Lenka Reinerovás Inszenierung als „letzte Prager deutsche Schriftstellerin“

Author(s): Markéta Balcarová / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2018

Lenka Reinerová, who has been, since the 90’s, called by the media the last Prague German writer, uses this unique status of hers and presents herself – either in media or in her texts – as a holder of this tradition. This contribution deals with Reinerová’s performance as the last German-writing Jewish author in Prague. It thematizes some aspects of her work, that refers to this literary tradition and at the same time it points out the problems of the full term “Prague German Literature”. On the example of the model of “symbiosis”, that Reinerová presents as a characteristic feature giving a true picture of the cultural coexistence in Prague in the 1920s and 1930s (till 1935-1939) – or possibly from the 1910s till 1935-1939 –, the contribution points out schematisation of all the existing models of so called Prague German literature and even such models proposed by witnesses of that period among whom Reinerová may be ranked.

„Ein Schriftsteller ist mehr als die Summe seiner politischen Stellungsnahmen und Erkenntnisse“ (Stephan Hermlin)

Author(s): Elke Mehnert,Michaela Voltrová / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2018

The text discusses the value of literary works of writers who have lost their original recognition and appreciation due to their political views before 1990. Specifi cally, it explores the work of Stephan Hermlin (1915-1997) and his Abendlicht prose which as such can be seen as the author‘s refl ection on his relationship with the two diff erent political realities of his time. The fi rst part of the text outlines Hermlin‘s position in the literary society whereas the second part of the text examines the esthetics of Abendlicht in relation to its textual forms and functions.

Der deutsche Balkan von Prag oder der Anschein nationaler Substantialität. Karl Hans Strobls Prager Studentenroman «Der Schipkapaß» (1908)

Author(s): Jan Budňák / Language(s): German Issue: 01+02/2017

K.H. Strobl’s Prague student novels are usually read as “one text” – specifically as a homogenous, German-nationalist text. Even a study by Vojen Drlíks (2002) – who makes a valuable contribution by attempting to correct the injustices ingrained in the memory (and history) of Karl Hans Strobl – claims that after the success of «Vaclavbude» (1902), Strobl’s subsequent novels were basically thematically similar sequels based on the same nationalist and militant foundations. This paper attempts to look at Strobl’s treatment of the nationalist question in his novel «Der Schipkapaß» in a new light and comes to the conclusion that, beneath the apparently homogeneous German-nationalist surface of his novels, it is possible to find numerous discontinuities in the configuration of national identity building.

Grenzlandroman ohne Nationalismus: «Der himmelblaue Wagen» von Hans Multerer

Author(s): Petr Kučera / Language(s): German Issue: 01+02/2017

This paper analyses the literary work of Hans Multerer, in particular the novel «Der himmelblaue Wagen», which was published in an atmosphere of heightened nationalism in the 1930s in Czechoslovakia. Multerer was one of the German-language authors of the Bohemian Forest, who in their prose and plays portrayed the everyday lives of simple people living in the mountains in the border region between Bavaria and Bohemia. In contrast to the typical borderland novels from the border regions of Bohemia, «Der himmelblaue Wagen» concentrates not on the national conflicts between German and Czechs but on different forms of frontier-crossing, literally and above all metaphorically. The existential dimension of modern life is powerfully expressed in the dialogues of the main characters and in the inner monologue of the main protagonist, but also in descriptions of the landscapes and human activity.

Interkulturelle Inkonsistenzen. Wirklichkeitsdefizite und ihre Funktion in Paul Zechs Das Schloß der Brüder Zanowsky

Author(s): Matthias Aumüller / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2019

