German Audiences Research Articles

A New Production of an Old Play. Barbarians by M. Gorky on the German Stage of 1990s (Based on Press Materials)

The issue of how national cultures are perceived by representatives of other cultures is particularly relevant today considering some communities’ attempts at cancellation against former partners that, until recently, were enthusiastically interested in. Written in 1905 by a prominent Russian and Soviet writer M. Gorky, Barbarians is one example of a work which used to attract attention in the West as a cultural portrait of a country but is now almost forgotten. The article aims to study the semantic dominants of the production, as staged in the theater of Bad Godesberg, Germany, in 1993, by examining it as a representation of Russian culture for German audience. To enable the analysis the following tasks were addressed: 1) to systematize information about the connections of M. Gorky's creative work with German culture; 2) to clarify the place of the play Barbarians in M. Gorky's work in light of its theatrical destiny; 3) to describe the key concepts that form the basis of its poetics; 4) to identify the socio-cultural issues that were represented in the studied German theater production of 1993; 5) to establish the cultural boundaries of perception of Russian culture by the German public of the early 1990s – 2024 in terms of the studied phenomenon. The materials for the study were the original text of the play, its theatrical production in the Kammerspiele Bad Godesberg theater, and publications in German media selected by random sampling. Based on the axiological and hermeneutic approaches, as well as imagology, the author uses the biographical method, and case study method, along with content and literary analyses. As a result, data was obtained on the specifics of the perception of the image of Russian culture in Germany in the early 1990s within the framework of the formation of a theatrical image and its search for little-known details of knowledge of the Russian soul. It is shown that in Germany they tried to associate this image with the important, yet at the same time very ambiguous, concept of barbarism for German culture, showing for the German audience, above all, the vitality of the culture. The author concludes that the German public perceived Maxin Gorky as one of the key representatives of Russian culture. Gorky’s play Barbarians, little known in Russia, was a popular theatrical production in Germany in 1990s due to its conceptual characteristics: in which the mysterious Russian soul is presented through the positive connotations of vitality and hopefulness. This ecology of culture formed the essence of the poetics of Jaroslav Chundela, who realized the creative impulse of M. Gorky in a relevant production that caused wide resonance in German society. The socio-cultural issues of ‘ecology’, in the broad sense, laid the foundation for the expansion of the cultural boundaries of the perception of Russian culture by the German public in the early 1990s, which by 2024 allows us to speak about the limitations of attempts to cancel Russian culture, which remain of universal human value regardless of political situation.

A Nietzschean tafsīr for Nazi Germany: The Commentary to Sadr-ud-Dīn’s Qur’an of 1939

This contribution traces the history of the German Qur'an edition published by the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at-e-Islam Lahore (Lahore-Ahmadiyya) in Berlin in 1939. Maulvi Sadr-ud-Dīn, the Lahore-Ahmadiyya missionary who erected the first mosque in Berlin, fashioned the translation. To reach out to a German audience gearing up for war, he entrusted his Berlin collaborator, the philosopher Hugo Marcus, with the details of the commentary. The narrative starts in 1924, when Tatar intellectuals first sat down with Sadr-ud-Dīn to discuss the necessity of preparing Qur'an editions for European readers. It ends with the publication of the German Qur'an at the moment Germans were finalising their war preparations. Hugo Marcus’ approach to his commentary involved relating single Qur'an verses to Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, focusing on genius, heroism, and suffering. In making that choice, he connected the Qur'anic text to the Herrenethik (‘ethics of male superiority’) that pervaded National-Socialist (Nazi) ideology. From this emerged an exegesis full of delusions about masculinity and racist arrogance. A comparison with Hugo Marcus’ writings of the 1930s illustrates how it was wrought. In their approach to racism, nationalism, and war, Ahmadi Muslim missionaries and German Muslims in Berlin differed considerably. In their many attempts to bridge East and West through religion, their disagreements on these issues present a pivotal moment in intercultural communication, leaving an imprint on how the Qur'an was explained in Sadr-ud-Dīn's translation. Whereas the Lahore-Ahmadiyya tried to smooth the way towards an ‘international religion’ and defended the ‘Jihad of the Pen’, German Muslims steered close to the expectations of a frenzied, war-minded public. A straightforward document, Hugo Marcus’ tafsīr served to exonerate them in advance, wherever they were heading.

