Tom 44 (2019): Zeszyt 1 (June 2019)

This paper aims to reveal the relevance of a so far neclected essay, written by Petru Dumitriu in German and originally published in 1965. This essay discussed the situation of the novel and argue against some shortcomings in contemporary conceptions of literature.

Our analysis of Joachim Wittstock’s narrative entitled Hades and published thirteen years after the fall of the communist regime in Romania aims at pointing out the intimate connection between socio-political reality and personal experience reflected by the creative process of turning reality into fiction by writing. We consider the chosen narrative both as a political and literary statement, reflecting much of the way of life in Romania during the late 1980s. The narrative may be considered as some kind of withheld fiction and a pertinent comment of the author as to the role of fiction in a totalitarian regime.

The present study takes two tendencies into account that have shaped the cultural contact between the Romanian culture and the culture of the German minority in Romania. On the one hand, the re-writing of history respectively of the historical discourse according to cultural policy of the Romanian communist state is envisaged, on the other hand, the selection of articles on Romanian culture and literature published in the weekly Karpatenrundschau are analysed in order to trace tendencies cultural transfer.

The writer Emil Witting (1880-1952), known by German readers through the descriptions of the forests and pastures of the Carpathian Mountains, author of extensive relations dedicated to the bear (Frate Nicolae) and to deer (Scrimerul), conceives a novel dedicated to a painter connected to the Szekler’s world. Imre Nagy (1893-1976) served as a model for the main character. From this unfinished writing, three fragments were published. These have recently been translated into Hungarian, printed in Miercurea Ciuc in an illustrated edition containing Imre Nagy’s paintings and graphic works.

Herta Müller’s leaning towards word for word transfer of Romanian set phrases in her texts can be explained by the environment in which she lived until her emigration to West Germany and this admittedly intensifies with the gradually increasing general interest in multi-lingualism. The fact that the authoress speaks of the German-Romanian transfer in her acceptance speech on the occasion of the Nobel Prize award proves the important role, which Hertha Müller ascribes to this procedure.

Also at the centre of the latest books by Balthasar Waitz stands the multicultural region of the Banat. The author seems to be gripped by the plurilingualism of the immediate surroundings of his homeland. Different forms of Romanian, from slang to everyday speech, but occasionally also Hungarian, Slovak and Serbian phrases find their way into the texts of the Banat author. In this manner just as with Hertha Müller, language images come into being, new light. Thus literary multilingualism in both writers enables one to have a novel access to the relation between literature and reality.

The Black Church, the largest sacral building in Transylvania, has been given a central role in the local identity narratives. As a historical place of remembrance, it mediates and mobilizes elements of historical knowledge, and at the same time constructs a myth.The article examines how the Black Church in Brasov, one of the most important symbols of the Transylvanian Saxons, is poetically constructed as a place of cultural memory in the German, Romanian and Hungarian poems of the interwar period, how the concrete place is reinterpreted as a space for creating identity, while the ethnic dimension should not be ignored. It examines the question of what symbolic value it has for the German, Romanian and Hungarian populations and how this can be seen from the lyrical texts of the time.

The present study focuses on imagology. Starting from the theoretical aspects of the concepts self-image and hetero-image, the analysis ponders upon the imagological constructs of two ethnical groups in the novel of the Romanian German-language author Andreas Birkner. In this analysis, the self image identifies with the one of the Transylvanian, and the image of the other is that of the Roma. The analysis of Birkner's novel leads to the conclusion that there have been certain mental images deeply rooted in historical reality and which can be, partly, explained by means of collective memory parameters. Stereotypes and prejudices should be considered in this context.

Using the example of Lavinia Branişte’s novel Null Komma Irgendwas, the present article will explore the value of intercultural literature through a specific poetry. I will analyze with a close reading how questions of values as well as questions of apprehension of’ home’ are presented through a specific narrativ. I will draw paralells to Gottfried Keller´s Die drei gerechten Kammmacherandto Friedrich Nietzsche’s poem Vereinsamt.

The article presents Doina Ioanid and her prose poems. In her poems, Ioanid records in detailed manner everyday life episodes in order to capture the fragile, authentic, genuine aspects and thus the poetry of simple life. The author use the apparent trivial aspects of life for selfreflections and for her escapes into fantasy. Her poems is the result of a cautious language precision and frugality, which make of DoinaIoanid one of the most representative and gifted Romanian poets of the young generation.

This article addresses a little known poem by Goethe, Planetentanz (Dance of the Planets) and analyses it’s content referring to mythology, astronomy and dramaturgy. Goethe’s planets are defined by the character of their namesake gods and goddesses as well as by the physical characters of the rocky or gaseous heavenly bodies known today with their characteristics explored by Goethe’s contemporaries. It has been shown that Goethe corresponded with some of the most influential astronomers of his time.

The story “Ja nicht ja” was written specifically for the volume “Der siebenbürgische Voltaire. Walther Gottfried Seidner zum 80. Geburtstag” by the famous novelist Eginald Schlattner. It brings the communist regime and the Department of State Security into the focus of the reader. During a meeting in the early 1990s attended by evangelical Lutheran priests of Augustan Confession a young priest admitted that he was a collaborator of the State Security, and thus managed to take over the burden of being an informant on the shoulders of others. Father Walther Gottfried Seidner, who was also threatened, managed to avoid State Security at any price, and understanding the situation of the young priest takes his defense.

An essential factor for the naming practice lies in the language(s) spoken by that certain family. In the nowadays very common multilingual families in Transylvania, the so called ‚mixed marriages’, the linguistic contact also becomes manifest in the field of onomatology. Out of the vast subject matter, four aspects will be approached: the decline of the tradition of naming a child after a parent; naming practices following ethnic reasons in order to denote a certain identity; naming preferences for international names in mixed families; the increasing diversification and inter-culturality of name-giving due to globalization and the impact of social media. Concrete examples – based on bap tis mal registers of the local Lutheran Church – illustrate the monitored trends.

This article covers the verbs kopulieren (copulate) and kaufen (buy) with the meaning of, religious and legal marriage’ followed by the verb verändern (change) with the meaning of ,marry’, ,getting married’. The case examples show that certain meanings of a verb which have been retained in Transylvanian documentary sources and the Transylvanian-Saxon vernacular are indeed mentioned in High German, however, they are marked ,archaic’ (see the given meanings of the verbs kopulieren, originating from Latin and the given meanings of the verb verändern originating from Middle High German). On the other hand, when a certain meaning of a verb is not documented in High German any longer, Transylvanian document sources and the Transylvanian-Saxon vernacular can serve as documentation (see the verb kaufen which has retained the Middle High German meaning). The case examples are taken from the Transylvanian-Saxon Dictionary and the North-Transylvanian-Saxon Dictionary.

Beyond the communicative function of death notices, to informe about a death case, one will be repeatedly surprised by auxiliary functions of this category of private notices. The following article analizes from an intercultural perspective the representation of the (professional) identity in obituaries and death notices pertaining to a Romanian and a German corpus – the achievements attained to in the job environment and – in case of a blurred or merely outlined professional identity – on interests outside of one’s job, which were cherished by the deceased to the effect of shaping and defining him.

It has been more than thirty years since Christoph Ransmayr published The Last World to great success despite its intellectually challenging theme, the fictitious search for Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid, who had been sent into exile by emperor Augustus. Ever since then, his writing has attracted the attention of the public, literary critics and scholars alike. Volume 220 of the renowned edition text+kritik has been dedicated entirely to his work. Its editor, Doren Wohlleben, gathered half a dozen contributions meant to map the different intercultural narrative spaces, which are mainly identifiable in the author’s novels and prose writings.