Transfer kultury w polu wydawniczym
Transfer of Culture in the Publishing Field

Siegfried Unseld’s Archive and Polish Literature

Summary/Abstract: The present article sketches the literary studies potential of Siegfried Unseld Archive (found now in Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach) for research in Polish literature transfer to German-speaking countries. The study touches upon the methodological issues vital for archivist and for literary translation sociology. The author analyses the processes of publisher’s archive transposition into a form of literary archive, pays attention to the correlation between the archive structure and access to information on publishing policy, production process, and literary translation strategies of communication. He also highlights the problem of proper presentation of documents which helps to avoid ‘archive positivism.’ Within the scope of literary transfer historiography, the paper presents the bibliogenesis of Polish literature translation into German in Suhrkamp Verlag. As based on comprehensive archive material, it shows the dynamics of publishing proposals, sketches the profiles of literary intermediaries, and includes the collected data into four case studies. The first refers to the figure of Siegfried Unseld as to an active agent in Polish-German literary transfer, the second discusses the function of Polish and German literary agencies, the third is a proposal of ‘exclusion historiography,’ namely incorporating not realised (though taken into consideration) publishing projects into the studies in reception, while the last one insights into an insufficiently researched aspect of foreign cultural policy connection with the publishing field.

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