NFRL spring 2014 final - Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels

Anita Albus
Arndt Engelhardt
Alexander Korb
Stefan M. Maul
Markus Roth / Andrea Löw
Martin Seel
Ronen Steinke
Andreas Wirsching
Gerhard Wolf
GBO
NONFICTION
RIGHTS LIST
2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
GB
GUARANTEED FUNDING In the Light of Darkness: On Proust by anita albus
.................
4
In the Shadow of World War. The Ustaša’s Mass Violence against
Serbs, Jews, and Roma in Croatia, 1941–1945
by alexander korb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Warsaw Ghetto by roth & löw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
The Price of Freedom by andreas wirsching
.........................
7
Ideology and the Rationality of Domination: Nazi Germanization
Policies in Poland by gerhard wolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
GI RECOMMENDS An Arsenal of Jewish Knowledge. On the Origins
of the Encyclopaedia Judaica by arndt engelhardt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Fortune Telling in the Ancient Orient by stefan m. maul . . . . . . . . . . 5
Cinema Arts by martin seel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Fritz Bauer oder Auschwitz vor Gericht by ronen steinke . . . . . . . . . 7
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GBO NONFICTION RIGHTS LIST The Humanities are fueled by a variety of intellectual
and cultural impulses, even across national boundaries. Thus, five years ago, “Geisteswissenschaften International” was started to assist inquisitive English-language publishers in their search for authors and topics
from Germany. Since then, many highly interesting
and important intellectual stimuli from Europe became
established in North America.
With the present rights list, the jury of “Geisteswissenschaften International” wants to draw your attention
specifically to some titles which may be of particular
interest to the North American book market – because
the authors have already been established, the subject
of the book is equally important on this side of the
Atlantic – or simply because the books are extraordinarily interesting.
Most of the titles proposed in the featured rights list
have been awarded with the “Geisteswissenschaften
International” title last year but have not yet found
a licensee. This is not because of the quality of the
books, but is due to the difficulties of conquering
the English language market. Most books have been
published by small and independent German publishers. In Germany, these books are gems in the field
of Humanities and Social Sciences, but regretfully the
books are largely unknown in North America. Read
more below about the German Book Office New York,
Geisteswissenschaften International and other translations funding opportunities.
GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL
With “Geisteswissenschaften International”, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des deutschen
Buchhandels), the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the collecting
society VG WORT and the Federal Foreign Office of Germany
commend innovative humanities and social science works in
the German language.
Methods of critical theory and comparative research in the
humanities require expert use of language and knowledge of
tradition of thought. Therefore, even scholars who are excellent
in English often write their works in their native languages.
Making excellent academic works visible to the world by translating them into the language of the world is both an opportunity and a challenge for publishers and editors. In order to
increase the aspect of opportunity and to reduce the challenge,
Geisteswissenschaften International was initiated as a national
supporting grant for the humanities and social sciences. The
program is designed to provide the guidance and the support
English speaking publishers need in order to discover promising
new authors and exciting new approaches to the big questions.
Every year in January and July, German publishers can submit
publications from the fields of humanities and social sciences
at www.geisteswissenschaften-international.de. They nominate titles of their own choosing and provide a short rationale
for their selection. The award amount is determined by each
individual case and the actual translation costs. An independent selection committee of academics, expert journalists, and
scientific publishers select the works to be funded.
For more information, please contact:
Anke Simon | Geisteswissenschaften International | Phone:
+49 (0) 69 1306-517 | [email protected]
GERMAN BOOK OFFICE NEW YORK
anke simon, geisteswissenschaften international
TRANSLATION FUNDING
In addition to Geisteswissenschaften International, Germany,
Austria and Switzerland also offer seperate translation funding.
