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From: Patrice Miller <>
Subject: [GV] Fwd: Dr. Samuel Sinner authors new German-Russian anthology
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 20:49:15 -0800

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I am forwarding this message from Michael Miller at
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Patrice Miller
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Note: This new book can be located at the following website page including
four images:
http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/grhc/order/general/sinner2.html
___________________________

Autumn Thoughts - Under Ruins and Snow: An Experiment in Ethnic
Anthology. Two Centuries of German-Russian Poetry, Short Stories, and
Essays

By Samuel D. Sinner

Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University
Libraries, Fargo, ND, 2003, 328 pages, softcover

The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection is pleased announce
publication of this important anthology by Dr. Samuel D. Sinner.

This compelling anthology presents for the first time in English
translation a wealth of captivating works by ethnic-German writers of
Russia and the Soviet Union. Many of the authors whose dramatic works are
found between these covers led creative literary lives and were harassed
by Soviet authorities obsessed with cultural uniformity and thought
control; some were executed, others vanished forever in the Gulag. The
brilliant and alluring voices of these men and women authors have been
silent for decades. Now they speak again, offering an illuminating glimpse
into their provocative lives caught between two worlds.

The editor, Samuel Sinner, also presents his own striking literary
compositions, in which he intensifies the traditional themes of the
earlier translations, adding to them imaginative motifs from Jewish
mysticism, Scandinavian mythology, fantasy and philology, and even quantum
physics, in an overpowering attempt to understand and explain the haunting
nature and mystery of a universe where individuals are capable of
persecuting and liquidating their fellow human beings.

Supplementing the anthology are Sinner's forceful translations of verses
by the two greatest lyrical poets of twentieth-century Russia, Anna
Akhmatova and Stalin victim Osip Mandelstam, and the short story writer
and Stalin victim Boris Pilnyak. Taking into account works which have
influenced Russia's German-language authors, Sinner offers an evocative
selection of German poetry by Georg Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilke, Nikolaus
Lenau, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Eduard Mike, and Hermann Hesse, including
the latter's three poems which Richard Strauss set to music in his "Vier
letzte Lieder" ("Four Last Songs").

With marvelous skill, Sinner gathers the most widely disparate literary
traditions and themes and sews them together, creating a uniquely eclectic
and breathtaking unity, a vision at once epic, tragic, and
magical. Including translations of Russian, German, and ethnic
German-Russian works, this rich literary volume is a truly German-Russian
anthology in the fullest sense.

"Samuel Sinner's latest work, subtitled An Experiment in Ethnic Anthology,
is a work of striking and multifaceted originality. A mother lode of
imagination, of language, of history, both personal and ethnic, this book
intentionally blurs the distinctions between literary genres, and besides
the author's own works, reveals to the American public for the first time
a variety of powerful Germans from Russia artists and writers."

-- Ronald Vossler, award-winning author and documentary film-script writer

"With this important new anthology, German-Russian writers long absent
from the scene of world literature now take their rightful place at center
stage. Firmly grounded in the history and steeped in the cultural
traditions of the people whose ethnic identity he shares, Dr. Samuel
Sinner as editor, author, and translator of "Autumn Thoughts" presents a
skilled evocation of a lost world. His judicious selection of
representative works by recognized authors among the Germans in Russia, a
nation now in diaspora, is set against the backdrop of ancient Germanic
and contemporary Russian works which offer the reader glimpses into the
literary milieu and political context which inspired these
creations. Thanks to Sinner's immense erudition and inerrant ear for
language, voices once stilled by Stalin speak again. More than mere
translations, the pieces in the collection read like English language
reincarnations of the spirit of this vanished people. In his own original
compositions! included here, Sinner reveals mystical depths and a muscular
writing style that prove him the apt inheritor of his relative and
namesake, Johann Peter Sinner--that prescient poet who, while recalling a
German-Russian golden age, perceived the sharp winter winds of persecution
and exile about to descend on his people."

