Die Übersetzung von Kapitel 1 des Shuihu zhuan [水滸傳] von Max Gerhard Pernitzsch (1929)

Abstract

The Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳 is one of the best known traditional Chinese novels, an adventure story with picaresque elements and social critique. This presentation offers chapter 1 of a practically unknown German version by Sinologist Max Gerhard Pernitzsch (1882–1945), which was published in Batavia in 1929, and is thus a contribution to the history of the reception of this novel the first complete translation of which (into English, by Pearl S. Buck) was published in 1933; a condensed version in German by Franz Kuhn appeared in 1934, but it leaves out chapter 1. So it seems that Pernitzsch’s translation of chapter 1 is the first complete one into any European language, if we discount the fragment given by Louis Bazin in 1850–1851. Pernitzsch’s translation is reliable, makes good reading and was targeted at a wider audience. From a remark in a letter by the celebrated critic Erwin von Zach, it may be deduced that Pernitzsch had either translated the whole novel, or at least a considerable part of it, and tried to get it published in Germany, by the good offices of Prof. Ferdinand Lessing of the Oriental Seminar at Berlin. Unfortunately, very little is known about Pernitzsch – there are no letters, library, manuscripts, photographs. Therefore the editor of the translation gave the scanty data in full, including a professional evaluation of Pernitzsch by Hamburg Sinologist Fritz Jäger. This bibliographical note refrains from going into the textual history of the novel which the well-known specialist on Ming fiction, Ma Yau-woon 馬幼垣, discussed exensively in his books on the subject.