German Studies

This essay makes a case for reorientation in the controversially discussed matter of how the relationship between Orientalism and Zionism should be interpreted. It abandons the notion of convergence between both spheres, postulating instead that a tradition of downright resistance to Orientalism is inscribed into German literary Zionism. To exemplify the potential of this reorientation for new insights into both postcolonial and German-Jewish history, a discus- sion is provided of Theodor Herzl’s novel The Old New Land (1902), Felix Salten’s Neue Menschen auf alter Erde (1925), and Franz Kafka’s Schakale und Araber (1917).

This article focuses on the precariousness of everyday life of half-Jews during the Nazi-regime in Vienna. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews as well as the presence of their half-Jewish children represented an antagonism that was a permanent threat to the integrity of the Nazi regime. According to the Nuremberg Laws, half-Jews were either defined as Mischlinge of the first degree or as Geltungsjuden, depending on their denomination. Even though they were in most cases exempt from deportation, the plans to include them in the Final solution were never fully given up. Particularly during the last years of the war – after the majority of the Austrian Jewish population had been deported – the protection of half-Jews became more precarious and even trivial infractions against Nazi laws could lead to imprisonment and deportation.

The vast majority of Holocaust victims and survivors were Ashkenazim. Their main language was Yiddish. Yiddish is very close to German, the main difference being that the former is written in Hebrew letters, while the latter in Latin ones. Postwar Europe' s moral foundation is Holocaust remembrance. But this remembrance to be effective, it must be active in the absence of Holocaust survivors. A way to ensure that could be the novel school and university subject of Yiddish for reading purposes. As a result, researchers and interested Europeans would start reading documents and books in Yiddish again. Germany' s premiere cultural organization, Goethe-Institut, is uniquely well-placed and morally obligated to facilitate the relaunch, popularization and cultivation of the skill to read Yiddish-language sources and publications for both the sake of research and for pleasure.

Heimat- und Identitätslosigkeit – diese Themen beschäftigen Schriftsteller, die ihr Geburtsland verlassen haben, seit jeher. Manche Autoren nehmen eine passive, resignierte Haltung gegenüber der Unmöglichkeit eines Ankommens im neuen Land ein, andere beharren auf der Illusion einer Heimatfindung.
Das Motiv der Identität(slosigkeit) spielt auch in den Werken des aus Siebenbürgen stammenden Schriftstellers Franz Hodjak eine zentrale Rolle. In seinen Gedichten und Romanen behandelt er das Thema des Sich-fremd-Fühlens und der Identitätssuche, das Gefühl, nirgendwo zu Hause zu sein, mal mit heiterer Gelassenheit, mal mit resignierter Desillusionierung und behauptet: „In der Heimatlosigkeit besteht meine Identität.“ Es ist nicht das traurig-resignierte Gefühl des Ausreisenden, das in den Werken von Franz Hodjak anzutreffen ist, sondern eher der Ausreißende spricht den Leser an.
Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeigt anhand verschiedener literaturwissenschaftlicher und soziopsychologischer Theorien Aspekte der Identität und Identitätsgestaltung in der Gattungs- und Formenwahl der Werke Franz Hodjaks auf.

While the book mainly deals with questions of German Jews, who escaped to Japan and Korea during the 1930s and early 40s, my contribution covers the history of the German East Asiatic Society (OAG) from its foundation in 1873 to 1945, focusing mostly on the 1930s and early 40s.

The corpus of narratives produced in Germany since 1943 about the battle of Stalingrad appears as a multifaceted "grand narrative" in which historiographical and mythical morphology coexist. The Nazi myth of Stalingrad contributed to shaping the cultural memory of the event during the war, and historians lately integrated that myth into the historical discourse about the "overcoming of the past" (Vergangenheitsbewältigung). In the meantime, hundreds of veterans published their witness-accounts about the great battle, blending the two spheres of history and myth on the level of storytelling. While historiographical discourse aims to consolidate positive knowledge of the battle in terms of chronology, witness-narratives blur chronological storytelling with the mythical archetypes of conquest, defeat, fall, and resurrection. I will examine the morphological characteristics of the "grand narrative" of Stalingrad by combining the notion of "structure" (Koselleck) with that of the narrative archetype (Frye) and by integrating these tools with the theory of adaptive and evolutional narratives (Carrol; Scalise-Sugyjama) to claim that the "grand narrative" of Stalingrad can be read as the mythic-historical account of how the German community survived defeat and was reborn from its own ashes.

