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The present article focuses on the organization of the “Transylvania” Summer Academy in Sibiu, which aims to stimulate, on the one hand, the promotion of German culture from Romania and Southeastern Europe, one the other hand, keeping the cultural exchanges alive. Apart from presenting a synopsis of German literature in Romania, from its origins up to the present, the article also highlights the perspectives of promoting German culture from Romania through national institutions or institutions in Germany.
Joachim Wittstock presents three outstanding personalities from the Transylvanian Saxon and Romanian past – the theologian and reformer Johannes Honterus, the Saxon count and Royal Judge Johann Zabanius Sachs von Harteneck, and the Walachian prince Constantin Brâncovean – from very new, innovative and surprising points of view by combining fact and fiction in a subtle way. A special feature of Joachim Wittstock’s approach is the matching of form and content, naturally with varying emphasis on language construction or topic composition in the three pieces of prosa. In terms of the content, the author combines a circular perspective with a parallel one, thus creating a distinct up- and- down pattern. Linguistically, Joachim Wittstock uses cultivated everyday speech laced with telling word play, proverbs and idioms, foreign and archaic words, to ev oke the historic atmosphere of the past and making subtle political connotations. The unpretentious but deliberate syntax, with its most noticeable structural parallelism, sustains the author’s intentions. Joachim Wittstock encourages thought, not only about the contents, but especially about how we can improve things nowadays, about the responsibility that we have for our actions.