Jörn Steigerwald
Stimmgabe: Rhetorische und ästhetische Prosopopeia im Kater Murr
The protagonist of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novel Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr has often been regarded as ‘Bildungsphilister.’ In contrast to this widespread interpretation, I will argue that Murr does not belong to this category but is a self-conscious and self-reflective persona. As a literary figure he is the successor of the Puss-in-Boot tradition; as an autobiographer his way of speaking stands in the tradition of the speech of the fool. By being a cat, Murr refers to his predecessors without being someone’s servant anymore—he acts and speaks only for himself. The autobiographer Murr uses the speech of the fool in order to decompose and to defigurize his writing. This leads to the fact that his discourse is polyphone and non-referentiable. The autobiography is the monument of defigurized speech which presents the individual style of Murr combining romantic authorship and the speech of the fool. This double prosopopeia of Kater Murr personifies the transition from the rhetoric based system of imitation and emulation to the aesthetic based system of style and intertextuality. (JS) (In German)
Christiane Arndt
On the Transgression of Frames in Theodor Storm’s Novella Aquis submersus
In Theodor Storm’s novella Aquis submersus, the frame novella is introduced as an aesthetic form, which displays the principle of immortalization through art. The function of the narrative frame on the textual level is symbolized by actual picture frames in the story, such as the picture of a dead child serving as the Dingsymbol of the novella. The opposition between the dead child and the immortal work of art is overcome by the transgression of the frame, first with respect to the picture frame and ultimately with respect to the narrative frame on the textual level. The boundaries that the frames introduce, such as the distinction between life and death or between past and present, are overcome through and by the emergence of a work of art. In the end, the prevalence of the literary text marks a qualitative distinction between painting and writing as artistic production. (CA)
Rick Chamberlin
Coming Out of His Father’s Closet: Klaus Mann’s Der fromme Tanz as and Anti-Tod in Venedig
In Der fromme Tanz (1925), Klaus Mann creates an anti-Tod in Venedig, thereby affirming what his father Thomas repudiated in himself and in Gustav von Aschenbach: his homosexuality. In this pioneering attempt to map out a gay identity, Mann allows the intersection of personal and literary self-fashioning to function as a locus for the establishment of a cultural identity for gay Weimar Republic youth. An analysis of protagonist Andreas Magnus and of autobiographical sources reveals an antipathetic reading of his father’s novella and a main character who is a polar opposite of Aschenbach. Turning instead to George and Wedekind for inspiration, Mann counters the austere rejection of “Sympathie mit dem Abgrund” with the “Vergottung des Leibes” exemplified in Andreas's unrequited love for Niels. With Andreas as a new Aschenbach, Mann attempts to assert himself against his father by proposing life-affirming consequences of embracing and sublimating homoerotic desire. (RC)
Cornelius Partsch
The Case of Richard Sorge: Secret Operations in the German Past in 1950’s Spy Fiction
By the mid-1950s, the figure of the notorious master spy Richard Sorge had acquired a broad cultural and ideological currency in Germany both in fictional and non-fictional imprints. Through readings of two Sorge novels by Hans-Otto Meissner and Hans Hellmut Kirst, both published in 1955, this article examines the conditions under which a distinctly German spy genre developed and flourished before the ascent of Anglo-American spy films and fiction. Drawing on genre theory and popular culture studies, these exemplary texts are investigated within a variable and historically specific network of intertextual relations and cultural reference. In addressing the changing circumstances of post-war Germany, concerning especially the project of coping with the past and the escalating Cold War tensions between the two German states, the various organizations and reorganizations of the Sorge material furnished well-received, ideologically loaded, and imaginary resolutions of the real historical contradictions of the time. (CP)
Reinhold Grimm
Wissenschaft und Dichtung. Zu Hans Magnus Enzensbergers jüngsten Veröffentlichungen
Arguably, Hans Magnus Enzensberger is the formemost poet of science, or scientific poet, not only in present-day German letters, but in contemporary literature worldwide. His most recent contributions, the essay “Die Poesie der Wissenschaft” (2001/02/03) and the poems of the volume Die Geschichte der Wolken: 99 Meditationen (2003) in particular, testify more than anything else to this towering position. The article reports on Enzensberger’s essay, then discucces his 2003 collection in detail, concentrating on various texts which prove to be especially revealing. Both the author’s poetizing of science, or scientification of poetry, and the article’s mini-interpretations devoted to it culminate in the sovereign appropriation of modern chaos theory by the now seventy-five-year-old. (RG) (In German)
B. Venkat Mani
The Self and the Other: Contemporary German Scholarship on Trans-, Inter-, and Multiculturalism
PERSONALIA
Introduction, German Departments in the U.S.A., German Departments in Canada, Promotions, New Appointments, Visitors, Retirements, Necrology, Doctoral Dissertations, Summary