“Singing the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Translation, and Diasporic Blues” is the sixth chapter of the book The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany, written by Jonathan O. Wipplinger, by Assistant Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The book is a history of the influence of Jazz in Weimar Germany, the democratic Germany between the First World War and the rise of the Nazi Party in 1933.
The sixth chapter, in particular focuses on the translation of Harlem Renaissance poets. Harlem Renaissance poetry and Jazz music are linked. In Weimar Germany, the earliest German translation of Harlem Renaissance writers were by German Jews, such as Hans Goslar, an ardent zionist and a “strong supporter of Weimar democracy”, who connected the plight of Black Americans to Jewish Germans (Wippenlinger 169). The German Jewish translators also Germanized, makinging several “changes to sentence structure and wording” (Wipplinger 171). the works of Harlem Renaissance poets for example setting them to Classical Music, or translating them in a way to seem German, which in Translation Studies is called Domestication. Wippenlinger writes, “
This chapter provided references to several German newspapers. I read these news papers, providing more information for me.
Works Cited
Wipplinger, Jonathan O. The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany. University of Michigan Press, 2017. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1qv5n7m.
Khalifa's Blog 
Hey Khalifa! It is great how you went into the connection between writing, Jazz music, and historical context. I enjoyed your post because it mentions other countries and their Harlem Renaissance writers. We always need to remember the global view! Great post, keep up the good work!
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Interesting bit, though there is something to be said about meaning being lost in translation. I wonder about the level of variance between versions.
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Hi Khalifa, I think you could’ve introduced what your post was about a bit better, since I was mildly confused at first. However, I like how much of your source was used and also the connections you make with both your source and topic.
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