German Literature Research Articles

Reflection of the Ağalık System in Turkish and German Literature

Toplum düzenini sağlaması amacıyla oluşturulan hiyerarşik katmanlar ve beraberinde meydana gelen düzensizlikler halk arasında çatışmalara sebebiyet vermiştir. Kendilerini ait olduğu milletin sesi olarak gören yazarlar toplumlarının maruz kaldığı problemleri eserlerinde anlatmışlardır. Bu çalışmada incelenecek olan ağalık sistemi ve bunun neticeleri, Yaşar Kemal’in İnce Memed adlı eseriyle Heinrich von Kleist’ın Michael Kohlhaas hikâyesindeki yansımaları bakımından değerlendirilmiştir. Birbirinden oldukça farklı her iki yazarın eserlerinde benzer konunun anlatılması, ayrıcalıklı sınıfların varlığının evrensel bir sorun olduğunun göstergesi olarak kabul edilir. Bu bağlamda İnce Memed ve Micahel Kohlhaas’ta olayların akışında önemli roller üstlenen soylu ağa ve beylerin işlevleri bakımından karşılaştırmalı incelenmesi çalışmanın amacını oluşturur.

Literature and the Wadden Sea: Teaching coastal environments through literature

Literature and the Wadden Sea is a guide for teaching Wadden Sea literature in advanced university courses in Scandinavian, Danish, German or Dutch language and literature or comparative literary studies programmes, and for integrating literature into courses in other disciplines. It can be found at www.waddensealiterature.com . This article lays out the development of this project and the contents and objectives of the Teaching Toolkit. It also suggests how it can be used as a model for teaching that couples literature with other protected places, be they national parks, nature reserves or other places. Finally, it concludes with our initial findings, plans and hopes for the subsequent development of the project.

“E. T. A. Hoffmann complex” in the novel “Perfume” by Patrick Süskind

The purpose of this study is to analyse E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tradition in the 20th century German literature in terms of the novel ‟Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” by P. Süskind. The features of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s aesthetics are considered in the form of an ideological and thematic complex of images, motifs and stylistic techniques inherent in the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann (‟Hoffmann complex of German literature”), which manifests itself in a similar style (irony and grotesque), problems – the mechanization of human and society (realised through the opposition of ‟living” – ‟inanimate”, the motif of duality), understanding the nature of genius (antagonism of genius and philistine) and its relationship with femininity, the problem of violent influence on someone else's personality, as well as in the use of such an artistic technique as synesthesia.

Die Middeleeus-mistieke en Kaaps-piëtistiese Kontekstualisering van Dorothea Magdalena Goosen (c.1774–c.1840) se Uitdrukkings van Liefdesnumineuse in haar Outobiografiese Aantekeninge en Poësie

Cape Pietism is a hybrid, transnational and transconfessional form of spirituality, emanating from the Pietistic movement in Germany, with its emphasis on medieval mysticism, piety and spiritual devotion to Christ, and Dutch Second Reformation influences. Feminine Pietists in South African frontier communities were the practitioners of this form of spirituality, analogous to similar trends in the mystical cultures in German and Dutch Medieval mysticism. In addition to the influence of religious literature of German and Dutch Pietists, the marginalisation and isolation of feminine believers on the South African frontier cultivated tendencies similar to those in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Pietism in Europe. Lay feminine spirituality in Cape frontier communities reflects forms of Pietistic mysticism parallel to the Beguines, the Dominican penitent women and female mystics elsewhere in Europe. Common to the diverse mystical cultures in Europe and the Cape frontier communities, is the expression of numinous experiences through mystical love metaphors—a legacy of Dionysius the Areopagite and other Neoplatonic Christian believers. Dorothea Magdalena Goosen is an exponent of Cape Pietistic tendencies with a strong undercurrent of melancholy and a feeling of spiritual abandonment. Her autobiographical ego-text and self-composed verses testify to her finding consolation in the grace of God through the inpouring of Christ’s love in her heart. Typical to female exponents of Cape Pietism, she longs for the heavenly rejoicing with Christ and the sweet elation of the heart following the embrace of the Bridegroom and restored consolation. Her numinous mystical experiences are recorded in Pietistic outpourings of love and bridal metaphors—mostly in an erotic form. A study of her mystical spirituality adds to broaden the corpus of knowledge of Cape Pietistic mysticism by tracing the roots of her love mysticism to the Neoplatonic legacy of German and Dutch female spirituality. The conclusion provides a clearer view of the mystical profile of feminine members of the petit bourgeoisie and their efforts at spiritual self-empowerment in their isolated living conditions in South African pioneering communities.

