1 “The World Begins in Man”: A Brief and Selected History of Translations of Utopia into German Author: Nicole Pohl This article traces the translation history of Thomas More’s Utopia into German from the first seventeenth-century translations to the translations and reception of Utopia in the GDR and re-united Germany. In 1516, Thomas More, adviser to King Henry VIII, Catholic, martyr, and saint, published his most controversial book, De optimo reipublicae statu deque noval insula Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus (Of the best state law and of the new island Utopia, truly a golden booklet, as beneficial as it is cheerful). During 2016, special issues of Utopian Studies (27, no. 2, and 27, no. 3), edited by Fátima Vieira, have been tracing the translation history of this book that still grips our attention five hundred years later. As in the translation (and reception) histories in all countries, Utopia’s translation in Germany reflects contemporaneous social and political debates and anxieties. Thus, the book was read and translated as a communist document avant la lettre, a contradictory Catholic satire, a fantastical and thus ineffectual blueprint, and a socialist prophecy. In the seventeenth century, Utopia was translated not only into German but into the vernacular (albeit abbreviated). Other translations (by Gregor Wintermonath, for instance) published Utopia with Joseph Hall’s antipodean satire, Mundus alter et idem sive Terra Australis antehac semper incognita; Longis itineribus peregrini Academici