German Character Research Articles

“Their Skin Is Black”

This article examines Go Went Gone (2015), an award-winning novel by the German writer Jenny Erpenbeck on the plight of African refugees in Berlin in the context of what has been called the European refugee/migrant “crisis.” I interrogate the preponderance of the imagery of racial difference especially at the beginning of the story and explore the narrative roles given to the novel’s main protagonist, Richard, as the story’s main focaliser through which the reader is given access into the minds of the novel’s German characters. Adopting a mostly postcolonial approach, I argue that the narrative reveals the continuing impact of the colonial archive on the European social imagination despite attempts to transcend those problematic imaginaries over the past decades. I also show that although apparently committed to dismantling familiar stereotypes and clichés, Erpenbeck struggles with a larger conundrum related to the dialectic of representation and misrepresentation and the question of how to call up and critique prejudices and problematic ideas without automatically re-inscribing them.

Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity

Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity

‘The future was over’: Memory, meaning and temporality in Go, Went, Gone

Using Thing theory and a Marxist analysis of temporality, I show how identity formation in Erpenbeck’s novel relies on objects and a person’s ability to work, demonstrating how the dehumanizing effects of capitalism not only impact the asylum seekers in the novel, but its German characters as well. Although characters fight against dehumanization, Erpenbeck’s novel demonstrates that the only hope for the future lies in systemic change. Although the majority of scholarship on Go, Went, Gone reads it through the lens of Europe’s refugee crisis, I argue that Erpenbeck contextualizes the crisis, situating it in a dehumanizing capitalist system fraught with internal contradictions to show the true crisis is not an influx of migrants, but the failure of the German political and economic systems to account for them.

Relikt niemieckiego prastroju czy staropolska nałęcz? Wilamowska drymła w kontekście etnocentrycznych tekstów polskich i niemieckich badaczy

The paper presents the way of writing about Wilamowice as represented by both German and Polish authors, on the example of the Vilamovian headscarf called the “drymła”, in an attempt at analyzing the nationalistic discourse ap­plied therein. German authors, in particular those involved in the “Sprachinselforschung” – research of German language islands – posited the example of this element of folk dress as evidence for an essentially German character of the Vilamovian folk dress, and of its users by extension. In these authors’ opinion, the headdress was to be a relic of ancient-German attire. Polish ethnographers polemized with his view, nevertheless applying similar discursive strategies in their narration: e.g. describing the drymła as an evolution of an old Polish el­ement of traditional dress called the “nałęcz”. Elżbieta Teresa Filip is a notable exception in that she analyzes the overinterpretations on both sides of the debate. An important issue to notice is the mere amount of space dedicated to drymła even in shorter texts discussing the Vilamovian folk dress. The paper additionally presents the more recent history of drymła and its significance in Wilamowice.

Making sense of the past to understand the present: Attributions for historical trauma predict contemporary social and political attitudes

Research indicates that the memory of collective trauma influences attitudes towards contemporary social and political issues. We suggest that the specific attributions for trauma that members of victim and perpetrator groups make provide a more nuanced understanding of this relationship. Thus, we constructed and validated a measure of attributions for the Holocaust. Then, we ran a preregistered study on representative samples in Germany ( N = 504) and Israel ( N = 469) to examine whether attributing the Holocaust to essentialist or contextual causes influences attitudes towards the immigration crisis and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Results indicated that, among Germans, attributing the Holocaust to German character was associated with positive attitudes to immigration via collective guilt. Among Israelis, attributions to German character were associated with negative attitudes to non-Jewish immigration, a hawkish stance in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, and pro-Israel attitudes via a sense of perpetual victimization. Results reveal how attributions about past trauma affect contemporary social and political attitudes among victims and perpetrators.