For more information, please contact:
Riky Stock | [email protected]
The German Book Office (GBO), a nonprofit initiative of the
Frankfurt Book Fair, serves as a bridge between the North
American and German publishing industries. Its primary role is
to establish contact between members of these industries and
to increase the awareness of new German titles and authors in
both the North America book industry and among the reading
public. The GBO organizes literary events, recommends German
readers and translators to American publishers, and provides
information on translation funding.
For more information about the GBO’s activities, visit:
www.book-fair.com/en/international/offices_abroad/new_
york
4
ART & LITERATURE
IN THE LIGHT OF DARKNESS
on proust
anita albus: Im Licht der Finsternis. Über
Proust
S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, 224 pages
Rights Contact: Katrin Meerkamp,
[email protected]
anita albus is a painter and writer, and lives
in Munich and Burgundy. Her minutely detailed
nature studies of plants, birds, and butterflies have
been widely exhibited. She has written short stories
(including “Liebesbande”), novels (Farfallone)
and a number of volumes of essays on art history
including “Die Kunst der Künste.” Her most recent
publication was the book Von seltenen Vögeln. She
has received various awards for her wide range of
artistic work.
Anita Albus shows us things never before seen in Marcel Proust’s remembrance of
things past; its great variety of layers of meaning that lie within the work. Albus,
a poet herself, understands Proust’s representention of the visibility of the invisible amidst a forest of symbols, beneath a sky spangled with ideas.Anita Albus’
study sheds light on the significance of the religious in Proust’s main work À la
recherche du temps perdu. In a unique way, she brings together perspectives
from natural science and the history of ideas, linking botanical, architectural,
historical art, philosophical, and historical religious knowledge. On the basis of
numerous symbols within the text, Albus breaks down to what extent Proust’s
work can be understood as a religious work.
As well as its unique methodology and new findings, the study is also distinguished by the scholar and artist Anita Albus’ stylistic brilliance. Due to its linguistic elegance and
close reading of Proust’s text, the study is of interest not only to an academic
readership, but also to lovers of Proust and literature in general. The colour illustrations clarify the argumentation and render the work as an attractively designed book.
TRANSLATION FUNDING GUARANTEED
BY GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL
5
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AN ARSENAL OF JEWISH KNOWLEDGE
on the origins of the encyclopa-
edia judaica
arndt engelhardt: Arsenale jüdischen Wissens. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der »Encyclopaedia Judaica«
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, xxx Pages
Rights Contact:
Margarita Wolf, [email protected]
dr. arndt engelhardt is Assistant to the Director
at the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History
and Culture at the University of Leipzig. He studied
History, Comparative Literature, and German Literature and Language in Leipzig and at the University of Coimbra, Portugal (2000/2001). His current
research focuses on Jewish Publishing Cultures in
the 19th century.
Based on the history of the German-language »Encyclopaedia Judaica,« the author studies Jewish knowledge cultures during the 19th
and 20th centuries. The »Encyclopaedia Judaica« first appeared in
Berlin between 1928 and 1934. It was the fruit of the work of many
Jewish authors, scholars and politicians from various countries who
took up the ideas of other, existing encyclopedias and expanded on
them. Using the history of the »Encyclopaedia Judaica« as an example, Arndt Engelhardt traces the paths of Jewish knowledge cultures in
the 19th and 20th centuries. He interprets the publication of these
volumes as the strategic attempt to create a new Jewish canon of
culture and science in modern times.
GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL RECOMMENDS
GBO GERMAN BOOK OFFICE NEW YORK, INC. | 72 SPRING STREET | ELEVENTH FLOOR | NEW YORK, NY 10012 | 212-794-2851 | 212-794-2870 | [email protected] | WWW.NEWYORK.GBO.ORG
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5
HISTORY IN THE SHADOW OF WORLD WAR.
