Translating Johanna Kinkel's Hans Ibeles in London

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation is an annotated, academic English translation of Johanna Kinkel’s nineteenth-century, semi-autobiographical novel, Hans Ibeles in London: Ein Familienbild aus dem Flüchtlingsleben, published posthumously by Cotta in 1860. Kinkel was an advocate for the emancipation of women whose career pursuits ranged from that of musical conductor, concert pianist, composer, pedagogue, and musicologist, to revolutionary and political activist and writer. Her novel, written while she lived in exile in London with her husband, Gottfried, and their four children subsequent to the 1848 revolutionary uprisings in Germany, illuminates the historical and cultural specificities of the revolution’s events and its aftermath; it sheds light on the suffering and difficulties of the exilic experience, particularly from the perspective of a woman. In writing this novel, Kinkel sought a specific literary space in which she could process her thoughts and feelings about the reality of displacement and loss. The translation of Kinkel’s novel is preceded by a critical introduction that includes an overview of theory as it applies to exile literature and highlights the parallels between the process of translation and the condition of exile, ultimately showing how Kinkel’s life becomes a project of translation. In this context, this translation invites reflection on how aspects of the exilic experience relate to the act of translation and in this way adds to the evolving body of critical commentary on Kinkel and her novel—considering it both as an object of translation into English and as a document of the problem of “translation” involved in the experience of exile.