Martin Luther als Romangestalt am Beispiel von Feridun Zaimoglus „Evangelio. Ein Luther-Roman”
Martin Luther as a character based on the novel ’’Evangelio. Ein Luther-Roman’’ by Feridun Zaimoglus

Summary/Abstract: Literature is about fictions, yet simultaneously entwines historic events as the reformer Martin Luther is made a character of Feridun Zaimoglu’s latest novel ''Evangelio'' (2017).“If you stay true to your word, I shall stay with my affliction”: Opposed to the raw and ferocious first-person-narrator Burkhard, a catholic farmhand, Martin Luther stays at the Wartburg from the 4th of May 1521 to the 1st of March 1522, as he translates the New Testament into German. The present paper is concerned with Luther’s portrait as a historic figure in Zaimoglu’s novel. Based on guiding questions regarding the explorations of space and time, the suspenseful narrative perspective is analyzed, which, in addition to the narrator Burkhard, reaches a new dimension through a montage of Luther’s letters to Philipp Melanchthon and Georg Spalatin. Examinations of Luther’s characterization are placed in the foreground of this paper and are further illustrated through the functions and effects of focusing and antithesis as narrative strategies.

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