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The paper attempts at outlining some aspects of experienced intercultural phenomena in Transsylvania starting with the late 50ies and deals with the question of cultural and linguistic choice of an individual born into a multilinguistic and multicultural family. The close connection between mother tongue and identity is analysed under the particular circumstances of the author’s biographical background. The paper should be read as an autobiographical statement which the author considers necessary for the understanding of her legitimate status within present day German literature written in Romania.
This study analyses the role of the Romanian language in Christian Hallers novel Die verschluckte Musik (2008). The Romanian words are linked to the content and symbolical context, and also to intimacy or strangeness. Single words and expressions are connected to memories and rituals. For the family residing in Bucharest they are everyday elements. By migration they become cultural artefacts, are included in family stories. In the new home country Switzerland, the Romanian language is an element of intimacy. The language is also a method of exclusion and dissociation. Ruth, the first-person narratorʼs mother, is excluded in Bucharest until she learns the national language. In the Swiss environment the already familiar Romanian language is for Ruth a method of dissociation. For the first-person narrator, the few Romanian words are details connected to gastronomic culture which distinguish him from the Swiss environment. While travelling through Bucharest, the Romanian language becomes a method of exclusion, it is connected to an area that was not attainable for a long period. His journey updates the language for him.
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 concept of the foreign view is a recurring theme throughout all of Herta Müller’s prose. This kind of view derives from her biography. Certainly an unique biography but it is also transferable to many other people. Expressions like „remaining in order to leave“ or „arrived, but long not here“ become guidelines of leaving and arrivals or non-arrivals. The individual acts in-between languages, worlds and in-between cultures. Identity has to change continuously, as it is always in a process.
Erinnerungsdiskurs und Identitätskonstruktion in Carmen Elisabeth Puchianus Roman "Patula lacht"
(2013)
The novel of Romanian-born German author Carmen Elizabeth Puchianu Patula lacht, was published in 2012 by the Karl Stutz Passau publishing house in Germany. The novel is hybrid in nature, with discourse oscillating constantly between the factual and the fictional, many of the events being autobiographical and rendered in the form of recollections. The present article sets out to analyse Carmen Elizabeth Puchianu’s above-mentioned novel in terms of the recollection techniques used. This study is based on research in literary and cultural theory issued over the past several years. The interference between recollection and identity – which is not regarded as an entity proper but rather as one that is built and enriched with multiple facets throughout the narrative – is also investigated.
This article aims to trace different hypostases of alterity as they occur in the novel Vaterlandstage (Days at Home) by contemporary Romanian-born German author Dieter Schlesak. The paper draws on the distinction suggested by Volker Barth between the concepts “das Fremde” (i.e. “the stranger” that remains unknowable and impossible to control) and “das Andere” (i.e. “the other” which is excluded as a result of othering). The analysis of the way in which these two forms of alterity are represented in the novel shows that they go beyond the ethnic and cultural meaning of the terms and are closely linked to Schlesak’s antimimetic poetics, his identity concept based on estrangement and not-belonging as well as to his rejection of a materialist view of the world.
The following essay is based on the narrative Die schiefe Fassade der Kindheit. Erfundene Familienkunde written by Eginald Schlattner. The action takes place in Transylvania, a region where several nations live together. The key concepts are identity and alterity, because only by analysing the other one can find and understand one’s own identify. The traits of the communities living together are portraited by Aunt Maly, a strong supporter of the German traditions and by Grisi, the grandmother, who presents the mentality of her people as opposed to the Romanian people. The story also reveals the conflicts between these two ethnical groups. Nevertheless life in Transylvania can be seen as an example of how people belonging to different cultures can peacefully live together.
The present article focuses on the preservation of identity in the works of three Romanian-born authors (two of them of German origin – Herta Müller and Hans Bergel and the third of Jewish origin – Norman Manea). Their existence has been highly influenced on the one hand by being born in Romania, by the interaction with Romanian people, on the other hand by the oppressive communist regime under Ceaușescu, having to undergo censorship, imprisonment and even deportation. Therefore, all three authors have chosen to leave Romania and emigrate to Germany or America. These experiences have added new dimensions to their concept of identity. At the same time, they act as intermediaries between cultures, and keepers of their own multi-layered and complex identity.
One of the most memorable moments of Joe Biden’s inauguration as president of the USA was that of Amanda Gorman reciting her inaugural poem The Hill we Climb. The translation of this text led to a far-reaching controversy in the international media while at the same time raising a series of theoretical questions in the field of translation studies. The present paper intends to discuss certain theoretical issues such as the translator’s visibility and literary translation related to forms and relations of power by placing them in the context of the shift of theoretical paradigms in translation studies which started in the second half of the 20th century.
Beyond the communicative function of death notices, to informe about a death case, one will be repeatedly surprised by auxiliary functions of this category of private notices. The following article analizes from an intercultural perspective the representation of the (professional) identity in obituaries and death notices pertaining to a Romanian and a German corpus – the achievements attained to in the job environment and – in case of a blurred or merely outlined professional identity – on interests outside of one’s job, which were cherished by the deceased to the effect of shaping and defining him.