Germanistische Beiträge 26.2010
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- Transylvania (2)
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- Franz Hodjak (1)
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- German-Romanian bilinguism (1)
- Hermine Pilder-Klein (1)
The poetic oeuvre of Franz Hodjak takes an intermediate position between modernism and postmodernism. While his early works show the influence of German modernist poetry (Georg Trakl, Bertolt Brecht), the poems of his last volume, entitled Die Faszination eines Tages, den es nicht gibt (2008), show most clearly the approach to postmodernism. The ironic, sarcastic tone, the robust and acrobatic language as well as the rebellion against all conventional poetical structures are amplified in these poems. Besides ontological questions regarding identity, the borderline status between two worlds – neither of them a home –, also the banalities of everyday life are treated sometimes in an elated tone, sometimes almost parodied.
This essay deals with the intertextuality of the 21st century novel Zaira by the Swiss-Romanian writer Cătălin Dorian Florescu and the 21th century tragedy Zaire by Voltaire. It is analysed whether the name of the female protagonist Zaira is used by Florescu by accident or whether he refers to Voltaire. Furthermore, the differences between East and West brought up in the novel and the tragedy are examined. There are some similarities to be found as to the topoi of the selling respectively buying of women or fate deciding about the life of the protagonists. However, in the author’s opinion they don`t justify the assumption that Florescu knows the text by Voltaire or even uses it in his own novel.
In the 1930s and 40s the leading political figures of the German minority in Romania embraced a pro-fascist attitude. Therefore, after the WWII, Germans had to suffer expropriation, deportation and privation of civil rights. Since 1949 they were permitted to rebuild their cultural life which – according to the communist paradigm – had to be „Marxist in its content and national in shape“. In 1956 an Institute for Social Studies and the Humanities of the Romanian Academy was created in Sibiu in order to continue important scientific projects of the German minority, and since 1959 the review Forschungen zur Volks- und Landeskunde appeared as a tribune of Transylvanian studies. Although the editorial staff had to make concessions to the communist regime, its members tried to keep high scientific standards. Therefore the review Forschungen, the sole scientific periodical of the Romanian Academy published in German, was one of the most important reviews of the time.
Zum Quellenwert deutscher Sprachzeugnisse aus Südosteuropa für die Sprachgeschichte des Deutschen
(2010)
The history of the German language is not described adequately by the classification into Old, Middle High, Early New and New High German. Looking at regional varieties shows the simultaneous existence of older and newer manifestations in the language. Examples of older Transsylvanian writings and Danube-Swabian dialects from Romania and Hungary show how German varieties of South-Eastern Europe can be used for a more profound understanding of the history of the entire German language.
Gradation and intensification can be subject to different linguistic procedures. The present paper focuses on aspects of intensification and gradation by means of word formation in adjectives. The argument is that German and Romanian, as languages belonging to different language families, operate with different means to express high intensity in adjectives. The critical analysis on dictionary items (German-Romanian) aims at disclosing how mental representations are being formally structured at language level. It argues that correct equivalence in translation work can be achieved only if the deep structure level is properly understood by the translator.
Uwe Timm and Robert Schiff have both written an autobiographical text dealing with the premature death of an elder brother who was a combattant in the Waffen-SS in their childhood. Despite the frappantly similar biographical constellation, there are differences in narrative technique and thematical focus that stem from their respective sociocultural context. The analysis shows that Timm is in many ways a representative author of the German ‘68 generation that critically reevaluates the attitude of their parents during the national socialist period and points to omissions and falsifications in the oral family history, while the narration of Schiff, an emigrated author born in the pre-war milieu of the German minority of Southwest Romania, is mainly a reconstruction of the impact of big history on his childhood and thus also the effort to conserve the memory of a world that has passed away and to reconcile himself with the experience of loss.
Kultur und (Rechts)Sprache
(2010)
The content of the present paper can be outlined as follows:
1) Law is an integrative part of culture.
2) Legal terminology is system-bound. Thus, within one and the same language there are as many legal languages as there are legal orders that use that particular language as their legal language.
3) The representation of culture in legal texts is encountered both on word and on text level: on the one hand legal terms have often been referred to as culturemes, as they are informed by the respective legal order; on the other hand texts are being regarded as cultural products as they depend on the particular legal order.
Dieter Schlesak’s novel VLAD. Die DraculaKorrektur tries to deconstruct in an original manner the myth of Dracula by proposing a new approach of the subject: instead of the homonymous literary motif, the author deals with the literary figure Vlad Ţepeş. The originality of this approach lies in the fact that Schlesak does not present the reader with a classical heroic figure, instead he deliberately prefers fiction to the attributes of the classic historic novel. Thus he operates not only with a polyphonic text, but also with intertextualism, creating a novel of impressing complexity. This way of dealing with the subject is sustained by the main character, conceived as a decadent Renaissance prince and a prisoner between two antagonic universes, as well as by the whole constellation of real and fictional characters that define his contradictory personality. Dieter Schlesak has accepted the risk of being criticised by his countrymen as well as by historians, deliberately trying to change the Western readers’ perception of this legendary Romanian figure. By creating a literary character that rejects the Western stereotypes and the Romanian prejudices, he manages to prove the potential of the literary figure of Dracula.
Die Wende 1989 in Joachim Wittstocks Erzählung "In der Nachbarschaft. Von der Schwäche der Macht"
(2010)
The present article deals with Joachim Wittstock’s story In der Nachbarschaft. Von der Schwäche der Macht. Wittstock’s narration presents in the form of a diary the upheaval of 1989 in Sibiu, Romania. We try to analize the story in a wider context, as we consider that the changes of 1989 in Eastern Europe cannot be judged only within the context of their own country, they have to be judged against the European context. Overcoming dictatorship in 1989/91 in East-Central Europe can be regarded as a culturally formative era border; through the restoration of freedom there was a change within all societies of the former Soviet bloc.
How the Romanian Revolution is depicted in Wittstock’s text will be discussed in the following article. The importance of the text for the consolidation of the collective and cultural memory is also an issue stressed in the present analysis.
The purpose of this work is the linguistic analysis of the German street names in Petreşti, a locality in the county of Alba situated 4 kilometers south of the town of Sebeş which has a German-Romanian bilingual population. We also want to develop a morpho-lexical analysis (compounds of two words and descriptive constructions formed by a preposition and a noun), as well as of aspects of orthography and spelling (we analyze especially the inconsequences which appeared in the spelling of the street names and in their orthography), and furthermore an analysis of onomastic interferences, starting from the comparison of the German and Romanian street names (translation calques and words resulted from calques).