Essays

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Germany had initially little interest in contemporary literature from South Asia. This was also the case with the universities. The Indology focused almost exclusively on ancient Indian Sanskrit texts. Translations from languages such as Hindi, Bengali or Tamil were virtually non-existent.

The establishment of the South Asian Institute in Heidelberg in 1962 signified a new orientation. Firstly, the name itself was conspicuous of the entire cultural region, "South Asia" and not just the largest country, "India". Secondly, contemporary South Asia was now declared a research priority as well. Besides Sanskrit, even contemporary South Asian languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Urdu were now being taught at the Heidelberg South Asia Institute.

The appointment of the philologist, Lothar Lutze (1927-2015) as the Hindi lecturer in Heidelberg in 1965 was of far-reaching importance. Lothar Lutze was the first person to provide literary, advanced direct-translations from Hindi into German. He was particularly interested in contemporary Hindi poetry. There were poems from Hindi writers like Sachchidandanda Vatsyayan (Ajneya), Raghuvir Sahay, Shrikant Verma, Kailash Vajpeyi, Kedernath Singh, Vishnu Khare, Vishnu Nagar and Girdhar Rathi, which were first translated into German by Lothar Lutze.

Lothar Lutze was also crucially involved with “The New Indian Library”, which was created in 1983. This was a series of direct translations of South Asian literature into German, published by the Wolf Mersch publishers, Freiburg. “The new Indian library” contained important texts like Ajneya’s “The Oxcarts. Hindi Poetry of the Seventies and the Eighties” and, “On the way to the river”. Unfortunately, only about a dozen works could be published in this series.

In 1972, Alokeranjan Dasgupta, an important Bengali poet was appointed as a visiting professor to Heidelberg. He can be regarded as the pioneer of direct translations into German from Bengali. In 1974, he published (together with Lothar Lutze) the volume, “Ganges Delta. Contemporary Bengali poetry from India and Bangladesh”. In 1979, he came up, for the first time, with a German translation of the anthology of his own poems, naming them “A Terracotta Slumber”. This was followed in 1999 by the poetry collection, “The Mystical Saw” (translated by Hans Harder).

From 1970s, there has then been an increase in interest in non-European literature in Germany. The decision of the Frankfurt Book Fair to specifically emphasize the literature of a particular country every year played a major role therein. In 1986, India was designated as the Guest of Honour. For a brief period, even the mainstream media was interested in Indian literature.

Of the books that appeared in 1986, a work that merits special attention is “Blessed be the peacock. Indian poetry of the present,” edited by Alokeranjan Dasgupta (Schneekluth publishers / Munich Edition). This anthology contained 169 poems by 67 Indian authors. The original poems were written in 11 languages (Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, and Urdu). Such a comprehensive collection of high-quality translations of Indian poetry into German had not existed previously. After 1986, the situation was as follows: A few Indian writers (like Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth) were successful in the German book market. Their works, which appeared in large and well-known publishing houses mainly comprised of novels written in English.

Poetry translations - and general translations from South Asian languages - appeared only with small publishers. The Lotus Berlin publishing house with their beautifully crafted volumes containing poems by Dilip Chitre, Gagan Gill, and Alokeranjan Dasgupta deserves special mention here.

Of importance at this time were the far-reaching changes that occurred in the area of the South Asian academic research. At most Indology institutes, Hindi courses were now offered, and in cities such as Cologne (Tamil), Halle (Bengali), or Würzburg (Kannada) one could even learn other contemporary South Asian languages.

At the end of the 20th century there appeared yet another very special work, under the title, “Living Literature. A Trilingual Documentation of Indo-German Literary Exchange” (ed. by Barbara Lotz and Vishnu Khare). This anthology contained prose and poems by 29 Indian and 12 German authors, each in three languages (German, English, and an Indian language). This extensive publication was made possible through a collaboration of the Goethe Institute and the Heidelberg South Asia Institute.