Abstract
This article explores the expert genre ›medical report‹ from a narratological point of view, and is divided into three parts: the first part deals with the history of this widely unknown factual genre that develops, as is shown in patient files from the Inselarchiv Berne, in the 1940s as integral part of the file. The medical report transforms clinical actions and events into a fundamentally linear sequence and is initially marked by a substantial degree of narrativity, including a first-person-narrator, eventfulness and emotions. The second part of the article deals with the epistemology of the contemporary medical report: it is shown that the event-sequencing in medical reports becomes ever more selective, reductive and actionless as clinical medicine becomes over-complex, highly specialized and technicized. The third part explores the aesthetic potential of the medical report for post-modern German literary prose: In David Wagner’s autobiographical novel Leben, the medical report appears three times, thus structuring the whole plot and marking poetological turning points.
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