Olsztyn jako mała ojczyzna w grach planszowych dla dzieci – na przykładzie historycznej gry niemieckiej oraz polskich gier współczesnych

The aim of this study is to analyze the contents of regional board games for kids from the perspective of developing attachment to their little homeland. Two modern Polish games, Olsztyn mnie kręci (Olsztyn Turns Me On) and Przytul Olsztyn (Give Olsztyn a Hug), and a pre-war German game Spacer po Olsztynie (A Walk in Olsztyn) were examined. An attempt was made in the study to answer the following question: What image of Olsztyn has been created by the analyzed games? The theoretical framework for the study was the history of Warmia and the changing principles of education, which is currently referred to as “regional”. The selection of local buildings and facilities, and the way of their presentation, were found to be the key factors when interpreting the importance of the examined board games for strengthening the children’ bonds with their little homeland. The analysis revealed that the pre-war board game emphasized the German and monocultural character of the city, as well as its rapid development. On the other hand, Polish games depict Olsztyn as the capital city of the Warmia Region, and focus on its multicultural heritage. The games highlight the beauty of Olsztyn as a garden-city, and its tourism potential.

Wizerunek Niemców w polskich obrazach filmowych okresu transformacji ustrojowej

In Poland, the changes started with the Round Table talks and June elections, and in the GDR with the fall of the Berlin Wall. They gained momentum with the transformation of the Polish People’s Republic into the Republic of Poland and the accession of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany. These processes were reflected in literature, film, music, and even computer games. Artistic attempts to face the new reality acquired a special dimension in Germany, where the term “breakthrough literature” appeared. The international success of such productions as The Lives of Others or Goodbye, Lenin! indicates the great interest of German film directors in the subject as well. Similar attempts were made in Poland. Films appeared in which German characters – refugees from the GDR, businessmen, tourists, regime officials, or criminals – were presented in connection with the native heroes (usually in the background). An analysis of these characters allows us to look at the Polish experience of the last thirty years from a different perspective and to make a certain relativization of the changes that have occurred in Poland. In accord with Marcin Kula’s concept, the author treats selected films as “historical memory carriers” and analyzes the image of Germans in films created during the political transformation in Poland or in films that concern this period: Psy (Dogs, directed by Władysław Pasikowski), Dwadzieścia lat później (Twenty Years Later, directed by Michał Dudziewicz), Sauna (directed by Filip Bajon), Obcy musi fruwać (The Foreigner Must Go, dir. Wiesław Saniewski), Yuma (dir. Piotr Mularuk) and Wróżby kumaka (Call of the Toad, dir. Robert Gliński).

Sebastian Haffner’s Germanys

Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir appears in the twenty-first century as a kind of time capsule, offering a personal and political analysis forged during the 1930s, when the endgame of the Nazi regime was not yet visible. Haffner attempts to account for the historical precursors of Nazism, beginning with the Great War–besotted children of his own generation, now hungering for another dose of public excitement, and moving back to the mistaken nationalism of Bismarck’s 1871 Reich. Haffner’s general view of German character as incapable of democracy, reliant on strong leaders, but not essentially anti-Semitic, sits uncomfortably with his more personal horror at the Nazi invasion of individual privacy. Defiant analysis yields to tragedy as the memoir goes on to represent individual capitulations to Nazi tactics, including Haffner’s own. Reflecting our current dilemma, his dramatic narrative puts us vividly in mind of the angry, fearful, strident, hopeless, hopeful, and courageous elements that contend, unresolved, during an unpredictable rush of threatening world events.

The Talkie that Failed to Talk: an Exploration of Sounds in G. W. Pabst’s Kameradschaft (1931)

Filmed during a key transition period in the history of film sound, G. W. Pabst’s Kameradschaft (1931) thematizes the challenges and possibilities presented by the new sound technology in surprising ways. In this early ‘talkie’, dialogue often fails: conversations between French and German characters result in tension and misunderstandings, an irony given the film’s message of international solidarity. However, Pabst masterfully deploys the new sound technology to render vivid the diegetic space of the underground mines, and these sounds and noises operate as the primary form of meaning-making in the film. I contend that Pabst’s ‘acoustic realism’ is also a central tenet of the socialist message conveyed in the film. It drives an affective critique of war and enables the director to explore questions of nationhood in the interwar period, as well as the precarity of human experience during this time in hitherto unimaginable ways.

