Untersuchungen Zur Research Articles

Genetic Risk Score Analysis Supports a Joint View of TwoClassification Systems for Age-Related Macular Degeneration.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of combining the Clinical Classification (CC) and the Three Continent age-related macular degeneration (AMD) Consortium Severity Scale (3CACSS) for classification of AMD. In two independent cross-sectional datasets of our population-based AugUR study (Altersbezogene Untersuchungen zur Gesundheit der Universität Regensburg), we graded AMD via color fundus images applying two established classification systems (CC and 3CACSS). We calculated the genetic risk score (GRS) across 50 previously identified variants for late AMD, its association via logistic regression, and area under the curve (AUC) for each AMD stage. We analyzed 2188 persons aged 70 to 95 years. When comparing the two classification systems, we found a distinct pattern: CC "age-related changes" and CC "early AMD" distinguished individuals with 3CACSS "no AMD"; 3CACSS "mild/moderate/severe early AMD" stages, and distinguished CC "intermediate AMD". This suggested a 7-step scale combining the 2 systems: (i) "no AMD", (ii) "age-related changes", (iii) "very early AMD", (i.e. CC "early"), (iv) "mild early AMD", (v) "moderate early AMD", (vi) "severe early AMD", and (vii) "late AMD". GRS association and diagnostic accuracy increased stepwise by increased AMD severity in the 7-step scale and by increased restriction of controls (e.g. for CC "no AMD without age-related changes": AUC = 55.1%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 51.6, 58.6, AUC = 62.3%, 95% CI=59.1, 65.6, AUC = 63.8%, 95% CI=59.3, 68.3, AUC=78.1%, 95% CI=73.6, 82.5, AUC = 82.2%, 95% CI = 78.4, 86.0, and AUC = 79.2%, 95% CI = 75.4, 83.0). A stepwise increase was also observed by increased drusen size and area. The utility of a 7-step scale is supported by our clinical and GRS data. This harmonization and full data integration provides an immediate simplification over using either CC or 3CACSS and helps to sharpen the control group.

ERZÄHLER UND FIGUR IN INTERAKTION: METALEPSEN IN HOMERS “ILIAS.” By LeonievonAlvensleben. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 139, 2022 $114.99.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 49, Issue 1 p. 71-71 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Greece, Rome and Greco-Roman Period ERZÄHLER UND FIGUR IN INTERAKTION: METALEPSEN IN HOMERS “ILIAS.” By Leonie Alvensleben. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 139, 2022 $114.99. First published: 24 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16300Read the full textAboutPDF 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. Volume49, Issue1Special Issue: Unique Approaches to Christianity in Africa and BeyondMarch 2023Pages 71-71 RelatedInformation

Topisches Erzählen bei Adalbert Stifter: Untersuchungen zur Gestaltung von Bildungsgängen in ausgewählten Werkkomplexen by Hendrik Achenbach

