Literatura i życie
Literature and Life

Józef Wittlin’s Cooperation with Walter Landauer and Translations of “Sól ziemi” (“Salt of the Earth”)

Summary/Abstract: The author analyses 107 letters written in German which make up Józef Wittlin’s correspondence with Walter Landauer, an editor of Allert de Lange publishing house, where in the year 1937 a German translation of Józef Wittlin’s “Sól ziemi” (“Salt of the Earth”) was released. The letters cover the period from January 1936 to March 1940 and they lack letters from the years 1937 and 1939. The preserved pieces refer mainly to the circumstances of publishing Wittlin’s book in German, but also contain pieces of information about the wirter’s biography from that period. The article briefly presents the war fortune of the two correspondents, namely Wittlin’s departure from Europe and the beginning of his stay in the USA, and Landauer’s desperate attempts to flee from Holland which ended with his capturing by the Nazi and his following death in Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp. To add, the paper presents a fragment of the then literary life in Europe. Wittlin’s book achieved a great artistic and commercial success, Allert de Lange publishing house made a contribution to emigration literature of 1930s, and Landauer is an example of a publisher who not only in exemplary fashion fulfilled his professional obligations, but also reveal his unbiased interest in the problems of the authors with whom he cooperated.

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