Volume 35, Issue 1

The essay examines the literary representation of towns in the 17 th and 18 th centuries. In the dramatic poetry of the 17 th century, the leadership of autonomous German and Dutch trade towns was extensively praised within the context of the mythos of the city blessed with everlasting prosperity by God. In the early 18 th century, new forms of trade increasingly undermined the social and economic security of the municipal patriciate. The essay outlines conservative reflexes of the endangered urban elites by examining dramatic texts from Amsterdam and Hamburg, in which the territorially defined source of solidarity of the town was no longer employed as a dramatic frame of action.

Mid–19 th century authors still had to establish their position with respect to the ‹classical‹ period of German literature when situating themselves in the literary field of the modern book trade. Christoph Martin Wieland and some of his works, in particular Agathon , Oberon and the Abderiten , belonged to the classical archive of this time. However, the perception of Wieland as a ›classic‹ author was persistently negative. In the literary discourse of the 19 th century he was considered to represent a classicism that had been preserved as though in a museum, but offered no potential for productive reception. While Gottfried Keller engaged in this discourse, an analysis of the historical reception of the Züricher Novellen , Der Grüne Heinrich and Leute von Seldwyla shows that Keller used both Wieland's works and the derogatory discourse for his own poetic production.

The research group »Poetik und Hermeneutik« is frequently considered to have an exemplary status for other research groups and colloquiums. However, up to now there has been no detailed history of the beginnings of »Poetik und Hermeneutik« itself, which in turn casts its eye on role models, predecessors and founder constellations. The present article dares to make a first attempt at describing the manifold interweaving of institutional, personal and thematic connections that played a role in the group's founding, in order to not only present »Poetik und Hermeneutik« as a prospective model, but also classify its founding according to pre-existing structures.

The founding phase of the research group »Poetik und Hermeneutik« provides us with an opportunity to study the production of knowledge in the humanities in actu – analogously to laboratory studies in the sociology of science – and within the context of the interaction of theories, institutions and social history. A closer look at the discussions published in the first volumes of »Poetik und Hermeneutik« reveals the creation of the research program, as well as its defence against competing interests – in this case a literary-sociological perspective strongly asserted by Siegfried Kracauer. The essay follows the arguments, strategies and consequences of these attempts at differentiation. During the third colloquium in 1966 they caused inner and outer friction in the research and communication process, from which the theory of the aesthetics of reception emerged.

The following essay introduces a research project which aims to examine one central focus of the research group «Poetik und Hermeneutik«: the clarification of terms and the history of their various disciplinary applications. At the same time, perspectives are developed, which situate the research itself within the context of contemporary scientific-theoretical research on the history of the humanities.

The recent history of the influence of the research group »Poetik und Hermeneutik« is shaped by a strong tension between the somewhat limited reception of the group's results on the one hand and the large inner-disciplinary and extra-disciplinary fascination for the research group itself on the other. The scholarly reception of the volumes and the scholarly and non-scholarly resonance of the group are not commensurate. The essay asserts the thesis that the fascination of the »Poetik und Hermeneutik« research group no longer depends on the relevance of its research results. The history of the fascination of »Poetik und Hermeneutik« and the reconstruction of its attractiveness, which was also of importance to the higher level cultural and scholarly journalism of the last century, is explained here by means of the cultural-critical ›functionalisation‹ of »Poetik und Hermeneutik«.

The present study examines a group that has largely been ignored by scholars in the fields of social and literary history. Daughters of Protestant pastors made up a significant part of those women who took up the pen in the ›pedagogical‹ century. This study emphasizes the commonalities and paralleles between the different women and at the same time attempts to underline the significance of this group for gender, education, and literary studies.

Based on a selection of female authors' letters to Hermann Hauff, editor of the Morgenblatt , this paper examines writing and publication strategies used by writers in the middle of the 19th century. The analysis will in particular focus on rhetorical devices and identity constructions used by these authors with the aim of presenting themselves as professional writers without jeopardizing their personal integrity and gender identity.