Academic literature on the topic 'German literature – 20th century – History and criticism'

Sinkova L. D. Between text and discourse: Russian literature of the XX-XXI century: history, comparative studies and criticism (lit. - crit. articles, conversations). - Minsk: Parkus plus, 2013. - 296 P. The main characteristics of the Belarusian literature development in the contest of 20th-21th century are demonstrated throughout the review. The key patterns of the poetics progression in Belarusian literature are revealed, alongside with the most noticeable algorithms of the national aesthetics establishment and the specifics of mythopoetic perception. Meaningful characteristics of Belarusian literature during Soviet period are examined particularly, especially the literature about Second World War. The national aspects of literary comprehension of the experience of German-fascist occupation in Belarusian literature during Soviet period are revealed. The important characteristic of the modern Belarusian literature after the Chernobyl disaster that has started in 1986, is emphasized upon.

Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas (1919–2015), the celebrated Lithuanian poet of the 20th century, was also one of the most prominent literary critics. For more than two decades, he had been an active literary critic, publishing his texts in Lithuanian émigré literary and culture magazines. In addition to his studies on the history and criticism of Lithuanian literature, articles on Western and Lithuanian classics, Nyka-Niliūnas wrote literary reviews. In the field of Lithuanian émigré literature and criticism, he validated a certain type of critical review which emphasized novelty, originality and evaluation of the book in question.Nyka-Niliūnas wrote his first reviews in a monthly pedagogical journal, Tremtinių mokykla [School of Exiles], published in a German DP camp. The reviews published in the journal, and later in the cultural magazine, Aidai [Echoes], stood out for their completeness, coherent structure, and strict and straightforward evaluation that allowed seeing a particular book in a broader context. A number of Nyka-Niliūnas’s reviews of this period sparked controversy and encouraged literary dialogue.In the US, Nyka-Niliūnas continued to publish literary reviews in Aidai and literary magazine, Literatūros lankai [The Pages of Literature]. In the reviews written during this period, he debated with a group of critics who held a different opinion, established the criteria for evaluating the literature, and highlighted the objectives and the importance of a literary review. Nyka-Niliūnas’s reviews can be characterized not only by author’s suggestive argumentation and fiery style, but also by his poetic metaphors.

AbstractDaniel Chwolson (1819–1911) made a huge impact upon the research of Hebrew epigraphy from the Crimea and Caucasus. Despite that, his role in the more-than-a-century-long controversy regarding Crimean Hebrew tomb inscriptions has not been well studied. Chwolson, at first, adopted Abraham Firkowicz’s forgeries, and then quickly realized his mistake; however, he could not back up. Th e criticism by both Abraham Harkavy and German Hebraists questioned Chwolson’s scholarly qualifications and integrity. Consequently, the interference of political pressure into the academic argument resulted in the prevailing of the scholarly flawed opinion. We revisit the interpretation of these findings by Russian, Jewish, Karaite and Georgian historians in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the Soviet period, Jewish Studies in the USSR were in neglect and nobody seriously studied the whole complex of the inscriptions from the South of Russia / the Soviet Union. The remnants of the scholarly community were hypnotized by Chwolson’s authority, who was the teacher of their teachers’ teachers. At the same time, Western scholars did not have access to these materials and/or lacked the understanding of the broader context, and thus a number of erroneous Chwolson’s conclusion have entered academic literature for decades.

In Estonian historiography, the revolutionary year of 1905 has been described as a starting point for subsequent political changes in 1917 and 1918. Hence many authors have highlighted the importance of political development that led to the foundation of the first Estonian political parties in 1905. However, the ideological differentiation of Estonian political thought between the revolutionary years of 1905 and 1917 has been studied less. The aim of this article is to analyse the political debates on Marxist theory that took place in the Estonian area of the Baltic provinces from 1905 to 1916. The leaders of the Estonian socialist movement first became acquainted with Marxist theory through German and Russian socialist literature. Since 1905, various texts by socialist authors were also available to a wider audience in Estonian. First and foremost, the works of German social democrats were published in Estonian. During 1910–14, the first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital was translated into Estonian. While it had often previously been argued that socialism benefits all oppressed people, Marxist ideology was now presented as a scientific theory that explained economic development and protected the interests of industrial workers in a class society. The article claims that during the period from 1905 to 1916, recognised experts on Marxist ideology emerged among Estonian socialists. In addition to Marxist tactics, Estonian socialist authors discussed theoretical issues such as the material conception of history. In these discussions, the personal conflicts between Estonian socialists as well as their ideological disagreements became evident. More broadly, these discussions were shaped by earlier ideological debates among European socialists at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The article also argues that during the period considered, several Estonian left-wing thinkers questioned the validity of Marxism. Influenced by Bernstein’s revisionist ideas, these thinkers criticised Marxism as a one-sided and dogmatic ideology. They claimed that Marxism was just another theory with both strengths and weaknesses. However, Estonian social democrats who embraced Marxism as a scientific theory responded to such criticism and defended the materialist view of society. The debates on Marxist theory considered here provide evidence of the ideological differentiation of Estonian left-wing political thought. From 1905 to 1916, numerous socialist texts in Estonian presented various approaches for understanding Marxist ideology. Thus, one can witness an intensified reception of Marxism in the Estonian area during that period. More specifically, these ideological debates reveal new facets of the political views of Estonian socialists who later affected the course of Estonian history as communist revolutionaries or as members of the Estonian Constituent Assembly.

