Edition Practices

Zentrum für Literaturforschung

Warlam Schalamov-Edition

Franziska Thun Hohenstein

Warlam Schalamov-Edition

Dr. Franziska Thun-Hohentstein

The literary work of the Russian poet and author Varlam Shalamov (1907-1982) remained relatively unknown for a long time to the German reading public and other international audiences. He did, however, establish a prominent position for himself in twentieth-century literature thanks to the literary caliber of his critique of Stalin’s regime of violence, especially in his six cycles of short stories entitled, »The Kolyma Tales«. In his writings on Soviet ›camp civilization‹, Shalamov develops an extremely dense and sober literary style, making him something of a contrasting figure, aesthetically speaking, to Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. In addition to the editorial coordination of publishing Shalamov’s works, this project is also concerned with situating Varlam Shalamov within international debates on »writing after the GULag« and »writing after Auschwitz«.

In 2007 the publishers Matthes & Seitz Berlin began the multivolume collection of Shalamov’s works with Erzählungen aus Kolyma 1 – Warlam Schalamow: Durch den Schnee [The Kolyma Tales 1 – Varlam Schalamov: Through the Snow]. The collection is translated by Gebriele Leupold and edited by Franziska Thun-Hohenstein. Each volume features annotations, a glossary, and an afterword.

The publication of The Kolyma Tales cycles was completed in 2011. The subsequent volumes contain two autobiographical prose pieces (»Das vierte Wologda« [The Fourth Vologda] and »Wischera« [Vishera]) in addition to reminiscences, essays, letters (to B. Pasternak, A. Solzhenitsyn, and N. Mandelstam, among others), and selected poems

Ernst Jünger's Letter Archive

Ernst Jünger's Letter Archive

Detlev Schöttker

Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) assembled a letter archive containing 130,000 documents, which he systematically organized and kept at his home in Wilflingen. Today it is part of his literary estate held at the German Literature Archive in Marbach and includes approximately 90,000 letters to him (from around 5000 correspondents) and some 40,000 letters by him preserved as transcriptions or copies. The letters are significant both to Jünger’s opus in terms of his literary production and its reception but also more broadly in terms of 20th-century literary and political history. They constitute a documentary basis for his autobiographical writings and diary chronicles, in which he often refers to his correspondence. Beyond their value in relation to Jünger’s work as an author, they are also important as historical sources given Jünger’s role as a writer and political player with close contacts to a variety of different people over many decades.