the British Library’s collections: there are other known sets in the world, are in the V&A, Cambridge, Oxford, Heidelberg, Baton Rouge (Louisiana) and Minneapolis, and perhaps more to be discovered.
Arrival of French prisoners at Ingolstadt, 10 August 1870, British Library Collections
The project is part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) scheme, which offers doctoral studentships as part of collaborations between a Higher Education Institution and an organisation in the museums, libraries, archives and heritage sector. The doctoral grant will cover fees and pay the student a stipend; the British Library will also provide a research allowance of up to £1,000 a year for agreed research-related costs. In addition to being able to draw on the researcher development opportunities and postgraduate community in both the Department of History and the Doctoral School at Royal Holloway, the successful student will become part of a vibrant cohort of collaborative doctoral researchers at the British Library, and benefit from staff-level access to its collections, resources and training programmes such as the Digital Scholarship Training Programme.
The deadline for applications is 5pm on Monday 4 May 2020. All applicants must have a good reading knowledge of French and meet the standard UKRI residency requirements for Training Grants. The successful student will be expected to begin on 1 October 2020.
For further details of the studentship, and the CDP programme, see the British Library Research Collaboration page or download the advert directly on the Royal Holloway website.
To discuss the project further, potential candidates are very welcome to contact Sophie Defrance ([email protected]) or Robert Priest ([email protected]) in advance of submitting an application.
Additional reading:
Morna Daniels, ‘Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2005.
Bettina Müller, ‘The collection of French caricatures in Heidelberg: The English connection’, French Studies Library Group Annual Review, 8 (2011-2012), p. 39-42.
W. Jack Rhoden, ‘French caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and Commune at the British Library’, French Studies Library Group Annual Review, 6 (2009-2010), p. 22-24.
03 April 2020
Bringing the News in Revolutionary Berlin
During the revolutionary year of 1848 printed placards and broadsides were a vital means of communication, both official and unofficial. The British Library holds collections of such material and other ephemera of the period from various European cities, including four volumes from Berlin (1851.c.4-7). Obviously such placards – particularly the official proclamations – were intended for posting on walls for public information, but they were also sold in the street.
In Berlin the ‘flying booksellers’, boys who hawked broadsides along with newspapers, journals and pamphlets around the city, became a familiar sight, detested by some, but viewed by others with affection. The writer Robert Springer later described them as:
Boys of the lower class, who used to sell cakes, flowers or matches, or simply to beg … would surround the printing-shops … in order to deliver the fresh goods as quickly as possible. … Thus the refined spirit of the Berlin street-urchins came into close contact with ephemeral literature, and it was not uninteresting to see the little good-for-nothings now, out of political and commercial enthusiasm, using their wares to practise the reading that they had never settled to at school before selling them in the most original way.
A verse parody of the flying bookseller’s ‘most original’ selling technique suggests the mixture of advertising, patter and exaggerated claims that the boys might have used.
Parody of a flying bookseller, Berlin 1848. Reproduced in Ruth-Esther Geiger, Zeitschriften 1848 in Berlin: die Zeitschrift als Medium bürgerlicher Öffentlichkeit und ihr erweiterter Funktionszusammenhang in den Berliner Revolutionsmonaten von 1848 (Berlin, 1980) X.808/35196
In translation: ‘Manifestos to our voters / Ewige Lampe und Krakehler / The Pope has taken a wife / Kladderadatsch – the Russians are coming / Open letter to the Mayor / Duke Johann’s Imperial Regent / Menagerie of bloodthirsty beasts / Monecke, a high traitor / Neuer Berliner Struwwelpeter / Löwinsohn, Korn, Urban, Sigrist / Civic guardsman, see what you’re like / New extra edition of the Vossische / The cholera’s raging, for one groschen / One groschen, hand it over!’ / That’s what they call: flying bookseller.
As well as the tall stories about the Pope’s marriage and a Russian invasion, the verse reflects real events and can be dated from these to sometime in the first half of July 1848. The Austrian Archduke Johann was appointed ‘Reichsverweser’ (Imperial Regent, i.e. the provisional head of the new government to be created by the Frankfurt Parliament), on 29 June. Eduard Monecke, a student, was imprisoned for lèse-majesté on 30 June, while Löwinsohn (or Lövinsohn), Korn, Urban and Siegrist (or Siegerist) were tried in early July for instigating the previous month’s attack on the Berlin Arsenal, with sentences passed on the 15th. The verse also quotes the titles of genuine political or satirical journals: Die ewige Lampe, [Berliner] Krakehler, Kladderadatsch, Freie Blätter and Neuer Berliner Struwwelpeter, and the ‘Voss’schen’ refers to the venerable Vossische Zeitung, the oldest newspaper in Berlin. There are even references to two broadsides Grosse Menagerie blutdürstiger Thiere and Bürjerwehreken, siehste wie De bist? The first is a satire depicting European monarchs as ‘bloodthirsty beasts’ on display in a zoo, and the second is a comic ‘curtain lecture’ in Berlin dialect, supposedly addressed to a member of the recently-formed Civic Guard (Bürgerwehr) by his wife, who is unimpressed with his new status.
