German Culture Research Articles

Of Boiled Eggs and Rocket Science: Textual Experiments in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin

Abstract Told from the perspective of a soft-boiled egg, Sharon Dodua Otoo’s German-language story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin serves up a portrait of a retired Nazi rocket scientist at his breakfast table. The text came to public attention in 2016 when Otoo was awarded the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for the story’s experimental pastiche of German culture. This article draws on a posthuman framework to consider the story’s central challenge to a society in which whiteness is presented as the norm. By exploring the story's anthropomorphizing play with narrative perspective, I demonstrate how Otoo moves beyond bourgeois satire to unmask racist categories which ensure that privilege goes unnoticed. Decolonial perspectives, as well as concepts from the materialist thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, will be employed to illuminate the materialist politics of Otoo’s decentring of the white masculine subject, revealing how instead the text foregrounds material forces that act on bodies, both human and nonhuman.

Otto Friedrich Bolnow: between philosophy and pedagogy: monograph

The monograph highlights the creative heritage of the German 20th century thinker Otto Friedrich Bolnow (1903–1991): for the first time in Russian literature, an attempt has been made to reconstruct his creative heritage, and a systematic analysis of his philosophical and pedagogical views is given. Along with this, the publication contains a translation of an essay by O.F. Bolnova on a similar topic - “Self-Representation”. The book is intended for specialists in the field of philosophy and pedagogy, as well as the history of German culture.

Decolonial Gazing and Hermeneutic Resistance: Black German Challenges to White German Cultural Hegemony in the Museum

Abstract In this article, I highlight the ways that Black Europeans challenge universalizing notions of cultural heritage to emphasize decolonial possibilities. Focusing on the German context, I show how Black artists, intellectuals and activists interrogate the collection, display and spectatorship of museum objects in majority-white contexts using the strategies of decolonial gazing and hermeneutic resistance. I use the Berlin Ethnological Museum in its former and current iterations as a representative example of debates about collecting and looking at museums, showing how scholars like Fatima El-Tayeb and initiatives like No Humboldt21! challenge universalizing discourses and reflect the gaze back on whiteness. Finally, I offer a reading of a literary challenge to white hegemony within and beyond the museum in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s 2021 novel Adas Raum [Ada’s Realm].

On Beowulf's Elegiac Mood: from the Perspective of Cognitive Poetics

Beowulf is the longest narrative poem in ancient England and the most complete and outstanding epic in the early Middle Ages of Europe. It holds an important position in the history of British literature and even European literature. Beowulf mainly tells the great deeds of the hero Beowulf, who is half human and half divine, in subduing monsters and killing poisonous dragons. It has a mythological colour and can be regarded as a heroic mythological epic. It mainly praises Beowulf's heroic spirit, promotes Christian consciousness, and showcases England's unique cultural style during the Anglo-Saxon period. Most studies of Beowulf focus on Germanic culture, literary form, historical background, themes, and symbolic significance portrayed in the poem. By adopting theories in Cognitive Linguistics like prototype, iconicity, perspectives, metaphor, naming in cognitive poetics, this article peruses the elegiac language of Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, illustrating that Beowulf is an elegy of the deaths of heroes, the inconstant fate, the vicissitudes of the world and age, the collapse of tribal society, and ultimately—the elegiac world, and results in that Beowulf is more like an elegy than an epic.

New Perspectives in German Studies: A View from the Margins

This article calls for studying German history and culture from the margins, an approach that highlights unexpected mutual influences and entanglements between German and non-German cultures in Europe and beyond and that challenges essentialist understandings of German identity. Moreover, by looking at peripheries of German culture, scholars can break out of the straitjacket of national narratives and rediscover the transnational dimensions inherent in German history. Bukovina, a multiethnic former province of the Habsburg Empire that now spans the border between Ukraine and Romania, is one such place. The article sketches how the German concept of Kultur was first used to legitimize the Habsburg Empire in Bukovina and was later absorbed into a new language of rights in a postimperial age.