Niniejsza publikacja zawiera:

tłumaczenia 170 dokumentów polskich i niemieckich, w tym reprezentatywnych dokumentów metrykalnych, szkolnych, notarialnych, policyjnych, sądowych, pracowniczych, handlowych, księgowo-podatkowych i medycznych,

tłumaczenia dokumentów nie tylko z Niemiec, ale także z Austrii i Szwajcarii,

komentarze w 460 przypisach dotyczące alternatywnych rozwiązań translacyjnych,

przekład skrótów najczęściej występujących w tekstach specjalistycznych,

formalne i lingwistyczne zasady sporządzania tłumaczeń poświadczonych,

metodologię wykonywania tłumaczeń poświadczonych,

wykaz literatury przedmiotu niezbędnej w pracy każdego tłumacza specjalistycznego.

Publikacja adresowana jest do szerokiego grona osób zainteresowanych przekładem tekstów specjalistycznych, a więc uczestników seminariów translacyjnych, kandydatów zgłaszających się do egzaminu na tłumacza przysięgłego oraz czynnych tłumaczy, którzy chcieliby skonfrontować swoje tłumaczenia z propozycjami przekładów zamieszczonymi w książce.

A selection of some of Novalis’s most important reflections on mathematics from the years 1798-1800. Introduced and translated into English by David W. Wood.

In: Symphilosophie: International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism 3 (2021): 273-290
https://symphilosophie.com/issue-4-2022/2/

The Second World War gave a strong impulse to the development of translation and interpreting services in the Soviet Union. Military translators/interpreters were expected to engage in frontline propaganda, ad hoc language teaching and reconnaissance, without special preparation. Under constant ideological pressure, they had to come up with creative solutions for concrete problems. On the base of the prosopographic research and semi-structured interviews with three prominent representatives of the aforementioned school, this book describes different biographical and professional trajectories of military translators/interpreters during and after the Second World War. Their backgrounds are as diverse as they are distinct: German and German-Jewish migrants, romantic philological students and poets from the legendary Institute of Literature Studies in Moscow (IFLI), bilingual descendants of diplomatic families and outstanding students and teachers from university departments of German Studies. The translational competences and methodological insights acquired during the war contributed to the establishment of a Soviet school of translation/interpreting and German Studies.
Key-words: Circulation of knowledge, military translation and interpreting services, Second World War, prosopography

Deutung und Bewertung des Rilkeschen Lebenswerkes, insbesondere seiner »Duineser Elegien«, sind nach wie vor durch eine erstaunliche Unsicherheit gekennzeichnet. Dies erklärt sich wohl vor allem aus der weitgehenden Vernachlässigung bewußtseins- wie literaturgeschichtlicher Zusammenhänge in der bisherigen Forschung. Die Arbeit stellt daher die »Duineser Elegien« in den Kontext von Rilkes Gesamtwerk und versucht, ihre Eigenart und ihren Rang vor dem Hintergrund der deutschen Lyrik zwischen Jahrhundertwende und dem Beginn der zwanziger Jahre zu bestimmen. Da sie dabei die wesentlichen Züge der europäischen Modeme einbezieht, enthält die Studie auch den Entwurf einer Geschichte der modernen Lyrik und leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Formulierung eines Epochenbegriffs der »Modeme«. Mit Hilfe ausgewählter philosophischer wie literarischer Texte der Zeit skizziert sie ein Entwicklungsmodell, das den französischen Symbolismus, die deutsche Jahrhundertwende, die »klassische Modeme« und die Avantgarde (Futurismus, Expressionismus, Wortkunst und Dada) in ein überzeugendes Verhältnis zueinander bringt, und zeigt Grundstrukturen der modernen Lyrik auf.
In ständigem Wechsel mit diesen Kontexten werden die »Duineser Elegien« eingehend analysiert. Nach rezeptionsgeschichtlichen und rezeptionsästhetischen Vorüberlegungen untersucht die Arbeit im Detail das Motivgeflecht des Werkes, Rilkes Verwendung von Mythos, Metapher, Vergleich und Symbol sowie die Bauformen des Zyklus und die intendierte Leserhaltung. Sie weist nach, wie Rilkes Deutung der condition humaine, sein neuer Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Subjektivitätsentwurf, und der poetische Diskurs der »Elegien« zusammenhängen und grenzt sie von den radikaleren Experimenten der Avantgarde ab.

*Winner of the Peter C. Rollins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the Northeast Popular Culture Association*
An investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures.

