James J. Conway
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jamesjconway.bsky.social
James J. Conway
@jamesjconway.bsky.social
350 followers 420 following 120 posts
Writer, translator, reformed publisher in Berlin
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jamesjconway.bsky.social
A few days ago, this old, half-blind dog was so ill that when I took her to the vet, I wasn’t sure I would be bringing her home again. And now here she is, running through the forest on a beautiful autumn morning like a furry little Lazarus. ❤️
October 26, 2025 at 11:07 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Daniel Brook’s The Einstein of Sex is outstanding – an insightful, expansive and compulsively readable biography that reflects Hirschfeld’s epochal significance as a visionary of sexuality, gender and ultimately race. I thought I knew a fair bit about Hirschfeld but I learned so much.
A book cover with the text The Einstein of Sex/Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld/Visionary of/Weimar Berlin/Daniel Brook against a black and white photo showing revellers at what is evidently a costume ball, some dressed formally, others in masks and wigs, including one person as Medusa with a headpiece of snakes. Magnus Hirschfeld holds hands with his partner, Karl Giese, who appears to be in drag. A pattern of hand-coloured circles occupies the rest of the cover, including a large pink circle interlocking with a smaller blue circle.
October 8, 2025 at 10:10 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Berliners! Next Wednesday (15/10) at @curiousfoxbooks.bsky.social: hear @brookfiles.bsky.social talking about his new Magnus Hirschfeld bio, The Einstein of Sex, and me re my translation of Hirschfeld’s Berlin’s Third Sex, moderated by @ajbwells.bsky.social www.curiousfoxbooks.com/events
A pink information panel headed “An evening with Magnus Hirschfeld” above the book covers for The Einstein of Sex by Daniel Brook and Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, to the left the details “15 October/20:00/Doors 19:39/Free entry”, to the right “with Daniel Brook & James J. Conway in conversation with Alexander Wells”
October 8, 2025 at 10:10 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Monte Verità, looking down on Ascona and Lago Maggiore.
A mountaintop with fir trees to the left and right of the frame, in the top left a dramatic sun casting rays onto the lake below, with buildings just visible on the far shore.
October 3, 2025 at 2:12 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
You know the feeling: you’re on a train deep in the Gotthard Tunnel but you MUST have risotto rice. Swiss railways got ya covered.
October 1, 2025 at 12:24 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
#normalforbrandenburg
Red sign in a planted bed reading "Schön aber giftig/Bitte nicht berühren!" (Beautiful but poisonous/Please don't touch!) Hedge cut in the shape of leering lantern-jawed ogre with a lawn, yellow house with shutters and partly cloudy daytime sky behind
August 27, 2025 at 1:38 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
It was closing time at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart but this caught my eye on the way to the exit. “Magic Scene” 1740/1 by Andrea Locatelli – a macabre, occult scenario that really rewards close examination (death has not halted the hanged man’s indignities...). Fantastic custom frame, too.
Against a mulberry coloured wall, a carved silver-plated frame in portrait format topped by an owl on a stack of books within a pediment, with plants and flowers at the bottom left and right. The oil painting within the frame shows a sorcerer in a blue cloak reading from a book on the ground, tracing a sigil into the dirt within a gloomy half-ruined building, with columns holding up a vaulting ceiling, although one column is broken and topped by plant life. Around him are presumably the apparitions he has summoned. In the foreground is the skeleton of a dog, still standing, alongside broken jugs, and the skeleton of a man lying down. Above the broken column is a man hanged in a noose from a beam; a cat standing on the beam is defecating on the dead man’s head. Also hanging from the beam are monkey, and an owl watches from a perch attached to a column. Above the sorcerer a naked man is riding a flying goat through a hole in the wall toward the moonlight, behind the sorcerer we see demons, bats, a naked woman and flying snakes emerging from the pits of hell.
August 14, 2025 at 1:28 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Me: I’ve got a package coming today.