Charlemagne’s Legacy: A Consensus Analysis of Affective Meanings in French and German Culture

We investigate between- and within-country consensus about affective meanings of social identities along the evaluation, potency, and activity dimensions from the affect control theory research tradition. Ratings for 387 (194 male and 193 female) identities were collected from two samples representative of the French (N = 700) and German (N = 700) populations for age, gender, and region. Guided by two preregistered hypotheses based on previous cross-cultural research, our analysis points to considerable cultural consensus between French and Germans who seem to share a common “Carolingian” affective culture; yet some culture-specific patterns concerning the evaluation dimension and evaluation-potency interactions were found to be statistically significant. We interpret these results in terms of known cross-cultural features such as power distance and conceptions of power.

Emancipation of the National Identity in Augusts Deglavs’ Novel “Riga”

The article studies the formation of the Latvian national identity as depicted in the cultural and historical novel Riga by the writer Augusts Deglavs. The plot is set in the second half of the 19th century when more and more Latvians from the country started to move to Riga. By applying the context-oriented approach and practices of cultural studies, the New historicism, post-colonialism, separate aspects of the dynamics and context of the relationship between Latvians and Baltic Germans in multicultural Riga have been analysed. In addition, the points where social and national identities contact and cross under the conditions of hermetic and hegemonic German culture, like relations with the German language, acquisition of social practices, emergence of the sense of Latvianness, have also been examined. The article also performs a concise evaluation of the historical importance of the Young Latvians’ movement depicted in the novel as the awakener of the national identity. Based on John Austin’s concept of performative language, in studying the emancipation of national identity, attention was paid to the ability of language “to do things”, which proves that words expressed in certain situations can possibly affect and change the run of historical processes.

Motywy faustyczne w twórczości Czesława Miłosza

The article discusses the references to Faust by Johann Wolfgang Goethe present in the works of Czesław Miłosz. They appear in his poems, as well as in essays and non-literary texts, e.g. interviews. The references to Goethe in Miłosz’s work are also of interest, especially included in autobiographical statements. The article attempts to indicate certain regularities concerning the occurrence of intertextual references to Goethe’s tragedy, related to the poet’s worldview, his aesthetic choices and biographical context. The considerations included in the article lead to the conclusion that the hero of the tragedy symbolises the content which, after World War II, made it possible to name and understand the processes that led to the catastrophe of war and the rejection of humanity. Faust can be a tool for self-characterisation or an accusation against German culture and the cult of science and progress, leading to the alienation of the individual.

The semiotics of Kosovo’s streetscapes

Abstract Post-war Kosovo is characterised by strong transition processes, including in the car and service vehicle sector, and Germany, German culture, and the German language play a central role in these processes. The popularity of used vehicles imported from German-speaking countries has led to a change in the appearance of Kosovo’s streetscapes. These cars often carry signage or texts written in German and are very common in Kosovo. The spread of these cars is due both to the lower cost and to the high prestige of the German language and culture in Kosovo. Often the owners also keep the German number plates, as the registration of cars in Kosovo is not handled very strictly, or they retain the sticker that designates the country of origin of the vehicle, ‘D’ for Germany, ‘A’ for Austria and ‘CH’ for Switzerland. As a result, there is a strong German influence to be found across Kosovo’s streetscapes. Our article is dedicated to these particular semiotic landscapes on the basis of empirically collected photographic material. Data was collected outside the transmigrant season, i.e. outside the months around the turn of the year and the summer vacations, and the period of the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid as far as possible non-residential German signs.

Cultural representation in German as a foreign language textbooks used in Indonesia: A critical social semiotic analysis

AbstractInformed by an integrated critical social semiotic approach, the present critical discourse study investigates the semiotic relations of image–text and the cultural meanings encapsulated in two German language textbooks: Studio d A1 and Netzwerk A1 widely used in Indonesia. Adopting Xiong and Peng's semiotic relation model, the findings demonstrate that Netzwerk A1 provides learners with opportunities to learn, think, and reflect critically on German culture through pedagogical questions regarding image–text‐pedagogy discussion. However, the image–text in Studio d A1 emphasizes the acquisition of linguistic knowledge and does not engage learners in exploring and negotiating their cultural repertoire. This empirical evidence suggests that language textbook writers should consider designing culturally responsive language learning tasks to engage learners in the active construction of cultural knowledge in practice.

