Modern German Research Articles

A tale of two eras: assessing the impact of breeding programs on historical and modern German wheat cultivars under distinct management

Breeding advancements have significantly improved grain yield over recent decades, yet further progress is needed to meet global food demands amid a growing population. In this study, we systematically examine the responses of both historical and modern winter wheat cultivars, released between 1895 and 2007 in Germany, to varying management intensities. We quantified the independent contributions of nitrogen (N) levels, growth regulators, and plant protection measures to crop productivity and growth variables over two growing seasons. Historical cultivars (pre-1960) exhibited a lower yield (4.6 t ha−1) and harvest index (0.30) compared to modern cultivars (post-1960), which demonstrated a higher yield (6.8 t ha−1) and harvest index (0.40) across all treatments, even those excluding both nitrogen and agrochemicals. We found positive trends in the yield and yield components for both historical (1895–1960) and modern (1961–2007) cultivars; however, significance was only noted for modern cultivars. Crop growth in historical cultivars was aided more by growth regulators, while modern cultivars gained more benefits from plant protection. However, both categories of cultivars produced a synergistic response when combining agronomic practices. Based on a comparison of N application rates and agronomic practices, N had a distinctly greater impact on yield and yield components than other treatments. In both historical and modern cultivars, grain number per ear was the most influential contributing factor to yield. Nevertheless, the effect of the thousand grain weight on yield was notably less for modern cultivars compared to their historical ones. Grain nitrogen yield increased up to mid-supply nitrogen application but remained constant at high rates. Results underscored that cultivar-specific responses for yield and yield components need to consider the interactions between fertilization and other agronomic practices.

Contemporary Censorship Debates in Germany

During the past five years the cultural world in Germany has been shaken and divided by a series of controversies involving contemporary works of art charged with being anti-Semitic. Obviously, with the Holocaust continuing to occupy a major position in modern German consciousness and history, sensitivity to anti-Semitic expressions is particularly keen here. This sensitivity has been increased by a number of recent developments, including the growing visibility of far-right political groups, the rise of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) protesting Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, and the official politicization of these tensions by a parliamentary ruling in 2015 restricting the activities of the BDS. The conflict between legitimate criticism of policies of the Israeli state and legitimate censorship of ethnically offensive material has recently become increasingly bitter in Germany. This article discusses the dynamics of three of the most significant recent examples: the conflict involving Germany’s most prestigious arts festival, the Kassell documenta in 2020; the withdrawal in 2022 of the European Drama Award, the continent’s largest award, from British dramatist Caryl Churchill; and the withdrawal from the Munich stage of the most recent play by Wajdi Mouawad, who has been widely heralded in Germany as the most significant contemporary dramatist.

Book Review: The Culture of the Case: Madness, Crime, and Justice in Modern German Art

Book Review: The Culture of the Case: Madness, Crime, and Justice in Modern German Art

Linguistic representation of the concept BERLIN WALL in German eonyms

The article is devoted to the study of linguistic representation of the concept BERLIN WALL in modern German. The main goal of the article is to identify and describe eonyms (key words of the epoch) that preserve the historical memory of the Berlin Wall in modern German. The material of the study was eonyms selected from the rating lists of the linguistic action of the German Language Society (Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache e. V.) «Word of the Year» for the period from 1978 to 2020, verbalizing the concept BERLIN WALL. The application of comparative-historical and descriptive methods made it possible to identify eonyms representing the result of linguistic reflection of the most important political phenomenon in modern German history. The article provides a linguocultural analysis of the selected eonyms in synchronic and diachronic aspects. The author describes the influence of the BERLIN WALL concept on the perception of East and West German citizens of each other, analyses the linguistic reflection of changes in political and social life in Germany in the critical era after German reunification. The description of the socio-historical contexts of the emergence of eonyms as representatives of the BERLIN WALL concept allows us to characterise the existing linguistic stereotypes in the German language. The analysis highlights the eonyms and their derivatives, which appear with certain cyclicity, linking historical events with each other and characterising the dynamic development of society and language. The unfolding of the meanings projected in the eonyms allows us to identify the most significant historical events reflected in the concept of BERLIN WALL, to interpret the differences in communicative behaviour between the inhabitants of East and West Germany.

