Was Europe during the Cold War characterized by a rigid confrontation between the repressive East and the free West, as is often remembered? What were the possibilities for exchange? The recently approved project TRANSCEND uses translation as an analytical prism to open up new perspectives on the exchange between East and West. The project addresses a significant research gap by examining, for the first time, the private archives of Intertext, the central language mediation agency of the GDR (German Democratic Republic). This private archive has been in the possession of a former board member of Intertext for the past three decades, and as a result, the several thousand pages of records have remained entirely unexplored from a scientific standpoint. The initial goal of the project is to digitize these records, supplemented by interviews with translators and other field experts.
Funding: Land Steiermark
Program: ERC - Get Started
Approved amount: 13.148,00 Euro
Project management: Dr. Hanna Blum
Planned project start: 01.07.2025