Thomas Reiser (born 1979 in Bayreuth, Germany) is a German philologist and translator. His contributions range from Baroque alchemy to comedies and art technological treatises of classical antiquity as well as of the Italian Renaissance. In 2014 he saw to the first German translation of Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Thomas Reiser
Born1979 (age 44–45)
Bayreuth, Germany
Occupationphilologist, translator
NationalityGerman

Life and career

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Thomas Reiser studied German Medieval Literature, Italian and Latin at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg. There he also obtained his doctoral degree in 2009 with the edition, translation and commentary of the mytho-alchemical didactic epic Chryseidos Libri IIII by the physician and alchemist Johannes Nicolaus Furichius (1602–1633) from Strasbourg.[1] He then held postdoctoral scholarships at the Centre Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice and 2010 at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich.[2] In 2014 he provided the first German translation of Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice 1499), which the Austrian composer Alexander Moosbrugger (with extracts from the English version by Joscelyn Godwin) turned into the libretto of his opera Wind; premiered at the Bregenz Festival, Lake Constance, and first aired in 2021.[3] As a fellow at the Casa di Goethe museum in Rome (2016 and 2017) Reiser rendered Andrea Palladio’s guides to the city’s ancient monuments and churches into German.[4] In the same year he was awarded a scholarship for a new translation of Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena’s (1470–1520) comedy La Calandria (1513) by the Viennese publishing house Schultz & Schirm Bühnenverlag.[5] Reiser further worked, as Gerda Henkel fellow in 2016 on Julius Pollux and as Volkswagen Foundation fellow on the architectural theory of the Italian Renaissance from 2018 to 2019, at the Section for Conservation and Restoration Studies of the TUM School of Engineering and Design in Munich.[6]

Publications (selected)

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Monographs
  • together with Paola Travaglio, Der ‚Liber colorum secundum magistrum Bernardum’, Ein Maltraktat des 13. Jahrhunderts, Neuedition, Übersetzung und Kommentar, Marktredwitz 2023, ISBN 979-8-8599-2576-6.
  • Francesco Colonna: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Interlinearkommentarfassung. Translated and commented by Thomas Reiser, Breitenbrunn 2014, series: Theon Lykos (ed. by Uta Schedler) Ia. ISBN 978-1-4992-0611-1.[7]
  • Mythologie und Alchemie in der Lehrepik des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Die Chryseidos libri IIII des Straßburger Dichterarztes Johannes Nicolaus Furichius (1602–1633). De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023316-2.[8]
Articles and Book Chapters

References

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