Dear readers of my blog,

now things progress step by step, for it is on Wednesday, 11 December 2024 that the exhibition “Oscar Wilde: A Writer trapped by his own Words” is going to be re-opened in the library of Castle Ansbach at 11:30 a.m. It is the reawakening from a sleep of seven years.

Conceived bilingually with the German title “Ein Schriftsteller verfangen in den eigenen Worten”, this exhibition was originally the idea of David Rose (Paris), which was welcomed heartily by Sandra Mayer and the late Werner Huber in Vienna in 2013 and opened there in June 2014.

Further stops in its itinerary between 2014 up until 2017 were the Irish Embassy in Berlin as well as the universities of Passau, Dortmund, Vechta, and Potsdam, and “FosBos” vocational school in Munich where it was also Dr. Wolfgang Streit who took the initiative. Now working at Ansbach at the local “FosBos” vocational school, Dr. Streit was responsible for having the exhibition materials delivered via Dr. Harald Pittel from Potsdam to Franconia.

Heartfelt thanks are due to the State Library in Ansbach Castle and its director for the opportunity to make such a mobile extracurricular learning facility such as this bilingual Oscar Wilde exhibition accessible to the public at large as well as to students of six form colleges and their teachers in particular for the period between 11 December 2024 to 17 January 2025.

“Oscar Wilde: A Writer trapped by his own Words” is going to be opened in the library of Castle Ansbach at 11:30 a.m. by introductory talks given by the director of the library, Christian Mantsch, the headteacher of “FosBos”, Gernot Helmreich, and by Dr. Wolfgang Streit.

The exhibition is based on Oscar Wilde’s only novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, which had appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in a single issue of the “Lippincott’s Magazine” in June 1890. Public reactions to and the contemporary newspaper debate about the novel, in which Wilde took an active part, where that harsh and vehement that the author felt obliged to both enlarge and substantially revise and thoroughly censor the text before it appeared in book form in 1891. After the court cases in 1895, in the course which Oscar Wilde was turned from a famous person to an infamous persona non grata, the traces of the shorter texts of the novel rapidly disappeared. Thus it was rarely reprinted and translated in the 20th century. For it was from this text that passages had been taken to make sure Wilde was sentenced for acts of indecency to two years of prison with forced labour.

In fact, the edition of “Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray”  [Fig. 01, 02, 03, 04], edited and translated by Jörg W. Rademacher on the occasion of the centenary of Oscar Wilde’s death in 2000 is based on the uncensored wording of the first edition comprising 13 chapters in total, while the novel in book form from 1891 contains 20 chapters. Since it was necessary to constitute a new text of the novel based on the typescript, which Wilde had had done, this translation is both a first rendition in German of the uncensored text and a text that Wilde had never seen as such. Since censorship took place in the editorial committee based in Philadelphia, USA, where the magazine was also printed, Wilde after dispatching the typescript to America had no more access to the wording of his novel.

Copies of the German edition of this text can be acquired on the spot in the library. The English and the Italian printings [Fig. 05, 06] of the self-same edition are available via Elsinor Verlag or on the Internet as well as the exhibition catalogue [Fig. 07] and the essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”/“Des Menschen Seele im Sozialismus” [Fig. 09/10], of which there are separate versions in book form in English and German and a lesson plan for the teaching of the novel [Fig. 08].

Whoever wants to make the trip to Ansbach will hopefully make many discoveries. Whoever wants to show the exhibition themselves – in a school or in a library – is asked to turn to Dr. Streit or to me.

All best wishes,

Jörg W. Rademacher

3 December 2024, 124 years to the day after Oscar Wilde’s first burial