Dallas Goethe Center -- Programs and Events


February           28th Reading of Goethe Poems in bilingual format 4:00 p.m. (Dallas Goethe Center members)
March                 4th University of Dallas Foreign Language Film series 7:00 p.m.
Die Ehe der Maria Braun / The Marriage of Maria Braun, at Lynch Auditorium, University of Dallas campus
March                 5th Stammtisch  about 6:00 p.m.
March               10th Die Gruppe Dallas
March               17th Die Gruppe Arlington
March               21st Film Presentation at DMA ...



Dr. Rainer Schulte Receives Translation Award

On June 22, 2009, at a ceremony at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in Banff, Canada, Rainer Schulte was presented with the "Linda Gaboriau Translation Award 2009: In honour of his significant contribution to the art of literary translation and to literature in North America." Schulte is the first recipient of the award, which comes with a stipend and a two-week residency at the Banff Centre in a beautiful studio designed by Peter Hemingway, surrounded by trees and visited by elk and deer.

Dr. Schulte is the First Vice President and Program Committee Chair of the Dallas Goethe Center.


          KULTURECKE   Deutsche Kultur. Texas Gastfreundschaft.

          REVIEWS

          WRITER'S CORNER by Rainer Schulte


          Book Review -- The Photomontages of Hannah Höch
          In Memoriam Gershon Canaan

STAMMTISCH

The Stammtisch is a very informal gathering of people who have a general interest in German culture and enjoy visiting with old friends and new acquaintances over happy hour and a wonderful complimentary buffet.  

Location: EMBASSY SUITES
Belmont Lounge, 3880 West Northwest Highway, Dallas, TX 75220, 214-357- 4500.
Directions: Embassy Suites is on the south side of Northwest Highway, just east of the intersection between Northwest Highway and Lemmon/ Marsh.









KULTURECKE
Deutsche Kultur. Texas Gastfreundschaft.
By Dr. John P. Kasik


In the mid-1960s, a small group of people devoted to the German language and culture founded the Dallas Goethe Center. Their reasons for founding the Center were twofold. First, their goal was to foster an appreciation of German art, music, literature, and culture, while their second objective was to cultivate mutual understanding between people from German-speaking countries and those of the United States.

Nearly five decades later, the Center’s goals remain the same. Although it has grown from a mere handful of people decades ago to become a thriving organization of more than 300 members today, the Dallas Goethe Center’s primary purpose remains to build appreciation and mutual understanding between people of different cultures and backgrounds.

Such goals are not only noble, they are vitally important to the future of our city and the North Dallas region as a whole. German has been one of the most important languages in the world for centuries, and perhaps it is more important today than at any other time since the 18th and 19th centuries when German art, music, and culture flourished throughout Europe.

Not only is German still the most translated written language in the world, surpassing English, Spanish, Chinese, and other languages that actually have more speakers, it’s also the third-most-studied tongue worldwide. German is the second-most-spoken language in the European Union after English, and it plays a particularly vital role in promoting communication and commerce between Western and Eastern Europe.

More importantly, despite its disastrous periods in the 20th century, Germany is once again one of the most powerful economies in the world. American businesses, including those in North Texas, have much to learn from the German miracle, not only today but in the future as well.

As a result, the people of Dallas and the Dallas business community in particular simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of the German language and culture. Without a clear understanding of what one of the world’s most important cultures can contribute to the North Texas area, Dallas is less likely to become a truly international city on a par with New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

It’s important to remember, however, that mutual understanding works both ways. As members of the Dallas Goethe Center, we not only play a vital role in promoting the contributions of German-speaking cultures; we must also make certain to reflect the values of the city and country that we now all share.

Freedom. Equality. Opportunity. Friendliness and the acceptance of diverse ethnic backgrounds and lifestyles are all part of what it means to live in Dallas. As a uniquely American city, Dallas isn’t just one of the most powerful metropolitan areas in the world, it’s an increasingly important cultural center in and of itself. p>German speakers and lovers of German culture now live in every part of the world, from Austria to Romania, from the Czech Republic to Namibia, from Zurich to the great state of Texas. Because of the Dallas Goethe Center, however, only in Dallas do we have the opportunity to enjoy the best of both worlds—a Texassized combination of German culture and Dallas hospitality.



The German Blog
New Blog (Web Log) for German Speaking People and Groups in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex
Sponsored by the German American Chamber of Commerce, South, North Texas Chapter





German Genealogy

Meetings of the German Genealogy Group take place on the second Sunday of each month. If you would like to participate, please contact Elke via e-mail:  elke.hedstrom@home.com.





Reviews


WRITER'S CORNER
By Rainer Schulte

Franz Kafka in a New Biography By Reiner Stach -- Translated by Shelley Frisch

Reiner Stach, who has worked extensively on the definitive edition of Kafka.s collected works, has devoted more than a decade to researching and writing Kafka: The Decisive Years, translated by Shelley Frisch. Stach has worked with four thousand pages of journal entries, letters, and literary fragments, many of which have never before been available. In this volume, the first of three now available in English, Stach portrays the years 1910 to 1915. In 1912, Kafka began to work on .The Judgment. and .The Metamorphosis,. Amerika, and The Trial. In his biography, Stach takes the reader through the composition of these major pieces day by day and, in some cases, even hour by hour. These years also cover Kafka.s close friendship with Max Brod and the outbreak of World War I.

