Welcome to Ken Kronenberg's Website.

NOTE: This Website was started on March 4, 1996-- an oldie by Internet standards. I was the first person I knew to build a Website, and back then I wrote the HTML myself in Notepad by trial and error until it worked. The site has exactly the same "look" as it had in 1996. It's a part of my own history in its form and content. Like an old New England farmhouse with irregular annexes built on to make room for new family members, this site has grown organically to accommodate new material and new interests. It's sprawly and hospitable. It isn't sleek or streamlined, and it has no toolbars or elaborate navigation aids, but to me its architecture is meaningful and worth preserving.

I am a German translator specializing in intellectual and cultural history and 19th- and 20th-century diaries and letters. Below is a partial listing of my published translations.

The Struggle for Germany, by Philipp Bouhler, translated from the German Der Kampf um Deutschland, 1939

.

The author, Philipp Bouhler was Nazi party member #12 and, among other things, was in charge of implementing the T4 euthanasia program, which murdered more than 250,000 people deemed not worthy of life. Because he committed suicide shortly after his arrest, Bouhler was never put on trial for his crimes. According to Bouhler, Hitler asked him personally to write this book for young people. Der Kampf um Deutschland had the third highest print run of any book published during the Third Reich, just shy of two million. This was largely because it was mandatory in the schools. I am publishing it here because of the antidemocratic trends currently being proposed or implemented in the United States and elsewhere. In particular, Bouhler encourages the use of democratic machinery to destroy democracy, the myth of the Jewish origins of the evils of both capitalism and communism, the use of violence to "resolve" differences, and the deification of the Great Leader.

The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, 1921-1939, edited by Gertie F. Bögels, translated by Kenneth Kronenberg, Routledge Press (The International Psychoanalytical Association International Psychoanalysis Library), 2022

What If? Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images, by Vilém Flusser, translated by Anke Finger and Kenneth Kronenberg, University of Minnesota Press, 2021

Migrating Merchants. Trade, Nation, and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Hamburg and Portugal, by Jorun Poettering, DeGruyter Oldenbourg, 2018

A History of Jews in Germany since 1945, edited by Michael Brenner, Indiana University Press, 2018

The Political Orchestra: The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics During the Third Reich, by Fritz Trümpi, University of Chicago Press, 2016*

* Named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of 2017.

The Baltic: A History, by Michael North, Harvard University Press, 2015

Latin: Story of a World Language, by Jürgen Leonhardt, Harvard University Press, 2013*

* Named a Library Journal Best Book of 2013.

No Justice in Germany: The Breslau Diaries, 1933-1941. The diaries of historian and teacher Willy Cohn (1888-1941), Stanford University Press, 2012

Treating Attachment Disorders, by Karl Heinz Brisch, Guilford Press, 2002, 2012*

* Nominated for the 2013 Gradiva Award for Best Book by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP).

Pope and Devil, by Hubert Wolf, Harvard University Press, 2010

Self-Education for Death for the Fatherland. The excerpted diaries and letters of Udo Kraft (1870-1914)

The Terezín Diary of Alice Ehrmann, in Salvaged Pages, by Alexandra Zapruder, Yale University Press, 2002

The Freedom of the Migrant, by Vilém Flusser, University of Illinois Press, 2003

Lives and Letters of an Immigrant Family. The Van Dreveldts' Experiences along the Missouri, 1844-1866, University of Nebraska Press, 1998

Nine Poems by Helga Grimm

Other Book Translations

FAQs about Translation of Letters and Diaries

The diaries, letters, and documents currently gathering dust in your attic connect you to your own history in a way that a family tree alone cannot. These writings may also contain information or first-hand accounts of more general historical interest. In any case, they will help you to understand the personal lives of your ancestors and the world in which they moved. Because of my background and interests I am uniquely able to help you to place yourself and your family in historical context.

Looking for Signs of Life in Old Letters

Family Documents

A number of years ago I translated documents relating to my grandparents' deportation to Theresienstadt and then Auschwitz, in 1942.

Zur Geschichte der Familie Kronenberg

A History of the Kronenberg Family

On June 18, 2022 five Stolpersteine were placed in the sidewalk in front of Hellweg 16/18 in Geseke, Westphalia, where the store N. Kronenberg was located until its forced sale in 1937. Reinhard Marx, a local teacher and historian compiled and wrote a history of the Kronenberg family, which can be downloaded in German and in my English translation.

Die antijüdischen Ausschreitungen in Geseke und Störmede im Jahr 1844

The anti-Jewish riots in Geseke and Störmede in 1844

Historian Margit Naarmann published a detailed account in 1991 in Menora-Jahrbuch für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte of the anti-Jewish riots that occurred in Geseke, Westphalia in 1844. These riots formed the background for a play by the Jewish German poet Else Lasker-Schüler, based on her father's family's experiences there. Both her account and my translation may be downloaded.

What is translation? What is a translator?

Presented at the 15th Annual Conference of the New England Translators Association, May 7, 2011.

Translation and Identity/Translation as Identity

Presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the New England Translators Association, May 4, 2013.

Collaboration, Autonomy, and Models of Translation

Presented at the 20th Annual Conference of the New England Translators Association, May 14, 2016.

How I Learned the Alphabet— and a Few Other Things along the Way

Translator profile, Translation Journal, October 2013

Latin: Story of a World Language

An Interview with Kenneth Kronenberg, NETA News, Fall 2013

Translation in the Twenty-First Century: The Need for a New Model

Closing remarks given at the 1st NYU Translation Day Symposium at NYU, October 1, 2016.

A Timeline of RWS Group Acquisitions

Climate and antiwar related:

Weymouth and the National Security State

The Volatility of Gas: War in the Pipeline?

The Heat in the Eastern Mediterranean: Implications for the Climate and Antiwar Movements

Presentation: The Volatility of Gas: War in the Pipeline?

This Web site was started on March 4, 1996.

It was last updated on February 8, 2022.