Mistress of Mediation - the German-American Publisher Helen Wolff (1906-1994). A Biographical Study in the Publishing History of the 20th Century from a Gendered and Transnational Perspective

20世纪世纪的精品图书出版社曾经是意义和解释的生产和建立的聚集地、焦点。将历史作为物质、精神和社会条件的历史出版，使我们能够研究世界观是如何形成的，资源是如何建立的，区别是如何达到的，以及象征性统治是如何组织的。然而，迄今为止，这方面的两个方面被广泛忽视：1）出版的跨国和跨文化层面：翻译业务和文化间调解和营销任务以及出版中的跨国网络; 2）出版的性别历史：性别结构和性别角色，创造并伴随着出版商的男性概念，在一个非常吸引和整合女性的行业中，特别的方式。该项目希望通过传记研究的方式来探讨这些方面：一项关于一位出版界人物的研究，这位人物从20世纪40年代到世纪末在欧洲-大西洋两岸的文学网络中占有关键地位。海伦·沃尔夫（1906-1994）是著名出版商库尔特·沃尔夫（1887-1963）的妻子和遗孀，1933年从德国移民，1941年美国出版社万神殿图书的共同创始人，以及1961年大型出版公司哈科特斯出版社内欧洲文学的印记。她为大量德国和欧洲作家（君特·格拉斯、马克斯·弗里希、乌韦·约翰逊、伊塔洛·卡尔维诺、乔治·西梅农等）打开了美国-美国市场，并成为不同文化之间的桥梁。该项目将解构具有国际影响力的出版商的形象，这种形象已被她自己的自传分期和保守的出版历史所僵化，并将试图在新的标准下重新发展这一形象。我在洪堡大学的职位上已经为该项目做好了充分的准备，现在将通过资金完成。随后，我想在一个继续的项目中检查其结果的代表性和范围，将出版史重新构想为一部性别化和跨国的纠缠史。

Quality trade book publishing houses in 20th century used to be meeting places, focal points, for the production and establishment of meanings and interpretations. Publishing history as the history of the material, mental and social conditions allows us to examine how world views are created, how resources are built, how distinction is reached and how symbolic rule is organised. Two aspects of this have so far been widely neglected, though: 1) the transnational and transcultural dimension of publishing: the translation business and intercultural mediation and marketing tasks and the transnational networks in publishing; and 2) the gender history of publishing: gender constructions and gender roles that created and accompanied the male concept of the publisher in a business which attracted and integrated women in a very special way. The project wants to look into these dimensions by way of a biographical study: a study about a publishing figure that had a key position in the european-transatlantic literary networks from the 1940s until the end of the century. Helen Wolff (1906-1994) was the wife and widow of the famous publisher Kurt Wolff (1887-1963), emigrated from Germany 1933, co-founder of the US-american publishing house Pantheon Books 1941 and of the imprint for european literature A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book within the big publishing concern Harcourt, Brace 1961. She opened the US-american market to a great number of german and european writers (Günter Grass, Max Frisch, Uwe Johnson, Italo Calvino, Georges Simenon and many more) and worked as a bridge between the different cultures. The project will deconstruct the image of the internationally influencial publisher that has been rigidified by her own autobiographical stagings as much as by a conserving publishing history, and it will try to re-develop this image under new criteria. The project has been well prepared in my position at Humboldt University and shall now be completed by funding. Subsequently I want to examine the representativity and the scope of its results in a carry on project, to re-conceive publishing history as a gendered and transnational history of entanglements.