The Bauhaus (1919–1933) is one of the twentieth century's most influential art schools, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In Haunted Bauhaus, art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. The Bauhaus, she shows us, is haunted by these untold stories.

The Bauhaus is most often associated with a handful of famous artists, architects, and designers―notably Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. Otto enlarges this narrow focus by reclaiming the historically marginalized lives and accomplishments of many of the more than 1,200 Bauhaus teachers and students (the so-called Bauhäusler), arguing that they are central to our understanding of this movement. Otto reveals Bauhaus members' spiritual experimentation, expressed in double-exposed “spirit photographs” and enacted in breathing exercises and nude gymnastics; their explorations of the dark sides of masculinity and emerging female identities in design; the “queer hauntology” of certain Bauhaus works; and the school's communist period (1928–1932), when Bauhäusler put their skills into the service of the revolution―even as Nazism emerged and entered the Bauhaus itself.

With Haunted Bauhaus, Otto not only expands our knowledge of a foundational movement of modern art, architecture, and design, she also provides the first sustained investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. This is a fresh, wild ride through the Bauhaus you thought you knew.

This piece consists of two parts and deals with three German East Asia experts that cooperated more or less with the National-Socialist regime during the 1930s: Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Hack, Prof. Dr. Karl Haushofer and Dr. Hermann von Raumer. Here, your find part one.

Attributed to Master Heinrich of Constance, a sculpture of the Visitation from the convent of St. Katharinenthal in the Lower Rhine Valley (ca. 1310­20) portrays Mary and her cousin Elizabeth with two quartz cabochons inserted into their torsos, rock crystal representations of their wombs, which nurture the fetal Christ and John the Baptist. These crystals make the ​Visitation a strikingly unique devotional object in the eyes of the modern viewer, but when considered in the context of the fourteenth­century German Dominican convent, they also provide insight into the devotional practices of their users, cloistered nuns. In this thesis, I explore the nature and function of this unique object of devotion in the context of the Katharinenthal convent specifically in addition to the wider Middle High German spiritual milieu, particularly Rhenish Mysticism. ​I take a multidisciplinary approach to the study of this medieval artwork by making use of a wide range of sources: works from this same period found at Katharinenthal and other convents around the Rhine valley, theological treatises concerning the Incarnation (and, therefore, the Marian womb) the visionary accounts of Henry Suso and other Rhineland mystics, and the work of such medieval art historians as Jeffrey Hamburger, Caroline Walker Bynum, and Jacqueline Jung. Jung in particular describes the bodies of Mary and Elizabeth in the ​Visitation as “exuberant,” “thrusting the evidence of [their] virtues outward toward beholders and rendering them visible through the body’s materiality rather than through any internal motifs.” (“Crystalline Wombs and Pregnant Hearts,” p. 234). In this thesis, I use Jung’s analysis of the sculpture as a starting point to propose a new, though not mutually exclusive, model for interpreting the function of these crystal wombs.
In the first main section of the thesis, I examine the convent of Katharinenthal itself, a highly enclosed and communal female monastic environment, together with many of the surviving devotional objects from the convent around 1300 that formed Katharinenthal’s visual and material culture. The following section examines in closer detail the crystal wombs of the Visitation, considering both their theological connotations and their significance to medieval perception of the female body. The final section addresses the devotional function of Mary and Elizabeth’s crystal wombs by placing the ​Visitation within the context of both late medieval Euc​haristic theology and Rhenish mysticism. I conclude that the ​Visitation’s crystal wombs functioned as meditational foci, serving as “windows” into the visionary experience. These wombs, with their emphasis on transparency and interiority in their enclosed, conventual context, ultimately serve as a catalyst for mystical union with the divine.

Researchers have long questioned how debunked myths such as the blood libel – the notion that Jews used Christian blood in their ceremonies – were able to persist for so long. This essay explains the social function of such myths in one context by presenting a public debate on Judaism carried out in the pages of the two leading Christian periodicals of the early eighteenth century in Germany. One journal put forth the orthodox Lutheran viewpoint, the other that of “Pietist” reformers. Through these journals, a battle took place for control of the Lutheran church, and thus for much of public life in Protestant Germany. Because Pietists believed Jews to hold a special place in God’s plan, they sought to rehabilitate Jews to their Christian readers and to argue for better conditions for Jewish communities. Orthodox Lutheran leaders quickly identified Pietists’ “Jew-friendly” policies as an Achilles’ heel. To attack Pietists, the orthodoxy dredged up and re-publicized centuries-old anti-Judaic propaganda, negative images that the orthodoxy linked to Pietists. Representatives of the Lutheran orthodoxy thus deployed anti-Judaic stereotypes in order to shore up their own church-political hegemony. Through this media manipulation, the Lutheran state church was able to seed fear among Christian readers and to argue that Pietist reformers and Jews were pollutants that needed to be cleansed from church and society.

