Ralph Manheim (4 April 1907 - 26 September 1992) was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian.
Biography
Born in New York, Manheim spent a year in Vienna as an adolescent, and after completing college spent some time in Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler to power. He moved to Paris in 1950 and lived there for most of the rest of his life. Manheim translated the works of Günter Grass, Bertolt Brecht, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Hermann Hesse, Peter Handke, Novalis, philosopher Martin Heidegger, and many others. He also completed a translation of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, in which he endeavored to give an exact English equivalent of Hitler's highly individual, often awkward style, including his occasional grammatical errors. He also translated transcripts of the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, and translated Grimm's Tales For Young and Old - The Complete Stories, as published in 1977. Modern readers are familiar with his 1986 translation of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King), the story which inspired Tchaikovsky's famous ballet. It was published with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, in conjunction with the release of the 1986 film . Lovers of children's books also admire his agile translation of Michael Ende's The Neverending Story. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in Literary Studies. The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation is a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation, and past honorees include Gregory Rabassa, Richard Howard, William Weaver, Richard Wilbur, Robert Fagles, Edmund Keeley, and Donald Keene.
