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世纪的优质贸易图书出版社曾经是生产和建立意义和解释的聚集地和焦点。将历史作为物质、精神和社会条件的历史出版，使我们能够审视世界观是如何产生的，资源是如何建立的，区别是如何实现的，象征性规则是如何组织的。然而，这方面的两个方面迄今被广泛忽视：1)出版的跨国和跨文化层面：翻译业务、跨文化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：在一个以非常特殊的方式吸引和融合女性的行业中，创造并伴随出版商男性观念的性别结构和性别角色。该项目希望通过传记研究的方式来探讨这些维度：一项关于一位从20世纪40年代到本世纪末在欧洲-大西洋两岸文学网络中担任关键职位的出版人物的研究。海伦·沃尔夫(1906-1994)是著名出版商库尔特·沃尔夫(Kurt Wolff，1887-1963)的妻子和遗孀，1933年从德国移民，1941年美裔美国出版社Pantheon Books 1941的联合创始人，以及大型出版公司HarCourt，Brace 1961旗下的欧洲文学印记A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book。她向大量的德国和欧洲作家(君特·格拉斯、马克斯·弗里施、乌韦·约翰逊、伊塔罗·卡尔维诺、乔治·西门农等)打开了美美市场，并成为不同文化之间的桥梁。该项目将解构这位具有国际影响力的出版商的形象，她自己的自传阶段和保守的出版史一样僵化了她的形象，它将试图在新的标准下重新发展这一形象。以我在洪堡大学的职位，这个项目已经做好了充分的准备，现在将由资金来完成。随后，我想在一个进行项目中检验其代表性和结果的范围，将出版史重新构想为一部类型化和跨国纠葛的历史。

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.