Reception In Germany Research Articles

Between Heimat and world. Belgian perspectives on the success of Felix Timmermans's novel Pallieter (1916) in Germany and France

ABSTRACT In 1916, Felix Timmermans unveiled his debut novel, ‘Pallieter’. This work emerged as an unequivocal bestseller, within the Dutch-speaking realm but also, thanks to translations by esteemed foreign publishers, resonating far beyond these boundaries. In this contribution, we delve into the impact of this literary work, firmly rooted in an (imagined) Flanders, on both Germany and France. Our analysis begins by shedding light on how Timmermans harnessed an image of the ‘licentious’ yet ‘devout’ Flemish populace, a construct previously propagated by francophone-Belgian literature. We further investigate how the international propagation of this image, facilitated by authors such as Maurice Maeterlinck and Emile Verhaeren, contributed to the reception of ‘Pallieter’ in France and Germany. Subsequently, we reconstruct the publication history of Timmermans’ text in both Germany and France. Our examination encompasses the translation process, the paratextual elements, the role played by publishers (Insel Verlag and Les Éditions Rieder, respectively), and the reception of the work. Our findings illuminate a stark contrast: within the German-speaking domain, the signifier ‘Belgium’ fades into obscurity in favor of a sharper focus on Flanders, whereas in the French-speaking sphere, Belgium continues to play a significant role, with heightened emphasis on ‘Pallieter's’ cosmopolitan character compared to its reception in Germany.

Blue Cliff Record, Art of Living and Its Reception in Germany

Abstract In the encounter between the Western and Eastern Cultures in the 20th century, the Chinese Buddhist classic Blue Cliff Record (Biyanlu 《碧巖錄》) was widely translated in Europe, especially in Germany. In the first part, this paper introduces the various German translations as well as their translators’ evaluations and discussions of the book and Chan Buddhism. In the second part, this paper argues that Blue Cliff Record represents a dynamic ontology by interpreting the Highest Meaning. In the third part, this paper will present the self-understanding and freedom addressed in Blue Cliff Record. The paper shows that Chan Buddhism is characterized by its non-duality between convention and holiness and by the self-realization in this world.

When Translation Reshapes Reception: The Curious Case of Zeruya Shalev in the German Literary Sphere of World Literature

Abstract This article sets out to explore the conditions that paved the way for the unique success of the German translation of Zeruya Shalev’s second novel, Love Life (Hayei ahava, 1997), offering a specific example of the potential benefits that arise from cross-cultural translations. Upon its publication in Israel, Love Life was received quite critically; it was considered too simplistic, straightforward, and feminine to be considered an ‘important’ work. However, following the novel’s translation into German by Mirjam Pressler in 2000, it gained wide recognition in Germany and soon became a best-seller, owing much to Marcel Reich-Ranicki’s unusually warm review on the television program Das literarische Quartett (The Literary Quartet). Hence, this article examines the various cultural and commercial conditions that set the backdrop for Love Life’s success as a translated work. While focusing on the reception of a specific literary text, the article surveys both Israeli and German literary spheres, and draws on the contemporary discourse in the field of World Literature. Furthermore, it offers a comprehensive discussion on translation, and demonstrates the unique position of translated literature, and specifically Hebrew literature, in the German literary field. Subsequently, the discussion sheds light not only on the circumstances that supported, if not determined, Love Life’s enthusiastic reception in Germany, but also on the extraordinary effect of this success on Shalev’s position within the Israeli literary system in the two decades that have followed.

