Henderson Hall, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Monday 2 - Wednesday 4 September 2002
PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME AND ABSTRACTS
As at 23 August 2002
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.
16.45-18.00: Seminar Groups:
A
19.00: Dinner
20.30: Opening Business:
9.00-10.15: Seminar Groups:
A
10.45-11.30: Reports from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Swiss Embassy
11.30-1.00: Main Business Meeting
13.00: Lunch
14.00-15.15: Seminar Groups:
A
15.45-17.00: Seminar Groups:
A
A
20.00: Plenary Lecture:
9.00-10.15: Seminar Groups:
A
10.45-11.45: The President's Guest
13.00: Lunch
14.00-15.30: Seminar Group:
C
Jessica Amann (University of Nottingham)
The Politics of the Fantastic: Dialectics and Subversion in Wolfgang Hilbig's 'Ich'
This paper will investigate the potential inherent in the literary Fantastic for political satire and subversion. I shall explore this through a reading of Hilbig's post-Wende novel 'Ich', which, I shall suggest, uses formal and thematic aspects of the Fantastic to disrupt an ideology of instrumental rationality and unsettle the binary oppositions of reason and irrationality which have been constructed by the State.
As theorists have argued (Todorov, Jackson, Brooke-Rose et al.), the Fantastic both engages with empirical reality and rejects the imperative to restrict narrative to representation of the concrete empirical world. Since it rests on unresolved narrative hesitations, conflicts and tensions, the Fantastic mode allows contradictions to be explored without demanding a final narrative synthesis. It therefore constitutes a genre which is open-ended, and whose limits are blurred. This flexibility of the Fantastic can avoid the reassertion of binary oppositions, and instead can bring ostensibly opposing forces into continuing dialogue with each other. As a result, it does not simply give a view of opposing cultural forces but actively undermines the validity, stability and coherence of the status quo.
Turning to Hilbig's 'Ich', I shall show that the form and recurring themes of the literary Fantastic allow a subversion of state ideology, and more particularly, an ideology of instrumental reason. I shall draw on Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialektik der Aufklärung to elucidate from the novel the ways in which a commitment to reason resulted, in the East German context, in an irrational system of oppression and intimidation. I shall then demonstrate how the Fantastic, with its ability to tolerate and maintain dialectical modes of thinking, both exposes and subverts this ideology.
Alec Badenoch (University of Southampton)
More Helau than Hummel-Hummel? Cultural Landscapes in the Programme of the NWDR Cologne, 1945-1955
The Bundesland of North-Rhine Westphalia created by the British in 1946 was historically unique in all respects save one: it had been essentially the broadcast area of the radio station in Cologne until the beginning of the War. Ironically, after the War this area fell under the remit of the Northwest German Broadcasting Company (NWDR), which served the whole of the British Occupation Zone, and Cologne was de facto a secondary station to the main station in Hamburg. This paper examines the way the programmes of the NWDR, particularly those produced in Cologne, reproduced these new broadcast and political spaces in western Germany in terms of cultural landscape. In particular, it examines when and how notions such as 'Western', 'Rhinish', 'Westphalian' and even 'German' were employed and defined in the everyday radio programme.
Holger Briel (University of Surrey)
Mediated Communities in Germany: The Case of Public Access Television
In the early 1980s, due to a shift in politics, Germany began to liberalise its TV markets. This allowed for commercial TV to broadcast in Germany for the first time. While the legislature approved these new undertakings, it provided for safeguards and new chances for the consumers as well. Thus, laws were introduced to guarantee access to Free TV, as it came to be called, via satellite, cable and terrestrial antennae.
Today, one can receive over 40 free TV channels within the German broadcasting sphere. However, the law went even further: it provided for so-called open channels, Offene Kanäle, which allowed citizens to produce their own, mostly local, TV. This initiative was a great success: by now, there are 74 Offene Kanäle in Germany.
My paper will chart the rise of these channels and look at one channel in particular, ROK-TV, analysing its programming structure and Selbstverständnis.
Jerome Carroll (University of Nottingham)
Sensory Withdrawal and Sensory Excess: Wolfgang Welsch's Aesthetic Theory and the Dramatic Practice of Peter Handke and Heiner Müller
In this paper I will discuss the ways in which sensory excess and the arrest of the sensory have been conceived in art theory and deployed in art practice as a meditation on the question of representability. The impetus for this paper is given by the theoretical formulations of Wolfgang Welsch, the contemporary German philosopher and aesthetic theorist, who conceives of the anaesthetic, defined as art which deploys an arrest of sensory perception, as a respite from an aestheticised world. This diagnosis of the world as aestheticised rests on Welsch's identification of phenomena such as a predominance of beautification, of veneer, and of sensory excess. It should be contextualised in terms of Welsch's parallel project of revising aesthetics as a study of the sensory.
