German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects.
Ralph Frederick Manheim was a Jewish-American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. He was one of the most acclaimed translators of the 20th century, and likened translation to acting, the role being "to impersonate his author".
John Edwin Woods was an American translator who specialized in translating German literature, since about 1978. His work includes much of the fictional prose of Arno Schmidt and the works of contemporary authors such as Ingo Schulze and Christoph Ransmayr. He also translated all the major novels of Thomas Mann, as well as works by many other German writers.
The Heinrich Mann Prize is an essay prize that has been awarded since 1953, first by the East German Academy of Arts, then by the Academy of Arts, Berlin. The prize, which comes with a €10,000 purse, is given annually on 27 March, Heinrich Mann's day of birth. The laureate is selected by an independent three-member jury which usually includes the previous year's laureate.
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English".
Anthea Bell was an English translator of literary works, including children's literature, from French, German and Danish. These include The Castle by Franz Kafka, Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the French Asterix comics with co-translator Derek Hockridge.
Michael Henry Heim was an American literary translator and scholar. He translated literature from eight languages, including works by Anton Chekhov, Milan Kundera, and Günter Grass. He received his doctorate in Slavic languages and literature from Harvard in 1971, and joined the faculty of UCLA the following year. In 2003, he and his wife used their life savings ($734,000) to establish the PEN Translation Fund.
The Schiller Memorial Prize is a literature prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg. It is endowed with 25,000 euros and has been awarded since 1955 on Friedrich Schiller's birthday, 10 November. The award was donated on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Friedrich Schiller's death and is presented every three years. The prize acknowledges outstanding work in the field of German literature or intellectual history, for single works or collected works. At the same time, there are also two lesser prizes with 7,500 euros awarded for young dramatists.
Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste was a Bavarian literary prize by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste. In 2010, it merged with the Thomas Mann Prize.
Breon Mitchell is an American scholar, literary translator and bibliographer. He was Professor of Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies, and Director of the Lilly Library, at Indiana University. He was a founding member of the American Literary Translators Association and served as President in its early years. He has translated numerous major works from the German by such authors as Franz Kafka, Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Siegfried Lenz, and Uwe Timm (Morenga). Mitchell translated and then revised What Must Be Said by Grass in April 2012. Among his awards are the ATA’s Ungar Prize, the ALTA Translation Prize, the Kurt and Helen Wolff Prize, the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, the British Society of Authors’ Schlegel-Tieck Prize, and the Banff Centre’s Linda Gaboriau Prize.
Leila Vennewitz was a Canadian-English translator of German literature. She was born Leila Croot in Hampshire, England and grew up in Portsmouth. Her brother was the surgeon Sir John Croot.
The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation award given by the Society of Authors in London. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000, while the runner-up now receives £1,000. The prize is named for August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, who translated Shakespeare to German in the 19th century.
John Maxwell Brownjohn was a British literary translator.
Philip Boehm is an American playwright, theater director and literary translator. Born in Texas, he was educated at Wesleyan University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the State Academy of Theater in Warsaw, Poland.
Damion Searls is an American writer and translator. He grew up in New York and studied at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. He translates literary works from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch. Among the authors he has translated are Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann, Hermann Hesse, Kurt Schwitters, Peter Handke, Jon Fosse, Heike B. Görtemaker, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Weber, and Nescio. He has received numerous grants and fellowships for his translations.
Susan Bernofsky is an American translator of German-language literature and author. She is best known for bringing the Swiss writer Robert Walser to the attention of the English-speaking world, translating many of his books and writing his biography. She has also translated several books by Jenny Erpenbeck and Yoko Tawada. Her prizes for translation include the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize, the 2012 Calw Hermann Hesse Prize, the 2015 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the 2015 Schlegel-Tieck Prize. She was also selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. In 2017 she won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for her translation of Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada. In 2018 she was awarded the MLA's Lois Roth Award for her translation of Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck. In 2024, Bernofsky was reported to be working on a translation of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.
Shelley Laura Frisch is an American literary translator from German to English. She is best known for her translations of biographies, most notably of Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Marlene Dietrich/Leni Riefenstahl.
Drenka Opalic Willen is a Serbian-American editor, publisher and translator, credited for discovering authors Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, José Saramago, Amos Oz, Wisława Szymborska and others.
Teresa D. Lewis is an American translator, writer, and essayist. She is best known for her translation of French author Christine Angot's novel, Incest which was nominated for the Best Translated Book Award and her translation of Austrian poet and novelist Maja Haderlap's novel Angel of Oblivion, which was awarded the 2017 PEN Translation Prize, the Austrian Cultural Forum NY Translation Prize, and was nominated for the BTBA. She has also translated works by Peter Handke, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, and Philippe Jaccottet. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and received the Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, New College, in 1986. Website: www.tesslewis.org
Imogen Taylor is a British literary translator. She translates works from German to English, and has previously won the Goethe-Institut Prize for her work. Her notable translations include Sasha Marianna Salzmann's novel, Beside Myself, Melanie Raabe's The Trap, as well as Florian Huber's Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Ordinary Germans, 1945; and Sascha Arango's novel, The Truth and Other Lies. Her work has been shortlisted for the Schlegel-Tieck Prize and Helen and Kurt Wolff's Translator Prize.
