Draft:Georg Witte (Slavicist)

Georg Witte (born 1952 in Arnsberg, West Germany. Full name Georg Wilhelm Heinrich Witte,^[1] pseudonym Günter Hirt) is a German slavicist (UK: slavonicist), comparatist, translator, and lyricist.

Life

Witte studied German and Slavic studies from 1971 to 1982 in Munich, Cologne, and Bochum. In 1984 and 1985 he undertook a research stay in the Soviet Union, at the Moscow State University. He recieved his doctorate in 1987 at the University of Bochum and subsequently worked there as a research asssistant. His post-doctoral habilitation followed in 1992. In 1994 he was appointed as professor for East Slavic Literature at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In 2004 he accepted a professorship at the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin). From 2013 until achieving his academic emeritus in 2019, Witte was managing director of FU Berlin's Peter Szondi Insistute of Comparative Literature. In 2019 he became the director of the Department of Philology at the St Petersburg campus of the Russian Higher School of Economics research university.^[2] After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine he resigned from his position there.^[3]

Witte is married and has two children.

Work

Witte specialises in Soviet literature, particularly experimental textual practices from the 1960s to 1980s. He has made numerous and diverse contributions on the relationship between literature and writing (script). In this frame, he has often worked with fellow slavicist Susanne Strätling. More recently, his work has expanded to include the aesthetics of the material.

As a translator, he has published unofficial Russian poetry since the 1980s together with artist Sabine Hänsgen. In this work, he used the pseudonym Günter Hirt, while Hänsgen called herself Sascha Wonders. His translations include poems by Vsevolod Nekrasov, Dmitri Prigov, and Kirill Medvedev.

Publications

Monographs

Die sowjetische Kolchos- und Dorfprosa der fünfziger und sechziger Jahre. Zur Evolution einer literarischen Unterreihe, München: Sagner 1983. ['Soviet Kolkhoz and Village Prose of the Fifties and Sixties. Towards the Evolution of a Literary Subgenre.']
Appell – Spiel – Ritual. Textpraktiken in der russischen Literatur der sechziger bis achtziger Jahre, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1989. ['Rollcall - Play - Ritual: Textual Pracitices in Russian Literature from the Sixties to the Eighties.']

Editorship

Bewegte und bewegende Briefe. Schriftbeschleunigung als Imaginationstechnik der Empfindsamen, in: Georg Witte, Inke Arns, Mirjam Goller und Susanne Strätling (eds.): Kinetographien, Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2004, p. 413–451. ['Moving Letters: Accelerated Writing as an Imaginative Technique of the Sentimental', in 'Kinetographies']
Das Gesicht des Gedichts, in: Susanne Strätling, Georg Witte (eds.): Die Sichtbarkeit der Schrift, München: Fink 2006, p. 173–190. ['The Face of the Poem' in 'The Visibility of Script']
Das Geschenk als Ding, das Ding als Geschenk. Daniil Charms' Überbietung des funktionalen Gegenstands, in: Rainer Grübel, Gun-Britt Köhler (ed.): Gabe und Opfer in der russischen Literatur und Kultur der Moderne, München: BIS 2006, p. 282–303. ['The Gift as a Thing, the Thing as a Gift: Daniil Kharms' Surpassing of the Functional Object' in 'Gifts and Sacrifices in Modernist Russian Literature and Culture']
Ins Unreine. Zur Poetik der Übersetzung II, ed. with Marie Luise Knott, Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2021, ISBN 978-3-75180-350-2. ['Into the Unclean: On the Poetics of Translation II']
with Susanne Strätling: Im Lichtozean. Energien der sowjetischen Moderne. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2025, ISBN 978-3-7518-2069-1. ['In the Ocean of Light: Energies of Soviet Modernism']

Lyric Poetry

with Robert Berghoff: Nacht ohne Schlaf, Berlin, ciconia ciconia 2022, ISBN 978-3-945867-40-2. ['Night without Sleep']
Auf den schwarzen Wassern, Berlin, ciconia ciconia 2025, ISBN 978-3-945-867-69-3. ['On Black Waters']

Links

Personal website @ the Freien Universität

Sources

↑ "Georg Wilhelm Heinrich Witte". Archived from the original on 2021-06-19. Retrieved 2022-04-28.
↑ "Витте Георг Вильгельм Хайнрих" (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2019-12-29. Retrieved 2019-12-29.Page Template:Vorlage:IconExternal/styles.css has no content."Витте Георг Вильгельм Хайнрих" (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2019-12-29. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
↑ Appell der Intellektuellen: Putins nützliche Idioten. ISSN 0174-4909.

[1] "Georg Wilhelm Heinrich Witte". Archived from the original on 2021-06-19. Retrieved 2022-04-28.

[2] "Витте Георг Вильгельм Хайнрих" (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2019-12-29. Retrieved 2019-12-29.Page Template:Vorlage:IconExternal/styles.css has no content."Витте Георг Вильгельм Хайнрих" (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2019-12-29. Retrieved 2019-12-29.

[3] Appell der Intellektuellen: Putins nützliche Idioten. ISSN 0174-4909.

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