Flecken, Tina

Born in 1968 in Cologne.

Scandinavian, English and German studies in Cologne and Reykjavik.

Publishing editor for several years.

Translator of poems and prose by authors like Sjón, Linda Vilhjálmsdóttir, Kristín Steinsdóttir, Andri Snær Magnason and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir  from Icelandic into German.

Fontane, Theodor

Born into a Huguenot family in Neuruppin, Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) grew up in Berlin and initially trained as an apothecary under his father. In 1849 he left the profession and became a full-time journalist and writer, working during the 1850s as a London-based correspondent. He wrote a number of books about Britain and, on returning to Germany, published works on Prussia's military campaigns and on Brandenburg. He also participated in the Franco-Prussian war and spent a short time in French captivity. From 1875 onwards he devoted himself largely to novel-writing.

Dach, Simon

Simon Dach was born in 1605 in Memel in East Prussia, which is now the Lithuanian city of Klaipėda. His father worked as a court interpreter and, between 1619 and 1625, Dach attended schools in Königsberg, Wittenberg und Magdeburg. In 1626 he enrolled at the University of Königsberg and remained in the city until his death in 1659. In 1639, after working for six years as a secondary school teacher, he was appointed Professor of Poetry at the university.

Schmidgall, Renate

Renate Schmidgall, born in Heilbronn, is a German translator from Polish. She studied Germanic and Slavic Studies at Heidelberg University. From 1984 to 1990 she worked as a librarian, from 1990 to 1996 as a research assistant at the German Polish Institute in Darmstadt. Since then, she is a freelance translator for Polish literature. The best-known authors she has translated are: Stefan Chwin, Witold Gombrowicz, Paweł Huelle, Andrzej Stasiuk and Mirosław Nahacz.

Renate Schmidgall lives in Darmstadt. For her work she received the Jane Scatcherd price of the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation in 2001 and the European Translation Prize Offenburg in 2006. In 2009 she was awarded the Dedecius price jointly with Karl Ryszard Wojnakowski.

Kreutzer, Gert

Studied Germanic Philology, Latin and Scandinavian Studies in Münster, Tübingen and Kiel
PhD and habilitation in Kiel, 1970-1990 assistant, associate professor and professor in Kiel
1990-2005 director of the Institute of Nordic Philology / Scandinavian Studies at the University of Cologne
Numerous publications on the history of literature and culture of the Nordic countries, many translations of poetry and prose from English and the Nordic languages​​, especially from Icelandic.
Gert Kreutzer was awarded with the Icelandic Order of the Falcon and was president of the German-Icelandic society in Cologne.

Grössel, Hanns

Born in Leipzig in 1931, Grössel studied German literature, Romanic literature and philosophy in Göttingen and Paris. Doctorate 1960. Worked 1960-1966 as a publishing house reader, 1966-1997 as a radio journalist in Cologne and continuously as a translator, editor and critic in the fields of Danish, French and Swedish literature. Hanns Grössel died in Cologne on 1st August, 2012.

Prizes (selection): 1976 Translators' prize of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, 1991 Translators' prize „Natur och Kultur“ of the Swedish Academy, 1995 Prize for European Poetry of the Town of Münster (together with Inger Christensen), 1996 Alfred-Kerr-Prize for Literary Criticism, 2010 European Translators' Prize of the Town of Offenburg; 2002-2004: awarded with the German Translators' Union's Hieronymus ring.