Masthead of a satirical broadside, General-Versammlung der fliegenden Buchhändler Berlins (Berlin, 1848) 1851.c.4.(68.). Digitised copy available from the Kujawsko-Pomorska Digital Library
The life of the flying bookseller was not an easy one. As some of the material they distributed could be classed as seditious, the boys risked being stopped by the police and having their wares confiscated. In a satire imagining a meeting of flying booksellers to discuss their rights, one of the speakers calls the police ‘our greatest enemy’. Another satire, this time on the daily life of a policeman, shows two constables accosting a flying bookseller as he leaves a stall carrying broadsides to sell: however, the constable who narrates this tale in a supposed letter to his sweetheart says that he is enclosing some of the confiscated literature for her as it is ‘very nice to read.’
Two policemen stop a flying bookseller, detail from Adalbert Salomo Cohnfeld, Constablers Leiden und Freuden, geschildert in einem Briefe an seine Jelübte (Berlin, 1848) 1851.c.5.(293.) Digitised version available from the Library of the Humboldt University, Berlin
When the revolution was defeated in November 1848, the number of satirical and overtly anti-government broadsides and journals fell sharply. A cartoon published the following year in the satirical weekly Kladderadatsch, one of the few such titles to survive, shows a figure representing the journal in a graveyard among the tombs of his deceased contemporaries. Three other titles named in the verse quoted above are among them: Freie Blätter, Die ewige Lampe and Berliner Krakehler.
‘Kladderadatsch in der Sylvesternacht’, cartoon from Kladderadatsch, 23 December 1849, P.P.4736.h. (The entire run of the journal is available online via the University of Heidelberg.)
With the vibrant print culture of the revolution quashed, the flying booksellers no doubt returned to selling their previous wares, but perhaps with a raised political conscience and a greater enthusiasm for reading.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
References/Further reading:
Robert Springer, Berlin’s Strassen, Kneipen und Clubs im Jahre 1848 (Berlin, 1850) 9385.a.10 and available online
Die ewige Lampe, no. 1-48 (Berlin, 1848) P.P.3378.e.
Berliner Krakehler (Berlin, 1848) LOU.FMISC307
Freie Blätter: illustrierte politisch-humoristische Zeitung. No. 9 (Berlin, 1848). 1851.c.7.(117)
Der Neue Berliner Struwwelpeter: ein politisches Bilderbuch für Reactionaire und Revolutionaire und solche, die es werden wollen. No 1. (Berlin, 1848) 1851.c.7.(123)
Grosse Menagerie blutdürstiger Thiere (Berlin, 1848) 1851.c.4.(151), and a variant at 1851.c.4.(152)
Adalbert Salomo Cohnfeld, Bürjerwehreken, siehste wie Du bist? Eine Gardinen-Predigt, ihrem Gatten Ludewig bein Schlafengehen gehalten von Madame Bullrichen (Berlin, 1848) 1851.c.7.(42)
Susan Reed, ‘Printing the Revolution: Berlin Broadsides from 1848’, in The Book in Germany, edited by M.C. Fischer and W.A. Kelly (Edinburgh, 2010) YC.2011.a.8954
Major collections of broadsides, pamphlets and other ephemera from the 1848 Revolution in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany are available online from the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin and the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
20 March 2020
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin, whose 250th birthday we mark today, is in many ways the very model of a tragic Romantic poet and tormented genius, his life marked by loss, hopeless love, struggles for recognition, and eventually madness. Born in the Swabian town of Lauffen am Neckar in 1770, he lost both his father and stepfather at an early age. His mother hoped he would enter the church and he studied at seminaries in Denkendorf, Maulbronn and Tübingen, where his friends included G.F.W. Hegel and Friedrich von Schelling.
By the time he began his studies at Tübingen Hölderlin had already begun to write poetry and to reject the idea of a church career. After graduating in 1793 he instead sought employment as a private tutor, and moved to Jena to be close to Schiller, whom he had revered since first reading Don Carlos. His first job did not last long and he then enrolled at the University of Jena for a short time, before leaving the town in haste in 1795. He next found work as tutor to the son of a Frankfurt banker, Jakob Gontard, and fell in love with Gontard’s wife Susette. Their relationship played a crucial role not only in Hölderlin’s personal life but also in his creative work. Susette is idealised as ‘Diotima’ in a number of his poems and in his novel Hyperion.
Title-page of the first volume of Hölderlin’s epistolary novel Hyperion (Tübingen, 1797)
When Gontard discovered the relationship, Hölderlin was dismissed and fled to Homburg where he tried to make an independent living as a writer. Schiller helped him to place some poems in literary journals and supported the publication of Hyperion, but later turned against Hölderlin’s work. A plan to start a literary journal foundered, and Hölderlin remained largely dependent on his mother for funds. Eventually he again took on teaching posts, first in Hauptwil in Switzerland and then in Bordeaux, but neither lasted more than a few months. The reasons are unknown, but his increasingly fragile mental health might have been a contributory factor: on his return from Bordeaux in June 1802 his friends were shocked by his confused and neglected state. Around this time he was further distressed by the news of Susette’s death.
