A indicates papers in the 'Literature' strand; B those in the 'Language and Linguistics' strand; and C papers in the 'Society, Media and Institutions' strand.
16.30: Seminar groups:
A
19.00: Dinner
20.30: Opening business:
9.00: Seminar groups:
A
10.45: Reports from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Austrian Cultural Institute and the Swiss Embassy
11.30: Main Business Meeting
13.00: Lunch
14.00: Poster Session:
A
16.30: Seminar groups:
A
A
9.00: Seminar groups:
B
10.45: The President's Guest
13.00: Lunch
14.00: Seminar groups:
A
Barbara Arnold (University of Exeter)
Lexikographische Studien zu August Klingemann
Nur wenige Werk- oder Autorenwörterbücher wurden bisher im deutschsprachigen Raum konsequent zu Ende gebracht. Schon seit Jahrzehnten zieht etwa das noch im Entstehen begriffene Goethe-Wörterbuch die Aufmerksamkeit von Lexikographen und Literaturwissenschaftlern gleichermaßen auf sich. Vielfältig scheinen die Perspektiven, die sich den jeweiligen Disziplinen durch Nachschlagewerke wie dieses eröffnen. Neben einem reichen Zitatenschatz bieten sie die Möglichkeit, Einblicke in Vokabular und stilistische Charakteristika eines einzelnen Autors zu gewinnen. Den Ausgangspunkt stellt dabei jeweils das Einzellemma, quasi als Kern der Betrachtung, dar.
Anhand eigener lexikographischer Studien zu einem Schriftsteller der deutschen Romantik, August Klingemann, den man unlängst als Verfasser der umstrittenen "Nachtwachen von Bonaventura" identifiziert hat, soll gezeigt werden, inwiefern ein autorenspezifisches Wörterbuch für linguistische Untersuchungen nutzbar gemacht werden kann. Wortschatz und Begriffswelt einer Einzelpersönlichkeit werden dabei ebenso zu erörtern sein wie sprachstatistische Analysen und Überlegungen zur Ansiedlung des Autors in der Zeitsprache des 19. Jahrhunderts.
Stefan Busch (Lincoln College, Oxford)
Laughter in the Dark: Blasphemous Laughter from Lessing to Büchner
In Vita activa, Hannah Arendt expressed the view that the course of secularisation had not resulted in a re-appropriation of the world but in an historically unparalleled 'Weltverlust'. The paper will substantiate this view by tracing the motif of blasphemous laughter from Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm to Büchner's Lenz.
Elizabeth Catling (University of Exeter)
'Theater um's Theater': Berliner Kulturpolitik and the Closure of the Schiller-Theater
This paper will contribute to the assessment of cultural life in the new Germany by focusing on the theatre institution. Specifically it will examine the controversy surrounding the closure of Berlin's Schiller-Theater in 1993, assessing immediate reactions to the crisis and placing the events in their broader politico-cultural context.
The Senate's announcement to shut down the Charlottenburg theatre (one of the trio of stages in the former West Berlin known as the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen) sent shock waves through the entire Bundesrepublik, and generated enormous media interest. Since then, the closure has held a prominent position in the wider debate over cultural subsidy in Germany. I look at the case of the theatre from the perspective of years of faulty Kulturpolitik, and also consider how its closure can be read as a direct consequence of the Wende. Finally I go on to demonstrate how this episode has been symptomatic of shifts in the city's theatrical landscape since unification.
Peter Davies (University of Edinburgh), Stephen Parker (University of Manchester) and Matthew Philpotts (University of Manchester)
The Modern Restoration: Discourses of Style in German Literature 1930-1960
In 1977, Hans Dieter Schäfer first formulated his thesis that 1930 marks the start of a new period in German literature, characteristic features of which endure until the sea-changes of the 1960s. Schäfer postulated a culturally conservative 'turn' in German literature and cultural life in general around 1930 which was occasioned by the atmosphere of crisis gripping the Weimar Republic, not so much determined by the rise of Nazism, but rather out of which Nazism itself emerged. Similarly, Schäfer relativised the perception that the artistic avant-garde thrived until it was smashed by the Nazis in 1933, arguing that avant-gardist experimentation forfeited much of its credibility earlier. For Schäfer, the common thread informing authors' stylistic choices from 1930 was the marginalisation of avant-gardist experimentation in favour of the integration of Modernist and pre-Modernist stylistic features. Further, not only did non-Nazi writers in Germany and anti-Nazi writers in exile share this response to the seminal experience of crisis, but this response remained a key feature in the development by those same groups of seemingly distinct East and West German literatures between 1945 and the early 1960s. Schäfer's essay was welcomed in many quarters as a landmark initiative and found parallels in the work of figures such as Frank Trommler. However, neither has Schäfer's anticipated elaboration upon his thesis materialised, nor have other researchers followed his lead.
Our research project seeks to undertake the empirical study necessary to test Schäfer's thesis and to address areas in his original work liable for further development, and in this paper we will present for discussion the origins, aims and methodology of the project, together with some of the principal theoretical and methodological issues raised by it.