Urban Political Structure and Inequality: Political Economy Lessons from Early Modern German Cities

What was the impact of urban political structure on preindustrial wealth inequality? I document that more closed political institutions were associated with higher inequality in a panel of early-modern German cities. To investigate the mechanisms behind that macro-relationship, I construct a unique individual-level panel dataset on personal wealth and political office-holding in the city-state of Nördlingen (1579–1700). I employ a difference-in-differences setting to show that political elites enriched themselves substantially, increasing inequality. To address endogeneity concerns, I exploit the Thirty-Years’ War as a shock to elites’ potential for enrichment from public office. Officials manipulated this crisis to enrich themselves further.

Esoteric Dance Practices of the Early Twentieth Century: Case Study of George Gurdjieff’s Movements

Abstract The beginning of the twentieth century was marked by colossal changes in various spheres of life, including art, where appeared numerous choreographies produced by both professional dancers and esoteric teachers. This article analyzes the choreography of George Gurdjieff, a dance practice simply called “Movements.” This practice was often considered as closely related to and being a product of the artistic environment of the time. The article argues that even though being the product of the time, Gurdjieff’s dance requires a close attention. It will show that his approach to dance downplays aesthetic and emotional aspects. Applying the hybrid methodology, this article will first identify the place of the Movements in Gurdjieff’s teaching. It will then illustrate how the Movements differ from modern German dance. Finally, it will analyze and describe the author’s ethnographic experiences in the study and practice of the Movements.

Особенности наименования косметической продукции в виртуальных немецкоязычных рекламных текстах (на материале сайтов производителей косметики)

Advertising is constantly developing as it attempts to keep pace with the ever-changing reality. German producers of cosmetics advertise their brands in German-language online magazines, and these ads often reflect the current changes at the language level. The authors identified and described the current naming methods and patterns in online advertising of German cosmetic brands. The naming strategies followed the rapid global changes and adapted to the constantly emerging new cosmetic products. The most recent nominations proved to be structurally and semantically diverse. Along with the typical German word-formation, they demonstrated some novel methods, which indicated the most recent transformations in the language. The modern German cosmetic advertising is subject to the process of neologization. While each neoplasm adds to the linguistic expressiveness of the language in general, it increases the reader’s involvement in each particular ad. The neologisms were coined in line with German as well as English patterns while some were combinations of them both.

Changing the functioning of the article in the history of the German language

The subject of the study is the historical changes in the syntactic structure of the German language; the object of the study is articles. The authors consider in detail the use of definite, indefinite and null articles based on the material of a fragment of the Gospel of Luke, which were published in various periods of the German language: the text of Tatiana, translated by Martin Luther, made in 1545; an adapted version of Luther's translation, published in 2017 and a lightweight electronic version created as a result of deviation from the canonical translation. Particular attention is paid to the frequency of use of articles, the reasons for the increase or decrease in their use, as well as other means of determination. It is established that modern electronic text shows a tendency to decrease nominal groups, which, accordingly, leads to a decrease in articles. The tendency to decrease the zero article is manifested by the early Upper German period; in modern German, there is a displacement of the definite article.  The methodological basis is based on a systematic approach to the interpretation of the phenomena of linguistic ontology in diachrony. The research methods are comparative historical analysis, the method of distributive analysis, quantitative analysis, methods of N. Chomsky's theory of control and binding. The main conclusions of the proposed study are the revealed historical processes in the system of articles of the German language. It was found that at an early stage of language development, the zero article dominated in texts, which significantly narrowed the manifestation of determination. The main burden during this period fell on possessive nominal groups, which primarily included proper names. The definite article was used much less frequently. In nominal groups that are part of the prepositional group, the zero article was mainly used, which eventually led to the creation of stable prepositional constructions with a zero article. The largest number of all types of articles falls on Luther's translation adapted to the modern grammatical structure of the German language, which is associated with the maximum use of nominal groups. What is new is the establishment in modern German of a tendency to reduce the zero and definite articles.