Russia and the early Soviet Union, respectively, was a trendy topic in German interwar literature. Not surprisingly, Paul ZECH, known as an Expressionistic poet, friend of his Wuppertal compatriot Else LASKER-SCHÜLER, tried to jump on the bandwagon. Mentally disordered and with fi nancial problems, he was forced to look for literary motives that promised public attention and money. In the late twenties he published in nearly every literary genre, including “translations”, i.e. (very) free adaptions of Old French poetry, to which he added his own inventions, indeed, without pointing them out as such. It was by no means an exception that he took liberties with the originals. Characteristically, he also faked his CV. For instance, he pretended to have been travelled to the Soviet Union. His story Das Schloß der Brüder Zanowsky, published as a book in 1933, is also a case in which things are somehow diff erent. In particular, there are intercultural inconsistencies that are worth to be investigated. The question of the article is what the meaning of those inconsistencies is. After introducing the subject in chapters 1 and 2, I will thoroughly spell out the inconsistencies (chapter 3). In the last two chapters, they will be interpreted against the assumption that the homodiegetic narrator is unreliable. Obviously, the narrative is marked by fl aws which are so conspicuous that they cannot be interpreted as mistakes by the author. Besides, it is clear that the narrator is cognitively defi cient. Therefore, it is his unreliability that seems to be the right option in order to explain the strange manner of the narrator. However, this is not the whole story of the story. Since there is no alternative ‘truth’ communicated by the author, the numerous inconsistencies turn out to be not a function of the narrator’s discourse but a function of the author’s text. In the fi nal part of the paper, I will demonstrate that this particular kind of defi ciency is ZECH’s aesthetic way of coping with personal as well as general troubles of his times. The nebulous way of presentation is the expression of a feeling of absolute disorientation, which the author experienced.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger a teorém bezespornosti

Author(s): Nikola Mizerová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 33/2020

This paper deals with the issue of interdisciplinarity in literature, tracing the mathematical influences — and particularly those of the incompleteness theorems by Kurt Gödel — on the literary works of Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Our attention is focused on Enzensberger’s publications in mathematics, on his poem Hommage à Gödel, and his montage epos The Sinking of the Titanic. This paper submits a new, interdisciplinary interpretation of the poem Hommage à Gödel as a kind of art manifesto, and comes to the conclusion that the reason Enzensberger finds the incompleteness theorems so interesting is that they offer a scientific basis for undecidable problems and paradoxes. He applies Gödel’s theorems to literature, where they enable a creative, playful oscillation between two positions or aspects of an undecidable problem and self-reference in literature.

Johann Heinrich Friedrich Müllers (1738–1815) Rosswalder dramatisches Intermezzo

Author(s): Iveta Zlá / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2019

The article describes the dramatic work of Johann Heinrich Friedrich Müller at the beginning of his artistic career. The article points to the innovativeness of his dramatic reflections, which corresponded to the intentions of the Enlightenment. In addition, the study signifies the artistic commitment of Count Albert Joseph Hoditz, who was influenced by Baroque literature and the cultural climate of the Enlightenment.

Zirkus‑Akrobatik als poetologische und existentielle Kippfigur bei Richard Weiner und Franz Kafka

Author(s): Irina Wutsdorff / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2020

Perpetually teetering on the verge of failure, circus artistry, when seen as a figure of thought, takes on both a poetological and an existential dimension: In Richard Wein er’s Rovnováha (Equilibrium), an acrobat addresses his audience to expound the difficult art of his balancing act. Franz Kafka’s Erstes Leid (First Sorrow) conveys the anxieties of an eccentric trapeze artist, intent on keeping to the lofty heights of the circus tent dome, far from the lowly vicissitudes of everyday life. That both authors conceived of their own writing as an act of balance, coalescing into the thought image of a tightrope walker, be comes apparent in the remarkable congeniality of their depictions of a troupe of Japanese acrobats figuring both in Weiner’s short story, as well as in a drawing by Kafka, contained in a diary entry.

Die frühneuhochdeutsche Fachsprach der Mathematik und Anton Georg Kinnosts Rechenbuch aus dem Jahre 1727

Author(s): Libuše Spáčilová / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2020

The usage of mathematics gained on importance in the early modern period because knowledge of arithmetic was indispensable for civil engineering, mining industry or mercantile trade. Latin textbooks had been translated into national languages, i.e. also into German, which caused not only borrowing and adaptation of Latin terms, but also the gradual formation of mathematics terminology in national languages. The society of the 17th and 18th centuries also required practical knowledge of mathematics from both the upper class and the middle class. A textbook written in national language made it easier for the middle class to acquire the subject matter. One of such textbooks was written by the council scribe of Olomouc, Anton Georg Kinnost in 1727. The study presents the results of terminology analysis and its semantization.

