Małe akty wielkiego zderzenia cywilizacji? Kilka uwag krytycznych w oparciu o reportaż Güntera Wallraffa "Schwarz auf weiß. Fremd unter Deutschen"

Author(s): Anna Warakomska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 10/2014

Günter Wallraff is a contemporary German writer who has been strongly criticizing German society in his popular reports among other things for its hypocrisy and quasi post-colonial attitude to gas-tarbeiters. He has been traveling through German cities and villages in disguise and has been employed in different places under a false name, which allowed him to observe the daily life of his compatriots very closely. He describes all his impressions in the books, which became a kind of a seismo-graph of the social life in the Federal Republic. In his latest book From the brave new world, which is the subject of the analysis in this article, he has adopted a similar method of work. The authoress of the article presents in her text the figure of the writer as well as his previous achievements. She tries to show that Wallraff’s critical observations are valid today, too.

Debata o połączeniu trzech niemieckich PEN-Clubów 1989–1998

Author(s): Monika Wolting / Language(s): Polish Issue: 09/2013

Die Folgen der Julirevolution – Französische Zustände vor 1848 in Heinrich Heines Beurteilung

Author(s): Agnieszka Reszka / Language(s): German Issue: 09/2013

Heinrich Heine arrived in France in 1831 full of hope for great political and social changes. However, his expectations connected with the July Revolution of 1830 were exaggerated. The new monarch (Louis Philippe) as well as the actions of bourgeois politicians disappointed him. The article below will try to show Heine’s attitude and assessment of the social and political situation in France of the 1830s and 1840s, before the February Revolution. The picture was based on Heine’s works, especially journalistic texts.

Die ästhetische Reduktion des Narrativen und die Immersion in den gegenwärtigen deutschen und polnischen Debütromanen

Author(s): Bożena Badura / Language(s): Polish,German Issue: 1/2017

The paper investigates the occurrences and characteristics of the language used in contem-porary German literature and how these enact influence on immersion (Ryan). Through a discussion of the empirical approach to the process of reading, the article distinguishes between the aesthetic reduction of today and the long descriptive characteristics found mostly in older works of literature. For the majority of the newest works of contemporary literature, the analysis finds there is a positive influence towards both the cognition of the text and the immersion of the reader with the piece of literature.

Shock and Entertain. Gentile‑Jewish Romances from Bohemia, 1830s–1850s

Author(s): Jindřich Toman / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The present study discusses a selection of Czech and German texts from the first half of the nineteenth century that are based on transgressive relationships between Gentiles and Jews. Although belonging to various genres, they can all be interpreted as models of exclusion of Jews from Gentile society. The analysis highlights the use of transgression as a shocking and entertaining concept that ultimately reasserts the status quo of Gentile Jewish relations.

Unterhaltungslektüre und Kritik. Zur Prager Zeitschrift Bild und Leben (1844–1850)

Author(s): Štěpán Zbytovský / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2020

One of Prague’s German cultural magazines of the 1840s, published by the representative of Haskala, publisher and poet Moses Israel Landau and his colleague Josef Freund, was mostly dismissed by literary historiography as a harmless periodical with at most mediocre content without time critical and aesthetic potential. This article describes the magazine and its development in a more differentiated manner and explores the question of the relationship between the entertaining („Unterhaltung“) and pronounced critical aspects of the magazine.

Ka koida Kaffee. Ein bibliographischer Kommentar zum Wiener Kaffeehaus als Desiderat der literatur‑wissenschaftlichen Gedächtnisforschung

Author(s): Markus Grill / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2020

Man könnte meinen, dass zum Wiener Kaffeehaus längst alles gesagt sei. Die zahl losen Bücher scheinen altes Wissen seit Jahrzehnten zu reproduzieren. Es liegt nahe, die nachhaltige Präsenz des Themas durch erfolgreiches Marketing zu erklären, das sich das simple Traditionsbewusstsein und Nostalgiebedürfnis der Menschen zunutze macht. Der Mythos vom Wiener Kaffeehaus wäre demnach ein reines Markenprodukt. Den unbestrittenen wirtschaftlichen Zusammenhängen liegen allerdings geschichts mächtige Prozesse kultureller Sinnkonstruktion ursächlich zugrunde. Sie zu negieren bedeutet, einen anti wissenschaftlichen Abwehrmechanismus von Gesellschaften zu bedienen. Er soll die Integrität ihrer erfundenen Traditionen vor kritischem Zugriff schützen. Tatsächlich ist die wiederkehrende Rede vom Wiener Kaffeehaus Ausdruck einer kollektiven Verständigung über die gemeinsame Geschichte der Nation Öster reich und damit auch über die Bedingungen der Zusammengehörigkeit zu ihr und über die Selbst- und Fremdbilder von ihr. Diese identitätsstiftende Wirkungskraft des Wiener Kaffeehauses ist bis heute nicht ergründet.