Hölderlin moved back to his mother’s house where he translated works by Sophocles and Pindar and, under the influence of the latter, started to compose a series of hymn-like poems whose imagery combined the religion of ancient Greece with Christianity. In 1804 he returned to Homburg, nominally as court librarian, a sinecure acquired for him by an old Tübingen friend, Isaac von Sinclair. When Sinclair was tried for treason the following year, Hölderlin also fell under suspicion, but by this time his mental health had irrevocably broken down, and he was deemed unfit to stand trial, and was committed to an asylum. In 1807 he was released, and taken into the home of Ernst Zimmer, a carpenter in Tübingen, who had read and appreciated Hölderlin’s poetry. Hölderlin remained in the care of the Zimmer family until his death in 1843, occupying a room in a small tower overlooking the river Neckar, now preserved both as a museum and a monument to the poet.
Title-page of the first edition of Hölderlin’s poems (Stuttgart & Tübingen, 1826) 11526.e.32
For most of his own life Hölderlin’s work was largely unknown and unappreciated. Although some of his poems appeared in literary journals and almanacs, they were generally not well received. His only independent published work was Hyperion. It was not until 1826 that an edition of his poems was published, partly thanks to the advocacy of Wilhelm Waiblinger, a young writer who visited Hölderlin while studying in Tübingen. In the years that followed, Hölderlin became something of a tourist attraction, due not least to Waiblinger’s published depictions of him, but his own work remained largely neglected.
It was only in the early 20th century that interest in both the writer and his work began to grow. After the rediscovery and publication of some of his Pindar translations in 1911 Hölderlin’s work was eagerly taken up by the circle of writers around the poet Stefan George. The first complete critical edition of his works was published between 1911 and 1923 (BL 012251.f.3). Writers and critics began to truly appreciate the power and beauty of Hölderlin’s poetry and the originality of his fusion of ancient religion and Christianity with a Romantic evocation of nature.
Opening of Hölderlin’s dramatic fragment Der Tod des Empedokles in an edition illustrated with woodcuts by Gustav Eichenauer after drawings by Heinrich Holz (Offenbach a. M., 1925) 11745.h.23.
Hölderlin’s frequent themes of alientation and loss, and of the longing to restore a harmonious relationship between man, nature and divinity perhaps spoke more to the 20th-century mindset than to the poet’s own contemporaries, and the fragmentary and much-revised nature of his later works seemed to 20th-century poets and thinkers less the products of a confused mind and more a reflection of the difficulty of communication. Composers and artists have also drawn inspiration from his work, including the short and fragmentary pieces he wrote during his years with Zimmer. As well as being recognised for his literary works and translations, Hölderlin’s influence on philosophy, especially that of his Tübingen friend Hegel, has been increasingly acknowledged.
In an echo of his own life, Hölderlin’s anniversary this year has been somewhat overshadowed by the celebrations of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. Beethoven never set any of Hölderlin’s works to music, although in 2018 the composer Dieter Schnebel combined the work of both, linking the ‘Schiksalslied’ (‘Song of Fate’) from Hyperion with the concept of fate in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. But the British Library will be celebrating Beethoven in style later this year, so let today be Hölderlin’s alone.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
30 December 2019
Theodor Fontane’s British Wanderings
Theodor Fontane is one of those authors who gives hope to middle-aged would-be novelists who have yet to take up their pens: his first novel, Vor dem Sturm, was not published until he was 59. However, middle-aged would-be novelists should also be warned that, before embarking on the novels for which he is now most famous, Fontane had served a long literary apprenticeship as a poet, critic, journalist and travel writer. In these last capacities, he wrote in some detail about the three visits he made to Britain in the 1840s and 1850s.
Born in the town of Neuruppin in Brandenburg on 30 December 1819, Fontane initially followed his father’s career as a pharmacist, serving an apprenticeship in Berlin where he also began to develop his literary interests. It was during his year of compulsory military service that he was invited to join a friend on a two-week trip to England in the summer of 1844. Thanks to a sympathetic commanding officer, he was able to accept.
Theodor Fontane during his first stay in London in 1844. Sketch by J.W. Burford, reproduced in Josef Ettlinger, Theodor Fontane: ein Essai (Berlin, [1904]) 011852.ff.16/18.
On this first visit to England, Fontane was very much a tourist, making planned visits to the sights of London – a city which impressed him with its size compared with the still relatively provincial Berlin – and going on an excursion to Windsor. However, he also made some more independent trips, including a visit to fellow German pharmacist Hermann Schweitzer in Brighton. Schweitzer apparently promised to look for a possible job in England for Fontane, suggesting that Fontane was interested in settling here, although nothing came of this.
A side-effect of this first visit to England was Fontane’s increased interest in historical ballads, and ballads on English and Scottish themes were among the poems he published in 1851, by which time he had given up his pharmaceutical career to live by his pen. The following year, he returned to London as a correspondent for a Prussian newspaper, with a brief to write about conditions in England. This time he stayed for five months, writing articles on a range of subjects from the streets and sights of London to an election in Brentford, which were later collected into the book Ein Sommer in London. During this stay he again considered making a more permanent home in England, possibly by acquiring his own pharmacy business. However, the only work readily available appeared to be as a German tutor and, after some weeks of dithering about whether or not to seek employment in London, he returned to Berlin.
