Schweizer Literaturgeschichte by Peter Rusterholz, Andreas Solbach

Abstract

6io Reviews form constitutes a relatively rare exception in a book organized according to theme and authorship. Indeed, demolishing the assumption of a congruence between the twowastes a disproportionate amount of space, and isnot always successful. Para doxically, it also leads to the inclusion, especially but by no means exclusively, in Erin McGlothlin's final essay on 'Writing by Germany's Jewish Minority of a good number of texts that are not fiction and/or not written (or even interested) in the Berlin Republic. And that then raises serious issues of focus and purpose. Equally, the ubiquity of translations suggests that the book is aimed at people not familiarwith the terrain.Yet almost no attempt is made to cater to this constituency. The translations of titlesand concepts are oftenmechanical, inconsistent, ideological, or just plain wrong. (Particularly crass is the translation 'Middle' for '(Berlin) Mitte'; but we also have 'False Hare' for themeatloaf that is 'Falscher Hase', 'Fall of the Berlin Wall' and 'political turn' for 'Wende\ and 'Legacy for 'Mitgift'.) Buzzwords such as 'Frauleinwunder, 'Generation Golf, '78er\ even '68er\ are explained inade quately and inpassing. (Conversely, afterFinlay's magisterial treatment of the topic, further explanations of the 'Literaturstreit' are redundant.) The two chapters with transnational potential, by Ingo Cornils on 'LiteraryReflections on "68"' and Sabine von Dirke on 'Pop Literature in the Berlin Republic', remain resolutely parochial. And for someone who does not know the text, tobe told that 'Hans Ulrich Treichel's Der Verlorene is included in Bill Niven's discussion of Germans as perpetrators ofNazi crimes, but itmight also have appeared inHelmut Schmitz's examination of "German wartime suffering'" (p. 11) isworse than unhelpful. Anyone familiar with Treichel's book, of course, will find the remark equally infuriating. For experts, moreover, the secondary material cited isworryingly narrow. Unfortunately, then, forall its sundry strengths, this isnot the book thatwe needed. Queen Mary University of London Robert Gillett Schweizer Literaturgeschichte. Ed. by Peter Rusterholz and Andreas Solbach. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler. 2007. 529 pp. 49.95. ISBN 978-3-476 07136-9. Eight chapters of Schweizer Literaturgeschichte, each written by an established spe cialist, deal in chronological order with the literature ofGerman-speaking Switzer land from its perceived beginnings in theMiddle Ages to the year 2000, and constitute four-fifthsof the book. The remainder contains a chapter of some forty pages on the literature of French-speaking Switzerland from the Reformation to the end of the twentieth century, ten pages on that of Italian-speaking Switzerland, two chapters providing twenty pages on Romansh literature, and three 'Exkurse' by other authors, on 'Exilliteratur, on 'Der neue Schweizer Film', and on women's writing inGerman-speaking Switzerland since 2000. The composition and proportions of Schweizer Literaturgeschichte present one solution to the problems of organization posed by its title,but it is fairlycertain that this titlealso sets in train in themind of a potential reader differentexpectations of a more equitable distribution of constituent elements. The' Vorwort' does not really ac MLR, 104.2, 2009 611 count for theparticular structure of thebook. The editors point to themarginal place accorded to Switzerland in several recent histories of literature inGerman and to the limitation to the twentieth century of the one recent specialized work of note, Klaus Pezold's Schweizer Literaturgeschichte:Die deutschsprachige Literatur im20. Jahrhun dert (Leipzig: Militzke, 2007) (reviewed in MLR, 104 (2009), 291-92), and posit as a consequence the desirability of 'eine Geschichte der Literatur aus der Schweiz' which, going beyond the texts themselves, sets themmore widely 'imKontext der Geschichte der Kulturen, der Geschichte und Politik der Schweiz* (p. ix).The volume also seeks to encourage the reading of 'Literatur aus den Kulturraumen' of Switzer land among awider public since the individual contributors 'mochten [...] Lesende mit unterschiedlichen Voraussetzungen furdiese Literaturen gewinnen' (p. xii). Schweizer Literaturgeschichte contains good examples of contextualization and promotion, namely those chapters in the German section which are sustained by a strong,wide-ranging, and coherent narrative highlighting the characteristics of the period under discussion and the relationship of outstanding figures to it. Remy Charbon on 'Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert (i700-i83o)>, Dominik Miiller on 'Der liberale Bundesstaat (1830-1848-1914)', and Beatrice Sandberg on 'Geistige Landesverteidigung (1933-1945)' all...