Only Veblen among the planned translations ever reached German readers

Evidence

This was a project which would have been able to use American sociology to help reinforce theoretical and materialist social research that was oriented towards society as a whole. At the same time, it would have begun to fill an enormous gap in West German post-war sociology: namely the lack of any systematic response to new trends in the social sciences. But the resistance to producing the series seems to have been considerable, and there was little interest in it. Even today, Veblen’s is the only one of the works listed to have been translated into German. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2051

Categorization

• XREF: The failed translation project parallels today’s late arrival of American theory in non-English academies and the political economy of knowledge transfer.