The German Dante Society (DDG) met for the 100th time on the weekend of October 25-27, 2024. Every year, people from an international context meet here to listen to lectures on Dante, his works and their reception and to talk to each other. Founded in 1865 by a group of enthusiastic Dante readers around the lawyer Karl Witte and under the patronage of King John of Saxony, the DDG is still dedicated to the literary and cultural heritage of the Italian poet. As a non-profit association, it offers an open forum to anyone interested in Dante. More information about the DDG can be found on the homepage https://dante-gesellschaft.de/.
In this anniversary year, the conference took place at its founding location in Dresden. It was organized in collaboration with Maria Lieber and the Institute of Romance Studies at TU Dresden. Under the general theme of “Dante's languages”, the lectures dealt on the one hand with the Divine Comedy - Winfried Wehle (Eichstätt) read Dante's poetry as a “love language of thought”. On the other hand, Paola Manni (Florence) from the Accademia della Crusca presented the Vocabolario Dantesco, a major project that is extremely useful not only for scholars, which digitally records and philologically indexes the vocabulary used in Dante's complete works (available at www.vocabolariodantesco.it). Michael Schwarze, on the other hand, used the multilingual poem Aï faus ris, which is attributed to Dante, to show how the poet artfully composes verses from French, Florentine Italian and Latin into a canzone. Saverio Campanini (Bologna) spoke about Hebrew in Dante. The detailed program and further photos of the conference can be found at https://dante-gesellschaft.de/impressionen-der-jahrestagungen/
In Dresden, the weather was fine and there was plenty to do beyond the lectures - concerts, city tours and a visit to Weesenstein Castle, the seat of the then King of Saxony, showed the city at its best under the auspices of Dante. The warm hospitality of Mrs. Maria Minkner and the team of the Catholic Academy of the Diocese of Dresden-Meißen, whose premises the DDG was allowed to use, right in the prestigious heart of the city on the Elbe, contributed to the good atmosphere.
I was there myself as a member of the DDG board, which traditionally holds its meeting before the annual conference. As editor of the newsletter Il Novo Giorno (https://dante-gesellschaft.de/mitteilungsblatt-novo-giorno/), it was a special pleasure for me this year to invite guests such as Paola Manni, Ralf Christoph and Josephine Klingebeil to the sofa of the library in the Cathedral House for a short commentary on a passage of their own choice in Dante's work. The interviews will be published in the next issue of Novo Giorno. The annual newsletter provides information about events relating to Dante and his work. It also publishes short reviews, literary and essayistic as well as personal contributions on Dante. Submissions and suggestions are welcome until January 31 of each year!
Andrea Renker