Volume 43, Issue 1

This paper is interested in the role and space ‘conservative’ poetical realist literature was granted in the German Empire’s 19 th century public discourse around environmental pollution and its impact on social inequality. Wilhelm Raabe’s novel Pfister’s Mill serves as a case study, as this literary work discusses the unwanted side effects of the young nation state’s transformation from an agricultural to an industrial society based on a contemporaneous legal incident.

The following article deals with the relationship between names and their symbolic capital as a theme in Theodor Fontane’s Poggenpuhls . While the eponymous poor but noble family relies on its notable surname, different names were being popularized through advertising as part of the social and economic upheavals at the end of the 19 th century. This rivalry between a genealogical and a primarily economic way of publicizing and valorizing names is not only present in the novel’s dialogues, with noteworthy references to highly popular contemporary firms, but is also part of its spatial setting.

The problematization of journalistic work is a recurring theme in literature. This paper traces the reservations journalists see themselves confronted with according to literary representations, how criticism is solidified, and how the suspicion that journalists are making up facts is becoming more universal. This will be done by looking at a historical line of texts, ranging from Die Journalisten by Gustav Freytag to Josef Haslinger’s Opernball. There are two main criteria underlying the choice of texts: first, the figures of journalists play a central role in each of the texts; second, these texts make visible the stages of a presumed development process from the middle of the 19 th century through to today in the most succinct way possible.

Literary Studies of contemporary works of literature, in the absence of a canon, are largely directed by order-making umbrella terms. Using the umbrella term ‘new realism’ as an example this study examines (1) its relationship with poetological discourses and discourses of a diagnosis of the present, (2) how the umbrella term’s attractiveness corresponds to its conceptual underdetermination, and (3) which different forms text analytical concepts of ‘new realism’ can take.

The article deals with the edition of the collected works of Max Frisch, published in 1976 by the German Suhrkamp Verlag ( Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge ). Frisch was afraid of becoming a “classic” and therefore tried to portray his work as the writing of a contemporary. Nevertheless, Max Frisch took his place among the classical authors of the 20 th century. A glance into the archive dissolves the stability of the work unit and shows Frisch's writing as being in a process of constant change.

In 1976, the Frankfurt book fair set its focus on Latin America. On that occasion, the Suhrkamp Verlag presented its Latin America-Program to a massive audience for the first time. Through the analysis of the title of a promotional leaflet prepared by Suhrkamp Verlag for this book fair, this essay identifies and discusses some mediation strategies, as well as some of the misunderstandings and stereotypes set into motion by this publishing house for translating and introducing the Latin American literature into the German book market.

From a publishing perspective, a literary work is always manifested in a variety of issues. The article reconstructs the production history of the early editions of the East German author Angela Krauß in the West German Verlag at the time of the German division. It illustrates how the publishing house is involved in the configuration of a work in its processuality and unity. The article then explains the historical significance of West German issues for East German authors as means of extending their scope of action in the GDR. The focus on issues allows insights into concrete production processes of literature and their historical reception to be gained.

The article focuses on two important paratextual features of edition suhrkamp – its cover design and its seriality. In examining the complex relationship of these features both with respect to each other and to the image and content of edition suhrkamp , it can be shown that the paratext produces a surplus of meaning and thus allows the series to represent both the publishing firm of Suhrkamp and the “Suhrkamp Culture”.

The article follows the trajectory of two books by French philosopher Jacques Derrida through the German publishing scene, from their early rejection to their eventual release with the now-famous Suhrkamp Verlag. In the process, it casts a light on the particular role foreign philosophy has played in the establishment of the Suhrkamp Verlag as a publishing house for the humanities. In turn, this enables new perspectives on the formation of the canon of what is today generally referred to as ‘theory’. Attention to translational practices in their extended sense becomes a central analytical tool for gaining insights into the concrete production processes of theory and their social, economic, and political conditions.