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Erwin Wittstock (1899-1962), the writer of German expression from Romania, has created a monumental body of works (short stories and novels), which stem from German history and culture from Transylvania. The characters he created are projections of his own life. His novel Januar ’45 oder Die höhere Pflicht, reviewed in the present article from an intercultural point of view, is dedicated to the problem of deportation, a topic which was taboo in the communist regime. His work on the topic is shaped into a novel in Balzacian style, the author writing from the perspective of an eye witness. The problematic invites the description of power, of terror and of repression in totalitarian states. As member of the German community in Romania he depicts the Transylvanian multiethnic and multicultural society in his fiction. The elements of interculturality in his novel can be summarized as: social interethnic relations, imagology, respectively the outlining of the image of otherness, also on a linguistic level.
Auf Wolke Siebenbürgen … : eine Kindheit voller Gefahren. Die „Deportation“ und Rettung der Mutter
(2017)
Transylvania is a region that frequently appears in the texts of the German speaking writers from Romania. Walther Gottfried Seidner‘s story makes no exception. In the center is the narrator, a kindergarten child, who explores the history of Europe experienced from a subjective point of view. His attention is directed especially to the mother, who is in danger of being deported to the Soviet Union. The red thread of the narrative is interrupted by retrospectives, which complete the image of Transylvania at the beginning of the year 1945. This analysis refers to several aspects within the original text: the Cibin River and its significance to the community of Sibiu, the Christian cross and the swastika, the German National Socialism and the Communism, the deportation of the German minority.