Hansi Bochow-Blüthgen

Hansi Bochow-Blüthgen (2 January 1897 in Berlin-Charlottenburg – 30 August 1983 in Munich; actually Hanna Dora Margarethe, née Blüthgen; pen name: Lore Wiesner) was a German writer, editor, and translator in the Post-war years.

Life and work

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Bochow-Blüthgen, was married to the journalist Friedrich Walter Bochow (1889–1946) from the mid-1920s, was the granddaughter of the illustrator Fedor Flinzer and niece of the lyricist Victor Blüthgen (1844–1920). The photographer Gisèle Freund and the writer Moshe Ya'akov Ben-Gavriel (1891–1965), who dedicated Bochow-Blüthgen his story Ein Löwe hat den Mond verschluckt, were among her friends.

Bochow-Blüthgen worked on their first training as a librarian. She gained recognition through numerous translations from English and American. Among her best known translations into German is Frühstück bei Tiffany (Breakfast at Tiffany's) by Truman Capote. Her sensitive translation was very successful and is yet available. However, it was called advanced in years (betagt) in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung half a century after publication. Another famous translation from Bochow-Blüthgen is Der Kardinal (The Cardinal) by Henry Morton Robinson. 50 years after its appearance on the German book market, it was characterized as a Bestseller in best translation (Bestseller in Bestübersetzung) in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Further translations from Bochow-Blüthgen are Praterveilchen (Prater Violet) by Christopher Isherwood, Sturmwind – Flickas Sohn (Thunderhead) by Mary O'Hara, and Tien Pao ein Chinesenjunge (The House of Sixty Fathers) by Meindert DeJong. Apart from this, Bochow-Blüthgen translated texts by William Makepeace Thackeray, Katherine Anne Porter, and Patricia Highsmith into German.