To mark its 5th anniversary, the Viadrina University in Frankfurt hosted an academic symposium.
On November 28, 2013, the European University celebrated the establishment of the new Karl Dedecius Literary Archive Trust. The foundation’s mission is to actively promote German-Polish dialogue by dedicating itself to the research, translation, and dissemination of Polish literature in Germany and German literature in Poland, as well as to the study of how Polish literature is received in German-speaking countries.
To mark the anniversary, an international symposium was organized on November 29, 2018, at the Collegium Polonicum in Słubice, Poland. In addition to reviewing the foundation’s activities, the symposium was dedicated to the Silesian-born writer Henryk Bereska (1926–2005), a native of Silesia and one of the most important translators from Polish into German. He was highly regarded in both Germany and Poland, as evidenced, among other things, by his honorary doctorates from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the University of Wrocław.
The symposium was opened by the president of the European University Viadrina, Prof. Dr. Julia von Blumenthal, and Dr. Ulrich Bopp of the Robert Bosch Foundation. The organizers invited renowned scholars from Poland and Germany to the symposium (including Prof. Dr. Gabriela Matuszek, Jagiellonian University in Kraków; Prof. Dr. Grażyna Szewczyk, University of Silesia in Katowice; Prof. Dr. Heinrich Olschowsky, Polish studies scholar, Berlin).
Dr. Sławomir Tryc (Faculty of Managerial and Cultural Studies) spoke about the role of translators and writers as mediators in foreign cultural policy, using Henryk Bereska as an example. Among other things, he recalled the words of Jeremias Roter, a Polish teacher at the Maria Magdalena Gymnasium in Breslau who lived at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries: “May one nation understand the other”—words that German and Polish cultural managers today should also regard as the essence of international cultural dialogue.
(from left to right) Dr. Sławomir Tryc, Ms. Gilda Bereska (widow of Henryk Bereska, one of the good translators of Polish literature into German), and Prof. Dr. Heinrich Olschowsky (the most renowned scholar of Polish studies)
Contact:
Dr. Sławomir Tryc
Faculty of Managerial and Cultural Studies
Phone: 03581 374 - 4350
Email: s.tryc@hszg.de