Übersetzung und Interpretation

Abstract

After a long period of relative negligence, the late 1930s witnessed an increasing interest in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. Anglophone intellectuals and émigré scholars rediscovered the work of this nineteenth-century French writer and read his analysis of modern democracy in the light of their crisis-shaken present. However, it was only after the Second World War that Tocqueville found his way into a broader German-speaking public, thus sparking the demand for a full and accurate German translation of his classic account “Democracy in America.” This essay traces the conflicting interpretations of Tocqueville in different discourse communities and intellectual contexts in the mid-twentieth century and shows how they affected the German translation.