Janheinz jahn biography definition

Janheinz Jahn was born into a well-to-do family in Frankfurt on 23rd July, Frequent travels to other countries awakened his interest in foreign languages and literatures at an early age. Even before Jahn took up university studies in drama as well as German, Italian and Arabic language and literature, which were terminated prematurely because of World War II, he was proficient in five European languages.

After the war, Jahn initially freelanced as a journalist and also tried his hand at creative writing. On 1st Dezember , Jahn eventually had a memorable encounter which would shape the rest of his life. He was highly thrilled and determined on finding more poems like these, to study them and, if possible, to translate them into German.

Jahn himself once described the years to come as "intellectual expedition by airmail". He dispatched more than letters in order to identify the addresses of further poets and discuss with them both his choice of texts and his translations. The publication of Schwarzer Orpheus allowed a wider German readership to appreciate contemporary poetry from Africa and the African Diaspora for the very first time, at a time when the existence of a written African literature was still hardly known in Germany.

In the beginning, Schwarzer Orpheus was part of a publisher's adventure: Herbert G. It was his aim to publish innovative literary works which, in Germany, had not yet received the attention they deserved. Jahn's Schwarzer Orpheus , which comprised poems by 82 authors, was reprinted several times, became a bestseller and achieved quite a lot of fame.

The late Janheinz Jalm was one of the most prolific and most encyclopedic critics of Black cultures.

In , a new, enlarged edition was published. After the publication of Schwarzer Orpheus , Jahn continued to apply himself to the mediation and popularisation of African literature in Germany. Over the years, he developed friendships with many poets and writers, to which the handwritten dedications, with which several authors signed copies of their works for Jahn, attest.

Apart from further anthologies Jahn also published a number of internationally read and very influential, if not uncontroversial, critical works e.