"Beyond ideologies" – some remarks on the existential and ecocritical tone of Alfred Andersch's autobiographical report Die Kirschen der Freiheit (1952)

Abstract

The article is an attempt to look at the autobiographical text of the leading writer of early German post-war literature and one of the founders of the famous "Group of 47" Alfred Andersch entitled Die Kirschen der Freiheit (1952) from the perspective of the existential philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre and selected aspects of ecocritical thought. The article discusses in detail the existential concept of individual freedom not determined by twentieth-century totalitarian systems and emphasizes its ecocritical sense, i.e. the dimension of humanity in the bosom of nature, the potential of free will and deciding about one's own fate, as well as the role of art as a special means of expression of free man and his relationship to the world.