Johann Carl Zinner

Author(s): Peter Winkler / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2015

The study presents a brief biography of university teacher, scientist and intellectual Carl Johannes Zinner († around 1810). His activities are connected in a special way with Košice, he worked at the Royal Academy. Interest in the modern history of the United States led him to make contact with Benjamin Franklin. In consideration of this he obtained a special position in the history of Hungary and belonged to the important persons of history at the late 18th century. The study maps Zinner's life, work as well as scientific and political thoughts of Zinner to the recent or past events.

Pamięć o przeszłości w prywatnych narracjach i historiografii

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish,German

An interdisciplinary publication which is a forum of exchange of ideas on various strategies of presenting history. The authors examine the Polish-German relations throughout history as well as selected elements of the past related to the culture of Poland or Germany. They refer to the historiographical literature recalling the most important events in various periods from the perspective of the detailed studies and memories of people living in the particular period. The articles also include the theory on the ways of codifying memory, which can be regarded as a significant retrospective of the contemporary discourse on history.

Antyk jako źródło inspiracji w hitlerowskich Niemczech

Author(s): Agnieszka Wypiorczyk / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Moje zbrodnie są owocem miłości. Mit Medei w literaturze niemieckojęzycznej

Author(s): Anna Wilk / Language(s): Polish

The author compares and analyzes selected works dealing with the problem of the Medea myth in German-language literature. In German culture, the Medea theme has enjoyed exceptional popularity since the mid 1970s., and numerous theatre and opera productions, stories and novels have been devoted to it. The author puts forth a thesis in which she argues that the great potential of the myth consists in its ambiguity and current relevance. Writers have placed the tragic figure of a baby killer in various contexts, portraying the heroine as a jilted lover, a foreigner deprived of her homeland, and even a victim of political or racial persecution. What is the real face of Medea? Does the real Medea even exist? Does Euripides’s portrayal refer to one mythical character? Even as a mythical figure, Medea cannot be said to be a homogeneous concept. And maybe Christa Wolf is right when she claims that the heroine has become the object of political manipulation? In the present publication, these questions remain unanswered because the reception of the myth and the attempt to adapt the mythological matter in the modern world seem much more important. Two different tendencies can be observed here: the first is an attempt to archaize the character and establish her in a mythical reality while emphasizing her divine origin; the second is contemporization, whereby the story of the babykiller is set in a given author’s own times. A third group, or rather a subgroup, might merit a mention, too: these are the works which, despite being set in ancient times, are characterized by an immediate relevance of the problems they discuss. The myth in them acts as a form of camouflage. In all cases, the myth was therefore treated as a complex of rules and models of human behaviour that would not change over time.

Od redakcji

Author(s): Weronika Kostecka,Maciej Skowera / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2019

Od redakcji

Author(s): Weronika Kostecka,Maciej Skowera / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

Sophie Mereau-Brentano i jej droga do pisarstwa

Author(s): Renata Dampc-Jarosz / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

The article is an introduction to the life and work of the German classicromantic period writer Sophie Mereau-Brentano. It shows all those factors that influenced the formation of her poetic world and consolidated her position as one of the first professional German writers. Particular attention has been paid to the family home, the education gained thanks to the efforts of her father, her collaboration with Schiller, in whose magazine „Thalia” the young Sophie published her first poems, her marriage to Clemens Brentano and her friendship with Achim von Arnim. The article is also an attempt at the general characteristics of Sophie Mereau-Brentano’’ s writing, particularly emphasizing her creation of female characters, striving for self-determination, happiness and love. Much attention has also been paid to the position of the female writer, competing with the male-dominated publishing market. The dilemmas of the split between private life, the role of wife and mother and professional life, the writer, the publisher of a women’s magazine and a translator, the feminine and the masculine world of private and public space are an important key to understanding Sophie Mereau-Brentano’s work and her contemporary perception.

Sophie Mereau i Schiller

Author(s): Norbert Oellers / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

The subject of the article is a long-term relationship connecting Friedrich Schiller with Sophie Mereau-Brentano. The author of the article analyzes their private contacts and the influence of Schiller on the artistic development of Mereau. The research corpus consists of preserved correspondence, Mereau’s poetry published in Schiller‘s magazines and her diary.