Adapting Nord Stream 2: How Russia adapts strategic narratives to English-speaking Polish and German audiences

Despite extensive scrutiny of how Russia has weaponized information, little work has been done on how it takes different audiences into account when designing its strategic narratives. Although scholars and practitioners agree on the importance of fitting narratives to audiences, the fact that Russia builds knowledge on audiences and that its practices are informed by a Soviet legacy of information warfare, little is known about the strategies Russia uses to adapt its strategic narratives to audiences. Through a comparative narrative study, the article investigates how Russian state media promote different narratives on Nord Stream 2 to German, Polish and English-speaking audiences. It shows how these are shaped by four adaptation strategies in which Russia amplifies, bridges, transforms and pushes back on the audiences’ pre-existing structures of meaning. This article contributes to the existing literature by deepening our knowledge of the relationship between the design of strategic narratives and their intended audience.

From Niche Narrative to Audio Blockbusters

From Niche Narrative to Audio Blockbusters

Not So Quiet on the Western Front: German Reactions to Netflix's 2022 Remake

In October 2022, Netflix's remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) opened to great acclaim in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries, receiving rave reviews from critics and movie-goers alike, eventually winning seven BAFTAs and four Oscars, the most awards ever for a German-language production. In Germany, however, reactions could not have been more different. The film was roundly panned by historians as “flawed, cliché-laden, and unauthentic [all translations from German by Michael Geheran],” and derided by critics as Oscar bait, an anti-American trope often used to disparage a cultural production. In what has now become something of a punchline, the Süddeutsche Zeitung quipped that “No book is so good you can't make a bad film out of it,” while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung charged that the producers were “horny for an Oscar,” having removed “the inner plot, the brains of the story” and “replaced them with a Hollywood program.” How to make sense of such dramatically different reactions to the same film? Germans’ responses cannot simply be explained by the historical liberties taken by the director, Edward Berger, or disappointment with the plot differences between the movie and Erich Maria Remarque's novel, but arguably reveal deeper anxieties as the long shadow of Germany's past continues to weigh heavily on German minds. Does the film pander to popular images about war in a way that has different meaning in Germany than, say, in the US or the UK, with their different memory cultures? How much is German dislike of the film shaped by the legacy of the Second World War and not just the First? With these questions in mind, this essay will consider German reactions to the 2022 film and what they say about Germany's memory culture, paying close attention to the film's language, connotations, and imagery that may be particularly meaningful to German audiences. To be sure, film reviews are not the most reliable source for getting at popular attitudes and mentalities, but the stark divergence of opinion about Netflix's All Quiet say something important about how and whether memories of militarism and the Holocaust continue to shape how Germans think about war.

Idoya Puig and Karl McLaughlin, eds. Spanish Golden Age Texts in the Twenty-First Century: Teaching the Old Through the New; Alba Carmona. Las reescrituras fílmicas de la comedia nueva: Un siglo en la gran pantalla

Idoya Puig and Karl McLaughlin, eds. <i>Spanish Golden Age Texts in the Twenty-First Century: Teaching the Old Through the New</i>; Alba Carmona. <i>Las reescrituras fílmicas de la comedia nueva: Un siglo en la gran pantalla</i>

German narratives about the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre

Abstract In Germany, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre was seen as special but not unique. Confronted with the first news reports, German audiences turned to existing understandings of the nature of religious conflict to make sense of the traumatic stories. This article examines four broad and interrelated narrative frameworks that were used to explain the massacre. First, German Catholics and Lutherans, treasuring the orderly Peace of Augsburg, condemned the sedition of the Huguenots and saw the massacre as a regrettable but logical consequence of their rebellion. Secondly, rumours of conspiracy and equivocation abounded in the empire. These seemed to be confirmed by the massacre. Thirdly, fearing the erosion of noble prerogatives and the creation of ‘Turkish’ tyrannies, the massacre of the French nobility chimed in with German aristocratic anxieties. Finally, the horrific fate of so many fellow Christians in France led some to see the massacre as an eschatological event.

Overviewing a Century. The Lahore-Ahmadiyya Mosque Archive in Berlin

Abstract In 1923, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat ve Islam with headquarters in Lahore (hereafter: Lahore-Ahmadiyya) sent the pedagogue Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din to Berlin commissioned to erect a mosque, create a mission and enter in conversation with the Europeans. The European mission was a comprehensive answer to the challenge that the British Empire presented to Muslims. In their hometown, Lahore, Lahore-Ahmadiyya aimed at comparing religions in order to push back British missionaries and disprove Christian claims to superiority. Adapting to the German setting, which in the years to come would swiftly move from democratic to nationalistic politics, the mission in Berlin created many variations on that theme. Today, the mosque registry, holding records of almost 100 years of administration, bears witness to the efforts of the missionaries to explain to various German audiences their view of Islam. An important source for Muslim history in Germany, the archive highlights such different research subjects as Muslim modernity at work, the language of secular Islam, Indian-German approximations, conversion, and mixed marriage. In 2018, it was donated to the National Archive in Berlin, where the approximately 70,000 documents and 5,000 photographs were made available for research. This contribution offers an analysis of the contents.

