Winifred Katzin

Winifred Katzin (1894-1994) was a translator, author, and publishing director.

Biography

Winnifred appears to have been born , in Cape Town in 1894, the sister of Norah (Norah de la Fere, later of Ludlow, England) and Alfred G. Katzin, who became a Colonel during World War II and former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, and later settled at Weybridge, England.

Winifred became the second wife of Dr Ernest Gloor (1893-1964) of Lausanne, Switzerland, She died in 1994.

Her career as translator, compiler and author

She was a talented linguist and a prolific translator and even adaptor - particularly of Eastern European and Yiddish plays. Among her translations over the years have been Failures by Henri-Rene Lenormand (1923), Dybbuk by S. Ansky (1925, translated with Henry G. Alsberg), The Coral by Georg Kaiser (1929), The Passion Play of Alsfeld by M. Wall-Neumann (1935).

She also edited and collaborated on a number of play compilations, among them:

Eight European Plays, selected by Winifred Katzin with a preface by Barrett H. Clark (1890-1953), and published by Brentano's, New York, 1927. According to a note in the book "(a)ll of the plays were translated by the compiler, except A Place in the World, which was translated by Miss Katzin and Barrett H. Clark".

Short Plays from Twelve Countries, a collection of English one act plays selected, some translated and adapted, and edited by Winifred Katzin (London: George G Harrap and Co., 1937).

Political publications include As They Are: French Political Portraits (London : W. Heinemann, 1924), Ecoutons-les : problèmes socialistes, positions chrétiennes" (written with her husband and published in Neuchâtel by Ed. de La Baconnière, 1942).

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Her collection of Short Plays from Twelve Countries (1937) contains the text of the South African play In the Drought by J. du Plessis.

In South Africa, the Eastern European one-act plays The Jews of Hodos by Sandor Martinescu and Diamond Cuts Diamond by Nikolai Gogol - both translated by Katzin - were performed locally and published (re-published?) as performance texts by DALRO in 1969.

Sources

Adam Yamey. 2004. "A Wedding in Roeland Street", SA-SIG Newsletter (Vol. 4, Issue 3, March 2004): p.6

"Ernest Gloor", Dictionnaire Historiques de la Suisse[1]]

"Katzin, Winifred", WorldCat online catalogue[2]

Obituary: "Alfred G. Katzin, U.N. Ex-Official, 83", New York Times (June 16, 1989: Page 28)[3].

"Winifred Katzin", VIAF: Virtual International Authority File[4]

Jo Mielziner: Other Works, IMDb[5]

Sydney Paul Gosher. 1988. A Historical and Critical Survey of the South African One-Act Play Written in English. Unpublished D.Litt. et Phil. Thesis, University of South Africa.

NELM catalogue.

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