The subject of the study is the military rhetoric on the pages of the “Vitchyzna” magazine of the 1940s. The author processed two issues of the magazines “Soviet Literature” and “Ukrainian Literature” from 1941, researched and analyzed the content of each periodical according to chronology. The novelty lies in the use of a different toolkit for the analysis of Soviet periodicals, in particular, the less-studied magazine “Vitchyzna” and the determination of its leading role both in publishing and in the literary and artistic space of the 40s of the 20th century. The goal is to analyze the magazine’s system-typological features with the help of the historical context; to determine the specifics of military rhetoric at all its structural levels. The main methods of the study were comparative and systematic-typological, which were used to identify and interpret rhetorical features in the structure of texts and the literary and artistic context of the “Vitchyzna” magazine of the pre-war and war periods. The scholar traced the history of the creation and development of the magazine in the 1940s, which during the studied period had three titles: “Soviet Literature”, “Ukrainian Literature”, “Vitchyzna”. The researcher focused on the constant changes in the editorial staff, chief editors (I. Kulyk, I. Le, I. Stebun and Yu. Yanovsky) and their influence on the magazine’s rhetoric. Having singled out the most important structural and semantic features of both individual artistic texts and various headings (Poetry, Prose, Criticism, Literary and Artistic Chronicle, Bibliography) that unite these texts, she offered to consider the selected material through the prism of war rhetoric. The results of the research confirmed that war narratives were an integral part of Soviet society both before and during World War II. To reproduce a complete picture of the narratives of the Soviet government, the scholar in the study turns to 1939, which marks the beginning of the full-scale German invasion of Poland (September 1) and the “Winter” Soviet-Finnish War (November 30). Literary characters in poetry and prose from the content of magazines are characterized by excessive heroism and pathos. The system of figurative and poetic expression of the authors of the texts is diversified by rhetorical devices: metaphor, alliteration, anaphora, hyperbolization, juxtaposition of enemies / fighters of the Red Army, humor, identification with the audience (use of the pronoun “we”), appeal to authority. All works are designed for the Soviet reader of the time and are written according to the appropriate Soviet methods.

