Germanistische Beiträge 32.2013
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The Banat Swabians represent in the years 1867-1918 one of the most exciting parts of regional history, and we tried to contribute to a more detailed knowledge of the multicultural and cross-cultural and multi-confessional physiognomy of the region Banat. Our research intends to provide more information on the past of this cultural-linguistic and confessional group. Its presence from the eighteenth century in the region between Mures, Tisa and the Danube is correlated with the Habsburg policy of modernization and with the ethnonational identities structured in the romantic era.
The study seeks to enrich the history of regional history through a so-called marginal component, which has always played a key role in defining the specifics of a region as the Banat. We focused on the Austro-Hungarian period, highlighting the relevant passages in the life of this important community, namely, its social expression, economic and cultural development. Throughout the paper, our intention was to highlight the active participation of the Swabians at the modernization process. We chose the years 1867-1918 – those that coincide with the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy – because at that time, the Banat Swabians had a spectacular economic development and an ambivalent cultural creation, between German and Hungarian.
The archives in Sibiu hold a large number of German documents of the town council with a great historical and cultural significance for the Romanian reading public. This is the reason why the selective translation of these records is more than welcome. This study deals with the difficulties encountered in the act of translation of some civil, administrative and criminal lawrecords of the town council in Sibiu between 1556 and 1705. The analyzed corpus consists of 20 texts from different periods translated into Romanian by the authors of this study. The registered difficulties are engendered on one side by the language particularities – old or worn out idioms, judicial language, dialectal influences, Latin words and phrases, an intricate structure of the sentences, the defective punctuation, abbreviations and graphic peculiarities of the actuary – and on the other side by the historical and cultural background of Transylvania in those times.
With the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRM) the Romanian state guarantees all members of national minorities the right to preserve, develop and express their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity.
The charter offers a catalogue of more than 100 activities; at least 35 should be chosen and put into practice by the member states, as is stated in the Declaration of Commitment.
The article analyses, using the example of “education”, which activities Romania has chosen in its first report on the implementation of ECRM (2010) and how the international commission of experts evaluate the application of the Charter in Romania in their inspection report (2012).
The lively debate about the biblical topics and motifs in search for words and „unwords” represents the subject of the present study, which treats the poetry of two authors: Nelly Sachs and Nichita Stănescu. Jacob’s Wrestling with the Angel (chapter 32 of Genesis) turns out to be, for the two poets, a motive, which describes their own writing, a wrestling with the insufficiency and commonplaceness of language, a wrestling for the word, because poetry is doubtless creation, but first of all mystical revelation.
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.
Der literarische Mythos des Dr. Faust – Ansätze und Eckpunkte einer Phänomenologie im Überblick
(2013)
Due to its multidimensional model of identity, the literary myth of Dr. Faustus is suitable for a phenomenological analysis. This paper investigates this identity model as well as the most important aspects that must taken into account in this respect: its modulations, interpretations and variations, the instances of relevant expression that the literary myth of Dr. Faustus has adopted in its transformations across cultures and time.
The main theme “Identity and Alterity” requires a comprehensive view over the literary personages who are characterized by their backgrounds, their language and their food culture as well. Therefore, an interdisciplinary extending of perspectives should enhance the mere literary analysis. For this purpose the fields of study Sociolinguistics and Gastrosophy (a still insufficiently acknowledged humane discipline) are advisable. The sociolinguistic perspective illustrates the acquired or renegotiated spiritual home and identity of the personages within their language, whereas the gastrosophic perspective investigates their identity considering specific eating habits. The migration background of the reviewed author functions as a mirror which reflects and conveys these aspects in an inventive way. The paper intends to demonstrate to what extend the suggested approaches are suitable for analyzing a transcultural text.
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.
The author starts from a study by Maria Fanache and Ilse Fels about Sibiu writers in the years of the „people’s democracy,” i.e. the period around 1960. The outlook and the stylistic structure were typical of socialist realism, while the criteria for the selection of the Romanian and German writers discussed were those of belles-letters adapted to propaganda purposes. The present paper rounds off the convenient aspects of the literature of the time with a series of aspects that had been kept silent or ignored for the sake of avoiding confrontation with certain factual contradictions which the socio-political changes of the „people’s democratic” dictatorship had brought about. In the summer of 1956, the state authorities considered a private literary meeting of over twenty persons an action meant to subvert the official ideology, an attempt to commit a conspiracy, and, later, some of those present came under investigation and served severe prison sentences.
Regine Ziegler was a Transylvanian Saxon poet and writer, who by the turn of the century lived for some years in Berlin, where her brother Karl Ziegler (1866–1945) was a successful portrait painter. In 1913 she assessed that in her writings she aimed to present the Saxons in their whole complexity, wishing that in the future all Germans should know Transylvania and its German inhabitants. Contiguous to the Saxons she presented the „sultry and passionate” Romanians, the „primitive and impulsive” Gypsies and the „nationalistic” Hungarians, she all had known from her multiethnic village Arkeden/Archita. Regine Ziegler’s approach, although characteristic for the epoch of fierce nationalism, breathes great sympathy for all Transylvanian ethnic groups.
The North Transylvanian linguist Friedrich Krauss has dealt with the Northern Transylvanian plant inventory in his work “Noesnerlaendish Plant Names” (1943) referring to the town of Bistritz and surroundings. The referenced popular names of the plants are rendered phonetically, the way the linguist heard (understood) them. I have selected 68 descriptive case samples of popular plantnames for my study and have grouped them according to certain criteria. These samples exemplify the fact that the cohabitation of Saxons, Romanians and Hungarians is reflected as well in the ethnographic plant naming phenomenon. They belong to the old Transylvanian vernacular names which the linguist and plantlover, Friedrich Krauss, has saved from oblivion.
On a close examination, the Romanian cultural space suggests the existance of a spiritual and cultural incompatibility between Romanian existential feeling and the Faustian man, endowed with the personality and character of Faustus. The Faustian character, Faustus and his literary myth have been imported in Romanian culture. Under the circumstances, this paper investigates the manner in which Faustian aspects and motives reflect in Romanian literature.