For German to read: Alencar and Taunay by Arno Philipp

Abstract

In this paper we study the actions of the German-Brazilian citizen Arno Philipp as a translator to the German language of a number of José de Alencar and Visconde de Taunay novels. The sources and the trails that led us to this accomplishment proceed from the Arno Philipp Literary Collection (ALAPH), that we organized after we became aware of an infinity of documents, specially about the translator and the letters he changed with Alencar and Taunay relatives, filed at the Panambi Historical Museum and Archive. The results here presented allow weaving a series of considerations about the presence of the Brazilian literature in this southern Brazil city, at that time known as Neu-Württemberg colony. Through the translations he made and other actions, Philipp mediated the Brazilianness and the Germanism, enabling to produce, from the material arranged in the archive, a literary micro-history that, focused on intercultural contacts, relies on the teachings of the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg.