Manthey, Jürgen

Jürgen Manthey, born 1932 in Forst, Lausitz; died 2018 in Lübeck, was a publishing editor, author and literary scholar. He was a member of the PEN Center Germany.

Manthey headed the literature editorial department at Hessischer Rundfunk. He was chief editor at Rowohlt Verlag, edited the Rowohlt literary magazine and the series "das neue buch". In 1998 he published his monography on Hans Fallada.
From 1986 to 1998 he was Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Essen. During his last decades he lived in Lübeck as a freelance author and literary critic. He became widely known for his book on "Königsberg. History of a Cosmopolitan Republic" (Munich 2005). In the last ten years of his life he worked on an unfinished project on "Schicksalsjahre des Ostseeraums".

Steffin, Margarete

Margarete Steffin, born in Berlin in 1908, died in Moscow in 1941. She finished elementary school in 1922, whereafter she began a two-year apprenticeship as a clerk and bookkeeper at Globus publishing house. Even at school, she had attracted attention with her artistic and linguistic talents. Steffin continued her education independently, attending evening classes and taking Russian lessons privately.
From the end of the 1920s, she was involved in the workers' education movement, especially in the chorus of the communist workers' sports club "Fichte," where she soon became a solo speaker. As an amateur actress with the Junge Volksbühne, she appeared on stage alongside Ernst Busch, Helene Weigel and Blandine Ebinger in the agit-prop revue Wir sind ja sooo zufrieden, which premiered in 1932. One of the lyricists was Bertolt Brecht, who offered her the next role in his play Die Mutter. Steffin played the maid - alongside Helene Weigel in the title role. Since then, Brecht and Steffin had a love and work relationship, that lasted until her early death.
Steffin's main activity can be described as her work for Brecht; this included research for various projects of Brecht's, the management of his entire correspondence, the organization of his manuscripts, and the preparatory translation of (source) texts. Translating other texts was purely a sideline for Steffin.
It was only with the publication of her Nachgelassene Texte (Literary Remains, 1991) and Briefe (Letters, 1999) that she emerged from Brecht's shadow: as a writer in her own right, and also as a translator. Steffin's translational work was limited to the period of exile together with Brecht's from 1933 to 1941 (Paris, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia on their way to the US).

Reichstein, Reinhard

Reinhard Reichstein, born in Paderborn in 1956, studied pharmacy in Münster/Westphalia and Romance studies and Philosophy in Berlin, where he moved in 1980. His romance book publication is: Imagination in Gérard de Nerval's Narrative Work (Würzburg 1992).

In addition to running a pharmacy, he has written various essays in anthologies and scientific journals, including on Goethe's Faust and Wilhelm Meister. He is a member of the literary circle "Spree-Athen", the discussion circle "Theophil" in Birkenwerder and the Society for Indo-Asian Art in Berlin. The essay on Persian miniature painting and the architecture of the Mughals: 'Diwan-i-Khas' - the House of the One Pillar Throne of Fatehpur Sikri (Indo-Asian Journal, Berlin 2016-2017) resulted from his occupation with India.

Reinhard Reichstein has lived in Borgsdorf near Oranienburg since 1997, and the extent to which he feels at home there and in the land of Theodor Fontane is underlined by his novel Das Kaffeehaus - eine Liebe in Brandenburg (2019).

Sinnig, Claudia

Born in 1965, Claudia Sinnig grew up in Gotha. She studied Russian and English in Leipzig and Lithuanian in Vilnius. In 1992, she obtained a doctorate in Lithuanian literature. 
In 1989, she was co-founder of the Lithuanian Review, the English-language newspaper of the Lithuanian indepence movement Sąjūdis, and a member of Lithuania’s first women studies‘ circle in Vilnius; in 1990, she volunteered as an aide in the information office of Lithuania’s first post-Soviet parliament. 
Since 1992, she has been working as a freelance writer and translator. She translated, among others, Tomas Venclova, Jonas Mekas, Eugenijus Ališanka, Sigitas Parulskis, Irena Veisaitė as well as Antanas Škėma into German, and published, in 2002, Litauen. Ein literarischer Reisebegleiter (Lithuania. A Literary Travel Companion). 
Claudia Sinnig lives in Wuhden on the German-Polish border, east of Berlin.

Holländer, Katarina

Katarina Holländer was born in Czechoslovakia in 1964. The family emigrated to Zurich in 1968, where she studied literature and art history.
Among other occupations Katarina Holländer worked as an editor at Benteli-Verlag in Bern, and for the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia as well as for the German Goethe-Institut in Prague. She was an editor of the Swiss cultural magazine "du" in Zurich until 1997, where the text published here also appeared for the first time.
Her participatory exhibition project "A Certain Jewish Something" was shown at several locations in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic starting in 2007. Most recently, Katarina Holländer's Diheime was published in "Unsere Schweiz - Ein Heimatbuch für Weltoffene" (Zytglogge 2019) and Der Riegel in the anthology "Dunkelkammern" (Suhrkamp 2020). In 2021 her book Wurzelwerk is published by Telegramme-Verlag, Zurich.

Schieb, Roswitha

Roswitha Schieb, born in Recklinghausen in 1962, studied literature and art history. She lives in Borgsdorf near Berlin and works as a book author, essayist and publicist for various magazines and newspapers, including the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. In addition to books about the theatre director Peter Stein, she has written cultural-historical travel books on Rügen, on Silesia, Galicia (Reise nach Schlesien und Galizien) and Wroclaw (Literarischer Reiseführer Breslau). In her book Jeder zweite Berliner ("Every Second Berliner") she traces Silesian influences on Berlin.

A few years ago came her art guide to Wroclaw, a literary travel guide to Carlsbad, Marienbad and Franzensbad, a collection of essays Reisefreiheit. Berichte aus Osteuropa and the anthology Zugezogen. Flight and Expulsion - Memories of the Second Generation.

Recent publications include her illustrated book Schlesien. Geschichte – Landschaft – Kultur ("Silesia. History - Landscape - Culture"), her Berliner Literaturgeschichte, her biographical volume of essays Risse. Dreißig deutsche Lebensläufe, her short story Der Hof, and her book Der Berliner Witz.