Month 1: Pages 1-3

I plan on writing a post like this every month (on the 14th) to document my progress and mention any interesting lingual things I might have run across.  It'll be like a serialization but of translation rather than of writing.  Here's what I've translated so far (the parts I'm unsure about [there are a lot, and even some of the other sections could probably be phrased better; I'm planning on refining things once I get through a first draft of translation] are in italics and "---&---" indicates page breaks, accompanied by a page number if there is one):

Who Loves the Home as You

Novel by Artur Brausewetter 

Twenty-sixth through Thirtieth Thousand 

Publishing house of Georg Westermann

Brunswick - Berlin - Hamburg 

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Copyright 1916 by Georg Westermann Brunswick

From the bill literal prescribed formula 

Printing by Georg Westermann in Brunswick 

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Dedicated in gratitude and admiration to the savior of East Prussia General-Fieldmarshall von Hindenburg 

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     What had not happened for a long time in Reckenstein happened today: someone was having a party.  Edith the only daughter of the old Reckenstein citizen, who for five years had with circumspection and loyalty replaced his early departed wife for him in house and yard, began her twenty-first birthday.  The Reckenstein citizen had never been for having the party; for him life’s sense and happiness lay in his monotony.  This time he made an exception; it was from him that the suggestion for this celebration came.

     Small was the circle of the invited: from the neighborhood, Harro von Ubitzsch, lean, serious aloof, with a small wife who delighted in empty chatter; from farther away, Dr. Werner Stoltzmann, the first mayor of Rodenburg, who had been city treasurer for a short time in Königsberg, and who had - for their blossoming city and not easy administration - won the Rodenburg city council to count on him with pride to action.  He was still young and of outspoken talent, one whose consciousness of himself was - for one in his thirty-fourth year - stamped very surely in character and appearance, which for him would be laid out from some sides as arrogance and self-importance.  However, those who knew him more closely, like the Reckenstein citizen and his daughter, knew that at heart he was humble and modest.  But the life and the great publicity, in this it was tasked to him so early, to have liked to have taught him, that in this world with such virtues, not many were to begin.  His wife showed the compensating opposite, a tall brunette with red, round, 

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soft cheeks; laughing eyes; and a boldly-made nose with very thin, finely-drawn wings that - when she spoke - quietly shook.  Coming from an old Rhenish officer’s family, Frau Lisa quickly settled herself by virtue of excellent upbringing into the stiffer north German relations, and through her natural, warm-hearted nature, quickly won the hearts of all the Rodenburg citizens and also the hearts of those who were still temporarily faced with deferring to their husbands.

     Edith, more serious but as life-affirming as she, was tightly befriended to her of a Genevan pension year; now the contact, when she found herself here again one day, would preferably maintain, although one had a three-hour railroad journey to Reckenstein and both men appear further separated through the differences of age and attitude.

     For the early season the day had been exceptionally hot.  When one settled one’s self to supper in the large dining room, the windows and both wings of the old oak doors that led out to the garden veranda remain opened.  Although the darkness had not yet arrived, one had lit the candles on the enormous silver candelabra that - inherited from the ancestors - belonged to the most beautiful pieces of the Reckenstein house-treasure.  In the mild draft the flickering light grasped her there with long fingers over the spring flowers that - stunning and fragrant - adorned the table.  However, the gradually duller and twilight-still becoming evening light pierced the windows and the door.  And if the conversation once fell silent, one heard from outside the song of a nightingale in wonderful tones, one minute jubilant, the next sighing. 

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     But now it broke off, from a loud sound that shrilly cut off his soft melodies, brought to silence.  Dr. Stoltzmann had knocked on his glass and rose to his feet.
     “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in his somewhat hard - but not sparing melodiousness - way of speaking, “You know that I am more a man of objective language than of well-cut table-aphorisms.  However, the friendly position that we took up for our host - and particularly my wife took up for the daughter of his house - drives me today together in her name to offer up our congratulations to Miss Edith in this circle of chosen friends.  It is the day on which she” - he took an approach to be humorous, something at which he never particularly succeeded - “steps out of her children’s shoes and will be received under the adults.  This event will change little in her external life-relationships.

Fun German words I came across by happenstance while looking up other words:

• verprügeln - to beat someone up
  While cross checking candelabrum (der Armleuchter) I ran across baste in the English section of my German-English dictionary, and apparently verprügeln also means to baste
  And while reading a book about Mendelssohn (R. Larry Todd's Mendelssohn: A Life in Music), I ran across Musikantenprügelei a "humorous part-song" Mendelssohn wrote.  I'm not sure of the origin of the given English translation: "Musicians' Fisticuffs," but - while I hate the word fisticuffs - it does agree with what my German-English dictionary gives me: "brawl, scrap, free-for-all"
• der Liliputaner - dwarf, midget
  Apparently in reference to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
• (wie) im Fluge - [idiomatically:] quickly [but literally:] as in flight
• uzen - to pull someone's leg [as a noun: die Uzerei]
• die Schwachkopf - blockhead [but literally "weak head"]
• der Klimbim - to-do; rubbish; der ganze ~ - the whole caboodle

I was a bit befuddled by "einer... Nase mit... Flügeln."  I translated it as "a... nose with... wings," which didn't make sense at first, but then I looked it up.  Apparently nose wings are a thing even in English.  I'd never heard of this, so it was weird to learn about it via German.

While looking up hinausführenden (leading out [or led out?]), I noticed die Hexe (witch), and discovered that it's connected etymologically with the English word hex.  I either discovered or re-discovered die Hexerei (witchcraft), which I found interesting because it follows the same paradigm as die Bäckerei (bakery), die Brauerei (brewery), die Metzgerei (butcher shop), and probably some others.

And while confirming Brauerei for that comment above, I ran across die Brause (shower).  Along with das Wetter (weather), I think this provides the author's surname (Brausewetter).

I couldn't find a direct translation for Hausschatzes, but since Haus is house and Schatz (in genitive case here) is treasure, I translated it as house-treasure.  Then it occurred to me that a lot of the German compound words (and I suppose English ones too) are sort of akin to Old English kennings (I've been reading Beowulf lately, so I've encountered a lot of them).

"Bald jauchzenden, bald schluchzenden" looked sort of confusing when I was copying it out, but in translating it and looking up bald, I discovered that "bald... bald..." is a correlative ("one minute... the next...").  I was going to verify this with my German textbook, but it turns out that neither of my collegiate German textbooks has anything about correlatives in the indices.  Running into jauchzenden (jubilant) was coincidental as it appeared in the title of a Bach cantata I'd listened to a few days earlier (albeit as an imperative: Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51 ["Praise God in all lands"]).