CARL DIEM – A SIGNIFICANT SPORTS PERSONALITY FOR GERMANY, EUROPE, AND BULGARIA ATTEMPT AT ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT

The German Carl Diem is considered one of the most outstanding sports personalities and Olympic promoters of modern times and was not only relevant to sports development in and for Germany but also abroad. His work unfolded especially in the first half of the 20th century but led to highly contradictory assessments of his person and his work due to the circumstances of the time and political developments in Germany and Europe. It becomes apparent that in contrast to Germany, where Diem is now almost forgotten despite an almost incalculable oeuvre and is only known to sports historians, in Bulgaria, where he created the essential basis for the establishment and structure of the “State Higher School for Physical Education”, later “National Sports Academy ‘Vasil Levski’”, and thus the academic training of sports teachers with his “Organizational Plan for Physical Education in Bulgaria”, there was initially no mention of him after 1944 and only from the 1990s of the last century at least some few mentions. This article uses an overview of the academic literature to shed light on Diem’s changed reception in Germany as well as the deficient research situation on him in Bulgaria.

Newman's Reception in Germany: From Döllinger to Ratzinger

Newman's Reception in Germany: From Döllinger to Ratzinger

LITERATURE AND ANTHROPOLOGY (ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF ROBERT MÜLLER AND ERNST JÜNGER)

e aim of the article is to examine some works of two authors from the first half of the 20th century, both native speakers of the German language in order to look for common mental constructs and symbols. Many literary critics comparing Robert Müller and Ernst Jünger emphasize the similar roles they played in the literatures of Austria and Germany, respectively. Robert Müller and Ernst Jünger leave the impression that they search for order in the contradictory universe and if they do not find it, they create it. They are both social analysts, they are multi-talented, both dreamers and travelers, obsessed by pure ideas, within whose framework they try to sort out everything that exists, they are both idealists. Robert Müller is Head of the Academic Society for Literature and Music in Vienna and founder of the illicit organization "Katakomba" and the Vienna Association of Magazines Pubishers and author of numerous publications. Despite the numerous attempts to portray his work in its true light and to show his great role in the German-speaking cultural area, Ernst Jünger's reception in Germany is permanently marked by his image of the person and officer Ernst Jünger. The reasons for this is, on the one hand, moral tabooing in Germany after the Second World War, and, on the other hand, his internal development, which has transformed the "scandalous" young writer into a fully integrated member of bourgeois life which he used to highly criticize in his early years.

Return of the Picaresque: Günter Grass’s Self-Positioning with Regard to World Literature and its Effect on his International Reception

Günter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel presented a radical break with established conventions of post-war German writing. While its early critical reception in Germany tended to concentrate on this rupture, the novel was internationally read in the context of an older European tradition. Comparisons with an international literary canon were used to make the novel and its dubious hero more palatable to a potentially sceptical readership. References to major writers from Rabelais to Joyce and to the picaresque tradition in particular appear in reviews from France to Finland. By positioning Grass’s novel in the framework of the European canon the early reception established a pattern that in the long run influenced Grass’s own writing. In his subsequent work reference to canonical traditions becomes ever more visible as he unfolds dialogues with major authors of the past. By identifying with these authors Grass positioned himself as one among equals in the literary Parnassus. Having established his own international reputation and thereby contributed to enhancing the reputation of post-war German writing as a whole, his later writing increasingly paid tribute to a specifically German literary heritage.

“Wir Schaffen Das!”? Spatial Pitfalls of Neighborhood-Based Refugee Reception in Germany—A Case Study of Frankfurt-Rödelheim

Refugee reception in Germany is a primarily municipal task that relies heavily on neighborhood-based volunteering. This paper asserts that there are fundamental spatial mismatches between municipal policies and neighborhood-based approaches that place additional burden on all of the stakeholders involved. Drawing from the case of Frankfurt-Rödelheim, which is a socially and ethnically mixed neighborhood in Frankfurt am Main, I show how the way the municipality accommodates refugees disregards the politically embraced work of neighborhood-based volunteers and how the ideal of neighborhood-based inclusion creates a spatial fetish that fails the living reality of the refugees. The findings are based on my ethnographic fieldwork as volunteer in a neighborhood-based welcome initiative.

