Joachim Neugroschel

Joachim Neugroschel was born in Vienna. His father was the Yiddish Galician poet Mendel Naygreshl (Max Neugröschel) (1903–1965).[2] The family emigrated to Rio de Janeiro in 1939, and eventually arrived in New York City in 1941.[3] He grew up in New York City and graduated from Bronx Science (1954) and Columbia University (1958) with a degree in English and Comparative Literature.[3] After graduating from Columbia, he lived in Paris and then in Berlin.[4] Neugroschel returned to New York six years later and became a literary translator.[4]

Although his father was a native Yiddish speaker, Neugroschel did not speak the language and learned it as an autodidact in the 1970s.[4]

Neugroschel translated more than 200 books by numerous authors, including Sholem Aleichem, Dovid Bergelson, Chekhov, Alexandre Dumas, Hermann Hesse, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Moliere, Maupassant, Proust, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and modern writers such as Ernst Jünger, Elfriede Jelinek and Tahar Ben Jelloun.[4] His Yiddish translations of The Dybbuk by S. Ansky and God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch were produced and reached wide audience.

Regarding his process, Neugroschel said, "I never read a book before translating it. No reason to. I do not translate the words literally. Only a bad translator would translate literally.[4]

Neugroschel was the winner of three PEN Translation Awards, the 1994 French-American Translation Prize, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in German Literature (1998).[4] In 1996 he was also made a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.[5]

Neugroschel died in Brooklyn at the age of 73. He is survived by his legal guardian and former partner, Aaron Mack Schloff.[3]

• Lawrence A. Rosenwald, Review of No Star Too Beautiful, an anthology of Yiddish literature, ed. Joachim Neugroschel, 31 August 2004.
• Photograph of Joachim Neugroschel (1987) by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston