A Gift from Hồ Chí Minh: The Story of Franz and Irene Faber and Das Mädchen Kiều
Inspired by Hồ Chí Minh’s gift of Truyện Kiều, Franz and Irene Faber spent seven years translating Nguyễn Du’s epic into German. Their Das Mädchen Kiều became a milestone of Vietnamese-German literary exchange, first published in East Germany in 1964 and recently reissued in a bilingual edition.
In 1954, German journalist Franz Faber, then a correspondent for Neues Deutschland, traveled to Vietnam at the invitation of Hồ Chí Minh, shortly after the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ.
According to Faber’s accounts, Hồ Chí Minh presented Franz with Kim Vân Kiều tân truyện – Histoire de Kiều – a bilingual, annotated Vietnamese-French edition (1931/1951) of the Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh.
That encounter sparked a seven-year translation journey by Franz and his wife Irene Faber, a linguist fluent in five languages who began learning Vietnamese from scratch.
Working together, the Fabers created thousands of index cards to capture the poem’s tone, rhythm, and cultural references.
Their verse translation transformed Nguyễn Du’s 3,254 lines into 9,384 German verses.
First published in 1964 in East Berlin by Rütten & Loening in 1964, Das Mädchen Kiều remains the only German translation of The Tale of Kiều – a singular achievement in Vietnamese–German literary exchange.
In 2015, German-Vietnamese visual artist Claudia Borchers and scholar Dr. Trương Hồng Quang reissued the Fabers’ work as a bilingual Vietnamese-German edition.
It was published by Thế Giới Verlag, Hanoi, with Borchers’ artwork gracing the cover.
German on one side, Vietnamese on the other, the volume becomes more than a book: it is a bridge between languages, histories, and generations.
Das Mädchen Kiêu von Nguyên Du: Das vietnamesische Nationalepos übertragen ins Deutsche von Irene und Franz is available as digital download via online shops and via the artist’s website.
(Note: the digitial edition includes only the German text.)
