Curt Meyer-Clason (19 September 1910 – 13 January 2012) was a German writer and translator.
Biography
Meyer-Clason was born in
Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg (; Swabian: ''Ludisburg'') is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about north of Stuttgart city centre, near the river Neckar. It is the largest and primary city of the Ludwigsburg district with about 88,000 inhabitants. It is s ...
in September 1910. After graduating from high school, Meyer-Clason worked as a commercial clerk in
Bremen and from 1936 as an independent businessman in
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
and
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. From 1942 to 1944, he was interned in Brazil as an illegal alien. In 1955 he went back to Germany and worked as a freelance book editor in Munich. From the sixties, his work concentrated on working on translations of Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American books – notably numerous books by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብር ...
including ''
One Hundred Years of Solitude''. From 1969 to 1976 Meyer-Clason acted as head of the
Goethe Institute
The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...
in Lisbon.
Curt Meyer-Clason was a member of the Association of German Writers, the
PEN
A pen is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Early pens such as reed pens, quill pens, dip pens and ruling pens held a small amount of ink on a nib or in a small void or cavity wh ...
Center of the Federal Republic of Germany, and a corresponding member of the
Academia Brasileira de Letras in
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
. He received the following awards: 1975
Translation Prize of the German Academy for Language and Literature, 1978 Translation Prize of the Cultural Committee of the
Federal Association of German Industry (BDI) and in 1996 the
Federal Merit 1st Class.
As of 2008, Meyer-Clason was living in Munich and in 2011 he
turned 100.
He died in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
in January 2012 at the age of 101.
Works
*''Literatura alemana actual'', Asunción 1969
*''Erstens die Freiheit'', Wuppertal 1978
*''Portugiesische Tagebücher'', Königstein/Ts. 1979
*''Äquator'', Bergisch Gladbach 1986
*''Unterwegs'', Bergisch Gladbach 1989
*''Die Menschen sterben nicht, sie werden verzaubert'', München
. a.1990
*''Die große Insel'', Reicheneck 1995
*''Der Unbekannte'', München 1999
*''Bin gleich wieder da'', Weitra 2000
References
External links
*
Curt Meyer-Clason on the website of A1 publisher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer-Clason, Curt
1910 births
2012 deaths
German centenarians
Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Translators to German
Translators from Spanish
Translators from Portuguese
Translators of Gabriel García Márquez
20th-century German translators
20th-century German male writers
German male non-fiction writers
People associated with the Goethe-Institut
Men centenarians