Issue Information

German Life and LettersVolume 76, Issue 3 Issue InformationFree Access Issue Information First published: 09 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.12352AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume76, Issue3Imagining the Beliefs of Others in German Literature from the Enlightenment to the PresentJuly 2023 RelatedInformation

Übersetzungstheorie aus Brasilien: Haroldo de Campos im Dialog mit Christian Morgenstern

Abstract An innovative and dynamic way of practicing and thinking about translation emerged in 1950 s Brazil and became entangled with German literature. However, due to linguistic barriers, this constellation remains almost invisible today. The main protagonist of this translation discourse was Haroldo de Campos who, together with his brother Augusto de Campos, translated texts from world literature into Brazilian Portuguese. This article argues that in the translation and criticism of a poem by Christian Morgenstern, the work of Haroldo de Campos as a philologist and scholar of Comparative Literature becomes especially palpable. Beginning with an example from Morgenstern’s collection Galgenlieder, the article illustrates how Campos translated the German vanguard movement into the Brazilian context and reflected on the similarities of both literary currents. The translation also depicts Haroldo de Campos’ understanding of both Comparative Literature and criticism, in general, favoring translation, adaption, and reception over the praise of the ‘original’. In following the traces of the poem (“Ein ästhetisches Wiesel”) through Brazilian literary theory (also in the work of Roberto Schwarz and Anatol Rosenfeld), the article argues in favor of its relevance for the discipline of Comparative Literature.

Literatur im Ministerium des Innern.

Abstract The Rome Prize of the German Academy Villa Massimo is by far the most important award for German artists. It is awarded to renowned artists from the fields of fine arts, composition, literature, and architecture. Despite the award’s significant status, its position in the German literary and cultural-political system and the selection policy on which it is based remains largely under-researched. This article examines institutional and personal networks of the Rome Prize, the objectives of the respective actors and the mechanisms of selection. The major aim of the study is to analyse archival material on writers who have received grants. The period of investigation begins in 1957 and ends in 1974 with the institutional reorganization of the Villa Massimo.

Plea for a Collective Genetics

Abstract The study of the early manuscripts of the great authors most often becomes a process of monumentalising or (re)legitimising their work. The recent publication of two of Sartre's early manuscripts – first Empédocle (Empedocles) in 2016 and second, in 2018, his dissertation for his graduate diploma (diplôme d’études supérieures or DES), L'Image dans la vie psychologique (The Image in Psychological Life), both texts written in 1926–1927 – encourages us to propose another type of genetic reading that insists on the collective conditions of the production of knowledge, including philosophical knowledge. Such a collective genetics, applied to Sartre's intellectual formation during the interwar years, allows us to highlight some of the little-known forms of Parisian intellectual societies (the activities of the International Information Group of the École Normale Supérieure, the critical logic of the psychology journals, the regular meetings of the cenacles, and the literary and philosophical research groups). It also reveals, at the same time, the original relationship between Sartre's thought and the German literature and philosophy mediated to him by Bernard Groethuysen, Stefan Zweig and Alexandre Koyré.

Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori ed. by Martin Kagel and David Z. Saltz

