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Neophilologus (2007) 91:117134 Springer 2007 DOI 10.1007/s11061-006-9008-x
STEFAN MANZ
Department of Languages and International Studies, School of Humanities, University of Greenwich, Maritime Greenwich Campus, London, SE10 9LS, UKE-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
Dr. Alexander Tille (18661912) was one of the key-gures in Anglo-German inter-cultural transfer towards the end of the 19th century. As a lecturer in German at Glasgow University he was the rst to translate and edit Nietzsches work into English. Writers such as W. B. Yeats were inuenced by Nietzsche and used Tilles translations. Tilles social Darwinist reading of the philosophers oeuvre, however, had a narrowing impact on the reception of Nietzsche in the Anglo-Saxon world for decades. Through numerous publications Tille disseminated knowledge about British authors (e.g., Robert Louis Stevenson, William Wordsworth) in Germany and about German authors (e.g., Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) in Britain. His role as mediator also extended into areas such as history, religion, and industry. During the Boer war, however, Tilles outspoken pro-German nationalism brought him in conict with his British host society. After being physically attacked by his students he returned to Germany and published a highly anglophobic monograph. Tille personies the paradox of Anglo-German relations in the pre-war years, which deteriorated despite an increase in intercultural transfer and knowledge about the respective Other.
Dr Alexander Tille is mentioned in major monographs as a key gure in Anglo-German intercultural transfer and late 19th century German intellectual life. Steven E. Aschheim, for example, describes Tille as the major mediator of Nietzsche in Britain.1 For Richard Hinton Thomas, he was the most important of the German Social Darwinists at this time.2 Despite frequent references of this kind, Tilles academic work and activities have never been thoroughly investigated in a specically Anglo-German context.3 Based on Tilles publications and other primary sources, the following article seeks to ll this gap. The seeming paradox that Tille was not only a cultural mediator but at the same time a nationalistic warmonger between Britain and Germany will be discussed within the methodological framework of intercultural transfer.
TRANSLATING NIETZSCHE, MEDIATING LITERATURE: ALEXANDER TILLE AND THE LIMITS OF ANGLO-GERMAN INTERCULTURAL TRANSFER
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Stefan Manz
I.
Alexander Tille (18661912) was born in Lauenstein/Saxony into a bildungsburgerlich family, his father being a protestant pastor who introduced his son to Greek,...