With the death aged 70 of Harry Rowohlt, Ireland has lost one of its greatest ambassadors in Germany.
With a striking appearance that channelled all members of The Dubliners simultaneously, Rowohlt was a lifelong fan of Ireland since his first visit, a stopover in Shannon, gave him the “inexplicable feeling, for the first time, of coming home”.
He poured this love into his professional life, with dozens of translations of Irish authors, from James Joyce to Ken Bruen. But his masterworks were his translations of Flann O'Brien, which made the Irish Times columnist a posthumous literary star in Germany.
Rowohlt was born in a Hamburg bunker in March 1945 to the actor Maria Pierenkämper. His father was not her painter husband, Max Rupp, but the publisher Ernst Rowohlt. He married Ms Pierenkämper in 1957 but died three years later.
Rowohlt inherited 49 per cent of the family publishing empire but later sold off his shares to follow his own path. Beginning in 1971, he established himself as one of Germany's most celebrated translators of English-language fiction, with over 120 titles ranging from Ernest Hemingway to Kurt Vonnegut. 'Pooh's Corner' His celebrated translations of AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh began a long-term relationship with the honey-loving bear – and a regular column, "Pooh's Corner", in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. In later life his recurring role as Harry the tramp in Lindenstrasse, Germany's answer to Coronation Street, made him a household name.
Already a star in literary circles, he took on Flann O’Brien after noting “around 1,400 mistakes” in the first German translation. The most egregious of these, he told his friend Ralf Sotscheck, concerned a meeting of IRA men “at a postbox”. “In the original it was ‘the pillar’, meaning not a postbox but Nelson’s Pillar in O’Connell Street,” wrote Mr Sotscheck.
Rowohlt was friends with many of the Irish authors he translated. Frank McCourt said on a visit to Hamburg in 2007 that he only finished Angela's Ashes because of threats from his pal Harry.
Harry Rowohlt was a sought-after translator because, though he often took liberties with the original text, it was always in the hope of serving the author’s original intention in the German language. Lubricated “Through his translation he reinvented books,” said literary critic Hellmuth Karasek, “turning Irish alcohol-soaked language into congenial German slang.”His public readings were legendary: five-hour events, well-lubricated with Irish whiskey, which he described as “show-boozing with accentuation”.
He is survived by his widow, Ulla.