Infinitive as a verb form of the German language

The object of the study is the infinitive of the German language, and the subject is its semantic, structural and functional characteristics, which make it possible to interpret it as a verb form. The authors consider in detail such aspects as the specificity of the infinitive expression of the verbal categorical meaning, which brings it closer to the noun; structural division and microsystem of infinitive forms of the modern German language. Morphological features of the infinitive are considered through the prism of historical changes in the structure of the word in the German language. The authors pay special attention to the syntactic behavior of the infinitive. At the same time, the authors pay special attention to the multifunctionality of the infinitive, which is maximally identical to the nominal parts of speech. At the same time, the authors note the manifestation of the verb character of the infinitive in the ability to form a verb group. The methodological basis of the work is based on a systematic approach to the interpretation of linguistic phenomena in synchrony and diachrony. The theoretical basis of the research is the fundamental principles of general, comparative historical and Germanic linguistics. The comparative method and the method of distributive analysis were used to identify the functional potential of the infinitive and innovative phenomena. The main conclusions of the study are to identify the complexity of interpreting syncretic units to which the infinitive belongs. It was found that during the development of the German language, the infinitive gradually entered its verbal system, losing nominal grammatical features, such as the case paradigm. At the same time, the infinitive acquired verbal signs, as a temporary and collateral meaning. A special contribution of the author is the conclusion that the dual nature of the infinitive, which determines its peripheral position, is the basis for expanding its functional potential, which contributes to the participation of the infinitive in the formation of new grammatical structures/forms. The novelty of the study lies in the identification of such a function of the infinitive as participation in the formation of verb groups, where maximum proximity with the final verb is manifested.

Taxis trough the prism of the categorial interaction (based on the modern German)

The focus of this article is the speech actualization of taxis categorial meanings of simultaneity and non-simultaneity in German statements with temporal-taxis prepositions. The purpose of the study is to determine the process of taxis actualization as a result of intercategorial connections and interactions of semantic categories representing the idea of time in modern German. The subject of this study is the issue of taxis actualization in the German language, considered in the context of the implementation of intercategorial relations of taxis, temporality and aspectuality. The material of this study is German utterances with actional deverbatives die Trennung, die Scheidung and temporal-taxis prepositions bei, mit, seit, bis, nach, vor, obtained by directed sampling from the electronic database of the Leipzig Corpus (LC). In the course of the study, it was determined that the intercategorial interaction of taxis with the semantic categories of aspectuality and temporality determines the actualization of various primary taxis categorial situations of simultaneity, precedence and succession. These are temporal-taxis, durative-taxis, iterative-taxis, phase-taxis, and other categorical values. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the segment of the zone of intersection of the categories of taxis, temporality and aspectuality is constituted by temporal-taxis prepositions, temporal adverbials and aspectual quantifiers. The latter include durative, iterative and phase adverbials and attributes. They function as indicators of conjugated primary taxis categorial situations.

The Oxford History of Modern German Theology. Volume 1 1781–1848 ed. by Grant Kaplan and Kevin M. Vander Schel (review)

The Oxford History of Modern German Theology. Volume 1 1781–1848 ed. by Grant Kaplan and Kevin M. Vander Schel (review)

Освіта як соціальна система: від філософської концептуалізації до освітньої комунікації (версія Нікласа Лумана)

This article examines the issue of education from the point of the system theory of the modern German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. The main goal was to present arguments in favor of the possibility of education as a system, to describe its main functions and to highlight the problem of the medium. Firstly, the problem of translation of the German term Erziehung and its English counterpart Education was described; the existence of ambiguity, due to which it is possible in the context of the system theory to talk about both education and upbringing. Against this background, it was decided to use both terms as synonyms, bearing in mind their common meaning and the possibility of reverse translation. Then, by describing the main terms, Luhmann’s general understanding of the system theory and the system as a whole was given. Was mentioned such concepts as: distinguishing between the system and Umwelt, the phenomenon of self-reference and form. This gives rise to the second term – autopoiesis. The term was taken by Luhmann from the Chilean scientist Humberto Maturanа, the main point is in the special ability of systems to reproduce themselves from their own parts and to reproduce the parts themselves. A specific feature of autopoiesis is that it does not affect the final form. The phenomenon that provides autopoiesis is communication. It is possible because it is based on understanding and misunderstanding, which is found when distinguishing between message and information. From this constant distinction, sense is born. The possibility of understanding sense by a human, which is a psycho-physical system, is provided by structural coupling, openness of the system to external information. Based on this, we can describe the educational system. It is aimed at the formation and editing of the Person – a social symbol of communication. By providing each pupil with the same necessary knowledge, the education system thus increases the success of future communication. The medium that enables the system is the Pupil. However, significant social changes led to its reinterpretation and the emergence of a new term Lebenslauf, which causes problems in translation and interpretation.

