1968 and transnational history in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn

This article considers the representation of transnational political movements around 1968 in Özdamar’s autobiographical novel Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (1998). The transnational perspective enables Özdamar to articulate cultural transfers between Turkey, West Germany, Greece, Spain and Italy in the context of Cold War political activism. The article will show how the novel reappraises the political movements of the late sixties and early seventies as transnational phenomena which in West Germany included the participation of ‘Gastarbeiter’, thus serving as a corrective to Eurocentric histories of 1968. This is followed by a consideration of the cultural practices of the political activists. The characters continually reference a canon of revolutionary authors including Brecht, Lorca, Rosa Luxemburg and Nâzım Hikmet in order to foster a sense of transnational identity. The article comments on the relevance of Hikmet’s concept of secular resurrection for Özdamar’s novel. Finally the article considers how words are depicted as physical presences and bodies are subjected to physical transformation. These techniques are central to Özdamar’s utopian presentation of transnational political activism as an erotic experience

Linksalternatives Leben: Wohngemeinschaften in Özdamars Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde und ‘Ein unzeitgemäßer Üsküdarer’

Dieser Artikel konzentriert sich auf die Darstellung der Wohn- und Arbeitsgemeinschaften in Ost- und Westberlin in Özdamars Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde, ergänzt mit einer Besprechung der Istanbuler Wohngemeinschaft in dem Prosa-Fragment ‘Ein unzeitgemäßer Üsküdarer’. Die Wohngemeinschaft wird als paradigmatischer Ort der antiautoritären Reformbewegungen der siebziger Jahre betrachtet, als Versuch, die linksalternativen Ideen der Studentenbewegung in die Praxis umzusetzen. Programmatische Formulierungen dieser antiautoritären Lebensversuche befinden sich sowohl beim Dissidenten Rudolf Bahro als auch beim Dichter Ece Ayhan Çağlar. Untersucht werden diese Lebensversuche in Westberlin, in Ostberlin (an der Volksbühne und bei Gabriele Gysi) und in der Türkei bei Ece Ayhan. In Seltsame Sterne und ‘Ein unzeitgemäßer Üsküdarer’ werden Andersartigkeit, Vielfältigkeit und Nebeneinanderwohnen zum poetologischen Programm gestaltet. In diesen Texten hängen Thema und literarische Form miteinander zusammen: Der Topos der Wohngemeinschaft entspricht der Mehrstimmigkeit der Form. Durch die Erzähltechnik der Montage bietet Özdamar eine inklusive Ästhetik des Nebeneinanders

Medical experiments on humans in Kerstin Hensel's Lärchenau (2008)

This chapter considers the representation of the legacy of National Socialist eugenics and human experimentation in Kerstin Hensel’s novel Lärchenau (2008). Lärchenau chronicles a period of almost a century (1915–2007) in a small village in the Oder-Spree district of Brandenburg. The chapter draws on the work of Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich in order to argue that Hensel’s characters enact sado-masochistic behaviour patterns which echo the medical crimes of the Third Reich. Hensel’s novel – in part, a tribute to Ingeborg Bachmann’s Das Buch Franza/The Book of Franza (1978/1995) – centres on the geneticist Gunter Konarske who conducts a series of medical experiments on his wife Adele. Although Konarske is born in 1944, his practices bear comparison to the human experiments carried out by Carl Clauberg in Auschwitz. Clauberg’s victims were unaware that they were experimental subjects, and, in Hensel’s novel, so too is Adele. Reading Lärchenau against the background of Nazi medical crimes requires us to reconsider the novel as a confrontation with history, showing how the present is rooted in the past. This perspective counteracts the prevailing tendency in Hensel criticism to pigeonhole her as a satirical and fantastical author. Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Darstellung nationalsozialistischer Programme der Eugenik und Menschenversuche bzw. deren Nachwirkungen in Kerstin Hensels Roman Lärchenau (2008). Lärchenau erzählt die Geschichte eines gleichnamigen Dorfes im Oder-Spree-Seengebiet Brandenburgs im Zeitraum von 1915 bis 2007. Auf Basis der Theorien von Alexander und Margarete Mitscherlich wird hier argumentiert, dass Hensels Figuren sadomasochistische Verhaltensweisen wiederholen, die den Formen der medizinischen Gewalt im Dritten Reich ähnlich sind. Hensels Roman ist zum Teil als Hommage an Ingeborg Bachmanns Das Buch Franza (1978/1995) zu verstehen. Im Zentrum von Lärchenau steht der Genetiker Gunter Konarske, der eine Reihe von Menschenversuchen an der eigenen Frau Adele durchführt. Obwohl Konarske erst im Jahre 1944 geboren wurde, lässt sich seine Praxis mit den Menschenversuchen vergleichen, die Carl Clauberg in Auschwitz durchführte. Claubergs Opfer wussten nicht, dass sie Versuchspersonen waren, und das gleiche gilt für Adele in Lärchenau. Die Betrachtung Lärchenaus aus der Sicht der nationalsozialistischen Medizinverbrechen bedeutet, dass man den Roman als kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der Vergangenheit verstehen soll, die die Wurzeln der Gegenwart in der Vergangenheit entdeckt. Diese Betrachtungsweise wirkt der Forschungstendenz entgegen, Hensel als Satirikerin und Fantasy-Autorin einzuordnen

