Dieter Zimmer (1934-2020): noble, wise, driven by truth-seeking, mercilessly attentive to detail, an intellectual of the highest carat, a man of honour, a writer from God. He interviewed Nabokov several times and translated him into German, becoming the editor of VN's works at Rowholt Verlag in 1989. His Nabokov's Berlin (2001) and A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths, his unprecedented website dedicated to VN's family and haunts, and his Lolita travelogue are and will remain the golden standard of Nabokov studies.

In Memoriam Dieter E. Zimmer

To mark the occasion of Dieter E. Zimmer's passing away on June 19, 2020, Brian Boyd has translated into English Dieter's 1959 review of Lolita. 

With Brian's permission, I am posting his English translation below (there is also a pdf version accessible here). The German original can be read below or in pdf here or in the context of Dieter's incomparable website. 

DIE ZEIT/Literatur, Nr.42, 16 October 1959, pp.9-10

Dear Nabokovians:

​Dieter Eduard Zimmer, essayist, editor, translator, an intellectually “incorruptible” “Renaissance man” (I quote from the German Wikipedia) and among much else Nabokov’s most important translator, editor, and longest-serving scholar, has died in Berlin on June 19, 2020, aged 85.