I will begin by summarising the strengths and weaknesses of his more or less minimalist theory of art. The strengths are that it provides a theoretical commentary for what seems to be a sustained preoccupation with the imperceptible and aesthetic reduction since the 1950s, whether this is in Cage's music, Beckett's drama or the fine art of people like John Baldessari, whose 'no ideas have entered this work' (1966) comprises a 'blank' canvas on which is written 'EVERYTHING IS PURGED FROM THIS PAINTING BUT ART, NO IDEAS HAVE ENTERED THIS WORK.' The weaknesses of Welsch's formulations turn on the inherent conceptuality of art which is anaesthetic, rather than any purely sensory mode of functioning. This is borne out by the concomitant slippage in Welsch's formulations from questions of sensation to the more complex issues of authenticity beyond the fictionality of the aestheticised, and of representation. The instance of art as obstructed perception which I will take as my model is the dramatic work of Peter Handke, in particular the short piece Das Mündel will Vormund sein (1969). I will demonstrate that this piece is also a meditation on illusionist representation and the authenticity of on-stage activity.
This claim to authenticity that Handke's drama makes will be the starting point of the second half of my paper. Here I will ask whether, rather than this alleged freezing of the sensory, a challenge to illusionist representation does not equally inhere in art which deploys an excess of the sensory. This also coincides with Welsch's reconceptualisation of the aesthetic as sensory. The works of art which will feature in this second section will be plays by Heiner Müller, such as Anatomie Titus Fall of Rome and Macbeth, in which physical excess is treated not simply thematically, in the form of violence as a vitalistic historical life-force, but formally as somehow real and effective as a means of facing the audience with an 'Überschwemmung' of references and textual levels. Moreover, I will ask whether this kind of art might not be understood to offer a different kind of resistance to aspects of the phenomena which Welsch identifies under the concept of aestheticisation, namely veneer and beautification.
Elizabeth Catling (University of Exeter)
The Restructuring of the Brandenburg Theatre Landscape After 1990
This paper will contribute to the ongoing assessment of cultural institutions in the united Germany by focusing on funded theatre in the Bundesland of Brandenburg. While the major Berlin stages have received considerable media and critical attention since 1990, the changes and processes accompanying unification brought far-reaching consequences for theatre life in the new Länder. This paper outlines the measures undertaken to secure the futures of the six state-funded playhouses in Land Brandenburg, located in Potsdam, Senftenberg, Schwedt, Frankfurt (Oder), Cottbus and Brandenburg. After unification, more cost-effective modes of operation were sought in response to the demands of the new cultural climate. The restructuring of Brandenburg's theatre landscape has been achieved by means of mergers and part-closures, as well as a reduction in staffing levels. There has also been a trend towards promoting arts centre buildings that feature regular theatre productions.
The case of the Hans-Otto-Theater Potsdam will be introduced, and the consequences of its proximity to Berlin discussed in the context of cultural planning. The controversy surrounding the new theatre building for Potsdam - a project started in GDR times and, to date, not fully realised - gives insights into the friction between town planners, politicians, the wishes of the local community and the artists themselves against the backdrop of unification.
Hadaya Chisholm-El Saad (University of Exeter)
Male Creativity and Female Death in Nineteenth-Century Narrative Prose
This is a strictly text-based paper, which will examine the link between the death of the central female figure and the male protagonist/narrator's creative progress in three exemplary nineteenth-century German narrative texts. The works discussed include Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Gottfried Keller's Der grüne Heinrich and Theodor Storm's Auf dem Staatshof. The novels written in the earlier half of the nineteenth century would fall into the group of the Bildungsroman, where the often very long wasting process of the woman and her subsequent, highly aestheticised death and funeral are exhausted in their intellectual and aesthetic potential by the male artists featuring in the texts. The woman's death is the ultimate stepping-stone in the progress of the artist, who has been continuously feeding his creativity off the wasting heroine. Towards the latter half of the century, as exemplified by Storm's realist novella Auf dem Staatshof, the link between male creativity and female death becomes far subtler. Here, the text defines itself as art and the novella owes its very existence to the death of the central female. Though the wasting of a young and beautiful woman's life is portrayed as a tragic, inevitable event in all the texts, the narrator or male protagonist shows an awareness of the fact that his artistic progress is reliant on the disappearance of the female without, however, destroying this destructive mechanism. The unavoidability of the woman's death can often be observed from her first appearance in the text, and the logical direction of the narrative seems to be to transform her into a dead muse.
