Paul Reitter
2025

Friedrich Engels, who published a handwringing essay called “How Not to Translate Marx” in 1885, pronounced Karl Marx’s prose “almost untranslatable.” Small wonder, then, that there have been so few translations of Capital into English, despite its status as one of the most consequential books in history. We are fortunate that Paul Reitter has now achieved the near-impossible task of translating Capital, volume one, into what The Nation has lauded as “crisp and contemporary” English. Our jury has marveled at Reitter’s ability to retain the accuracy of the lengthy original, seemingly forbidding text, while rendering it an inviting and even humorous read. Together with editor Paul North, Reitter has brought us an extraordinary edition that also features a sweeping scholarly apparatus drawing on generations of scholarship and helping to make this new translation the definitive one for our era. We congratulate Paul Reitter on his outstanding achievement, and we are delighted to present this year’s Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize to him to honor this impressive work. We are also pleased to learn that Paul Reitter has just been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to translate volume two of Capital.

THE JURY

Shelley Frisch, Princeton, NJ (Chair)
Elisabeth Lauffer, Hannacroix, NY
Philip Boehm, Houston, TX

Paul Reitter received his PhD in German studies from the University of California, Berkeley. For more than twenty years, he has taught in the German department at Ohio State University, where he served as the director of the humanities institute from 2012 to 2018. He writes mainly about German-Jewish culture, the history of the humanities, and translation, and in his own translation projects he has focused on retranslating and reframing texts that deliver philosophical critique and social criticism in enduringly exciting ways. His work has been supported by fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Guggenheim Foundation.