Reviewed by: Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori ed. by Martin Kagel and David Z. Saltz Inge Arteel Martin Kagel and David Z. Saltz, eds., Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2022. 200 pp. Scholarship on the Hungarian-born Jewish playwright and director George Tabori (1914–2007) is gaining new momentum, especially under the impulse of Martin Kagel, professor of German literature and culture at the University [End Page 135] of Georgia. After the 2018 publication of a substantial special section on Tabori in Nexus, the essay series in German Jewish Studies, Kagel has now co-edited with David Z. Saltz the book Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori. So far, Tabori scholarship has predominantly addressed the generic and ethical specificities of Tabori's interaction with Holocaust remembrance culture, focusing on his provocative grotesque humor and his radically intertextual rewriting of dramatic and theatrical conventions. In her opening essay, eminent Tabori scholar Anat Feinberg stresses the need to look at other aspects of Tabori's work as well. Feinberg herself gives the example of Tabori's often overlooked experimental directorial practice in the 1970s and 1980s in Bremen and Vienna. Tracing Tabori's legacy means asking how the dramaturgical specificities of Tabori's work relate to theater and performance of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. At stake is first of all the embodied form of the survivor-witness so central to Tabori's dramaturgy. Several contributions tackle this question in a comparative approach. Alice Le Trionnaire-Bolterauer convincingly shows Tabori's connection with the newer avantgarde in confronting the physicality of Tabori's ritual dramaturgy with two theater performances by Israeli artists, Arbeit Macht Frei vom Toitland Europa (1991) by the Israeli Akko Theatre and Yael Ronen's Third Generation: Work in Progress (2008). Rebecca Rovit reads the drama of Tabori's contemporary Charlotte Delbo and two playwrights of the succeeding generation, Yehoshua Sobol and Peter Barnes, through the lens of Tabori's work. Rovit carefully outlines the quite diverse dramaturgical means with which these authors address the question of theater as a space to bear witness. Johanna Öttl, in her comparative reading of Tabori's The Cannibals with Robert Schindel's drama Dunkelstein (2010), shows how we can read Tabori's embodied theater as a way to present victims as singular self-determined subjects, whereas Schindel shows how this self-determination has been reduced to a mere convention in melodramatic cinema. Tabori's nonrealistic aesthetics, including his disturbing and grotesque humor, present a second and maybe even bigger challenge, especially when transposing his work to the formats of popular culture. Peter Höyng's contribution on Urs Odermatt's film adaptation (2009) of Tabori's Mein Kampf shows, though Höyng is careful not to voice too strong a judgment, how the film nullifies every aspect of Tabori's aesthetics. Ironically, it is the failed adaptation [End Page 136] that retrospectively makes Tabori's dramatic "palimpsest" (157) stand out as the highly complex and provocatively grotesque work it is. Barbara Wallace Grossman's chapter on so-called Holocaust musicals asks whether they can provide an equivalent for Tabori's disturbing laughter. The answer is nuanced: melodramatic Broadway productions do not pass the test at all, whereas some more stylized productions do explore musical theater "as an appropriate genre for presenting Holocaust narratives" (182). The challenges of a transcultural transposition in performance practice are touched upon by the director Laura Forti, who discusses the difficulties she faced when staging The Cannibals in Italy in 2002. Her contribution indirectly indicates how rewarding a more encompassing transnational investigation into Tabori's work could be, an approach that would reflect on how Tabori addresses the legacy of the Holocaust as a European one. Other contributions adopt a more historiographical and genealogical perspective. Klaus van den Berg compares two quite diverse stagings by Tabori of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in 1966 and 1978. Van den Berg reads them in relation with Walter Benjamin's thoughts on "image-space" and "performing space," an approach very well suited to trace the shift from...

CURRENT PROBLEMS OF RAPPROCHEMENT OF THE EAST AND WEST OF GERMANY

The paper describes actual problem of socio-economic inequality between the East and West of Germany. We examine the analysis of sociological differences between parts of the country in terms of the results of German unity policies, the introduction of coronavirus restrictions, technological equipment and economic potential. All those issues are considered with key works of German literature of recent years on understanding the contradiction «East-West». It is determined that the ongoing intellectual attempts have not overcome the split in the country. Additionally, we examine the federal government’s concept of a «new look to the East» was explored. The results show that as an independent region, for which the western part of the country does not serve as an indisputable reference point. Most likely, in fact, this approach has shifted the focus from the traditionally important internal chronic shortages of new lands in economic power, labor, infrastructure and technology. This problem is particularly relevant in connection with the lack of representation of people from East Germany in key positions in many areas of society and politics. This explains why its that these issues will be considered in a special concept of the federal government, adopted at the beginning of 2023. The second part of the state's efforts is related to changes in approaches to the implementation of regional policy in the country and financing of measures to improve the economic structures of the regions. The author concludes that they are synchronized with the tasks of ensuring energy security and accelerating the transformation at oil refineries and ports in eastern Germany after the cessation of oil and gas supplies from Russia. In this regard, we consider that the continuation of the polycrisis in the country makes a decisive contribution to the growing disillusionment of East Germans in politics. On the example of this analyses, we obtained that they do not reject democracy as such, but are much more critical of political actions than the population of the western part of Germany.

