Germanistische Beiträge 48.2022
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This paper is an attempt to peel out the core of historical and autobiographical reality in Klara Blumʼs poems, to show their militant character and ideological limits, and to analyze them as contemporary documents whose relevance lies less in the originality of their language than in the consistency of their historical and intellectual substance.
Cosmin, a twelve-year-old Roma boy from Transylvania, only goes to school for a short while. For his mother, it is more important, that he, the only male of a household with many mouths to feed, help her with work. But Cosmin’s teacher does not give up and proposes a bargain: If Cosmin’s mother lets her children go to school, she will get electricity from the school to be able to watch TV. Due to this arrangement, Cosmin returns to school for a few days, becomes a little thief and embarks on a journey that can become an opportunity for him. A kind of a bildungsroman, a coming of age novel focused on the ups and downs between two worlds on Romanian soil, that could not be more different from one another: the Romanian majority and the Roma minority. This article sets out to document life at the brink of society, with all of its facets.
A.E. Johann (1901-1996), relying on his experience of over sixty years of travelling around the world, left behind a wealth of literary and journalist material, in which he often addresses topics and issues related to the United States of America. This paper’s objective is to analyze the reflections and observations of this writer and journalist included in the travel report from the period of the Weimar Republic and entitled America. Untergang am Überfluß (1932) as compared with his later creative output of a more autobiographical nature and developed between 1989 to 1992 (Dies wilde Jahrhundert, 1989; Schön war die Welt. Erinnerungen an die großen Reisen, 1992). Thus, continuity and change in his perception and image of America will be investigated; moreover, at attempt will be made to answer the question to what extent this perception and image have evolved throughout six decades (or one should rather ask why this image hardly changes with the passage of time and the emergence of new circumstances). This once very popular writer, whose books were sold in high volume, for many years could not enjoy the attention and focus of literary scholars. Accordingly, this paper aims to expand the knowledge about him and boost the discussion on German (anti-) Americanism.
In his tale „Der Wortmann“, the Transylvanian-German author Traugott Teutsch tells the story of Peter Emerich, an influent man in his community, who is keen on getting rich and climbing up the social ladder, while preserving the image of an honest person. The article follows through different stages the evolution of his mindset up to the point where he repents of his past actions, tries to make amends for some of his mistakes and decides to lead an unselfish life of faithful service to the community. Guilt, repentance and redemption are some of the main topics followed in this article, which constituted also some of the founding stones of the Transylvanian-German collective mentality.
The German-speaking Saxon minority from Transylvania, a region in Romania, has almost disappeared due to the historical events after World War II and the fall of communism in December 1989. Therefore, the literary work that was created before 1990 is often considered to be a “lieu de mémoire”, a place of remembrance, for the Saxon culture. This article deals with the question whether Maria Haydl’s short stories can be considered as such or do they show too much influence of the politically imposed writing style in order to be authentic.
In comparison to the Transsylvanian-Saxon or to the German-speaking Bukowina literature the modernists exerted a more reduced influence on the literature of the Banat Swabians. Franz Xaver Kappus (1883-1966) influenced the literary modernists in the Western part of Romania especially through his expressionistic texts. He became famous thanks to his correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke. The masterpiece Die lebenden Vierzehn (The Fourteeen Survivors) (1918) is swayed by a collective catastrophe and represents a certain kind of utopia, which anticipates the end of the world. A dread causing image with a peculiar unreality shapes the event. Kappus’ fantasy does not shrink back from images of dread and horror. As in the expressionistic literature any destruction of the harmonious beautiful principle comes about in dread. The grotesque features belong to the expressionistic character of the book. It is interesting that the dreadful and the grotesque show their demonic side and with it they destroy the familiar reality. Such a development demonstrates that Kappus follows a tradition to which also E. T. A. Hoffmann, Frank Wedekind, Franz Kafka or Georg Heym belong. There are also streaks of naturalism in the novel.
The novel “Wasserzeichen” was published at the Pop Publishing House in Ludwigsburg, Germany, in 2018. The destiny of the main character of the aforementioned literary work is undoubtedly linked to the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca. After finishing high school in Brașov, the young Eginald – who is not the same as the author of the novel – arrives in Cluj-Napoca where he first goes to the Faculty of Protestant Theology, from which he is relegated; afterwards, he starts the courses of another faculty, but before finishing his studies he is arrested by the Securitate. The life story of the young Transylvanian Saxon turns out to be a troubled one – full of defining experiences for his existence. Due to the relationships with the people whom he meets there, the romantic entanglements, and the betrayals he experiences, he matures quickly. The 1st person narrator becomes a true man in this predestinate space.
Using the example of Herta Müller‘s novels written after her emigration into the Federal Republic of Germany, the article shows how digital tools can be used to classify the fragmented space that unfolds in the writings of the Nobel Prize winner into a clear model structure. Quantitative research methods are combined with a database-driven GIS analysis toolkit to illustrate the weighting of the fictionalized locations given their gravity centers and polarities. The series of maps show both the density and spread of the action places, as well as the meanings which are attached to the literary space.
Die Essayistik Herta Müllers
(2022)
The article follows the two volumes of essays The King Bows and Kills (2003) and Always the same snow and always the same uncle (2011) written by Herta Müller. Politics and aesthetics define the Nobel laureate’s writing, with her essays anchored in Romania’s recent history. They are of a political nature, offer retrospectives on their life in Romania beyond the Iron Curtain, insights into the dictatorial past, persecution by the secret service, the betrayal of closest friends, but also contain reflections on the role of the language, the preference for Romanian, on the use of “The King” in their fictional texts, explain their “alien gaze”. Always the same snow and always the same uncle focuses on the deportation of the Romanian Germans to the Ukraine, with the information serving as a companion work to the novel Hunger angel. The betrayal of closest friends is also discussed, whereby the insight into their files and the past of Oskar Pastior/Otto Stein’s files are used.
All three hitherto published novels by Dana Grigorcea do explicitly refer to Romania. Had her first novel been set in the Danube Delta and her second in Bucharest, so the plot of the recently released novel "Die nicht sterben" is located in the touristic town B. (= Buşteni) at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula as literary pre-text, the plot of "Die nicht sterben" interweaves elements of Romanian history, Romanian contemporary events as well as elements of the family history of the first-person narrator. The present paper is focused especially on the female narrator’s bodily, erotic and flying fantasies. The social and moral revolt which manifests itself first and foremost in the vampiresses’ urge to impale, subsides in the end in uncritical idyllic and narcissistic self-reflection.