The Ustaša’s Mass Violence against Serbs,
Jews, and Roma in Croatia, 1941–1945
In World War II, Croatia was nominally an independent state, but was in fact divided into German and Italian occupation zones, and was one of the most multiethnic regions in Hitler’s Europe. Ending this diversity was the goal of the Croatian Ustaša, founded in 1929 as a militant, “völkisch-nationalistic” organization
by Zagreb attorney Ante Paveli. The civil war initiated by the Ustaša militias was
intended to transform Croatia into an ethnically homogenous national state. To
date, the Ustaša have been generally perceived either as Hitler’s henchmen or as
irrational, murderous nationalists who were responsible for the deaths of half a
million people.
Korb challenges both interpretations to explore how and why mass violence
evolved in Croatia, when it accelerated, and how it declined. An introductory
chapter on the Ustaša, their ideology, plans, and relations with the Germans
and Italians is followed by in-depth analysis of violence as part of “ethnic homogenization,” massacres perpetrated as part of civil war, and mass violence
within camps.
Korb shows how the Ustaša skillfully played the Germans and Italians against
each other and how civil war served them as a means of promoting their own
independence. Violence against Serbs, Jews, and Roma, he argues, were closely
intertwined; persecution of the Jews cannot be fully understood without consideration of the radicalization of anti-Serbian policies. Moreover, the microregional context, local warlordism, geography, and factors such as crop harvests
played a significant role in determining the trajectory of violence. But as this
prize-winning book also reveals, the Ustaša were increasingly controlled by the
dynamics of the violence they unleashed. The mass murder of Serbs, Jews, and
Roma were as much a result of the Ustaša’s loss of control in a disintegrating
state as it was the manifestation of a policy of ethnic purity.
TRANSLATION FUNDING GUARANTEED
BY GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL
Alexander Korb was awarded the Geisteswissenschaften International Award
alexander korb: Im Schatten des Weltkriegs.
Massengewalt der Ustaša gegen Serben, Juden
und Roma in Kroatien 1941–1945
Hamburger Edition, 510 Pages
Rights Contact:
Paula Bradish,
[email protected]
alexander korb is a historian and lecturer in modern European history at the University of Leicester
and acting director of the university’s Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. His
study has won the Wiener Library’s Fraenkel Prize,
the Herbert Steiner Prize 2012, the Irma Rosenberg
Award, and the Andrej Mitrovic Prize.
HISTORY
2013, view the laudatio here: bit.ly/1gvQhr7.
FORTUNE TELLING IN THE
ANCIENT ORIENT
Exploring God’s will was a part of everyday life for people in the
ancient Near East - no matter whether they were the king of
Assur or a simple craftsman, a wealthy merchant or a poor widow.
Those who could afford it sacrificed an immaculate sheep, from
whose liver the ritual priest could read divine answers. Countless
cuneiform tablets, which were found in the archives of the fallen
high cultures, testify this. Every public action and every war campaign was prepared with the help of a detailed questioning of the
Gods; but even those who were worried ‘just’ about their private
love life or the success of a journey sought the advice of priests
and Gods. Stefan M. Maul has been researching about fortunetelling in the ancient Near East for years and now presents us
with a masterful overview of this fascinating topic. He succeeds
in showing how the process of fortune-telling was highly coveted and top secret knowledge that the political elite tried to keep
from their enemies and even used for their own purpose and
propaganda.
GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL RECOMMENDS
stefan m. maul: Die Wahrsagekunst im Alten
Orient
Verlag C.H. Beck, 423 Pages
Rights Contact:
Susanne Simor, [email protected]
stefan m. maul, Prof. Dr.hc, was born in 1958. He
studied Assyriology, Near Eastern Archaeology,
and Egyptology at the University of Göttingen. He
has made many guest professor appearances over
the years, and has been the Dean of the Faculty
of Arts of the University of Heidelberg since 2012.