Cover of Theodor Fontane, Aus England (Stuttgart, 1860) 10348.d.3
Three years later he returned again on a longer-term basis with a mission from the Prussian Government to promote a more pro-Prussian line in the British press. He remained until 1859, and once again wrote about England for the German press. A selection of this journalism was also later published in book form as Aus England. Unlike the varied and shorter sketches of Ein Sommer in London, this collection focuses in three longer sections on the London theatre, British art and the British press. The second section was inspired by a visit to the 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, and Fontane adds some impressions of Manchester, which he found ‘not quite so dreary a place as it had been described to me in London’, and Liverpool, where he was very impressed by the docks on the River Mersey’s ‘vast expanse of water’.
These excursions are rare exceptions to the usual focus on London and its surroundings in Fontane’s published accounts of Britain. However, in the summer of 1858 he and his friend Bernhard von Lepel set off on a 14-day tour of Scotland which Fontane described in his book Jenseits des Tweed, again compiled from articles originally written for newspapers. Although his anglophilia had become somewhat jaded by the realities of London life, Fontane described himself setting off for Scotland with much of the same excitement that he had felt on first leaving for England 14 years earlier. The travellers fitted a lot into a short time, starting in Edinburgh before travelling on to Inverness, their northernmost stop, via Stirling and Perth. They then travelled down the Caledonian Canal to the West Coast, taking in the Islands of Iona and Staffa before returning to Edinburgh.
Map of Fontane’s Scottish tour, from Theodor Fontane, Beyond the Tweed, translated by Brian Battershaw (London, 1998) YC.2001.a.8037
Like many Germans, Fontane’s idea of Scotland had been shaped by the works of Sir Walter Scott, by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, by romantic tales and legends, and by picturesque historical anecdotes, several of which he repeats in his descriptions of the places he and Lepel visited. However, a ‘pilgrimage’ to Scott’s old home at Abbotsford, the final visit on their tour, and perhaps saved until last as a particular treat, left Fontane somewhat underwhelmed. He found the house, preserved as a museum, something of a ‘waxwork show’ without the living writer’s spirit to animate it.
Despite this rather anticlimactic end to the trip, Fontane retained fond memories of Scotland, and his Scottish tour inspired him, on his return to Germany, to start writing similar travel pieces about his native Brandenburg. His Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg ran to five volumes and played a role in the development of his writing style towards that of a novelist.
Fontane in later life, reproduced in Josef Ettlinger, Theodor Fontane
After leaving London in early 1859 Fontane never returned to Britain, but he wrote at least one more piece about Scotland, a poem in response to the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879. Harking back to his love of Shakespeare and Scott, he wrote it in the style of a ballad, framed by three Macbeth-style witches who plot and rejoice in the bridge’s destruction. Sadly, this is less well known in Britain than William McGonagall’s hilariously inept verses on the same theme, but in the year that marks the 140th anniversary of the disaster as well as the bicentenary of Fontane’s birth, it seems an appropriate note on which to end our look at Fontane in Britain.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
References/further reading:
Theodor Fontane, Ein Sommer in London (Berlin, 1854) 10350.c.1.
Theodor Fontane, Jenseits des Tweed: Bilder und Briefe aus Schottland (Berlin, 1860) 10370.c.26
Theodor Fontane, A Prussian in Victorian London, translated by John Lynch (London, 2014) YC.2016.a.11501
Petra E. Krüger, Fontane in London (Berlin, 2012) YF.2017.a.16769
Gordon A. Craig, Theodor Fontane: literature and history in the Bismarck Reich (New York, 1999) YC.1999.b.9426
09 November 2019
The Revolutionary Year of 1989
Thirty years ago today the crossing-points between two German states opened, marking the end of the Berlin Wall, demolished in the following months. The concrete barrier, separating East and West Berlin from 1961 until 1989, has been a symbol of the Cold War and the division of Europe. It was also a stage of dramatic escapes and a topic frequently explored by artists and writers.
The demolition of the Berlin Wall generated high hopes about the new order emerging in 1989, after the collapse of authoritarian regimes across Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union. Timothy Garton Ash gave one of the most compelling accounts of these events and the spirit of the period. He went to Berlin to study the archival sources on the German resistance to Hitler, but found himself in the middle of a political upheaval in the region and embarked upon writing what he himself described as “history of the present”. He witnessed, among others, the first partly free election in Poland, the celebratory reburial of Imre Nagy (the executed prime minister of the revolutionary government in 1956) in Hungary, and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia.
Front cover of Timothy Garton Ash, We the People: the Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague (Cambridge, 1990), YK.1991.a.7367
Front cover of Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: the Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague (London, 2019), ELD.DS.107591 (a revised and updated fourth edition of We the People)
As a major turning point in European history, the events of 1989 have been repeatedly revisited by historians and social scientists. What exactly happened? Did the transition to democracy and free-market economy bring the expected results? Did the end of communism live up to the expectations of the people? Answers to these pertinent questions can be found in two volumes (co-)edited by Vladimir Tismaneanu, a Romanian-American political scientist, who invited leading scholars in the field to rethink the meaning and impact of what is often called an annus mirabilis, a miraculous year.
The issue of bringing to justice people involved in authoritarian regimes has been hotly debated long after the transition to democracy. These debates are particularly vivid around the anniversaries of the revolution. In a large comparative study, edited by Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik, the commemorations of the 20th anniversary of the changes are analysed in 17 post-communist countries. The authors looked into how the memory of the historical events was shaped by various parties in order to serve their political agenda and concluded that the fractured memory of 1989 undermines democracy in the region.