Nous avons pu constater que l'humour, comme point de départ, peut s'emparer d'un éventail de sujets différents les uns des autres. Le sens ordinaire des mots, les situations, la physionomie des personnages n’est qu'une invitation à deviner leur autre visage, le sens figuré des images comiques. La presse germaniques a été vivement inspirée par les événements qui ont précédé la chute du mur de Berlin en octobre / novembre 1989 et par ceux qui lui ont succédé. Elle a suivi avec beaucoup d'attention le développement politique jusqu'à la Réunification du 3 octobre 1990 et aux premières élections dans l'Allemagne unifiée en décembre de la même année. Les caricatures se réfèrent à cette série d'événements sous un double point de vue: celui d'une affaire interallemande, et d'un événement de la politique internationale.

The purpose of this essay is to reconstruct the comics controversy in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, paying special attention to the debate over effects, which was paramount. A guiding principle of this investigation is to relate the arguments of the comics debate to a broader political, social, and cultural context. The main source of information are selected articles published in the German press at that time.

This study briefly presents the history of the radical form of Ukrainian nationalism, paying special attention to the geopolitical circumstances which formed this movement. Then, it analyzes some aspects of this phenomenon, such as its main ideologists, racism, antisemitism, religion, rituals, leaders, concepts of revolution, and the ethnic, political and mass violence conducted before, during, and after the Second World War. This short monograph argues that the extreme and genocidal form of Ukrainian nationalism did have a fascist kernel and should be considered a form of European or East-Central European fascism. Nevertheless, because of the specific cultural, social, and political Ukrainian circumstances the radical form of Ukrainian nationalism differed from better-known fascist movements such as German National Socialism or Italian Fascism, and thus it requires a careful and nuanced investigation.

In the first half of 1944, tens of thousand Ukrainians left their country together with the withdrawing German occupiers in order to avoid confrontation with the approaching Red Army and the Soviet authorities. Between the summer of 1941 and their time of departure, all of these Ukrainians had had some kind of experience with the Holocaust, either as observers, as rescuers or as perpetrators. In the second half of the 1940s they were relocated from DP camps to various western countries such as Australia, Canada, the USA and the United Kingdom, while some remained in West Germany and Austria. In their newspapers and numerous memoirs they frequently described and discussed the Second World War, but they either did not mention the Holocaust at all or portrayed it as a crime committed only by the Nazis and a small group of unpatriotic Ukrainians. The participation of the Ukrainian police, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and various types of ordinary local Ukrainians did not appear in these memoirs and historical discourses. On the contrary, some of these actors, in particular the members of the OUN and the partisans of the UPA, were commemorated as freedom fighters and national heroes. Concentrating on western Ukraine, this article explores how, during the Cold War, the Ukrainian Diaspora forgot the annihilation of the Jews, turned Holocaust perpetrators and war criminals into heroes of Ukraine, and argued that survivors from eastern Galicia and Volhynia, who mentioned Ukrainians as perpetrators, were Soviet propagandists and Jewish chauvinists.

Üç semavi dinin kutsal mekânı, Müslümanların ilk kıblesi Kudüs hakkında ne biliyoruz?
Uğrunda mücadeleler verilen ve asırlarca farklı hâkimiyetler altında kalan Kudüs tarih boyunca hep “Halilullah” şehri olarak saygı görmüştür. Mukaddes belde Kudüs, İslam Tarihi boyunca ama özellikle Osmanlı asırlarında bütün dinlerin bir arada yaşayabildiği bir barış adası olmuştur.
Bugün Filistin meselesi sürekli dünya gündeminde yüz yıldır çözüme kavuşturulamıyor. Bu kavganın sebebi bütün dinler nazarında mukaddes sayılan Kudüs’ün ve Mescid-i Aksâ’nın bu topraklar üzerinde yer almasıdır.
Elinizdeki kitap, dünyanın göz bebeği olan Kudüs’ün tarihine ve önemine ışık tutmak amacıyla kaleme alındı. Kudüs’ün tarih sahnesine çıktığı zamanlardan günümüze kadar olan serüveni ve semavi dinler için taşıdığı önemi bütüncül bir bakış açısıyla 100 soruda (başlıkta) anlatıldı. Tarihi süreklilik gözetilerek seçilen sorular cevaplanırken olay örgülerinin arka planı ve sonrasında ortaya çıkan durumlar akıcı bir dille aktarıldı. Eserde verilen soruların cevapları titiz bir çalışmanın ürünü olarak ortaya konuldu. Kitap, güvenilir kaynaklara ve arşiv belgelerine ve onlara dayalı yapılan akademik çalışmalara müracaat edilerek yazıldı.
Elinizdeki kitap, Kudüs okumaları yapacaklar için ilk başvuru kitabı; Kudüs'e seyahat edecekler için de bir tarihi rehber olarak hazırlandı.

