Misplaced Pages

Christian Enzensberger

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
German professor and translator (1931–2009)
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (November 2021) Click for important translation instructions.
  • View a machine-translated version of the German article.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Christian Enzensberger}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Christian Enzensberger" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
(Learn how and when to remove this message)

Christian Enzensberger
man with glasses in raincoat and umbrella looking right
Born(1931-12-24)24 December 1931
Nuremberg, Germany
Died27 January 2009(2009-01-27) (aged 77)
Munich, Germany
OccupationProfessor of English Literature
NationalityGerman
Notable worksSmut: An Anatomy of Dirt; translation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Alice through the Looking-Glass

Christian Enzensberger (24 December 1931 – 27 January 2009) was a German Professor of English studies, author and a translator of English literature into German.

Life

Born in Nuremberg, Enzensberger was one of the more enigmatic figures in German letters. Younger brother of the literary celebrity and political figure Hans Magnus Enzensberger, he maintained a relatively low media profile throughout his career, in spite of being embroiled in one of the more interesting literary scandals of early 70s Germany.

From 1969 until 1994, Enzensberger held a post as Professor of English Literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is today chiefly known in Germany for his 1963 translation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking-Glass.

In 1970, Enzensberger became the only author ever to refuse the Literaturpreis der Stadt Bremen, offered in the wake of the publication of Größerer Versuch über den Schmutz (translated by Sandra Morris and published by Calder & Boyars in 1972 as Smut: An Anatomy of Dirt). The book generated a furore when it was first published in Germany, not least due to its linking of personal cleanliness with totalitarianism. Smut is an experimental work in which dirt is described scientifically, personally and perversely by a panoply of narrative voices, including fragments from the anthropologist Mary Douglas alongside writers from Samuel Beckett through William S. Burroughs to Jean Genet. It has since then fallen into neglect and remains out of print in both English and German.

He died in Munich in January 2009.

Published works (selection)

  • Größerer Versuch über den Schmutz. 1968 (Smut: An Anatomy of Dirt. 1972, translated by Sandra Morris) published in the U.S. by Continuum Books in 1974.
  • Viktorianische Lyrik. Tennyson und Swinburne in der Geschichte der Entfremdung. Hanser Verlag, München 1969
  • Literatur und Interesse – Eine politische Ästhetik mit zwei Beispielen aus der englischen Literatur. Band 1: Theorie. Band 2: Beispiele, Shakespeare ‚Der Kaufmann von Venedig’, Dickens ‚Oliver Twist’. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977 (Zweite, fortgeschriebene Fassung 1981, ISBN 3-518-27902-5)
  • Brief an Herbert Marcuse. Akzente. Issue 1, Volume 25. February 1978
  • Was ist was. Greno Verlag, Nördlingen 1987, ISBN 3-891-90233-6

Translations (selection)

Secondary literature (selection)

  • Review of Größerer Versuch über den Schmutz by Wolfgang Hildesheimer published in Der Spiegel, issue 1, 1969 page 96 under the headline Sauber ist nicht Schön

References

  1. Enzensberger, Christian (1974). Smut; an anatomy of dirt. New York: Seabury Press. ISBN 0-8164-9183-6. OCLC 704932.
Categories: