Von der Penis- zur Kreuzinsel: Der Fake-Bericht von der Isle of Pines und seine europäischen Adaptationen

A satirically intended fake report about the alleged discovery of an unknown island in the Indian Ocean, published in London in two parts, leads to a flood of translations throughout Europe within a few weeks in 1688. In the process, the first part of the fantasy tale is translated into numerous other languages and used as an actual account of the discovery, as a scandalous polygamy experiment and finally even as the model for the island episode at the end of Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus novel. The latter appears to be a counterfactual of the original text for moral and confessional reasons. Overall, the history of translation demonstrates the central role of Dutch as a language of mediation for English texts into German and French and beyond. For French, a divergent reception can be reconstructed depending on the political and confessional conditions. The reception in Germany was mainly in the trading cities of Hamburg and Frankfurt. In the meantime, Georg Greflinger has been identified as the decisive translator and mediator. As an early newspaper publisher, his main focus was on the curieuse interest in entertainment. The history of translation nevertheless proves to be a comprehensive misreception, which became a condition for the enormous journalistic success. This article breaks down the multiple thematic spectrum of the original narrative and its diverse further use, compares significant text variants and is able to add a number of new findings to the known printing and translation history with regard to the originals used, unknown printings and concrete reception paths.