Esty’s Erlebnis and Moishe’s Mikveh: Experiencing Berlin in Netflix’s Unorthodox

Netflix has repeatedly used the four-part series Unorthodox to show the success of its international offerings. While the series was popular in the United States and Britain, it was named a "Binge-Watch Phänomen" among German audiences. The story follows Esty, a Jewish woman who escapes her Satmar Orthodox Jewish community to Berlin. Although she is pursued by her husband and an outcast from her former community, Esty moves through the enlightened, welcoming city of Berlin like a modern subject. Using and re-appropriating Walter Benjamin’s competing concepts of urban experience, Erfahrung and Erlebnis, this article probes into ethical questions about the way that Unorthodox’s protagonists interact with the city: how can a German series responsibly criticize the violence of an Orthodox Jewish community and present Berlin as the answer to a Jewish problem?

Metaphorical dimension of idioms in TV series for German, Norwegian and Spanish audiences

Over recent years, internet TV series have grown in popularity to become one of the audiovisual products with the highest audiences worldwide. The Covid crisis, with limitations on movement, has further increased their success during 2020-21. English is by far the most common language for such productions, which are typically offered to non-anglophone viewers in translated format, with either subtitles or dubbing. One of the main challenges in translation here concerns the use of idioms, since these do not always have a fixed equivalent in the target language. Taking as a starting point a corpus of drama series from Netflix and Amazon Prime, this study considers the metaphorical dimension of idioms in original TV series in English and the subtitling of these in German, Norwegian and Spanish. The aim is to analyze the strategies used in the translation process, and to look at the differences between the original dialogues and the translated subtitles. The data are described from a cognitive and contrastive perspective, according to the methodology developed by the author. The results of the analysis show a general trend towards the reduction of metaphorical expressions in the translated subtitles. Significant differences are found between the translations into the three target languages under examination. A surprising finding is that there are more similarities between the German and Spanish translations than between those into German and Norwegian, despite these latter two belonging to the same Germanic linguistic family.

Benefits from herb garden. Pharmaceutical works in translations by Georg Henisch

Georg Henisch (1549-1618), native of today´s Slovak city Bardejov (in German Bartfeld) translated four pharmaceutical texts from Latin into German, three works by the French author Antoine Mizauld and one by Sextus Placitus, an author of the late Classical period. All of them were published in quick succession in the years 1574-1575 and they appeared until 1615 in several unchanged editions. All four works have a similar theme: unusual curative substances which could be easily procured from plants, metals and animals and they are addressed to the layman. From the point of view of genre, they are different, it is a matter of Kräuterbücher, herbal books, so called Hausväterliteratur (house father literature) and medicine, art and wonder books as well. In his translations, Henisch does not adhere strictly to the original texts, leaving out some smaller parts, translating freely and adapting his version to suit his wider German audience.

Hidden in a European Bestseller: The Quadragesimale of Gritsch/Grütsch and the Reception of Dante’s Commedia in Sermons

ABSTRACT The article investigates the presence of Dante in a sermon of the Quadragesimale printed under the name of Johannes Gritsch, one of the main sermon bestsellers in late medieval Europe. Albeit quite in plain sight, this text that translates into Latin and comments extensively on Paradiso 33. 1–9 has been completely overlooked by sermon and Dante scholars. By analysing this Dantean passage and by contextualizing it within the Quadragesimale, the article underlines its relevance within the broader phenomenon of the use of the Commedia in late medieval preaching in and outside Italy. On this latter aspect, the sermon under investigation is a game changer. While a few German preachers who used sermons composed in Italy that included references to Dante were already known, this time we encounter a German Franciscan friar who, when composing sermons meant first and foremost for a German audience, engaged with a passage of the Commedia. He did so probably knowing nothing about Dante, perhaps not even his name. As a result, mediated by preachers and detached from its original cultural context, a fragment of the Commedia found its way on a prodigious journey across Europe.