Front cover of Michael Bernhard, Jan Kubik (eds.), Twenty years after communism: the politics of memory and commemoration (Oxford, New York 2014), YC.2014.a.12893
The most recent attempt to rethink the changes of 1989 is a freshly-published book, The light that failed: a reckoning by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes. They critically assess the belief prevalent after 1989 that the liberal democracy was destined to expand worldwide. The book begins with the sarcastic assertion that “the future was better yesterday”.
Andrzej Sadecki, British Library PhD placement student working on the topic ‘Politicisation of commemorative practices in Eastern Europe’
References
Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, The light that failed: a reckoning (London 2019), DRT ELD.DS.455162 (EPUB)
Timothy Garton Ash, We the People. The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague (Cambridge 1990), YK.1991.a.7367
Timothy Garton Ash, The magic lantern: the revolution of '89 witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague (London 2019), ELD.DS.107591 (EPUB)
Vladimir Tismaneanu (ed.), The Revolutions of 1989 (London 1999), YC.1999.b.2118
Vladimir Tismaneanu, Sorin Antohi (eds.), Between past and future: the revolutions of 1989 and their aftermath (Budapest, New York 2012), YC.2002.a.8579
Michael Bernhard, Jan Kubik (eds.), Twenty years after communism: the politics of memory and commemoration (Oxford, New York 2014), YC.2014.a.12893
07 October 2019
70 Years of Books From and About East Germany
On 7 October 1949 the Soviet-occupied area of Germany became an independent state with the official name Deutsche Demokratische Republik/DDR (German Democratic Republic/GDR). The Western-occupied territories had become the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany) in May of the same year, and for the next four decades there would be two separate German states with very different government, societies, ideologies and allegiances.
Map of the German Democratic Republic, from Deutsche Demokratische Republik: Handbuch (Leipzig, 1979) X:800/14702
Wilhelm Pieck (left) is sworn in as President of the newly-founded GDR, 11 October 1949, from Heinz Heitzer [et al.], DDR – Werden und Wachsen: Zur Geschichte der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin, 1975) X:809/23404
The British Library and its predecessors acquired books and other material from the GDR for the whole period of its existence and continues to buy works about the East German state and its legacy. Many are of course research-level publications, the backbone of our non-British collecting, including the output of East German academies, universities, museums and other scholarly institutions, but there are also more general and in some cases ephemeral works which shed light on everyday aspects of life in the GDR.
A official handbook of the East German Parliament, Die Volkskammer der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin, 1964) S.F.1372/2.
Images from the 9th Party Conference of the SED, from Deutsche Demokratische Republik: Handbuch
Official GDR Government publications were received by the Library via international exchange agreements. While our holdings are not complete, we have the proceedings of the East German Parliament (Volkskammer) from the late 1950s to 1990 and the official record of laws and treaties for the whole period of the GDR’s existence. Full details of our own holdings, as well as those of the LSE and Bodleian libraries, can be found in the collection guide on our website We also hold a complete run on microfilm of Neues Deutschland the official newspaper of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED).
Masthead of Neues Deutschland, 7 October 1949, announcing the birth of the German Democratic republic. MFM.MF538H
We hold a small amount of material for and about the East German youth movements, including a collection of poems and art by members of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation to celebrate its 30th anniversary. In one poem a boy reflects that in 30 years time he will have a son of his own who will also be a pioneer; I wonder if he remembers that today?
Cover of So sind wir - so ist ein Pionier! Literarische und bildkünstlerische Arbeiten der Schuljugend des Bezirkes Neubrandenburg zum 30. Jahrestag der Pionierorganisation 'Ernst Thälmann' (Neubrandenburg, [1978]) X:990/11196
Cover of a songbook for the Freie Deutsche Jugend, Leben, Singen, Kämpfen (Berlin, 1949) A.697.dd
Many publications serve as guides to or histories of the East German state. An impressive publication from 1979, simply titled Deutsche Demokratische Republik: Handbuch gives a full overview of the state’s geography, history, economy, institutions and culture. Like other state-approved histories such as Heinz Heitzer’s DDR – Werden und Wachsen, the Handbuch gives a resolutely upbeat account of the GDR. Inevitably much material has a greater or lesser degree of propagandist content and is openly critical of the West German state, such as a study of the popular magazines and pulp fiction found in a typical Munich news kiosk and described by the study’s author as ‘poison in colourful pamphlets’.
Gift in bunten Heften: ein Münchner Zeitungskiosk als Spiegel des westdeutschen Kulturverfalls (Berlin, 1960). X.529/47019
Cultural and leisure activities within the GDR are also represented: music, art and sport all feature in the collections, often in books received as donations or as part of exchange arrangements, intended to showcase the GDR’s cultural credentials.
Cover of Sports in the GDR (Dresden, 1980) L.45/1458. This was published on the occasion of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the young gymnast is shown holding the official mascot for the games
And of course we acquired original literary texts by prominent East German writers, such as Christa Wolf, Volker Braun, Heiner Müller and many others.
We also hold West German material about the GDR from the period of its existence, also often propagandist in its own way. In the early decades of the two states, West German authors deliberately avoided using the name ‘Deutsche Demokratische Republik’, instead referring to the ‘Soviet Occupation Zone’ (Sowjetische Besatzungszone/SBZ), or sometimes just as ‘the Zone’ as in a 1965 history.
