Perlet, Gisela

German translator from Danish Gisela Perlet was born in 1942 and died in December 2010. She grew up in the village of Gutenswegen close to Magdeburg and studied German literature and Scandinavian studies at Greifswald University. From 1966 to 1979 she was working as an editor for Hinstorff-Verlag in Rostock. Her first translations appeared at the end of the 1960s. After political differences with authorities about a planned translation of Kierkegaard she was dismissed and continued to work as a freelance translator and editor. Suffering from cancer, Perlet lived the last years of her life in Rostock.

Gisela Perlet's translations of Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard are most renowned.

Gisela Perlet received following awards: 1998 the Danish Dannebrogorden, 2001 the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal cross of merit), 2002 Johann Heinrich Voß Prize for translation, 2004 the Danish Arts Council's translation prize.

Monschein, Kerstin

Born in Eisenstadt, Austria, in 1979. Graduated from Graz University after translation studies for German, Russian and English in 2010.

She studied and worked for several months in Russia and Ireland. Lives and works now in Fürstenfeld and Graz as a translator of novels and technical texts from Russian and English into German.

 

Sauser, Barbara

Born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1974, and graduated in Slavic Studies and musicology, Barbara Sauser worked as editor and press officer for Rotpunktverlag, Zurich.

She now lives in Bellinzona and works since 2009 as a freelance editor and translator from Italian, French, Russian and Polish.

In 2023 she was awarded the Viceversa-prize of the Swiss Schillerstiftung: 

Huppert, Hugo

Hugo Huppert (1902–1982) was an Austrrian poet, translator and writer. Member of the Austrian Communist Party. After his dissertation in political science, he studied sociology in Paris and moved to Moscow in 1928 where he worked as an editor at the Marx-Engels-Institute until 1932. Personal friend and from 1936 onwards German translator of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Imprisoned in 1938, but from 1941 lecturer at the Maxim-Gorki-Institute for World Literature. From summer 1944 onwards Huppert was Ilya Ehrenburg's personal secretary and major in the Red Army. After the War he stayed in Vienna, but was ordered back to the Soviet Union and sent to internal exile in Tbilissi. From 1956 until his death he lived in Vienna.

He translated almost all works by Mayakovsky and even The Knight in the Panther's Skin by Shota Rustaveli. Huppert was honored with the Austrian title of a professor in 1969 and with different literary prizes of the German Democractic Republic.

 

Wyneken, Ruth

Born in Bavaria, Germany. Grew up in Essen. Master of Arts at the LMU University of Munich in 1977, in Slavic and Russian Studies and Philosophy; thesis on Chronotopos in Mikhail Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA. Since 1987 working as a freelance.

Drama teacher and dramaturgy adviser with profound knowledge of Russian Theatre-School-Method (Stanislavsky and following masters) with about 20 lecturships. Initiator and artistic director of several German-Russian theatre- and cultural projects in Germany, Switzerland and Russia and the symposium “Bridges to Russia” at the European Womens’ Forum in Illereichen, Germany (2001). Author and editor of several books and more than 100 feature articles and publications on Russian culture and theatre in German-language newspapers and theatrical journals as well as for the radio. Translator of dramatic works and theatrical literature (Anatoly Vasilyev: “To the only Reader”, Berlin 2003) and from Prof. Yurij Alschitz. Closely connected with the “School of Dramatic Arts (former director: Anatoly Vasilyev) in Moscow since 1987; extensive travel in the former Soviet Union (Baltic, Volga, Siberia) by invitation of the Russian Theater Association from 1988 until 1991.

From 1992 through 1998 continuously living in St. Petersburg, after 1998 both in Germany and Russia. Lectures-Performances in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart and others.

Zwerg, Franziska

Born in 1969, Franziska Zwerg studied Slavic philology, German literature and Theater studies in Berlin and Moscow. Besides some translations of poems from Russian into German, she translated among others the novels Ich bin Tschetschene by German Sadulajew, Milch und Honig by Vladimir Lortschenkow and Der Himmel auf ihren Schultern by Sergei Lebedev, as well as Permafrost by Viktor Remizov in 2025.