Project Man­ag­er: Dr. Mar­tin Christof-Füch­sle
Direc­tion: Prof. Dr. Ravi Ahu­ja
Project Sta­tus: running 

The project exam­ines trans­la­tions from mod­ern Indi­an lan­guages, includ­ing Indi­an Eng­lish, which were pub­lished in the GDR amid ten­sions between ide­ol­o­gy and cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy. With ref­er­ence to the offi­cial frame­work con­di­tions of pub­lish­ing in the GDR, which were char­ac­ter­ized by insti­tu­tion­al­ized cen­sor­ship, the dis­course on the polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the text and the author is analysed. In addi­tion, the lit­er­ary and aes­thet­ic eval­u­a­tion of the texts is of inter­est, espe­cial­ly with regard to a pos­tu­lat­ed ide­al of “inter­na­tion­al con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture” accept­able to the GDR as a “read­ing nation.” Between 1963 and 1990, there were a total of about 45 such trans­la­tions from Indi­an lan­guages, which were often ini­tial­ly medi­at­ed through Eng­lish or Russian.

Three con­tri­bu­tions are planned. One arti­cle, which has already been pub­lished and is based on a lec­ture giv­en at the con­fer­ence ‘Nodes of Trans­la­tion: Rethink­ing Mod­ern Intel­lec­tu­al His­to­ry between South Asia and Ger­many (7–9 July 2022)’, pro­vides an intro­duc­tion to the cen­sor­ship sys­tem in the GDR and an overview of the dis­cus­sion of the most inter­est­ing and con­tro­ver­sial works by Indi­an authors in trans­la­tion. (‘Inter­na­tion­al GDR Lit­er­a­ture, Cen­sor­ship and the Pub­li­ca­tion of Trans­la­tions from Mod­ern Indi­an Lan­guages in the GDR,’ in Nodes of Trans­la­tion. Intel­lec­tu­al His­to­ry between Mod­ern India and Ger­many, ed. Mar­tin Christof-Füch­sle and Razak Khan, 293–322. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024.)

A case study will exam­ine the image of Rabindranath Tagore that pre­vailed in the GDR in the late 1950s, as reflect­ed in the expert opin­ions on appli­ca­tions for print­ing per­mits for trans­la­tions of his works – the ‘cen­sor­ship doc­u­ments’ – and then analyse how this image changed in lec­tures, aca­d­e­m­ic and pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture, and com­mem­o­ra­tive address­es fol­low­ing the GDR lead­er­ship’s deci­sion to par­tic­i­pate promi­nent­ly in the cel­e­bra­tions mark­ing the 100th birth­day of the Ben­gali author in 1961, which in turn was reflect­ed in the ‘cen­sor­ship doc­u­ments’ that were sub­se­quent­ly created.

A final con­tri­bu­tion sup­ple­ments the dis­cus­sion of the genre of reportage and trav­el lit­er­a­ture on India as writ­ten by Ger­man-speak­ing authors in the GDR. Here, too, the doc­u­men­ta­tion of the print­ing approval process is analysed in order to demon­strate how and to what extent the cen­sor­ship author­i­ties, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs or the par­ty inter­vened in the cre­ation of these orig­i­nal texts in order to paint a pic­ture of India that was in line with the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion – an influ­ence on the writ­ing process that is not pos­si­ble in this way when trans­lat­ing for­eign-lan­guage texts.

All three con­tri­bu­tions will also focus on the role of the actors involved – pub­lish­ing edi­tors, review­ers, trans­la­tors and cul­tur­al offi­cials. I assume that the analy­ses of the eval­u­a­tions of lit­er­ary works from mod­ern South Asian lan­guages will show that they reflect the polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in the GDR, inter­nal cul­tur­al pol­i­cy and bilat­er­al rela­tions between India and the GDR. This should shed light on the role of trans­la­tions in the GDR’s cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy towards India before and after the polit­i­cal recog­ni­tion of the GDR. Sim­i­lar­ly, the analy­sis of reportage and trav­el lit­er­a­ture will shed light on the rela­tions between the GDR and India and high­light the offi­cial images of India pre­vail­ing in the GDR. In this way, I hope to be able to place both these works and the pub­lished trans­la­tions in the broad­er con­text of the inter­twined rela­tions between South Asia and the GDR in the fields of lit­er­a­ture, cul­ture and politics.