The Latest at Goethe

Three countries, three men, three prizes: The awarding of the Goethe Medals to European mediators of language and culture in Weimar becomes a fervent appeal to foster the German language – not only abroad. Deutsche Welle reporter Aya Bach attended the ceremony in Weimar.

They couldn’t have chosen a better place: Goethe, who considered translation one of the “most important and honourable callings,” called Weimar his home. The date, as well, was more propitious than ever before: for the first time since the Medal has been awarded by the Goethe-Institut, the awards ceremony was held on the poet’s birthday – at noonday under sunny skies, just as 260 years ago when the future prince of poets first entered the world. Hence, good-humoured writers, translators, theatre professionals and cultural mediators came together in Weimar, united with Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, president of the Goethe-Institut, in the belief that a secure linguistic foundation abroad is needed for all of those who are interested in Germany.

Smuggling Goethe to Norway

Yet today the world status of German literature and language is no longer as sunny as it was in Goethe’s day. He had to downright “smuggle” his translation of Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship into a major Norwegian publishing house relates translator Sverre Dahl: “The publisher had English, French and American classics, but not a single German novel! I said that is totally indecent!” Ultimately the name of Goethe was convincing and once Dahl received the Norwegian critics’ prize for his translations, he was even able to follow up with Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years.

Now, in Weimar Sverre Dahl has been honoured for his extraordinary life’s work: 120 significant works in German are available in Norway solely through his work – from Goethe and Hölderlin to Kafka and Ingeborg Bachmann and contemporary writers like Ingo Schulze and Daniel Kehlmann. A great deal of convincing is required to bring the classics in particular to the publishers’ attention, says Dahl: “For us, Germany seems a great challenge. It was always dangerous for other countries politically. And though German culture is not dangerous, it is so great and rich.” The German occupation of Norway during the Second World War was long a hindrance to the reception of German literature. Today, this resistance has disappeared, says Dahl, “but now it has turned into a lack of judgement.” For the German way of writing and treating subject matter is frequently strange to his fellow countrymen: “In simple terms, Germans often have a very philosophical way of expressing themselves.”

Hegel and the fall of the wall

These ways of thinking are quite familiar to Swedish philosopher-and-poet-in-one Lars Gustafsson, who is an outstanding Germany initiate and is present on its book market with several novels and poems. He was honoured for his literary work in Weimar, which tells Germans more about Sweden than the ideal world of Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerbü or the murderous characters of crime thriller author Henning Mankell. Gustafsson merges German philosophy in his texts with such virtuosity that reading them is an intellectual and sensual pleasure. While considering Germany in Weimar, Gustafsson segues directly from the 1989 fall of the wall, which he learned about from Deutsche Welle via shortwave radio in Texas, to “my dear colleague Hegel,” who perhaps was correct when he said there may be “a direction built into events.” He, by all means, is very glad, for “my Germany, through which I can travel, has expanded almost endlessly.”

An exercise in freedom

The year 1989 and all of its consequences in Europe was even more decisive for the Romanian translator, theatre critic and maker Victor Marian Scoradet, the third recipient of the Goethe Medal. We must be grateful to his grandmother who, an immigrant from Tyrol, required that her family and 12 children speak German. Scoradet therefore grew up bilingual and advocates the translation – and performance – of works by German-language playwrights. Hence, thanks to him current plays from Germany have met with great response since the end of the Ceausescu regime in Romania; German plays are the most-produced foreign plays in his country, relates Scoradet. The domestic theatres, he says, have failed to promote their own writers. “German playwrights, by contrast, are promoted, are permitted to take any risk and therefore they dare a great deal! I consider this daring exemplary for writers from an ex-totalitarian country!” They also have a great advantage: “They have had longer exercise in freedom.”

Gallery of honour: A portrait of the Goethe Medal awardees

Language transports culture

It is not the fault of people such as Scoradet, Gustafsson and Sverre Dahl if the German language plays a lesser role abroad today than it did in Goethe’s age. He could not have assumed that his language would one day be on a market “where all nations offer their wares.” Today, it is wise to take a critical look at one’s own country: “It is how a country deals with its own language that it is perceived abroad,” commented Goethe president Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, “We must develop more passion for our language and promote it not only as a tool but as a transporter of culture.”

Courtesy of Deutsche Welle