Reviewed by: Topisches Erzählen bei Adalbert Stifter: Untersuchungen zur Gestaltung von Bildungsgängen in ausgewählten Werkkomplexen by Hendrik Achenbach Jan Hohenstein Hendrik Achenbach, Topisches Erzählen bei Adalbert Stifter: Untersuchungen zur Gestaltung von Bildungsgängen in ausgewählten Werkkomplexen. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. 467 pp. Bildung, or education, assumes a critical role in the writings and biography of Adalbert Stifter. Many of his stories depict the development of children, adolescents, and young adults. Moreover, Stifter became directly involved in the educational institutions of the Habsburg Empire when he served as a school inspector for the district of Upper Austria. Ever since the reading public rediscovered his works at the turn of the twentieth century, critics have attempted to characterize the educational practices and processes in them. In Topisches Erzählen bei Adalbert Stifter: Untersuchungen zur Gestaltung von Bildungsgängen in ausgewählten Werkkomplexen, critic Hendrik Achenbach applies the concept of "topisches Erzählen," or "topical narration," to elucidate the problem of Bildung in Stifter's works. His study provides a concise history of the concept of the topos and its place within modern literary criticism. Readers with an interest in that history and those wanting to learn more about Bildung in selected works of Stifter will find what they are looking for in this book. The study offers a concise survey of the history of the term topos—from its origins in classical rhetoric and decline beginning in the eighteenth century—and a profile of the Topikforschung as a current within modern literary criticism, influenced by the works of the prominent Romanist Ernst Robert Curtius. Achenbach defines the topos as a "zeichenhaftes, im Gedächtnis gespeichertes Vorstellungsmuster" (19) for his analysis. The study presents the model of the topos and "topisches Denken," or thinking along the lines of the topos, as [End Page 63] a founding principle of literature and approaches the characters in Stifter's stories as "Konstrukte, an die sich kulturell determinierte Vorstellungsmuster anlagern" (3), with the aim to isolate these culturally determined cognitive patterns on the level of character development. Achenbach posits that topoi can only develop their full potential for literary analysis if critics address them by finding a "Deskriptor," a phrase that encapsulates the "Deskription," that is, the content of a pattern. In addition, the author utilizes charts to synthesize his findings from the close readings of individual texts. Achenbach limits the scope of his analysis to three different "Werkkomplexe": the stories "Die Narrenburg," "Turmalin," "Kazensilber," and "Der Waldbrunnen"; then, Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters, with a focus on the second and fourth editions of the novella; and, lastly, the novel Der Nachsommer. This selection—which excludes most of Stifter's pre-1848 works—reflects Achenbach's assumption that different topoi can and do occur in more than one of Stifter's works and that Stifter's engagement with them often continued after their publication. For the benefit of his readers, Achenbach prefaces his own analysis in each of these sections with an account of the scholarship on each "Werkkomplex" and then follows up with a summary of individual findings before moving on to the next. In his textual analyses, Achenbach reconstructs how topoi related to Bildung manifest themselves, such as, for example, the topos of the "Mittelpunkt der kultivierten Natur" in the character of the "wilde Mädchen" in the first group of texts or the topos of the "Macht der Leidenschaften" in the Freiherr von Risach in Der Nachsommer. This methodology allows Achenbach to combine and systematize the findings of other scholars, leaving the reader with a detailed account of how the problem of Bildung recurs in different topoi across various texts. A strength of Achenbach's study, as the author himself highlights, is that the model of the topos as a comprehensive category accounts for central aspects of Stifter's prose such as artificiality, repetition, and (infamously) the lack of plot. Also, Achenbach's knowledge and adroit handling of the scholarship on Stifter makes his isolating and naming of individual topoi overall cogent. That the author chose to include graphic representations of these topoi is a welcome addition. There are still a few things to consider: The author...

Incidence, progression and risk factors of age-related macular degeneration in 35–95-year-old individuals from three jointly designed German cohort studies

ObjectiveTo estimate age-related macular degeneration (AMD) incidence/progression across a wide age range.Methods and analysisAMD at baseline and follow-up (colour fundus imaging, Three Continent AMD Consortium Severity Scale, 3CACSS, clinical classification,...

Distribution and specificity of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T in older adults without acute cardiac conditions: cross-sectional results from the population-based AugUR study

ObjectiveEuropean guidelines recommended a uniform upper reference limit of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hsTnT) to rule out non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction. Our study aimed to provide a hsTnT reference...