Henk de Berg (University of Sheffield)
Nietzsche redivivus? The Sloterdijk Debate
This paper provides a short summary of Peter Sloterdijk's controversial lecture 'Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus', discusses the critical reactions to it, and provides critical comments on the lecture itself.
Dirk Göttsche (University of Nottingham)
'Kulturgemälde der Zeit'. Anfänge und Entwicklungen des Zeitromans im 19. Jahrhundert
Auf der Grundlage meiner Habilitationsschrift 'Zeit im Roman. Literarische Zeitreflexion und die Geschichte des Zeitromans im späten 18. and 19. Jahrhundert' (Münster 1998, erscheint München: Fink 2001) soll auf der Grundlage neuen Materials ein Überblick über die Geschichte des Zeitromans im 19. Jahrhundert gegeben werden. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt der vergessenen Frühgeschichte des Zeitromans vor 1830 - vor seiner poetologischen Begründung als 'Kulturgemälde der Zeit' (Gottschall) durch das Junge Deutschland - und seiner Entstehung um 1800 in der Auseinandersetzung mit der Französischen Revolution. Von den frühen Spielarten des Zeitromans aus lassen sich die großen Entwicklungslinien der Gattung bis zu den Autoren des späten Realismus wie Spielhagen, Keller and Fontane skizzieren. Diese Revision einer der grundlegenden Formen des deutschsprachigen Romans im 19. Jahrhundert ist zugleich auch eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem alten Vorurteil, dem deutschen Roman dieser Epoche mangele es im europäischen Vergleich an der 'ernsten Darstellung der zeitgenössischen alltäglichen gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit auf dem Grunde der ständigen geschichtlichen Bewegung' (E. Auerbach).
Michael Gratzke (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge)
'ICH AJAX DER SEIN BLUT': Terror and Sentimentality in Heiner Müller's Works
My tour de force through Müller's works focuses on - as Norbert Eke put it - the painful collision of bodies and ideas as the basic pattern of historical process. I will begin with Müller's much lesser known poetry, but will try - if time allows - to draw examples from drama and prose as well.
In Traktoristenlied, Müller describes cruel death in battle and names its necessary and useful outcome. The lyrisches Ich narrates that his brother burnt to death in a German tank near Stalingrad. Now he - the narrator - drives a Stalingrad-built Soviet tractor. His brother's death was justified because the good cause (socialism) had to win against 'us', the Germans. This poem contains both the intellectual pattern to outline most dramatic conflicts in years to come and the literary material to fill it: a horrible, non-heroic death with overtones of vitalism in pictures of blood.
At first glance, Müller seems to reject literary sentimentality along with the concept of heroism. He wrote in Motiv bei A.S.: 'In den Zeiten des Verrats / Sind die Landschaften schön'. This rather dire communist program has its shadows. Müller wrote about these shadows: 'Im Schatten / Der Klassenschlachten ruhn die Liebenden'.
In Müller's poetry, the (bourgeois) self is not dead. The author knew that in contrast to official propaganda - the myth of a new start - socialism had to be built with the 'old' people. In a broader sense, Müller's occasional privatism and surprisingly frank autobiographical pieces reveal a sentimentality of their own.
In the years between the end of the GDR and his death, Müller's disillusionment, his illness and a subsequent writer's block coloured his poetry quite dark. Sadly and ironically, the writer turned his attention to his dying body. Three weeks before his death a hint of Müller's 'ironisches Pathos' returned when he wrote: '(...) beinahe / War ich stolz auf meinen unbesiegten / Tumor'.
This rebellion of the body was also a very productive metaphor in Müller's plays. In Germania 3, Müller depicts his younger self in the role of the mayor's son, a witty, cynical, lust-ridden youngster with high-flying dreams of a communist society. In this scene, Neoptolemos (from the play Philoktet) returns in quotation to tell the story of Ajax, the betrayed hero, who went mad, massacred a herd of sheep, woke up to his shame, and finally committed suicide. This can be seen as a reminiscence of Müller's poem Ajax zum Beispiel from 1994, in which the author twice starts a line with 'ICH AJAX'. This poem ends when the television set and the author fall silent in white noise: 'Das letzte Programm ist die Erfindung des Schweigens / ICH AJAX DER SEIN BLUT'.
In this paper, I will talk about Ajax as a writer.
Birgit Haas (Keele University)
A View of the New German(s)? Peter Handke's Das Spiel vom Fragen (1991)
On the basis of the play Das Spiel vom Fragen, an attempt will be made to look at the events of 1989 through Handke's eyes. With respect to earlier theatre forms of the twentieth century, the highly symbolic approach to the Wende will be analysed. Taking up Handke's idea, I asked myself the following questions: How are the events of 1989 mirrored? What image of the New German(s) is presented? What is Handke's opinion on Reunification as expressed in the play?
