Jahnn, Hans Henny

Hans Henny Jahnn was born in 1894 in Stellingen, one of Hamburg's suburbs, and died in Hamburg in 1959. He was a German novelist, plawright, organ-builder, and even a music publisher, focusing on 17th-century organ music.
Together with his friend and lover Friedel Harms, Jahnn fled to Norway in order to avoid being enlisted to the German army during WWI. In 1919, after returning to Hamburg, Jahnn founded the Utopian community of Ugrino. In 1926, Jahnn married Ellinor Philips, and Harms Ellinor's sister, in 1928. When Harms died in 1931 Jahnn designed his gravestone. Once the Nazi period began, he fled Germany once again to escape the hostility of the Nazis, first to Zurich and then the island of Bornholm (1934-46), where he managed a farm and breeded horses. Returning to Germany after WWII Jahnn became a member of the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg. He was especially engaged against racism and past-war militarism.
Jahnn was awarded the Kleist-Preis in 1920 (for his play Pastor Ephraim Magnus), Literaturpreis des Landes Niedersachsen in 1954, and the Lessing-Preis der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg in 1956.
Most famous Jahnn became for his literary scandals in Expressionist theatre during the 1920's and his boundless novels, like Perrudja (1929) and a trilogy of novels called River without Banks (Fluss ohne Ufer, 1949-50, Epilogue posthoumus ed. 1961).

Bruns, Alken

Alken Bruns, born in 1942, studied Scandinavian philology in Kiel and became an archivarian in his hometown Lübeck, where he died on 13th March, 2021.

He is the author of two volumes of Lübecker Lebensläufe and Neue Lübecker Lebensläufe, of the translation critical thesis Übersetzung als Rezeption. Deutsche Übersetzer skandinavischer Literatur von 1860 bis 1900 (Neumünster 1977) and the translator of Knut Hamsun, Johan Borgen and Kjartan Fløgstad from Norwegian, August Strindberg and Carl-Henning Wijmark from Swedish.

His method of translating took a stand against a colonialistic, germanizing attitude, thus quoting Wilhelm von Humboldt: „Wenn man in ekler Scheu vor dem Fremden noch weiter geht und auch das Fremde selbst vermeiden will, so wie man wohl sonst sagen hörte, daß der Übersetzer schreiben müsse, wie der Originalverfasser in der Sprache des Übersetzers geschrieben haben würde, so zerstört man alles Übersetzen, und allen Nutzen desselben für Sprache und Nation.“ Further he wrote about his method: „Vom Übersetzer wird erwartet, daß er sich unsichtbar macht, und es gilt als Lob, wenn gesagt wird, einer Übersetzung sei nicht anzumerken, daß sie eine Übersetzung ist. Das bedeutet doch: Sie soll nichts Fremdes, Fernes, Unbegreifliches haben, keine dem Original nachgebildeten sprachlichen Neuerungen, keine Normverletzungen und Grenzüberschreitungen, alles schön deutsch und gut zu lesen. Die Spuren der Übersetzerarbeit sollen getilgt sein, und der Übersetzer wird gelobt, wenn er nicht in Erscheinung tritt. Ein zweisprachiger Automat, durch den das Original hindurchgeht. um sich gleichsam selbsttätig ins Deutsche zu verwandeln.“ (1987)

Bauer, Albert

German historian, born in Riga in 1894, died in Tübingen in 1961.

Grönholm, Irja

Born in Eberswalde in 1951, she grew up bilingually, in Estonian and German. She studied biology from 1970 to 1974 at Greifswald University and worked at the Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR in Berlin. Since 1984 she has been working as literary translator of Estonian literature.
For her many translations she has been awarded several prizes, among others in 2009 the annual prize of Estonia's Eesti Kultuurkapital.

Lenz, Siegfried

Born in Lyck, East Prussia, in 1926, Lenz died in Hamburg in 2014. He was one the most renowned German post war prose writers and became an honorary citizen of Hamburg in 2002 and of Schleswig-Holstein in 2004. In 2011 even the honorary citzen of his hometown, nowadays the Polish Ełk. 
Among the numerous literary prizes he received were the Thomas-Mann-Preis in 1984, the Goethe prize in 1999 and the Goethe medal in 2002. 

Gladkich, Sergey

Born in Kalach-on-the-Don in 1952, Gladkich studied German and French at the "Maurice Thorez" State University for Foreign Languages in Moscow. Since 1976 he has been living in Berlin (GDR). 

Member of the PEN Germany. Working as a translator from German and French to Russian and from Russian to German, as well as a sculptor, painter and actor.