13 September 2022

Nathalie Mälzer new secretary of the Literature Section at the Akademie der Künste

German-French scholar Nathalie Mälzer is taking over as secretary of the Literature Section at the Akademie der Künste on 1 October 2022.

The literary translator, moderator and interpreter studied General and Comparative Literature and Theatre and Film at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. Besides her renderings of poetry, she has also translated around fifty novels, essays and plays from French into German, including texts by Maurice Blanchot, Céline Minard and Cécile Wajsbrot.

Between 2018 and 2022, she held a full university professorship in Transmedia Translation at the University of Hildesheim, where she played a key role in developing the Media Text and Media Translation master’s programme. Her research focused on approaches to dialogue and spoken language in literary and media translation, the relationship between image and text in comic book translation and barrier-free communication. In addition to numerous essays, she has published several anthologies and monographs.

Nathalie Mälzer succeeds Jörg Feßmann, who is going into retirement. After many years working as deputy editor-in-chief of the literary magazine SINN UND FORM, Feßmann became secretary of the Literature Section in 2005. Besides fostering literary dialogues with Russia, Poland and France and developing the narration partner project “Our Stories – Rewrite the Future” with young refugees, promoting literature was a key aspect of his work, which included the Alfred Döblin Scholarship and the Alfred Döblin Prize.

The Literature Section is one of six art sections at the Akademie der Künste. It was founded in 1926 and was known then as the “Poetry Section”. Its founding members included Gerhart Hauptmann, Arno Holz, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Ricarda Huch and Franz Werfel. It now has about 70 members, among them many of the most important authors from Germany and abroad writing in the German language.
The section sees itself as an educational forum for communicating literature with a critical focus, engaging with aspects of literary history and current trends in contemporary literature in a linguistic and sociopolitical context. Kerstin Hensel has been director since November 2021, with Cécile Wajsbrot as deputy director.