IMAGINATION UND WISSEN ÜBER DIE NACHBARVÖLKER IN DER RUMÄNIENDEUTSCHEN LITERATUR NACH DEM ERSTEN WELTKRIEG

Author(s): András Balogh F. / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2021

Imagination and Knowledge about the Neighbouring Peoples in the German Literature in Romania after the First World War. The starting point of this paper consists in adapting the ideas formulated by the cultural turn, according to which culture is a product of a dynamic process. After the First World War, a new cultural field was formed through a very fast process in the micro-society of German-speaking people in Transylvania and Banat. This cultural field was mostly influenced by the newspapers and cultural periodicals (Klingsor, Siebenbürgisch-Deutsches Tageblatt, Temeswarer Zeitung), by ecclesiastical discourse and by the speeches given by the Saxon and Swabian politicians. The literature of this period illustrates a very intense life; several texts deal with either the problems of time or describe a glorious past. The most famous authors (Adam Müller Guttenbrunn, Karl von Möller, Adolf Meschendörfer, Heinrich Zillich) are in the spotlight of public life. This article’s case studies are taken from the literature of Transylvania. In general, it can be said that the representation of Romanians is positive, that of Hungarians is to some degree negative, while Jews are rarely represented.

ZU EGINALD SCHLATTNERS ROMAN DRACHENKÖPFE (2021). EINE LITERARISCHE REPLIK AUF IRIS WOLFFS ERZÄHLUNG DRACHENHAUS

Author(s): Gabriella-Nóra Tar / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2021

On Eginald Schlattner’s Novel Drachenköpfe/Dragon Heads (2021) – A Literary Replica of Iris Wolff’s Story Drachenhaus/Dragon House. The author of the article examines the story and the discourse of Eginald Schlattner’s 2021 novel Drachenköpfe and identifies some novelties in the context of his life’s work: Schlattner’s new novel focuses on the 1960s and sets out thematically where his trilogy published by Zsolnay Verlag 1998-2005 ended historically. In Drachenköpfe, the Transylvanian-German writer continues or even develops upon the compositional technique that he mainly appropriates starting with his monumental Wasserzeichen/Watermarks, published in 2018. Thus, Drachenköpfe is regarded both as a literary text and as an artistic reflection, and by the metaphor of disease it certainly does justice to its turbulent world-historical period of publication.

NARRATOLOGISCHE ANALYSE DES GORGIAS-ROMANS VERIPHANTORS BETROGENER FRONTALBO

Author(s): Zoltán Mikó / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2021

A Narratological Analysis of the Novel Veriphantors Betrogener Frontalbo by Johann Gorgias. Veriphantors Betrogener Frontalbo is the most important novel by the German-Transylvanian writer Johann Gorgias. It represents the pinnacle of his poetic œuvre, since earlier texts often still consist of few plot elements, and Veriphantors Buhlende Jungfer is a text that is not yet particularly well structured. The educational intent of Gorgias’s earlier texts can seem quite offensive today, as the reader is often bombarded with general rules, commonplaces, and moralizing examples drawn from life after a small plot point. In the narratological analysis, the relationship of the narrated time and the narrative time or pace are examined first. Furthermore, the sequence of events presented, the length of the presentation of incidents (duration), and the “repetition relations” in which “the narrated and the narration” stand, are identified and differentiated.

DAS BILD DES SOZIALISMUS IN DER REIHE KRITERION-HEFTE

Author(s): Tímea Ferencz / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2021

The Image of Socialism in the Kriterion-Hefte Book Series. The following paper, based on the author’s as yet unpublished PhD Thesis, aims to highlight the image of socialism as reflected in the book series Kriterion-Hefte, published by the Bucharest-based Kriterion publishing house between 1980 and 1984. After a brief presentation of the book series, the paper also addresses the historical framework in which the Kriterion-Hefte were published and offers a glimpse into the image of socialism as presented and perceived by the nine authors of this twelve-book series.

DAS MOTIV DER GRENZÜBERSCHREITUNG IN KARPATENDEUTSCHEN AUTOBIOGRAFIEN

Author(s): Diana Balogáčová / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2021

The Motif of Crossing Borders in Carpathian German Autobiographies. Josef Derx's Memories is the autobiography of a Wehrmacht soldier who becomes a banker after the war. Free of mythology and biblical references, but often with humorous-parodic undertones, the narrative focuses on spatial and temporal details of Derx's life story. In the description of everyday life in a prison camp and the escape from it, the transformation of the remembered self into a remembering self can be observed textually and stylistically by means of changes in tempo and rhetorical figures. Elisabeth Metzl's Ein Paradies verloren aber wir leben (A Lost Paradise but We Live) tells the story of a young woman who has to flee from Bratislava to Austria in her “travelling prison” before the war, without knowing that she will leave her homeland behind forever. The search for her lost sons becomes a personal odyssey.