A nyugat-európai akadémiai tanulmányok és a magyarországi rámizmus

Studies at Western European Academies and the Hungarian Ramism. Recent schools of the history of ideas do not study the „influence” of one outstanding personality primarily but more the way numerous thinkers receive and utilise elements of the sets of ideas connected to the name. It is especially true in the case of Petrus Ramus. The interpretation of Ramism is not feasible if we focus on exploring one coherent intention of the author (or several of them). It seems more fruitful to study the multi-faceted community of interpreters that was driven to hold certain positions by personal conviction, institutional needs, or confessional identity. These people found the suitable framework for asserting their positions in one or the other of the many processes of Ramism, that is, they connected their aspirations to paradigms that they believed to be Ramist. His earliest acquaintances from Hungary and Transylvania met Ramus in Paris, several of them before his conversion to Protestantism (1561). Outlining these early connections poses no problem, since there are only a handful of Hungarians who had personal connection to him. All of them are members of the humanist elite, professional philologists. The influence of Ramus that came from the German academic world to Hungary and Transylvania seems far more important than the sporadic and haphazard personal connections. These influences are much more multitudinous, because they grow out of the system of connections organically embedded in the studies of Hungarian youngsters at foreign universities. Obviously, Ramus could affect Hungarian and Transylvanian young people by this way only after his reception in Germany started to take shape. This means that this aspect of the processes can be discussed beginning with the 1570s. Early traces are sporadic, and a deeper, systemic influence on thinking and history of ideas in Hungary and Transylvania by Ramism is relevant only from the early 17th century.

Characteristics of Women and their Reception in Germany

Characteristics of Women and their Reception in Germany

On “Genuine” and “Illegitimate” Refugees: New Boundaries Drawn by Discriminatory Legislation and Practice in the Field of Humanitarian Reception in Germany

A high number of legal changes accompanied the increase of people seeking asylum in Germany throughout the 18th legislative period from 2013–2017. These changes have transformed the field of humanitarian reception in Germany, especially along the axes of citizenship, integration performance and deviation from administrative and legal rules. Half of the legal measures from this period have led to differential rights for different groups of asylum seekers according to one of these three axes. The axis of citizenship has also structured the development of administrative procedures referred to as “integrated refugee management” which was established to speed up asylum seeking processes, classifying persons applying for a humanitarian residence visa in Germany into four clusters. This categorization, too, led to different entitlements regarding the admittance to state-financed German courses and integration measures focussed on education and the labour market. In this article I employ the notion of differential inclusion (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2012) to analyse these legal and administrative changes. I show that they have reshaped the substructures impacting the lives of those categorized as “genuine” and “illegitimate” refugees and thus redrawn the boundaries and created hierarchies among those seeking humanitarian protection in Germany.

<em>Excitator Germaniae</em>. La recepción de Miguel de Unamuno en la República de Weimar

La recepción de Unamuno en Alemania apenas ha sido estudiada. Sin embargo, entre 1924 y 1933, fue uno de los escritores extranjeros que más atención suscitó en este país. Este artículo, basado en el análisis de casi un centenar de publicaciones alemanas, estudia su recepción tanto en la prensa diaria como en todo tipo de revistas, especialmente literarias.

Beyond the Cold War?: Arendt's reception in Germany and Italy

Beyond the Cold War?: Arendt's reception in Germany and Italy

The transnational circulation of the ‘organizing model’ and its reception in Germany and France

Approaches to union ‘renewal’ or ‘revitalization’ developed in the USA have influenced debates in other countries on responses to the loss of membership. The ‘organizing model’ was first disseminated to other Anglophone countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) but was subsequently discussed and adopted in a number of continental European countries. This article analyses the transnational circulation of the organizing approach, focusing on its reception in Germany and France and examining the actors and channels of circulation, before exploring the extent to which the ‘organizing model’ has been received, reformulated and adopted.

