Studia Germanica Posnaniensia
Not a member yet
464 research outputs found
Sort by
The transcendence of violence in the face of German Reunification – Thomas Hettches Nox and the particular configuration of postmodernity
Get PDFThe year 1989 not only marks the end of the Cold War and the German reunification, it also initiates a specific period in which post-modern philosophy reached its peak. The political and social situation in the Occident seemed to be so stable that scientists as well as the general public started to speak of the “end of history”. This was accompanied by a certain feeling of loss of reality, intensified by the development of electronic media. This little Belle Époque of the 90s was the breeding ground for a peculiar understanding of violence that was expressed in popular culture or even in such phenomena as extreme sports. The violence was in fact seen as one of the few ways to transcend the boundaries of the world not only broadcasted but also created by the mass media. With the spirit of the times corresponds the novel Nox by Thomas Hettche. The text, considered as one of the first novels of German Reunification, brings up and connects two transitions – the one, regional, from the divided to the reunified Germany and the other, related to all spheres of reality, from modernity to post-modernity. In both processes, the infamous, autotelic violence emerges (Reemtsma), this time, in the constellation of postmodernity, under the guise of transcendence. The year 1989 not only marks the end of the Cold War and the German reunification, it also initiates a specific period in which post-modern philosophy reached its peak. The political and social situation in the Occident seemed to be so stable that scientists as well as the general public started to speak of the “end of history”. This was accompanied by a certain feeling of loss of reality, intensified by the development of electronic media. This little Belle Époque of the 90s was the breeding ground for a peculiar understanding of violence that was expressed in popular culture or even in such phenomena as extreme sports. The violence was in fact seen as one of the few ways to transcend the boundaries of the world not only broadcasted but also created by the mass media. With the spirit of the times corresponds the novel Nox by Thomas Hettche. The text, considered as one of the first novels of German Reunification, brings up and connects two transitions – the one, regional, from the divided to the reunified Germany and the other, related to all spheres of reality, from modernity to post-modernity. In both processes, the infamous, autotelic violence emerges (Reemtsma), this time, in the constellation of postmodernity, under the guise of transcendence.
Oppressions and turning points in the fate of the contemporary migrant – Polish-German writer-wanderer Artur Becker and his novel ,Chopin’s Heart’
Get PDFThe following article aims at presenting the main emigration-related interpretative aspects of Becker’s prose and attempts to put them in the context of the post-colonial theories. The characters created by Artur Becker, who calls himself a “Polish writer of German language”, roam continually between the old and the new fatherland and struggle with the feeling of not belonging to any of these worlds. The experience of alienation in foreign country stems from a “transition” in a double sense: on the one side a physical change of the place of residence to Germany which means crossing the “mystical” frontier between the East and the West and on the other a fruitful caesura: the crisis of the identity leads the protagonists of Becker to the conclusion that this hybridity constitutes an intellectual potential and an existential skill.In the introduction, the foundations of the Postcolonial Theories will be outlined, with the emphasis on the concept of Homi Bhabha which postulates that the fluidity of identity forming in a symbolic “third space”, enables the cultural hybridity. Subsequently, after a short presentation of the characters and the work of Artur Becker, the research will focus on the novel Das Herz von Chopin (Chopin’s Heart), in which the main character – a financially successful car dealer who emigrated from the communistic Poland to Germany almost 20 years ago while being internally conflicted begins to explore a zone betwixt-and-between to find his own way to happiness. The following article aims at presenting the main emigration-related interpretative aspects of Becker’s prose and attempts to put them in the context of the post-colonial theories. The characters created by Artur Becker, who calls himself a “Polish writer of German language”, roam continually between the old and the new fatherland and struggle with the feeling of not belonging to any of these worlds. The experience of alienation in foreign country stems from a “transition” in a double sense: on the one side a physical change of the place of residence to Germany which means crossing the “mystical” frontier between the East and the West and on the other a fruitful caesura: the crisis of the identity leads the protagonists of Becker to the conclusion that this hybridity constitutes an intellectual potential and an existential skill.In the introduction, the foundations of the Postcolonial Theories will be outlined, with the emphasis on the concept of Homi Bhabha which postulates that the fluidity of identity forming in a symbolic “third space”, enables the cultural hybridity. Subsequently, after a short presentation of the characters and the work of Artur Becker, the research will focus on the novel Das Herz von Chopin (Chopin’s Heart), in which the main character – a financially successful car dealer who emigrated from the communistic Poland to Germany almost 20 years ago while being internally conflicted begins to explore a zone betwixt-and-between to find his own way to happiness.
Sprachliche Varietäten. Eine mediale Perspektive
Get PDFSprachliche Varietäten. Eine mediale Perspektiv
Einige Besonderheiten der Anwendung des Linguistischen Analyse-modells von Józef P. Darski bei der Beschreibung der morphologischen Systeme älterer Sprachstufen der Indogermania
Get PDFEinige Besonderheiten der Anwendung des Linguistischen Analyse-modells von Józef P. Darski bei der Beschreibung der morphologischen Systeme älterer Sprachstufen der Indogermani
Renate Sternel-Rutz (Hg.), Leben und Werk der Posener Theologen D. Paul Blau und D. Karl Greulich. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Provinz Posen, Band 4: Deutscher Geschichtsverein (DGV) des Posener Landes e.V.
Get PDFLooking for the other in the return of the same. Heiner Müller’s Bildbeschreibung, astride the fantasized end of history and the hope of a new historical dynamism towards the end of the Cold War
Get PDFBildbeschreibung, written in 1984, is undoubtedly the most hermetic text in the work of the East-German dramatist Heiner Müller. In this prose text, referred to by its author as ‘a play’, an ungraspable “I” vainly attempts to piece together an image to construct a coherent whole. When one compares this with Müller’s other works, Bildbeschreibung makes disconcerting reading because of its apparent lack of any political dimension. A thorough analysis however reveals that the traumas of Germany’s twentieth century history underpin the narrative. Moreover, the desperate attempts by the “I” to build itself into a proper “self” through the (re)-construction of the undecipherable image, hark back to the difficulties one has to conceptualize History after the end of what Jean-François Lyotard calls ‘the grand narratives’. Bildbeschreibung stages these difficulties in terms of history as drama. The “landscape between steppe and savannah” under “a Prussian blue sky” turns out to be the GDR in the 1980s, a country tossed and torn between the anguish of the ending of the historical process as described by the theories of post-history and the hope of a new dynamism made possible by the end of the Cold War.Bildbeschreibung, written in 1984, is undoubtedly the most hermetic text in the work of the East-German dramatist Heiner Müller. In this prose text, referred to by its author as ‘a play’, an ungraspable “I” vainly attempts to piece together an image to construct a coherent whole. When one compares this with Müller’s other works, Bildbeschreibung makes disconcerting reading because of its apparent lack of any political dimension. A thorough analysis however reveals that the traumas of Germany’s twentieth century history underpin the narrative. Moreover, the desperate attempts by the “I” to build itself into a proper “self” through the (re)-construction of the undecipherable image, hark back to the difficulties one has to conceptualize History after the end of what Jean-François Lyotard calls ‘the grand narratives’. Bildbeschreibung stages these difficulties in terms of history as drama. The “landscape between steppe and savannah” under “a Prussian blue sky” turns out to be the GDR in the 1980s, a country tossed and torn between the anguish of the ending of the historical process as described by the theories of post-history and the hope of a new dynamism made possible by the end of the Cold War
