German

In the short story ‘Fünf klopfende Herzen, wenn die Liebe springt’ (2004) and the novel Hinterland (2009), Feridun Zaimoglu engages with cosmopolitanism and German Romanticism – both characteristic themes of his more recent fiction. A dialogue between the ideas of love presented by Jean-Luc Nancy and the Romantics Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Kleist can illuminate the non-identitarian nature of Zaimoglu's cosmopolitanism, suggesting a radical openness to the future and an ontological interrelatedness in line with Nancy's ‘communauté désœuvrée’ (‘inoperative community’), rather than a new cosmopolitan identity with its own moral code. Just as the Romantics invested in the power of love to create a harmonious world, love is equally important for Nancy in that it renders the inoperative community more accessible to us. This understanding of cosmopolitanism can be glimpsed in ‘Fünf klopfende Herzen’, in which falling in love presents the protagonist with the radical possibilities brought about by the interconnected nature of being. Similarly, in Hinterland, in which transnational sensibilities create a cosmopolitan web across Europe, it is implied that being-with is not subordinate to being-one. Zaimoglu's engagement with the Brothers Grimm and the more nationalist aspects of Romanticism also requires close scrutiny, and can be illuminated by an appeal to Nancy's concepts of ‘myth’ and ‘literature’.

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Islam is increasingly being viewed as the Other of an enlightened and tolerant Germany. Turkish-German author Feridun Zaimoglu and his co-writer Günter Senkel destabilize these Western assumptions in the play 'Schwarze Jungfrauen' (2006), in which performed monologues from the perspective of Muslim women evoke both fundamentalist and mystical (Sufi) manifestations of Islam. The play challenges contemporary cosmopolitan theory's engagement with religion, implying that its insistence upon the rational individual's exercise of free will is actually conducive to fundamentalism. Instead, 'Schwarze Jungfrauen' suggests, corresponding with Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophy, that any hope of stemming religious fundamentalism rests not in the perpetuation of immanent identities and universalizing ideologies, but rather in notions of religiosity and community beyond representation. Thus, rather than acting as a barrier to cosmopolitan solidarities, Islam, in the form of Sufism, in fact provides inspiration for a non-identitarian religiosity that would avoid religion-based conflict.

Navid Kermani's first novel 'Kurzmitteilung' emphasises the unspectacular. It unfolds against the backdrop of the '7/7' bombings in London and yet this seismic event is not the main focus, despite the protagonist Dariusch's Iranian-Islamic background. Rather, it is the 'ordinary' death of Maike Anfang, a colleague he barely knows, that dominates his thoughts and confronts him with his own mortality. This constellation allows Kermani to contrast two opposing ideas of death, Maike's being without predetermined meaning and the terrorists' being imbued with meaning for ideological struggle, at least from their own perspective. A close examination of Dariusch's seemingly banal interactions with others (such as comforting grieving friends and helping the deceased's mother with funeral preparations) suggests a cosmopolitan sense of coexistence that can be illuminated by Jean-Luc Nancy's reconceptualization of community in the absence of a common identity or cause.

At a time when the place of Muslims in German society is being disputed, this book explores how four contemporary German writers of Muslim backgrounds - Zafer Senocak, SAID, Feridun Zaimoglu, and Navid Kermani - point beyond identity politics and suggest new ways of thinking about religion and community. Twist highlights both the spirituality and the cosmopolitanism of these authors, bringing their thought into dialogue with the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.

Nancy is critical of communities based on a single guiding principle (be it God or Reason) and thus involving a universalizing core that leads to conflicts between identity groups. He proposes alternative notions of both religious faith (a postmonotheistic version with elements of mysticism) and community (spontaneous communities requiring no shared identity). Twist relates these arguments to post-9/11 debates over cosmopolitanism and religion, illuminating how the writers under study draw upon mystical Islam's deconstructive potential, finding divine insight in love, sex, music, pain, and beauty. Such a worldly and affective spirituality dispels associations between Islam and sexual conservatism while rejecting monotheistic ideology. Thus, unlike the homogenizing drive of universalist cosmopolitanism, these writers' nonfoundational conceptualizations undermine the twenty-first century's "clash-of-civilizations" narrative and open up space for new ways of coexisting.

Labor migration from Muslim-majority countries to the Federal Republic of Germany between the 1961 agreement with the Turkish government and the Anwerbestopp in 1973 was followed by family reunions and successive waves of political refugees and asylum seekers predominantly from the Balkans and the Middle East, leading to an increasingly visible Muslim presence in all areas of German culture, politics and society. The German literary scene is no exception, as the success of prize-winning authors who identify as Muslims, such as Navid Kermani and Feridun Zaimoglu, demonstrates. There has also been a notable post-9/11 rise in Islamic themes in German literary texts regardless of their author’s background, outlined by Karin E. Yeşilada’s study of the “Muslim turn.” Yet the literary writing of Emine Sevgi Özdamar seems to contradict this trend. It is her publications in the early 1990s, not her post-9/11 work, that deal primarily with Islamic themes. Although her position within the many debates surrounding Islam in German society is more difficult to ascertain than that of other writers, such as Kermani, who have enthusiastically adopted the role of public intellectual, Özdamar’s early semi-autobiographical works of fiction, including the novel Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei hat zwei Türen aus einer kam ich rein aus der anderen ging ich raus (1992, henceforth Karawanserei) and the short story “Großvater Zunge” (the second story in the collection Mutterzunge, 1990), raise questions that are central to debates over Islam’s place in society, be it in Germany or Turkey.

