Svetlana Geier

Svetlana Geier was born in Kiev in 1923, the daughter of Russian parents. Her father was a scientist, his specialism plant breeding. Her mother came from a family of Tsarist officers. Her father was arrested in 1938 during the period of Stalin's Great Purge, and died in 1939 from illnesses stemming from his time in prison. Svetlana Ivanova had a sheltered childhood, receiving private tuition in both French and German early on in her life. In 1941, the year the German army invaded the Soviet Union, she passed her school – leaving exams with excellent grades and was accepted as a student at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the Faculty of West European languages. There she also worked as a translator for the Institute of Geology.

Following the German invasion of Kiev she became an interpreter for the Dortmund Bridge Building company on their site in Kiev. She had been promised a scholarship to study in Germany if she worked for the Germans for a year. In 1943, following the defeat of the German troops at the Battle of Stalingrad, the company had to close down its site in Kiev. Svetlana Ivanova was well aware that, having worked for the Germans, her fellow countrymen regarded her as a collaborator and that she would never be able to study in the Soviet Union. Her mother, too, no longer wanted to live with the "murderers of her/svetlana’s father", so they joined up with the bridge building firm that was returning to Germany. (There) they were arrested and taken to a camp for workers from the East, from which they managed to escape with the help of friends after six months.

Having proven her excellent translating skills in an exam at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Svetlana Ivanova was awarded a scholarship with which she could realise her dream of studying. Together with her mother she moved to Guenterstal in Freiburg, and started her studies in Literature and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Freiburg in 1944. After her marriage she took her husband’s name, Geier. She had two children and lived in Guenterstal until her death in 2010.

In 1960 Svetlana started teaching Russian at the University of Karlsruhe. From 1964 onwards she had a contract for eight hours a week. She took the train to Karlsruhe one day a week right up until she died. In addition, from 1964 to 1988 she was a lector for Russian in the Department of Slavistics at the University of Freiburg. From 1979 to 1983 she also taught Russian language and literature at the University of Witten/Herdecke. In schools too, she did a great deal of work to enhance the teaching of Russian. At the Kepler-Gymnasium (grammar school) in Freiburg she raised the profile of Russian so that the language was available to choose as an exam subject, which she taught herself for many years. In addition, she was responsible for the teaching of Russian at various Steiner schools throughout Germany for a period of 25 years.

She began working as a translator in Germany for the then newly published series Rowohlt Classics.

She was a member of the PEN centre in Germany.

She died on 7 November 2010 at the age of 87 in her house in Günterstal. This house, where she lived for over 50 years and that belonged to the city of Freiburg, was to become a centre for translation through the efforts of a private initiative. However, this plan was never realised – the city has, in the meantime, sold the house.

Svetalan Geier ranks amongst the most important translators of Russian literature in the German-speaking world. Amongst other works, she translated those of Tolstoi, Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn. She became known to a wider public through new translations of the great novels by Fjodor Dostojewski.

She did not hesitate to reformulate older, well-known titles, although she insisted she did nothing more than translate from the original Russian. However, it should be noted that her choice of title for Dostojevski's most famous novel (Crime and Punishment) had already been chosen by the earlier translators Alexander Eliasberg 1921 and Gregor Jarcho 1924 respectively.

Thanks to her work at the university, Svetlana Geier was never financially dependent on translation, and thus it was possible for her to devote large periods of time to the translations of individual texts; she spent 20 years translating Dostojevski's novels. Unusually for a translator, she chose to dictate her translations to an assistant.

2009: Die Frau mit den 5 Elefanten Documentary by Vadim Jendreyko (English trailer).

Svetlana Geier received numerous awards and prizes for her outstanding contribution to the dissemination of Russian culture, history and literature, including the following:

• 1995: Reinhold-Schneider-Preis from the city of Freiburg
• 1995: Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding
• 1998: Order of Merit from the University of Karsruhe
• 2000: Goldene Eule der Sokratischen Gesellschaft (The Golden Owl from the Socrates Society)
• 2003: Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg
• 2004: Honorary Degree from the Philosophy and History Faculty of the University of Basel
• 2007: Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the category of translation
• 2007: Honorary Doctorate from the University of Freiburg