Originally, this website was exclusively in German. Not for strategic reasons, but because the texts emerged from a German-speaking space of thought and perception.
At the same time, I have read mainly English books since my youth. Over many years, this resulted less in a traditional confidence in active writing than in a feel for the rhythm, movement and atmosphere of English-language writing. For a long time, English was for me more of a receptive mental and emotional space than a language in which I actively wrote myself.
Perhaps that was precisely what prompted me, at some point, to start translating my own texts in the first place.
Not primarily out of a desire for internationalisation or wider reach, but out of curiosity as to whether certain perceptions, images or essayistic movements could be carried differently — or perhaps more precisely — in another language.
While working on the translations, it quickly became apparent that these texts cannot simply be translated sentence by sentence.
Some perceptions can be expressed more directly, fluently or precisely in English. Others lose their rhythm entirely. Certain images shift into a different atmosphere or create unintended meanings. In some cases, the translations even reshape the original German texts themselves.
As a result, translation gradually became less a technical transfer and more a form of rewriting.
The English versions are therefore not word-for-word copies, but independent linguistic approaches to the same perceptual space.
Not every text is translated.
Some texts remain in German. Others appear in both languages. Some English versions will diverge more from the original than others. For me, what matters is not the exact reproduction of individual sentences, but whether a similar tension, image logic or movement of thought can be conveyed.
I therefore do not see the English-language section of this website as a complete translation of the existing works, but rather as an additional linguistic space within the same ongoing body of work.
Just as different genres or artistic forms can carry different perceptions, slight shifts in rhythm, atmosphere and thought also emerge between German and English.
The English-language section therefore remains fragmentary.
It is not intended to create a second, artificial authorial identity, nor to function as a complete mirror of the German-language content. Instead, a further form of expression is slowly emerging here: individual essays, fragments and perceptions that perhaps only find their form through this shift between languages.
Deutsche Version verfügbar.