Rückübersetzung: The Fates of Nico Rost’s Diary Goethe in Dachau

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nico Rost’s diary from the Dachau camp, Goethe in Dachau (1947), combines eyewitness accounts of camp life with erudite reflections on German literature, often underpinned by quotations in German. Initially ignored in the Netherlands, the German translation by Rost’s wife garnered a lot of attention in the GDR, where the author was enthusiastically welcomed as a defender of the true German, anti-fascist traditions. However, the changing political climate as well as doubts as to Rost’s own allegiances led to his arrest and expulsion from the GDR and put an end to the distribution of his diary in Eastern Europe. The present contribution aims to retrace the diary’s fortunes in light of its author’s career and the political turmoil in which he operated; it also proposes some explanations for the book’s remarkable trajectory.