Germanistische Beiträge 43.2018
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This article is dedicated to the intercultural aspects of Paul Schuster’s stories (1930-2004), a German writer, born in Sibiu, regarded by German literary historians and criticists as one of the most talented prose writers descending from the small German cultural enclave of Transylvania. His work is thematically focused on events of the past century; The German minority he belongs to plays a decisive role, but also its cohabitation with different ethnic groups in Romania as well as the interethnic relations between them. Interculturality in Paul Schuster's stories is revealed on several levels: cultural exchanges between different ethnic groups, aspects of interethnic collaboration, imagology, linguistic interferences and translations from Romanian authors.
The border experience is the basic experience in the novel Engelszungen. There are characters who escape, emigrate, moving between several countries whose identity is unstable and changing. Life between cultures and with different identities determined their nomadic wandering around, where the transit movement as the basic experience has also a political dimension. The scientific contribution analyzes inner and outer boundaries, examines identitary border crossings, illuminates the major characters, their different identity designs, the restless in theirwandering and strategies of adaptation to the West.
The materialis based on the fact that German citizens which have been born in Transylvania (Saxons) and immigrated to Germany return even “in death” to their homeland, be that through the choice of the medium where the death notice is published, or through the content of the death notice itself. The article follows the mechanisms through which this reference is built and analyzes the objective, geographical and cultural referentiality as well as the subjective recollections of the former, now far away, homeland, relying on death notices published in the Siebenbürgischen Zeitungbetween January 2012 – December 2015 und January 2017 – March 2018.
The study deals with the large variety of judicial trials found in the records of the magistrate and judge of Sibiu of the 16th and 17th century. The topics of the magistratedocuments include heritage, the changing of the property right, guild regulations, rules for day laborers and servants and even orders regarding the number of persons that could attend to a feast and the number of dishes that should be served. The judicial papers deal with litigations, robberies, unpaid debts, frauds, adultery, crime and witchcraft trials.
Inspired by the general theme Interculturality in language and literature. Assimilation – distinction – exchange, the contribution offers a short survey over the linguistic situation at the schools with instruction in German language in Romania and outlines the evolution, problems and perspectives in this domain. The long tradition of the church-sponsored, Lutheran German schools of the Transylvanian Saxons belongs to history. The present linguistic situation at schools with instruction in German language in Romania is a totally changed one and all participants are facing huge challenges. Very briefly, current aspects of the linguistic situation (school types, staff, students, acquisition of the language of instruction, multilingualism, language competence, phenomena of language contact, intercultural learning etc.) as well as possible actions in the field of multilingual didactics and educational politicy are pointed up.
This article addresses a little discussed popular phenomenon, namely that of internet memes as a manifestation of public criticism in the online space. Internet memes are pieces of entertainement with an extremely adaptable repertoire, defined by unexpected word associations, sentences, retorts, purposely modified images, which become viral by replication. The variation forms, the parody, puns, humorous, ironically-sarcastic allusions to current events, socially important topics, or statements of public figures make it clear how the modifications of a message built around some suggestive images with an obviously telling statement can get political relevance.
Nowadays, the Bukovinian writer and psychiatrist Robert Flinker is a familiar name only to those interested in the German literature of Bukovina. His literary legacy, which consists of poems, stories and two novels, was published more than twenty years after his death. This paper intends to analyze Flinker’s novels, Der Sturz [The Downfall] and Fegefeuer [Purgatory], from a psychiatric and psychoanalytical perspective. As a psychiatrist in the first half of the 20th century, Flinker was familiar with the benefits of psychoanalysis in treating patients. This raises the question of whether thewriter Robert Flinker was influenced by the new psychoanalytical discoveries and, if so, which theories he used in his novels. Moreover, it must be taken into consideration that Flinker, who had Jewish origins, wrote his novels during the Second World War. In this regard, the socio-cultural context had an impact on Flinker’s literary work.
This text is based on the novelette „The Disarmed Bullet – The Frost Pattern On the Thirteenth” by Walther Gottfried Seidner (from the prose volume „On The Cloud Called Transylvania, A Paradise Inmidst Of Hell – Good Night Stories” with a preface by Ph.D. Gerhard Konnerth). Both, research and critical essays on the topic of the deportation of the German minority of Transylvania to the Donetsk valley in Ukraine are marked by the tendency to victimize this ethnis group. The writer Walther Gottfried Seidner publishes his novelette as a reaction against this perspective and as a general humane reflection as well, retelling from the point of view of an six-year-old boy how his mother (a mother of four) is saved by a Russian soldier, who disarms a bullet, lying he would have killed the woman, in order for her to stay with her four small children. The story is captured from the memory of the grown-up child, from a distant perspective, valuable for its subjective but very profound reflections. The present analysis focusses on three dimensions of the post-war novelette: 1. The narrative, 2. The characters, 3. The langauge, especially the elements of the German Saxon variety. The novelette is regarded as being representative for the work of the German Saxon author, as it voices a positive humanism in the face of a warlike Regime, in the period of the Iron Curtain. The work can be seen as a cornerstone of the European idea in the context of the 100th jubilee of the Romanian Unity and of 29 years since the Romanian Revolution.
The present article is based on the premise that Europe is currently in context of migration dynamics between 'home' and 'foreign' ideas, between 'soft' strategies of inclusion, social participation on the one hand, and 'hard' tactics ofexclusion of the 'others' or 'Migrants' on the other hand. Against this background and based on some ideas of Zygmunt Bauman, Navid Kermani and Amin Maalouf, I will firstly discuss some factors of the 'We-debate'. Then, using the example of the novel So tun, als ob es regnet of the German-Romanian author Iris Wolff I will analyze how far literature uses translation and multilingualism to initiate a poetological process of understanding others and therefore counteracts cultural we-phantasms in Europe.
The anthology Vînt potrivit pînă la tare. Tineri poeţi germani din România (1982) introduced to Romanian writers and readers a new poetry that used a direct language and referred to the social and political situation of Romania. The authors – Germans from Romania whose texts where translated into Romanian – are Anemone Latzina, Franz Hodjak, Rolf Frieder Marmont, Johann Lippet, William Totok, Richard Wagner, Rolf Bossert, Hellmut Seiler, Horst Samson and Helmut Britz. The young poets engaged during the 1970’s in a dialogue with German literature, which allows an intercultural approach. The publication of the anthology was a daring gesture in the context of the 80’s politics and had also an influence on the poetry of some Romanian poets.