Vēsturiskie ciemu nosaukumi Piejūras reģionālajā parkā: kuršu un kursenieku pēdas Klaipēdas apkārtnē

The paper deals with the analysis of the toponyms of the historical Klaipėda region (Ger. Memelland), the northern part of former East Prussia. Research material comes from historical and cartographic sources of various periods. The accessibility of these sources enables marked expansion of the data that was used by the initiators of this theme in the middle of the twentieth century. A fairly small seaside territory (2,735 ha in the mainland), in which the concept of the regional park is directly related to the protection of cultural heritage, was selected for research. Methods of diachronic and comparative linguistics, as well as of geolinguistics, are combined with analysis of historical and genealogical data. Special attention is paid to the traces of fifteenth-to-eighteenth-century migration from Courland in the onomastics in the Klaipėda region. The problem of regional lexical identification, investigation of the chronology of the documentation of names, and the search for specific linguistic features addressed in the paper allow raising the hypotheses of the origin and the interaction of languages. The actualisation of historical and obsolete names for the needs of the Baltic, historical, and cultural studies is approached as an important issue. In the sixteenth century, the northern part of Prussia was a zone of intensive contacts of the Baltic languages. The personal names recorded here at that time point to undisputed links between the dialects of Courland and north-western Lithuanians. Now it is difficult to say which part of the toponyms has reached us from the old Curonians and which toponyms immigrated from Courland – not only due to the hypothetical nature of the reconstructed system of close languages, but also because analysis is made complicated by varying orthography in German characters. In the seventeenth century and later, the expansion of Latvian onomastics in the Klaipėda region decreased, but even then, there would appear names the etymology of which is more transparent in Latvian and not Lithuanian. The influence of Curonian and neo-Curonian (the Kursenieku language) is stronger in the seaside territories of fishermen and in the locations where fishermen became assimilated in the farmers’ community. However, the names of the villages situated at some distance from the sea are more frequently related to Lithuanian anthroponyms. In the northern part of the Klaipėda region, German toponyms were rare exceptions even during the period of intensive germanization. Although in the early twentieth century, the origin of the official oikonyms used in the Lithuanian and German environment often differed, the absolute majority of German oikonyms are of Baltic origin. Lituanization of the names of villages was a natural result of the residents’ assimilation process. In the process of the reconstruction of historical toponyms, it is possible to form a reserve list of names, part of which could be brought back for ‘the second life’ by giving these names to streets, parts of the regional park, hotels, and other objects.

Vācbaltiešu un latviešu attiecību attēlojums Rūdolfa Blaumaņa daiļradē

The article explores the relationship between Baltic Germans and Latvians in the works of Rūdolfs Blaumanis by turning attention towards the interpretation of this topic within the context of the social history of literature. An insight into previous evaluations by literary historians has been provided. In the first part of the article, two works with central Baltic German characters – novella “Andriksons” (1899) and play “Ugunī” (In the Fire, 1906, written in 1904) – have been analyzed. In these works, German landowners have been depicted demonstrating the social and national conflicts of the age in their relationship with subordinated Latvians. The characters of landowners are ambiguous and indecisive, and they are distanced from everyday reality and living in the past. Their communication with Latvians is characterized by complications and obstacles. Hence, these characters can be viewed as a wider generalization about the crisis of the Baltic German community by the turn of the 20th century. In the second part of the article, episodic characters of Baltic Germans in prose fiction have been explored along with the overview of satirical poetry by Blaumanis in which the relationship between Baltic Germans and Latvians mostly in the period after the revolution of 1905 has been addressed. It has been concluded in the article that in the representations of the relationship between Baltic Germans and Latvians, Blaumanis depicts the instability of the transition period and avoids disclosing his own views. This corresponds to his concept of the depiction of social problems in literary works. Satirical poetry, which is less neutral but also less literary successful, remains an exception. Baltic German characters in works of Blaumanis are mostly episodic, and besides neutral background characters and politically charged characters in satirical poetry, the most interesting both literary and historically are the characters in which the contradictions of the period have been represented.

