Germanistische Beiträge 36.2015
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For intercultural language teaching, coaching students on how to perceive the cultural “other” is of crucial importance in order to avoid culturally based misunderstandings. This paper explores how perceiving the other can offer conclusions for perceiving and becoming aware of the self. Through that, a process of giving and taking ensues in which perceptions of the self and of the other are constantly fluctuating depending on the context in which the communication is taking place. At the crossroads between members of two different cultures, a dialogue emerges in which the points of view of both parties are changed. The paper outlines how perception is a construct in which one’s own origin, education, and emotions are blended in. Intercultural learning is the way to deal with this constructs in a flexible manner so as to create new interpretation patterns. It teaches how to sympathize with the other and how to better understand oneself.
The purpose of this study is to reconstruct and document the image of “The Other’’ starting with the historical street names in the Transylvanian town of Sebeş, Alba County, founded in the thirteenth century by German settlers. Due to the fact that, throughout Middle Ages, one of the criteria of naming the streets of a borough was, inter alia, the ethnic one, the street names of the town reveal the ethnic groups which would form the population of the town: Székelys (Siculorumgasse), Saxons (Sachsgasse, Herrengasse, Petrigasse a.s.o.), Romans (Opricestengasse, Suseni– and Joseni Viertel), Greek and Macedonian, as well as Germans from the Southwestern Germany and Austria, who founded the north quarter of the town, in the eighteenth century (Saxonii Noi Street, Saxonii Vechi Street, Quer Gasse). In Sebeş, the street names established after the specific place the road leads the way to also contribute to the image of “The Other’’ (Petersdorfer Gässchen, Daiagasse and Hermannstädter Straße). Furthermore, the names of various local or super regional personalities who influenced the existence of the town also have an important contribution. Examples to illustrate this aspect are particularly the street names from the early stalinist period of communism in Romania (Stalin Street, V. I. Lenin Street, Miciurin Street, Malinovski Street, Rosa Luxemburg Street).
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.
Adina Lucia Nistor’s recent book focuses on standard German, viewed from the perspective of the morphemic, internalanalysis of one of the essential parts of a sentence, i.e. the nominal group (Nominalgruppe),in opposition to the verbal group (Verbalgruppe).
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).