Martin Luther’s Use of Blended Hebrew and German Idioms in His Translation of the Hebrew Bible

AbstractThis article investigates an uncharted facet of Martin Luther’s Hebrew translation method. It is one of the more fascinating aspects of his translation, which demonstrates both the complexity of how he translated Hebrew and the lasting impact of the Hebrew on his German, neither of which has been fully appreciated by scholars. This article demonstrates how he sometimes blended Hebrew and German idioms in his translation of the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the Minor Prophets. It further shows how he used this translation method to convey various linguistic features of the Hebrew language to his German audience. Finally, it shows how this has a number of important implications for Luther studies, Hebrew and German linguistics, and medieval and early modern history.

Narratives Transcending Borders: Sabrina Janesch’s "Katzenberge" as a German Response to Polish Migration Literature

The establishment of the Oder-Neisse border between Poland and Germany, as well as the westward shift of Poland’s eastern border resulted in migration for tens of millions in regions that had already been devastated by nearly a decade of forced evacuation, flight, war and genocide. In Poland, postwar authors such as Gdańsk’s own Stefan Chwin and Paweł Huelle have begun to establish a fascinating narrative connecting now-Polish spaces with what are at least in part non-Polish pasts. In Germany, meanwhile, coming to terms with a past that includes the Vertreibung, or forced migration, of millions of Germans during the mid-1940s has been limited at best, in no small part on account of its implication of Germans in the role of victim. In her 2010 debut novel Katzenberge, however, German author Sabrina Janesch employs a Polish migration story to connect with her German readers. Her narrator, like Janesch herself, is a young German who identifies with her Polish grandfather, whose death prompts her to trace the steps of his flight in 1945 from a Galician village to (then) German Silesia. This narrative, I argue, resonates with Janesch’s German audience because the expulsion experience is one with which they can identify. That it centers on Polish migration, however, not only avoids the context of guilt associated with German migration during World War II, but also creates an opportunity to better comprehend their Polish neighbors as well as the geographical spaces that connect them. Instead of allowing border narratives to be limited by the very border they attempt to define, engaging with multiple narratives of a given border provide enhanced meanings in local and national contexts and beyond.

Attitudinal and Emotional Consequences of Islamist Terrorism. Evidence from the Berlin Attack

Studies about Islamist‐inspired terror attacks in the Western world have identified a recently declining impact on public opinion. What explains this development? I argue that the wider audience of terrorist attacks has become desensitized. Cognitive desensitization occurs when citizens increasingly expect an attack, reducing the likelihood of attitudinal change. Emotional desensitization occurs when audiences lose sensitivity to attacks, tempering emotional arousal. To assess the implications of desensitization, I analyze a survey conducted around the Berlin Christmas market attack in 2016 and account for baseline information of the surveyed individuals, an approach not used before due to data limitations. I find that attitudes like trust in government, national identification, and views of Islam remain unchanged. Sadness and anger are heightened in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The wider German audience may thus have expected an attack but still be emotionally sensitive to it in the short term. These findings are relevant as political leaders have justified important policy changes in fields like migration and even war making with reference to supposed shifts in public opinion after attacks.

Draamateoste tõlkimise teooria ja reaalsus Anton Tšehhovi näidendi „Kirsiaed“ mõnede tõlgete analüüsi näitel / Translation theory and reality: The case of multiple translations of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard into German

Draamateoste tõlkimise teooria ja reaalsus Anton Tšehhovi näidendi „Kirsiaed“ mõnede tõlgete analüüsi näitel / Translation theory and reality: The case of multiple translations of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard into German

Briefwechsel. Band 1: Texte by Merkel Garlieb Dirk Sangmeister Thomas Taterka Jörg Drews (review)