The issue of the journal opens with an article dedicated to the formation of metrology as government regulated activity in France. The article has discussed the historical process of development of metrological activity in France. It was revealed that the history of metrology is considered as an auxiliary historical and ethnographic discipline from a social and philosophical point of view as the evolution of scientific approaches to the definition of individual units of physical quantities and branches of metrology. However, in the scientific literature, the little attention is paid to the process of a development of a centralized institutional metrology system that is the organizational basis for ensuring the uniformity of measurements. The article by Irena Grebtsova and Maryna Kovalska is devoted to the of the development of the source criticism’s knowledge in the Imperial Novorossiya University which was founded in the second half of the XIX century in Odesa. Grounding on a large complex of general scientific methods, and a historical method and source criticism, the authors identified the stages of the formation of source criticism in the process of teaching historical disciplines at the university, what they based on an analysis of the teaching activities of professors and associate professors of the Faculty of History and Philology. In the article, the development of the foundations of source criticism is considered as a complex process, which in Western European and Russian science was the result of the development of the theory and practice of everyday dialogue between scientists and historical sources. This process had a great influence on the advancement of a historical education in university, which was one of the important factors in the formation of source studies as a scientific discipline. The article by Tetiana Malovichko is devoted to the study of what changes the course of the probability theory has undergone from the end of the 19th century to our time based on the analysis of The Theory of Probabilities textbook by Vasyl P. Ermakov published in 1878. The paper contains a comparative analysis of The Probability Theory textbook and modern educational literature. The birth of children after infertility treatment of married couples with the help of assisted reproductive technologies has become a reality after many years of basic research on the physiology of reproductive system, development of oocyte’s in vitro fertilization methods and cultivation of embryos at pre-implantation stages. Given the widespread use of assisted reproductive technologies in modern medical practice and the great interest of society to this problem, the aim of the study authors from the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was to trace the main stages and key events of assisted reproductive technologies in the world and in Ukraine, as well as to highlight the activities of outstanding scientists of domestic and world science who were at the origins of the development of this area. As a result of the work, it has been shown that despite certain ethical and social biases, the discovery of individual predecessor scientists became the basis for the efforts of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe to ensure birth of the world's first child, whose conception occurred outside the mother's body. There are also historical facts and unique photos from our own archive, which confirm the fact of the first successful oocyte in vitro fertilization and the birth of a child after the use of assisted reproductive technologies in Ukraine. In the next article, the authors tried to consider and structure the stages of development and creation of the “Yermak”, the world's first Arctic icebreaker, and analyzed the stages of preparation and the results of its first expeditions to explore the Arctic. Systematic analysis of historical sources and biographical material allowed to separate and comprehensively consider the conditions and prehistory for the development and creation of “Yermak” icebreaker. Also, the authors gave an assessment to the role of Vice Admiral Stepan Osypovych Makarov in those events, and analyzed the role of Sergei Yulyevich Witte, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev and Pyotr Petrovich Semenov-Tian-Shansky in the preparation and implementation of the first Arctic expeditions of the “Yermak”icebreaker. The authors of the following article considered the historical aspects of construction and operation of train ferry routes. The article deals with the analysis and systematization of the data on the historical development of train ferry routes and describes the background for the construction of train ferry routes and their advantages over other combined transport types. It also deals with the basic features of the train ferries operating on the main international train ferry routes. The study is concerned with both sea routes and routes across rivers and lakes. The article shows the role of train ferry routes in the improvement of a national economy, and in the provision of the military defense. An analysis of numerous artefacts of the first third of the 20th century suggests that the production of many varieties of art-and-industrial ceramics developed in Halychyna, in particular architectural ceramic plastics, a variety of functional ceramics, decorative tiles, ceramic tiles, facing tiles, etc. The artistic features of Halychyna art ceramics, the richness of methods for decorating and shaping it, stylistic features, as well as numerous art societies, scientific and professional associations, groups, plants and factories specializing in the production of ceramics reflect the general development of this industry in the first half of the century and represent the prerequisites the emergence of the school of professional ceramics in Halychyna at the beginning of the 20th century. The purpose of the next paper is to analyze the formation and development of scientific and professional schools of art-and-industrial ceramics of Halychyna in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. During the environmental crisis, electric transport (e-transport) is becoming a matter for scientific inquiry, a subject of discussion in politics and among public figures. In the program for developing the municipal services of Ukraine, priorities are given to the development of the infrastructure of ecological transport: trolleybuses, electric buses, electric cars. The increased attention to e-transport on the part of the scientific community, politicians, and the public actualizes the study of its history, development, features of operation, etc. The aim of the next study is to highlight little-known facts of the history of production and operation of MAN trolleybuses in Ukrainian cities, as well as to introduce their technical characteristics into scientific circulation. The types, specific design solutions of the first MAN trolleybus generation and the prerequisites for their appearance in Chernivtsi have been determined. Particular attention has been paid to trolleybuses that were in operation in Germany and other Western European countries from the first half of the 1930s to the early 1950s. The paper traces the stages of operation of the MAN trolleybuses in Chernivtsi, where they worked during 1939–1944 and after the end of the Second World War, they were transferred to Kyiv. After two years of operation in the Ukrainian capital, the trolleybuses entered the routes in Dnipropetrovsk during 1947–1951. The purpose of the article by authors from the State University of Infrastructure and Technologies of Ukraine is to thoroughly analyze unpaved roads of the late 18th – early 19th century, as well as the project of the first wooden trackway as the forerunner of the Bukovyna railways. To achieve this purpose, the authors first reviewed how railways were constructed in the Austrian Empire during 1830s – 1850s. Then, in contrast with the first railway networks that emerged and developed in the Austrian Empire, the authors made an analysis of the condition and characteristics of unpaved roads in Bukovyna. In addition, the authors considered the first attempt to create a wooden trackway as a prototype and predecessor of the Bukovyna railway.