The Weimar Century: German Émigrés and the Ideological Foundations of the Cold War by Udi Greenberg (review)

[MWS 16.2 (2016) 254-283] ISSN 1470-8078 http://dx.doi.org/10.15543/MWS/2016/2/9© Max Weber Studies 2016, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. Book Reviews Udi Greenberg, The Weimar Century: German Émigrés and the Ideological Foundations of the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), ix + 276pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-0-691-15933-1. $35.00. There has been so much research and so many publications about German academic émigrés to the United States in the fields of law, politics, and the social sciences on both sides of the Atlantic over the last three decades that all relevant issues seem to have been covered already. So what should one expect from another book on this topic? Such initial skepticism is forgotten after just a few minutes of reading Udi Greenberg’s remarkable book. Greenberg makes clear that he aims at more than just retelling the story of a few German émigrés who came to the United States after 1933. He wants to convince the reader that the influence of some of these German émigrés on American politics from the late 1940s until the early 1960s—the era in which the United States became the number one world superpower —had been underestimated for far too long. The book breaks new ground in the research on the role of German émigrés in the United States. Much ink has been spelled about the tremendous influence of authors like Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, or Herbert Marcuse in American academia. Other historians have already written about the role that politicians with a German émigré background, such as Henry Kissinger, played in the U.S. administration . But Greenberg intends to do far more. He wants to give evidence to support two theses which obviously inspired the ambitious title of the book, The Weimar Century: first, that the ideas, policies, and institutional connections of German émigrés travelled basically unchanged with them from Weimar Germany to the other side of the Atlantic; and second, that the ideas and activities of these five German émigr és, in particular, became crucial for both democratization and antiCommunist mobilization in the United States after World War II. The German émigrés whom Greenberg identifies as most influential , in this sense, were Karl Loewenstein (1891–1973), Ernst Fraenkel Book Reviews 255© Max Weber Studies 2016. (1898–1975), Carl Joachim Friedrich (1902–1984), Waldemar Gurian (1902–1954), and Hans Morgenthau (1904–1980), the youngest among them. All five made impressive careers in the United States, soon after escaping from Nazi Germany, as academics, writers, and—last but not least—consultants to various governmental administrations and philanthropic organizations. These five émigrés came from very different political, philosophical, religious, and intellectual backgrounds . Readers of Max Weber Studies may be interested to know that two of them—Loewenstein and Friedrich—were strongly influenced by Weber and his reception in Germany. Though some of the five émigrés loosely knew each other from their Weimar years, they never formed a group, even in exile. Each of them preferred to act on his own terrain. However, they did share one distinctive ideological mission: they wanted to save the United States from the disastrous fate of the short-lived Weimar Republic, as its collapse in 1933 had opened the path to the National Socialism and thus dictatorship, war, and the Holocaust. The book is organized into five main chapters. Each chapter is devoted to one of the German émigrés. There have already been biographies, books, and articles about every one of them, but Greenberg has nonetheless been able to dig up a great deal of material that had so far remained unnoticed, distributed in more than fifteen archives in Germany, the U.S., and England. It is surprising how many new facets about the German émigrés in America Greenberg has been able to contribute to our knowledge. This is the case, in particular , for the archival material he has found about Karl Loewenstein ’s deep involvement in the United States’ diplomatic and brutal military interventions in Latin America, already beginning in 1941 (187-98); about Ernst Fraenkel’s role as a key...

Asylum in Germany: The Making of the ‘Crisis’ and the Role of Civil Society

In most German cities today, refugees are welcomed and supported by a large and growing number of individuals and collectives whose volunteer work covers almost all aspects of refugee reception. At the same time, the arrival and establishment of refugees has been met with xenophobic protest and violence in many German localities. Focusing especially on the example of a local welcome initiative, but also considering exclusionary civil-society practices, this contribution explores recent civil-society involvement in refugee reception against the legal and political context of asylum in Germany. It will be argued that measures of forced dispersal, deterrence and discomfort, in particular, have materially and discursively produced the framing of current refugee movements as a ‘crisis’ and have triggered the differing actions and reactions among local populations. The fact that the ‘refugee crisis’ has been presented not only as a threat, but also as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ that needs to be tackled by both German state actors and civil society has encouraged the wave of positive reactions. Furthermore, taking into account local negotiation processes of asylum is significant if we want to understand the recent and often contradictory civil-society responses. The paper draws on observations from an ongoing research project on local migration regimes and urban asylum, as well as on other studies dealing with refugee reception in Germany.