Since 2013, he has been a member of the National
Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
GBO GERMAN BOOK OFFICE NEW YORK, INC. | 72 SPRING STREET | ELEVENTH FLOOR | NEW YORK, NY 10012 | 212-794-2851 | 212-794-2870 | [email protected] | WWW.NEWYORK.GBO.ORG
6
HISTORY
THE WARSAW GHETTO
In the same way that Auschwitz represents the mass murder of European Jews,
Warsaw represents the Ghetto of the Holocaust. Here, about 500,000 people
were penned in, more people than in any other ghetto in occupied Europe. And
here the persecuted Jews resisted against their German tormentors. The SS was
not able to defeat the Jewish rebellion for several weeks in the spring of 1943.
markus roth & andrea löw: Das
Warschauer Getto
Verlag C. H. Beck, 240 pages
Rights Contact: Susanne Simor,
[email protected]
Andrea Löw and Markus Roth describe the ghetto’s and the people’s history
powerfully. They starved, got sick, suffered, and were scared. But these people reacted very differently to the persecution and humiliation. Many fought
a heroic fight without weapons as well: against hunger and sickness, for the
education of their children, for a cultural life, and physical as well as psychological self-assertion. Their efforts to organize a life that included culture and
music, to help others, and to maintain love and friendship are the focus of this
book. Those who were persecuted are given a chance to speak for themselves
through their diaries and memories. For the first time, the reader can view a
living picture of everyday life in a ghetto.
7
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dr. markus roth is vice-director and the chair of
Holocaust Literature at the University of Gießen.
TRANSLATION FUNDING GUARANTEED
BY GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL
dr. andrea löw is research assistant at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.
ARTS & LITERATURE
CINEMA ARTS
What film can teach us about ourselves.
From its very beginnings, film has adopted many practices of architecture, music,
painting, theatre, literature, and other arts – but it does not leave them unchanged. Cinema can do the things it does because it adopts and adapts what
other arts can do.
martin seel: Die Künste des Kinos
S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, 256 Pages
Rights Contact:
Katrin Meerkamp, [email protected]
In his new book, Martin Seel sets out to analyse this connection. In nine concise
and elegantly written chapters, he explores the aesthetic potential unique to film
and uses specific examples to demonstrate the many different ways this potential
can be realized. Martin Seel has developed a new perspective on film and what
it does to us once we are in the cinema.
GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL RECOMMENDS
martin seel, born in Ludwigshafen am Rhein in
1954, is a professor of philosophy at the Johann
Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. His
recent publications include Sich bestimmen lassen.
Studien zur theoretischen und praktischen Philosophie (2002), Paradoxien der Erfüllung. Philosophische Essays (2006) and Die Macht des Erscheinens.
Texte zur Ästhetik (2007).
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7
HISTORY FRITZ BAUER
or auschwitz on trial
In 1963, the word “Auschwitz” burst into German living rooms. A charge was
brought against 22 former Nazi henchmen and a major court case began in
Frankfurt. It was thanks to one man and one man alone that the case even
saw the light of day: Fritz Bauer, chief public prosecutor in Hesse. A social
democrat with Jewish roots, Bauer just about managed to flee the country in
1936. He was the man that made German post-war society talk and brought
Adolf Eichmann to trial in Israel. In the restorative climate of the Adenauer
era, the jurist Bauer became a controversial figure, an individual that enraged his guild and made many enemies: “When I leave my office, I enter
enemy country” is how he described his situation. Ronen Steinke tells us
about the life of a man whose courage saved Germany’s honour and changed
an entire nation.
GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN INTERNATIONAL RECOMMENDS
ronen steinke: Fritz Bauer oder Auschwitz vor
Gericht
Piper Verlag GmbH, 352 Pages
Rights Contact:
Sarah Reinbacher, [email protected]
ronen steinke, dr. jur., born in 1983 in Erlangen, works as a journalist for the daily newspaper SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG. He studied law and
criminology and worked for law offices as well as
a juvenile prison, before going on to work with
the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in
The Hague. His doctoral thesis about the development of war crime tribunals from Nuremberg to
The Hague was hailed as a “masterpiece” by the
renowned daily FAZ.
