Parallel Texts

One of the most enjoyable ways to learn German is to read bilingual, parallel text editions. The following editions are recommended:

Fiction

Stanley Appelbaum (ed. and trans.), Five Great German Short Stories: A Dual-Language Book (New York: Dover, 1993). Includes Kleist, Hoffmann, Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, Kafka.

David Constantine (ed.), Penguin Parallel Text: German Short Stories 2 (London and New York: Penguin, 1976). Includes Penzoldt, Kaschnitz, De Bruyn, Siegfried Lenz, Bachmann, Bobrowski, Kluge, Bernhard. [Still in print.]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther: A Dual-Language Book, ed. and trans. by Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 2004)

Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, Selected Folktales/Ausgewählte Marchen: A Dual-Language Book, ed. and trans. by Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 2003)

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha: A Dual-Language Book, ed. and trans. by Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 1998)

Hermann Hesse, Demian: A Dual-Language Book, ed. and trans. by Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 2002)

Franz Kafka, Best Short Stories: A Dual-Language Book, ed. and trans. by Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 1997)

Richard Newnham (ed.), Penguin Parallel Text: German Short Stories 1 (Harmondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin, 1964). Includes Böll, Aichinger, Bender, Fussenegger, Gaiser, Schnurre, Lettau, Borchert. [Still in print.]

Harry Steinhauer (ed. and trans.), First German Reader: A Beginner’s Dual-Language Book (New York: Dover, 2007)

Harry Steinhauer (ed. and trans.), Twelve German Novellas (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977). Includes Wieland, Kleist, Chamisso, Hoffmann, Keller, Meyer, Thomas Mann, Fontane, Hauptmann, Kafka, Schnitzler, Bergengruen. [Still in print.]

Harry Steinhauer (ed. and trans.), German Stories/Deutsche Erzählungen: A Bilingual En Face Anthology [first edition 1961] (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011). Includes Goethe, Hebel, Kleist, Hoffmann, Schnitzler, Mann, Kafka, Böll. This one is a real treasure trove, with 464 pages.

Ernst Zillekens (ed.), New Penguin Parallel Text: Short Stories in German (London and New York: Penguin, 2003). Includes Siegfried Lenz, Wellershof, Vanderbeke, Hermann, Klein, Hein, Becker.

Poetry

Stanley Appelbaum (ed. and trans.), Great German Poems of the Romantic Era: A Dual-Language Book (New York: Dover, 1995). Includes eighteen poets from Goethe to Nietzsche.

Paul Celan, Poems, trans. by Michael Hamburger, 3rd edition (London: Anvil, 2007)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 103 Great Poems: A Dual-Language Book, ed. and trans. by Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 1999)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Erotic Poems, trans. by David Luke, intro. by Hans Rudolf Vaget (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems and Fragments, trans. by Michael Hamburger, 4th edition (London: Anvil, 2007)

Rainer Maria Rilke, Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘The Book of Hours’: A New Translation with Commentary, trans. by Susan Ranson, ed. by Ben Hutchinson (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012)

Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems, trans. by Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland, ed. by Robert Vilain, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Edward Snow (ed. and trans.), The Poetry of Rilke (New York: North Point Press, 2009)

Michael Hamburger (ed. and trans.), German Poetry 1910-1975 (Manchester: Carcanet, 1977)

Richard Stokes (ed. and trans.), The Book of Lieder. The original texts of over 1000 songs (London: Faber and Faber, 2005)

Philosophy

Henk de Berg and Duncan Large, Modern German Thought from Kant to Habermas (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012) [*not* a parallel text edition but a German-language reader with English annotations]

Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man In a Series of Letters, English and German Facing, ed. and trans. with intro., commentary and glossary by Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby [1967] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983)