author
Franz Kühn
Known for opening a window onto classic Chinese fiction for German readers, this prolific translator helped bring works like Dream of the Red Chamber to a much wider audience. Trained as a lawyer, he became one of the best-known European mediators of Chinese storytelling in the first half of the 20th century.
1 Audiobook
Barbarossa
by Franz Kühn
About the author
Franz Walther Kühn was a German lawyer and translator, born on March 10, 1884, in Frankenberg, Saxony, and died on January 22, 1961, in Freiburg im Breisgau. Although he studied law in Leipzig and Berlin and worked professionally in that field, he is chiefly remembered for his translations from Chinese into German.
He became especially well known for introducing major Chinese novels to German-speaking readers. His translations included works such as Dream of the Red Chamber, and he was widely regarded as one of the most productive translators of Chinese fiction in the West during his lifetime.
Kühn's work helped make Chinese narrative literature accessible to a broad European audience, not just specialists. Even where later scholars debated the style or accuracy of some versions, his translations played an important role in shaping early Western readership of classic Chinese fiction.