Claremont
March 25, 2000

You are absolutely right! The German translation (Zaungast der Zeit) of my book ADVENTURES OF A BYSTANDER does not contain the chapter on Brailsford and the chapter on the Schwarzwalds. My German publisher - the founder and owner of ECON (he died several years ago) took out the BRAILSFORD chapter because he thought the book too long. He took out the Schwarzwald chapter because as a young man in Wien (he was incidentally KREISKY'S close Jugendfreund) he had a violent fight with Eugenia Schwarzwald.... The book never did well in its German edition and altogether did not well in Europe. It was a best-seller in the US, Brasil, Spain, Argentina and Japan, and is still selling extremely well in these countries -- it came out in new (but unchanged) editions in both the USA and Japan only a few months ago and is selling briskly in both countries. In its German edition it is of course long out of print and the rights have reverted to me.

NOW there seems to be increasing interest in Europe -- and especially in the German-speaking countries - in the Interwar period with which the book mainly deals. Perhaps it could and should be re-issued ... Nothing would please me more ... [the existing] German translation ... is full of stupid mistakes (e.g. in the chapter on my Grandmother the translator translated the maid's saying "MY LADY" with "Meine Herrin" -- the right translation is, of course MEINE GNAEDIGE, and so on). I'd be delighted if a German-language publisher were to take on this book and re-issued it - complete with the two chapters ECON omitted. And as I said, there is now considerable interest in that period -- at least in the countries in which the book is still in print -- USA, UK, Japan, Brasil, Spain/Argentina - and now Taiwan and China - the book is selling very well.

>> Brief vom 6.1.2001: Drucker erinnert sich, wie es zu seiner Tätigkeit beim "Frankfurter General-Anzeiger" gekommen ist.