Literary Translations

Wolfgang Borchert

One of the briefest and. most tragic writing careers of the 20th century was that of Wolfgang Borchert. Born in Hamburg in 1921, Borchert was drafted into the German infantry in 1941 and assigned to the Russian front where he was critically wounded. His statements against the Third Reich earned him a death sentence -- suspended so he could be sent back to the Russian front. Failing health left him ill fit for such rigors however, and upon receiving a medical discharge, he was promptly retried for his anti-Hitler statements and sent to prison. Set free at war's end by American troops in southern Germany, the only way he could get home to Hamburg was to walk -- a distance of nearly 400 miles.

Physically broken, Borchert lived barely two years after the war, yet it was during this brief time that he turned out virtually all of his writings. His most successful work was a drama, Draußen vor der Tür (The Outsider), performed originally as a radio play and aired for the first time in Hamburg the evening following his death. He was 26.

Borchert's short stories are all miniatures -- bleak vignettes of life in cold, war-plagued surroundings. The links that follow are my translations of four of his best (plus my script for a film short based on one of them). Borchert focuses on the residue of war, mostly the unfortunate human residue who must pick up living again where devastation left off. His descriptions are stark and photographic. He waves no banners, drums no morals -- his word portraits and landscapes speak their own haunting truths. His style is marked by repetition of key words and phrases, fine metaphor and dialogue without quotation marks.

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The Three Dark Kings (short story)
After All, Rats Sleep at Night (short story)
After All, Rats Sleep at Night (script for film short)

Jesus Wants Nothing More to Do With It (short story)
My Pale Brother (short story)

Bertolt Brecht

The most prominent figure in 20th century European theatre, dramatist Bertolt Brecht also worked with limited success in Germany and Hollywood as a screenwriter and producer. Brecht is credited as co-author of the screenplays for five movies and numerous scenarios for films which never saw production. His first film script, an adaptation of his own Three Penny Opera, was directed by G.W. Pabst. But the film's producers objected to Brecht's political slant, and by the time it was completed and shot, the script retained little Brechtian flavor.

The screenplays and pitch scenarios from Brecht's Hollywood exile period (1941-47) all fell victim of the industry's assembly line approach to film making. This is particularly so of Hangmen Also Die (auteured by Fritz Lang) and an adaptation of Brecht's Herr Puntila. His Mother Courage script languished in development purgatory more than three years, only to be pulled from production shortly after shooting began and never finished. Overall the Brecht film experience was a dismal disappointment.

The only film project through which Brecht achieved any real degree of satisfaction was his own independent production of Kuhle Wampe (1932) which he co-wrote with Ernst Ottwald. Despite scholarly debate that Brecht contributed only storyline, sparse dialogue and his not-insignificant name to the script, while it was Ottwald who was the main writer on the project, Kuhle Wampe is a significant work of Weimar era German cinema and remains unquestionably the best example of Brechtian film.

There is precious little material on Brecht and film in English translation. The links that follow are my translations of two Brecht essays regarding Kuhle Wampe and a script excerpt of the film's opening act as they were published in the Winter 1982 issue of Prism International. As no copy of the original script is known to have survived, my work is a transcription/translation from the film itself. The complete script translation may be requested via email.

Kuhle Wampe (Or Who Owns the World?) (screenplay)
Sound Film: Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? (essay)
A Small Contribution on the Topic of Realism (essay)