Elke Wehr — one of Germany’s best known Spanish translators — died last Friday in Berlin, at age 62, according to Suhrkamp Publishers of Frankfurt. Wehr gained notoriety with her translations of key works by Javier Marías of Spain, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, Julio Cortázar of Argentina, and Octavio Paz of Mexico, among others. In 2006, she was awarded the Paul Celan Prize by the German Literary Fund in recognition of her works, particularly her translation of Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos’ masterpiece Yo, el Supremo which was considered the most difficult adaption.

She was not only an extraordinary translator, but also took it upon herself to discover new authors, according to Jürgen Dormagen of Suhrkamp. Wehr’s last translation was the novel Los días azules by Colombian author Fernando Vallejo, whose German edition will be published this August.

Martyn Hitchcock’s translation of the poem "Da waren Deutsche auch dabei" ("Germans Among Them Did Abound") has been published in Schulhaus Reporter, the newsletter of the German-Texan Heritage Society.

Hitchcock describes the poem as "19th-century German-American chauvinistic doggerel." The author, Konrad Krez, was born in 1828 in Landau (Palatinate), Germany. He is one of several "1848’ers" who fled political repression. He was a lawyer, poet, and active in Wisconsin politics. He died in 1897 in Milwaukee.

Colleague and friend A. Leslie Willson Jr., highly respected educator and translator of contemporary German literature, died December 28, 2007, in Austin.

Among many accomplishments, he served for eight years as chairman of the German Department at UT-Austin, and for 20 years he edited Dimension, a groundbreaking bilingual literary magazine dedicated to the presentation of contemporary German-language authors. He was a co-founder and first president (1978 – 1979) of the American Literary Translators Association. He also served as president of the American Translators Association (1991 – 1993). He was recognized for his scholarly work with awards from the Goethe Institute and German government. An obituary appeared in the Austin American-Statesman.