The personality of Trochym Zinkivskyi (1861–1891) remains little known and insufficiently developed in modern Ukrainian historiography. The purpose of the article is to study the figure of Trokhym Zinkivskyi in the context of the problem of preserving the historical memory of Taras Shevchenko. Research methods are personalistic, historical-genetic and historical-systemic. Sources: published epistolaries of T. Zinkivskyi and his addressees, memories of contemporaries, biographical articles in the Ukrainian press of the beginning of the 20th century etc. The main results consist in elucidating the peculiarities of the formation of T. Zinkivskyi's worldview under the conditions of the oppression of the Southern Ukrainian lands by the Russian imperial regime, in particular in Berdyansk, Feodosia and Odesa, the establishment of his Ukrainian national-democratic views during his studies and military service in Smila, Shpola and Uman, in Kyiv and St. Petersburg. It is noted that an important factor in the development of his Ukrainian consciousness and identity was his family upbringing, which instilled love for his native language and formed Christian, religious values. A prominent role was played by the reading circle, which included Shevchenkov's «Kobzar» along with other literary works of Ukrainian and foreign writers; as well as Ukrainian folk art. V. Kravchenko, L. Smolenskyi, B. Grinchenko, M. Komarov, and a number of representatives of the Ukrainian colony in St. Petersburg were included in the closest circle of persons who significantly influenced the formation of the worldview of the Ukrainian figure. The article traces the main stages of the intellectual and public activity of the Ukrainian figure in the matter of preserving the historical memory of Kobzar. It is noted that already in the middle and second half of the 80s of the 19th century. T. Zinkivskyi began work in the field of Ukrainian literature, took care of translation activities. In St. Petersburg, he was able to begin wider work for the benefit of Ukrainianism and became an ideological leader of young Ukrainians. The powerful vital energy of the activist was organically combined with consistent and convinced actions in the name of the Ukrainian cause. In the youth group at Shevchenko's anniversary, T. Zinkivskyi read a number of essays, such as «The National Question in Russia», «Shevchenko in the Light of European Criticism», «Young Ukraine» and others. His essay «Taras Shevchenko in the Light of European Criticism», which was read in Ukrainian on the evening of February 25, 1889 in the capital of the empire, was of exceptional importance. This speech, prepared mostly on the basis of French, Austrian, German, and Polish historiographical sources, presented Kobzar as a figure of global poetic scale and destroyed the perception of the Russian metropolitan public about Ukrainians and the Ukrainian language as something provincial and inferior. Conclusions.T. Zinkivskyi became one of the brightest representatives of the «Young Ukraine» generation. The short-lived but important intellectual activity of the ideological leader of young Ukrainians, in particular, speeches at the Shevchenko anniversary, publication of abstracts, epistolaries, drew the attention of contemporaries to the figure of Taras Shevchenko, to his poetic heritage; actualized the issue of preserving the historical memory of Kobzar as a leader of the national values of Ukrainians. It has been proven that during the 1880s and early 1890s, T. Zinkivskyi's intellectual activity contributed to the progress of Ukrainian public affairs and national science, the establishment of Ukrainian national consciousness among the generation of young Ukrainians. The practical significance of the article is that the given material will be of interest to specialists in the context of studying the ethno-national history of Ukraine in the second half of the 19th century. The originality of the article lies in the understanding of insufficiently studied aspects of the activity of the Ukrainian intellectual, who stood at the origins of the idea of «Young Ukraine». Scientific novelty in updating the intellectual activity of T. Zinkivskyi in the matter of preserving Ukrainian national memory and forming national consciousness and identity.

On the example of German philosophical thought of the first half of the 20th century, the paper examines the problem of collective guilt of the nation for the actions of its state. Particular attention is paid to the formation of the revanchist ideology that led to the domination of National Socialism. The paper also addresses the history of the criticism of the German imperial statehood, which had developed by the end of the 19th century.

The contribution gives a brief historical insight in the beginning and the drastic change of biographical thinking particularly in the educational sphere. Biography is a theme addressed by German educational sciences ever since its historical beginnings in the late 18th century. The discovery of the autonomous, educated, middle-class subject is rooted in that interest in biography, which also shaped the process of “biographisation” of the lower social strata a century later. Even post-modern and post-structural criticism of the ‘subject’ towards the end of the 20th century has a lasting influence on educational science. Understanding the historical background and the consequences of this threefold change of ideas in the concept of “biography” in the German tradition is the aim of this article.

E.A. Zachevsky’s book is the first study about the Western German author Wolfgang Koeppen (1906–1996). For the first time in the national and international literary studies, the monograph offers a detailed survey of the writer’s life and work as well as defines his place and role in the 20th century German literature. The author analyzes philosophic views as well as the properties of his fictional world and highlights the key moments of his peculiar poetic manner. The book touches upon the main issues of the German literary process and integrates Koeppen’s work into this process which allows us to read the volume as a mini-history of 20th century German literature.