Interdisciplinarity in the 17th century? A co-occurrence analysis of early modern German dissertation titles

Interdisciplinarity in the 17th century? A co-occurrence analysis of early modern German dissertation titles

Реализация диминутивных значений глаголами с суффиксом -el(n) в современном немецком языке

The paper describes unprefixed diminutive verbs with the suffix -el(n) in modern German from the perspective of the interconnection between their semantics and pragmatics. The aim of the research is to identify the primary actualizations of diminutive meanings by the analyzed units. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the first attempt to thoroughly analyze the influence of a derivational affix (the German suffix -el(n)) on the development of diminutive semantics within the semantic structure of a verb. Additionally, the authors expand the understanding of the diminutiveness category by considering notions such as intensity and iterativity. As a result of conducting a corpus analysis of German verbs with the suffix -el(n) that manifest diminutive meanings, it was found that affixational means of expressing diminutiveness primarily possess a semantic nature and mainly mark the category of intentionality of verbs. It was also found that the meanings of diminutiveness in some derivatives ending in -el(n) are explicit only through various shades of attenuation, derived solely from the pragmatic content of verbal lexemes, simultaneously conveying implicit evaluative information about the action.

The Problem of the Actress in Modern German Theater and Thought By S. E.Jackson, Camden House. 2021. 246 pp. $105 (hardcover) $29.95 (ebook or pdf)

The Problem of the Actress in Modern German Theater and Thought By S. E.Jackson, Camden House. 2021. 246 pp. $105 (hardcover) $29.95 (ebook or pdf)

English-language borrowings of the coronavirus era and their functioning in German online publications

In post-crisis conditions, it becomes possible to assess the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on the vocabulary of the German language. A large number of English-language borrowings have penetrated into the German language, arousing the interest of linguists in the question of the influence of a new layer of vocabulary on the recipient language and becoming the subject of study by Russian and foreign linguists. For example, on the basis of research on neologisms of the Covid era, dictionaries and reference books of the vocabulary of the coronavirus era are being produced in various languages, including German. The subject of this study is English-language borrowings dedicated to Covid-19 in modern German online media (magazines, newspapers), and the aim is to identify the impact of the pandemic on enriching the vocabulary of the German language with English-language borrowings. Actual works (not older than five years) of Russian and foreign scientists in the fields of lexicology, lexicography, onomastics, and sociolinguistics became the methodological basis of the study. The analysis of the impact of the coronavirus on the process of assimilation of English-language borrowings in German is carried out on the basis of online media texts for the period February 2020 – October 2021, which makes the study innovative and reflects the trends of modern linguistic science. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the coronavirus pandemic had an impact on the German language; in most cases, the recipient language began to actively combine English-language components of words with native German words, thereby forming new hybrid lexical formations. The further perspective of the research lies in the field of comparing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the lexical composition of the German and Russian languages and determining the role of English-language borrowings in the vocabulary of both German and Russian languages.

“Not a drop of tears, or any sweat from fear came from her”: Interrogating Mind, Body, and Emotions in Early Modern German Witch Trials

In early modern German witch trials, how defendants looked and moreover how they behaved on trial—physically and emotionally—was crucial to whether they were deemed innocent or guilty. This was particularly the case in trials of witchcraft, a crime that often left little tangible evidence in its wake. Indeed, notions of the body are integral to understanding early modern witchcraft beliefs, particularly at a time when the boundary between mind and body was viewed as porous and permeable. This was a time when emotions were seen to have physical consequences, and this belief played a key role in witchcraft cases. Through a close reading of a seventeenth-century trial of witchcraft from a history of emotions perspective, this article examines the ways in which the body, mind, and soul were interrogated in the heartland of early modern witch persecutions: the Holy Roman Empire.