The Interpretation Mechanism of Meaning Creation Ways in German Literary Discourse

The Interpretation Mechanism of Meaning Creation Ways in German Literary Discourse

ALMAN DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI BÖLÜMLERİNDE ALMANCA HAZIRLIK EĞİTİMİ: FIRAT ÜNİVERSİTESİ ÖRNEĞİ

Türkiye’de 1935 yılından itibaren birçok üniversitede Alman dili ve edebiyatı bölümleri kurulmuştur. Günümüzde lisans düzeyinde 13 devlet üniversitesinde Alman Dili ve Edebiyatı bölümü bulunmaktadır. Bu bölümlerin eğitim süresi 1 yıl hazırlık ve 4 yıl lisans eğitimi olmak üzere toplam 5 yıldır. Ancak Fırat Üniversitesi Alman Dili ve Edebiyatı bölümü incelendiğinde hazırlık eğitiminin olmadığı saptanmıştır. Bölüme kayıt yaptıran öğrenciler Almanca sınavı yerine İngilizce sınavıyla bölüme alınmaktadır. Bu durum ise öğrencilerin çok yetersiz, hatta sıfır Almanca bilgisiyle bölümde öğrenim görmesine neden olmaktadır. Bu bağlamda bu çalışmanın amacı Fırat Üniversitesi Alman Dili ve Edebiyatı bölümünde hazırlık eğitiminin olmamasının olumlu veya olumsuz yönlerini öğrencilerin görüşleri doğrultusunda araştırmaktır. Çalışmanın araştırma grubu Fırat Üniversitesi Alman Dili ve Edebiyatında öğrenim gören 142 öğrencidir. Katılımcılar hazırlık eğitiminin olmamasının birçok olumsuzluğa neden olduğunu, eğitim ve öğretim sürecinin başarılı olmasına engel bir durum olduğunu belirtmişlerdir. Hazırlık eğitiminin olmamasının dilbilgisi, telaffuz, dil becerileri, alan derslerini, kelime haznesi, sınıf geçmeyi, edebiyat derslerini etkileyerek bilişsel yönde öğrencileri olumsuz etkilediği, bunun yanı sıra bölüme uyum sağlayamama, özgüven eksikliği yaşama, motivasyon düşüklüğü, önyargının gelişmesi, başarısızlık duygusu yaşama olmak üzere duyuşsal birçok olumsuz etkisi de vurgulanmıştır.

„Ételîh fúncho dero uuârhéite. lóskêt târínne. dér fóne dero ánablâsentûn lêro erchícchet uuírt“. Zur Diachronie in Lehrplänen der Prager deutschen und tschechischen Germanistik nach der Teilung der Prager Universität 1882

After 1882, the development of the University of Prague and its division reflected the situation of Czech and German society in the Czech Lands. While German Studies at the German university of Prague since 1882, when the University of Prague was divided into two autonomous – German and Czech – institutions, continued its pedagogical and scientific activities, it was necessary to establish German studies at the Czech university of Prague. Despite the progressive specialization of German Studies in German language and literature and the following internal differentiation of German Studies into older and newer German language and literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, great attention was traditionally paid to the older German language and literature in the curriculum of German Studies. The teaching here focused mainly on the analysis and interpretation of Gothic, Old and Middle High German texts from a linguistic and literary point of view. After 1900, the content of diachronic courses changed for German Germanists in favor of prehistory, dialectology and onomastics, and for Czech Germanists it was directed towards German-Czech language contacts, especially in the lexicon. These changes in the teaching profile and scholarly area were related not only to the development of German Studies, but also to social changes, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Deutsch.info Platform as a Means of Organizing German Language Students’ Independent Study

