Helmut Schmitz – författare

Beginning with the question of the role of the past in the shaping of a contemporary identity, this volumes spans three generations of German and Austrian writers and explores changes and shifts in the aesthetics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The purpose of the book is to assess contemporary German literary representations of National Socialism in a wider context of these current debates. The contributors address questions arising from a shift over the last decade, triggered by a generation change-questions of personal and national identity in Germany and Austria, and the aesthetics of memory. One of the central questions that emerges in relation to the Hitler youth generation is that of biography, as examined through Günter Grass' and Martin Walser's conflicting views on the subject of National Socialism. Other themes explored here are the conflict between the post-war generations and the contributions of that conflict to (West)-German mentality, and the growing historical distance and its influence on the aesthetics of representation.

Beginning with the question of the role of the past in the shaping of a contemporary identity, this volumes spans three generations of German and Austrian writers and explores changes and shifts in the aesthetics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The purpose of the book is to assess contemporary German literary representations of National Socialism in a wider context of these current debates. The contributors address questions arising from a shift over the last decade, triggered by a generation change-questions of personal and national identity in Germany and Austria, and the aesthetics of memory. One of the central questions that emerges in relation to the Hitler youth generation is that of biography, as examined through Günter Grass' and Martin Walser's conflicting views on the subject of National Socialism. Other themes explored here are the conflict between the post-war generations and the contributions of that conflict to (West)-German mentality, and the growing historical distance and its influence on the aesthetics of representation.

New essays exploring the resurgence of the theme of romantic relationships and love in German literature since around the turn of the millennium.While sociologists have long agreed that the problems of modern and contemporary subjectivity crystallize in the issue of romantic relationships and love (e.g., Luhmann, Illouz, Beck, etc.), the theme of love, so crucial to the foundational text of modern German literature, Goethe's Werther, all but disappeared from German prose literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet over the past fifteen years German-language literature has witnessed an explosion of novels with "Liebe" in their titles as well as novels that centrally focus on intersubjective erotic and emotional relationships. A number of major contemporary writers (Treichel, Walser, Kermani, Ortheil, Maron, Zaimoglu, Genazino) have written Liebesromane or novels in which significant sociohistorical questions are refracted through the love relationships of their protagonists. German film likewise has increasingly thematized love relationships under postromantic conditions, e.g. in the films of the Berlin school. Simultaneously, the development of both feminist and LGBTQ politics over the past decades has exploded the heteronormative discourses ofdesire in a way that has both expanded and enriched the lovers' discourse, while recent developments of urban (hetero)sexuality have expanded the previously available models of expressing erotic relationships in ways that are reminiscent of the utopian ending of Goethe's first version of Stella. The present collection offers a wide-ranging set of essays on these developments.Contributors: Esther K. Bauer, Sven Glawion, Silke Horstkotte,Sarra Kassem, Maria Roca Lizarazu, Helmut Schmitz, Angelika Vybiral.Helmut Schmitz is Reader in German at the University of Warwick. Peter Davies is Professor and Head of German at the University of Edinburgh.

Seit ungefähr zwei Jahrzehnten gibt es in der deutschen Kulturlandschaft, im literarischen und akademischen Betrieb eine zunehmende Sensibilisierung für den Beitrag von Schriftstellern und Schriftstellerinnen zur Gegenwartsliteratur, deren Muttersprache nicht, oder nicht nur, deutsch ist und die nach Deutschland immigriert oder Kinder bzw. Enkel von Immigranten sind. Dieser Band präsentiert eine Reihe von Aufsätzen zur zeitgenössischen transnationalen deutschsprachigen Literatur und Kultur. Neben Aufsätzen zu einzelnen Schriftstellern (Imran Ayata, Yadé Kara, Feridun Zaimoğlu, Rafik Schami, Terézia Mora, Libuše Moníková und Ilija Trojanow) werden auch begriffliche und thematische Fragen angesprochen. Unterteilt in die Sektionen Historisches, Begriffliche Fragen, Deutsch-türkische, Ost- und südosteuropäische und Deutsch-jüdische Literatur, sucht der Band der Vielfalt und Heterogenität der transkulturellen deutschsprachigen Literatur gerecht zu werden. Dabei richtet sich der Band sowohl an Fachkollegen, als auch an Studenten.