Band 37, Heft 2

Abstract: This article explores the complex origins of the literary figure ‘Berliner Eckensteher’ around 1830. It analyses the sources of this figure in European visual and textual culture, its literary transformations and its different meanings. On the one hand, these figures were conceived as typical ‘biedermeierlich’, that is, as conforming to the social order, as drunken, dumb and harmless. On the other hand, and typical ‘vormärzlich’, they stood also for subversive protest against social repression and increasingly for the fight against reactionary politics. But: did Berlin ‘Eckensteher’ ever actually exist?

Abstract: Der vorliegende Beitrag sucht eine Blickkorrektur anzustoßen. Er zielt auf eine Lektüre von Des Vetters Eckfenster im Journalkontext der von Johann Daniel Symanski herausgegebenen Zeitschrift Der Zuschauer. Zeitblatt für Belehrung und Aufheiterung samt deren prätextuellen Implikationen, dem Rekurs auf die frühaufklärerische Moralische Wochenschrift. Warum reinszeniert Der Zuschauer , warum Des Vetters Eckfenster 1821/22 das Format Moralische Wochenschrift und dessen spezifische Schreibweisen?

Abstract: The article talks about Verena Stefan’s Häutungen ( Shedding ). More precisely it deals with the reactions of individual female readers on the one hand and, on the other hand, the letters Erich Fried and Verena Stefan exchanged about the topic of female writing. Such secondary sources allow a very interesting insight in the way individual reading and collective identity formation have matched in the 1970’s women’s liberation movement.

Abstract: A systematic overview of the concurrent usages of the theory of recognition in literary studies is given, including the relations to the philosophical and sociological theories of recognition. It is complemented by a selected bibliography.

Abstract: In Dostoevsky, the question of justice is not only posed as a legal or moral question but also, on a more fundamental level, as a question of a human being’s right to live, its raison d’être. This article will interpret the central notion of justice in Dostoevsky in the conceptual framework of the theory of recognition as it is put forward in Hegel’s early Jenaer Realphilosophie.

Abstract: Contrary to the widespread opinion that Franz Kafka’s works mainly articulate the disturbance of all meaning and thus represent the deconstruction of every stable identity, this article focuses on the struggle for recognition in his diaries, letters and fragments. The article especially emphasizes the utopian ideas of recognition and the concept of positive selfhood, as it appears in Kafka’s works. Some comments on the story A Starvation Artist (1922) are included.

Abstract: Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition is juxtaposed to Lotte Paepcke’s descriptions of the disrespect for Jews in Germany from the Weimar Republic, through the Third Reich, to the Federal Republic. While Paepcke’s depiction of the transitional time to National Socialism can be well understood in terms of Honneth’s theory as a continuous erosion of the various spheres of recognition, the theory is not fully adequate to describe her position on the German politics of memory of the postwar period. Paepcke is convinced that a renewed recognition of Jews in Germany after the Shoah can only be obtained by a broad acceptance of the concept of ‘negative symbiosis’ (Dan Diner), both publicly and individually.

Abstract: This essay investigates the numerous recent academic publications (2000–2012) on the theme of tragedy and ‘the tragic’. The books discussed are grouped under three headings: (1) new perspectives on the history of tragedy as dramatic genre; (2) reflections of the role and function of the tragic in philosophy and cultural theory; (3) the relation of theatricality and tragedy, especially regarding the representation of emotions.

Abstract: Focusing on a recently published book on the role of temporality and media in the process of early modern reformation this essay discusses the role of theories and histories of media and communication in research on the early modern era.

Abstract: This article outlines four ways of writing the history of German Studies after 1945: 1. the history of theory and methods, 2. the history of projects and objects, 3. the history of institutions, 4. the biographical approach. The discipline is learning how to appreciate polycentric structures and philological traditions which transcend the boundaries of the 19th century and the nation state.