Body language in the prints of Käthe Kollwitz

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Büchner and Paine on elitism and equality

Büchner’s belief in equality and in the value of every human life motivate his constant polemics against elitism. Taking the letter of mid-February 1834 on aristocratic elitism as a starting point, this chapter explores Büchner’s critique of elitism in the fields of politics, morality, aesthetics and history. Particularly relevant is the relentless unmasking of aristocratic, heroic ideology in Danton’s Tod. Close affinities between Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791-92) and Dantons Tod suggest that Büchner’s critique of idealist drama in the letter of 28 July 1835 draws in part on Paine’s critique of Edmund Burke. Büchner’s programmatic insistence on human suffering is intended to counter ideological distortions of history

Edwin Morgan and European modernism

Morgan’s Collected Translations (1996) is one of his most substantial achievements. This chapter looks at the trajectory of his translations from, and use of, poets of European modernism, in various forms, in a range of political contexts and languages, and in the continuing dialogue, or open conversation, of Morgan’s poetic practice. Amongst the dozens of poets Morgan has translated, five stand out – Eugenio Montale, Sándor Weöres, Vladimir Mayakovsky, August von Platen and Attila József – because Morgan has dedicated a separate volume to each one. This chapter shows that by engaging with modern European poetry, and with these five poets in particular, Morgan was able to develop his voice in a number of important ways

The rhetoric of business in Brecht's Dreigroschenroman

This article takes Walter Benjamin's interpretation of the Dreigroschenroman as a point of departure and conclusion. It develops Benjamin's idea that the novel shows how language is used to exert political and economic influence. This article reads the Dreigroschenroman as an insightful example of ‘Sprachkritik’. The business people in the novel use the rhetorical technique of paraphrase, thus drawing on Cicero's advice that the orator should exploit the ignorance of the audience. Whereas neoliberal free market rhetoric (following F. A. Hayek) tends to minimise the problem of monopoly formation, Brecht's novel explores the coercive character of the market and its reliance on the deception that a transaction is mutually beneficial. Macheath emerges as an expert salesman who uses populist marketing techniques in order to extract the maximum profit from his audience. The focus on material interests can be seen as antidote to business rhetoric. As with Marx and Engels, the fundamental question here is that of property. In this way, the novel exemplifies the Brechtian use of crude thinking (‘plumpes Denken’) in order to evade ideological manipulation

Edwin Morgan and European modernism

Morgan’s Collected Translations (1996) is one of his most substantial achievements. This chapter looks at the trajectory of his translations from, and use of, poets of European modernism, in various forms, in a range of political contexts and languages, and in the continuing dialogue, or open conversation, of Morgan’s poetic practice. Amongst the dozens of poets Morgan has translated, five stand out – Eugenio Montale, Sándor Weöres, Vladimir Mayakovsky, August von Platen and Attila József – because Morgan has dedicated a separate volume to each one. This chapter shows that by engaging with modern European poetry, and with these five poets in particular, Morgan was able to develop his voice in a number of important ways