Emancypacja jako rzeczywistość wyimaginowana w powieściach epistolarnych Sophie von La Roche i Sophie Mereau

Author(s): Karina Becker / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Sophie von La Roche creates in her epistolary novel entitled Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim [The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim] (1771) an image of a modern, emancipated woman that remains in opposition to the images of women and men of epistolary novels written by men, such as in Goethe‘s The Sufferings of Young Werther (1774). Sophie Mereau, on the other hand, in her epistolary novel Amanda und Eduard [Amanda and Ewdard] (1803) boldly takes up the taboo subject of extramarital sex and women‘s bodily sensations. Although the views of both writers were ahead of their time, they still remained merely an imaginary concept of femininity.

Problematyka artystowska w opowiadaniu „Marie” Sophie Mereau-Brentano

Author(s): Nina Nowara-Matusik / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

The main goal of the article is to reconstruct the discourse about the artist in the story Marie by Sophie Mereau-Brentano, with particular emphasis on the actress Marie. The author of the article shows that Mereau-Brentano develops an original concept of a female artist, synthesizing the thoughts of Rousseau, Plato, Shaftesbury, Kant, and Schiller, which in the historical-literary sense can be located between the Weimar classicism and romanticism.

LITERATURA – SPOŁECZEŃSTWO – SYSTEM. Studia wokół Peter Handke, Siegfried Lenz, Botho Strauß, Dietrich Schwanitz i Peter Turrini

Author(s): Andrzej Denka / Language(s): Polish

This monograph provides selected studies on writers of German and Austrian literature. These studies draw from particular aspects of Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory, which, although developed within sociology, can be applied to other research fields, such as economics, law, political science, and finally, literary studies. The author of this monograph explains the possible applications of this theory to the issues of conflict, literary scandal, controversial engagements of writers, and also the variety of possible interpretations of literary texts. The conflict around last year’s Literary Nobel Prize winner, Peter Handke, which arose due to his engagement in support of the Serbian case, is presented here as a clash of opinions, as well as their adjustment to a particular line of argument, which, thanks to the media, aims at processing social irritation. In the case of Siegfried Lenz, the aim of the study is to prove the connection between his political views and purely literary activity in the light of substantial system distinctions. Such writers as Botho Strauß and Dietrich Schwanitz are presented here as ones who consciously adapt various theoretical systemic concepts to construct their own literary texts (essays, prose). When interpreting Peter Turrini’s play, on the other hand, the category of 'framing' has been applied along with the relationship between the internal and external references. These analyses are complemented by two theoretical chapters that provide an overview of the most important concepts of the systemic literary studies, which are relatively unfamiliar in Poland, by presenting them against the background of the scholarly tradition.

Сънят-приказка

Author(s): Nikolai Vukov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2021

The article deals with the semantic and functional interrelations between folktales and dreams and with the role of dreaming as a component which defines the structure of the folktale plots. The author discusses the symptomatic lack of the dream motif in one of the key studies in the humanities of the twentieth century, Vladimir Propp’s “Morphology of the Folktale” (1928). The study emphasizes the special place that the motif of dreaming has in folktales and analyses the versatile development of the narrative through the situations of “a folktale in the dream” and “a dream in the folktale.” The focus of attention is on the folktales from “One Thousand and One Nights,” through which a range of narrative techniques and plots enter European culture, along with a plethora of themes and motifs related to dreams and dreaming. Based on the analysis, the author elicits two main models of assimilation of dreams/ sleep in folktales: the model of Sleeping Beauty and the model of Scheherazade, which represent respectively sleeping as a fact provoking no plot, and the dream as a tale. The conclusion offers an explanation of the absence of the dreaming motif from Propp’s folktale morphology and draws a parallel between the theory of the functions in folktale plots and the idea of the psyche’s protective mechanisms in psychoanalytical tradition.

Transkulturowość a przekład w trójkącie językowym. „Herztier” Herty Müller w czeskim i polskim przekładzie

Author(s): Christian Jakob Altmann / Language(s): Polish

This work is dedicated to literary translation in a language triangle, consisting of one Germanic language (German) and two typologically and culturally related West Slavonic languages (Polish and Czech). The analysis of the translations into Czech and Polish of the novels Herztier and Atemschaukel written by Herta Müller is a contribution to the description of translatability from the perspective of a language triangle in which each language is involved in different factors of understanding the texts created in it.

OderÜbersetzen 2021/10. Karl Dedecius

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish,German

The volume we are presenting to you marks a double anniversary: firstly, it is our 10th publication, counting from the inaugural issue in 2010, and secondly, it celebrates one of the most eminent translators of Polish literature into German – Karl Dedecius, whose birth centenary was on 20 May 2021. The collection brings together many texts whose authors try to approach the "myth of Dedecius" either in their recollections or by taking a critical and fresh look at his work from a contemporary perspective. It includes several articles presenting recent reflections on translation studies between Poland and German-speaking countries.

