Authors

Lukas Michael Joura¹;  ¹ Europa-Universität Viadrina, Germany

Discussion

The presentation deals with the editorial history and reception of the novel Sobor (English: "Cathedral," Kyiv 1968) by the Ukrainian writer Oles Honchar in both German states at the end of the 1960s and the end of the 1980s. Two attempts to publish a German translation in the GDR failed, while a German translation from the Ukrainian literary diaspora in West Germany was able to appear (Der Dom von Satschipljanka, Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 1970).
Previously unpublished documents from the archives of GDR publishers and ministerial archives will form the basis on which a publication history of the novel Sobor can be traced, embedded both in the censorship procedures and the highly politicised literary-historical context. Furthermore, the novel demonstrates the mutual influence and (negated) entanglements of the West and East German literary landscapes, particularly in the area of Ukrainian literature in Germany. By revealing the institutional set-up of the publishing industry and their cooperation between the Wqarsaw Pact stats, the novel of Honchar reveals the specific nature of the reception of Ukrainian literature in the GDR Translationskultur, which was caught in a tension between West Germany and the centralized Soviet literary system.