Czas (na) Sebalda

Author(s): Arkadiusz Żychliński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 799/2021

ДРВО У КУЛТУРНОМ ПАМЋЕЊУ НЕМАЧКОГ НАРОДА НА ПРИМЕРУ ПРИКАЗА КЊИГЕ ПЕТЕРА ВОЛЕБЕНА ТАЈНИ ЖИВОТ ДРВЕЋА

Author(s): Ivana D. Pajić,Mirjana Zarifović Grković / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2022

Peter Wohlleben’s book The Secret Life of Trees became a best-seller after the very first release in 2015. In the meantime, it has been translated into many languages, Serbian included. The question is why a book written by a forester received such positive public reactions. In order to answer this question, the paper takes a deeper insight into the concept of cultural memory of the German people. The paper is primarily focused on symbolic and semantic traits of the tree in German mythology, German literature since the Middle Ages onwards, as well as the significance of the tree symbolism in creating a national identity of the German people in the 19th century. The review from diverse fields that have formed the cultural memory of the German people explains that the concept of the tree has had a significant place in the cultural memory of the German people since the very beginning. Wohlleben’s revival of this topic explains the great success of the book in which the very essence and life of the trees are explained by the author. The paper shows how the author uses a refined way to connect his forestry expertise to the topics and motifs from world literature by reviewing certain chapters of the book. These are friendship, enmity, family, love, the process of getting old, benevolence, tolerance and death. Wohlleben depicts trees by permeating them with their symbolic and semantic meanings, while, at the same time, staying closer to science than literature. However, in order to get closer to his audience, the author uses different figures such as anthropomorphism, personification, comparison, metaphors and humor. By using such a thoughtful way of describing, Wohlleben has succeeded in reaching a wider audience.

DIE ANTHROPOMORPHISIERTE GESTALT DES KATERS IM MÄRCHEN „DER GESTIEFELTE KATER” DER BRÜDER GRIMM UND DER MÄRCHENSERIE „PETTERSON UND FINDUS” VON SVEN NORDQVIST

Author(s): Anita-Andreea Széll / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2022

The Anthropomorphized Cat Figure in the Fairy Tale “Puss in Boots” by the Grimm Brothers and the Fairy Tale Series “Pettson and Findus” by Sven Nordqvist. This paper attempts to bring together three scientific fields that have always fascinated fairy-tale researchers and readers: fairy tales, psychology and anthropology. Almost all fairy tales deal with central stages and problems of human life. Thus, fairy tales, psychology, as well as anthropology deal with themes that reflect the reality of one's own person. The selected areas, which are intended to make the given analysis possible, serve to describe the way of life of the human hero and their animal companion and to describe both of their character developments, which take place with the help and thanks to the animal. Grimms’ Fairy Tales were the most published written works in the world after the Bible and the Quran. During that time, Children's and Household Tales caught the attention of several authors of world literature; therefore, some fairy tales of this collection served as the basis for numerous literary’ fairy tales. With these considerations and for these reasons, this article aims to analyse and draw comparisons between the Grimm fairy tale Puss in Boots and the fairy tale series Pettson and Findus by the Swedish author Sven Nordqvist.

Mišljenje i zahvala

Author(s): Paul Celan / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 10+12/2014

Mišljenje [Denken] i zahvala [Danken] u našem su jeziku riječi istoga podrijetla. Onaj tko slijedi njihov smisao upućuje se u značenje riječi gedenken [spominjati se], eingedenksein [ne zaboravljati], Andenken [spomen], Andacht [pobožnost]. Dopustite mi da vam zahvalim polazeći od tih riječi.

„A természet és a megismerése egyszerre jön létre”. Produktív énformálás és allegorikus fikcionalizálás Novalis írásművészetében

Author(s): Tamás Valastyán / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2021

The aesthetical thinking of Novalis and his philosophical considerations goes hand in hand with his literary activity. The encyclopaedic project as a more comprehensive framework delineates the contours of these two areas. His conception has been formed by his interest in the natural sciences and the philosophy of history. The paper focuses on the question of how his investigation on nature assimilates and stages an autopoietic, performative movement that makes it possible for him to develop the interactive conception of nature and poetry. This interaction, compared to the rather absolutistic, unity-based developmental systems, can be regarded as a nomad or tropical feature.

Od Bechera k Wolfovej. Niekoľko poznámok k recepcii literatúry NDR v Encyklopédii spisovateľov sveta (1987)

Author(s): Juraj Dvorský / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 4/2022

The aim of the study is to point out several specific features of the reception of GDR literature in the 1987 Encyclopedia of the World's Writers. It will be represented mainly by selected German prose writers.