German Studies in America – serie

The work of Peter von Matt, Switzerland’s finest living literary critic, offers a model of humanisticscholarship par excellence: learned, gracious, elegant, dancing nimbly from history andculture to politics and philosophy. Von Matt weaves engaging literary analyses that aresimultaneously interpretations not only of authors and texts but also of Swiss nationhooditself. Inspired in particular by his 2012 volume Das Kalb vor der Gotthardpost: Zur Literaturund Politik der Schweiz (The Calf Fleeing the St. Gotthard Mail Coach: On the Literatureand Politics of Switzerland; winner of that year’s Swiss Book Prize), this interdisciplinarycollection of essays by leading North American scholars of Swiss Studies supplies a criticalbut appreciative engagement with von Matt’s writing. Of interest to students of literatureand of Switzerland, it is the first volume devoted specifically to probing the legacy of vonMatt’s thought. It is thus a worthy testimony to the richness and influence of one of latetwentieth- and early twenty-first-century Switzerland’s leading intellectuals.Die Schriften von Peter von Matt, dem bedeutendsten Literaturkritiker der heutigen Schweiz,sind Beispiele humanistischer Gelehrsamkeit par excellence. Gebildet, anmutig undelegant bewegen sie sich leichtfüßig zwischen Geschichte und Kultur zu Politik undPhilosophie. Dadurch entstehen ansprechende Literaturanalysen, die nicht nur wichtigeAutoren und Texte, sondern auch die Schweizer nationale Identität an sich interpretieren.Besonders durch sein 2012 erschienenes und mit dem Schweizer Buchpreis gekröntenBuch Das Kalb vor der Gotthardpost: Zur Literatur und Politik der Schweiz inspiriert, liefertdiese interdisziplinäre Essaysammlung, die von führenden nordamerikanischen SwissStudies Forschern verfasst wurde, eine manchmal kritische, aber dabei immer auch mitWertschätzung durchzogene Auseinandersetzung mit von Matts Schriften. Studenten derSchweizer Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften bietet diese bahnbrechende Sammlung dieMöglichkeit, sich mit von Matts Gedankengut auseinanderzusetzen. Damit legt dervorliegende Band von dem Reichtum und dem Einfluss eines der führenden SchweizerIntellektuellen des späten 20. und frühen 21. Jahrhunderts Zeugnis ab.

The essays in this volume explore how the humanities can contribute to an understanding of a fundamental aspect of human life: work. This volume explores how German literature has grappled with understanding work in times of disruptive change brought about by industrialization, rapid technological advances, and globalization. It adds a cross-disciplinary perspective by including contributions from the field of film studies, on the cinematic treatment of work, and from philosophy, on the normative questions posed by changing work environments.

«Based on extensive archival sources, this book provides a much-needed look behind the surface of the Imperial German state at war. In contrast to the image of a rapacious and finely tuned war machine, Kless illustrates the frictions, uncertainties, and rivalries that marked Germany’s often confused attempts to create an occupation regime in Poland.»(Dr. Jesse Kauffman, Professor, Eastern Michigan University)«Occupations are often described in terms of their consequences, with the beginnings being neglected. Andrew Kless shows how an occupation in Russian Poland came into being during a critical time in the First World War—it emerged from the ground. He therefore fills an important gap in research.»(Dr. Christian Westerhoff, Director, Library for Contemporary History (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte) Landesbibliothek Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart)Broken Ground captures Germany’s tumultuous first year of the First World War, as it built an occupation administration from scratch between August 1914 and August 1915. Borderlands of the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian Empires became battlegrounds. The German army, struggling to maintain order in a thin strip of war-ravaged, ethnically Polish territory seized from Russia, called for the aid of bureaucrats from the German Kingdom of Prussia to form the Civil Administration for Russian Poland. With few resources, the civilian administrators relied on independent Polish citizens committees and militias to maintain order and called upon the American Rockefeller Foundation to intervene philanthropically to provide food aid. Despite these immense challenges, the enterprising administrators built an enduring occupation administration. They created new offices and departments from finance to forestry, mining to medical. They hired wounded soldiers and aged university professors and self-funded their operation through taxes and tariffs. Their growth was not a directive of Berlin but a product of their own ambition. After the May 1915 Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive and capture of Warsaw, the Civil Administration was adopted into Germany’s German General Government of Warsaw entirely. The broken ground of the first year of war guided the remainder of Germany’s occupation of Poland in the First World War.This book project was the Joint Winner of the 2020 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition for German Studies in America.

This book explores the intersection of folklore and new media storytelling in feminist adaptations of traditional fairy tales. Focusing on the Germanic folktale, the author investigates how retelling and reinterpreting fairy tales in online fan fiction both criticizes traditional narratives and reinforces the continued importance of fairy tales, while also mirroring contemporary concerns and changes in German-speaking society.　Fan versions of the examined folktales are repurposed to serve new functions within the communities in which they are told. Within the community investigated in this book, the stories open an online space where women can reclaim and reconsider the role canonical fairy tales play in their lives. Introducing fandom and new media studies to the realm of oral storytelling and folklore produces a new way of understanding the importance of communal folklore even in an age of mass culture. The adaptations traced throughout this book show the fascinating longevity and flexibility of the folktale and its power to reimagine the Germanic past into the future.