Hans Hahn (Oxford Brookes University)
'Einem gelang es': Die Grammatik der Natur in Novalis' Die Lehrlinge zu Sais
Im Zentrum meines Vortrags steht das Romanfragment Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, in dem Novalis die 'Grammatik der Natur' darstellen wollte. An Hand dieses Stoffes wird versucht, Novalis aus den hemetischen (Pseudo) Wissenschaften seiner Zeit herauszulösen und ihn stärker in die literarische Tradition einzubinden. Vergleichende Betrachtungen zur Verwendung des altägyptischen Mythos von Isis und Osiris bei Reinhold, Schiller und - indirekt - Lessing sollen zeigen, wie Novalis das von Fichte aufgegriffene Identitätsproblem zu lösen suchte und wie sich diese Lösung (vielleicht) bis ins zwanzigste Jahrhundert weiterverfolgen lässt.
Marianne Howarth (Nottingham Trent University)
Making Friends of the Class Enemy: The Britain-GDR Society and the Image of the GDR in Britain
The Britain-GDR Society was originally formed in 1965 as BRIDGE (Britain-Democratic Germany Information Exchange) to support the campaign for recognition. Following the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1973, the Society was renamed and its role focused on raising awareness of the GDR in Britain. During the 1970s, tensions developed between the Embassy and the Society as well as within the Society itself over the way in which this undertaking was to be approached. These centred, in particular, on the role the Society perceived for itself in supporting the GDR's auswärtige Kulturpolitik and the priorities the Embassy identified in implementing the GDR's Westpolitik at the time. Despite a growth in membership during the 1980s, the Society became politically and structurally fragmented, leading in the mid-1980s to the establishment of a separate Scotland-GDR Society and the founding of a rival organisation, the London-Berlin Committee. This paper charts these developments against the broader context of GDR Westpolitik and its changing priorities. It concludes with an evaluation of the work of the Britain-GDR Society and its place in the overall context of relations between Britain and the GDR.
Jon Hughes (University of Sussex)
Damaged Goods: Hermann Ungar's Brutal Imagination in Context
In this paper I propose to examine the treatment of abusive interpersonal relationships and identity crises in the work of Hermann Ungar (1893-1929). Ungar's novels and short stories are characterised by an intense interest in dysfunctional father-son relationships, the cruelty inherent in hierarchical power-structures, and the damage to self and others resultant from a peculiarly masculine form of self-loathing. I shall seek to provide an overview of Ungar's work, largely ignored or forgotten by scholars, and to contextualise his preoccupations by comparing them to those of better-known contemporaries active in Prague in the decade or so after the First World War, including Kafka, Ernst Weiß and Egon Erwin Kisch. I shall examine the formal and thematic structure of texts such as Die Verstümmelten and Knaben und Mörder, in which Ungar paints an unrelentingly bleak, and in many ways prescient, picture of a world of damaged and deranged men, whose aggressive masculinity is also the locus of their suffering.
Helen Kelly-Holmes and Gertrud Reershemius (Aston University)
Accents, Dialects, Identities: A Study of German and British Languages Students
In the context of globalisation and increasing standardisation, what level of self-awareness is there among languages students concerning accents, dialects and their relationship to identities? This paper reports on a survey of awareness of and attitudes to accents and dialects among a group of British home students, German home students and German exchange students. The research seeks to address the following questions: Are German students more aware of dialect than their British counterparts are of accent? Do British students see accent as primarily a marker of class and education, while their German counterparts view dialect as the conduit of an inherited local identity and cultural heritage? Has the experience of studying language and, in particular, the Year Abroad helped to increase awareness of accents, dialects and their contributions to identities? Finally, does language awareness help in the preservation of accent/dialect? Is there evidence of a move towards standardisation among the respondents, or do these British and German students make a conscious effort to preserve their accent or dialect?
Katrin Kohl (Jesus College, Oxford)
Literature as Contest: Metaphors in German Poetics
'Poetological metaphors' play a central role in the process by which writers and literary groups establish themselves in their literary context and are evaluated in the course of reception. Around 1800, poets competed for the literary high ground through traditional metaphors belonging to the fields 'poetry is contest' (Classical) and 'poetry is nature' (Romantic). Writers have continued to respond to new social roles by drawing on old metaphors, e.g. GDR writers initially took up the industrial metaphors of Socialist Realism, but subverted these around 1970 by defining their project through Romantic metaphors. Romantic metaphors have been particularly powerful in shaping literary historiography, not least because they coincide with the beginnings of the discipline. Metaphors of natural creation still play a part in evaluating literature, rendering alternative metaphors - and non-conforming writers - valueless or invisible. The purpose of the paper is to question a linear historiography that constructs literary progress out of periods separated by 'breaks' and 'innovations' - though without substituting the abstract sites of discourse favoured by postmodernism. An exploration of poetological metaphors evokes complex dialogue: writers are continually adapting and enriching a 'timeless' repertoire of literary models as they engage with society and with each other through and across time.