Rilkes Musikalität by Thomas Martinec

Austrian Studies 29 (2021), 166–207© Modern Humanities Research Association 2021 Reviews Rilkes Musikalität. Edited by Thomas Martinec. Palaestra: Untersuchungen zur europäischen Literatur, 348. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2019. 174 pp. €35. ISBN 978–3-8471–1032–3. ‘Rilke’s musicality’ may seem an unpromising topic for a conference and subsequent edited collection, for Rilke was, as several of the contributors to this volume point out, notably unmusical in the everyday sense of the word: in a letter to the pianist Magda von Hattingberg he describes his inability to recall a tune, even one that had moved him, as ‘die dichteste Unfähigkeit selber’ [the most profound incapacity, p. 47]. Music was of a more conceptual than technical interest, whether in the notes of 1900 on Nietzsche’s Geburt der Tragödie (pp. 7, 39, 56), or the later poem ‘An die Musik’ (1918): ‘Du Sprache wo Sprachen | enden’ [You language where languages | end]; ‘Du uns entwachsener| Herzraum’ [You, grown out of us | heartspace, p. 133]. In letters to Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin he described music as ‘ein Jenseits’, ‘viel zu viel’ (p. 83), as an experience exceeding the senses, a threat and a temptation. This was, then, a productive kind of ‘Unfähigkeit’, as Thomas Martinec suggests in his contribution to this volume. Many of the — varied but cohesive — contributions are structured around ambivalence or paradox, whether Rüdiger Görner’s opening essay, which begins, ‘Musik eignet etwas beglückend Verstörendes: Preis ihres Erklingens ist ihr Verklingen’ [Music possesses something pleasingly unsettling: the price of its sounding out is its dying away, p. 15], or Robert Vilain’s discussion of Rilke’s many references to Beethoven which are characterized by ideas of simultaneous sterility and possibility — Rilke’s emphasis on his deafness, for instance, and particularly the passage in Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge where the composer is imagined in the early Christian desert. Jacob-Ivan Eidt discusses Rilke’s ambivalence towards music within an intellectual-historical constellation (Goethe and Nietzsche), and Antonia Egel, making the case for music being of greater importance in the Neue Gedichte than is usually acknowledged in the collection’s tension between form and flowing force, addresses an ambivalence towards music in Rilke criticism. Lothar van Laak similarly presents music as a poetic principle, using the interplay between sound and silence in Malte as a case study for a definition of musicality in literature. In the final essay, Eva-Tabea Meineke looks at music in the reception of Rilke among the Surrealists (Aragon and Savinio) — writers far less afraid of the danger of an art form beyond all senses — using Rilke’s interactions with the composer and writer Ferruccio Busoni as a fulcrum. This follows a pair of essays on Rilke’s late poems, rather different examples of a ‘grenzüberschreitende Ästhetik’ [boundary-crossing aesthetic, Meineke, p. 171] to that of the Surrealists: Winfried Eckel’s on the Reviews 167 Quatrains Valaisans and the landscape as ‘soundscape’ between art and nature, and Charlie Louth’s on the metrical form of the bilingual ‘Gong’ poems, where the lyric, in dealing with that which lies beyond the reach of the senses, almost becomes it. As this brief summary shows, there is variety here in what music is given to mean and understood to include. This could be said too of Rilke’s own use of the term, and a number of contributors draw on Egel’s distinction, from her monograph, ‘Musik ist Schöpfung’: Rilkes musikalische Poetik (2014), between ‘MUSIK’, Rilke’s theoretical conception of music as the origin of all art, superordinate to individual art forms, and ‘musik’ as an art form made of sound. Martinec argues that it is precisely Rilke’s lack of technical skill in and connoisseurship of the second of these that allowed for the development of the former. But it is also the tendency to see music in such abstract terms that fuelled his wariness towards it, and he exaggerated this abstraction, for instance in an often-quoted letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé on Rodin, where music is opposed to art as a ‘Nicht-Ver-dichten’ [non-concentration], a ‘Versuchung zum Ausfließen’ [temptation to...

Das Junge Wien—Orte und Spielräume der Wiener Moderne ed. by Wilhelm Hemecker, Cornelius Mitterer, and David Österle