-- Dr. Nancy Bernhardt Holland, former executive director of the American
Historical Society of Germans from Russia

The anthology contains translations of poems and short stories by
German-Russian authors from the Black Sea villages of Pordenau and
Annette, from the Criema village Hohenberg, from Siberia, and from the
Volga-German villages and cities of Saratov, Engels, Schilling,
Neu-Schilling, Frank, Balzer, Kana, Katharinenstadt, etc. Among the
uniquely talented authors represented in the volume are the
following: Peter Sinner, Kamilla Sinner, David Kufeld, August von Neu,
Franz Bach, Rudolph Dirk, Jacob Wagner, Julie Hanke, Emilie Lffler,
Friedrich Reimer, Georg Dnhoff, Maria Grzen, Waldemar Weber, Reinhold
Frank, Dominik Hollmann, Eduard Stssel, Herbert Henke, Viktor Schnittke,
Nelly Wacker Robert Weber, and Reinhold Keil.

About the Author

A noted ethnic activist, author, and scholar, Samuel D. Sinner grew up in
California's Mojave Desert where he enjoyed a closeness to nature
reminiscent of that enjoyed by his Volga-German ancestors in the mountains
and steppes of Russia. From his father's stories, as a child he became
interested in German literature and history. He is an avid researcher of
such widely diverse topics as Jewish mysticism, philosophy, theology,
world folklore and mythology, ancient history and languages, classical
literature, ancient Jewish and Christian apocryphal literature, the Dead
Sea Scrolls, and quantum physics.

He began his higher education in Oklahoma, later gaining undergraduate
degrees in California and Nebraska in Liberal Arts and in Modern Languages
and Literatures. He earned his M.A. in 1998 from the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in Modern Languages and Literatures, with a History
minor. His Ph.D. from UNL was also in Modern Languages and Literatures,
with a minor and internship in Museum Studies. He has worked for several
years as a librarian and archivist. At UNL, he studied German philology
and linguistics under the internationally known German dialect expert
Dr. Dieter Karch. In April 2002, Sinner completed his 614-page
German-language dissertation, Johann Peter Sinner (Petr Ivanovich Zinner,
1879-1935) Russlanddeutscher Autor und Stalinopfer: Sein Werk und
Schicksal [Johann Peter Sinner (Petr Ivanovich Zinner,
1879-1935) Russian-German Author and Stalin Victim: His Literary Works and
Fate].

Sinner's published books include the groundbreaking The Open Wound: The
Genocide of Ethnic-German Minorities in Russia and the Soviet Union,
1914-1945 and Beyond, and Letters from Hell: A Bibliography of Famine
Letters published in Die Welt-Post, 1920-1925; 1930-1934. His research on
the Jewish Holocaust has been published by Oxford University Press and
will soon be published by Berghahn Books (Oxford and New York). His
translations and essays on history and literature have been published in
Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Oxford), the Journal of Genocide Research
(New York and United Kingdom), Nebraska History, Journal of the American
Historical Society of Germans from Russia, and Heritage
Review. Forthcoming essays on German-Russian literature and the Holocaust
will appear in Russia and Germany.

Sinner is presently working on a number of writing projects related to
German-Russian history, literature, and folklore, including a second
anthology of German-Russian literature and a bibliography on
German-Russian women writers. He is also presently conducting archival
research projects on Lord Byron, Shakespeare, and H. G. Wells.
__________________________________

Order Form

Autumn Thoughts -- Under Ruins and Snow

The price of the book is $45 plus postage and handling ($4 for shipping in
the U.S.; $6 for shipping to Canada; and $12 for shipping outside U.S. and
Canada). All orders must be paid in U.S. dollars. Make check payable to
NDSU Library.

Name

Address

City State/Province ZIP/Postal Code

Daytime phone number E-mail

Number of softcover books

Total enclosed $

Mail to:
Germans from Russia Heritage Collection
Autumn Thoughts Book
NDSU Libraries
PO Box 5599
Fargo, ND 58105-5599 USA


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• [GV] Fwd: Dr. Samuel Sinner authors new German-Russian anthology by Patrice Miller <>