Astrid-Elke Kurth (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge)
Via Appia: Cruising the Self
In the first scene of Jochen Hick's Via Appia (1993), the protagonist Frank (Peter Senner) writes 'Welcome to the AIDS-Club' over his reflection in a mirror and at first only seems to invite the viewer to the topic of AIDS and HIV. The act, however, is much more complex: it is part of the forced repetitive structures of trauma, acknowledges the loss of the protagonist's identity to HIV/AIDS and constitutes and expresses a temporary identity or role related to HIV/AIDS in an act of posing and cruising. Throughout Via Appia repetitions as substitutions take precedence over original experiences and the film's body thus reflects on the one hand the structures of cruising, which are empowering for the individual, and on the other hand those of trauma, disruptive and painful for the individual. I hypothesise thus that in Via Appia through a discursive intertwining of trauma and cruising, HIV/AIDS can be assimilated within the citation of performances and constructions of identity which determined Frank's pre-trauma life but reflect the influence of AIDS. I shall analyse two scenes, Frank's inscription in front of the mirror and its mirror scene at the film's end in which the trauma-agent is abolished and Frank finally establishes a trauma-identity.
Anna Linton (St John's College, Oxford)
'Poetische Trauer-Binden': German Lutheran Funeral Verse for Bereaved Parents in the Seventeenth Century
In the early modern period it has been estimated that around fifty percent of children did not live to the age of ten. It might be conjectured that in an era of such high infant mortality the death of a child would not be regarded as a significant event; the numerous Lutheran funeral poems composed for and by bereaved parents and published in funeral booklets ('Leichenpredigten') suggest otherwise. Taking as a starting point early modern theories of literature, language and the affects, this paper will examine the way in which art is used to offer succour and support at a time of emotional crisis. It will demonstrate the very practical terms in which early modern poets understood the function of funeral verse, presenting a medical model based on the Galenic theory of the Four Humours, which draws a connection between 'Dichtkunst' and 'Heilkunst', a functional model of poetry as a cloth with which to wipe away tears, and a commemorative model, setting the poems in the context of early modern debates on the most suitable and effective method of remembering the dead. A strong didactic element anchors funeral verse within the greater framework of seventeenth-century literature and the consolation tradition, and the paper will discuss briefly its various instructional intentions: 'memento mori', the establishment of role models, and the reinforcement of Lutheran doctrine, showing how these function within specific poetic forms.
Peter R. Lutzeier (University of Surrey)
A Dictionary of 'Gegensinn in German'
Polysemy is a widespread and well-known phenomenon in any lexicon of a natural language. The general view is that polysemy can be accounted for by the fundamental principle of similarity between individual senses. Whilst this is supported by our own findings, we want to stress that the fundamental principle of opposition can also play a major part in the polysemic structure of words. This is exactly the case for words with 'Gegensinn', i.e. words which have senses in opposition to each other. A typical example in English would be the verb to dust with the senses 'to remove particles from something' [to dust the shelves] and 'to add particles to something' [to dust the cake].
Up to now, we have collected nearly 700 words with 'Gegensinn' in German and expect at least 1000 words in total. The words cover most parts of speech including idioms. We aim to present them in a dictionary of 'Gegensinn' and the talk will report on this work in progress. The dictionary will be a specialist one and the first one of its kind in any major language.
The talk will touch upon the following questions:
Joanne McNally (Institute of Germanic Studies, London)
Kabarett within Advanced Foreign Language Learning Classrooms
Over a century has elapsed since the tentative beginnings of cabaret in Germany. During this time cabaret has developed into a 'cultural institution' which is dynamic in terms of style, mischievous with respect to its themes, parasitic in its appropriation of forms and, at times, ambiguous with regard to its function.
Although its antecedent in France has long since disappeared, cabaret in Germany has continued to survive as a flexible and open medium for critical and political comment, and, since the thirties, has been referred to as 'Kabarett'. Indeed, the German language distinguishes between 'Kabarett' and 'Cabaret'. Although related etymologically, and used interchangeably through the Weimar period, they have different styles and functions. 'Kabarett' generally means performed satire, whether in a theatre-type setting or a more intimate location, or even in a studio setting; 'Cabaret' can often refer to the erotic entertainment of 'red-light' clubs as well as live comedy and light entertainment in general. Additionally, 'Kabarett' has a political or literary content, or a mixture of the two.
Kabarett can be defined as 'creative misbehaviour'. Such 'creative misbehaviour' involves distortions, miscommunications, misunderstandings, misquotations, the expression of provocative opinions and attitudes, the breaking of taboos, blatant borrowing, or plagiarising of, well-known source materials (literary and media-related), and the modification of revered work. But what has this to do with advanced foreign language learning? It will be argued that materials associated with 'creative misbehaviour', as exemplified by German Kabarett, can potentially enhance the foreign language learning experience on linguistic, cognitive, cultural, metalanguage and motivational levels.
Mechthild M. Matheja-Theaker (UWE, Bristol)
Poverty and the Transformation Process: 'Aufschwung Ost' versus the 'Darker Side of Life'
Life in the new Länder has changed dramatically within an extremely short period, and it was only to be expected that such a rapid transition process would give rise to some problems. For many people who initially felt that their lives would improve - if not overnight, then certainly in the not so distant future - unification has turned out to be a frustrating and disappointing experience, bringing unemployment, financial hardship and even deprivation in its wake.