David Clarke (The Nottingham Trent University)
Narration and Subjectivity in Reinhard Jirgl's Abschied von den Feinden
The novelist Reinhard Jirgl maintains a unique and uncompromising position amongst the authors of the former GDR. Despite being active as a writer since the mid-1970s, Jirgl remained unpublished before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet, when his novel MutterVaterRoman was taken up by Gerhard Wolf's 'Außer der Reihe' series at Aufbau-Verlag in 1990, it was swiftly followed by six major texts in the space of ten years, including his most well-known works Abschied von den Feinden (1995) and its sequel Hundsnächte (1997). Jirgl's influences are clearly located in the European modernist avant-garde, and he makes frequent reference to his personal pantheon, including Benn, Artaud, Beckett and Kafka. Far from any post-modern 'Wiederkehr des Erzählens' or even a 'neue Lesbarkeit', Jirgl's texts are highly fragmentary and almost frustratingly complex, demanding careful and repeated reading. Frequently over-laden with metaphor and symbolism, they have yet to attract the critical attention which they would seem to demand.
In this paper, I will examine one of Jirgl's central themes, namely the relationship between the subject and power. Jirgl's major theoretical influence in this respect is Michel Foucault, yet his novel Abschied von den Feinden is perhaps best understood in the light of the psychoanalytic literary theory of Julia Kristeva. I will argue that Jirgl's novel conforms to Kristeva's conception of avant-garde 'text' in portraying subjects who cannot escape subjugation to power, since their subjectivity is fundamentally formed by that power, but who negotiate between the socio-symbolic order and the subversive pre-Oedipal realm of the 'semiotic' described by Kristeva. This subversion, which involves a blurring of the boundaries of the subject and its body, is expressed in Jirgl's text by a persistent calling into question of the distinctness of the narrating subjects who appear in the text and by their eventual retreat into fictional spaces where they hover between subjectivity and its dissolution, between life and death.
Horst Claus (University of the West of England, Bristol)
Culture, Commerce, Continuity: Hans Steinhoff's Mittelfilm Production of Angst (1928) in Context
This paper (a) analyses the production context of the first screen version of Stefan Zweig's famous short story and its transformation into a product for the mass market, and (b) argues that the motives for making it were similar to those behind Ufa's Hitlerjunge Quex, which gave rise to Hans Steinhoff's reputation as one of the leading German film directors supporting the NS-regime. (Angst is one of five silent films by Hans Steinhoff I am currently restoring in collaboration with the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.)
Helmut Daller (University of the West of England, Bristol)
This Foreign Homeland: Mennonite Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Germany
The focus of this paper is on the social and linguistic integration of Mennonite immigrants from Russia into modern German society. (West) German society has been shaped by several waves of immigration in the second half of the last century. In the last two decades, more than 2 million ethnic Germans immigrated from the former Soviet Union. Among these immigrants were about 150,000 Mennonites, a very close-knit, dissenting Protestant group of ethnic Germans who have managed to preserve their social, religious and linguistic identity in Russia for more than 200 years. In the 1980s and 90s almost all members of this group decided to head for their original (now foreign) homeland and settled in Germany. The present study is based on in-depth interviews carried out in two main settlement areas in Germany (Neuwied and Bielefeld) and 80 questionnaires from the same group. The study shows that there are two tendencies at the same time: adaptation to the new environment and isolation from it. The language that was closely linked to the group identity in Russia (Plautdiitsch, a Low German variety) comes under pressure after immigration to Germany. A dramatic shift towards Standard German takes place, especially among the younger members of the group. On the other hand there are tendencies in the group to isolate themselves. The Protestant work ethic of the group, their community spirit and their deliberate decision to settle as a group in relative isolation from German society has allowed the Mennonite immigrants to prosper economically. These success strategies lead, however, to conflicts with the mainstream environment. The main research question of the study is whether the Mennonites from Russia can preserve their religious and social identity or whether they will (have to) adapt to a large extent to the new environment, and whether German society is multicultural in the sense that different groups can successfully preserve their identities.
