Literature In Germany Research Articles

Kleine Literaturen und die Globalgeschichte der deutschen Literatur Zur rumäniendeutschen Literatur vor und nach 1989 in Rumänien und in Deutschland

Abstract The aim of the essay is to formulate approaches towards a global history of German-language literature from Romania and to discuss them using examples. To this end, the concept of minor literature according to Franz Kafka is utilized and linked with the concept of a global history of German literature. Emphasis is placed on the continuity in this literature despite the changes resulting from engagement with the communist system in Romania before 1989 and through the 1989 revolution in Romania. Many of the authors have emigrated and live today in Germany. Nevertheless, their works remains part of the minor literature in Germany as well.

Comparison of the Flow of Post-War Reflective Literature in Germany and Japan: On the Example of Schlink and Kazuo Ishiguro

Comparison of the Flow of Post-War Reflective Literature in Germany and Japan: On the Example of Schlink and Kazuo Ishiguro

Die Kantate als musikoliterarische Gattung.

Abstract The cantata genre is one of the most important intermedial art forms in European cultural history. Originating in Italy, it has also been used productively in music and literature in Germany since the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Since Erdmann Neumeister, who was the first to formulate a poetics of the (madrigal) cantata, numerous cantata poems have been written, which – even before they are potentially set to music – are literary artifacts in their own right. It is therefore surprising that the genre of the cantata has been researched almost exclusively by musicologists, and that there has been a lack of literary studies, and consequently, interdisciplinary approaches, which would be necessary for a systematic understanding of the cantata as a musical-literary hybrid genre. This article is intended as a contribution to an interdisciplinary study of the cantata. It examines the cantata text “Ich will den Kreuzweg gerne gehen”, written by Erdmann Neumeister and set to music by Georg Philipp Telemann, according to literary-textual and musical criteria, paying particular attention to the mechanisms and dynamics of the interaction between text and music.

The Early Reception of Georg Brandes in Germany and France. A Comparative Study

The publication of Emigrant Literature, the first volume of Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature (1872–1890), constituted Georg Brandes’ breakthrough work and the beginning of his career as a European literary critic. However, the work was very differently received in the two major literary cultures of the time, Germany and France. In the German press, Brandes was saluted as a cultural reformer and icebreaker of literary modernity, “a good European and cultural missionary”, as Friedrich Nietzsche called him in a letter from 1887, whereas French critics reacted with much greater skepticism to Brandes’ work. This situation was especially annoying to Brandes as he regarded French literary and intellectual culture as superior to any other culture of the world and more than anything else he longed for recognition from the French literati. The uneven distribution of critical acclaim was a paradox that also affected Brandes’ self-understanding and position as a lcritic. The following article will examine this tension by providing a comparative study of the reception of Emigrant Literature in Germany and France from 1872 to 1893.

Феномен транснационализма в романах А. Хидера

In modern realities, works written by immigrant authors have become an integral part of the multinational culture of Germany. A native of Iraq, Abbas Khider is one of the most prominent representatives of the immigrant segment of German-language literature in Germany. The difficulties that arise during the integration of refugees into the multicultural European society represent a topical issue in the current context of globalization, which explains the popularity of this theme in works by immigrant writers. The subject of the article is the phenomenon of transnationalism in A. Khider’s novels. The study analyzes four works of the author – The Village Indian (2008), The President’s Oranges (2011), A Slap in the Face (2016), and Letter to the Eggplant Republic (2013). The article aims to investigate how the phenomenon of transnationalism is represented in A. Khider’s works. The research objectives were as follows: to consider and clarify the term ‘transnationalism’ in the context of modern progressive globalization; to analyze the transnational models of relations reflected in the system of images of the works under consideration; to explore the formation of the characters’ self-identification. The study is novel in that it represents the first attempt in Russian literary criticism to analyze certain features of the poetics of A. Khider’s novels, in particular the phenomenon of transnationalism as presented in the literary space created by the author. The results of the study expand the understanding of the state of modern German-language literature, with works of immigrant writers being its integral part.

Polski krytyk teatralny Andrzej Wirth – mistrz przemieszczania się i jego rola w kształtowaniu nowego oblicza teatru w Niemczech

Andrzej Wirth, a 20th century Polish essayist, philosopher and theatre critic, is one of the often forgotten theatre and drama scholars in Poland, perhaps due to his long life in exile. A recognized expert in theatre studies and philosophy, he has lectured at many universities around the world, especially in the United States and Europe. He gained particular recognition as the founder and director of the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen in Germany. The aim of this article is to introduce Wirth’s personality, outline his life between cultures and highlight his importance for the development of theatre studies in Germany, as well as his great contribution to the promotion of Polish literature in Germany in the mid-20th century. Andrzej Wirth’s life was beyond borders and divisions, although with a particular attachment to the culture of his homeland and Germany; he was rooted in childhood memories and a desire for theatre as a liberated art in an age of evolving media technologies.

