One year of signandsight.com

Read what writers such as Bora Cosic, Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, Navid Kermani, Adam Krzeminski, Olga Martynova, Wolfram Siebeck, Matthias Politycki and Georg Klein have to say about it:



It's a fantastic idea to put a selection of texts which relate to German culture online in English, because this opens a necessary space in the English-speaking world for non-English authors. My essay "As many wars as many nations" which appeared on signandsight.com garnered many responses from readers in the USA. I'm sure the project is a lot of work but please carry on. With my respect and thanks!
Adam Krzeminski


signandsight.com has the potential to make my life a lot easier. It enables my students in California to read what I've written about the German elections, and thus enriches my seminar. And the effect? That's hard to say for now, maybe forever. The optimistic answer would be that signandsight.com is a manifestation of what the deconstructivists once referred to as "dissemination" (and not the one they expected). Signandsight is at the very least an experiment with philosophical dimensions.
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht


A provincialism of the metropolises has afflicted all historical centers. Did the Romans know what new life was blossoming on the periphery of their empire? And indeed, a Jewish sect took over their imperium. Did powerful France, the trend-setting and world-conquering nation of the Enlightenment and Revolution, suspect that its semi-barbaric German neighbours were reaching new heights in philosophy, music and poetry? One woman, Madame de Stael, had the privilege of making that known. Today we have it easier: signandsight.com sends signals from our province in the monolingual middle of the world, so that it doesn't end up sliding into provincialism.
Gustav Seibt


I consider signandsight.com a step in the right direction. The interest in texts and issues from Germany is definitely greater than the mastery of the German language. With your English site, you're remedying this. Of course, every intellectual work should have a general validity. The intellectual public should become more international... My essay met positive response from English readers in south-eastern Europe.
Bora Cosic


As an author who writes in Russian and German and lives in Germany, I already find myself belonging to an "internationalised intellectual public". ... It seems that signandsight.com does its job very well and plays an important and positive role. ... For me, there's also a very nice and helpful side effect. I can send my German language texts to Russian colleagues without having to translate them into Russian myself. Russians are much more likely to speak English than German.
Olga Martynova


signandsight.com and Perlentaucher make it possible to be much more aware of non-European voices. This definitely will contribute to a stronger cosmopolitan – rather than national, ethnic or religious – understanding. In the face of German debates, it's often hard to gain access to other discourses. signandsight.com brings authors into an increasingly international public space. There were many responses on my website to the article of mine that signandsight.com published in English. It also seems to have lead to further translations; my article was obviously translated into other languages because it had appeared on signandsight.com in English.
Navid Kermani


signandsight.com is a highly informative and, given the speed of its publication, remarkably varied "institution" – after a year's existence, it can already claim this title. My article on the Lehrter Bahnhof was met with various reactions, one from the architect of the main train station in San Francisco ,who wrote that my article could have been written in reference to San Francisco as well as Berlin.
Horst Bredekamp


Of course, it's good for issues that exist above the tabloid level to be disseminated internationally. signandsight plays an important role in this. There were reactions to my text on London's gastronomic offerings in the British daily press, the BBC and a Canadian newspaper.
Wolfram Siebeck


There was no dearth of reactions to my essay "Weißer Mann - was nun?", and this undoubtedly owes much to its publication in English as "What now, white man?" on signandsight.com. After my reading in New York several members of the audience brought it up and this made for animated discussion.
I would not go as far to talk about an "internationalisation" of the public domain but it is extremely helpful to interconnect media, which have traditionally been organised along national-linguistic lines, so that they can be aware of another when the need arises and in the best case, even exchange views. The single global public domain is a still a long way off; the exchange enabled by the Internet can only play a role in this, albeit a central one. If signandsight.com manages to become a central platform for communicating German culture to the outside world, on which information and opinion is viewed, evaluated and packaged for an international audience in the way that Perlentaucher so regularly succeeds in doing with such concision ... there is, also in terms of cultural politics, hope.
Matthias Politycki


The signandsight.com project pluckily throws a bottled message into the future media sea. It tests whether high-quality text material is capable of reaching an international public in day-to-day business fast and uncut. For me as a writer, whose work almost always demands a complete translation of style and meaning, this is of particular importance. The reactions I have received so far regarding the fine translations of my texts on signandsight.com lead me to hope that a culturally-oriented public arena which crosses language barriers, is not condemned to subsist on a diet of abbreviations, extracts and buzz words.
Georg Klein