Osman Durrani (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Provincial Idyll or German Misery? Painted Landscapes of the Nineteenth Century
This illustrated talk will examine a succession of approaches to the concept of a German 'Heimat', concentrating on painters from Romanticism to Naturalism. The underlying task will be to compare and evaluate individual perspectives on the geographic and social data contained in some of the most famous canvases of the period. A transition will be noted from the monumental and emblematic approach of Caspar David Friedrich and Karl Friedrich Schinkel to the private myths of Moritz von Schwind and the backstreet vignettes of Carl Spitzweg. The works of the Biedermeier period have been seen as harmlessly decorative, as vignettes and cartoons, yet the repetition of certain telling motifs hints at a deeper significance. The world they portray is frequently idyllic and flawed at the same time. The movement towards Realism, when it comes, will invite consideration of Adolph Menzel and Anton von Werner as chroniclers of the immediate present. To what extent did their works celebrate the German landscape, and to what extent did they use their art to comment critically on a rapidly changing cultural environment?
Background Reading:
Carolin Duttlinger (St John's College, Cambridge)
Genealogies of Vision: Photography and Visual Modernity in Franz Kafka's Der Verschollene
In this paper I explore the ways in which the concept of 'genealogy' mediates between two central themes of Kafka's Der Verschollene: firstly, the relationship between the individual and his familial origins, and secondly, the field of visual perception, both of which are intricately related to one of the text's primary oppositions: that between tradition (Europe) and modernity (America).
One example which illustrates the intersection of the themes of genealogy and vision is the photograph of Karl's parents, probably the most widely known example of photography in Kafka's work. Although photography is elsewhere in Kafka's work associated with visual modernity, the picture of Karl's parents is closely associated with notions of origin, 'Heimat', and belonging, and provokes in Karl a contemplative stance of viewing. However, although the protagonist repeatedly emphasises its unique and irreplaceable character, the photograph soon gets lost and is then replaced by a number of anonymous portraits which Karl finds in a hotel room. A similar process of substitution can be discerned within the narrative itself, when the Oedipal conflict between Karl and his parents, which the photograph depicts in an almost stereotypical manner, subsequently recurs in a series of other scenarios which repeat the initial pattern of accusation and punishment. It seems, therefore, that both the photograph's content and its reproducibility emblematise the novel's series of Oedipal conflicts.
Another example for the interrelation between 'traditional' and 'modern' forms of visuality is the mechanical desk which Karl finds in his uncle's house and whose external transformation, effected by the turning of a handle, is reminiscent of a cinema apparatus. Despite its advanced technological character, however, the desk reminds Karl of a nativity scene which he saw as a child in his hometown. The 'unklare Verbindung' which Karl discerns between the two seemingly opposite phenomena shows that the themes of technical progress and visual modernity in Kafka's work cannot be reduced to a clear-cut opposition between old and new, the technical and the traditional; instead, they are subject to a more complex framework of genealogies, associations and unconscious desires.
Carol Fehringer (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)
Dealing with Irregularity in Modern German Dialects
This paper deals with the fundamental question of the status of morphologically complex forms within a speaker's mental lexicon, namely whether inflectional categories, such as e.g. noun plurals and adjective comparatives, and derivational ones, such as e.g. deadjectival nouns, are produced by means of a grammatical rule or are stored as whole words. The traditional generative notion of a rule-based grammar is shown to be problematic when dealing with languages and dialects which contain a high degree of irregularity, as is the case with a wide variety of modern High and Low German dialects. These are particularly interest-ing, as the irregular forms in question cannot merely be written off as historical relics but have been introduced due to analogical change over the past two centuries. On the basis of these findings, a generative rule-based approach is rejected in favour of a word-based storage approach, and it is argued that speakers are able to deal with a high degree of irregularity by employing certain strategies to connect particular groups of related words, thus lightening the cognitive load.
Dirk Göttsche (University of Nottingham)
Kolonialismus aus postkolonialer Sicht - Interkulturelle Rekonstruktionen im neuen historischen Afrika-Roman
Ganz gegen seine Marginalisierung in den politischen und ökonomischen Prozessen der Globalisierung ist Afrika in der deutschsprachigen Literatur in den letzten 15 Jahren geradezu zu einem Schwerpunkt der Darstellung und Reflexion interkultureller Erfahrung geworden - von der exotistischen Fortschreibung tradierter Klischees über Afrika als Raum der Abenteuer und des Ursprünglichen bis zu ästhetisch und diskursiv komplexen Auseinandersetzungen mit der sozialen Realität des postkolonialen Afrika und den Erfahrungen Afrikas mit und in Deutschland/Europa. In diesen Kontext gehört auch ein neues Interesse für die (auch, aber nicht nur deutsche) Kolonialgeschichte als gewaltsamen Eingriff in die Geschichte Afrikas und historische Grundlage heutiger globaler neokolonialer Strukturen und vermeintlich ,ethnischer' Konflikt. Eine solche Relektüre des Kolonialismus aus postkolonialer Sicht, die Afrika und Europa als Teile einer gemeinsamen Geschichte sieht und sich zugleich (gegen Klischees wie das der Geschichtslosigkeit Afrikas und seiner rassisch verstandenen Einheit) für die eigene Geschichte des Kontinents und die Entwicklung seiner Kulturen in ihrer Vielfalt interessiert, leisten insbesondere die Romane Morenga (1985) von Uwe Timm, Munzinger Pascha (1997) von Alex Capus, Auf dem Strom (1998) von Hermann Schulz und Die Stadt unter den Steinen (2000) von Jens Johannes Kramer, weniger streng historisch auch Die Erstgeborenen (1991) von Giselher W. Hoffmann, während z.B. Kai Meyer in Göttin der Wüste (1999) Abenteuer-Klischees in mythisierender Phantastik fortschreibt.