Schwarze Katze – podwójna biografia Karin Wolff w świetle badań nad tłumaczką

The aim of the above article is to reconstruct the biography of Karin Wolff, a distinguished translator of Polish literature in Germany (more than 90 translations), who was active in the opposition in the GDR and the Polish People’s Republic. The author presents Wolff’s activities to popularize Polish culture (including the organization of a Polish literate salon in Frankfurt/Oder), her contacts with Polish poets (e.g. Jan Twardowski, Jerzy Ficowski) and her numerous publishing initiatives.

Determinants of welfare benefit use of immigrant groups - longitudinal evidence from Germany.

While recent literature in Germany has compared predictors of welfare use between EU and non-EU immigrants, refugees have yet to be added to the analysis. Using survey data of approximately 4,000 immigrants living in Germany, I examine the determinants of basic unemployment benefits receipt for intra-EU immigrants, refugees, and third country immigrants. In particular, I investigate how education affects the likelihood of welfare use for each immigrant group. Even after controlling for human capital factors, sociodemographic characteristics, and factors related to migration such as legal status and age at migration, refugees remain significantly more likely to receive benefits. Results demonstrate that higher education significantly decreases the likelihood of welfare receipt for EU and third country immigrants, but much less so for refugees. These findings may indicate that refugees' education is not being used to its full potential in the labor market or that they face additional challenges hindering their labor market integration. A further and unanticipated finding is that immigrants who hold permanent residency or German citizenship are less likely to receive unemployment benefits, pointing either to positive effects of a secure residency or selection into permanent residency and citizenship among those with the greatest labor market success. Overall, this research shows that challenges beyond human capital deficiencies and sociodemographic characteristics must be considered when studying immigrants' receipt of social benefits, that not all educational credentials are valued equally, and that the experiences of refugees differ in significant ways from those of other immigrant groups.

«МАССОВОЕ» И «ЭЛИТАРНОЕ» В ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ ГЕРМАНИИ И АВСТРИИ РУБЕЖА XIX-XX ВВ

The article examines the phenomena of mass and elite culture in literature of Germany and Austria at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Significant changes that took place in society and culture during this historical period were reflected in both elite and mass manifestations of social and cultural reality. Germany and Austria, while embedded in a pan-European context, developed a number of unique national characteristics. Despite the qualitative contradictions inherent in the very notion of the «mass» and the «elite», both types of culture became expressions of the general ideas of the fin de siecle.

Literarische Mehrsprachigkeit und Transkulturalität. Der Dialog zwischen den Kulturen und das Echo von Mimikry und sprachlicher Hybridität im Werk deutsch-türkischer Autorinnen

The beginnings of migration literature in Germany were noticeable 20 years after the first agreements for work enlistment in the 1950s between countries around the Mediterranean on the one hand and Germany on the other. Well into the 1980s migration literature was considered to be a politically moti-vated, autobiographical and experiential kind of literature produced by migrants, most of whom were initially foreign workers. Today migrant/- migration literature or intercultural literature is considered to be the work of a generation of authors originating from families with migration experience, or migrants themselves. It is the linguistic hybridity and thematic alterity in these works which form the pre-condition for the dialogue between cultures and languages; a dialogue initiated by the successful examples of migration literature currently available on the market. Indeed, a considerable number of German-Turkish authors ’works enrich the cultural and literary scene in Germany. The article analyses the use of hybridity and mimicry as central themes in the novel Der Mond isst die Sterne auf (1998) by Dilek Zapctioglu. This novel is then compared with the stories in the collection Mutterzunge (1998) and with a novel by Emine S. Özdamar, more specifically with the novel Die Brücke vom goldenen Horn (1998), exploring language and thematic hybridization. Central themes in migration literature are issues such as the loss of the homeland, culture shock, alienation, life in and between two languages and cultures, as well as everyday, subliminal discrimination and the accumulating communication problems. The novels can therefore be defined thematically on the basis of their changing time and space coordinates, their shared theme of space diversity, their oscillation between the homeland and the foreign land, the linguistic diversity of their voices and the reflection they offer on the diaspora.

