25. Mai 2023 19:00
Catherine Mason
The Penguin Book of German Verse, edited by Leonard Forster, was first published in 1957 and was never subsequently out of print. It was the first, major post-war anthology of German poems from the Middle Ages to the first half of the twentieth century and included Forster’s elegantly simple translations at the foot of each page. The anthology was intended for a general British readership, and particularly for schools, where, despite two world wars, the teaching of German poetry and literature had not only survived but was still held in affectionate esteem.
Shortly after the anthology’s publication, he received a letter from a ‘Bernward Michaelsen’ who objected at great (though courteous) length to many of Forster’s inclusions and omissions. Forster judged the writer to be an elderly German schoolteacher of a middle-brow, conservative literary taste that had been formed after WWI.
What Forster did not know in 1957 – or even in 1988 – was that the writer of the letter was only eighteen. The subject of my recent research and the focus of my talk is the story of this young man’s parentage and his political trajectory, which commenced shortly after the writing of his letter – and which ended in tragedy.
Biography:
Catherine Mason was born in 1960, of a Bavarian mother and Irish father. She read German, Italian and English literature at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and then worked in academic publishing for several years before setting up her own publishing company, Broadcast Books. She single-handedly published twenty non-fiction titles over twenty years, initially in collaboration with the BBC World Service. She retrained as a teacher and taught languages at an inner city comprehensive in Bristol for ten years, before being awarded a BASF bursary to study for an M.A. in Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, in 2017. Still funded by BASF she is now in her third year of a PhD on the decline of German literature and poetry in the German language learning classroom, 1900 – 2020, which she hopes to complete in the spring of 2024. She also has ambitions to turn the thesis into a more general study of the cultural and pedagogical reception of German literature over the last century.
Please register for the Pressclub by May 17 and for Zoom by May 23 at dbg-rheinmain@t-online.de. *Registered Zoom-participants will receive login details on March 23.
Melden Sie sich an
Hinweis: Mit der Anmeldung und Teilnahme an diesem Event stimmen Sie der Aufzeichnung Ihres Äußeren und/oder Ihrer Stimme zu, die Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft in Fotos, Videos und begleitenden Tonaufnahmen über beliebige Medien und zu beliebigen Zwecken veröffentlichen kann.
25. Mai 2023 19:00
Catherine Mason
Veranstaltungsort
Frankfurter Presseclub and virtual (via Zoom*)
Ulmenstraße 20
60325 Frankfurt
The Penguin Book of German Verse, edited by Leonard Forster, was first published in 1957 and was never subsequently out of print. It was the first, major post-war anthology of German poems from the Middle Ages to the first half of the twentieth century and included Forster’s elegantly simple translations at the foot of each page. The anthology was intended for a general British readership, and particularly for schools, where, despite two world wars, the teaching of German poetry and literature had not only survived but was still held in affectionate esteem.
Shortly after the anthology’s publication, he received a letter from a ‘Bernward Michaelsen’ who objected at great (though courteous) length to many of Forster’s inclusions and omissions. Forster judged the writer to be an elderly German schoolteacher of a middle-brow, conservative literary taste that had been formed after WWI.
What Forster did not know in 1957 – or even in 1988 – was that the writer of the letter was only eighteen. The subject of my recent research and the focus of my talk is the story of this young man’s parentage and his political trajectory, which commenced shortly after the writing of his letter – and which ended in tragedy.
Biography:
Catherine Mason was born in 1960, of a Bavarian mother and Irish father. She read German, Italian and English literature at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and then worked in academic publishing for several years before setting up her own publishing company, Broadcast Books. She single-handedly published twenty non-fiction titles over twenty years, initially in collaboration with the BBC World Service. She retrained as a teacher and taught languages at an inner city comprehensive in Bristol for ten years, before being awarded a BASF bursary to study for an M.A. in Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, in 2017. Still funded by BASF she is now in her third year of a PhD on the decline of German literature and poetry in the German language learning classroom, 1900 – 2020, which she hopes to complete in the spring of 2024. She also has ambitions to turn the thesis into a more general study of the cultural and pedagogical reception of German literature over the last century.
Please register for the Pressclub by May 17 and for Zoom by May 23 at dbg-rheinmain@t-online.de. *Registered Zoom-participants will receive login details on March 23.
Melden Sie sich an
Hinweis: Mit der Anmeldung und Teilnahme an diesem Event stimmen Sie der Aufzeichnung Ihres Äußeren und/oder Ihrer Stimme zu, die Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft in Fotos, Videos und begleitenden Tonaufnahmen über beliebige Medien und zu beliebigen Zwecken veröffentlichen kann.