In 1990, German literary critics agreed that the end of the Cold War should mark the end of politically committed post-war literature. The political caesura prompted a debate about the future of German literature during which the concept of 'readability' evolved as a contested issue. It was championed in particular by the author Matthias Politycki and the publishers Uwe Wittstock and Martin Hielscher. Ever since, 'readability' has remained a benchmark for authors and critics alike in the battle for value and success. The thesis will establish a theoretical basis for 'readability' that draws on narratology, the Aristotelian concept of 'mimesis', classical rhetoric, and the poetics of contemporary authors who explicitly engage with 'readability'. Discussion will centre on the novel since this genre has been the focus of debate ever since the novel gained prominence with the rise of the reading middle classes in the eighteenth century. An analysis of the historical role of 'readability' will demonstrate that the debate as it manifested itself around 1990 developed out of a specifically German tradition, in which authors and critics alike viewed it as potentially in conflict with true art. In 1990, German literary critics agreed that the end of the Cold War should mark the end of politically committed post-war literature. The political caesura prompted a debate about the future of German literature during which the concept of 'readability' evolved as a contested issue. It was championed in particular by the author Matthias Politycki and the publishers Uwe Wittstock and Martin Hielscher. Ever since, 'readability' has remained a benchmark for authors and critics alike in the battle for value and success. The thesis will establish a theoretical basis for 'readability' that draws on narratology, the Aristotelian concept of 'mimesis', classical rhetoric, and the poetics of contemporary authors who explicitly engage with 'readability'. Discussion will centre on the novel since this genre has been the focus of debate ever since the novel gained prominence with the rise of the reading middle classes in the eighteenth century. An analysis of the historical role of 'readability' will demonstrate that the debate as it manifested itself around 1990 developed out of a specifically German tradition, in which authors and critics alike viewed it as potentially in conflict with true art. The thesis will demonstrate that 'readability' is key to understanding the debates about German literature in an era of globalisation when readers are more attracted to works by foreign authors than to works by German ones. It will examine how writers such as Helmut Krausser, Daniel Kehlmann, and Thomas Glavinic have exploited the opportunities of the changed parameters by writing and promoting 'readable' books. It will further explore to what extent 'readability' has opened up new avenues even for authors like Felicitas Hoppe and Ulrike Draesner, who distrust the quest for 'readability'. The thesis will conclude with a reflection on the prospects for 'readability' in the current literary landscape in Germany.

This study investigates the expression and repression of desire in four 20th-century German-language lesbian prose texts. I examine in chronological order three novels and one novella: Der Skorpion (1919) by Anna Elisabet Weirauch; Lyrische Novelle (1933) by the Swiss author Annemarie Schwarzenbach; Der Schlachter empfiehlt noch immer Herz (1976) by Margot Schroeder; and, finally, Bilder von ihr (1996) by Karen-Susan Fessel. While not concentrating on any single literary work, the excursus on texts from the period between the Third Reich and the Second Feminist Movement in Germany provides a brief analysis of the (lack of) lesbian literary developments during this time.
Drawing on diverse lesbian-feminist and queer strains of criticism, this study provides a close examination of the narrative elements, strategies, and styles used to inscribe lesbian desire into the literary works selected for analysis. The investigation explores how these texts utilize narrative conceptualizations of lesbian desire, critiques of heterophallocentric language and representation, and strategies to create lesbian narrative spaces that challenge the heterosexual presumptions and trajectories which traditionally underlie conventional Western romance narratives. The constructions of "lesbian" identity presented in the texts are fundamentally connected to the creation and operation of these narrative spaces. Thus, in order to contextualize my interpretations and literary analyses, I situate the texts in the respective socio-historical and political contexts in which they were written and received.
The unresolved problems, prevailing tensions, and their individual differences notwithstanding, the narratives examined here collectively contribute to a lesbian counterdiscourse to the 20th-century German literary establishment. By exploring the strategies invoked in these texts to represent a desiring textual lesbian subjectivity, this study hopes to make visible a tradition of Germanlanguage lesbian literature---a fragmented and often marginalized literature---over the last century and to offer German literary studies insights from the periphery of the dominant heterosexual culture. However, this investigation simultaneously and paradoxically also contests the very positioning of German lesbian literature and criticism at the margins by proposing their strategic integration into the German literary canon.

In the course of its history, Prague has been the site of many significant cultural confrontations and conversations. From the medieval chronicle of Cosmas to the work of contemporary writers, the city has taken shape in literature as a multivalent space where identities are constructed and questioned. The evolution of Prague's literary significance has taken place in an intercultural context: both Czech-speaking and German-speaking writers have engaged with the city and its past, and their texts have interacted with each other. The city has played a central part in many collective narratives in which myth, history and literature intertwine. Looking at contemporary prose fiction written in both Czech and German, this thesis explores continuities and contrasts in the literary roles played by Prague. It analyses two German-speaking emigrant authors, Libuše Moníková (1945-1998) and Jan Faktor (1951- ), viewing them alongside three Czech writers, Jáchym Topol (1962- ), Daniela Hodrová (1946- ), and Michal Ajvaz (1949- ). Through close readings of eight texts, the thesis approaches the imagined city from four angles. It discusses how contemporary authors portray the search for meaning in the city by imagining Prague as two contrasting realms (the 'real' city and the 'other' city), how the discontinuities of the city are reflected by the fragmentation of the authorial stance, how these authors assemble new Prague myths from the vestiges of older topoi, and how they confront the contradictory urges to uphold the boundaries of the city and to transgress them. In post-1989 Prague, authors explore the unstable spaces between continuity and discontinuity, constructing an authorial ethos in these areas of tension.