SEER, 98, 2, APRIL 2020 374 nevertheless desired to bolster ‘the collective rights’ of the Muslim community inside Russia (p. 180). Finally, two chapters analyse the impact of constraints on religious freedom imposed by the Russian church and state. Daniel Scarborough examines the ‘oppressive influence of state protection of state religion’ (p. 159) within the work of professional missionaries established in Orthodox dioceses from 1886 to oppose sectarianism and preserve the purity of Orthodoxy. Instead of strengthening the church by regulating interfaith relations, these official missionaries ‘exacerbated interfaith tensions’ (p. 158) and negatively affected the ability for Orthodox voluntary associations to attract non-Orthodox members and meaningfully join emerging civil society. Finally, J. Eugene Clay assesses the impact of the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations on religious communities in contemporary Russia. Tracing how two Buddhist denominations, a Presbyterian movement and the new Orthodox Church of the Sovereign Mother of God (OCSMG) adapted their religious histories and alliances to fit within the proscribed boundaries of acceptable confessions, Clay concludes that the law ‘may have the unintended consequence of weakening, rather than strengthening, the “traditional” religions of Russia’ (p. 212). Thisbriefsummarydoesnotdojusticetotheconsistentlyimpressiveresearch and analysis — as well as the diversity of voices, positions, and experiences — that these eight chapters bring to the discussion of ‘freedom of conscience’ in Russia. This book should be welcomed by scholars in the fields of religious history, intellectual history and the history of the Russian Empire. Department of History Barbara Skinner Indiana State University Merkel, Garlieb. Briefwechsel. Band 1: Texte. Edited by Dirk Sangmeister, with Thomas Taterka and Jörg Drews. Presse und Geschichte — Neue Beiträge, 133. Philanthropismus und populäre Aufklärung — Studien und Dokumente, 16. edition lumière, Bremen, 2019. 547 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Index. €44.80. The German writer and publicist Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850) has had, historically, an unjustifiably bad press. His name belongs in the history of German literature and journal publishing, and also in the social and cultural history of his native Latvia and the Russian Empire. His political writings attracted the hostility of the Baltic German establishment, and he deliberately courted controversy as a literary writer and publisher. REVIEWS 375 Born in Riga, the son of an immigrant Lutheran pastor from Danzig, Merkel made a name for himself first with a flaming attack on serfdom and the Baltic German serf-owning landowners of Livonia, Die Letten, vorzüglich in Liefland, am Ende des philosphischen Jahrhunderts (The Latvians, principally in Livland, at the end of the Philosophical Century), Leipzig 1797, which was banned in Russia. This publicistic masterpiece had significant influence on the peasant question in the Russian Baltic states, but brought him lasting hostility among the Baltic German establishment. Merkel also has other claims to fame. Compelled to go to Germany to publish his book, and to earn a living by his pen, he settled in Berlin in 1802 and became an pugnacious and widely-read literary commentator, a notorious participant on the losing side of tradition in the ‘literary fisticuffs’ which raged between the new German Romantics, including Goethe, and the defenders of older literary norms. He also went into newspaper and journal publishing, and is credited with the invention of the feature article (Feuilleton) in German papers. After his return to Riga in 1806 Merkel became for many years one of the leading Baltic journalists and journal publishersofhisgeneration,writingforbothaBalticGermanandamainstream German audience. At the same time he maintained his interest in the economy and the local peasantry, celebrating the abolition of Baltic serfdom in 1816–19 with Die Freien Letten und Esthen (The Free Latvians and Estonians), 1820, for which he was awarded a pension by Tsar Alexander I. After his death in 1850 his early pro-Latvian writings became an inspiration for the first ethnic Latvian university graduates who formed the ‘Young Latvian’ movement: in 1869 they erected a memorial ‘from the grateful Latvians’ over his burial place outside Riga. Die Letten was translated into Latvian after independence in 1920, but there is no full biography in any language. Merkel’s bad literary reputation followed him into the twentieth century, and in the Soviet Latvian period his championing of Latvian nationhood made him suspect...

Serving the populist agenda. How German public media broadcasters inadvertently facilitate populist movements by evoking fear and anger

The term Media Populism is used to indicate a ‘involuntary complicity’ between news media and populist movements based on the convergence of commercial media logic and populist communication style. It grants populists and their messages a high degree of media visibility. According to the literature, this applies more to tabloid media and infotainment content in commercial television than to upmarket media outlets and news programs. In this paper, we refer to another form of involuntary collaboration between news media and populists that is not based on similar communication styles, but simply on the fact that news media have to report on topics which populists claim issue ownership for. This applies foremost to upmarket media and public service broadcasting, which are obliged by their own quality standards or legal mandate to report completely and comprehensively on all topics of public concern. We are especially interested in the emotional response of German audiences to news coverage on two topics: mass migration and the role of Islam in Germany. With the help of two experiments, we demonstrate that public service news reporting on these issues provokes strong negative emotional reactions. What is more, our results indicate that media induced fear and anger lead to increased support for anti-migration and Islam-critical demands. Hence, German public service broadcasters may not only be ‘secret accomplices’ in creating negative emotions towards Muslim migration, but also facilitate populist movements.