Hans-Ulrich Treichel. Lost. (Der Verlorene) Translated by Carol Brown Janeway.

The novel portrays an ordinary German family that flees from the advancing Russian army in 1945, yet makes it to safety and starts a new life in the postwar economic miracle. The development of the events is seen through the eyes of the nameless narrator, who reveals early on that in the general confusion of fleeing from the Russians, his brother, Arnold, was lost. Thus, the entire novel deals with the guilt of the parents, who feel responsible for the loss of Arnold, and therefore set a whole sequence of desperate searches in motion to find their lost son. Threaded into the basic plot are elaborate descriptions of the family’s everyday life: a typically derailed middle-class German family. There are no memorable moments in their lives. The mother spends many hours weeping, the father shows no emotional reactions, and the narrator is unable to do anything about this dreary family life. No solutions are reached throughout the novel. Treichel paints human beings who ultimately become the victims of their own inertia and total emotional emptiness. Lost is a short novel of 130 pages that intrigues the reader by its refreshing linguistic energy and its accurate portrayal of the absence of genuine human relationships.

Uwe Timm

The recently published novel Morenga, by Uwe Timm, translated by Breon Mitchell, has been well received in the United States. The novel recounts the conflict between the colonial German empire and the rebellious Africans of the Hottentot and Herero tribes led by the legendary Morenga in the former German colony of South West Africa between 1904 and 1907. Timm spent several years researching the historical background of this uprising, and consequently, the novel is an intriguing mix of fact and fiction. Here is what Timm had to say about this aspect of his novel: "There are situations in the novel that a writer could not have made up. If they had been invented, one would think the author had gone too far. For example, the vocabulary of punishment, when the Germans discuss techniques for flogging the African natives. Those are things that are taken directly from historical documents. There were other matters, however, that seemed to me to demand fictional treatment. For example, the figure of Gottschalk, a veterinarian, who arrives in Africa and is changed by it; how he first experiences it, how it alters him, and how those alterations are revealed in his character. That is all fictional, the protagonist of the novel, Gottschalk, is a fictional character."
The novel drew particular attention in this country because it could be considered a precursor of the undertakings of the soon to arrive Third Reich, with its focus on racial inferiority and the Untermensch. Timm was interested in projecting the mentality of people who desire to come to a foreign country, to oppress other human beings, and to torture or kill them. These are all themes that have plagued the history of the 20th century. When the translation of Morenga was reviewed in The New York Times, the reviewer thought it appropriate to draw a parallel between the content of the novel and the war in Iraq. Other works by Uwe Timm in English: Headhunter. Translated by Peter Tegel. The Invention of Curried Sausage. Translated by Leila Vennewitz. Midsummmer Night. Translated by Peter Tegel.
All of Timm's novels, including Morenga, have been published by New Directions.


The Germans Are Breaking an Old Taboo

The new novel by Günter Grass titled Crabwalk ("Im Krebsgang"), translated by Krishna Winston, revives the trauma of carpet-bombing and the devastating destruction of many German cities. This time, however, history is being reversed, and the Germans focus on the atrocities that the British, the Russians, and the Americans inflicted on Germany during World War II. Crabwalk recalls a historical tragedy: the sinking of the refugee ship Gustloff by a Soviet submarine in the spring of 1945 with 9000 women and children. In the past three years that German writers and historians have begun to address a topic previously considered taboo: the sufferings of the German people in the last years of World War II. W. G. Sebald wrote the essay "Air War and Literature" (Luftkrieg und Literatur"), which was published by Random House under the title of "On the Natural History of Destruction." An excerpt of that essay had been published in The New Yorker (November 2002). In addition, the historian Jörg Friedrich published an elaborate study titled "Der Brand" (The Fire), which, however, has not yet been translated into English. In this study, which immediately became a best-seller in Germany, Friedrich elaborately chronicles the effects of the carpet-bombing of German cities. Grass and Sebald have taken the audacious step to change an established way of looking at World War II. Fifty years after the war, the Germans, who inflicted so many atrocities on other nations, are now inclined to see themselves as the victims of a war they originally had unleashed on the world.





German Books in English Translation

A review, German literature that appeared in English translation since 1998 , has been added to the existing information on German books which have been translated into English.

German literature that appeared in English translation in 1998 ,


BOOK REVIEW by Missy Finger

The Photomontages of Hannah Höch


Essays by Peter Boswell, Maria Makela, Carolyn Lanchner
Published by Walker Art Center, Vineland Pl. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403.
Distributed by D. A. P. /Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. NY


TRANSLATION SERVICES

We receive periodic requests to recommend individuals who can do English/German or German/English translations in fields ranging from literature to science. If you would like to offer translation services in any domain, please contact the Dallas Goethe Center so that we might transfer inquiries to you.

Please send correspondence to: DALLAS GOETHE CENTER, INC., P.O. BOX 600533, Dallas, TX


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Updated 19FEB10 2204 CST