This study examines the interpretive possibilities in the shorter fiction of Post-War German literature. The corpus includes works by Rolf Hochhuth, Friedrich Durrenmatt and Martin Walser. The historical framework of the theory of the novella and short story provides a basis for a discussion of genre, extended to include the coordinates of metaphor and metonymy. With the exception of one text designated as a novel, these works demonstrate interlocking and restricted motif complexes, repetitive and parallel structure and the integration of most narrative components. They project a tenor of hermetic plurality from a vehicle of abbreviated and truncated referential discourse. They use myth and intertextuality to show general principles to be extrapolated from specific contexts. Metafiction complements the theme of the subject not at one with itself. A partial resolution to the incertitude of existence, rendered according to Freud and Lacan, is offered through the emerging role of women as a stabilizing factor.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the complexities of daughterhood as portrayed by nine contemporary women writers: from former West Germany(Gabriele Wohmann, Elisabeth Plessen), from former East Germany (Hedda Zinner, Helga M. Novak), from Switzerland (Margrit Schriber) and from Austria (Brigitte Schwaiger, Jutta Schutting, Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch, Christine Haidegger). Ten prose-works which span a period of approximately ten years, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, are analysed according to theme and character. In the Introduction, we trace the historical development of women's writing in German, focusing on the most significant female authors from the Romantic period through to the rise of the New Women's Movement in the late sixties. We then consider a definition of 'Frauenliteratur' and the extent to which autobiography has become a typical feature of such women's writing. In the ensuing four chapters we highlight in psychological and sociological terms the mourning process a daughter undergoes after her father's death; the identification process between daughter and mother; the daughter's reaction to being adopted; and the daughter's decision to commit suicide. We see to what extent the environment in which each of these daughters is brought up as well as past events in German history shape the daughter's attitude towards her parents. Since we are studying the way in which these relationships are portrayed, we also need to take into account the narrative strategies employed by these modern women writers. In the light of our analysis of content and form we are able to examine the possible intentions behind such personal portraits: the act of writing as a form of self-discovery and self-therapy as well as the sharing of female experience. We conclude by suggesting the direction women's writing from German-speaking countries may be taking.

In the 1960's, cancer became one of the dominating diseases of our time and this has, in the last two decades, been increasingly reflected in German literature. This thesis examines a number of such texts (diaries, autopathographies, short stories and novels) from a literary and psychosocial standpoint.
First, a brief outline of the literary and social context attempts to answer questions concerning the production and reception of this 'cancer literature'. The following thematic analysis examines the role of cancer as a signifier. It shows that endo- and exogenic conceptions of the disease are present, and that mood changes of the afflicted person determine the meanings that are attributed to it. The ways cancer affects the social and bodily identity and different aspects of treatment are analyzed next. Finally, a chapter is devoted to the aesthetics of cancer, examining the metaphors used to describe the disease and the rhetorical means to represent the anxiety that accompanies it.
This study is intended not only as an interdisciplinary analysis of a chapter of contemporary German literature but as a contribution to a better understanding of how cancer is viewed and experienced.

Das Wort was a literary journal published by German Communist writers and fellow-travelers exiled in Moscow from 1936 to 1939. It was to be a mouthpiece for German literature in exile and to promote the Popular Front policy, which sought to unite disparate elements in non-Fascist Europe in opposition to the Nazis. Das Wort, under the editorship of German Communist writers whose close association with the Soviet Union had been well established in the previous decade, tried to provide a forum for exiled writers of various political persuasions, but was unwavering in its positive portrayal of Stalin's Soviet Union and the policies of that country. As the level of hysteria grew with the successive purges and public show trials in the Soviet Union, the journal adopted an even more eulogistic and militant attitude: any criticism or expression of doubt about Soviet policy was equated with support for Fascism. Thus the ability of the journal to contribute to the formation of a true common front in Europe to oppose Fascism was compromised from the outset by its total support for the Soviet Union. The Popular Front policy foundered on this issue, and that portion of German literature in exile which was to form the first generation of East German literature was inextricably bound to the Soviet Union well before the German Democratic Republic came in to existence.