BÜCHNER, BORDERS AND THE CONVERGING OF ‘CROWDS’: JACK THORNE'S WOYZECK (2017)

ABSTRACTAs an important site of cross‐cultural exchange, theatre translations performed in Britain form key routes for international writers to be introduced to, and to influence, British audiences and theatre‐makers. This article introduces Jack Thorne's 2017 adaptation of Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, performed at the Old Vic Theatre in London, as a case study to trace how British theatre practitioners and institutions frame and utilise German texts and playwrights to construct an image of German (theatrical) culture in Britain. I will focus on institutional practice in the first instance, tracing how the Old Vic Theatre framed this production as appealing to two different ‘crowds’ and how Woyzeck relates to the Old Vic's stated institutional aims. This will be combined with performance and textual analysis that draws out the ways in which the production thematises borders and cultural difference. While theatre in translation can be seen as a bridge between different national cultures, I ultimately argue that this Woyzeck adaptation highlights, and indeed propagates, divisions between British and German (theatrical) cultures.

The Semantics of the Absurd: On German ‘Hermetic’ Poetry and Political Commitment after 1945

German culture experienced an enormous rupture after 1945. Not only was the country in ruins and an outcast of the international community because of the recent regime and its devastating effects, its entire cultural tradition was under suspicion: had German culture always been steering towards this catastrophe? Was everything within it corrupt? While the frenetic economic activity of the ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ side-stepped a mainstream confrontation with the horrors of the recent past, intellectuals and artists radically interrogated the reasons for the disaster. As always, language and the meaning-making procedures in language prepare the mind to open up and to prepare for action. Language is at the root of action and this insight fuelled reflections on language, for instance by philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Heidegger. But it was particularly in lyric poetry that a lucid and politically aware examination of the recent past took place and an expression of such considerations could be found.
 This paper demonstrates how poets made a unique and highly significant contribution to the development of a new political awareness in Germanlanguage culture. By integrating silence and the absurd (that is, the unheardof and the unspeakable) into literary language, this so-called hermetic poetry did not entail a withdrawal from society but, on the contrary, devoted itself to a particular form of political commitment. This procedure represents a rupture with what Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno called the ‘culture industry’ (1947), opposing conventional and habituated approaches to art in terms of its production and reception and advocating instead a stringent and critical concept of arresting aesthetic form that was to distinguish the work of art from products of that culture industry. Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ilse Aichinger, Günter Eich and Nelly Sachs are the household names associated with this poetics. While it was never necessarily mainstream, it was arguably the most innovative poetic strand of its time and in the long run a key factor in shaping a modern German culture that could come to terms with its past and overcome authoritarian structures.

Early English Translations of Grimm's "Children and Household Tales" as Children's Literature

The Children and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, KHM) by the Brothers Grimm are not only an integral part of German culture but have also become a global success over the last two centuries. Currently, the collections of the Grimm brothers include translations into over 100 languages, some of which were written during the lifetime of the Brothers Grimm. English editions in particular carry a considerable influence on the global reception of the tales, since most of the tales are received in a translation instead of the original language. However, many readers of the Grimms’ tales are not aware of this. It is often disregarded that a translation can rarely be described as identical to the original and is subject to different factors such as the translation tradition, the target culture, or the translator’s own ideas. The following essay investigates how and why the tales were edited in English translation to be modified as children’s literature.

