Svetlana Geier

Svetlana Geier, née Swetlana Michailovna Ivanova, (26 April 1923 in Kiev, USSR – 7 November 2010 in Freiburg im Breisgau) was a literary translator who translated from her native Russian into German. She lived in Germany from 1943 until her death in 2010.

Biography

Svetlana Geier was born in Kiev in 1923, the daughter of Russian parents. Her father was a scientist, his specialism plant breeding. Her mother came from a family of Tsarist officers. Her father was arrested in 1938 during the period of Stalin's Great Purge, and died in 1939 from illnesses stemming from his time in prison. Svetlana Ivanova had a sheltered childhood, receiving private tuition in both French and German early on in her life. In 1941, the year the German army invaded the Soviet Union, she passed her school – leaving exams with excellent grades and was accepted as a student at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the Faculty of West European languages. There she also worked as a translator for the Institute of Geology.