The article is devoted to the study of the religious and political aspects of the famous manifesto of European romanticism, i. e. the book of the German writer and musician V.G. Wackenroder “Fantasies Concerning the Art of an Art-Loving Monk” (1814). In 1826 this book was translated into Russian and influenced the development of Russian romanticism. The article examines in detail N.V. Gogol’s attitude to the works of German romantics and traces the evolution of the writer’s views on romantic literature, starting from the 1820s, when he created his first works, namely the prose satire “Something about Nizhyn, or the Law is not Written for Fools” (1826) and the poetic poem “Hanz Küchelgarten” (1827). The author of the article shows close connection of Gogol’s images of the German artisans Schiller and Hoffmann in the story “Nevsky Prospekt” (1835) with other satirical works of the writer and gives an analysis of the reformist ideas of Wakenroder’s book, which were developed in the writings of German romantics and the events of the subsequent 20th century. In addition, the research touches upon the history of the study and perception of “Nevsky Prospekt” and notes the unexpected discovery in Soviet Russia during the Great Patriotic War of the deep, “prophetic” meaning of Gogol’s work. The corresponding judgments about Gogol’s story are given by a number of critics, writers and scientists, such as F.M. Dostoevsky, D.I. Pisarev, V.V. Rozanov, Protopresbyter Vasily Zenkovsky, A.G. Dementiev, G.P. Makogonenko. The article emphasizes immutability of Gogol’s religious and patriotic views, which were formed thanks to family upbringing and school education; and made the conclusion about the fundamental polemic of the artist with the German romantics’ religious-renovationist ideas.

This chapter investigates the factors—both domestic and foreign, from the culture of medieval Orthodoxy to neoclassicism and German romanticism—involved in the genesis and development of the modern concept of literature in Russia. It particularly looks at the interrelation of belles lettres, national identity, and national history. For Russia, the nineteenth century opens with the 1812 defeat of Napoleon. It is the lack of political avenues of expression for this newly awakened national consciousness that motivates the cultural elite to work out Russia’s destiny indirectly, through literature and literary criticism. Already by the 1840s this trend has reached its apogee, and the foundation has been laid for a literary tradition to embody the ideals of a nation. For Russians in the nineteenth century, the literary process is a source—even substitute—for the national narrative they see their backward land as having failed to produce. The dominant expression of the social function with which the Tradition’s aesthetic value is equated thus becomes the creation of a history for Russia. The chapter then considers the historiogenic role of Russian writers.

The article is devoted to the study of readers’ receptions of N.V. Gogol “Taras Bulba” in Russia. This work, imbued with a deep religious and patriotic intention, occupies such a significant place in Russian culture that the reviews of readers and critics, the assessments and interpretations of its researchers, dramatizations in the theater, opera and ballet, etc. allows to analyze not only history of the story’s existence, but also to trace the key moments of Russian life in the second half of the 19th–20th centuries. The interaction of the patriotic story’s spiritual lyricism with the contradictory socio-political processes of the era identifies the most significant features of the poetics of Gogol’s work. Enthusiastically received by contemporaries, including A.S. Pushkin, “Taras Bulba” was subsequently met with hostility from domestic liberalradical and Polish nationalist criticism. Continuing to be one of the favorite works of the domestic and foreign readers, the story after 1917 was removed from the Soviet school curriculum and again restored in rights only during the Great Patriotic War. The article presents a detailed analysis of the assessments and interpretations of “Taras Bulba” for more than a century and a half.

This chapter analyses how discussions about race and nationhood surfaced in nineteenth-century British and American literary criticism and literary historiography. It discusses Carlyle’s and Emerson’s writings about the relationship between literature and nationality and argues that, drawing on a handful of near-contemporary German and French authors, they positioned themselves at the crossroads of cultural nationalism and literary cosmopolitanism. The second half of the chapter explains how Carlyle and Emerson conceptualised continuity and change in literary history and highlights the role of Romantic expressivism in their nation-centred poetics. The two developed conflicting accounts of English literary history: where Carlyle’s narrative emphasised the past achievement and future global dominance of metropolitan writing, Emerson tended to invest in the authority of the English canon to locate the future of a specifically Anglo-American tradition in the cultural periphery.

The present article is devoted to the multidimensional analysis of the book by I.A. Bunin “Liberation of Leo Tolstoy” (1937). Attention is devoted to the history of its creation and to its unique structure, combining the genres of memoirs, journalistic sketch, diary, epistles and literary portrait with philosophical contemplation. Special consideration is paid to the properties of style of the text as well as to the development of the artistic image of Leo Tolstoy. The center of the research is occupied by the problem of the spiritual and religious quest of Tolstoy in the latest decades of his life, to his multifaceted concept of liberation and also to the enigma of his last flight from Yasnaya Poliana. Bunin’s interpretations are investigated on the complex background of literary, philosophical and theological evaluations of Tolstoy’s worldview, as it took shape after the spiritual crisis of his later years. Different reactions to his final escape are also taken into account. The article reflects the positions of G. Adamovitch, V. Hodasevitch, V. Maklakov, I. Shahovskoy, S. Bulgakov, as well as many other literary critics, philosophers and theologians. Bunin’s book is investigated as a source for the studies of spiritual and intellectual quest on the verge of the centuries, i.e. the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Bunin’s book is presented also in the context of Russian émigré literary and philosophical criticism.

