J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings in German
„Herr der Ringe“-Bücher und Filme
It all started with The Hobbit
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The German edition of
Der kleine Hobbit.
More Tolkien books
As a scholar, Tolkien specialized in Old and Middle English. Even before he became a professor at Oxford University in 1925, he had begun to assemble the fantasy stories and mythical geography that would become “Middle-earth” — from the Old English “Middangeard” (Mittelerde in German). Finally, in 1937 he published The Hobbit.
»In einem Loch im Boden, da lebte ein Hobbit.«
“In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.”
- The opening line of Tolkien's The Hobbit
The success of The Hobbit left Tolkien's publisher, Stanley Unwin, asking for more. But it would be another 16 years before Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy was ready for publication. When the three Ring books first appeared in 1954 and 1955, they sold very well, but true cult status didn't arrive until the paperback editions in the 1960s. Much to the author's dismay, the Tolkien books became a big hit with the hippy alternative culture and college students in the US. All the unwanted attention soon forced Tolkien and his wife to move to another part of England. By the time he died in 1973, Tolkien had written many other scholarly and fictional works, many of which were only published after his death.
German poster for the
first 'Herr der Ringe' film.
Foto: Warner Brothers
The first Warner Brothers' movie of The Lord of the Rings, filmed in New Zealand, was released worldwide on December 19, 2001. The German title is Herr der Ringe - Die Gefährten (“the companions”), a loose translation of the English title, since “The Fellowship of the Ring” would actually be Die Gefolgschaft des Rings. (See the German movie trailers as streaming video.) Although Tolkien's books never reached cult status in Germany, the first Herr der Ringe film was very successful (as were the other two: "Die Zwei Türme" and "Die Rückkehr des Königs"). All of the Ring books as well as other Tolkien publications are available in German... but which German?
The recent publication of a revised Lord of the Rings German translation by Wolfgang Krege has stirred up some controversy. Some German Tolkien fans claim Krege's new translation is closer to the original English, while others complain about its use of more modern terms than the "old" German translation by Margaret Carroux. (More about the two translations on our 'Ring' Links page.) But German readers have the choice of either version, an issue that doesn't matter for readers of Tolkien in English.
ALSO SEE > The Ring Verse in English, German, Latin
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