Аспекти перекладу фразеологічних єдностей в творі "Копійчаний роман" Б. Брехта

The article analyzes communicative and pragmatic orientation of linguistics. The binary character of Ukrainian and German has established. The term scientific and „Scientific and technical terminology” has considered. The meaning, varieties of lexical system as a part of language have characterized. The orign mechanisms of the process and development of phraseology in national languages have outlited. The views of scientists on understanding the problem of phraseology as a system have elucidated. The types of phraseological unities, their using in language and artistic text have determined. The pragmatic potential of translated phraseological unities in the drama „The Threepenny Opera” by the German classic B. Brecht has founded. The review of the philosophical and poetic ideas of German writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has made. Quantitative and qualitative characterization has substantiated. The dominant types of phraseological unities in the examples given from the book „The Threepenny Opera” by B. Brecht have revealed. The „concept individualized language characters” has explored. Attention is paid to the peculiarities and theoretical foundations of „epic theater”.

UNIVERSAL AND SPECIFIC FEATURES IN METAPHORICAL PROJECTIONS OF GERMAN AND RUSSIAN SPORTS DISCOURSE

The article deals with the peculiarities of German and Russian sports discourse functioning by the example of metaphorical representations. Metaphor is not only an important mechanism for cognition and communication, at the same time it functions as a cultural code which enables linguists to discover universal and nationally coloured concepts, discourse areas fixed in the collective identity and so on. It is possible to determine a degree of distinctive and universal character of German and Russian sports discourse in three basic directions: analysis of interdiscourse projections; identification of metaphorical borrowings; study of metaphorical «import» of sports concepts in the «intradepartmental» communicative area created inside the sports discourse. The study makes it possible to get as accurate results as possible due to comparative perspective applied to research one of the most essential areas of sports communication – sports jargon, which distinguishes itself against the general background by its bright, vivid and sometimes provocative metaphors. As observations have showed, the given level of the discourse has both zones of coincidence and difference in metaphorical representation of facts, events, phenomena embedded in the sports worldview by the participants of sports discourse. The article aims at promoting the discussion about the issue whether it should be spoken of the existence of one discourse presented in different languages or of a diversity found in discourses associated with one topic and studied as parallel in any language.

A book as an attribute of everyday life culture (based on the German classics)

The functional role of books (scientific, artistic, philosophical, religious and moralistic) in the public prac­tice of the German Enlightenment is comparable to the significance of such major national concepts as the Lutheran faith and a special German character. The idea of aesthetic education in contemporary historical circumstances and socio-political circumstances actually became the ideology of national self-determina­tion. The book, its semantic «images» as literary reading images enshrined in famous works of German clas­sics, helps better revealing the spiritual content of the era and the human inner world (in typical «hero of time»). Educational book (serious and entertaining) defines the vector of social development in Germany. German book in its «materiality» belongs to the everyday life culture, reflects the level of development of the book business in Germany and the specificity of the «culture of consumption». Everyday life culture is a holistic «life world» shared «values» and «meanings» perceived as a world attitudes and behavioral habits and regarded as a natural space of human activity. Such an approach makes it possible to study the typical, recurring forms of «cultural practices», before remaining on the periphery of classical humanities. «Reading» could be attributed to this range of socio-cultural practices. Philosophical basis of the study is the following: everything that a thing opens our perception is simply «a scheme of sensation» changing in accordance with «angles», in which we perceive them; what the thing is in its materiality can be revealed only through our final experiences. A material thing and its «causality» base in sensory perception of a subject. This series of «material things» should include «the book in general» and specifically German book as an attribute of everyday life culture of the Enlightenment. The author investigates representations of meanings of «books» (ash an abstracted subject of study) realized in the «chronotope» of a literary work. The structure of «reading image» and «book image» identified during the texts analysis of famous masterpieces of German classics have a moral connotation.

Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music by William Gibbons

Reviewed by: Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music by William Gibbons Julianne Grasso Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music. By William Gibbons. (Oxford Music/Media Series.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. [xii, 196 p. ISBN 9780190265250 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9780190265267 (paperback), $29.95; ISBN 9780190265304 (Oxford Scholarship Online).] Figures, tables, bibliography, index. If you assume that video games are no place for the likes of Ludwig van Beethoven or Johann Sebastian Bach, you'd be right—and wrong. In Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music, William Gibbons explores how art and entertainment collide, blurring boundaries that otherwise seem clear. We learn not only that classical music can be found in many video games but also that the industry of classical music has increasingly looked to games and "gamification" to attract new audiences. And those are just two of many intersections of video games and classical music in this richly multifaceted volume. Gibbons, a musicologist, has written previously on French opera and historicity in Building the Operatic Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013). In several ways, Unlimited Replays is a similar book about music and historicity, but it is situated in the very time and place it aims to capture. Gibbons is already well published on the topic of video-game music (the study of which is often referred to as ludomusicology). Prior to Unlimited Replays, he coedited a volume of essays with K. J. Donnelly and Neil Lerner (Music in Video Games: Studying Play [New York: Routledge, 2014]). Forthcoming is another collection coedited with Steven Reale (Music in the Role-Playing Game: Heroes & Harmonies [New York: Routledge, 2019]). As a relatively young area in a quickly evolving industry, the study of music in video games nonetheless exists primarily in unpublished work. Gibbons draws on scholarly and journalistic articles but also frequently cites unpublished conference papers. Drawing on the most recent research is a boon to the book, to be sure, but it is also an indicator of Gibbons's scholarly inclusivity; rarely do bibliographies in musicology include work by graduate students, journalists, and bloggers alongside publications from established academic presses. In eleven brief but brimming chapters, Gibbons weaves a variety of cases, each clearly and concisely outlined to focus on how classical music (or simply the notion of classical music) is incorporated and interpreted in video games and beyond. Gibbons frequently draws on such intersections in other media— particularly film—to establish a precedent [End Page 306] for this practice, giving insightful historical context. At stake are questions about the highbrow and lowbrow dichotomy straddled by classical music in video games, the potential for games as art, and the nature of art in multimedia writ large. Chapter 1 establishes the assumed incompatibilities between video games and classical music, which are as much sociocultural as they are formal or technical. Classical music is commonly understood as a civilized art, while video games are slick entertainment for mass consumption. Nonetheless, Gibbons points out that these sharp definitions are inherently fluid, the boundaries made unclear by categories like "popular" classical music and the relatively new "artgame" genre of serious games (p. 16). With this rather shaky conceptual ground established, Gibbons guides the reader adeptly through cases that further problematize the high/low cultural strata. Chapter 2 considers the meanings game designers might draw from classical music. Here, Gibbons focuses on the use of classical music in games to signify real time/place associations. Punch Out!! (1987), for instance, draws on a notion of "Germanness" from Richard Wagner's music to introduce a German character. Of course, we're still on shaky ground—Gibbons notes that game designers often rely on a rather loose understanding of music history that is not particularly accurate or precise. (Hearing Bach to signify the medieval, for instance, might actually work well for a player accustomed to such anachronisms in other media.) Chapter 3 is a closer study of BioShock Infinite (2013), notable for its rather complex intertextuality between music and the game's metaphysical narrative. Gibbons discusses how classical music— and "classic" popular music—can be read as subtle commentary on the timetraveling...

Travesty Image of Germany in the Russian Literature of 1840s: I. P. Myatlev’s poem "Sensacii i zamechaniya gospozhi Kurdyukovoy za graniceyu, dans l’etranger

The paper deals with the image ofGermanyin I. P. Miatlev’s poem "Sensacii i zamechaniya gospozhi Kurdyukovoy za graniceyu, dans l’etranger" ("Madam Kurdukova’s Sensations and Remarks Abroad, dans l’etranger") that is an example of macaronic poetry. The poem marks an important milestone in the transformation of the image ofGermanyin the Russian literature of the 1840s; however, it has not received proper scientific attention. The current research examines the historic and the mundane aspects of the image in question. The historic aspect combines different loci connected with the German history of the Middle Ages and the Modern Times: urban images and urban unions, like theHanseatic League, or certain urban spaces, e. g. churches, etc. Such loci are often connected with historical characters like Charlemagne or Napoleon. The mundane aspect is represented with things, money and goods as a typical attribute of the German (Western) civilization, which leads to the metonymic unity of cities and goods produces there, the way it happens toHamburg. Besides, the mundane element is actualized via the philistine personages, which make the core of German characters in the poem.