Ten years after unification it is now only too obvious that unemployment, which was initially thought to be a short-term problem, is here to stay, for the foreseeable future at least. What is perhaps even more worrying in this context, though, is the fact that jobless periods are now no longer merely brief and exceptional intervals in an individual's life. On the contrary, recent studies show not only that periods spent out of work are getting longer (Hübinger/Neumann 1998), but that there is also an increasing tendency for them to recur. People are thus left with a 'broken' or 'perforated track record of working life' [perforierte Erwerbsbiographie]. In turn, such a development makes those affected extremely vulnerable to social and financial decline. The periods they spend working are often too short or too badly paid for them to recover from the losses incurred during periods of unemployment. This then leads to a slow but continuous deterioration in their material circumstances; they spiral downwards towards a life marred by financial and social deprivation, poverty and life on benefits.
The European Commission defines the threshold of poverty at 50 percent of the average national income per head, weighted according to the respective members of the household. However, the German Institute for Economic Research estimated in 1997 that every citizen should have a minimum income of DM 941 a month to prevent him or her from sliding into poverty. According to this definition, around 10 million people in Germany are already poor (Hunfeld 1998:8). There is no official poverty threshold and thus the threshold to social assistance is frequently referred to as the 'quasi-official' line (Neumann 1999:27). Social assistance is available to those whose income is less than the minimum amount necessary for existence as defined by the Federal Social Welfare Act (BMfAS 1999:9f.).
Hübinger (1999) also defines a new grouping of people who live in what he refers to as a state of 'precarious affluence' [prekärer Wohlstand]. Their incomes range between 50 and 70 percent of the official average income, but - as Hübinger points out - they are by no means safe. Most of them are continuously in danger of slipping below the poverty line, and only very few manage to improve their situation to such an extent as to climb beyond the 80 percent mark and towards relative safety.
Over the last five years observers have also attempted to define more closely a segment of society which has hitherto - not least because this is its very determining feature - been relatively unknown: the concealed poor are those whose incomes lie below the threshold for social assistance and who - in spite of their legal entitlement - do not claim. The notion of having to expose one's financial situation to an official, and the fear that relations might be called upon to contribute to one's maintenance, is not only off-putting but also causes many - and especially older citizens - to forgo their entitlement (Hunfeld 1998:64; Schomers 1999:145f.). The term 'concealed' is based on the fact that the people affected are not entered into any official statistic (Neumann 1999:27). Consequently, their existence is known only to experts, while the general public remains largely unaware.
This paper will take a close look at the situation of poverty and deprivation in the new Länder ten years after unification in the light of the observations made above. The circumstances of particular groupings within society (such as children and young people, families, women and elderly citizens) will be given special consideration. I should also like to investigate how people actually feel about these developments, how they cope with the changes (life without employment, life on the breadline) which unification has forced upon them.
Simon Meacher (University of Exeter)
Peter Härtling's Das Windrad (1983): Anarchy and the Ecosocialist Solution
Previous reviews of Härtling's Das Windrad have given only a cursory indication of the way in which the novel draws attention to ecological themes. This paper highlights one specific green political idea, ecosocialism, tracing its historical origins to key proto-environmentalist thinkers within German culture, and finds evidence of the confluence of socialist and environmentalist thought in Härtling's writing. The paper examines the novel's hitherto ignored evocation of the ideals of the early twentieth-century German anarchist Gustav Landauer, a significant, yet largely neglected contributor to ecosocialist thought. The novel's narrative, which is inspired by the protest culture of late-1970s West Germany, has an anarchic protest action as its centrepoint, and invites a reappraisal of the ecosocialist alternative to contemporary society, as well as a reconsideration of the virtue of a spiritual aspect to environmentalism.
Ben Morgan (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
Masculinity in the Films of Leni Riefenstahl
'Leni Riefenstahl: woman artist or woman propagandist? 100% woman and also 100% man.' The title page of Alice Schwarzer's recent feature article on Riefenstahl repeats the terms to which critiques of Riefenstahl continuously return: Nazi, artist, woman. However, as Catherine Soussloff and Bill Nichols have argued, these terms obscure as much as they reveal, leaving critics who use them with the apparently insoluble enigma of how such great filmmaking could double as propaganda. An alternative approach is that of setting Riefenstahl's works in a historical context wider than that of the Third Reich. Riefenstahl's films can be related to the tendencies in early twentieth-century German society of which the Nazi movement was itself only one, finally dominant permutation: namely, the youth and body cults that challenged and modified the forms of identity associated with Wihelmine culture. (As the images of the sports festival from Brecht's and Dudow's Kuhle Wampe confirm, the celebration of youthful corporeality was not the sole preserve of the political right.) In this context, Riefenstahl's work is particularly striking for the way it objectifies and eroticises the male body. Using a clip from Olympia, as well as a wide range of stills from Riefenstahl's other works, the paper will examine how the bodily, spiritual and sexual impulses behind the youth movements are, in Riefenstahl's films, simultaneously articulated and constrained by a vision of masculinity which in many instances comes surprisingly close to images from post-war gay culture.
