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Monatshefte

Volume 110, Number 1, Spring 2018
Table of Contents

 

ARTICLES

Melanie Rohner

„Lern dieses Volk der Hirten kennen!“ Verhandlungen des Barbarischen in Schillers Wilhelm Tell

In Friedrich Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, the ambivalence which had been characteristic of the concept of the barbarian ever since the enlightenment’s theories, becomes particularly manifest. In these historico-philosophical models, the concept no longer served simply to realize aspatial exclusion: rather, it chiefly signaled an intermediate, pre-civilized stage within the development of culture, a stage in which people still principally lived as shepherds and still occasionally secured their subsistence via raids. Not coincidentally, in Wilhelm Tell Schiller represented the prototypical Urschweizer as shepherds, even though quite possibly on the Rütli Meadow none of the 33 plotters belonged to the shepherd class. Linking the Swiss confederates with herdsmanship at first glance serves the goal of underlining the social and political purity of the old Swiss. If, however, one reads this isotopy of the pastoral against the backdrop of the concepts of cultural stages in circulation at the time, then this isotopy primarily and from the very beginning points to the barbaric-violent that could erupt from these mountain dwellers—despite, or perhaps because of, their location in a golden era. (MR; in German)

 

Elena Agazzi

Die „Gesellschaft der Freien Männer“ und ihre Entwicklung auf dem Weg zu einer Identitätsphilosophie

This article focuses on productive intellectual reactions shared by some members of the Gesellschaft der Freien Männer (1794–1799) in Jena who gathered around Fichte starting in 1794 and shaped an association with a statute and a protocol. Those members did not completely agree with the philosopher’s proposal to construct positive knowledge based on the metaphysical unity of the “I”. As in Fichte’s premise to Wissenschaftslehre, where the forms of individual consciousness are simply “coordinated” with the pure infinite “I,” and the definite world as “non-I” is inevitably curtailed in its participative freedom. Johann Friedrich Herbart, August Ludwig Hülsen, and Johann Erich von Berger derived in their writings suggestions for a social ethics closer to the needs of individuals following the model of Pestalozzi. Berger’s study of civil rights, conducted until his death in 1833, proves to be the best inheritance of Late Enlightenment as struggle to defend individual dignity and freedom. (EA; in German)

 

Yahya Elsaghe

„Alle Frauen sind hier größer als die Männer“. Klaus Maria Brandauers Verfilmung von Mario und der Zauberer vor dem Hintergrund der gendertheoretisch informierten Thomas Mann-Forschung

The film adaptation of Mario and the Magician, produced shortly after German reunification, exhibits a consistent series of changes to, and extensions of, Thomas Mann’s novella. These can be understood as very much a part and expression of their time, especially with regard to the momentum then gathering in gender discourse, which had begun to yield concrete legal results. In light of their respective gender mentalities, the time of the film’s realization has something significant in common with the conditions under which Mann wrote his novella and which he addressed therein. Recent research has specifically drawn attention to Mann’s use of Johann Jakob Bachofen’s cultural theory, a connection of which the filmmakers cannot have been aware. The film’s open and repeated staging of female power and male weakness is thus all the more noteworthy. It intuitively reveals aspects that specialized scholarship only subsequently uncovered by means of archival research. (YE; in German)

 

Edward T. Larkin

“Scientific Pacifism” in Alfred Hermann Fried’s Mein Kriegstagebuch

The Nobel Prize recipient Alfred Hermann Fried a significant yet less celebrated pacifist at the turn of the twentieth century in both Austria and Germany, developed his “scientific pacifism” in his theoretical writings, Handbuch der Friedensbewegung (1905, 1911, 1913) and Die Grundlagen des revolutionären Pacifismus (1908). Less studied is his Kriegs-Tagebuch, which he kept during the war and published in four volumes in 1918–1920. This essay examines how the constitutent parts of “scientific pacifism” held up during the war, which Fried experienced from his forced emigration in Switzerland. It considers his views on internationalism, leadership, militarism, rearmament, economics, democracy, and the treaties ending the war. The essay argues that Fried remained steadfast in his passionate and rigorous convictions against war even if he became less sanguine, but not ultimately despondent, about the establishment of a stable peace. (ETL)

 

Pavlo Shopin

Metaphorical Conceptualization of Destructive and Destructible Language in the Work of Herta Müller

This article analyzes the metaphorical mapping between language and destruction in the work of Herta Müller. Using conceptual metaphor theory, the study demonstrates how Müller applies the more concrete concepts of destruction and damage in order to reason about language and to convey effectively her understanding of it to readers. The concepts of destruction and damage allow Müller to convey to the reader the impact of and influence on language. The essay concludes that the metaphorical conceptualization of destructive and destructible language is an integral part of Müller’s poetics and its functioning in her texts relies on conceptual and linguistic conventions. (PS)

