Bevölkerungstransfer als Bedeutungstransfer. Zur Rolle der Literatur bei der Gestaltung ostmitteleuropäischer Lebenswirklichkeit(en) seit 1945
Transfer of Population as Transfer of Meaning: On the Role of Literature in the Making of East-Central European Everyday Realities since 1945

Summary/Abstract: In their migration human beings are accompanied by their semantics. This article asks how those who themselves or whose parents were affected by the forced population transfer in Germany and Poland after the end of the Second World War arrived at new places and set themselves up in their new environments with the help of literature. It is argued that there are four types of reaction: 1) the overwriting of the new lifeworld by old familiar patterns, mainly in Poland, 2) attempts at rescuing memory by its virtualization, primarily in Germany, or 3) the deconstruction of similar attempts by later generations. 4) Since the political changes of 1989/1990 Eastern-European literatures have tested a utopian syncretism to reunite those cultures which had been fighting each other before.

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