Kulturelles Erbe und Arbeit im Exil: Die deutschsprachige Literatur und der internationale Film (1933–1945)

Considering the devastating impact of Fascism and National Socialism on exiles and their literary heritage through the lens of adaptation history, this essay focuses on German-language literature in international cinema from 1933–45 and, by implication, on the role of refugees in major film industries abroad. When Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor, most notable authors and filmmakers were forced to leave their homes in Germany and soon Austria. Many of them went to Paris and quite a few eventually made it to Hollywood. Several exile filmmakers sought to claim German-language literature for that ‘other Germany’ in foreign language films, but — especially after Hitler’s troops had invaded Poland — the literary canon of Germany and Austria was considered a liability by most international film producers. In desperate need of income, many exile authors actively pursued adaptations of their own works, but only rarely did their plans materialize, even for bestselling writers; Remarque, Seghers, and Werfel were among the lucky few. Max Ophuls’ effort to preserve at least a fragment of the German literary canon and ensure the survival of German culture abroad, by filming Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774), was an exception. For the most part neither international film studios nor audiences were interested in German literary culture during the Hitler era unless an exile writers’ works provided useful and entertaining insights into current challenges and/or had established a wide-ranging readership.

How Icelandic Is French Law? A Few Remarks about the Discovery and Usage of Icelandic Antiquities in French Legal Historiography during the Nineteenth Century

How Icelandic Is French Law? A Few Remarks about the Discovery and Usage of Icelandic Antiquities in French Legal Historiography during the Nineteenth Century

PECULIARITIES OF THAT FLEXIBILITY OF THE GERMAN-UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION OF RELIGIOUS VOCABULARY

Objective. The objective of the article is to investigate the main translation strategies of structurally distant languages, namely the religious vocabulary of the German language, as well as to analyze the peculiarities and complexities of its German-Ukrainian translation. Methods. Solving the set tasks is carried out using such methods as analysis and generalization of scientific literature on the problems of translation studies; system and comparative analysis, and the continuous sampling technique is applied to collect language facts. Results. Studying the peculiarities and difficulties that arise in the process of translation from German to Ukrainian, and especially when working with religious vocabulary, it should be noted that a literal translation will often be incomprehensible due to the absence or lack of knowledge of one or another feature of German culture. Therefore, in order to avoid questions and misunderstandings, the translator must find an equivalent word, metaphor, proverb or saying, or a story that will evoke the same feelings and thoughts that the recipient receives when reading the original text. Issues of the importance of context and the peculiarities of German grammar also affect the quality of the translation. Therefore, the difference between German and Ukrainian culture, as well as religions, requires special skills of the translator and mastery of various translation tools. Phrases with a religious component, religious terms create additional difficulties in the process of translation, because sometimes it is very difficult to find an equivalent in the Ukrainian language, so a comprehensive translation is the best choice in this case. Having analyzed a number of religious terms from Duden explanatory dictionary, it can be concluded that the influence of the Latin language over the centuries on other languages caused a high number of equivalents of religious concepts in the Ukrainian and German languages. Therefore, in most cases, the selection of a direct analogue and adaptive transcoding is used in the process of translating religious vocabulary.

Max Reger and Ukraine in the Context of Music Research and Performing Practice

The authors highlight the main directions and approaches to the study of the legacy of the outstanding composer, conductor, performer and teacher Max Reger. Its 150th anniversary was celebrated on the European territory on March 19, 2023. The significant contribution of German musicology to the scientific development of Reger's legacy made it possible to expand the idea of the composer's work in informative-biographical, theoretical, musical-textological and performing aspects. The invaluable contribution of Max Reger's widow, Elsa Reger, who published the autobiography "My life with and for Max Reger" in order to disseminate any possible information about the character and work of her husband, is described. It is noted that during the artist's lifetime he was considered old-fashioned, and his music was seen as too difficult to understand. It was found that modern musicologists point out the uniqueness of the figure of M. Reger, which is manifested in his collection of key achievements of German culture and his contribution to the consolidation of stylistic trends from post-Romanticism to Neoclassicism. An attempt was made to trace the influence of M. Reger's music on the stylistic practice of Ukrainian composers, but, unfortunately, it was not successful due to the lack of confirmed facts. A coincidence in the activities and priorities of M. Reger and M. Skoryk was revealed, analogies with the work of the Ukrainian composer arose in the process of research. Such analogies include: the national idea "as the main factor in the formation of meaning-making landmarks" as well as the attitude of composers to sound material and its organization. Recently, there has been activity in the development of Ukrainian Regeriana, which is felt, first of all, in the last decades. Information about the latest research and interpretive approaches to the performance of M. Reger's music has been introduced into the scientific circulation in connection with his 150th anniversary. It is proved that the change in the vector of European performance practice at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries towards an increase in the significant weight of the performance of intellectual music determined M. Reger's work as a component of musical culture and a paradigm of the composer's influence already on modern performance in the world as a process. The figure of M. Reger is considered as one that resonates with his famous predecessor J.S. Bach. A conclusion is made regarding Reger's music, which is experiencing a renaissance period, demonstrates its scale, emotional and creative potential, but still remains underappreciated in Ukraine.

