German Epistolary Heritage Of Ivan Franko And Its Dominant Features

Abstract

The epistolary heritage of Ivan Franko contains over six thousand letters. German
epistolary correspondence addressed to Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Stanislav,
Chernivtsi. The author of the article analyzes also the response letters sent to I. Franko. His first
letters in German were addressed to Olha Roshkevych. They were written under the strong
impression that the epistolary novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by J.W. von Goethe had had
on I. Franko. The Ukrainian writer’s correspondence with H. Kanner and I. Singer the editors of the
weekly newspaper “Zeit” is an evidence of their close cooperation. I. Franko had close professional
ties with V. Adler one of the founders and leaders of the Austrian social-democratic party, the
editor of Vienna newspaper “Arbeiterzeitung”, as well as with V. Adler’s wife Emma. I. Franko’s
correspondence with a prominent Slavic scholar V. Yagic didn’t contain only private matters
discussions. The third part of it is totally scientific which actually makes it valuable for researchers.
I. Franko’s epistolary works reflect his artistic writer’s style neither in form nor in content. His
letters are characterized by the depth of his thought, consistency of his statements, clearness of the
sentence constructions, tendency to critical assessments of phenomena and scientific findings.