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In comparison to the Transsylvanian-Saxon or to the German-speaking Bukowina literature the modernists exerted a more reduced influence on the literature of the Banat Swabians. Franz Xaver Kappus (1883-1966) influenced the literary modernists in the Western part of Romania especially through his expressionistic texts. He became famous thanks to his correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke. The masterpiece Die lebenden Vierzehn (The Fourteeen Survivors) (1918) is swayed by a collective catastrophe and represents a certain kind of utopia, which anticipates the end of the world. A dread causing image with a peculiar unreality shapes the event. Kappus’ fantasy does not shrink back from images of dread and horror. As in the expressionistic literature any destruction of the harmonious beautiful principle comes about in dread. The grotesque features belong to the expressionistic character of the book. It is interesting that the dreadful and the grotesque show their demonic side and with it they destroy the familiar reality. Such a development demonstrates that Kappus follows a tradition to which also E. T. A. Hoffmann, Frank Wedekind, Franz Kafka or Georg Heym belong. There are also streaks of naturalism in the novel.
The novel “Wasserzeichen” was published at the Pop Publishing House in Ludwigsburg, Germany, in 2018. The destiny of the main character of the aforementioned literary work is undoubtedly linked to the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca. After finishing high school in Brașov, the young Eginald – who is not the same as the author of the novel – arrives in Cluj-Napoca where he first goes to the Faculty of Protestant Theology, from which he is relegated; afterwards, he starts the courses of another faculty, but before finishing his studies he is arrested by the Securitate. The life story of the young Transylvanian Saxon turns out to be a troubled one – full of defining experiences for his existence. Due to the relationships with the people whom he meets there, the romantic entanglements, and the betrayals he experiences, he matures quickly. The 1st person narrator becomes a true man in this predestinate space.
Using the example of Herta Müller‘s novels written after her emigration into the Federal Republic of Germany, the article shows how digital tools can be used to classify the fragmented space that unfolds in the writings of the Nobel Prize winner into a clear model structure. Quantitative research methods are combined with a database-driven GIS analysis toolkit to illustrate the weighting of the fictionalized locations given their gravity centers and polarities. The series of maps show both the density and spread of the action places, as well as the meanings which are attached to the literary space.
Die Essayistik Herta Müllers
(2022)
The article follows the two volumes of essays The King Bows and Kills (2003) and Always the same snow and always the same uncle (2011) written by Herta Müller. Politics and aesthetics define the Nobel laureate’s writing, with her essays anchored in Romania’s recent history. They are of a political nature, offer retrospectives on their life in Romania beyond the Iron Curtain, insights into the dictatorial past, persecution by the secret service, the betrayal of closest friends, but also contain reflections on the role of the language, the preference for Romanian, on the use of “The King” in their fictional texts, explain their “alien gaze”. Always the same snow and always the same uncle focuses on the deportation of the Romanian Germans to the Ukraine, with the information serving as a companion work to the novel Hunger angel. The betrayal of closest friends is also discussed, whereby the insight into their files and the past of Oskar Pastior/Otto Stein’s files are used.
All three hitherto published novels by Dana Grigorcea do explicitly refer to Romania. Had her first novel been set in the Danube Delta and her second in Bucharest, so the plot of the recently released novel "Die nicht sterben" is located in the touristic town B. (= Buşteni) at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula as literary pre-text, the plot of "Die nicht sterben" interweaves elements of Romanian history, Romanian contemporary events as well as elements of the family history of the first-person narrator. The present paper is focused especially on the female narrator’s bodily, erotic and flying fantasies. The social and moral revolt which manifests itself first and foremost in the vampiresses’ urge to impale, subsides in the end in uncritical idyllic and narcissistic self-reflection.
Der Klimawandel ist nicht die einzige drängende Zukunftsfrage, der sich die Menschheit stellen muss. Ein genauerer Blick in die Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts zeigt, dass etliche namhafte Literaten sich in ihren Werken mit der systemischen Transformation ökologischer Systeme durch den Menschen auseinandergesetzt haben.
"En tierras bajas" de Herta Müller: mirada crítica hacia las cicatrices de una infancia irrespirable
(2016)
A través de la mirada y la voz narrativa de una niña rumana, la escritora Herta Müller nos acerca con su ópera prima Niederungen (En tierras bajas) a las cicatrices aún hoy vivas de su propia infancia en un pequeño pueblo ubicado en la región de Timisoara en la época de la dictadura de Nicolae Ceaucescu. Este artículo pretende una aproximación crítica a la recurrente temática centrada en la denuncia del país dejado atrás por la escritora tras su experiencia de exilio a la entonces Alemania occidental en el año 1987. Un análisis crítico de esta primera obra publicada por Müller en lengua alemana nos acerca a la literatura intercultural de la escritora migrante rumano-alemana cuya calidad y trayectoria literaria la hizo merecedora en 2009 del Premio Nobel de Literatura.
Richard Wagner hatte ein gebrochenes Verhältnis zum Geld: Er benötigte viel, hatte aber meist so wenig, dass er auf Pump leben musste. Nicht selten war er auf der Flucht vor seinen Gläubigern. Die Erfindung des Geldes hielt er für einen Sündenfall, das Eigentum für die Wurzel allen Übels. Im »Ring des Nibelungen « spiegelt er im Mythos vom Fluch des Goldes die moderne Erfahrung der Macht des Geldes.
Grenzenloser Reichtum und schier unerschöpfliche Geldquellen – diese Träume sind der Stoff, aus dem unzählige Geschichten narratives Kapital schlagen. Der Mythos von König Midas oder die Comics mit Dagobert Duck gehören zu den prominentesten Vertretern solcher Erzählungen. Der Fortunatus hingegen, in dem ein Geld produzierender Zauberbeutel die Geschicke bestimmt, ist weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten. Dabei kann gerade dieser Roman, der 1509 in Augsburg anonym veröffentlicht wurde, in doppelter Hinsicht als ein Pionier der Literaturgeschichte gelten.