11.11 German-language literature outside Germany — Epoché
What you will be able to do See German-language literature as larger than the literature of Germany: Austria, Switzerland, Prague and the German-speaking communities of central and eastern Europe, and the literature of exile. Place the authors of this course on that map: Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Zweig, Musil and Trakl in Austria; Keller in Switzerland; Kafka and Rilke in Prague; Heine, Büchner , Thomas Mann, Lasker-Schüler , Tucholsky and Benjamin in exile. Know the main names of each region from the nineteenth century to the present, including some of the German-language winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Use the words of migration and exile: Heimat , Exilant , Auswanderer , Verfolgung . Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English Sie sehnte sich nach ihrer Heimat. [1] She ached for home. Mein Körper sehnte sich nach Schlaf. [2] My body cried for sleep. Ich habe dich immer für eine Kanadierin gehalten. [3] I've always thought you were a Canadian. Sie bewundert diesen Schriftsteller. [4] She admires this writer. Ich will morgen nach Prag. [5] I want to go to Prague tomorrow. Bist du eine typische Kanadierin? [6] Are you a typical Canadian? Sie ist eine gute Schriftstellerin. [7] She is a good writer. Mein Bruder möchte nach Liechtenstein fahren. [8] My brother wants to visit Liechtenstein. Prerequisites : 11.10 — you need the periods of literature from 11.7 Background , the three standards of German from 11.3 Background , and the regional variants of 5.32 Vocabulary . When English speakers say German literature , they often mean literature from Germany. But many of the greatest German-language writers were Austrian, Swiss or Bohemian, and many of the most important books of the twentieth century were written in exile. German has been the language of literature in a large area of central Europe, and for long periods that area did not coincide with a German state. This lesson draws the map, and places on it the authors you have read. Austria For centuries Vienna was the capital of the Habsburg monarchy, a multinational empire in which German was the language of administration and of much of the culture. In the nineteenth century Franz Grillparzer wrote dramas, Adalbert Stifter quiet novels of nature and order, and Johann Nestroy comedies in Viennese dialect. Around 1900 Vienna became one of the centres of European modernism, die Wiener Moderne : Arthur Schnitzler, whose Lieutenant Gustl you read in 7.38 Reading , Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose Chandos letter you read in 7.36 Reading , the satirist Karl Kraus, and Sigmund Freud, read in 7.52 Reading . Robert Musil, whose Törleß you read in 7.49 Reading , and Joseph Roth described the end of the empire; Stefan Zweig, whose Buchmendel you read in 7.39 Reading , mourned it. Georg Trakl, from Salzburg, appears in 7.35 Reading . After 1945 Austrian literature again produced writers of the first rank: the poet Ingeborg Bachmann, with whom Paul Celan spent time in Vienna before he settled in Paris, and the prose writers Thomas Bernhard and Peter Handke. Elfriede Jelinek received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, Handke in 2019. Austrian authors write Austrian standard German, with words such as Jänner and heuer that you met in 11.3 Background . Switzerland Swiss literature in German has a strong tradition of realist prose. Jeremias Gotthelf wrote about peasant life in the Emmental; Gottfried Keller, whose Kleider machen Leute you read in 7.14 Reading and 7.15 Reading , is one of the masters of the German novella; Conrad Ferdinand Meyer wrote historical novellas and poems. In the twentieth century Robert Walser wrote delicate, strange short prose, and Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt became the best-known dramatists in German after Brecht. Swiss writers write standard German, often with Swiss words and without ß , while speaking dialect in everyday life. Hermann Hesse, born in Germany, became a Swiss citizen and received the Nobel Prize in 1946. Prague and the German east Until 1918 Bohemia belonged to the Habsburg monarchy, and in Prague a German-speaking minority, many of them Jewish, lived alongside the Czech majority. Out of this small world came Franz Kafka, whose stories you read in 7.16 Reading , 7.17 Reading , 7.24 Reading and 7.25 Reading , Rainer Maria Rilke, read in 7.34 Reading and 7.50 Reading , Franz Werfel, and Kafka's friend and editor Max Brod. Kafka wrote in German and knew Czech well; his German, precise and almost without regional colour, has been connected with this situation. After 1945 most German speakers were expelled from Czechoslovakia, and this literary world ended. German-speaking communities also existed in Romania, Hungary and further east. Herta Müller , born in the German-speaking Banat region of Romania, received the Nobel Prize in 2009 for her novels about life under the Romanian dictatorship. Exile Exile is an old theme of German literature. Heinrich Heine lived in Paris from 1831 until his death, partly because his books were censored at home; Georg Büchner fled to Strasbourg and Zurich after the Hessischer Landbote of 7.54 Reading . In 1933 exile became the fate of a whole literature. After the Nazis came to power and burned books in May 1933, hundreds of writers left Germany: Thomas Mann, who had received the Nobel Prize in 1929 and whose stories you read in 7.37 Reading and 7.40 Reading , went to Switzerland and then to the United States; Bertolt Brecht to Scandinavia and the United States; Anna Seghers to France and, from 1941, Mexico; Else Lasker-Schüler to Zurich and, from 1939, Jerusalem; the Austrian Stefan Zweig to London in 1934 and later to Brazil, where he took his own life in 1942. Kurt Tucholsky, who had lived in Sweden since 1929 and was stripped of his citizenship in 1933, died there in 1935, Walter Benjamin in flight at the Spanish border in 1940. German literary history calls their work die Exilliteratur .