Reviewed by: Das Junge Wien—Orte und Spielräume der Wiener Moderne ed. by Wilhelm Hemecker, Cornelius Mitterer, and David Österle Monica Strauss Wilhelm Hemecker, Cornelius Mitterer, and David Österle, eds., Das Junge Wien—Orte und Spielräume der Wiener Moderne. Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte 155. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. 280 pp. The three editors of this essay collection are all associated with Vienna's Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Biographie. Indeed, the book reads like the history of a movement in biographical form. Jung Wien, a group without a manifesto or a program but possessing a clear generational identity marking the start of modernism in Vienna, is well suited to the exercise. The focus on the members' environments (both private and public) and their share in social change offers fruitful new perspectives. The sites covered in this volume range widely from domiciles to cafes, from movie theaters to the Prater, from urban to provincial locations and even include a bedroom in Schnitzler's Reigen. The scope expands the usual fin-de-siècle time frame to more than a century including an 1853 performance of a piece by Wagner in the Volksgarten Kaffeehaus to the appearance of a fictional Hugo von Hofmannsthal as a character in a novel published in 2009. The first of the book's four sections looks at the homes of the key figures associated with Jung Wien. Roland Innerhofer reflects on the manner in which each of these residences reflects the respective writer's self-image. Once securely established by the first decade of the new century, Hermann Bahr, Richard [End Page 142] Beer-Hofmann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Felix Salten, and Arthur Schnitzler moved away from their youthful, hectic café life in Vienna's first district to bourgeois comfort in the outer districts and beyond. Bahr, the unofficial publicist for both Vienna's literary and visual modernists, hired Josef Olbrich, the architect of the Secession, to build a villa for him in Ober St. Veit. Beer-Hofmann also relied on a contemporary architect—Josef Hofmann—to design his home. In a little baroque castle built in 1724 in the town of Rodaun, Hofmannsthal found a match for the historicism of many of his literary efforts (and his own emphasis on aspects of his lineage). His family, alas, had to put up with the lack of many modern conveniences. Peter Altenberg, the Jung Wien bohemian, dispensed with a residence altogether, keeping instead a room in the Hotel Graben. However, he too gave it a touch of his own individuality with artful arrangements of mementos and photographs on the walls. Philipp Ramer devotes his essay in this section to the seamless connection between life and work that Karl Kraus's apartment in Vienna's Lothringerstrasse allowed for. There was no kitchen or living room but a large workroom housing a magnificent desk. A secured space just within the front door enabled his printer to pick up his manuscript when Kraus left for the café in the evening. On the writer's return home late at night, the printed version would be there. Opening the section on Spielräume is Cornelius Mitterer's dissection of the failed attempt of Jung Wien to launch a Freie Bühne along the lines of the Berlin model. He singles out the group's lack of cohesive vision amid the sturdy vitality of Vienna's own native theatrical tradition. A more successful response to a new arena is the subject of Anna Högner's contribution dealing with the enthusiasm of the members of Jung Wien for the new medium of film. No picture of the world in which Jung Wien moved is complete without a discussion of the role of the Kaffeehaus. Here, the collection moves in a surprising direction by emphasizing that this most traditional of Viennese institutions played a role in "reception" as well as "production." Gregor Schima's detailed analysis of the role of the Strauss brothers in introducing Wagner to Vienna in the Pietro Corti Kaffeehaus in the Volksgarten as early as 1853 is a wonderful demonstration of the receptivity to new music not only of those composers/impresarios but also of their...

Créativité linguistique dans la poésie surréaliste (II)

At the beginning of Surrealism was a theoretical and practical engagement with language. This topic is presented in two parts in this review and is based on the author’s book Der Leser des Surrealismus. Untersuchungen zur Kommunikationsästhetik (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1977). The first part of this article discusses the search for a new language, a language as objective or device, and it considers language games as a challenge to the reader. The second part of this article focuses first on words examined in terms of belief, and on proverbs as a justification of words. On the basis of Paulhan’s reflections on semantic fields, the natural resources of words are considered, as well as the concentration of words – which explores the semantic reduction possibilities of the sentence. The question of the renouncement of meaning, or the discovering of a new meaning is also evoked. Further, the determination – the background, presuppositions – of the reader is another point developed here, which sheds light on the reader’s shock and consciousness when facing a whole semantic and syntactic upheaval. A general conclusion aims to recapitulate the results of the two articles.