«Murderous Mothers is both an homage to and a critical reflection on the multiple Medea figures that populate late twentieth-century German literature. Claire Scott artfully demonstrates how feminist politics and women’s issues – from abstract questions about the power of women’s bodies and voices, to concrete matters like abortion and sexual violence – speak through this ancient myth, transforming it into something vital and urgent. Scott’s own voice is crystal clear throughout, which allows the layers of productive critique to shine through. With its sophisticated literary analyses, its deep engagement with feminist and postcolonial theory, and its lucid and accessible style, Murderous Mothers will interest and provoke a range of readers and critics.» (Kata Gellen, Duke University)　«Murderous Mothers explores the ambiguities of literary Medea adaptations in beautifully written, engaging prose. For anyone interested in the aesthetics and politics of contemporary literature, this book offers brilliant examples of how literary adaptations of classical myths can contribute to contemporary political discourses on motherhood, reproductive rights, gender, and rage.» (Maria Stehle, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)　This book explores German-language Medea adaptations from the late twentieth century and their relationship to feminist theory and politics. Close readings of novels and plays by Ursula Haas, Christa Wolf, Dagmar Nick, Dea Loher, and Elfriede Jelinek reveal the promise and the pitfalls of using gendered depictions of violence to process inequity and oppression. The figure of Medea has been called many things: a witch, a barbarian, a monster, a goddess, a feminist heroine, a healer, and, finally, a murderous mother. This book considers Medea in all her complexity, thereby reframing our understanding of identity as it relates to feminism and to mythological storytelling. This book project was the Joint Winner of the 2020 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition for German Studies in America.

«Schuchalter’s comprehensive study of the enigmatic author Charles Sealsfield is a welcome contribution to German-American studies. He convincingly explains the development of Sealsfield’s political philosophy: After having fled Europe, the former Catholic priest discovered liberalism and saw its promises fulfilled in the New World before getting disgruntled with actual developments in the USA since the late 1830s.»(Wynfrid Kriegleder, Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Vienna)This work explores the literary phenomenon of Charles Sealsfield, known throughout much of his career as «the Great Unknown» and for a brief time as «Seatsfield, the Greatest American Author.» Sealsfield, a runaway Moravian monk, living in permanent disguise, reinvented himself as an American author and the self-proclaimed founder of a new novel form. Despite publishing works both in English and in German, he has been relegated to a marginalized, if not forgotten, place in the American canon and a constricted place in the German canon. This study examines his fiction and travel books, as well as his correspondence, and strives for a reassessment of his achievement in both canons.

“This superbly compiled and provocative edition makes available for the first time in English translation Albert Lindner’s metatheatrical play on the canine conflict that disrupted Goethe’s Weimar Classicism with melodramatic sensation to herald modernism. The critical apparatus offers a rich historiographical frame for reading diegetic animals in performance, while images of primary documents help vivify the context. Thus framed and honed with two staged readings, the German- and English-language play texts raise intriguing questions about des Pudels Kern, the absent/present poodle’s core meaning. Faustian allusions evoke disturbing dynamics of white patriarchy amid complex intersections of political and theatrical autocracies that resound to the present day.” – Professor Kim Marra, University of Iowa“In Goethe and the Poodle, you get not only an extraordinary play but, also, extraordinary history. Young and Marks make Lindner's nineteenth-century play accessible, bringing out its humor and its theatricality. In the introduction and footnotes, they use the play to teach the reader about the sweep of nineteenth-century German theater, from Goethe and French melodrama through to unified Germany. The book is eminently teachable, in German as well as English, and very entertaining.” – Professor Matt Cornish, Ohio UniversityGoethe and the Poodle is the first English translation of scholar Albert Lindner's 1869 play Der Hund des Aubri, which premiered at Berlin's Wallner Theater during the German Wars of Unification. Inspired by actual events, Lindner's eccentric play stages the conspiracy to bring a popular melodrama featuring a trained poodle to the Weimar Court theater in 1817, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's resistance to the performance, and his subsequent departure after leading the theater for 26 years. Thorough annotations explain the play's cultural and geographic references, and the introductory essay analyzes aesthetic debates surrounding Weimar Classicism, popular taste, and animal performance. Archival images including playbills, portraits, and the 1812 Weimar Theater Laws supplement the volume's contributions to theater history.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a dominant figure in European literature and intellectual life, was the creator of a new and influential visual culture. This volume investigates a new science of perception through an exploration of his autobiographical works, novels and writings on optics. The psychoanalytic approach taken in this study focuses on central acts of perception and the role of vision in Goethe as key to the formation of identity. By addressing the impact of visuality on the act of writing, new interpretations of his most important works emerge through analysis of subject formation in the autobiographies, The Italian Journey and Poetry and Truth. Further, the relationship between the self and the gaze plays a central role in the semi-autobiographical works, The Elective Affinities, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, as well as Color Theory. In exploring the question of identity and identification within a Lacanian framework, The Eye and the Gaze offers an innovative approach to biography, autobiography, and narrative.