Comparative Literature and Intercultural Communication: an Imagological Analysis of Iris Alanyali's Work Gebrauchsanweisung Für die Türkei

Multicultural societies are one of the research objects that social sciences researchs are particularly focused on. In these societies, cultural, sociological phenomena and problematics are analyzed by many different sciences by various methods and some conclusions are reached. As an important representative of these disciplines comparative literature creates a research area on these societies with the contributions of both imagology and intercultural literary theories. In fact according to various definitions, comparative literature which plays a major role in the providing of intercultural communication examines the relationship of the individual with the "other" in social and psychological dimensions, especially with its one of the research methods imagology oriented studies and focuses on differences and phenomena which are described as foreign through images. In this study, primarily a general definition of comparative literature is given in a theoretical context, and then imagology discussions and the concept and theories of intercultural literature are mentioned in a descriptive way. In application part of this study, the work of Iris Alanyalı who is considered one of the representatives of intercultural literature in Germany, named Gebrauchsanweisung für die Türkei is examined. The most important reason for this work to be chosen is to determine how effective the bicultural identity which is carried by the author in the work written for the German readership about Turkey and Turkish culture. For this research, various concepts of intercultural literary theories and imagology are used. Thus, with its imagological analysis, in the name of intercultural communication what kind of contribution it has is exhibited.

SOME SPECIFICS OF THE RECEPTION OF KAZAKH LITERATURE IN GERMANY

In the article the author discusses the process of reception of Kazakh literature in Germany. Some features inherent in each stage of the development of the German reception of Kazakh literature are analyzed. For example, the descriptive and historical-cognitive nature of the perception of the first works of Kazakh writers, which were translated into German in the 1950s. The modern stage of the German reception is due to the predominance of in-depth analysis of the works of Kazakh authors. The names of modern participants in the process of German reception of Kazakh literature are presented. German researchers such as Leonard Kossuth,Sigrid Kleinmichel,Marcel Erdahl, Mark Kirchner, Friedrich Hitzer, Hans-Peter Durr and others are the active participants of the modern process of foreign reception of Kazakh literature. German professional readers analyze the artistic merits and style features of the works by Kazakh authors. They address the works of Kazakh authors with constant interest and evaluate them positively.

The Yugoslav Wars 1990–1999 in contemporary literature in Germany and Austria

In this article, the literature on the wars in the former Yugoslavia is critically examined. The inter-pretive patterns of these wars aim at the authors’ confrontation with the “West that has gone wild” (Handke) and its colonial mentality, which manifests itself in the politically determined friend-enemy ascriptions. The writing about the wars also expresses a presumption whether or not we are in a state before “the war” (Monika Maron) and preparing for a new European tragedy through the language of hatred. On the whole, the article attests a responsible attitude by all authors, regardless of their position on the sides of the conflicts that are manifested in this high-quality literature.

World Literature and Socialist Internationalism in the Weimar Republic: Five Theses

AbstractLargely overlooked in the booming scholarship on world literature, literary globalization, and transnational modernism, a world literature of socialist internationalism was imagined, written, theorized, and practiced in the aftermath of World War I, representing the first attempt to actualize the idea of world literature under the auspices of a social and political mass movement. This article develops and illustrates five theses about this internationalist world literature. It thereby sketches aspects of the history of internationalist world literature in Germany between 1918 and 1933 and formulates historical, historiographical, poetological, and literary and cultural theoretical interventions into the field of world literature studies. In particular, the article develops the notions of the transnational literary counterpublic and of realist modernism while tracing ideas about transnational class literatures and nonnormative imaginaries of the proletariat.

On one source of information on Dutch, Danish and Swedish literature in Germany and Russia in the 1830s in the context of the formation of the canon of world literature

The article analyzes the book by the famous German literary historian O. L. B. Wolff (1799–1851), The Fine Literature of Modern Europe (1832), in which an attempt was made for the first time to create a canon of European literature, which at that moment was a substitute for the non-existent canon of world literature. This article provides a comparative study of Dutch, Danish, and Swedish literatures in this work, which introduced Dutch, Swedish, and Danish authors Little-known at the time to the general reading public outside their own countries. The introduction of this forgotten source allows us to reconstruct the criteria for evaluating “Northern” literatures within the circle of “major” European literatures and to identify a “set” of those writers who, from the author’s perspective, deserved some attention and could therefore form a canon for the literatures described, which only partially coincides with the modern canon. Of particular interest is the comparison of the German text of the book with its Russian translation, published in 1835, which contains elements of a veiled polemic with the German scholar, manifested not only in cuts made and the stylistic treatment of Wolff ’s value judgements, but also in replacing certain sections by texts of Russian origin whose authorship was established for the first time in the article. The juxtaposition of the original text and its Russian translation demonstrates a discrepancy of perceptions about the hierarchy of specific literatures within the constitutive canon of the period and the translator’s desire to place Russian literature at the forefront, which he saw eclipsing the literatures of the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.