HISTORY
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
the history of europe in
our time
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet bloc began to crumble, the coordinates of world politics shifted. The most palpable consequences, however,
were felt in Europe. Andreas Wirsching identifies here the first patterns in our
most recent history and provides an important contribution to the understanding of current developments.
In the last twenty years, Europe has experienced massive growth in freedom
– in politics, society, and economics. In a certain sense the present crisis presents us with the bill for this development. The democratic transformation of
Eastern European nations has come at a price, as did the introduction of the
Euro, which led to unprecedented freedom in the flow of goods, services, and
capital. The deregulation of financial markets has imposed costs for which the
continent will pay dearly. And will Europe, as a world power, be able to afford
intervention on behalf of freedom and human rights elsewhere in the world?
Andreas Wirsching offers here an impressive synthesis of political, social,q
and economic developments in Europe since 1989, making it the first history
of a unified Europe.
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andreas wirsching: Der Preis der Freiheit.
Geschichte Europas in unserer Zeit
CH Beck Verlag, 489 Pages
Rights Contact:
Susanne Simor,
[email protected]
andreas wirsching, born in 1959, is professor
for modern and contemporary history at Ludwig
Maximilian University in Munich and director of the
Institute for Contemporary History. C.H. Beck published his Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert
(German History in the 20th Century) in 2011.
GBO GERMAN BOOK OFFICE NEW YORK, INC. | 72 SPRING STREET | ELEVENTH FLOOR | NEW YORK, NY 10012 | 212-794-2851 | 212-794-2870 | [email protected] | WWW.NEWYORK.GBO.ORG
8
HISTORY
IDEOLOGY AND THE RATIONALITY OF
DOMINATION:
nazi germanization policies in
poland
Researchers who have studied Nazi policies in occupied Poland, especially in the western regions
annexed by the Third Reich, seem to agree in their findings: not only did the occupiers rule with
extreme brutality, the SS succeeded in implementing its radical program of installing a new “racial
order.”
Gerhard Wolf has taken an in-depth look at how the various institutions involved in the occupa-
gerhard wolf: Ideologie und Herrschaftsrati-
tion in Poland—including the SS, the civil administrations, and the Reich Ministry of the Interior—
onalität. Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen
Hamburger Edition, 528 Pages
complex and, at times, astonishing reality, fraught with conflict and dissent between the actors
Rights Contact: Paula Bradish
[email protected]
opposed this. A key motive was their intention of pacifying and integrating a large part of the Pol-
formulated programs and policies and how these operated in practice. His findings reveal a more
involved. The SS indeed insisted on allowing only a chosen few of the inhabitants of these territories to be Germanized and based their selection primarily on “racial” criteria; local administrators
ish majority under Nazi rule. Consequently, they applied broader cultural or political definitions
of who was to be considered German.
dr. gerhard wolf is Lecturer in German History at
the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of
Sussex. His research in the history of Nazi Germany
focuses on occupation policies in eastern Europe,
population policies, and the causes of racism and
anti-Semitism.
Moreover, economic interests were of increasing importance in determining what policies were
implemented for Poland and its population. With the attack on the Soviet Union, it became clear
that the war could only be won if the German economy received a steady supply of laborers to
replace the German men who were being drafted. Thus, rather than deporting Poles to the East as
originally planned, more and more people were sent westward to work in factories and on farms
within the “Altreich.”
Wolf demonstrates how racist ideology and the demands of attempting to establish a viable system of domination while sustaining a war economy clashed and ultimately led to a surprising and
hitherto barely recognized result. In practice, the SS and its adherence to strict racial criteria when
dealing with the population in the occupied territories more often than not gave way to policies
shaped by other Nazi authorities, who chose instead to adopt more flexible strategies. Although
neither the goal of persecuting and annihilating the Jewish population, nor the aim of extending
German domination to all of Europe was questioned, the ways in which these goals were to be
reached diverged significantly.
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