Crossed destinies: the tectonic and modern architecture in Barcelona during 50’s-60’s

The tectonic as theoretical subject was carried on in the nineteenth century in the context of German culture and concerns the relationship between form and construction, focusing on the analysis of the correspondences between the constructive and static needs and the intents addressed to aesthetics. In Barcelona, oppressed by Francoism during the ‘50s and ‘60s, the will to be modern was expressed to a considerable extent through the reinvention of a language characterised by a successful synthesis between modernity and attention to local culture. Therefore the tectonic is an investigative tool that links the culture of Barcelona’s design with the broader koinè of modernity that has made tectonic one of its fundamentals. As in Italo Calvino’s novelist The Castle of crossed destines where different tales intersect, and the tellers are prompted by the symbols of a pack of cards so even in Barcelona the representative strength of Architecture interweaves with theoretical texts about tectonic providing a wider horizon to understand Barcelona architecture in the modern age.

Hryhorii Skovoroda: syncretism-cordocentrism-wisdom

The article defends the thesis that Skovoroda is a representative of syncretic culture and thinking, which combines philosophy, religion (faith), poetry (literature), theology into an unity. His universality, as a talented and comprehensively developed personality, also lies in this combining different sphere of a human activity. To combine all this, Skovoroda must be the bearer of syncretic thinking and perception of the world. But, such combination includes also philosophy and, therefore, subordinates it to spirituality. Skovoroda is a sage, who imparts wisdom and sets an example of a morally clean life and strong faith. The works of Skovoroda should be viewed from the standpoint of syncretism. He did not create a new philosophy for Ukrainian culture, as did, for example, Socrates for Ancient Greek culture, Descartes for French culture, and Kant for German culture. To consider Skovoroda only a philosopher means to reduce him to a «highly specialized mental worker». It is necessary to read Skovoroda's works universally and syncretically, not philosophically (analytically and critically). The article examines also the weak and strong aspects of the syncretic creativity of Skovoroda for Ukrainian culture in general and Ukrainian philosophy in particular. In Skovoroda's works, there is no analysis and criticism of philosophical problems, there is no consistent rational-logical (step-by-step) construction of a philosophical conception, which he would defend with arguments. Instead, we find in Skovoroda's works many biblical quotations and their interpretation, that is, he uses the Bible to confirm his position and way of life. The authority of the Bible for Skovoroda is indisputable, so it is a source of wisdom for him. The author argues that Skovoroda is «internally new» for Ukrainian culture. He brings into Ukrainian culture Christianity, which differs from the traditional church, biblical symbolic hermeneutics and vegetarianism as a way of life. Skovoroda's life represents a life of integrated personality.

Thackeray's German Governesses, Real and Imagined

ABSTRACT: As a father of two daughters educated at home, William Makepeace Thackeray knew something about German governesses: he interviewed many, employed several, and counted one among his acquaintances. In his fiction, he satirized the type in two burlesques: Miss Wirt ( The Book of Snobs , 1848) and Mlle Wallfisch ( The Adventures of Philip , 1862)—ludicrous characters intended to amuse English middle-class readers, whose bigotry he also targets. But these imaginary renderings contradicted Thackeray's real opinion of German people and culture, which was complimentary and admiring, albeit tempered by disquiet about their perceived tendency toward violence. This analysis considers the ambiguity of Thackeray's attitudes toward German culture, both real and imagined, in the context of mid-century, English middle-class values.