Germanistik, Deutsche Sprache und Literatur
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- Banat Swabians (1)
- Franz Xaver Kappus (1)
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- Josephine epistolary satire (1)
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German-language literature of the Banat develops under specific historical circumstances amidst a multiethnic Region, in which the multiple social-political, religious and linguistic relations to Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs and Jews find their immediate expression. The beginning of the German-language writings of the Banat Swabians are under the aegis of the Austrian model, especially of the Viennese model. Here one mainly includes the extremely stimulating press and theater tradition of the Banat, which can still be remarked in the interwar period, and which created the conditions for the unfolding of a lively spiritual life. Johann Friedel born in Timișoara, an outstanding representative of Josephine epistolary satire, was considered on account of his novels and letters to be the founder of the local German-language writings by several scholars.
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.