Stefan Weidner
Stefan Weidner, born in 1967 in Cologne, where he presently lives, is a German writer, translator and literary critic. He has studied Arabic and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at the universities of Göttingen, Damascus, Berkeley (CA) and Bonn. He has published several volumes of fiction, travel writing and essays, focusing on the relations between Islam and the West (cf. list of publications below). As a translator he has presented to the German public some of the most eminent contemporary Arab poets such as Adonis أدونيس , Mahmoud Darwish محمود درويش , Badr Shakir as-Sayyab بدر شاكر السياب, Nizar Qabbani نزار قباني and others. In 2016 he has published the first complete German translation of Ibn al-Arabi’s ابن العربيmost famous volume of poetry “Tarjuman al-ashwaq ترجمان الأشواق” (The Interpreter of Desires/ Der Übersetzer der Sehnsüchte). Currently he is preparing the first anthology of classical Arab poetry in German since the 19th century.
From 2001 until the closure of the magazine in 2016 he was editor-in-chief of Art/Thought – Fikrun wa Fann, فكر وفنa bi-annual journal published and distributed by the German Goethe-Institut in English, Arabic and Farsi (www.goethe.de/fikrun). He contributes to the cultural pages of the leading German newspapers and radio stations such as FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Deutschlandradio.
For his essays he was awarded the Clemens-Brentano Prize of the city of Heidelberg in 2006. For his work as a translator from the Arabic he received the Johann-Heinrich-Voss Prize of the German Academy for Language and Poetry (2007), the Paul-Scheerbart Preis of the Rowohlt Foundation (2014) and the International Sheikh Hamad Prize for Translation in the First Rank (2018) جائزة الشيج حمد للترجمة بالمركز الأول. He has been a guest-professor for “Poetics of Translation” at the department of comparative literature at the Free University of Berlin and is currently teaching as a guest professor at the University of Bonn. His book, Anti-Pegida (2015/2016), has been translated into Arabic (خطاب ضد الإسلاموفوبيا) and published by the Fairforum.org in Qatar. His most recent publication (2018) is the politico-historical essay “Jenseits des Westens. Für eine neues kosmopolitisches Denken” (“Beyond the Conceptions of the West. For a New Cosmopolitan Thinking”) at Hanser Publishing House in Munich. It was shortlisted for the renowned non-fiction prize of the Northern German Radio Association (NDR) in 2018.
Stefan Weidner is a member of the German Academy of Language and Poetry (the German equivalent of the Académie Française; www.deutscheakademie.de/de/akademie/mitglieder/stefan-weidner), the German PEN-Club and a founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne (www.academycologne.org/de/about#mitglieder/stefan_weidner).
From 2001 until the closure of the magazine in 2016 he was editor-in-chief of Art/Thought – Fikrun wa Fann, فكر وفنa bi-annual journal published and distributed by the German Goethe-Institut in English, Arabic and Farsi (www.goethe.de/fikrun). He contributes to the cultural pages of the leading German newspapers and radio stations such as FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Deutschlandradio.
For his essays he was awarded the Clemens-Brentano Prize of the city of Heidelberg in 2006. For his work as a translator from the Arabic he received the Johann-Heinrich-Voss Prize of the German Academy for Language and Poetry (2007), the Paul-Scheerbart Preis of the Rowohlt Foundation (2014) and the International Sheikh Hamad Prize for Translation in the First Rank (2018) جائزة الشيج حمد للترجمة بالمركز الأول. He has been a guest-professor for “Poetics of Translation” at the department of comparative literature at the Free University of Berlin and is currently teaching as a guest professor at the University of Bonn. His book, Anti-Pegida (2015/2016), has been translated into Arabic (خطاب ضد الإسلاموفوبيا) and published by the Fairforum.org in Qatar. His most recent publication (2018) is the politico-historical essay “Jenseits des Westens. Für eine neues kosmopolitisches Denken” (“Beyond the Conceptions of the West. For a New Cosmopolitan Thinking”) at Hanser Publishing House in Munich. It was shortlisted for the renowned non-fiction prize of the Northern German Radio Association (NDR) in 2018.
Stefan Weidner is a member of the German Academy of Language and Poetry (the German equivalent of the Académie Française; www.deutscheakademie.de/de/akademie/mitglieder/stefan-weidner), the German PEN-Club and a founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne (www.academycologne.org/de/about#mitglieder/stefan_weidner).
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (7)
Uploads
Papers by Stefan Weidner
Erstes Kapitel des Buchs: Ground Zero. "9/11 und die Geburt der Gegenwart." Hanser Verlag, München 2021.
(Antrittsvorlesung zur August-Wilhelm-Schlegel Gastprofessur für Poetik der Übersetzung am Peter-Szondi Institut für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der FU Berlin, die Stefan Weidner 2009/2010 innehatte).
Fikrun wa Fann (Art&Thought) was published. It was a remarkable
project: a journal the like of which had never been seen before,
produced by Germans for the Islamic world.
character to one simple denominator. However, more than almost anyone else, Lawrence embodies the transformation from hero to anti hero that shaped literature in the twentieth century.
Erstes Kapitel des Buchs: Ground Zero. "9/11 und die Geburt der Gegenwart." Hanser Verlag, München 2021.
(Antrittsvorlesung zur August-Wilhelm-Schlegel Gastprofessur für Poetik der Übersetzung am Peter-Szondi Institut für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der FU Berlin, die Stefan Weidner 2009/2010 innehatte).
Fikrun wa Fann (Art&Thought) was published. It was a remarkable
project: a journal the like of which had never been seen before,
produced by Germans for the Islamic world.
character to one simple denominator. However, more than almost anyone else, Lawrence embodies the transformation from hero to anti hero that shaped literature in the twentieth century.
Later, on his travels through the Arab world, the learned Orientalist finds himself repeatedly confronted by the dilemma that characterises all our encounters with Islam. Hatred and love, empathy and incomprehension, indignation and solidarity are not mutually exclusive. In this book, they combine to fire the anarchic potential that arises when our subjective feelings and experiences start to undermine our reason, knowledge and moral standards.
Mohammedan Temptations is an examination of Islam that disregards ideological taboos. Alternating between narration and essay, it demonstrates that every serious encounter with the ‘Oriental’ Other also calls one’s own point of view deeply into question.
“These Mohammedan Temptations are a fantastic read! They’re also a perfect way of shaking up the clichés about the Arab world.” – Ludwig Ammann, Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels (Journal of the German Booksellers' Association).
“This is the most intelligent book published to date about the ‘clash of civilizations’.”
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9.10.2004
“Unless something else very exciting should happen, this is for me the book of the year. Up to now no other book has so fascinated, at times annoyed, but also preoccupied and excited me. Not only a temptation, then, in the true sense of the word – a ruthless seduction to which I have succumbed.”
Selected by Renée Zucker as Book of the Year for Inforadio Berlin (26.9.2004) and for the taz newspaper supplement at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
“Scarcely has one spent a few pages in the company of this book and already one is ‘mesmerised’. This English word means something like enthusiastic, magnetised, electrified. A current flows between the author and the reader.”
Wiener Zeitung, 8.10.2004
“This is literature in the true sense of the word.”
Der Standard newspaper, Vienna, 9.10.2004
Book length close reading in German of the poetry of Adunis, especially of his works "The Songs of Mihyar the Damascene" and "The Time" (Al-Waqt).
This is the published version of the M.A. thesis of Stefan Weidner (Cologne, born 1967) at the University of Bonn, accepted by Prof. Stefan Wild.