Kafka's Other Prague: Writings from the Czechoslovak Republic by Anne Jamison

Reviewed by: Kafka's Other Prague: Writings from the Czechoslovak Republic by Anne Jamison Veronika Tuckerova Kafka's Other Prague: Writings from the Czechoslovak Republic. Anne Jamison. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018. Pp. 222. $99.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper); $34.95 (eBook). The title of Anne Jamison's book evokes an omission in Kafka scholarship in English. Kafka has mostly been studied in the context of the small Prague German minority, German literature in Prague, and German literature in general. The titular "other Prague" refers to Kafka's less commonly studied Czech linguistic, cultural, and historical context. Kafka wrote about Czech literature in a 1911 diary entry, on which Deleuze and Guattari based their concept of minor literature; but their work obscured rather than clarified Kafka's Czech social and cultural context. Scott Spector, an important source for Jamison, used a territorial metaphor and focused on the lesser known authors of Max Brod's "Prague Circle."1 Jamison gives the Czech language and literature its due. She argues that Czech writing played an increasingly important role in Kafka's later life and works. Following the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Czech (or rather the non-existent Czechoslovak) became the main official language and the name Franz turned into František. Kafka worked for a Czech insurance company where his fluent but non-native Czech had been tested; he met the writer Milena Jesenská, who, at his request, wrote to him in Czech and who was his first translator to the "other" language. The relationship with Jesenská profoundly unsettled Kafka's notions of relations, languages, and gender, and that dynamic was "replicated […] at the level of structure" of The Castle (128). Jamison observes a divide between Kafka's earlier and later writings; engagement with Czech language and culture more generally influenced Kafka's late works. Czech was now "foregrounded"; it ceased to be a "background noise" as it was in the earlier letters to Felice Bauer (31, 33). External changes effected profound shifts in Kafka's writing. Jamison relies on some Czech sources to explore this in depth: the linguist Jan Mukařovský and his 1940 essay on architectural space, Marek Nekula's recent studies of Kafka's languages, the art historian Josef Kroutvor who wrote on Kafka and cubism, and the literary historian Josef Čermák. The editorial decision to include the Czech originals of some of the important quotations in the footnotes shows respect for this context. Jamison's investigation encompasses the broader Czech and Czech German milieu Kafka was part of. She not only examines Czech journals and newspapers that Kafka read or subscribed to, including the small but key avant-garde journal Kmen that published his work since 1920 and the newspaper Tribuna, but also the German language Prager Presse, a state-sponsored newspaper founded by Tomáš Masaryk in 1921 and published for the Czech German audience. Brod worked for the paper as a critic; Kafka's works were published there (43). Jamison gives these periodicals the attention they deserve, and also notes Kafka's interest in Czech visual art. Kafka would have been familiar with Czech culture, art, and myth simply by walking the city streets; the striving for Czech culture was inscribed into the city's architecture and landmarks, and Kafka commented on the newly erected Jan Hus monument. Jamison initiates a "conversation" between Kafka's texts, Czech, and Czech Jewish writers such as František and Jiří Langer, Jaroslav Hašek, Ladislav Klíma, Karel Čapek, and, most importantly, Božena Němcová, a nineteenth-century writer whose work Kafka knew from school and whose letters he read during his stay in the west Bohemian village of Zürau. Kafka's familiarity with Němcová (and, for example, Vladislav Vančura or Jaroslav Vrchlický) is one of the demonstrably direct links to Czech literature. Kafka's familiarity with other writers and their work is in the realm of possibility. In this category, the philosopher and writer Ladislav Klíma whom Kafka may have read on the pages of Tribuna is a striking example. Klíma's eccentric life shows surprising [End Page 410] external similarities with Kafka's, but it is their...

Advancing American Art and Intercultural Confrontations in Germany, 1945–1948

This article critically addresses the multivalent function of American art exhibitions in the period of de-Nazification and re-democratization. What kind of cultural and political parameters shaped the perception of American Art in Germany during the early post-war years? I investigate intercultural confrontations surrounding the project of advancing American art and the critical response of German audiences by first looking at the exhibition Advancing American Art from 1947. I then analyze the role of the transatlantic cultural mediator Hilla von Rebay to understand developments in the German perspective on American art. The German-born artist von Rebay emigrated in 1927 to the United States and organized the German tour of Zeitgenössische Kunst und Kunstpflege in U.S.A. (Contemporary Art and the Promotion of Arts in the U.S.A.) authorized by the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) in 1948. The project of ‘advancing American art’ resembles a struggle with many setbacks due to lack of official support and finding a larger public in the early years after World War II.