The article investigates the didactic properties of the deutsch.info German language learning online platform used by students of Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University (Ukraine) in their independent educational activities. The aim of the present research is to identify the functional, content-related, technical, and aesthetic features of this web resource in the context of the current requirements for foreign language learning tools, to collect and analyze student feedback on deutsch.info based on their first-hand experience of using it, and to determine the conditions for its rational implementation into German language learning practice. Based on a survey featuring 37 students of the Faculty of Ukrainian and Foreign Philology of Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University (Speciality 035 Philology. Germanic Languages and Literatures (Including Translation), Major: English), an empirical information research base is formed, which represents the full range of the students’ evaluations of the deutsch.info online platform as a means of independent study of the German language. The results obtained suggest that the majority of the respondents approve of the use of the web resource for an independent acquisition of German language knowledge and skills despite the lack of a German-Ukrainian dictionary and the inaccessibility of the site in an offline format. The platform benefits are reported to be its diverse and authentic content as well as its convenient navigation system. The collected data summarization allows for determining the conditions for the effective use of the deutsch.info platform in the practice of German language learning.

MOTIVATION FOR ENROLMENT AND THE STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES AT THE FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY IN NIŠ REGARDING THE GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE STUDY PROGRAMME

This paper reports on the motivation for enrolment and the students’ attitudes at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš regarding the German language and literature study programme. The aim of the research was obtaining concrete data which will serve as the basis for its improvement. An anonymous survey was conducted from June to September 2021. The research sample included 55 students in the first, second and third year. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that among all the surveyed students intrinsic motivation predominates as regards the choice of the German language and literature study programme. As indicated in the findings, the interest in the German language and their desire to master it well were at the top of the list of motivating factors. Half of the students enrolled in their studies in order to work as German language teachers. The students’ suggestions indicate the need to introduce more professional translation and practice in presentation and public speaking skills. The study also reveals that the vast majority of the students are satisfied with their choice of philology studies and that they assess their future perspectives and opportunities for professional development as good.

A Wende in representing the Holocaust in German literature? From Jurek Becker to W. G. Sebald

AbstractThis article examines Jurek Becker's 1976 novel Der Boxer and W. G. Sebald's critical essay on Becker “Ich möchte zu ihnen hinabsteigen und finde den Weg nicht. Zu den Romanen Jurek Beckers” (posthumously published in 2010) to show how they reflect the changing norms of Holocaust testimony in German literature. Becker's well‐received novel narrates the refusal of a traumatized Jewish survivor to conform to the normative expectations of Holocaust testimony in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Sebald's essay, written in the early 1990s, however, accuses the novel of being inauthentic and by implication unethical. The polemic demonstrates Sebald's attempt to establish norms of Holocaust representation in the period following the Wende. Becker's novel and Sebald's response to it shed light on restrictive norms and expectations that surrounded Jewish survivor testimony to the Holocaust, both in the GDR during the 1970s and in post‐unification Germany of the early 1990s.

Van Gogh and British Literature: The Influence of Felix Holt on His Mind and Art

Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) was an artist of remarkable intellect and self-discipline, who was dedicated to learning to the end of his tragically brief life: “It’s a study I need, for I want to learn,” he noted in September 1889, just some months before his death.1 He believed that “one has to learn to read, as one has to learn to see and learn to live” (letter 155). He thus took reading very seriously and incorporated it into his life and art. In fact, Van Gogh was an ardent reader of world literature. A polyglot, he read Dutch, German, French, and British literature in the original languages.2 His interest in British literature, which dated from his childhood, was intensified in his early twenties when he lived and worked in London as an apprentice of Goupil & Cie, a renowned international art dealership. This formative period in Britain from 1873 to 1876 laid the foundation for the development of the young artist-to-be’s thoughts and worldview.3 By the time Van Gogh arrived, Britain, caught up in the ongoing process of industrialization, urbanization, and political reform, represented the most advanced modern civilization and its contradictions. Its capital was, in Charles Dickens’s terms, “a great (and dirty) city” that exhibited the complex spectacle of a modern metropolis: alongside the scenes of unrivalled wealth and glamor were those of widespread pauperism and inequality.4 Life in Victorian Britain with its splendor and squalor amazed the Dutchman:“I can’t tell you how interesting it is to see London and the trade and the way of life here, which are so very different from ours,” he wrote to his brother Theo in November 1873 (letter 15). This British sojourn also stirred social consciousness in him, drawing his attention to contemporary British art and literature, which squarely engaged with the topical issues of the day.5

Tales that Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Culture ed. by Bettina Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz

Reviewed by: Tales that Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Culture ed. by Bettina Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz Ela Gezen Tales that Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Culture. Edited by Bettina Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. Pp. 354. Hardcover €99.95. ISBN 978-3110778236. Divided into four riveting parts, this co-edited volume in honor of Leslie A. Adelson centers migration, translation, and temporality as key terms emanating from the main areas for her interventions which are also presented as threads that appear in a variety of thematic, disciplinary, and analytical guises. Scholarly contributions are framed by two literary tributes from Yoko Tawada (“Der Name und die Zeit,” The Name and the Time) and Zafer Şenocak (“Ausreisen und Reißaus nehmen,” To Exit or to Escape) who “stand out for their recurring place in her scholarship from the 1990s to the present” (19). Thanks to English translations provided by co-editor Bettina Brandt, these original literary texts are accessible to a broader readership and can therefore be included in a variety of courses and curricula, while also paying homage to Adelson’s own critical contributions as translator (which Deniz Göktürk also takes up in her contribution). The first section, “Reframing Time and Exile,” “take[s] up writing about exile and refuge in different constellations and literary modes” (14) with contributions by Jamie Trnka, Anna M. Parkinson, and Bala Venkat Mani. The ensuing part, titled “Multilingualism, Translation, Transfer,” reflects on linguistic dimensions of translation and multilingualism, featuring chapters by Ulrike Vedder and Erik Porath, John Namjun Kim, Göktürk, and Yuliya Komska. The third section, “Narratological Itineraries,” illustrates literary close readings in a narratological framework consisting of chapters by Claudia Breger, Katrina L. Nousek, and Paul Michael Lützeler. The fourth and final section, “Communities/Constellations on the Aftermath,” where “different constellations of the aftermath of catastrophe and hope are at stake” (17), comprises chapters by Barbara Mennel, Brett de Bary, Gizem Arslan, and Damani J. Partridge. Apart from thematic and/or methodological intersections within each section, the co-editors illustrate further connections between contributions across these four sections, foregrounding the “presence of ‘migration’” (11) in particular. “Tales that touch are . . . something being explored with the tools of literary and interdisciplinary cultural scholarship” (5), as co-editors Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz underline in their introduction. They further emphasize as commonality across all contributions the disciplinary expansion of German Studies in transnational, multilingual, and intermedial terms in their exploration of touching tales (which is highlighted in the title, in addition to the key terms included in the subtitle). This conceptual tool and mode of inquiry is characterized by its openness in resisting restrictive binaries, categorizations, and essentializations including singular national frameworks, instead shifting the attention to the exploration of the “cultural labor [End Page 338] [texts] . . . perform” (Adelson cited on p. 3). As readers, we are not only given the opportunity to re-engage and re-examine Adelson’s signature concepts including touching tales, future sense, and the riddle of referentiality, but also to discover new “touches,” proximities, and modes of contact this volume engenders: from Chilean writer Carlos Cerda and his exile in the GDR (Trnka) to German-Jewish writer Hans Keilson’s publication history (Parkinson) and Anita Desai’s novel of refuge (Mani); Uljana Wolf’s poetic insights on Bertha Pappenheim (Vedder and Porath); betweenness and lines of literary affiliation in Yoko Tawada (Kim, de Bary); Saša Stanišić’s exploration of fabulation and the significance of intermedial archives (Nousek and Breger); the relationship between theory, the everyday, and artistic practice in Irene von Alberti’s essay film (Mennel); José F.A. Oliver’s intertextual tributes to Rose Ausländer and Paul Celan (Arslan); intertexts in Peter Schneider’s literary engagement with the student movement (Lützeler); translation and multilingualism in Şenocak’s recent Turkish-language novels (Göktürk); multilingual archives in connection to H. A. Rey’s line drawings (Komska); and anthropological (re)considerations of touch to comprehend relatable experiences (Partridge). Not only do we encounter different disciplines ranging from Film Studies, German Studies...