Franz Kafkas akustische Welten by Rüdiger Görner

Reviewed by: Franz Kafkas akustische Welten by Rüdiger Görner Peter Höyng and Jessie Zhao Rüdiger Görner, Franz Kafkas akustische Welten. Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte 156. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019. 183 pp. Franz Kafkas akustische Welten is a short, tightly organized guide to the role of sound in Kafka's oeuvre. Ever since sound studies have become established within the last decade, this particular angle seems ripe for analysis. However, scholars and biographers have long recognized Kafka's peculiar relationship to noise and music, and in recent years Görner's book has been joined by two others: Jürgen Daiber's Kaßca und der Lärm: Klanglandschaften der frühen [End Page 109] Moderne (2015) and Kata Gellen's Kafka andNoise: The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism (2019). It should be noted that all three books focus on the same texts, and for good reason. The sensitive animal figures in "Josefin die Sängerin," "Der Bau," and "Forschungen eines Hundes" are prominent features, as is the enticingly incomprehensible fragment "Das Schweigen der Sirenen" and the consequences of advances in technology during Kafka's lifetime like telephones and earplugs. With its three parts Franz Kafkas akustische Welten is straightforwardly structured: after its extensive introduction entitled Befunde, the two major sections are called Bereiche and Beziehungen. Each subsection of parts two and three roughly corresponds to one text, the analysis of which usually takes no more than a few pages, and hence tends to be relatively superficial, particularly when it comes to the aforementioned texts with animals and technology. These texts would benefit greatly from a more radical and specific approach rather than summaries of sound's presence within a single text, with relatively little connection to others. By separating each story so cleanly and avoiding bigger questions about Kafka's relationships to sound, Görner's analysis overlooks many of the potentially fascinating cracks in the narrative facades on which Kafka thrives. In part three of Beziehungen, some subsections deal with texts by other writers, and while insightful, the strength of the connection between Kafka and the texts chosen varies wildly. It is hard to find a place for Joyce's Ulysses, written five years after "Das Schweigen der Sirenen," with vastly different circumstances and goals in mind (whatever they were), in a text that is ultimately about Kafka's particular usage of sound. However, it is easy to see how Kafka's decision to use intelligent dogs to interrogate human society could have been inspired by the Cervantes story "Dialogue of the Dogs" via E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Nachricht von den neuesten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza," or why sirens in Rilkes poetry are worth comparing to his contemporary's parables. Yet Görner's choice of György Kurtág's large Kafka Fragmente cycle (1985-1987) as his only example for Kafka's texts attracting contemporary composers seems arbitrary. In his best moments Görner manages to situate Kafka in a literary tradition and a living, breathing world where writers share their peers' concerns, without jumping to conclusions about the uniqueness of Kafka, as so many scholars do. Another helpful feature of this book is the way Görner clearly sets out four goals in his first part, Befunde, offering more insight into the reason why [End Page 110] certain arguments are made and certain texts are featured. The goals combine relatively uncontroversial ideas (that sound plays a major role in Kafka's work and is related to Kafka's tendency for manipulating illusions) with bolder ones (that the idea of the "Kafkaesque" can be primarily understood as an auditory phenomenon). Of note is the idea of an "Acousticon," which is proposed as a unit for describing repetitive acoustic events (for instance, knocking on a door in Der Prozeß). Unfortunately these "acousticons" do not play a very large role in Görner's overall argument and as a result their usefulness for analysis has not been fully tested. The other aspects of Görner's theoretical approaches are set up and proven without much friction. Depictions of sound in a soundless medium like literature will by their nature have a...

Créativité linguistique dans la poésie surréaliste (I)

At the beginning of Surrealism there was a theoretical and practical engagement with language. This topic is presented in two parts in this review and is based on the author’s book Der Leser des Surrealismus. Untersuchungen zur Kommunikationsasthetik, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1977. The first part of this article discusses the search for a new language, the discussion of language as objective or device, and language games as a challenge to the reader.

Theodor W. Adorno on ‘Marx and the Basic Concepts of Sociological Theory’

Abstract The following is the transcript of a lecture taken in shorthand by Hans-Georg Backhaus. The transcript was originally published as an appendix in Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur marxschen Ökonomiekritik (Freiburg: ça ira, 1997), a complete translation of which is forthcoming in the Historical Materialism book series.

Genetic diversity of Barbary lion based on genealogic analysis

Genetic diversity of Barbary lion based on genealogic analysis

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Fälschung als Mittel der Politik? Pseudoisidor im Licht der neuen Forschung: Gedenkschriftfür Klaus Zechiel-Eckes ed. by Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann, and: Gefälschtes Recht aus dem Frühmittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Herstellung und Überlieferung der pseudoisidorischen Dekretalen by Steffen Patzold