 

Christoph Schaub

Re-Imagining the World in an Era of Globalization: Christoph Ransmayr’s Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes

This article analyzes literary world-making in Christoph Ransmayr’s Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes against the background of current debates about globalization and from a planetary studies perspective. Performing a particular response to time-space compression and to imaginaries of cultural homogenization, Ransmayr’s text expands what is intelligible as part of the planetary conditionand decelerates the pace at which it can be perceived. The text’s poetics favor isolation over interconnection; they suspend temporal linearity and instead emphasize a layering through which different histories, at times even different temporalities, are present at the same time in the same place. Through its representation of history and geography, Atlas destabilizes Euro-centric meaning-making. It constructs an imaginary of planetary belonging that goes beyond cosmopolitanism’s anthropocentric framework while never moving explicitly into ethical or political spheres. (CS)

 

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Bivens, Hunter, Epic and Exile: Novels of the German Popular Front, 1933–1945 (Johannes F. Evelein)

Büttner, Urs, Poiesis des ,Sozialen‘. Achim von Arnims frühe Poetik bis zur Heidelberger Romantik (1800–1808) (Jan O. Jost-Fritz)

Christ, Valentin, Bausteine zu einer Narratologie der Dinge. Der ,Eneasroman‘ Heinrichs von Veldeke, der ,Roman d’Eneas‘ und Vergils ,Aeneis‘ im Vergleich (Kathryn Starkey)

Dürbeck, Gabriele und Urte Stobbe, Hrsg., Ecocriticism. Eine Einführung (Erika Berroth)

Edwards, Maurice, Christian Dietrich Grabbe: His Life and His Works (Jeffrey L. Sammons)

Egyptien, Jürgen, Hrsg., Stefan George – Werkkommentar (Rolf J. Goebel)

Elsen, Hilke, Einführung in die Lautsymbolik (Ulla Fix)

Geddes, Jennifer L., Kafka’s Ethics of Interpretation: Between Tyranny and Despair (Marjorie R. Rhine)

Göttsche, Dirk, Florian Krobb und Rolf Parr, Hrsg., Raabe Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung (Monika Schmitz-Emans)

Gramling, David, The Invention of Monolingualism (Viktorija Bilić)

Grubner, Bernadette, Analogiespiele. Klassik und Romantik in den Dramen von Peter Hacks (Nikolas Immer)

Klinger, Judith und Andreas Kraß, Hrsg., Tiere. Begleiter des Menschen in der Literatur des Mittelalters (Will Hasty)

Kranz, Isabel, Alexander Schwan und Eike Wittrock, Hrsg., Floriographie. Die Sprachen der Blumen (Helga G. Braunbeck)

Lehleiter, Christine, ed., Fact and Fiction: Literary and Scientific Cultures in Germany and Britain (Yevgenya Strakovsky)

Mendicino, Kristina, Prophecies of Language: The Confusion of Tongues in German Romanticism (Kristin Dickinson)

Möller, Reinhard M., Situationen des Fremden. Ästhetik und Reiseliteratur im späten 18. Jahrhundert (Florian Krobb)

Nicklas, Simone Christina, „Erinnern führt ins Innere“. Erinnerung und Identität bei Uwe Timm (Antje Krüger)

Pieger, Bruno und Bertram Schefold, Hrsg., „Kreis aus Kreisen“. Der George-Kreis im Kontext deutscher und europäischer Gemeinschaftsbildung (Rolf J. Goebel)

Plug, Jan, They Have All Been Healed: Reading Robert Walser (Paul Buchholz)

Prutti, Brigitte, Unglück und Zerstreuung. Autobiographisches Schreiben bei Franz Grillparzer (Katherine Arens)

Ryan, Marie-Laure, Kenneth Foote, and Maoz Azaryahu, Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet (Vance Byrd)

Utler, Anja, „manchmal sehr mitreißend“. Über die poetische Erfahrung gesprochener Gedichte (Hannah V. Eldridge)

Wagner, Sabrina, Aufklärer der Gegenwart. Politische Autorschaft zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts – Juli Zeh, Ilija Trojanow, Uwe Tellkamp (Lars Richter)

Weitzman, Erica, Irony’s Antics: Walser, Kafka, Roth, and the German Comic Tradition (Gail Finney)

Wiggin, Bethany and Catriona MacLeod, eds., Un/Translatables: New Maps for Germanic Literatures (David Gramling)