Uwolnij poezję, czyli jak gotycki metal pomaga w zrozumieniu klasyków

Author(s): Andrzej Kowalczyk / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Nowadays it is difficult to encourage young people into poetry at school. The education systems lacks methods, which could make lyric poetry more attractive for students, because it may be difficult due to its form and specific figures of speech. The purpose of this article is to show the synergy between poems by classical German authors and the mix of music genres like goth metal and NDH (Neue Deutsche Härte), which is realised in the works of the German band Leichenwetter. The text also tries to describe their individual, eclectic music style and the uncommon selection of Poems for the lyrics. Another goal is to explain how the metal listeners as well as poetry fans can benefit from listening to Leichenwetter. As an example is shown the analysis of their interpretation of the sonnet Menschliches Elende by Andreas Gryphius.

The image of the Russian Enlightened monarch in the Romanian culture at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century

Author(s): Alexandra Chiriac,Ana Catană-Spenchiu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This paper aims to reconstruct the way in which the Romanian written culture from the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth gradually built the image of the Russian Enlightened monarchy with three of its most famous representatives: Peter II, Catherine II and Alexander I. By means of translating from Italian and German historiography, these texts served a double goal: on the one hand they satisfied the reader’s need for knowledge and understanding of the contemporary events, and on the other they contributed to a political discourse that viewed Russia and the Russian Orthodox monarchy as potential saviours of the Romanian principalities from the oppression of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. By means of translation analysis, we have attempted to illustrate how the Western image of an Eastern monarch, guided by a blend of Western philosophy and Eastern Orthodox tradition, was transferred in the Romanian culture as a scientific base for political and cultural decisions.

Powieść pokoleniowa w służbie rozliczenia z historią. Emigracja, ucieczka i wypędzenie w literaturze niemieckiej po 2000 roku

Author(s): Joanna Jabłkowska / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Generational novel has been popular in German literature for about twenty years. This popularity can be explained by the need sum up the communicative memory comprising the traumatic events of the twentieth century that is coming to a close. This paper shows the specificity of the most recent generational novels, taking as examples Reinhard Jirgl’s Die Unvollendeten, Ulrike Draesner’s Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt and Ursula Krechel’s Landgericht. The works are representative of the group but exceptional too, since they raise problems which until recently were taboo in the public discourse. Their leitmotif is forced emigration. Their characters are the descendants of both victims of war and (German) victims of expulsion, i.e., two antagonistic memory groups. One of the aims of the paper is to show the divergences in the experiences of the two groups, even though those divergences become gradually obliterated in the texts written from the twenty first century perspective.

Alfred Döblin. Między zaangażowaniem a zapomnieniem

Author(s): Bartłomiej Bielas / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

Alfred Döblin is not a completely unknown writer in Poland, nor is he a completely forgotten author, but his name is often cited in passing, in parentheses, only as an exemplification of his style or literary technique, or in order to compare or contrast another author. This article is therefore an attempt to rediscover the author of the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and to briefly characterize his oeuvre. The reconstruction of his biography was based on Polish and German texts, including Roland Links’ biography Alfred Doblin and articles: Dorota Sośnicka’s “Alfred Döblin: Sketch to a Portrait of the Writer,” Ingeborg Höverkamp’s “Alfred Döblin” and Jan Koprowski’s “One Difficult Life.”

Über die romantischen Elemente in Goethes Werken im Kontext der Romantik-Epoche, oder die Absurdität einer „klassischen“ Schubladen-Periodisierung des Weimarer „Klassikers“

Author(s): Ivica Bevanda / Language(s): German Publication Year: 0

As already known, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a writer whose artistic genius means that he should be considered outside of the rigid histories of literary history. Nonetheless, one should be able to analyze stylistically the poetic and exact poetic specifications of the ‘Goethe era’ and especially poetologically hybrid literary works. In the present contribution, selected works of the genius of the Weimarer Klassiker are scrutinized from the point of view of romantic poetology – in the context of previous Goethe research. The romantic elements in individual works or the completely romantic work of Goethe seem to prove that the Romantic as part of his complete writing is not a break in style, but a spontaneous, ingenious expansion of style as well as a disruption of cultural-political as well as institutional drawer rigidity in terms of periodization can be considered. To answer the question of whether Goethe can also be a kind of syncretism or a phenomenon that can be explained otherwise would also be the task of the present article.

In memoriam Евгений Михайлович Верешчагин

Author(s): Cenka Doseva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 48/2024