Falschung als Mittel der Politik? Pseudoisidor im Licht der neuen Forschung: Gedenkschrift fur Klaus Zechiel-Eckes. Edited by Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann. [Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte, Band 57.] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 2015. Pp. vii, 268. euro48.00. ISBN 978-3-44710335-0.)Gefalschtes Recht aus dem Fruhmittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Herstellung und Uberlieferung der pseudoisidorischen Dekretalen. By Steffen Patzold. [Schriften der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Band 55.] (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter. 2015. Pp. 76. euro24.00. ISBN 978-3-8253-6511-0.)These two books outline recent thought and current lines of enquiry on the origins and dissemination of the great canon law forgeries widely known as Pseudo-Isidore, which today are commonly believed to have begun life at or around the monastery of Corbie in the 830s. The Pseudo-Isidorian decretals are often considered one of the most influential forgery collections of the Middle Ages; many Pseudo-Isidorian concepts would go on to provide a platform for the Gregorian reform and the growth of papal power in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Recent Pseudo-Isidorian studies have been galvanized by the work of Klaus Zechiel-Eckes, who died in 2010 and is honored by the collection Falschung als Mittel der Politik?, edited by Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann. In 2000, ZechielEckes' discoveries shattered an old consensus on Pseudo-Isidore's origins; since then, the field has been developing rather quickly, as these two volumes attest. Both works are oriented firmly towards specialists, and the uninitiated will probably want to chase up some of the introductory references provided to grasp the full import of this latest scholarship.Falschung is based on a colloquium held in 2013 in Zechiel-Eckes' honor. According to the editors, contributors were asked to test Zechiel-Eckes' hypotheses concerning the provenance of Pseudo-Isidore, to interrogate the relationship between the various versions and combinations of the forgery complex, and to consider the role of forgery in political culture more generally. Abigail Firey tackles the question of Corbie origins head on with an exemplary paleographical analysis of a canon law collection usually deemed to have been an early product of PseudoIsidore's workshop. She shows how Corbie's role in the Carolingian economy of book production presents a methodological problem in the pursuit of manuscript provenance. Eric Knibbs uncovers evidence for what looks to be a hitherto unnoticed early recension of the corpus in the manuscripts of the so-called A1 version. Semih Heinen and Steffen Patzold argue from different perspectives that the forgery project was stimulated not, as Zechiel-Eckes believed, by the rebellion against Louis the Pious of 833-835, but by the earlier rebellion of 830-831. …

Event: A Philosophical Journey through a Concept by Slavoj Žižek, and: Ereignisse in aller Kürze. Narratologische Untersuchungen zur Ereignishaftigkeit in Kürzestprosa von Thomas Bernhard, Ror Wolf und Helmut Heißenbüttel by Carola Gruber (review)

Reviewed by: Event: A Philosophical Journey through a Concept by Slavoj Žižek, and: Ereignisse in aller Kürze. Narratologische Untersuchungen zur Ereignishaftigkeit in Kürzestprosa von Thomas Bernhard, Ror Wolf und Helmut Heißenbüttel by Carola Gruber Andrew B.B. Hamilton Event: A Philosophical Journey through a Concept. By Slavoj Žižek. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2014. Pp. 182. Paper $13.21. ISBN 978-1612194110. Ereignisse in aller Kürze. Narratologische Untersuchungen zur Ereignishaftigkeit in Kürzestprosa von Thomas Bernhard, Ror Wolf und Helmut Heißenbüttel. By Carola Gruber. Bielefeld: transcript, 2014. Pp. 338. Paper €35.99. ISBN 978-3837624335. Now is a good time to be curious about the event, that protean term that Slavoj Žižek calls “something shocking, out of joint that appears to happen all of a sudden and interrupts the usual flow of things; something that emerges seemingly out of nowhere, without discernible causes, an appearance without solid being as its foundation” (4) in his recent Event: A Philosophical Journey through a Concept. It is one of two books published last year, which offer the finest points of entry in recent memory into this challenging term. There is an emergent systematicity to be found in reading Slavoj Žižek’s Event and Carola Gruber’s Ereignisse in aller Kürze together. These two books could hardly be more different, and for precisely that reason they illustrate the vast range and power of the monoverbal lynchpin in their titles that holds them together. While Žižek’s book rests on the conceit of an imagined subway train ride (each chapter is a stop), jumping from topic to topic keeping only one hand clinging to the term “event,” Gruber offers a clear, concise, and systematic analysis of the narratological discussions surrounding the event and eventiveness. While Žižek is interested in the philosophical range of meaning that an event can take on and is prepared to trace the resonances of the event in intellectual history from Buddhism to Badiou, Gruber’s ultimate aim is an analysis of short-form prose (Kürzestprosa), which is informed and supported by her chapters on the narratological legacy of the event. Yet for all these differences, the texts resonate remarkably with one another, [End Page 211] their strengths being so complementary that a reader curious about theories of the event could not wish for a better way to be brought up to speed in all departments than to read these volumes together. Žižek’s book, one of six he published in English in 2014, is the livelier of the two: the sheer energy with which the author sends the argument hurtling forward makes for a fun, and fast, reading experience. Žižek frames his approach in almost the broadest possible terms: “Already with this approximate definition, we find ourselves at the very heart of philosophy,” an exploration of which will invariably “culminate in some notion of Event” (5–6). From this promising, if bombastic, beginning, the ride itself cannot help be something of a letdown. Readers familiar with Žižek’s work will recognize many of his main lines of argumentation: regular recourse to Marx, a recurring ideology critique, and many, many cinematic illustrations. The breadth of reference in a book of this length may obscure the fact that the core argument of the book is in fact quite simple. An event, in Žižek’s account, is “an effect which exceeds its causes” (6). But such a definition is in fact unhelpful, and so one must encounter the event to define it: “The only appropriate solution is thus to approach events in an evental way” (7), and the subway conceit is born. Here is the overview of the book: “Let us then imagine that we are on a subway trip with many stops and connections, with each stop standing for a putative definition of event.” He goes on to enumerate the stops: the first is “a change or disintegration of the frame through which reality appears to us,” the second “a religious Fall,” the third “the breaking of symmetry,” the fourth “Buddhist Enlightenment” and so on via encounters with self-knowledge, encounters with absolute truth, and trauma...