Racialised international order? Traces of ‘yellow peril’ trope in Germany’s public discourse toward China

This article explores how racial prejudice in the West forms at least part of the ideational foundation in how the rise of China has been perceived, and how such racial prejudices to some extent inflate people’s threat perception and hinders acceptance of any future Chinese hegemony. The article focuses on the leading European power, Germany, and provide a discourse analysis of the contemporary German popular media’s portrayal of China, China’s rise and how the vestiges of racial prejudice continue to define the German public’s view of China. It focuses on an analysis of a small yet representative sample of mainstream media and expert literature in Germany, so as to discern how ‘the rise of China’ is discussed in the German public sphere and the persistence of the ‘Yellow Peril’ trope. This article contests that all the elements that make up the perception of the ‘Yellow Peril’ have persisted, albeit in subtler ways. It argues that the more the literature adheres to the idea of a ‘Yellow Peril,’ the more it tends to perceive the international order in terms of a quasi-natural competition between nations. The article argues that as a non-Western non-White nation, China’s rise has been heavily racialised.

Sigmund von Birken, der Literaturbetrieb, Netzwerke und Werkpolitik

Abstract Sigmund von Birken belongs to the »Trio of poets from Nürnberg«, together with Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Johann Klaj whose posthumous fame is mainly due to their pastoral poetry with fullsounding verses in praise of peace and love. Birken started his career with an enormous upshot as organizer of multi-media spectacles during the peace ceremony in Nürnberg in 1650. Apart from his hymns and pastoral love poems, Birken’s poetry does not belong to the canon of early modern literature in Germany. If he had lived longer, he would probably have edited later all those poems which he had written on demand for special occasions and immediately published as separate brochures or leaflets in at least four huge volumes. He would have properly arranged love poems, odes in praise of friendship, poems dedicated to noblemen and civilians, hymns and secular songs, starting like his famous predecessors with his Latin verses. This ambitious publication project is outlined in his manuscript collections, but was not realized during Birken’s lifetime. To correct for this oversight, the commented edition of Birken’s complete poetic manuscripts, which was recently finished by Hartmut Laufhütte, gives a broad impression of his talents as a playful virtuoso in all kinds of genres, teacher of poetry, advisor, ›ghostwriter‹ and promotor of young poets, male and female alike. His diaries and correspondence account for his enormous productivity and versatility, thus enabling modern readers to watch him during the creative procedure more closely than any other German poet of his time. The edition of Birken’s manuscripts is on the same scale as a few other recently completed long term editions of early modern German ego-documents and poetry and sets high standards for further editions.

Image of Mary Stuart in Tragedies of C. H. Spiess and F. Schiller

Features of the interpretation of events related to the life and death of the Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart (1542-1587), in the works of the outstanding German playwright F. Schiller (1759-1805) and his contemporary, the famous writer Christian Heinrich Spiess (Spiess, 1755-1799) is considered. The originality in the image of the last days of Mary by C. H. Spiess and F. Schiller is emphasized. The question is raised about the various literary and aesthetic positions of both German writers. Attention is paid to the review of works in various genres and genres of art dedicated to Mary Stuart by Spiess and Schiller. First, an analysis of the work of the author, which is secondary in the framework of German and European literature, is presented, since Spiess wrote his tragedy many years before the great German playwright. It is shown that Schiller’s tragedy was written with a characteristic thirst for epic coverage of reality, while the stage play of Spiess is more focused on the events of the last days of Mary Stuart’s life and turns into a chamber work. The results of the study can be used when giving lecture courses on foreign literature of the XVIII-XXI centuries, special courses on the literature of Western European countries, on the problems of classical literature in Germany, as well as literature of the Western European Enlightenment and pre-romanticism.

On sale: Aotearoa New Zealand literature in Germany

ABSTRACTThe website ANZL – Academy of New Zealand (www.anzliterature.com/feature/selling-new-zealand-frankfurt) – features “Selling New Zealand in Frankfurt”, a review of the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair with New Zealand as Guest of Honour (GoH); a project intended to enhance interest in New Zealand books and increase their foreign readership. This article first investigates the Book Fair’s intention to achieve this goal by taking the term “selling” literally, and then focuses on the academic reception of New Zealand literature in German-speaking countries by exchanging “selling” with “translating”, or by moving from the commercial to the intercultural creation of dialogue between senders and receivers, between the “seller” and “buyer”. This shift from marketing to hermeneutically understanding New Zealand books across cultural borders points to the longer-lasting effect of “selling” books understood as “translating” them, and furthermore highlights the recipients’ notions of interest in the other, which becomes pertinent for the reception of Māori writing.

История литературы Германии ХХ века. Т. I (1880–1945). В 2 кн. Кн. 2: Литература Германии между 1918 и 1945 годами / Отв. ред.-сост. Т.В. Кудрявцева, В.Д. Седельник. М.: ИМЛИ РАН, 2018. — 984 с.

История литературы Германии ХХ века. Т. I (1880–1945). В 2 кн. Кн. 2: Литература Германии между 1918 и 1945 годами / Отв. ред.-сост. Т.В. Кудрявцева, В.Д. Седельник. М.: ИМЛИ РАН, 2018. — 984 с.