Das Referat wird die Darstellung deutscher und europäischer Kolonialgeschichte in Afrika sowie die Darstellung afrikanischer Kultur und Geschichte im Medium des deutschen historischen Afrika-Romans untersuchen, und zwar auf der Folie des übergreifenden Afrika-Diskurses im deutschen Gegenwartsroman. Der Beitrag ist ein vergrößernder Ausschnitt aus meinem breiter angelegten, mehr überblickshaften Aufsatz "Zwischen Exotismus und Postkolonialismus. Der Afrika-Diskurs in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur", der im Herbst in dem von mir und Moustapha Diallo hrsg. Band Interkulturelle Texturen: Essays zur afrikanischen und deutschsprachigen Literatur bei Aisthesis erscheint.
Elystan Griffiths (University of Birmingham)
Friedrich Spielhagen and German Unification
This paper will consider the representation of the German question in selected novels by Friedrich Spielhagen from the period 1864-1886. Whilst supportive of national unification, Spielhagen was critical of the development of German society after 1871, which he sees as having become more fractured, rather than more unified, since the Reichsgründung. Spielhagen's response is framed with explicit reference to ongoing debates on realism in Germany. On the political level, Spielhagen argues for small-scale practical action over engagement in ideologically driven high politics, which are increasingly controlled by a narrow social elite. Spielhagen's support for a new realism in social action is reflected in his call for a more radical representation of social reality in literature, which, by pointing up divisions in the Reich, will become capable of acting as a focal point for the isolated oppositional forces within an increasingly authoritarian society. I argue, therefore, that German unification plays a central role in changing Spielhagen's understanding of his art and its relationship to social reality, though the effect of this new direction on his literary practice is profoundly limited.
Birgit Haas (University of Bristol)
German Political Drama, 1990-2000: Between Crisis and Creativity
This paper will look at different forms of political drama of the last decade, encompassing the complex reactions to the 'gentle revolution' in 1989, as well as terrorism, right-wing radicalism and feminism, to name but a few. The analysis also discusses continuities and changes in German political drama, with respect to both form and content. Drawing on examples from Volker Braun to Rainald Goetz, from Albert Ostermaier to Oliver Czeslik, the paper gives an outline of the exciting developments within the field of political drama. Yet the paper will also ask whether highly subsidised German drama is really able to function as a fruitful running commentary on political events, even a criticism of them, or whether it is instead futile navel-gazing. Thus the paper hopes to provide a more general, yet detailed analysis of the currents and cross-currents in contemporary German political drama.
Peter James (Northumbria University)
The Role and Relevance of the German Electoral System
This paper looks at the different types of electoral system used during past German political regimes. The paper examines how the post-War electoral system emerged as a key part of West Germany's new polity. The role and function of the German electoral system and its influence between 1949 and the present day are explored, including a closer look at the significance of electoral and coalition politics in the September 2002 federal election.
Sylwia Jaworska (Aston University, Birmingham)
Zur derzeitigen Situation der Auslandsgermanistik - Ein Vergleich zwischen dem britischen Modell der German Studies und der polnischen Germanistik
Die Auslandsgermanistik umfaßt heutzutage eine Vielzahl von Studienprofilen, Inhalten und Methoden, die sich aus den entsprechenden politischen, gesellschaftlichen und regional bedingten Umständen herausgebildet haben und sich weiterhin dynamisch entwickeln. Nichtsdestoweniger kann eine die Differenzen und Ähnlichkeiten hervorhebende Untersuchung interessante Einsichten vermitteln.