Kindgemäss und literarisch wertvoll. Untersuchungen zur Theorie des „guten Jugendbuchs“ – Anna Krüger, Richard Bamberger, Karl Ernst Maier by Sonja Müller

Reviewed by: Kindgemäss und literarisch wertvoll. Untersuchungen zur Theorie des „guten Jugendbuchs“ – Anna Krüger, Richard Bamberger, Karl Ernst Maier by Sonja Müller Michael Schmitt Translated by Nikola von Merveldt Kindgemäss und literarisch wertvoll. Untersuchungen zur Theorie des „guten Jugendbuchs“ – Anna Krüger, Richard Bamberger, Karl Ernst Maier (Suitable for children and of literary value: Studies on the theory of the “good children’s book”). Sonja Müller. Series: Kinder- und Jugendkultur, -literatur und -medien; 88. Frankfurt am Main u.a., Peter Lang Edition, 2014. 326pages. ISBN: 978-3-631-64501-7 In her doctoral thesis “Suitable for children and of literary value,” defended in 2012, Sonja Müller examines a brief and little studied phase in the development of children’s literature theory in the young German federal republic. In the 1950s and 60s, theories on the “good children’s book” were built on the visions of the postwar period for international understanding, as exemplified by the International Youth Library in Munich; they became established with the creation of institutions promoting quality children’s literature, such as the Arbeitskreis für Jugendschrifttum (Working committee for youth literature) or the Deutsche Jugendbuchpreis (German children’s literature award), and they paved the way for more intensive scholarly research in children’s literature—as in Frankfurt, where Klaus Doderer founded the Institut für Jugendbuchforschung (Institute for the Study of Children’s Literature) in 1963. In the [End Page 64] study “Histories of children’s literature” (2013) by Andrea Weinmann, this theory is hardly mentioned and is dismissed as irrelevant. Following the paradigm shift of the 1970s, theories of the “good children’s book” appear dated, even though their prime time coincided with the rise of a new kind of children’s literature, practiced by James Krüss or Otfried Preußler, which advocated the autonomous child. Müller’s study chronicles the histories both of the institutions and of the theoretical debates; she sketches the prehistory beginning in 1896 with Heinrich Wolgast’s call for aesthetically valuable children’s literature, followed by theories of reading-age, all the way to the “filth-and-trash” debates of the 1950s. Her focus is on three scholars who discuss children’s literature in different ways—looking at its aesthetic qualities, the suitability of its forms and media for children, and last but not least, its pedagogical benefit. The first of these chapters, which explore both the theories and the practice of contemporary literary criticism, presents Anna Krüger, who meticulously defined the concept of the good children’s book and attributed particular importance to the linguistic and literary qualities. Pedagogical issues are less important in her eyes; instead, she welcomes imagination and creative freedom, invokes Astrid Lindren, and supports the young generation of German-speaking authors. Despite all this, she considers even the best children’s book to be inferior to first-rate adult literature because writing for child addressees imposes limitations, such as not using experimental narrative devices. From the work of Krüger, who was denied a brilliant academic career, Sonja Müller goes on to present the ideas of the influential Austrian literary historian Richard Bamberger and of Karl Ernst Maier, whose literary histories continued to serve as textbooks in the 1980s. Bamberger and Maier share more conservative positions: Bamberger attaching more value to literacy, Maier to pedagogy. The three main chapters are accompanied by several shorter ones which sketch the contributions of other leading figures to the debate on what was to be considered good children’s literature. These figures include Walter Scherf, long-term director of the International Youth Library, and Malte Dahrendorf, who radically revoked his own theory on the good book in the 1970s. Building on the groundwork of her supervisor, Hans Heino Ewers, Müller succeeds in giving a dense account of the spectrum of theoretical concepts, teasing out the various constellations of progressive and conservative ideas underpinning them. The theories of the “good book” for young readers emerged when the prosperity in the young federal republic opened up new realms of experience for children; they declined in the mid-sixties when youth culture encouraged a massive culture of protest which led to...