The Repetition Game. An Essay on the Czech Tandariáš

Author(s): Matthias Meyer / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In this essay, I try to read the Czech Tandariáš not in relation to its much longer German model, but on its own right. The short version brings an element to the fore which is lost in the longer German text, namely its repetitive nature. Repetition thus becomes the main element of the text. Certainly not as a source (or reflection of a common source), but as a parallel phenomenon I look for comparison to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Concluding, I discuss possible reasons for the foregrounding of repetions, ranging from poetological implications to the (ritualistic, incantational) evocation and, at the same time, criticism of knightly values.

Der Ausflug ins Kabarett: Die Ästhetik von Jazz­‑Tänzen in der Prager Moderne

Author(s): Veronika Jičínská / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The transcultural character of jazz music with its claim to a modern way of life liberated from social conventions was particularly well received in European cities in the first decades of the 20th century. The special impact and popularity of this music in Europe derived from a favorable cultural -historical moment of meeting both African American and European musical traditions and aesthetic practices. Against the backdrop of the Prague dance scene, references to early jazz are contextualized in contemporary aesthetic discourses with regard to the Czech poetism on the one hand, and to Franz Kafka’s early texts on the other.

Anfang oder Ende? Zukunftsromane aus den Böhmischen Ländern 1918–1920

Author(s): Jörg Krappmann / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2022

The future novels written in the immediate post -war period (1918–1920) in the Bohemian Lands are related by two features. On the one hand, they imagine apocalyptic doomsday scenarios that perpetuate the horror of the World War and the political upheavals of the post -war period in excessive form. In terms of content, the texts are closely tied to processing the past and coping with the present, so that they cannot activate the innovative potential of the genre’s constitutive thinking of possibility. On the other hand, the authors each tie their narratives to a guiding medium (music, theatre, film) and thus establish within the genre a literary procedure that is still used in contemporary science fiction. The analysis contrasts (together with illustrative inserts on Hans Flesch’s star utopia Balthasar Tipho) the novels Das große Wagnis (Max Brod) and Gespenster im Sumpf (Karl Hans Strobl) as they, in addition to this modernisation, shed light on the relationship between centre and periphery in the Bohemian Lands.

Mindig történik valami

Author(s): Franz Hodjak / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 867/2023

Poems by Franz Hodjak translated by Enikő Szenkovics.

GRENZVERHANDLUNGEN: ZU NARRATIVEN DES POSTHUMANEN IN KATJA BRANDIS UND HANS-PETER ZIEMEKS „RUF DER TIEFE“

Author(s): Burrhus Njanjo,Klaus TEZOKENG / Language(s): German Issue: 42/2022

This paper explores narratives of the Posthuman using the novel Ruf der Tiefe (2011) by Katja Brandis and Hans-Peter Ziemek. The study pays special attention to literary ways of addressing hybridization processes as well as interconnections between nature and culture. The work refers to theoretical concepts of Posthumanism according to the neo-Deleuzian Rosi Braidotti. The article is aimed at analyzing how anthropocentric hierarchical dynamics are challenged and how new nomadic ways of becoming are depicted in the selected novel. Furthermore, the study investigates the re-configuration of the human’s relation to nature as common ground as addressed by Brandis and Ziemek.

EINE ERMITTLUNG OHNE MOPS IST MÖGLICH, ABER SINNLOS. MENSCH-TIER-BEZIEHUNGEN ALS AUSLÖSER VON UNSICHERHEIT UND ENTKONVENTIONALISIERUNG IM KRIMINALROMAN

Author(s): Ben SULZBACHER,Melanie Stralla / Language(s): German Issue: 42/2022

This paper investigates the transformation of the well-known detective-companion-dyad in crime fiction by analyzing the series of books Ein Fall für Commissaire Leclerc. The evidence suggests that the interspecific dialogue between detective Albin Leclerc and his pug dog, Tyson, as well as the interplay of strategies of anthropomorphism and dehumanization of the characters, are deconstructing formerly clear boundaries of the genre. By the repeated production of uncertainties, the novels create an aesthetics of the ‘in between’ with which the readers are constantly confronted.

Pomiędzy bestsellerem a poetologią. O aurze dzieła, dyskrecji wobec czytelnika i tajemnicy formy na przykładzie noweli Siegfrieda Lenza Minuta ciszy (2008)

Author(s): Andrzej Denka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 38/2022

Siegfried Lenz’s novella (2008, English edition 2009) has not only been appreciated by literary critics, but also turned out to be a great bestseller. The novella is a frequent subject of research analysis, especially in terms of its location in the tradition of German and world novella writing. This diversity of reception is astonishing and presents an interesting phenomenon. The novella tells a banal love story, but through an intentional silence and a series of intertextual tropes it also creates mysteriousness. The analysis proposed here is based on Walter Benjamin’s notion of “aura” in the 1930s. From today’s point of view, this concept requires a few additions, primarily from the perspective of systems theory. As it turns out this concept can be applied both to the content of the novella and to the strategy of literary criticism, as well as to explain the role of form and context in the personal perception of the text.

