GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS最新文献

This essay considers the treatment of theology in Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus. Specifically, it proposes theology as meeting-point of the two opposing elements characteristic of German cultural history: humanism and fanaticism (‘the demonic’). The most significant representatives of humanism are the so-called ‘Dunkelmänner’: the Christian humanists of the Reformation period and authors of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum. In these letters, we encounter the refined creative capacity of the human mind and spirit, in contrast to the excessive coarseness of the protestant Reformation and Martin Luther. The novel's narrator Serenus Zeitblom identifies himself particularly with Crotus Rubianus and Erasmus as representatives of both the classical and the Christian cultural world, a tradition threatened by fanaticism and violence in the twentieth century as in the sixteenth. The Epistolae arose from the burning of Jewish literature, and Mann's point is that the enfeebled German intelligentsia of the Third Reich now contains no true ‘Dunkelmänner’ – except perhaps himself. The essay also examines the sources of the theological material in the novel, both with reference to the characters in the university faculty in Halle and to the theological concepts themselves which give the novel its essential substance and are therefore necessary to its understanding.

Peter-Paul Zahl was a writer, printing press owner, and from 1972 to 1982 a prisoner suspected of belonging to the Red Army Faction (RAF). During the late 1970s, a number of prominent authors risked their reputations to campaign on his behalf. They did not argue that Zahl was innocent of violent crime, but instead protested that he had been handed an excessive prison sentence on account of his left-wing political views. This article examines the role that their shared identity as writers played in the campaign for Zahl, and how their self-awareness as authors translated into a sense of responsibility for civil society as a whole. They viewed the censorship of Zahl's printing press and of his prison writing as a threat to their own literary freedom, especially in the polarised political landscape that had emerged in response to the RAF. Authors used pre-existing literary networks – namely the ‘Verband deutscher Schriftsteller’ and PEN International – as political leverage. Zahl's case left a number of prominent writers feeling impelled to protect the public spheres – both mainstream and alternative – so that the voices which could hold the Federal Republic to account might be heard.

Peter-Paul Zahl war Schriftsteller, Drucker und von 1972 bis 1982 Gefangener, der der Mitgliedschaft in der Roten Armee Fraktion (RAF) verdächtigt wurde. In den späten siebziger Jahren riskierten prominente Autor:innen ihr öffentliches Ansehen, um sich für Zahl einzusetzen. Sie behaupteten nicht, dass Zahl unschuldig sei, sondern dass aufgrund seiner politisch linksradikalen Einstellung eine unangemessen hohe Haftstrafe gegen ihn verhängt wurde. Der folgende Beitrag untersucht, welche Bedeutung ihre gemeinsame Identität als Schriftsteller:innen in der Kampagne für Peter-Paul Zahl spielte. Die Autor:innen nutzten bereits existierende literarische Netzwerke wie den aerband deutscher Schriftstellerʼ sowie PEN International als politisches Druckmittel. Gerade in der durch die RAF polarisierten politischen Landschaft betrachteten sie die Zensur von Zahls Druckerei und seinen im Gefängnis geschriebenen Werken als Bedrohung der eigenen literarischen Freiheit. Ihr Selbstbewusstsein als Autor:innen brachte ein starkes Verantwortungsgefühl für die gesamte Zivilgesellschaft mit sich. Der Fall Peter-Paul Zahl führte dazu, dass sich eine Reihe von Autor:innen veranlasst sahen, die (Gegen-)Öffentlichkeit zu schützen, damit die Stimmen, die die Bundesrepublik zur Rechenschaft zogen, gehört werden konnten.

This article analyses Dr Else Kienle's 1932 text Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin within the context of the debates around women's access to abortion in Weimar Germany. Access to abortion was a widely debated topic in Weimar Germany and public demonstrations against Paragraph 218 of the Weimar penal code, which outlawed abortion, occurred following the 1931 arrest of Dr Kienle. I argue that, as a non-partisan work written from the perspective of a practising doctor, Kienle's text offers an innovative contribution to these debates. While Kienle's arrest is frequently cited as a key moment in the Weimar abortion debates, her writing has received limited critical attention. My analysis of the literary and discursive strategies employed by Kienle in Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin reveals that Kienle goes beyond the arguments of the women's and socialist movements. Kienle's text should be read as an attempt to broaden the reach of the campaign against Paragraph 218. The book adopts an innovative and experience-led approach, which reveals the medical, psychological, and social implications of limiting women's access to abortion, and which only re-emerged in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s.

I begin with a poem of Koepsell's that questions the writing of poetry in times of political upheaval, and whether words can save necks. I then examine the collection Die Akte James Knopf for possible answers to those questions. José Medina conceptualises epistemic death, and Koepsell reveals the closeness of epistemic and actual death. I read Die Akte James Knopf as both a poetry collection and a dossier of evidence in a case of epistemic murder; it uncovers the mechanisms of racialised knowledge production/perpetuation, and produces what David Lloyd has called poetic justice. Medina writes of guerilla pluralism, which in this context I call provoking pluralism, because it privileges linguistic intervention over violence. In its grammar and effects, provoking pluralism is both irritating and potentially generative. I also conceive of ‘guerilla epistemology’, which operates a reversal, or revolution, of epistemic privilege. Koepsell provokingly acknowledges that the violence of epistemic injustice is, like other kinds of violence, tied to pleasure: racialised injustice sells. With his poetry and strategic use of humour, I argue, he produces counter-pleasure, which infiltrates dominant knowledge and stimulates change. It might one day save someone's neck.