¶ Kurt Wagenseil wird in der Sekundärliteratur zu Vita Sackville-West als Freund Harold Nicolsons bezeichnet, der auch einige seiner Werke übersetzte. Nicolson konnte erreichen, dass Kurt 1935 aus dem Konzentrationslager Dachau entlassen wird. Laut den Wiedergutmachungsprozessakten von 1951 war Kurt zudem der Privatsekretär Nicolsons als Botschaftsrat 1928/29 in Berlin. Hans B. Wagenseil wiederum gilt als der Übersetzer einiger Werke Vitas sowie von Kurzprosastücken von Harold, Virginia, Clive Bell und Edward Sackville-West.
¶ In the research literature on Vita Sackville-West, Kurt Wagenseil is described as a friend of Harold Nicolson, who also translated some of his works. Nicolson was able to get Kurt released from the Dachau concentration camp in 1935. According to the reparation trial files of 1951, Kurt was also Nicolson's private secretary as embassy counsellor in Berlin in 1928/29. Hans B. Wagenseil, in turn, is considered the translator of some of Vita's works as well as short prose pieces by Harold, Virginia, Clive Bell and Edward Sackville-West.
Das Foto rechts zeigt Kurt Wagenseil. The photo on the right shows Kurt Wagenseil.
Bild "Virginia Woolf" von Barret Anspach unter Creative-Commons-Lizenz CC BY 2.0 (modifiziert).
Virgina Woolf an Clive Bell, Nr. 1846, Saturday 21st Jan [1928] ("Published in 2013, Woolf Online is currently a digital archive of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse [1927]"): "We are back again. And here's your letter about Wagenseil. I will send a copy of Monday or Tuesday, but Wagenseil has been pestering us for some time - asking for my books and offering his own and never paying - so I haven't much hopes. Mrs Dalloway is coming out in Germany soon - so is the Lighthouse I think." (Fußnote: "Hans B. Wagenseil [...] In 1929 he published in Die Neue Rundschau his translation of Virginia's An Unwritten Novel, a story in Monday or Tuesday").
Virginia Woolf schreibt an Vita Sackville-West, Nr. 1868, am 6.3.1928: "Eddy writes a very very testy letter about Herr Wagenseil. Never have I met anyone so frankly peevish".
Daniel Göskle u. Christian Weiß: "'What a curse these translators are!' Woolf's early German reception"; in: The Edinburgh Campanion to Virginia Woolf and Contemporary Global Literature, ed. by Jeanne Dubino et al., Ediburgh, S. 25-41, insb. S. 25f.: "In her [Vita's] attempt to promote [Margaret] Voigt[-Goldsmith], Vita saucerly compared herself to her cousin Eddy Sackville-West's untiring support for Harold Nicolson's German translator and friend, Kurt Wagenseil: 'Really it seems a pity that you should not be translated in German, as they all know about you here; so if you can do anything about Margaret Voigt I think you should. There. (Now I am going on like Eddy about Kurt Wagenseil).' [1985: 277 = 14 March 1928] Over the next five years Wagenseil and his brother Hans - who try to establish themselves as agents, scouts and freelance translators - wrote many urgent letters to Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press requesting among other translation rights." [am 20?. März 1928 schreibt sie auch Vita in Bezug auf deren "Bosom [!] friend Mrs. Voigt" den diesen Aufsatz betitelnden Ausruf "What a curse these translators are!", aber auch: "Orlando is finished!"].
Nr. 1976, am 29.12.1928: "[...] which reminds me: Eddy. His blood is not his strong point. It's his damned aristocratic thin-blooded, bubbly prickly weakly temper that annoys one; so would you hand on to him, tactfully, (for I cant be bothered to write another letter and be snubbed for it) that we can't meet [Kurt] Wagenseil? Charming, virtuos, accomplished as Wagenseil is, it is to avoid Wagenseil that we come to Berlin - Yes Vita: we come to Berlin." (Virginia Woolf: The Complete Collection, 2017).
Bild: William Strang (1859-1921): Lady with a Red Hat (Vita Sackville-West), Glasgow Museums, 1918.
Vita schreibt an Virginia am 6.1.1929: "[Kurt] Wagenseil, - yes, I'd queered Wagenseil's pitch before I ever got your letter. [450] I told Eddy firmly that you didn't wish to meet anyone, least of all Wagenseil. Then I met Wagenseil myself. He is a beautiful, brown, lean, young man like a Spanish captain, with melancholy eyes and a twisted mouth; very attractive. But still I was obdurate. A wall has been built between Wagenseil and you." (The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, 1984).
Brief von John Lehmann an Rosamond Lehmann, 7.4.1932, modernistarchives.com, University of Reading, Special Collections, UoR_MS 2750_238: "Leonhard and Virginia both think he [Hans Wagenseil] is a villain, that you are unlikely to get proper payment, that he may publish the translation in quitely the wrong paper, that he won't tell you which it is until it's to late for objections to make any difference, and that ever after you'll be at his mercy - [...]".
Alison Martin: "Reframing the Past: Post-War German Periodical Culture and Hans B. Wagenseil's Translation of Vita Sackville-West's Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour", Letteratura & Letterature, 2020, S. 7: "Kurt was certainly a figure whom Sackville-West avoided, having swiftly labelled him a 'bore' [28: See letter of 2nd June 1937 and of 10th July 1947 from Sackville-West to Nicolson]".
Vgl. auch Harold Nicolson: "The Charm of Berlin", Der Querschnitt, 5 (1929: S. 345); Nicolson, "Diaries and Letters 1907-1964", ed. Nigel Nicolson (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004); Violet & Vita [ext.]; "List of Bloomsbury Group people".
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