SBZ von A bis Z : ein Taschen-und Nachschlagebuch über die Sowjetische Besatzungsone Deutschlands (Bonn, 1966) W8/7230. A guide to the GDR produced by the West German Federal Ministry for All-German Affairs
Henning Frank, 20 Jahre Zone: kleine Geschichte der "DDR" (Munich, 1965) F13/4579. (Note how thew designation DDR is placed in inverted commas)
The GDR lasted only 41 years; in October 1989, even as the regime celebrated the state’s 40th anniversary, mass protests were growing in the country and many citizens were taking advantage of new opportunities to flee to the west. Within a few weeks the Berlin Wall had been breached and within a year the GDR had officially ceased to exist, acceding to the Federal Republic to form a single state.
After German reunification, books about the GDR continued to appear: scholarly studies of all aspects of East German history, politics and society; official reports on the activities of bodies such as the Ministry for State Security (STASI); literary works with the GDR as a theme; memoirs of former GDR citizens. We even have some more light-hearted items, some of which pick up on the trend for ‘Ostalgie’ (nostalgia for East Germany), such as a collection of the ‘best Trabi jokes’ mocking the famously unreliable East German cars.
Nils Brennecke, Warum hat der Trabi Räder? Die schönsten Trabi-Witze (Reinbek, 1991) YA.1994.a.9428
All the material we hold from and about the German Democratic Republic can be found in our online catalogue. With 70 years’ worth of material, we must have something for every research interest in the area.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
20 September 2019
Crusoe’s Adventures in Enlightenment Germany
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was first published 300 years ago this year and swiftly became popular both in Britain and beyond. As well as the numerous editions and translations that followed the original publication, there were also many adaptations of the story, particularly for younger readers.
One such was Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere (1779-80). Campe was an educational theorist, teacher, author and publisher in the tradition of the German Enlightenment. Like Rousseau, he believed that Robinson Crusoe could teach children valuable lessons in self-sufficiency and independence, but he thought that Defoe’s text was too dense for young readers and lacking in clear moral instruction. His wanted his own version to correct these supposed defects.
Title-page of an 1835 edition of Robinson der Jüngere, 1459.b.15.
Certainly nobody could accuse Campe’s version of lacking in instruction, moral or otherwise. The book is presented as a series of conversations between a father, who tells the main story over a number of evenings, and his extended family and friends, who chip in with questions and comments. Some of these relate to practical matters such as geography, natural history and survival skills, while others are moral and philosophical ones relating to Robinson’s actions and beliefs, with no opportunity missed to inform the listeners what course of action is right.
Campe’s Robinson is the youngest and only surviving son of a Hamburg merchant. (Oddly, Robinson is the family’s surname and ‘Krusoe’ the protagonist’s forename; even the narraor admits ‘I don’t know why’, and ‘Krusoe Robinson’ is referred to by his surname for most of the book). Over-indulged by his parents and allowed to neglect his education, he boards a ship bound for England on a whim, and without telling anyone. After various misadventures he finds himself the only survivor of a shipwreck, washed up on a deserted island. Unlike Defoe’s hero, he is unable to salvage tools and supplies from the wreck, and has to create shelter and find food using only his hands and his wits.
Robinson is washed ashore. Woodcut by John Bewick from The new Robinson Crusoe ... (London, 1811) Cup.403.a.26. an English translation made from the first French translation of Campe’s text,
Only quite late on in the story does Robinson, now accompanied by Friday whom he has rescued as in Defoe’s version, find another wreck from which useful supplies can be taken. Eventually both Robinson and Friday are able to return to Hamburg, where they establish a carpentry workshop (having become ‘accustomed to the pleasures of manual labour’), become model citizens, and remain lifelong friends.
Robinson and Friday build a boat, woodcut from The new Robinson Crusoe
Although the book wears its didacticism rather heavily for modern tastes, it was hugely successful in its time. The British Library’s collections give some idea of the wide range of translations that appeared in the century after its first publication. We have editions in English, French, Latin, Yiddish, Hungarian, Greek, Italian, Estonian, Polish, Swedish, Russian and Spanish.
Translations of Robinson der Jüngere, top to bottom: English (Dublin, 1789; RB.23.a.8790); Yiddish (Prague, 544 [1784]; 1978.c.22); Greek (Vienna, 1792; 868.c.12.); and Latin (Zullichau, 1794; 1578/5264.)
Like the Latin versions - and probably the Greek one - some of the other translations are also obviously aimed at language learners rather than native speakers, as is clear from the notes explaining vocabulary: we have English translations with notes in German and in Danish, and a French translation with Danish notes.
Editions for language learners. Above: Opening of an English translation with German vocabulary, Robinson the Younger (Frankfurt am Main, 1789) RB.23.a.11543; Below: Title-page of a French translation with Danish vocabulary
Like Defoe’s original, Campe’s adaptation was itself adapted and changed. Some translations (and later German editions) jettisoned much or all of the framing discussion and and stuck to the basic story of Robinson’s adventures. Some translations even claimed to be versions of Defoe’s work rather than Campe’s. The book also inspired two sequels by Christoph Hildebrandt, Robinsons Colonie and Robinsons letzte Tage (RB.23.a.20778), in which the island becomes a European colony where Robinson eventually returns to live out his last days.