Husband (hopefully): Is it negative books?
An open box showing a book with the title "Die Lebensreform/Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900" in green against an oil painting showing a naked young man flanked by a bare-breasted young woman with long auburn hair and green cloth blown by the wind and a blue skirt, and a dark-haired woman with an orange top and red skirt with her head turned away. They look to be striding into a better future.
July 9, 2025 at 12:59 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
@johncoulthart.com, I saw one of these in the wild* and thought of you.
* the Stefan George Museum in Bingen, which was actually pretty wild. Lots of Melchior Lechter designs.
In a curved glass case, a book in a Jugendstill design with the title MAXIMIN in gold within a gold design with thin vertical lines, a triangle and flame-like motifs against an ivory-coloured background. To the right of the book, a label: "'Maximin'/Ein Gedenkbuch/Herausgegeben von/Stefan George/Berlin 1907"
July 1, 2025 at 12:56 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
The idea is that if you have respiratory problems (and you can’t make it to the sea, which is a long way from here), the salty air will help. So you’re sitting on a bench on a surreally long wooden frame, looking out at grapevines and smelling sea air. It’s very, very odd.
A long view through the wooden frame of the Gradierwerk, in the foreground a view of the grey-black brushwood panels with water trickling down them.
July 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
It is essentially a framework with a raised deck, and at deck height are huge panels of brushwood twigs compressed to make a mesh, down which runs salt water pumped up from a natural saline aquifer. The water evaporates as it trickles, and the resulting vapour has a very high salt content.
July 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
… but it is very difficult to describe, so bear with me. We are looking at the “Gradierwerk”, a spa facility in the form of an immensely long wooden structure – 333 metres long, *one third of a kilometre*, dating from the mid-19th century.
Under a blue sky, a view of one side of the Gradierwerk, a wooden frame with a raised platform and dark panels, her with a small wooden turret, in the foreground a stream with plants either side. Angled view of most of one side of the Gradierwerk, showing an extremely long wooden structure with dark wooden panels, at the far end a hill with grapevines and a small white chapel, in the foreground a curving stream with reeds and a curving pathway.
July 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
… you continue on to open fields and your shape-shifting conveyance is now effectively a cross-country train, vineyards come into view and you arrive in the town of Bad Dürkheim. And there it is …
Grape vines in rows under a blue sky with hills in the distance.
July 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
… which was voted Germany’s ugliest city (and while it would be unfair to judge from few minutes’ transit, the fact that this bunker came as aesthetic relief was not a good sign), then the tram becomes a subway and then a tram again and then you’re out the other side of Ludwigshafen and …
A concrete bunker on a street corner approximately the size of a seven-storey building. It has a door with steps leading up to it on each of the two visible sides, but no windows. The upper part of the structure is distinguished by a pattern of stepped indentations in the wall which look like the imprint of step pyramid.
July 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
I may have found the most bizarre structure in Germany! Even the journey there is weird. Starting out from Mannheim, the grid city that has blocks with Battleship coordinates rather than street names, you catch a tram which crosses the Rhine to Ludwigshafen …
On a corner, two street signs in blue enamel with white text announcing this block in Mannheim as “N7”. Below it is a pedestrian traffic light on red, above it a sign saying “BÄCKER”.
July 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Toys at the Bauhaus Museum, Weimar, including spinning tops designed by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, one of the original Bauhaus Weimar cohort who later emigrated to Australia and became an art teacher, where his pupils included my Dad.
Stringed puppet figure with a dark red spherical torso, bulbous pink thighs and orange upper arms, stick forearms and lower legs, black hair with eyes agog, against a pick background Toy figures in a cabinet; a conical black-clad figure in the foreground, a spherical figure out of focus further away against a green and yellow background Looking down on a glass-covered display case with a dusty pink base, showing three children’s spinning tops with patterned discs, one evenly divided between black and white, another with wedges of red, purple, blue, black, yellow and orange, and the third with uneven concentric circles of white, yellow, red, blue and black.
