Dagmar Reichardt
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Dagmar Reichardt (born September 25, 1961, in Rome, Italy[1]) is a leading German scholar in the area of transcultural studies.
Dagmar Reichardt descends from a German Huguenot family with roots extending far back in time, the first documented Renaissance family crest of the Reichardt's being located in the cathedral St. Georg of Nördlingen, Bavaria, showing the then-mayor of Nördlingen Kilian Reichart (died in AD 1577) as first ancestor. The House's later branches include German composer and music critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814), as its most prominent cultural representative who appeared in Königsberg, Halle and at the courts of three Prussian kings in Berlin and Potsdam. With the Poet's Paradise Garden in Giebichenstein (Giebichensteiner Dichterparadies), which was also called Home of the Romantics (Herberge der Romantik) or Reichardt's Garden (Reichardts Garten) he created a meeting place for scientists and literary personalities of his time. He was close to the philosopher of the German Enlightenment Immanuel Kant during his years of study in Königsberg, engaged in correspondence with his friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and set the latter's poems to music (Kunstlied), as he also did for Johann Gottfried Herder and August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Among other cultural activities, Johann Friedrich Reichardt went on several trips to Italy and published the Frankreich (France) journal in 1795, followed by the cultural-political journal Deutschland (Germany) in 1796.
Reichardt's extended family includes not only the authors Ludwig Tieck, Heinrich von Kleist, a native of Frankfurt/Oder, and the historic Huguenot family De Pourtalès, but also the Silesian poet Hermann Isaac Emil von Petit (June 9, 1811 – January 30, 1864; also called Hermann de Petit). Von Petit, who was the son of a lieutenant in the regiment of Malschitzky and a French Protestant refugee (Réfugié), worked in the Silesian town of Brieg (now Brzeg, Poland) and was the author of the volume Poems: My Whole Wealth Is My Song (Gedichte. Mein ganzer Reichtum ist mein Lied, 1857) that is archived in the library of the Brieg museum. He also taught French, English, Italian, and Spanish, and published educational textbooks for these languages. Of these, especially his Practical Course for Learning the Italian Language (Praktischer Lehrgang zur Erlernung die italienischen Sprache, 1862 in its 3rd edition) and Indispensable Interpreter for Germans Who Travel to France, Especially Those Who Want to Visit the Paris Industrial Exhibition (Unentbehrlicher Dolmetscher für Deutsche, die nach Frankreich reisen, insbesondere für diejenigen, welche die Pariser Industrie-Ausstellung besuchen wollen), published on the occasion of the first major Paris Industrial Exhibition in 1855, have survived to this day. His volume of Festival Poems for Children (Festgedichte für Kinder, 1857) contained verses in German, French, English, Italian, and Spanish. In 1853, he published a weekly Brieg newspaper under the title of Jest and Seriousness (Scherz und Ernst), which contained essays, poems, and epigrams related to literature and history by various writers.
Dagmar Reichardt grew up as the daughter of a German diplomat in Santiago de Chile and Rome before she started her international academic career in Germany. From 1986 to 1989, she co-founded, published, and edited the German-Italian culture magazine Zigzag: The Italian Magazine (Zigzag. Das Italien-Magazin) in cooperation with the Institute of Political Science at the University of Hamburg. In Hamburg, she also directed the creative writing workshop with the onomatopoetic German title Reiters Ruhm (Rider's Renown) by the Writers' Room e.V. from 1999 to 2009 and worked as a translator, book editor, ghostwriter, and freelance author. During this time, she edited literary books such as Neuere Deutsche Literatur (Newer German Literature, 1991; 1992), as well as an anthology by the Italian scholar of German literature Cesare Cases in German translation (1996). These were followed by additional literary translations (from Italian and English language into German) and critical editions, including the book of poetry Himmelsreden (Heavenly Speeches, 2004) by Giuseppe Bonaviri, the film script Der heilige Paulus (Saint Paul, 2007; with a foreword by Dacia Maraini) by Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as music editions by Etta Scollo (2014) or Marco Basley (2014) and short texts by Ennio Morricone (2019), Igiaba Scego (2020), Iain Chambers (2020) and Dacia Maraini (2007 and 2020). Reichardt authored more than 200 publications, among them over 130 academic publications and, alone during the years 1987–2004, over 50 books of fiction and non-fiction on the German book market for which she was responsible, publishing and editing them as a freelance chief-lector, translator, and ghostwriter.[2]
