430 Germanische Sprachen; Deutsch
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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.
In the phenomenon of globalization, the foreign language skills are part of both scientific field and everyday life. Though the number of learners of German decreased in the last twenty years, German seems to be again in greater demand as a foreign language all over the world. In the Romanian universities, the study of the German language continues to arouse great interest in the recent years. The following article deals with the role that German language plays in our country, and it tries to find answers regarding the Banat region/area, by using the example of the Polytechnic University of Timișoara. Another topic that the author emphasizes is the contribution of German as a foreign language - lessons in promoting the German language and culture in the Banat region.
Herta Müller’s leaning towards word for word transfer of Romanian set phrases in her texts can be explained by the environment in which she lived until her emigration to West Germany and this admittedly intensifies with the gradually increasing general interest in multi-lingualism. The fact that the authoress speaks of the German-Romanian transfer in her acceptance speech on the occasion of the Nobel Prize award proves the important role, which Hertha Müller ascribes to this procedure. Also at the centre of the latest books by Balthasar Waitz stands the multicultural region of the Banat. The author seems to be gripped by the plurilingualism of the immediate surroundings of his homeland. Different forms of Romanian, from slang to everyday speech, but occasionally also Hungarian, Slovak and Serbian phrases find their way into the texts of the Banat author. In this manner just as with Hertha Müller, language images come into being, new light. Thus literary multilingualism in both writers enables one to have a novel access to the relation between literature and reality.
Here the German language acts as a bridge between Eastern and Western Europe playing an important role. It is exactly on the Banat with its multicultural tradition that many hopes are pinned. The introduction of the subject German Cultural Studies within the framework of the Communication Sciences at the “Polytechnic” University Timișoara is only a stepping stone, but in the given context this is however a sign that betokens our will to participate in the task of building the linguistic and cultural bridge. The present paper elaborates on starting points towards a cultural history of the Banat.