Культурно-історичний контекст подолання травматичного минулого (на прикладі новітнього німецькомовного роману поколінь)

This article deals with the process of “reinterpretation of the past” in the modern German literature, social and political discourse. The research demonstrates, that the German people actively work with their own past and form new national attitudes and values. The generation, who replaced the eyewitnesses and participants of the terrible crimes of the last century (the World War ІІ, the Holocaust, National Socialism), does not distance themselves from these events, but, on the contrary, accept the whole truth. The results of the research show that after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 90s of the 20th century, a lot of novels were published, which directly and without illusions demonstrate this most terrible page in the history of Germany. In such novels, on the example of their own family stories, the authors raise important questions about the collective guilt and responsibility of the German people for crimes against human life. The authors describe the lives of three generations of one family and demonstrate how the worldview and thoughts of people are changing over time and how this affects the process of overcoming a historical traumatic experience for German nation. This was especially shown in the works “Pawel’s letter” written by M. Maron and “Heavenly bodies” by T. Dückers, “In my brother’s shadow” by U. Timm. The similar situation we observe in the Ukrainian literature during the last twenty years. A number of authors raise important historical topics, including reinterpretation of the history and the past in their family sagas. A special attention is paid to S. Andruhovych’s novel “Amadoka”. The results of the research accentuate its key features, which emphasize the relevance of such literature. In this article the culture-historical and comparative methods are used, a lot of attention is paid to the biographical analyze.

German language studies: main research trends in Russia and Germany

The article is devoted to a review of current trends in modern research in Russian and foreign German studies. The purpose of the article is to describe existing trends in Russian and German studies and current research based on the material of the German language. In the article, German studies is understood in its narrow definition, as a subject area whose sphere of interests exclusively includes research in German language and literature. The material for the analysis was scientific articles in leading Russian and German publications, associations of government agencies, as well as publications of Russian and German research organizations. The rationale for this is the significant advances in scientific research of Russian (Soviet) and German Germanists in the twentieth century. During the study, methods of analysis, synthesis and observation were used. The development trends of Russian and German German studies are determined by the cultural, historical, socio-political, and informational features of the development of modern society. Text, corpus and translation are considered as the main sources of promising trends in German studies for the description and interpretation of the facts of the modern German language in diachrony and synchrony. Text models and text types are substantiated from the perspective of modern discursive practices of the German language community (migration discourse, multimodal discourse, political and populist discourse, valeological discourse, etc.). The results of corpus research are considered as an empirical basis for research in German studies and for the strategy of inductive generalization. Research in the field of translation studies is aimed at fixing and systematizing established translation techniques based on innovative digital technologies.

The evolution of the style of the German poetic fable of the late XXth and early XXIst centuries: linguistic synergetic, sociocultural aspects

The article studies the evolutionary trends of the modern German fable. The fables of Reiner Kuntze and James Kruse show the departure of the modern fable of the late ХХth and early ХХІst centuries from the literary canons of the classical Aesopian fable, which to varying degrees accompanied the German fable over the centuries, new ways of creating images-symbols, building a style and compositions, the phenomenon of hierarchical plots and the inclusion of a modern fable in another literary genre. To illustrate all these innovations, fables and fable chains of this authors were analyzed to reflect in them modern socio-cultural realities, cultural codes, which nowadays have a significant capacity and deep meaning. The revealed transformations of the form of the modern fables, its style, the incompleteness and hierarchy of plots and images-symbols contribute to the more powerful possibilities of the fables to convey more and more information with a relatively short text. From a synergetic point of view, the modern fable is becoming an increasingly open system that actively involves the reader in the development of its images-symbols and plot. This process becomes much more effective than in fables of past eras. The mechanism of reflecting sociocultural factors through the goal-attractors, stylistic attractors and the specificity of language and speech in the fable as a synergistic system is explaned. The reflecting of the complex sociocultural factors in the modern fable is based on the fact that socioculture is a semiotic system, a set of signs and symbols. This makes it possible to establish the correspondence of the components of socioculture with other semiotic systems - attractors of the fable, its language and stylistics and to analyze the factors of modern culture, synergistic goals-attractors of fables and stylistic attractors dependent on them.