Conflicting Images: Anne of Green Gables in Germany

CONFLICTING IMAGES: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES IN GERMANY

The translation history of Anne of Green Gables into German borders on scandal. Translated into Swedish only one year after its original publication, Anne was published in Dutch in 1910, and in Polish in 1912. Six years later a Norwegian and Danish translation followed, two years later a Finnish one, and after that it was translated into French, Japanese, Portuguese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Spanish, Korean, Turkish, Italian, etc., not to mention the high number of editions it experienced in many of these importing countries . However, the most popular and widely read Canadian book ever written did not find its way to Germany until 1986, almost 80 years after its original publication. In the following, I shall firstly explore some of the possible reasons for this most strikingly delayed reception—a mystery given post-war West Germany's prime role in children's literature translations—while in the second part, I will discuss the even more scandalous matter of the only German translation to date.

It could be argued that one reason why none of Montgomery's works were translated before World War II was the denigration of other literatures under National Socialism, a practice also quite prominent in the decades before 1933. It privileged German authors over foreign ones, and resulted in limited activities in the field of translation (see O'Sullivan 2005, 24). Surprisingly though, this had not been the case with imports from Canada: the translation of Canadian children's literature into German had a lively tradition dating back to the end of the 19th century. It marked the historical beginnings and the first success stories of Canadian literature as such in Germany, a phenomenon that finds very few parallels within the history of children's literature transfer worldwide. Canadian children's literature, or what was perceived as such in the target system, was celebrated in Germany long before its ‘adult' counterpart. Besides, children's books make up a remarkably large part of the body of Canadian literature in German translation—another phenomenon that distinguishes Canadian imports from others. Egerton Ryerson Young's and Ernest Thompson Seton's books were translated as early as 1899, followed by Charles G.D. Roberts, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Jack O'Brien, Rutherford George Montgomery, Grey Owl, and Chief Buffalo Child Longlance, all of whom were translated before World War II and remained popular long after that period. Both Seton's and Roberts' animal stories, with their Canadian wilderness settings and their harsh Darwinian principles, had incredibly high levels of circulation in Germany, received rave review,s and appeared in the major recommendation lists for the young. By 1923 over a million books by Seton had been sold, by 1950 52 different titles were on