Unlike the slightly later, similarly moralising, German-language Robinsonade, Der schweizerische Robinson (The Swiss Familiy Robinson), Campe’s work has not maintained its popularity, but for many 19th-century children it would have been their first introduction to the character of Robinson Crusoe and the basic outline of Defoe’s story.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
Cover of a Swedish translation (Stockholm, 1628. 12604.aa.12.)
10 September 2019
A European Autumn at the British Library
This autumn, as part of our ‘European Literature Focus’, the British Library will be hosting a number of events featuring writers and writing from across the continent. So we thought we’d give you a quick taster here to whet your appetites.
Lars Saabye Christensen, Echoes of the City, translated by Don Bartlett (London, 2019). Awaiting shelfmark. Norwegian edition: Byens spor - Ewald og Maj (Oslo, 2017), YF.2018.a.9337
First up, on Monday 7 October, you can hear Norwegian Lars Saabye Christensen in conversation with Georgina Godwin. In a rare UK appearance, he will be talking about his latest novel to appear in English translation, Echoes of the City, which traces an Oslo community’s slow recovery from a period of crippling austerity after the Second World War. Christensen is one of Norway’s most popular and critically-acclaimed writers; he has been awarded the country’s top literary prizes and his breakthrough novel Beatles (1984), a coming-of-age story about four teenage Beatles fans in 1960s Oslo, remains a bestseller in Norway over 30 years after its publication.
Elif Shafak © Bjørvika Utvikling by Kristin von Hirsch
On Tuesday 8 October Rosie Goldsmith, director of the European Literature Network and a familiar and welcome face at British Library events on European literature, chairs ‘Future Library: Art, Ideas and Time’, a discussion with artist Katie Paterson, novelist Elif Shafak and philosopher Roman Krznaric about Paterson’s ‘Future Library’ project. This is a public artwork in Oslo, begun in 2014 and designed to unfold over a century. A forest has been planted just outside the city to supply paper for an anthology to be published in 2114. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unread and unpublished, until the anthology appears. Elif Shafak contributed a text in 2017; other contributors so far have included Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and the Icelandic author Sjón.
Bart van Es, The Cut Out Girl (London, 2018). ELD.DS.290811
Fans of Dutch literature are in for a treat on Saturday 12 October, when Bart van Es, author of Costa Prize-winning The Cut Out Girl, joins bestselling novelist Herman Koch, rising literary stars Esther Gerritsen and Jeroen Olyslaegers, and historian Simon Schama at a special day of talks on new Dutch writing presented by the Dutch Foundation for Literature in association with Modern Culture. And if you’re not (yet) a fan of Dutch literature, a day exploring the complex history and current politics of the Netherlands, and the chance to discover the latest Dutch books in English translation will surely make you one!
Recently published works by Balla, Uršuľa Kovalyk and Ivana Dobrakovová
Two further events take the revolutionary changes in Europe in 1989 as a starting point. On Friday 25 October there is a rare chance to meet a new generation of Slovak authors at ‘Raising the Velvet Curtain’, part of a series of events under the same name presenting contemporary Slovak writers and artists to English audiences, organised with the support of Fond na podporu umenia (the Slovak Arts Council) and the Embassy of the Republic of Slovakia. Three leading contemporary writers – Balla, Uršuľa Kovalyk and Ivana Dobrakovová – will present their recently published works (translated into English by Julia and Peter Sherwood) and discuss with host Lucy Popescu how Slovakia has changed over the past 30 years.
Rosie Goldsmith, November 1989, Berlin Wall
On Tuesday 26 November Rosie Goldsmith returns for ‘Riveting Germans: After the Wall’, chairing a discussion of German literature and its translation into English since 1989. Prize-winning authors Durs Grünbein, Julia Franck and Nino Haratischvili, and translators Charlotte Collins, Karen Leeder and Ruth Martin will consider what what has or hasn’t worked for UK readers of German literature, and what the the impact of the East-West divide has been on German authors. The event is organised in collaboration with the European Literature Network, the British Council, Goethe-Institut London, Frankfurt Book Fair and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany London, and marks the publication of a German-themed issue of The Riveter, the magazine founded by Rosie with the aim of making European literature popular and accessible across the UK.
Self portrait, Leonid Pasternak
Finally, on Thursday 29 November, ‘Doctor Zhivago: A Pasternak Family Affair’ looks at a much-loved Russian classic in a new light. Translator Nicolas Pasternak Slater and picture editor Maya Slater present their recent work on a new translation of Doctor Zhivago illustrated with 70 pictures by Boris Pasternak’s father, the Impressionist painter Leonid Pasternak, and just published by the Folio Society. They will also reveal how members of the Pasternak family living in England experienced the writing and publication of the novel.
Booking is now open for all these events and you can find full details and purchase tickets via the links above. We hope you’ll be able to join us to celebrate and discover some of the literatures of Europe this autumn.
27 August 2019
Women in Translation Month: top picks from the European Studies team (Part 1)
Founded in August 2014 by book blogger Meytal Radzinski, Women in Translation Month (WITMonth) aims to celebrate and promote women writers in translation, as well as their translators and publishers. So why do we need WITMonth? As the organisers of the upcoming ‘Translating Women’ conference in London highlight, ‘translated literature notoriously accounts for only 3.5% of published literature in the English-language book market, and less than one-third of this is women-authored.’
