Dear colleagues,
a writer friend of mine, Philip Sington, whose most recent novel "The
Einstein Girl" has just been translated and published in Germany and is
doing really well there, is working on his new book that centres on
intellectuals and writers in the cold war, specifically Germany. He asked me
for help in a particular area of his research; since I was not entirely sure
of the answer I thought I might pose that question to a wider academic
audience. I quote from Philip's question:
"through what agency or government body did internationally known GDR
authors, such as Christa Wolf, sell the publication rights to their books
abroad? In other words, who handled the sale of rights to these books to the
FDR (assuming they did that) and countries like France? I'm assuming that
literary agents, as such, did not exist the GDR, but maybe they did. If
that's correct someone must have represented these authors in the West. Of
course it may have been that foreign publishers simply approached the GDR
writers independently, in which case I suppose permission to take up their
offers would have been required. In any event, what would happen to the hard
currency earnings such deals and sales would generate?"
We really appreciate your help in this matter; thank you very much for your
time.
Very best regards,
Claudia Geithner
Teaching Fellow German
UCL Language Centre
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