(German) Universities as multiple hybrid organizations

The paper claims that the organizational character of the (German) university can be comprehended best with the aid of the concept “multiple hybrid organization.” To corroborate this claim, I reconstruct two lines of argument that have dominated the discourse on the organizational nature of the German university so far. This discourse has only started in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the wake of new public management emphasizing that the reform of higher education governance has turned German universities into corporate actors (Meier 2009; Krücken and Meier 2006). At the same time, voices have risen advocating the singularity of the university and contrasting it to bureaucratic and corporate forms of organization. The paper starts by outlining these two strands of argumentation: the first highlights the organizational normality of the German university, the next its singularity. Against this background, I shall argue that both positions can be integrated if we rely on the term “multiple hybrid organization.” This concept is integrated into the systems theory concept of formal organization which serves as a theoretical means for analyzing organizations at large. The new concept of multiple organizational hybridity demonstrates its usefulness in showing that the structural particularity of the German university is rooted in numerous frictions pertaining to all its organizational structures.

Fictionalization of Germanness in the times of Greek crisis: deconstructing the ‘two strangers’ frame in TV sketch comedies

ABSTRACTAs processes of identity construction are relational, the ways the Greeks view the Germans are intrinsically interrelated to how they see themselves, especially in a period of economic recession. Against this backdrop, in the present paper, I consider the ways Germanness (and thus, also Greekness) are constructed in a popular Greek TV stand-up comedy show. The analysis revealed that they were depicted as two distinct universes consisting of different language, music and culture, echoing (at first impression) rather well-held ideas about Northern Europeanness vs. Southern Europeanness, which circulate in the (Greek) public sphere. Nevertheless, through the strategy of fictionalization, such stereotypical representations were actually challenged by the TV sketches, since they were systematically exoticized through several indexes (e.g. the stylized language performance of German characters), with the aim to be deconstructed.

ОБРАЗ ГЕРМАНИИ В ПОВЕСТИ А. Т. АВЕРЧЕНКО «ЭКСПЕДИЦИЯ В ЗАПАДНУЮ ЕВРОПУ САТИРИКОНЦЕВ: ЮЖАКИНА, САНДЕРСА, МИФАСОВА И КРЫСАКОВА»

The article deals with the image of Germany represented in the little-studied literary travelogue by A. T. Averchenko “Expedition of Satyriconers in Western Europe: Yuzhakin, Sanders, Mifasov and Krysakov (1911)”. In the images of German characters, the author singles out a prototypical component connected with the tradition of the perception of the Germans in Russian culture as self-satisfied and narrow-minded philistines, whose existence is boring, regulated and invariable. The motives of technical power, threat, ordering, as well as a gluttonic element - markedness with the images of food and drink - are characteristic of the space of Germany depicted in the travelogue.

АМБИВАЛЕНТНЫЙ ОБРАЗ ГЕРМАНИИ В ЮМОРИСТИЧЕСКОМ ЦИКЛЕ Н. А. ЛЕЙКИНА «НАШИ ЗА ГРАНИЦЕЙ»

The article examines the artistic space of Germany in the series of humorous stories “Ours Abroad” by N. A. Leikin. This chronotope is presented in two ways. One image of Germany is given from the point of view of a neutral narrator. The second one is phantasmagoric Germany, or Nemetchina (German way of life), seen through the eyes of the main characters, the Russian merchant couple of the Ivanovs. The common nucleus of both Germanies is a typical German character as an imagological construct formed within the framework of the XIX-century Russian literature. This includes motives of the purity, orderliness of the German locus, as well as the planned and mechanistic nature of the Germans’ life.