Carnap’s early metatheory: scope and limits

In his Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik (1928) and Abriss der Logistik (1929), Rudolf Carnap attempted to formulate the metatheory of axiomatic theories within a single, fully interpreted type-theoretic framework and to investigate a number of meta-logical notions in it, such as those of model, consequence, consistency, completeness, and decidability. These attempts were largely unsuccessful, also in his own considered judgment. A detailed assessment of Carnap's attempt shows, nevertheless, that his approach is much less confused and hopeless than it has often been made out to be. By providing such a reassessment, the paper contributes to a reevaluation of Carnap's contributions to the development of modern logic.

The role of universal language in the early work of Carnap and Tarski

It is often argued that by assuming the existence of a universal language, one prohibits oneself from conducting semantical investigations. It could thus be thought that Tarski’s stance towards a universal language in his fruitful Wahrheitsbegriff (1933) differs essentially from Carnap’s in the latter’s less successful Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik (1927–1929). Yet this is not the case. Rather, these two works differ in whether or not the studied fragments of the universal language are languages themselves, i.e., whether or not they are closed under derivation rules. In Carnap’s case, axiom systems are not closed under derivation rules, which enables him to adopt a substitutional concept of models. His approach is directly rooted in the tradition of formal axiomatics, we argue, and in this contrary to Tarski’s. In comparing these works by Carnap and Tarski, our aim will be to qualify the connection between Tarski’s approach and the tradition of formal axiomatics, which has been overemphasized in the literature.

Notes and Correspondence for Russell’s 1905 Review of Meinong

Bertrand Russell took fourteen pages of notes on Meinong’s Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie [Studies in object theory and psychology] in preparation for his review of the book in Mind. Translations of Russell’s letters from Alexius Meinong, Rudolf Ameseder and Ernst Mally discuss their contributions to the volume (with transcriptions of the German originals appended in this journal’s online edition). Together the notes and correspondence record the origin of Russell’s famous criticisms of Mein­ong’s theory of non-existent objects, which appeared in both “On Denoting” and the review in Mind in October 1905.

Notes and Correspondence for Russell’s 1905 Review of Meinong

Bertrand Russell took fourteen pages of notes on Meinong’s Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie [Studies in object theory and psychology] in preparation for his review of the book in Mind. Translations of Russell’s letters from Alexius Meinong, Rudolf Ameseder and Ernst Mally discuss their contributions to the volume (with transcriptions of the German originals appended in this journal’s online edition). Together the notes and correspondence record the origin of Russell’s famous criticisms of Meinong’s theory of non-existent objects, which appeared in both “On Denoting” and the review in Mind in October 1905.