From Structuralism to Culturalism: The Protracted German Reception ofThe Making of the English Working Classand its Actuality Reassessed from a Post-Cold War Perspective

AbstractBased on the author’s experience as one of the German translators ofThe Making, this article lays out its protracted and contradictory reception in Germany. When E.P. Thompson’smagnum opuswas published fifty years ago, German scholars on both sides of the Iron Curtain failed to take note of it for several years. The relatively muted reception in West Germany during the 1970s was marked by its dismissal as theory-lacking and “subjectivist”. Examining the contrasting contexts of postwar Britain, with its popular anti-fascist experience, and post-fascist West Germany helps to understand why Thompson’s “empirical idiom” of class history failed to strike a chord at the time with leading representatives of the new generation of “progressive” social historians in Germany and a broader reading public. It was only with the arrival ofAlltagsgeschichte, feminist history, and, more generally, the cultural turn in humanities thatThe Makingand its German translation became a canonical point of reference both in working-class history and the wider humanities. A brief epilogue discusses its lasting potential for a historical understanding of today’s processes of post-Cold War class formation and human rights struggles.

Articulating Europe During the Great War: Friedrich Naumann’s Idea of ‘Mitteleuropa’ and Its Public Reception in Germany, England and the USA

The article briefly outlines the major aspects of Friedrich Naumann’s concept of Mitteleuropa and shows how his idea derived from the experience of the First World War. Although the plan is often viewed as an expression of annexionist war goals, Naumann actually argued for a rather informal German economic hegemony in Central Europe. The public reception of Mitteleuropa in Germany as well as in Allied countries is traced in detail by conducting a discourse analysis of newspaper coverage. Especially in Great Britain the Central European scheme was seen as a great menace and triggered discussions about alternative pan-European concepts. Although Mitteleuropa can be considered well-researched, this aspect has been surprisingly neglected by previous studies. The aim of the article is to link intellectual and cultural history by carving out the strong transnational interweavements that existed within the public debates on Europe during World War I: at a crucial moment in history Naumann’s idea promoted the articulation of European thinking in wider circles.

