Monatshefte
Volume 111, Number 4, Winter 2019
Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Rudolph Glitz
Invoking Unheard Melodies: Rellstab’s Lyrics to Schubert’s “Serenade”
In this article, Ludwig Rellstab’s “Ständchen” or “Serenade” (1827), the poem set to music by Franz Schubert and included in the posthumous Schwanengesang collection (D 957), is a) translated with an emphasis on verbal and syntactical accuracy and b) interpreted in more detail than usual. The various interpretations offered range from a straightforward conventional reading that presumes a standard serenading situation over a more elusive one in which the melodies invoked by the speaker remain unheard in any literal sense to, finally, a “supernatural” one, in which the song as adapted and appropriated by Schubert takes the form of a communication from the afterlife. (RG)
Jeffrey Hertel
Holy Hate and Political Organization in Johannes R. Becher’s (CHCl=CH)3As (Levisite) oder Der einzig gerechte Krieg
This article explores the relationship between negative affect and political organization as portrayed in Johannes R. Becher’s critically-understudied (CHCl=CH)3As (Levisite) oder Der einzig gerechte Krieg (1926). This apocalyptic novel depicts a world wherein the only thing standing in the way of global annihilation by poison gas is a revolutionary uprising hastened along by the cultivation of negative affect. Becher’s literary deployment of hate as a tool of working-class emancipation hearkens to a genus of politically-relevant negative affect that eludes contemporary theoretical discussions of hate, where it is usually considered as it relates to right-wing extremism. Reading philosophical and literary texts from the German tradition, this study establishes a brief genealogy of progressive hate in the context of the workers’ movement between the 1840s and 1920s, arguing that the “holy hate” of the working class constitutes an affective functionalization of historical class consciousness that reached its literary apotheosis in Becher’s writing. (JH)
Patrick Ploschnitzki and David Gramling
„Aus heutiger Sicht gab’s damals nicht“: Jan-Ole Gerster’s Oh Boy and the Frischian Opacity of Vergangenheitsbewältigung
Blankenship and Twark (2017) showed that Jan-Ole Gerster’s 2012 Oh Boy (or: “A Coffee in Berlin”) addresses Vergangenheitsbewältigung to varying degrees of overtness and intensity. However, the movie refuses an interpretation of being entirely about this ubiquitous topic in German Studies and culture. Rather, it raises questions of identity, much like Max Frisch’s 1954 Stiller does in its opening sentence “Ich bin nicht Stiller!” The movie and the novel share interpretations by scholars that involve Vergangenheitsbewältigung, and they both include prominent female victims named Julika. We argue that the parallels don’t stop there, and that Oh Boy is in fact a contemporary restaging of Stiller—just shy of a remake, and just short of being overtly about Vergangenheitsbewältigung—and that both works are deeply embedded in the context of this issue as well as Nachkriegsliteratur, with Oh Boy heavily drawing from Stiller in a submerged literary intertextuality as a tool to comment on Germany’s collective dealing with the past at the time of its release. (PP/DG)
Emily E. Jones
“Eine Art idealer Landschaft”: The Material Agency of Landscape in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn
This essay undertakes an ecocritical and historical study of the environments described in Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, focusing on descriptions and narrative reconstructions of the English countryside, specifically Somerleyton Hall, Ditchingham, Orford, and the Great Storm of 1987. Drawing on Jane Bennett’s theory of vibrant materiality and other understandings of other-than-human agency in the Anthropocene, I argue that Sebald’s processing of history is not only inspired by his wandering through the countryside, but is spatialized in the narrator’s interaction with the environment. Furthermore, I suggest that not only are history and environment inextricable from one another in Sebald’s work, but that their relationship to one another constitutes a radical recognition of material agencies acting on and around human subjects. (EJ)
Matt Reingold
Heimat Across Space and Time in Nora Krug’s Belonging
This article explores notions of belonging and home in Nora Krug’s graphic memoir Belonging. Beginning with an exploration of how Krug feels disconnected from her identity as a German, the essay identifies a shift in the way that Krug comes to appreciate notions of home and homeland. Through the process of understanding her family’s Nazi history, Krug comes to not only feel more connected to her past but through this, she is able to feel at home again in her familial identity. Krug’s identification with history as a conduit for establishing identity is explored through the lens of postmemory and is analyzed in relation to public and private ways that Germany commemorates the legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary society. (MR)
PERSONALIA
Introduction, German Departments in the USA, German Departments in Canada, Promotions, New Appointments, Visitors, Retirements, Necrology, Doctoral Dissertations, Summary
BOOK REVIEWS
Baer, Elizabeth R., The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich (Irene Kacandes)
Csúri, Károly, Konstruktionsprinzipien von Georg Trakls lyrischen Textwelten (Jack Davis)
Davies, Peter, Witness between Languages: The Translation of Holocaust Testimonies in Context (Thomas Fuhr)
Geist, Kathrin, Berg-Sehn-Sucht. Der Alpenraum in der deutschsprachigen Literatur (Caroline Schaumann)
Gelberg, Johanna M., Poetik und Politik der Grenze. Die Literatur der deutsch-deutschen Teilung seit 1945 (Karolina May-Chu)
Gerhardt, Christina and Sara Saljoughi, eds., 1968 and Global Cinema (Friedemann Weidauer)
Henning, Christoph, Marx und die Folgen (Jennifer Ham)
Holub, Robert C., Nietzsche in the Nineteenth Century: Social Questions and Philosophical Interventions (Markus Weidler)
Itkin, Alan, Underworlds of Memory: W.G. Sebald’s Epic Journeys through the Past (Dora Osborne)
Kolkenbrock, Marie, Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzler’s Prose: Five Psycho-Sociological Readings (Gail Finney)
Koopmann, Helmut, Schiller und die Folgen (Jennifer Ham)
Lamping, Dieter, Kafka und die Folgen (Jennifer Ham)
Morat, Daniel und Hansjakob Ziemer, Hrsg., Handbuch Sound. Geschichte – Begriffe – Ansätze (Rolf J. Goebel)
Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt in collaboration with Paul Corley, Zu Hermeneutik, Literaturkritik und Sprachtheorie. Gesammelte Vorträge, Beiträge und Essays. On Hermeneutics, Theory of Literature and Language. Collected Essays, Lectures and Papers (Cora Lee Kluge)
Müller-Salget, Klaus, Kleist und die Folgen (Jennifer Ham)
Payer, Peter, Der Klang der Großstadt. Eine Geschichte des Hörens. Wien 1850–1914 (Erhard Schütz)
Sommer, Andreas Urs, Nietzsche und die Folgen (Jennifer Ham)
Vansant, Jacqueline, Austria Made in Hollywood (Alan Lareau)
Wallach, Kerry, Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany (Jeffrey Grossman)
Windfuhr, Manfred, Zukunftsvisionen. Von christlichen, grünen und sozialistischen Paradiesen und Apokalypsen (Wolfgang Lueckel)
Wirth, Uwe, Hrsg. Komik. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. (Jill E. Twark)
Zanucchi, Mario, Transfer und Modifikation. Die französischen Symbolisten in der deutschsprachigen Lyrik der Moderne (1890–1923) (Leena Eilittä)
INDEX VOLUME 111 (2019)
|
