Manheim, Ralph F. (32977412)

Ralph Frederick Manheim
Personal details
Born	4 April 1907 New York
Died	26 September 1992
Nativity	United States
Religion	Jewish
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	32977412
Rank	Private
Camp Ritchie	Class 23 (25 September – 23 November 1944)
Section	5E
Enlisted	New York City, New York

Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.

Sources & confidence: Treat Research notes as leads, not settled fact. Prefer NARA, the class roster, newspapers, Find a Grave, or published histories for contested claims. Mark unsourced claims with {{Needs source}}, or explain disagreements on talk. Baseline import notes: About the data.

Ralph Frederick Manheim (4 April 1907 – 26 September 1992) was a Ritchie Boy (from United States; Jewish) who trained at Camp Ritchie in class 23.

Biography

. Manheim was born in New York to American parents of Lithuanian and German descent, and graduated from Harvard in 1926. Born April 4, 1907; died September 26, 1992 at the age of 85. He was the outstanding literary translator from German into English since the second world war. Best known perhaps for his widely-read translations of Gunter Grass, starting with The Tin Drum for Kurt Wolff's New York firm Pantheon Books, he worked for several leading belles-lettres, academic and art book publishers on both sides of the Atlantic and also did some translating from the French (including Celine's novels and Proust's early letters). He won a number of literary awards, culminating in the MacArthur fellowship and the PEN medal for translation, and was an internationally loved and respected figure. He thereafter studied at Yale and Columbia before going overseas to Vienna and Munich. For a time he was a schoolmaster in Connecticut, and during the Roosevelt era began producing stories and articles of his own, helped by the Federal WPA writing project. His long bibliography of some 150 book translations begins ominously with Mein Kampf in 1943 and Konrad Heiden's biography of Hitler a year later, and when he was drafted into the army he was first sent to the intelligence training centre at Camp Ritchie to be made into a prisoner of war interrogator. By his own account he was spared this unwelcome role in favour of translating German documents, and the command of military terms and expressions which this gave him would become useful after 1945.

Research notes

• 5th Army ?

Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	85
Nara ASN	32977412
Nara Name	MANHEIM RALPH F
Nara State	23
Nara County	61
Nara POE	2364
Nara DOE	10743
Nara Grade Alpha	PVT
Nara Grade Code	8
Nara Branch Alpha	NO
Nara Branch Code	2
Branch	No branch assignment
Nara Term or Enlistment	5
Term of enlistment	Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law
Defer. Date	0
Nara Source	0
Nara Nativity	23
Nativity.1	NEW YORK
Nara Year of Birth	7
Nara Race	1
Nara Race Description	White citizen
Nara Education	4
Nara Civilian Occupation	68
Nara Marital Status	7
Nara Height (inches)	94
Nara Weight (lbs)	949
Class_ASN	32977412
Class_Name	MANHEIM, Ralph F.
match_method	asn_exact_name_exact
row_source	both

Sources

• Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
• Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page, post dated 2022-11-28 (1 post)
• Wikipedia