There has traditionally been some divergence in the interpretive paradigms used by scholars analysing minority literature in the Germanophone and Anglophone contexts. Whereas the Anglosphere has tended to utilize poststructural and postcolonial approaches, interculturality and transculturality are favoured in the German-speaking world. However, these positions are aligning more closely, as the concept of similarity is gaining ground in Germany, disrupting the self-other binary in what can be regarded as a shift from the idea of roots to rhizomes. In dialogue with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of the rhizome, the paradigm of similarity will be explored in terms of culture in Zafer Şenocak's essay collection Das Fremde, das in jedem wohnt: Wie Unterschiede unsere Gesellschaft zusammenhalten (The Foreign that Resides in Everyone: How Differences Hold Our Society Together, 2018), which explores the similarities between Turkish and German culture alongside their internal differences; in terms of language in Uljana Wolf's poetry cycle "DICHTionary" (2009), which seeks out links between German and English through 'false friends'; and in terms of religion in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel's play Nathan Messias (Nathan Messiah 2006), which raises questions about interreligious dialogue. All three texts challenge binary notions of identity in favour of a more complex, rhizomatic network of relations.

The perennial question “was ist deutsch?” resounds throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. This question is asked again and again since, as the scholar Fatima El-Tayeb outlines, German identity during this period depends on a recurring pattern of “sich regelmäßig wiederholenden, krisenhaften Auseinandersetzungen mit einem ‘Fremdem’” (the “guest worker” question, the Muslim question, the refugee question, etc.) necessitated by a widespread amnesia vis-à-vis the heterogeneity of the German past.1 Thus the question “was ist deutsch?” often becomes a matter of “wer ist deutsch und wer nicht?”. Philosophy and literature play an important role in challenging canonical conceptualizations of Germanness and allowing us to imagine new forms of community. This special edition of Oxford German Studies brings together scholars working in this field, creating a dialogue about conceptualizations of community and subjectivity between philosophy and the arts, including avant-garde literature, science fiction and live performance.

Inspired by popular novels Don Quijote upheld the values of the dying world of chivalry. The values and myths of chivalry to which he continued to hold on prevented him from understanding the emerging new word and to redefine his class identity in the changed circumstances. National communities exist within the global village. Thus national communities and the global village need each other, they are interdependent and are part of a never ending work in progress. Myths play an important part in the construction of national identities. They are necessary, however, we must avoid holding on to them uncritically as did Don Quijote. The myth of the people (German: Volk) demonstrates this particularly well.

Although historic drama uses elements of reality it remains fiction. Literature 'lies', that is to say it creates its own truth and reality. The Vienna Burgtheater as a historic institution and as a place of dramatic fiction is the subject matter of Jelinek's historic drama Burgtheater. Behind the highly articifial dramatis personae who speak an artificial language full of Nazi clichés one can easily recognize members of the Hörbiger family, a dynasty of Burgtheater actors. The argument that the Hörbigers have no reason to feel attacked because the dramatis personae are clearly works of fiction and thus different from the real Hörbigers is not convincing. Jelinek appears to be serious when she insinuates in the play that members of the family, especially Käthe / Paula Wessely, share the responsibilty for the crimes committed by the Nazis. Käthe in Burgtheater can hardly be distinguished from Paula Wessely as described in a telephone interview given by Jelinek. The artificiality and apparent fictionality of the play appears to be a cover which enables the author to say things for which she could otherwise be brought to court. Harald Weinrich has pointed out that since it is no longer content to tell 'lies' but insists in telling the real truth and the true reality literature is in danger of becoming a servant of real lies. By not limiting herself to contributing to the improvement of the nation * Der Autor ist Professor am University College Dublin.

In Calderon de la Barca‘s El gran teatro del mundo, the autor (God) wishes to see a play performed, and he orders the el mundo (the World) to arrange it. The author distributes the roles and then watches and judges the players. He is a Magister Ludi. The impact of the Baroque tradition, and especially Calderon’s paradigm that blurs the border between play and reality can be detected in many Austrian works for the stage. This article concentrates on the function of the Magister Ludi and the relationship between play and reality in Calderon’s El gran teatro del mundi (1633/36), Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte (1790), Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Grüne Kakadu (1898) and Felix Mitterer’s In der Löwengrube (1998).

Johann Nestroys Posse Einen Jux will er sich machen (1842) ist geradezu ein Paradebeispiel für Übersetzung im Sinne von kulturellem Transfer. Das Stück beruht auf der Farce A Day Well Spent von John Oxenford, und bildete die Vorlage zu Thornton Wilders The Merchant of Yonkers (1938) und The Matchmaker (1954), die wiederum Jerry Herman und Michael Stewart zu ihrem Musical Hello Dolly (1964) inspirierten. Auch Tom Stoppards On the Razzle (1981) ist eine Bearbeitung der Nestroyschen Posse.