In the form of a personal memoir, this essay outlines the work of the distinguished scholar Ladislao Mittner (1902-75) and the development of German studies at the University of Venice in the second half of the 20th century. Mittner arrived at Ca’ Foscari in 1942 and took charge of German studies in the first Italian Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures (established in 1954), and became a point of reference for over thirty years. During these years, he decisively shaped the guidelines of the discipline at Ca’ Foscari. Due to his own plurilingual Hapsburg roots, he considered a good command of languages pivotal. This is why he can also be considered a pioneer of the establishment of German language teaching as an independent subject from literature, which was not a self-evident truth at the time. However, he also underlined the importance of the literary text through very refined critical tools. He was an acute philologist and a broad-minded historian who, from the very beginning, added to the German courses such subjects as Germanic Philology, History of the German Language, Philosophy and Music of the German-speaking countries, transforming German studies in Italy into a modern and open-minded field of studies, far from just technical knowledge. From the beginning his vision of the German world was in a context of comparative cultures. Mittner’s work provided the firm basis for the educational commitment required to meet the daily challenge of a multicultural Europe.

This chapter provides an overview of the book and an introduction to its main thesis concerning Walter Benjamin’s development of a philological method in his early literary criticism that shapes all of his work. It focuses on a key letter written by Benjamin to his friend Gershom Scholem on February 14, 1921, that outlines his idiosyncratic redefinition of the traditional field of philology as a method for discovering genuine “historical time” in works of literature. Benjamin’s early work concerns the writings of Hölderlin, the German Romantics, and Goethe as representing together what he describes as “perhaps the greatest epoch in the Western philosophy of art.” This philological theory is situated in relation to the emergence of Lebensphilosophie (the philosophy of life) in the wake of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of history and Henri Bergson’s exploration of time as durée in the later nineteenth century.

Based on the significance of the narratives of European travelers of the 16th century for the historical studies of Brazilian literature, this article deals with the problem of the peculiar encounter between Hans Staden, the German mercenary who guarded the entrance to the Bay of São Vicente and his captors, the Tupinambá Indians. Preliminarily pointing to the presence, in Brazilian literary constructs of the 19th and 20th centuries, of the anthropophagic "Other", as confirmed in the adventurer's testimony, the work aims to understand the reasons for the recurrence of such an image. In the light of a proposition by Michel de Certeau, regarding the role of the person of whom one speaks in a certain culture - but who has no voice in it - as well as the unprecedented self-perception, which, according to Tzvetan Todorov, is achieved when the Other is met, a reflection is made about Staden's dialogue with that Other and the understanding that he achieves of his diverse reality. Using the method called Todorov "typology of relations with others”, an epistemological analysis is then carried out, which compares the figures of the narrator with that of the narrated, in such a text. This article concludes by demonstrating that Hans Staden: The True History Of His Captivity, 1557, exposes, on the one hand, the high degree of knowledge of the Other achieved by the German man-at-arms, and on the other hand, his total ineptitude to translate the Tupinambá culture in terms of the European, and vice-versa, despite establishing itself as a founding ethnographic study.

It is impossible to separate the public police organization from the modern state. King Louis XIV was the founder of the first centrally organized and uniform police force in 1667. A book related to the work of the police was first published in 1705 under the title "Traité de la police". It outlines the three main activities of the police, which are economic regulation, measures of the public order, and general rules of hygiene. The first head of Police and his 44 police commissioners' work was assisted by police inspectors beginning in 1709. The police also appeared on German territory, and the works of Lorenz von Stein, Otto Mayer, and Robert von Mohl are still dominant in Europe nowadays. This study examines books, journals, and legal documents to present the development of the law enforcement and the modern challenges of policing in Hungary. Our country celebrated the establishment of the central police last year. In the 20th century there was a development in modern policing and literature, as well as the emergence of modern police officer training. After World War II, a Soviet law enforcement model was imitated in which there was state security, secrecy, and Soviet police character. Although research of historical and theoretical studies of policing was forbidden, after the Revolution of 1989, the research of law enforcement theory was completed. Globalisation has created new sources of danger (e.g. terrorism, cybercrime), driven by a lack of borders and the expansion of international relations (Farkas, 2016). We can only meet the new challenges with the deepening of international law enforcement cooperation. Keywords: law enforcement, globalisation, data-transmission revolution, security