Andreas Musolff (University of Durham)
'Adamskostüm blieb im Schrank'; '(...) der Zug [fährt] langsam durch den Bahnhof - wer jetzt aufsteigen will, steigt auf': zu kühne Sprachbilder, or A Metaphor Too Far
Classical rhetorical theory classifies the problematic use of metaphors as 'barbarism' or - in one tradition of this term - as 'catachresis', an inappropriate mix of images. If we follow Weinrich, we can see it as an ill-fitting combination of Bildspender and Bildempfänger, which is too 'striking' or too 'bold'. Cognitive metaphor theory, though not focusing on such cases, views them as 'illogical' or, in Lakoff/Johnson's terminology, 'incoherent' relationships of source and target domains (whereas 'inconsistent' relationships are permitted). However, when it comes to distinguishing 'bold' and 'too bold', 'coherent' and 'incoherent' metaphors in actual data, the boundaries between 'creative' use of imagery and 'barbarism' become fuzzy. The paper analyses cases of creative-to-dubious metaphor usage documented in a corpus of the imagery of political discourse on Europe in Germany and Britain, which has been built at Durham University in co-operation with the Institut für deutsche Sprache. The analysis aims to show that the distinction between 'fitting' and 'ill-fitting' imagery remains fuzzy as long as it is based exclusively on semantic or logical features, but that it can be dealt with in a more satisfactory way by focusing on the role of pragmatic factors.
Ted Neather (University of Exeter)
The New World of AS/A2 Exams in German
In September 2000 teachers started preparing their pupils for the first sitting of the new AS exam in January or June 2001. This is the first stage in a major reform of the A Level teaching programmes and examinations. The changes take place within a radically altered political framework, including the merger of Examination Boards to form conglomerates grouping GCSE, A Level and vocational exams, and the increasing importance of government direction of the examination system through the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). It was the QCA which laid down strict criteria for the new A Level specifications (newspeak for syllabi) establishing what the balance should be between language and culture, between productive and receptive skills, and the weighting to be accorded to grammatical accuracy in the new framework. There are major questions for university linguists to consider here, notably:
Julian Preece (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Ulrike Meinhof and the Intellectuals: Ghosts of Weimar
The paper will look at Meinhof's own journalism during the 1960s, highlighting her concerns, methods of campaigning and the objectives and values she had in common with intellectual, left-wing contemporaries (in the media, in the students' movement, in the Gruppe 47). It then assesses the responses to her subsequent actions, her arrest, incarceration and death, from contemporaries broadly situated on the Left, and analyses the degree to which experiences in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s shaped these views and the rhetoric used to express them.
Barbara Rassi (University of Surrey)
Frauenräume im Radio oder: Frausein als Programm?
In den letzten Jahren konnten sich im deutschsprachigen Raum immer mehr so genannte "freie Radios" bzw. unabhängige Regionalradiostationen etablieren. Diese setzen bei der Gestaltung einiger ihrer Sendungen ausdrücklich "Frauenschwerpunkte". Bedeutet dies, dass es genügt, Frau zu sein um ein Radioprogramm anzubieten? Anhand ausgewählter Beispiele (vorrangig aus Österreich) soll der Frage nachgegangen werden, welche theoretischen Konzepte hinter diesen frauenspezifischen Programmen stecken und wie sie praktisch umgesetzt werden. Gibt es überhaupt so etwas wie "Frauensendungen" und wenn ja, wodurch zeichnen sie sich aus? Überdies soll aufgezeigt werden, welche Motive Radiomacherinnen bewegen, ihre Ansichten, Überlegungen, Gedanken via Äther öffentlich mitzuteilen.
David Rock (Keele University)
From the Banat to Berlin: Romanian-German Writer Richard Wagner
After a brief introduction to Richard Wagner as a writer with a unique voice reflecting a unique set of experiences in the Romanian-German minority, the paper will explain how he became a member of the literary/political Banat Action Group in the 1970s until its destruction by the Securitate, after which Wagner became disillusioned with the dismal prospects for any reform of Socialism in Ceaucescu's Romania where the future for the German minority looked particularly bleak. Examining the reasons why, in March 1987, Wagner left for West Germany together with his then wife, the writer Herta Müller, the paper also considers changes in his artistic position since coming to the West, but also continuity in terms of his sense of Banat identity. The diversity of forms employed by Wagner since coming to West Berlin are testimony to the range of experiences distilled into his works. His roots, though, are always inherent in his prose writing: usually set in Berlin, for him the only German city where unification can be experienced directly, it draws its black humour and unique insights from his critical awareness of the often curious ways in which the past (for him invariably associated with his earlier life in Eastern Europe) lives on in the present in this cosmopolitan meeting-point of East and West.
Birgit Röder (University of Reading)
'Denn sie lebt nur, wenn sie singt!' The Idealisation of Art and Femininity in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Künstlernovellen
The Romantic artist and the nature of his (never-ending) quest for the Romantic Ideal are central themes in almost all of Hoffmann's Künstlernovellen. By exploiting their creative potential, Hoffmann's artist-figures attempt to produce ever more perfect embodiments of the Ideal in a variety of artistic forms. However, it is in the nature of the Ideal that it cannot be realised in the temporal world of everyday reality, but exists only within the limits of a transcendent, metaphysical world. As a result it cannot assume a permanent, lasting form, but can be glimpsed, at best, only briefly, as - to quote Hegel - a 'Scheinen der Idee'. On the one hand, Hoffmann demonstrates how the transitory nature of the Ideal may inspire the artist (insofar as he is encouraged to scale the heights of his artistic creativity again and again); on the other hand, however, Hoffmann draws attention to the catastrophic consequences that may ensue whenever the artist becomes frustrated by the impossibility of ever bringing his quest to a successful, lasting conclusion and, as a result, falls into the trap of setting up a pseudo-Ideal in place of the true Ideal - an obvious (though understandable) lapse into a state of mauvaise foi.
