Germanistische Beiträge 36.2015
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- Aufklärung (German Enlightment) (1)
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In the novel "The Land of Green Plums" (1994) the author renders an apocalyptic image of Romania during the communist dictatorship, Timişoara representing the tragic background of the narrated events. From this perspective, language becomes for Herta Müller a way of distancing from the dictatorial system, the author managing to express, through specific processes of language, the circumstances hat generated those events. The aphorisms and the idioms used in the text express the wrong behavior and communication mechanisms of the protagonists, demonstrating the presence of the security forces and of the dictatorship. The author often appeals to repetitions to highlight the continuous threat and the repression force of the authorities. Thus, the language is for Herta Müller a form of resistance against the totalitarian regime and the only place of expressing freedom, even under the dictatorship.
Im Geflecht der Identitäten : Kulturgeschichtliches, dargestellt am Beispiel von János Bolyai
(2015)
The Transylvanian-born János Bolyai (1802-1860) never ceases to attract the attention of all those interested in the history of science, as he is one of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry. Bolyai also concerns the philosophy researchers, due to a social utopia, which he presents in his works, unpublished during his lifetime. From older and newer documentation, it is known that the Hungarian Bolyai nobility descent also has a German origin, from German Grafs. On the Calvaserului Valley, situated north of the Hârtibaciului Valley, lies the Buia parish, named Bolya by the Hungarians, Bell by the Germans, where the Bolyai family owned an estate and a castle. In this work, the author presents approaches concerning the genealogy of János Bolyai and reports about visits to the places where Bolyai has lived, such as Buia, Domald (Viişoara parrish) and Târgu Mureş.
This paper tries to present Ernst Jüngerʼs perception of „the enemy“ in his first publication, the novellike, personal report on his experiences in WW I, „Storm of Steel“, published for the first time in 1920. Interestingly his characterization of the French, English, Scottish – and a squad of Indian – Soldiers varies in the different editions of this work, which suffered six to seven revisons (the last one for editing the opera omnia in 1978). While especially the 1924 edition had a nationalistic bias, as Jünger for example mocked on French civilization, such passages were eliminated during a revison in 1934. Generally, also in the earlier editions, Jüngerʼs approach towards describing the enemy is distinguished by high respect and an outmoded chevalersque ethos of a warrioar-caste, which was in WW I already part of the historical past. Only some traces of every-day racism, typical for the German imperial age, found its way also in the last editions: the description of colonial military forces (Moroccans, Indians).
According to Arthur Rimbaud’s famous saying “Je est un autre” Max Frisch develops in his early diaries an idea of love which has to orient itself by the ban on images in the Old Testament and which, as a modern concept, has to renounce every image of oneself and the other at all. In Max Frisch’s novel Stiller the roots of this seemingly biblical belief can be found both in an aesthetic attitude towards life (as pointed out in Sören Kierkegaardʼs scriptures, especially in Entweder-Oder) and in an existentialist understanding of life (as set forth in the philosophical work of Jean-Paul Sartre). Max Frisch’s novel Stiller can be read as a literary experiment of achieving the ultimate goal of love and self-acceptance by radical self-negation and negation of the other.