МЕСЕЦИ

Author(s): Erich Kästner / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1-2/2023

Poetry by Erich Kästner: “Јануар”, “Фебруар”, “Мај”, “Септембар”, “Тринаести Месец”.

Von der Auflösung der Person: Das seltsame Problem der personalen Identität in neueren deutschsprachigen Autopathographien

Author(s): Roman Mikuláš,Andrea Mikulášová / Language(s): German Issue: 4/2023

Texts from the field of autopathography are close to the professional discourse of the medicalsciences and offer alternative ways of conceptualizing and thinking about illness. The recentautopathographic works that are analyzed in this article describe illnesses that are no longer evaluated as consequences of social developments, as was usually the case in the “new interiority”; rather, pathologies are interpreted as part of an individual life. Since the associated experiences and the consequences of the disease are serious for the individual life,the question of personal identity is often raised. The question of self is always relevant whenpeople who express this question do not know or no longer know who they are (or have become), or when they no longer have a sense of unity. This concerns not only external orders(i.e. uprooting of any kind), but also internal disruption. These insecurities are thus the trigger for questions about identity that are posed in the analyzed texts.

Autobiografie – Metaautobiografie – Autosoziobiografie: Ostdeutsches autobiografisches Erinnern im neuen Jahrtausend

Author(s): Nadežda Zemaníková / Language(s): German Issue: 4/2023

This article draws attention to the autobiographical remembrance of East German authorsin their texts from the new millennium, viewing their autobiographical work through the lensof generational belonging. Using exemplary autobiographical texts, it demonstrates how they (re)construct memories of the East German past, what narrative strategies the authors use, andwhat their autobiographical texts bring to non-literary discourses. Generational differencesare exposed mainly in the use of meta-autobiographical procedures to differing degrees orthe integration of documentary media into the process of literary remembrance, as well as in thenature of autofiction. Generational affiliation is mainly thematized in the strongly factual texts of the youngest GDR-born authors, often associated with marketable self-staging practices.In contrast to the Aufbaugeneration (literally “build-up generation”) which constructedthe new East German society from the ruins of the postwar period, as represented bythe deeply self-reflexive, fictional meta-autobiography of Christa Wolf, the autobiographiesof young authors rarely reflect the complexity of the processes of remembering. By dealing withone’s own origins and linking one’s individual life story to larger socio-historical and political contexts, the most recent texts of the post-reunification generation in particular come close to autosociobiographies.

O dyktaturze zdrowia i prawie do choroby w Corpus Delicti Juli Zeh

Author(s): Estera Głuszko-Boczoń / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2023

In her novel, Juli Zeh paints the picture of a perfect world from which disease and suffering have been almost entirely eliminated and in which health becomes the overarching value. That would truly be a perfect world, wholly subordinated t the state and the dictates of health, were it not for the disobedient individuals breaking out of the system. One of such reb- els and enemies of the state is the main character, Mia Holl. She becomes a symbol of freedom and independence, a personification of the right to illness, dirt and germs. In a sterile world an individual’s freedom and right of self-determination present a danger to the state’s apparatus – a totalitarian system in which nothing matters but the dictate of health.

Faces of Loneliness in Propertius 1.18

Author(s): Antoni Bobrowski / Language(s): English Issue: 26/2023

In Propertius’ Elegy 1.18, the speaker arrives at an empty, deso-late grove so that he may complain loud about being an abandoned loverin solitude. The work is positioned in the mainstream of the Augustan loveelegy, but apart from elegiac concepts, it contains numerous topoi andintertextual references to the tradition of bucolic poetry. This article dis-cusses the functioning of the motif of loneliness, which in 1.18 combinesvarious elements that make up the image of the depicted world and ena-bles the selection and modification of interpretative clues.

Sielanka – dualizm – katastrofa O związku tytułowego bohatera Cierpień młodego Wertera J. W. Goethego z naturą

Author(s): Beata Kornatowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2023

This article explores a reading of J. W. Goethe’s novel The Sufferings of Young Wertherin terms of the protagonist’s relationship with nature. The chronological analysisof Werther’s nature writings incorporated in his letters to Wilhelm addresses hisexperiences, attitudes, feelings and reactions in relation to the natural world, theirinfluence on his views, as well as the relationship between Werther’s individualismand social position and his ecological awareness. Werther sees nature either as anaesthetic object and a source of authenticity and freedom, or as a destructive forcethat threatens man. From this perspective, it appears that the source of the protagonist’spredicament and tragic end is his inability to apprehend the full scope ofnature, the overwhelming effect of a dualistic view that makes him perceive natureas either unilaterally benevolent and auspicious or, radically destructive and causingdecay.