In diesem Beitrag werden zwei Modelle der Auslandsgermanistik analysiert und verglichen. Dabei wird in erster Linie auf die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in beiden Ländern eingegangen, wobei die Situation im primären und sekundären Schulbereich explizit dargelegt wird. Des weiteren werden Probleme, Inhalte und Methoden der britischen German Studies und der polnischen Germanistik unter die Lupe genommen und auf ihr Spezifikum hin analysiert. Abschließend werden die daraus resultierenden neuen Herausforderungen und Perspektiven noch einmal kurz aufgezeigt.
Mechthild M. Matheja-Theaker (University of the West of England, Bristol)
'Reiches Deutschland - Arme Kinder?' The Effects of Poverty and Deprivation on Children and Young People
Since the Tenth Youth Report was published by the German government in 1998, a much broader section of society has become aware of the uncomfortably high level of poverty amongst children and young people in Germany. The report, which Claudia Nolte (at that time 'Ministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend' for the Kohl government) had been trying to block since May of that year, was leaked a mere fortnight before the general election and some believe that it dealt the deathblow to Christian Democrat rule. Since then, the Schröder government has published Lebenslagen in Deutschland - Der erste Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung (2001) and we are currently awaiting the Eleventh Youth Report. From the figures in the public domain thus far one can hazard a guess that during the last four years little or nothing has improved.
As unemployment figures increase year on year and the number of people receiving social assistance creeps up, more and more people slip towards and below the poverty line. Amongst those affected, the number of single mothers, large families and people belonging to the lower social and educational strata are disproportionately high. Children and young people are also increasingly affected. Statistical data show that many of them are destined to suffer long-term unemployment and the problems this brings.
Material crises are often the trigger, but they are by no means the only dimension of a life in poverty. Poverty reaches deep and goes hand in hand with extensive disadvantages in areas such as housing, health, education and the ability to participate in society. Those afflicted are - to adopt EU terminology - socially excluded.
During his election campaign in 1998 Schröder promised 100,000 more jobs for young people and a training programme, but these have not materialised. The government's initiative 'JUMP' (Jugend mit Perspektive) has cost billions but the number of unemployed young people under 25 has not gone down. The instructors working on this scheme report that frequently their first task is to sort out their students' most pressing problems like homelessness and substantial debt. Only once these are dealt with can they begin to look for individual talents and abilities and to find appropriate career choices. 'Die Teilnehmer haben häufig so viele Negativerlebnisse hinter sich, dass sie sich kaum noch vorstellen können, dass sie irgendwas gut können.' (Spiegel-online, 15.02.2002).
This paper will take a closer look at the effects a life in relative poverty has on children and young people by looking at a variety of statistical data as a starting point, but then also by exploring the human cost on a political, sociological and psychological level.
Falco Pfalzgraf (University of Manchester)
Auffassungen von Laien zum Gebrauch von Anglizismen im Deutschen
Die Anglizismenkritik in Deutschland hat seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre stark zugenommen. Erstmals seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg fordern hochrangige deutsche Politiker ein Sprachschutzgesetz. Mitgliederstarke Sprachschutzvereine haben sich etabliert, und Einzelpersonen engagieren sich ganz individuell gegen den Gebrauch von Fremdwörtern; gemeint sind hier vor allem Anglizismen. Das Internet eröffnet dabei völlig neue Möglichkeiten: Ohne jegliche redaktionelle oder sonstige professionelle Vor- oder Nachbearbeitung kann jeder die eigene Homepage nutzen, um weltweit seine Standpunkte zu verbreiten.
Diese Freiheit nutzen auch viele Fremdwortkritiker, und offensichtlich investieren sie dabei teilweise viel Zeit und Geld in den Aufbau ihrer Webseiten. Diese Personen sind nicht linguistisch ausgebildet, sondern scheinen sich vielmehr als Sprachliebhaber und Kulturpatrioten zu verstehen. Welches Bild haben diese Laien vom System Sprache, und in wieweit ist dieses sprachwissenschaftlich vertretbar? Was sind die Motive dieser Anglizismenkritiker, welche ihre Ziele, und wie hoffen sie diese zu erreichen? Kann hierbei vom Aufkommen eines Neopurismus gesprochen werden? Anhand dieser und anderer Fragestellungen sollen einige beispielhaft ausgewählte Internetseiten analysiert werden.
