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The nine stories of Kehlmann’s novel Ruhm. Ein Roman in neun Geschichten (2009) are contentwise independent, yet they are manifoldly linked up by several apparently coincidental elements. Modern means of communication as mobile phones or access to internet, initially invented to bring people together, have now the function to engulf people in misery and isolate them from each other. An analysis on Kehlmann’s social criticism of modern way of life and communication in his literary work is not so easy because of a special character of the novel: it is the fictional writer who ironically questions literature itself and its ethical function.
Sibylle Berg develops in her novel Der Mann schläft a new, nihilistic definition of love. Nietzsche considers that modern mankind killed the god in itself, Dürrenmatt shows the absolute hopelessness of the postmodern society and Berg presents the end of all known forms of love. For her protagonist it is enough to have found someone who needs her as much as she needs him to feel save and complete. But “the man” disappears during a journey to Asia while going to buy some papers. After waiting for three month for him to return she decides to stay there for the rest of her miserable life. The novel has an interesting structure, the story is told in dozens of short scenes, not in a chronological order but reffering to the period with “the man” and without him that confers to it a certain dramatic touch.
Gusel Jachina is a Russian writer. Her grandfather, a former German teacher in one of the villages along the Volga River, founded by German colonists, inspired her second novel “Wolgakinder” (Children of the Volga). She presents over 20 years of eventful history as it is seen by Jakob Bach, a German teacher in the village Gnadental on the banks of the Volga. It is an opulent novel of 600 pages, written in a rather baroque style, trying to not only present historic events from the beginning of the Soviet era but to recreate the atmosphere of those years full of Ups and Downs not only for the German speaking population.
The main issue of this paper is to analyse the literary motif „Effi Briest“ as it is found in the novel „Effi Briest“ by Fontane, Christine Brückners speechless monologues of angry women and in Rolf Hochhuths drama „Effis Nacht“ related altogether to the real protagonist Elisabeth von Ardenne and her more than unusual life. While Fontane and Brückner depicture a young helpless woman, restraint by society, unable to free herself but dying of grief, Hochhuth refers to the biography of Else von Ardenne whose life lasted almost a century. During her monologue the fictional Else comments not only on historical events like the two World Wars but also in intertextual remarks on Fontane’s novel based on her own biography.
Fatma Aydemir is a young German journalist and her first novel Ellbogen (Ellbow) had an amazing success. It’s the story of four young women immigrant families in Berlin. They try to find a way to live their lives but are torn apart by the traditional way of life in their turkish or bosnian families that is not compatible with modern western lifestyle. The novel is composed of two parts, the first one dealing with their struggle to be accepted by the german society, the action of the second part takes place in Istanbul during the riots of summer 2016. The linking between the two parts is the character of one of the young women, Hazal, who kills a German student during the night of her 18th birthday. Being drunk and full of anger because she and her friends were not accepted to a well known night club she pushes the also drunk young man on the ralis of the incoming subway. She leaves her friends and runs off to Istanbul to a Facebook-friend trying to put her live together in the country of her parents. The novel doesn’t try to offer any solution for the problems of these young people only presents them in strong images.
The present approach deals with an almost forgotten aspect of the oevre of Ludwig Hesshaimer, primarily known and appreciated for his drawings. Hesshaimer is nowadays known for his drawings and paintings from World War I. He also was very well known at his time as president of the Austrian Association of Philatelists. This approach starts with a brief biography, presenting the historical and family background of Hesshaimer, in order to position his work into the literary and historical context of the time. The second part of the present text refers to his autobiographical book Miniaturen aus der Monarchie printed in 1992 under the supervision of Hesshaimers daughter and granddaughter. Then it focuses on the analysis of his three stories about artists that are considered of general interest because they are almost unknown being published just once in 1928. Applied to the most interesting story Der nackte Fuß (The naked foot) follows an analysis of the stylistic phenomenon known as ekphrasis, which is a literary description of works of art.
The title Grenzfall of this crime novel is based on a pun because it means in German both “borderline case” and “border incident”. The novel refers to an incident at the border between Poland and Germany, that really happened in 1992, when two Roma from Romania were shot in strange circumstances. Kröger continues in her fiction the film script that she had written for the documentary Revision, produced in 2012, 10 years after the incident. The crime novel tries to reveal the causes that led to the violent death of the two, to disclose why German police investigations were so superficial, to present what effects all this had on the families of the two dead men, and what regional and ethnic stereotypes dominate the thinking of those involved in the action.
The German writer Gabriele Wohmann, who passed away in June 2015 at the age of 83 wrote over 100 books (novels, short stories) essays, poems, more than 20 filmskripts being translated into 15 languages. She ist known for her sharp, ruthless view on German everyday-life and its neurotic, lonely, frustrated protagonists, especially women. But it is not a distant and unaffectedportrayal, but one out of profound sympathy. The literary critic Reinhard Baumgart, even invented the term „Wohmannisieren“. He was referring to the seemingly unspectacular flowing ofher stories, but „under the surface it rages, however“. We then refer to a short story (Flitterwoche. Dritter Tag– Honeymoon. Third day) from her latest book Eine souveräne Frau. The main theme of this narrative, as well as in numerous other texts by Wohmann, is the familial relationship disorders in everyday middle-class existences. The main problem is the inability of the protagonists to communicate in a familiar and natural waywith each other, as one might expect of newlyweds.
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