June 11, 2025 at 11:32 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
🎵 Über-duckie, you're the one
Yellow rubber überduckie styled as Friedrich Nietzsche, with bushy eyebrows and moustache.
June 5, 2025 at 6:14 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
I wasn't sure what to expect, but Erfurt was great: buzzy, multicultural with an amazing (and largely car-less) old town, and – one or two black t-shirts with offensive slogans in white Fraktur aside – no conspicuous far-right presence.
A public square with cobbles and tram tracks, with two historic buildings: on the left, a smaller half-timbered brown and cream five-storey building with a simple gabled roof, on the right a five-storey tavern in green and white with a bell gabled roof, behind them a cloudy sky. A courtyard showing cobbles and trees and a half-timbered facade. A view over a vineyard toward a church and a cathedral with verdigris spires against a largely blue sky. Looking down from a fortification with a terrace and a watchtower, with historic houses in the distance, modern apartment buildings further away, and green hills in the distance, under a largely blue sky.
June 5, 2025 at 2:36 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
*Jan Brady voice* Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche!
Selection of busts and statuettes of Friedrich Nietzsche in a museum on stepped black pedestals. Close to the viewer, a standing statuette in grey plaster, behind out of focus largely white busts. White plaster statuette of the infirm Friedrich Nietzsche in an armchair with a blanket over his legs Close up of Friedrich Nietzsche's death mask in grey/white plaster Yellow rubber überduckie styled as Friedrich Nietzsche, with bushy eyebrows and moustache.
June 5, 2025 at 1:07 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
WILLY BRANDT ANS FENSTER
Brooding early evening sky, at the bottom of the image white neon letters spelling out WILLY BRANDT ANS FENSTER (Willy Brandt to the window).
June 5, 2025 at 12:43 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Erfurt is for lovers
Narrow canal with railing from which hang potted flowers, beyond a restaurant overlooking the water; trees and greenery on the left side of the image with a brooding cloudy sky beyond. Two half-timbered cream houses with sage window frames with trees either side overlooking a canal with a footbridge of stone steps and wooden boards. Covered medieval bridge in the evening with four-storey buildings overlooking the water below Cheese board with a heart-shaped bun and a butter pot with a pink daisy
June 5, 2025 at 12:39 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Receiving fresh copies of a book you’ve worked on – it never gets tired. Berlin‘s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, published by @uoftpress.bsky.social
Cardboard box open to reveal two stacks of the same book. The cover of the book has a backdrop the colour of a green carnation, with two colourised photos showing the same individual in two different exposures, one in masculine-coded clothing from the early 20th century, and one in feminine-coded clothing. On the left the individual is wearing a suit coloured mid-blue with a white starched collar and purple tie and waistcoat and a black hat. On the right the individual is wearing a pink overcoat with wide sleeves over a light-blue blouse and a purple skirt, as well as a purple broad-brimmed hat with a blue ribbon. The text at the top reads MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD/Translated and with an afterword by James J. Conway/BERLIN’S THIRD SEX
May 30, 2025 at 2:06 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Berlin, Saturday. Outside: meh. Inside: unfiltered sunshine from the other end of the world as Australian & New Zealand writing folk freely share their work and their thoughts in an all-day symposium. Looking forward to it!
May 23, 2025 at 9:25 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
TIL there is an online map of *every single tree in Berlin*! I see this tree on my dog walks and I always loved it but I had no idea what it was. Turns out it is a Dreidorniger Lederhülsenbaum, or honey locust (how is that not a shoegaze band?). experience.arcgis.com/experience/7...
A yellow-green tree with a pleasingly rounded crown amid other trees, including conifers, against cloudy sky.
May 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Next week! A whole day dedicated to Aus/NZ literature in Berlin. I'm looking forward to some great panel discussions with others who have wandered far from home. stadtsprachen.de/de/event/par...
May 16, 2025 at 2:00 PM