Evelyn Preuss (Yale University)
A Curve in the Party Line: Naked Among Wolves, or How the GDR Became Antifascist
Naked Among Wolves (1963: directed by Frank Beyer; based on the novel Naked Among Wolves by Bruno Apitz) was one of the most influential films produced by the East German state-owned film monopoly DEFA. The regime's endorsement of the film included regular screenings of the film on the annually celebrated Day of Liberation, screenings for schoolchildren as part of their curriculum and a much-noted re-release of the film in 1975. However, upon closer analysis the film does not quite fit the regime's agenda. Based on actual events at the Buchenwald concentration camp in the spring of 1945, the narrative relates two central elements: the rescue of a child from execution and the prisoners' liberation of the camp under communist leadership. Initially, these two elements represent a conflict. The communist leadership insists on sacrificing the child to avoid jeopardising self-liberation, while several prisoners are intent on saving the child. Bending the party line, the opposition to the communist leadership eventually succeeds. As the child is revealed as the humanist legitimation of the antifascist struggle and becomes the token of a future beyond fascism, the party itself seeks to re-appropriate it.
In my paper, I will show that the provocation inherent in this plot related to the current policies of the East German regime and was well registered by its authorities. In fact, the production history of Naked Among Wolves reiterates the curve in the party line of its plot. Reflecting the criticism the Association of those Persecuted under the Nazi Regime (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes, abbr. VVN) had started to level against the GDR's leadership, the material was initially rejected by DEFA, and Apitz, a member of the VVN, was fired from the film company.
However, seen by the West as a continuation of the Nazi regime, the GDR could not do without antifascist legitimation. For the inauguration of the National Memorial at Buchenwald in 1958, Apitz received the permission to publish his material as a novel - which turned into an instantaneous international hit. At the time, it was the GDR's first and only cultural success with an international audience. Eager to gain mileage on its course to international recognition, the GDR government commissioned DEFA to produce a film on the basis of the material it had originally rejected. Through the regime's promotion, the film soon became synonymous with the regime's antifascist doctrine.
Ultimately, my paper shows that the most effective censorship technique of the East German regime did not consist in banning a work of art outright, but instead in promoting it. Once it became part of the regime's ritualistic self-affirmation, it was more or less safely integrated into the party line.
Gertrud Reershemius (Aston University, Birmingham)
Die Verbklammer im Jiddischen und im Deutschen
Zu den auffälligeren Unterschieden zwischen den nah verwandten Sprachen Jiddisch und (Standard)Deutsch gehört im Bereich der Wortstellung der unterschiedliche Gebrauch von Satzklammern. Im Deutschen ist die vollständige Satzklammer üblich, Ausklammerung gilt als ein stilistisches Mittel, etwa der Lyrik. Im Jiddischen ist die Verbklammer zwar möglich, ihr Fehlen ist jedoch die gebräuchlichere Variante.
Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Entstehung der Vollklammer im Deutschen und fragt nach den Gründen für die im Jiddischen anders verlaufene Entwicklung.
Ingrid Rissom (TestDaF-Institut Hagen)
TestDaF - Der neue Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Prinzipien und Ziele
Wer in Deutschland studieren möchte, muss ausreichende Sprachkenntnisse nachweisen, um zu einem Fachstudium zugelassen zu werden. Dieser Nachweis kann durch die neue standardisierte Prüfung TestDaF erbracht werden. TestDaF wird weltweit zu festgelegten Terminen durchgeführt und zentral im TestDaF-Institut in Hagen korrigiert. Es handelt sich um eine Prüfung auf fortgeschrittenem Niveau, die die Sprachverwendung in hochschulbezogenen Kontexten zum Inhalt hat. TestDaF misst den sprachlichen Leistungsstand. Die vier Fertigkeiten Leseverstehen, Hörverstehen, Schriftlicher Ausdruck und Mündlicher Ausdruck werden getrennt geprüft, um ein differenziertes sprachliches Leistungsprofil der Studienbewerber/innen festzustellen.
Weitere Informationen sowie einen Mustertest unter http://www.testdaf.de/
Lucia Ruprecht (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge)
Heinrich Heine's Florentinische Nächte: A Tale of Transgression
Compared to most of his other works, Heinrich Heine's novella Florentinische Nächte (1836) has received little attention in scholarship. Written during the aftermath of the rigorous censorship placed upon Heine's writings in the 1830s, it presents itself as a harmless, light-hearted piece on love, art and the Paris salons. However, my reading of Florentinische Nächte tries to show that the text refers in intricate ways to the economy of restriction/overstepping with which Heine was confronted.
In order to illustrate my argument, I will focus on the dance scenes of the text. Dance becomes the site where several transgressive experiences are negotiated: the taking over of the dancer's unconscious, the defiance of discursive language by physical enactment, and the overstepping of the aesthetic code of proper dance movement. These instances of transgression talk of a vulnerability that is inextricably linked to moments of creativity. They lead back to a self-reflection of literary writing, elucidating how transgression - as liminal experience and experience of limits - becomes constitutive for Heine's work.
