Performed for the first time in 1924, S’Annele Balthasar is a dramatic poem about the witch-hunts in Europe at the time of the Renaissance, written in Alsatian by the Jewish-Alsatian poet Nathan Katz (1892-1981). It plays in 1589 and is based on the records of the trial for witchcraft of a young peasant girl. It was translated into French by Jean-Louis Spieser and published in a bi-lingual French-Alsatian edition by Editions Arfuyen in the wake of a vigourous renewal of interest in the poetry of Nathan Katz. The High Alemannic form of the Alsatian language (akin to Swiss German) in which Nathan Katz is writing is actually my birth language, and I was lucky enough to meet the poet in my childhood. I have translated S'Annele Balthasar into English and modern German, in the hope that it may sail safely into the literary future.

Anne-Marie de Grazia, October 2023

^{Nathan Katz, by Henri Solveen}