Education in Nazi Germany examines how Nazism took shape both in the schools, in particular through curricular and textbook changes, and in the youth groups, in which German boys and girls were socialized in accordance with the regime's ideological aims. Offering a compelling new analysis of Nazi Educational policy, this book brings to the forefront an often-overlooked aspect of the Third Reich

Mary Fulbrook’un Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi’nden 2018 yılında yayımlanan Almanya’nın Kısa Tarihi (A Concise History of Germany) isimli kitabı, Roma İmparatorluğu’nun çöküşünden sonra oluşan siyasi boşluktan Berlin duvarının çöküşüne kadar geçen sürede, Alman prensliklerini, devletlerini, krallıklarını ve imparatorluklarını siyasi, iktisadi ve askeri açıdan inceleyerek okuyucuya sunmaktadır. Alman tarihinin kronolojik olarak anlatılması ve gerçekleşen sosyal, ekonomik, siyasi değişikliklerin nedenleri ve sonuçlarının bir bütünlük içinde gösterilmesi açısından kitap orijinalliğe sahiptir. Kitap Alman Devleti’nin tarihi gelişimi bağlamında bir yandan tarihsel kırılmalara ve savrulmalara ışık tutarak Alman Devleti tarihinin önemli dönüşümlerine ve bu dönüşümlerin nedenleri ve sonuçlarına ışık tutarken bir diğer yandan da Alman tarih yazıcılığının bu tarihi kaleme alırken içine düştüğü problemli yönlere ışık tutması açısından orijinallikler taşımaktadır. Bir başka katkı, Alman tarihi bağlamında aslında Alman Devleti’nin ilişki içinde bulunduğu devlet ve coğrafyaların tarihine de ışık tutması olarak tespit edilebilir. Kitap içerisine yerleştirilen 41 adet görsel ve 13 adet harita sürekli değişen sınırların ve tarihi atmosferin zihinde somutlaştırılmasını kolaylaştırmakta, önsözden sonra oluşturulan dokuz ana başlığın her birisi anlatılan tarih aralığını alt başlıklara ayırmakta ve bu ayrım ile okuyucunun spesifik olayları görmesi sağlanmaktadır.

Zum Vortrag  Musils Kakanien, ein Land ohne Eigenschaften in Europa von  Univ.-Prof. Dr. Norbert Christian Wolf, seit 2009 im Vorstand der Internationalen Robert-Musil-Gesellschaft, Mitherausgeber des Musil-Forums (gem. mit Rosmarie Zeller, de Gruyter-Verlag),im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung des Wissenschaftskolleg Österreich-Bibliothek in Brünn „Europa: zerrissen oder doch vereint?“ (http://wiko.phil.muni.cz/de/content/2012-norbert-christian-wolf-musils-kakanien-ein-land-ohne-eigenschaften-europa)

This paper analyzes the LL in the city of Bautzen / Budyšin in Germany, a town which is frequently considered the “capital” of the Slavonic minority of the Sorbs. It focuses on the societal role of Sorbian in relation to practices and ideologies of mainstream German society. The vast majority of signs in Bautzen / Budyšin are in German only. Sorbian is essentially restricted to explicitly Sorbian institutions and to local and regional administration. Interviews conducted in shops and on the streets reveal that paternalistic attitudes common to perceptions of language policies and minority languages in Germany dominate; practices maintain the common monolingual habitus in German society. Members of the majority population show little awareness of Sorbian issues, and Sorbian signage is seen as a generous gesture but considered essentially unnecessary. Only in most recent times, a reaction by the Sorbian community has challenged these practices and attitudes.