In Romantic philosophy, love has a similar role to art insofar as it, too, offers the individual a means of coming into contact with the Ideal. Like art, love - at least in its ideal form - is a sphere of human activity pursued purely for its own sake. Most of the artist figures in Hoffmann's novellas are male and, as a result, it is hardly coincidental that the female characters are presented as the object of the artist's adoration/desire. But as Hoffmann demonstrates, whenever the (male) artist (either wittingly or unwittingly) comes to regard woman as something more than 'just' the source of his artistic inspiration, and mistakes her for the very incarnation of the Romantic Ideal itself, the consequences are usually catastrophic for all involved.
Although the problems that derive from a misguided idealisation of art and femininity are explored in almost all of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Künstlernovellen, my paper will focus primarily on three novellas: Das Sanctus, Die Jesuiterkirche in G. and Der Sandmann. Nonetheless, I also hope to be able to allude to some of the more important examples in some of his other works. The paper will be in English.
Dörthe Schilken (Worcester College, Oxford)
Beobachtungen zur englischen Rezeption deutscher politischer Lyrik und ihres Umfeldes (Vormärz) im Chartismus 1846-48
Der Vortrag beschäftigt sich mit der Rezeption deutscher Schriftsteller in verschiedenen journalistischen Organen des Chartismus in der Zeit bis zur endgültigen Ablehnung der Charter im Jahr 1848 durch das englische Parlament.
Verschiedene chartistischen Publikationen (Northern Star, The Labourer, Notes for the People) zeichnen sich unter anderem durch regelmäßige Lyrikpublikationen aus. Vor allem während des Engagement von Ernst Charles Jones in diesen Blättern in den Jahren 1846-1848 treten zunehmend Übersetzungen von Texten deutscher Autoren (u.a. F. Rückert, F. Freiligrath) neben gezielte politisch-propagandistischen Texte der Chartisten.
Der Beitrag betrachtet Art und Umfang dieser Rezeption und ihre Funktion in Bezug auf die Bedeutung der Entwicklungen in anderen europäischen Ländern für den Chartismus. Dabei stellt sich u.a. die Frage, welchen Vorbildcharakter eine bürgerlich-nationale Revolution für eine politische Emanzipierungsbewegung unter Industriearbeitern haben kann.
Gisela Shaw (UWE, Bristol)
Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741-1796) als Wegbereiter der Frauenbewegung in Deutschland - 'Lachender Philosoph' oder 'Prophet'?
Die von der Französischen Revolution ausgelösten ersten öffentlichen Forderungen nach gleichen Rechten für die Frau in einer aufgeklärten Demokratie erhoben sich in Frankreich mit Appellen des Marquis de Condorcet und der Olympe de Gouges und fanden innerhalb eines Jahres je ein Echo in England und Deutschland (Mary Wollstonecraft bzw. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel). Diese Stimmen verhallten zu ihrer Zeit mehr oder weniger ungehört oder doch zumindest wirkungslos und gerieten dann für lange Zeit in Vergessenheit. In Hippels Falle dauerte es ein Jahrhundert, bis seine Botschaft über die natürliche Gleichwertigkeit der Geschlechter - im Kontext der frühen deutschen Frauenbewegung und ihres Kampfes gegen das geplante Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch - auf ernsthaftes Interesse stieß. Dieser Beitrag erörtert Wesen und Rezeption des Schlüsselwerks in diesem Zusammenhang (Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Frauen, 1792) im Lichte der rhetorischen Fertig- und Eitelkeiten des Autors, der im Hauptberuf Jurist und hoher preußischer Staatsbeamter war. Unentschieden bleibt, ob es sich (um eine Unterscheidung der Frauenrechtlerinnen Helene Lang und Gertrud Bäumer aufzugreifen) bei diesem Wegbereiter der deutschen Frauenbewegung um nichts als einen 'lachenden Philosophen' oder aber um einen wahren 'Propheten' handelte.
Markus Oliver Spitz (University of Exeter)
'Der Wortlaut der Erinnerung'. Vom Umgang mit Vergangenheit in Christoph Ransmayrs Roman Morbus Kitahara
Christoph Ransmayr, Jahrgang 1954, gilt als einer der "wichtigsten deutschsprachigen Schriftsteller der Gegenwart" (Uwe Wittstock), noch dazu als einer der wenigen, welche national wie international rezipiert werden. In seinem letzten Roman, Morbus Kitahara (1995), entwirft Ransmayr einen erzählten Raum, nämlich das Dorf Moor, dessen Männer einen verbrecherischen Krieg begonnen und verloren haben. Als Ergebnis des "Friedens von Oranienburg" wird das Dorf be- und einer repressiven Besatzungspolitik ausgesetzt.
