830 Literaturen germanischer Sprachen; Deutsche Literatur
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Representations of the reasons and actions of terrorists have appeared in German literature tracing back to the age of Sturm und Drang of the 18th century, most notably in Heinrich von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas and Friedrich Schiller's Die Räuber, and more recently since the radical actions of the Red Army Faction during the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as in Uli Edel's film, The Baader Meinhof Complex. By referring to Walter Benjamin's system of natural law and positive law, which provides definitions of differing codes of ethics with relation to state laws and personal ethics, one should be able to understand that Michael Kohlhaas, Karl Moor, and the members of the RAF are indeed represented as terrorists. However, their actions and motives are not without an internal ethics, which conflicts with that of their respective state-sanctioned authorities. This thesis reveals the similarities and differences in motives, methods, and use of violence in Schiller, Kleist, and representations of the RAF and explores how the turn to terrorism can arise from a logical realization that ideologies of state law do not align with the personal sense of justice and law of the individual.
Ein Schtetl in der Stadt – Jüdische Identitätsräume in Texten von Martin Beradt und Sammy Gronemann
(2010)
The concern of this thesis is a discussion of the way German-Jewish identity manifests itself in two literary texts before and after 1933. Using the examples of Sammy Gronemann’s novel Tohuwabohu and Martin Beradt’s Die Straße der kleinen Ewigkeit, it offers a textual analysis of two works which share close connections in terms of subject matter, style, and their respective authors’ background, but are historically divided by the fundamental experience of the rise of National Socialism in Germany.
I argue that space is a crucial factor through which identity is constituted in each text, both of which use and partially subvert the romanticized image of the Eastern European shtetl brought to Germany by authors such as Arnold Zweig in the aftermath of World War I. Space in this context always has a twofold quality to it. It functions as a space of identity, but also as a space of identification through which a group of people label others as either belonging or not belonging to a specific space. Furthermore, both texts reject monolithic definitions of Jewish identity, emphasizing instead the diversity of Jewish life in Europe before the Rise of National Socialism.
Origin of the German Novel
(1927)