Cover and Introductory Pages

Studia theodisca, Vol 31 (2024) - Cover and Introductory Page

Anwältin des Menschlichen. Miniatur zu Rose Ausländer: [An advocate of the human. A miniature of Rose Ausländer]

Rose Ausländer’s poetry is a plea for rights that are universal, but which depend on a careful use of language and thoughtful, reasoned views. She exemplifies this with her clear, experience-laden work. Such language and the dialogues it allows contrast with the superficial and often ignorant discussions in social networks. Derrida’s concept of a «minimum friendship» with oneself and others is necessary to foster true discourse. Ausländer’s poem Gestern illustrates this by criticizing the limitations of identification through official documents like passports and affirming the principle of non-privilege. The gesture of throwing away the passport symbolizes the rejection of hierarchies and opens the space for true humanity and discursiveness, unbound by fixed categories

Cover and Introductory Pages

Studia theodisca – Peter Weiss (2023) - Cover and Introductory Page

Peter Weiss: Experiment und Engagement heute

In the introductory essay, the volume’s editors trace the project that gave rise to this collection of contributions on Peter Weiss, his work, and his fortunes back to the events celebrating the centenary of his birth in 2016. The reflections start from Milo Rau, as an example of a contemporary author and director who finds in the mastery of Peter Weiss a point of reference for an art combining formal experimentalism with political engagement. The relevance of this present-day reference to Weiss as an example of the “aesthetics of resistance” is then addressed in detail, which leads on to the discussion of the main idea and thematic structure of the volume.The twelve papers are divided into two equal halves. In the first section, entitled “Essay und Prosa – Experimente mit Subjekt, Kunst und Politik”, six scholars investigate Peter Weiss’s essayistic and fictional writing, its cultural and artistic context, and its legacy for literature up to the 21st century. Lesser-known articles in Swedish and seminal interventions in the public debates of the 1960s, experimental prose and canonical novels, are thus reinterpreted using the tools of contemporary literary theory.In the second section, a further six scholars examine Weiss’s cinematographic and theatrical work and his reflections on media and performance. These contributions give new insights into Weiss’s documentary films, revolutionary dramas, and media aesthetics and politics, as well as their influence up to the present day. Under the title “Performative Engagements: Film, Theater, Medien”, contributions are brought together that range from earlier models, such as Hölderlin, Artaud, and Brecht, to contemporaries like Pier Paolo Pasolini, and finally to today’s theatre, again with Milo Rau

I ‘nuovi cittadini tedeschi’ e il dibattito sulla singolarità dell’Olocausto. Su «Adas Raum» di Sharon Dodua Otoo: [The ‘new German citizens’ and the debate on the singularity of the Holocaust. On «Adas Raum» by Sharon Dodua Otoo]

This paper aims to investigate the relevance of Sharon Dodua Otoo’s debut novel Adas Raum in the ongoing Historikerstreit 2.0. Relevant to this new historical dispute is the possible connection between colonialism and the memory of the Holocaust. As I will show, Adas Raum seems to respond artistically to critical suggestions proposed by Michael Rothberg who interprets the link between memory and identity in a complex way, which results in non-competitive participation in collective memory construction in multi-ethnic societies and redefines the relevance of such categories as victims and perpetrators