Unschwer lassen sich aus dem oben Dargestellten und vielen anderen Hinweisen Parallelen zur Historie Österreichs und Deutschlands ziehen. In diesem Zusammenhang interessiere ich mich für den Komplex Erinnern, Vergessen und Verdrängen: Wie bemühen sich die Besatzer um das Wachhalten des "Wortlautes der Erinnerung"? Warum scheitern sie mit ihrem Konzept? Und schließlich: Welche Alternativen bieten sich an? Daß derartigen Fragen auch und insbesondere in Deutschland ein großes Gewicht zugemessen werden muß, steht außer Frage, verwiesen sei hier lediglich auf die Diskussion um das Holocaust-Mahnmal.
Fiona Strath (University of Kent at Canterbury)
The Thomas and Klaus Mann Writing Family
My presentation gives a view of Thomas Mann and his son Klaus Mann as a writing family. What were their attitudes towards one another? Why are there figures in Thomas's writings which bear a strong similarity to Klaus, and vice versa? What did it mean for Klaus Mann the writer to be the son of Thomas Mann?
Susan Tebbutt (University of Bradford)
Dark Strangers: The Role of Skin Colour in Images of the Gypsy in Twentieth-Century Art
At the end of the twentieth century there was a growing awareness in German studies of the importance of analysing the roots of discrimination. Elsewhere, critics such as Dyer, in White (Routledge 1997), or hooks, in black looks (Turnaround 1992), have explored the representation of whiteness and blackness. Yet the Gypsies are neither unambiguously black nor unambiguously white, and researchers have tended to draw parallels with the fate of the Jews (Wippermann 1997) rather than with that of black people.
In the first half of the paper I compare and contrast Gadzo (non-Gypsy) representations of Gypsies by Dame Laura Knight, and by German Expressionists Otto Müller and Otto Pankok. Whereas Knight's and Müller's images - with their exoticised, orientalised, swarthy-skinned beauties and sallow males reminiscent of the work of Gauguin, renowned for his interest in the 'other', the non-European - may be perceived as discriminatory, Pankok's images of Gypsies focus more on the individual and his or her idiosyncrasies.
In the second half of the paper I look at the individuals at the centre of the art of Austrian Romanies Karl and Ceija Stojka and the Romani schoolchildren of Jarovnice in Slovakia. I argue that the strong vibrant colours of the paintings draw the gaze of the viewer away from the skin colour towards the person as a whole human being.
Just as there are many shades between black and white, so there are many shades in the portrayal of dark strangers, of Gypsies. An analysis of the role of darkness in images of Gypsies in twentieth-century art may help to illuminate the issue.
Jean-Marc Trouille (University of Bradford)
The Intercultural Dimension in Franco-German Mega-Mergers
The last three years have witnessed an astonishing increase in new supranational European ventures involving major German and French companies with a long-standing history of industrial co-operation. As a European answer to globalising trends, the strategic logic of European mega-mergers has led to the emergence of new global players to be reckoned with, such as EADS in aeronautics, defence and space, Aventis in the pharmaceutical industry, and the alliance between Siemens-KWU and Framatome in the nuclear energy sector.
In view of these major developments, a number of questions inevitably beg answers. What happens when German and French businesses merge not only their activities, production, capital, know-how, market shares, laboratories, research units, but also their staff? What are the intercultural conflicts that German and French employees and managers encounter in the workplace, when it comes to sharing knowledge or offices, attending meetings or making decisions together? How do German and French employees, technicians or managers work together despite sometimes quite striking differences in their mentalities, in their respective business cultures, national traditions and education systems, in their ways of tackling problems, and in the way their élites are trained? In other words, what are the problems raised by biculturalism and intercultural management, and how is the human factor dealt with in the new ventures? How do different business cultures merge? Will this lead towards a new Franco-German or European business culture distinct from the Anglo-Saxon one?
Andrew Webber (Churchill College, Cambridge)
The Manipulation of Fantasy and Trauma in Orlacs Hände
This paper focuses on a dominant trend in early German film: experimentation in the production or reproduction of the body, which, in Orlacs Hände (Robert Wiene, 1924), takes the particular form of a transplantation fantasy. This film activates what can be called the primal fantasy of early film, the sort of animation of the dead which also features in Nosferatu, Metropolis and Caligari. My argument is that the technological manipulation of the body into new life creates 'paratechnological' effects of the uncanny: altered identity, disruption of home-life, post-traumatic disorder and sexual dysfunction. Orlacs Hände participates in a familiar range of uncanny fantasies from the 'haunted screen' of the early German cinema: the fantasy of a pathological double, the parade of master criminals evading detection, the projection of technological power haunted by Gothic dystopian catastrophe, and the domestic model of sexual relations succumbing to the perverse allure of monstrosity.
My intention is to approach the film through psychoanalysis, incorporating aspects of trauma theory. Close reading of key sections of the film will focus on the representation of the body as hystericised and on the function of lighting as a technology of trauma. My conclusion is that, notwithstanding its apparent happy resolution, the film fails to contain the traumatic fantasy which it has put on release.