Anna Saunders (University of Bristol)
'Wenn es so wäre wie im Geschichtsbuch': The Historical Consciousness of East Germany's Youth Before and After Unification
History was one of the most ideologically weighted subjects on the school curriculum of the GDR. As a combination of Marxist-Leninist theory, antifascist heroism and national exaltation, lessons aimed to create class-conscious pupils devoted to the national cause and faithful in their defence of the GDR. By the 1980s the emphasis was clearly on 'progressive' national history in the attempt to further promote a GDR identity amongst the young generation and thus secure the future of the socialist state. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, this national curriculum was fast abandoned, and not only did the history of the western world gain prominence, but the GDR's historical credentials were radically revised. From one month to the next, young people were presented with a fundamentally different view of history.
Using materials from regional and national GDR archives together with interviews with today's youth, this paper will explore the evolution of historical consciousness amongst the young generation in east Germany over the past two decades. It will examine firstly the extent to which young people in the 1980s rejected the official historical propaganda of the party, and secondly the ways in which the GDR legacy has influenced their attitudes towards national history today. The results of this analysis will reveal the importance of history education and historical consciousness in both the downfall of the GDR and present-day phenomena such as youth extremism, Ostalgie and east-west tensions.
Markus Oliver Spitz (University of Exeter)
'Die Sprache ist der Gott im verstörten Fleisch'. Zum symbolischen Jargon der 'Kanak Sprak' türkischer Frauen und Männer der zweiten und dritten Ausländergeneration in Deutschland
Die Zeiten, daß sich junge TürkInnen in Deutschland bedeckt hielten und sich mit einer Existenz am Rande der Gesellschaft zufriedengaben, scheinen mittlerweile vorbei zu sein. Im Verborgenen, an den Rändern der Großstädte, an der Peripherie der deutschen 'Normalität', hat sich eine florierende Subkultur entwickelt, welche sich in Sprache und Ritualen manifestiert und den Sprachteilnehmern hilft, sich zwischen ihren traditionellen, aber vielfach hilflosen Eltern und religiösen Autoritäten einerseits und den größtenteils indifferenten, wenn nicht abweisenden Deutschen andererseits, zu positionieren.
Ihre 'Kanak'-Sprache mischt deutsche mit türkischen Elementen. Das einst negativ besetzte Hetzwort 'Kanake' wird hierbei zum Identifikationsfaktor, die vormals verschämt verleugnete Identität wird in der Sprache wie im Habitus offensiv nach außen getragen.
Meine Präsentation deckt mehrere Bereiche ab: linguistisch analysiere ich Grundmuster der 'Kanak Sprak'. Dabei greife ich vor allem auf die gleichnamige Publikation von Feridun Zaimoglu auf dem Jahre 1995, die transkribierte Interviews beinhaltet, zurück. Schließlich werden auch soziale und politische Implikationen der 'Kanak Sprak' beleuchtet.
Matthias Uecker (Queen's University, Belfast)
Role Model - Representative - Warning: The Writer and his Audience in Thomas Mann's Der Tod in Venedig
The paper will look at the ambiguous relationship between Aschenbach and his (fictional) audience described in Thomas Mann's Der Tod in Venedig, as well as at the relationship between the protagonist and the readers of the novella constituted by its narrative structure. The paper will demonstrate how the story first establishes a series of contradictory positions for the writer (as a role model that should be imitated; as a representative of the Zeitgeist; and as a warning against a certain attitude) and then offers them up to the reader as alternative approaches to the novella's main concerns. In conclusion, the paper will show how Der Tod in Venedig on the one hand addresses a number of critical issues in early twentieth-century culture and at the same time develops a model for literary communication that would become a central feature of Mann's later works.
John Wieczorek (University of Reading)
From Wallerfang to Auschwitz: Aspects of the Novels of Judith Kuckart
In this paper I will be examining three of the novels of Judith Kuckart - Wahl der Waffen (1990), Die schöne Frau (1994) and Lenas Liebe (2002). I will look at her recurrent theme of 'Ich-Leistung' and consider her analysis of some of the problems she sees in her contemporary Germany. I intend to indicate in particular the extent to which her most recent novel, Lenas Liebe, is a work that specifically and deliberately continues the debate about Auschwitz ignited by Martin Walser in his 'Friedenspreis-Rede' of October 1998, offering support for Walser's point of view.