Questioning the Canon: Counter-Discourse and the Minority Perspective in Contemporary German Literature by Christine Meyer

Reviewed by: Questioning the Canon: Counter-Discourse and the Minority Perspective in Contemporary German Literature by Christine Meyer Bethany A. Morgan Questioning the Canon: Counter-Discourse and the Minority Perspective in Contemporary German Literature. By Christine Meyer. Translated by Dustin Lovett and Tegan Raleigh. Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. Pp. 343. Cloth $99.00. ISBN 978-3110674361. Christine Meyer’s Questioning the Canon masterfully treats the representative works of Rafik Schami, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and Feridun Zaimoglu through a postcolonial methodology to reveal their overlooked counter-discursive aspects. In response to a field of scholarship that lags behind its Francophone and Anglophone counterparts, Meyer calls for the necessity of utilizing a postcolonial approach to Germanophone literature and its authors originating from stigmatized countries. This work questions the power relations between the center, the canon, and the margins. Utilizing Genette’s theories of “hypertext” and “hypotext,” Meyer shows which authors have written into the canon and essentially asserted themselves as “successors” to canonical authors. Meyer exposes the problems with a literary canon as a collection of texts approved for universality by cultural and academic institutions. From a position inferior to the main subject of discourse in canonical texts, the un-, under-, or misrepresented, such as women and ethnic and sexual minorities, question the ability of canonical authors to universally represent the human experience. For her methodology, Meyer convincingly demonstrates both the validity and importance of approaching German-language “migration literature” from a postcolonial perspective, which originated with “orientalism” and has developed through “mimicry” and “third space,” “subalternity,” and “writing back.” The main difference between the German-speaking canon and the Anglophone or Francophone canon lies in the aims and discourse itself. Rather than uncovering a colonialist or racist ideology in the canon, German-language authors of “migration literature” endeavor to “de-ethnicize” and “denaturalize” the canon by uncovering cosmopolitan and hybrid elements already within. The German canon does not contain the same cultural imperialism or notions of expansionism, but rather focuses on its own “cultural nation.” Moreover, Meyer points out that Germany’s immigration population does not come from colonized subjects but rather from Turkey or from nations conquered by other colonizers. Despite these differences in colonial and immigration histories, Meyer does not excuse the German canon from its share of literary protests but rather [End Page 342] shows how a postcolonial approach unveils a power struggle between the margins and center analogous to that between writers in post-colonial regions and the colonizer. In considering the conditions under which Germany’s contemporary literary canon has developed, the fraught twentieth century required the redefinition of a common patrimony and cultural foundation upon which to build its Kulturnation. Schami, Özdamar, Zaimoglu, and others have entered intertextual dialogue not only with canonical German authors but also with Shakespeare and authors of the larger Western canon. By rereading authors such as Adelbert von Chamisso, Heinrich Heine, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in a “minor” mode, contemporary authors of “migration literature” recontextualize these authors into a decentered space. Beginning with chapter two, Meyer introduces the counter-discursive strategies of her representative authors, including metatextuality and rewriting. Continuing through chapter six, Meyer involves us in her fruitful close readings of numerous texts to show how they write back from the East, test national traditions by diversity, write oppositionally, and utilize a bottom-up approach. Rafik Schami even writes directly to some of these authors. He adopts the position of a grandchild to Chamisso in the epistolary preface to Chamisso’s 1990 biography. To address “Harry Heine,” Schami chooses an interview in which he and Heine realize they have political persecution, exile, and marked status as a historical minority in common. Meyer reads Schami’s epistolary and interview writings as postcolonial in that he assumes a position of successor and kin rather than outsider. In Schami’s corrective (re)reading of European classics such as the fairy tales and Dracula, he rewrites the Wolf as the misunderstood outsider and the Count as misrepresented. Meyer argues that these texts and yet another text in which a fictional sultan evaluates Goethe’s corpus all point to Schami’s postcolonial tendencies to scrutinize the canon and to...

USEFUL WAYS LEARNING GERMAN LANGUAGE

This article explores effective and useful ways to learn the German language. Learning German offers various benefits, including expanded travel opportunities, academic pursuits, and career advancements. The article provides a comprehensive overview of methods such as language classes, immersion in German media, conversational practice, online resources, reading German literature, cultural immersion, goal setting, and tracking progress. It also emphasizes the importance of utilizing flashcards, joining online language communities, writing in German, engaging with German culture, utilizing language exchange apps, and seeking professional language tutoring. By incorporating these strategies, language learners can enhance their German language skills and achieve fluency in an engaging and efficient manner.