In addition to WITMonth, initiatives such as the Translating Women project and associated conferences and events all help to redress the gender imbalance in the publishing industry. And there does appear to have been a shift in recent years, with the 2019 Man Booker International Prize shortlist featuring five women authors and six women translators.
In this two-part blog post, the European Studies team have selected books by women authors in translation from across the continent. Ranging from 20th-century classics to contemporary fiction, the majority of these works were also translated by women, and several have won or been shortlisted for literary and translation awards.
Goliarda Sapienza, The Art of Joy, translated by Anne Milano Appel (Penguin Books, 2013), Nov.2015/2304
Chosen by Valentina Mirabella, Curator Romance Collections
Written between 1966 and 1976, rejected by many publishers and issued posthumously in Italian, The Art of Joy only sparked interest after its French and English (by award-winning translator Anne Milano Appel) translations appeared, in 2008 and 2013. The Art of Joy is, above all, a novel of instruction and liberation, feminist, socialist, anti-Fascist. Goliarda Sapienza, its provocative and nonconformist Sicilian author, has just recently been rediscovered, being the subject of an international conference organised by UCL in 2013.
Marion Poschmann, The Pine Islands, translated by Jen Calleja (Serpent’s Tail, 2019), awaiting shelfmark.
Chosen by Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator Germanic Collections
Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019, The Pine Islands follows a lecturer with a specialism in beards, as he decides to take off to Japan on a Bashō-inspired journey to the pine islands of Matsushima. It is a poetic exploration of nature and man, and of the potential for resisting conventional existence. This light but profound text is seamlessly reflected in the translation of Jen Calleja, the British Library’s first Translator-in-Residence and writer of fiction and poetry.
Guzel Yakhina, Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, translated by Lisa C. Hayden (Oneworld Publications, 2019), awaiting shelfmark.
Chosen by Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections
Russian author and filmmaker Guzel Yakhina’s debut novel explores one of the most tragic periods in Russian and Soviet history – the large-scale repression of wealthier peasants, kulaks, who were stripped of their property and forcefully relocated to distant and uninhabited parts of the Soviet Union together with other groups of citizens, such as intellectuals, ethnic groups and peoples and ‘enemies of the state’. At the same time, this is a very personal story that relates to the experience of the author’s grandmother – a Muslim Tatar woman in the 1930s Soviet Union. This multi-award winning book is beautifully translated by Lisa Hayden, who described the process as an ‘enjoyable challenge’ due to the novel’s vivid characters and rich cultural and historical elements.
Anne Garréta, Sphinx, translated by Emma Ramadan, (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015), YA.1987.a.16171 (French), English translation awaiting shelfmark.
Chosen by Sophie Defrance, Curator Romance Collections
Born in 1962 in Paris, Anne Garréta currently teaches at Duke University as a Research Professor of Literature and Romance Studies. In 2000, she joined Oulipo (short for French: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle or workshop of potential literature), a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques. Garréta’s first novel, Sphinx (Grasset, 1986) is a work of literary ingenuity: a love story between two characters, the narrator, “I,” and A***, written without any gender markers referring to the main characters, all the more difficult with the strict gender requirements of the French language. Sphinx is the first novel by a woman member of Oulipo to be translated into English. Emma Ramadan’s translation was nominated for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award.
Nora Ikstena, Soviet Milk, translated by Margita Gailitis (Peirene Press, 2018), ELD.DS.269711
Chosen by Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator Baltic Collections
Nora Ikstena’s bestselling and widely translated novel is set in Soviet Latvia and tells a story of three generations of women. The mother, a doctor, is banished for political reasons to rural Latvia and takes her daughter with her. Uprooted and separated from her loving grandparents, in a reversal of roles, the daughter cares for her psychologically damaged and suicidal mother. This novel by one of the most prominent and influential prose writers in Latvia not only explores the mother-daughter relationship (under-represented in literature, according to Ikstena) but also gives a powerful voice to women living under - and coping with - an oppressive regime. It is seamlessly translated from Latvian by translator and poet Margita Gailitis.
Carmen Laforet, Nada, translated by Edith Grossman (Harvill Secker, 2007), Nov.2007/1429
Chosen by Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic Studies
Published in 1945, Carmen Laforet’s first novel tells how 18-year old Andrea comes to Barcelona to live with her grandmother’s family while studying at university. The Spanish Civil War has greatly impoverished her relatives and created a nightmarish household of conflict, domestic abuse and religious bigotry. This world contrasts with the better-off milieu of her university friend, Ena, who also becomes embroiled in the family’s personal hell. The novel was translated into English in 2007 by Edith Grossman, whose credits already included works by Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
European studies blog recent posts
- Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
- Terror, triumph and resistance: Women in the Yugoslav Partisans, 1941-1945
- Learning - and Shouting out for - German over the Centuries
- For the Love of Books: European Collections at the British Library Doctoral Open Days
- Medieval Women at the Press
- Beyond Traditional Monuments: Commemorating the Lost Jewish Community of Kaunas
- Silenced memories: the Holocaust Narrative in the Soviet Union
- Through the Eyes of Terezín’s Ghetto Children
- Fragments of the Past: Holocaust Legacies and Commemoration. Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
- New Year, Old Years: a Look Back
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