Receptions of Newman ed. by Frederick D. Aquino, Benjamin J. King

Reviewed by: Receptions of Newman ed. by Frederick D. Aquino, Benjamin J. King Ian Ker Receptions of Newman. Edited by Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 264. $110.00. ISBN 978-0-19-968758-9.) The coeditors stress that this book “is not an exhaustive account of the reception of [Newman’s] work” (p. 2): there is nothing on Newman as writer, and nothing on the Apologia pro Vita sua (London, 1864; Aquino and King, p. 2). There is a chapter on Newman and the French modernists but not one on his more informed reception in Germany. Benjamin J. King shows how the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London, 1845) aroused critical, albeit very different, reactions from Evangelicals, liberals, and High Churchmen in the Church of England. Kenneth L. Parker and C. Michael Shea point out that it is not true that the Essay was rejected by the Roman Catholic Church right up until the Second Vatican Council, for ironically [End Page 848] it was used by leading ultramontanes to justify the definitions of the Immaculate Conception and papal infallibility, nor that it had no influence on Catholic theologians, although at first greeted uneasily by leading Roman theologians, a suspicion that was revived during the Thomistic revival under Pope Leo XIII and that entered into the standard seminary manuals. For Frederick D. Aquino, the “crucial question” regarding the reception of the Grammar of Assent is whether in appealing to our actual mental processes Newman’s aim is to offer a “phenomenology of religious belief” or an “epistemology of religious belief” or a combination of both (p. 59); whereas Mark McInroy observes that even neo-Scholastic theologians insisted that the condemned modernists had misinterpreted the Grammar, thereby obscuring its originality. John Sullivan refers to “the mistaken view” that Newman excluded professional education and research from the university (p. 96) but without giving any explanation or sources for these misunderstandings and their refutation. He also fails to explain that Newman’s “philosophy” or the “architectonic role” (p. 99) does not refer to academic philosophy. Colin Barr argues, without explaining how or why, that Newman “never understood why [Dublin Archbishop Paul] Cullen behaved the way that he did” (p. 126). Actually, Newman knew perfectly well that he had not been singled out for special treatment since Cullen confided in and trusted no one. Barr claims that the failure by scholars to consider “any account of events other than Newman’s own” has distorted the historical record (p. 133) but fails to show how Newman’s account was distorted. Barr claims that Cullen “never sought to intervene in the discipline of the university, nor in its appointments,” except on “a handful of occasions” and then only for “political” reasons (p. 125). He ignores Cullen’s failure to respond to Newman’s request that he be made vicar general to the whole hierarchy in order to have more independence and power, which the autocratic Cullen was not prepared to give him. Nor does he mention Cullen’s absolute refusal, again not for any “political” reasons but out of clericalism, to allow a lay finance committee or indeed any nonacademic lay involvement, which Newman regarded as crucial for the university’s success. When Cullen very reluctantly let, or was forced to let, Newman have his way, it was not for want of trying very hard to prevent him, and therefore Newman’s complaint about “constant interference” (p. 130) was perfectly justified. Peter Nockles shows how a Tractarian idea of an “Anglican Newman” or “Newman for Anglicans” (p. 138) developed in response to his conversion to Rome, with some Tractarians blaming the university and ecclesiastical authorities, and hoping his conversion might help reunion with Rome, and other Tractarians denouncing his act of “schism,” which they attributed to an alleged restlessness and oversensitivity. In the best chapter in the book, Keith Beaumont explains the French modernists’ attempt to misrepresent Newman as a proto-modernist. Daniel J. Lattier misunderstands Newman’s comment that it was absurd for an Anglican to become an Orthodox as referring only to its impracticality. William J. Abraham points out the danger after the...

The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler BenUrwand. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler Ben Urwand. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.This book has aroused a huge controversy among academic scholars, some of whom arc demanding that Harvard University Press review its publication of the book. Much of the debate stems from academic claims that Urwand's book is deeply anti-Semitic in many of the assorted claims that the author, a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, presents throughout the book.The reader can decide whether or not The Collaboration warrants all this negative attention. It is a fascinating story and well-written, a book that one will find difficult to put down. The title of the book describes correctly what the author's thesis is: the between the Nazis and the Hollywood film community, especially the producers, over the making of films that would be acceptable to the Germans. The author does not say anything that most film scholars have not said (or known) before, namely the methods that Hollywood employed to keep the lucrative German film market open by the Nazis during the 1930s, after Hitler took power, through World War II. In order to continue doing business in Germany after Hitler's ascent to power, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films that attacked the Nazis or condemned Germany's persecution of Jews. Urwand reveals this bargain as a collaboration (Zusammenarbeit) that drew in a cast of characters ranging from notorious German political leaders such as Goebbels to Hollywood studio heads such as Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner.Central to the story is Hitler himself, who was obsessed with movies (he saw one almost nightly) and who recognized the power of film to shape public opinion. The Prologue discusses the making of King Kong (1933) and its eventual reception in Germany where it became one of Hitler's favorite films. He was captivated by the story, discussed it often, and had it screened several times. Other chapters are just as illuminating, such as the first chapter (Hitler's Obsession with Film) which details how Hollywood desperately sought approval by the German film censors to show the antiwar film, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), in Germany and to show it without censorship. The film's plot is not sympathetic to Germany's loss in World War I so understandably there was concern on the film's reception in that country. In December 1930, his Party rioted against the Berlin screening of All Quiet on the Western Front, which led to a chain of unfortunate events and decisions that lasted over a decade.Fearful of losing access to the German market, all of the Hollywood studios started making concessions to the German government, and, when Hitler came to power in January 1933, the studios, many of them headed by Jews, began dealing with his representatives directly (37). …