Kater Konstantin: Sammelband (German Edition)

Der Kater Konstantin Sammelband by Walter Wippersberg 9783851974973

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He recalls seeing a perplexing vision: He asked himself how he should interpret this vision and: Festhalten oder Hoffen; die drei Zacken bedeuten: These exercises did not, however, produce the desired result, instead Meyrink learned from people he trusted that O. This is not the only experience Meyrink had with so-called gurus. Through his contact with O. He needed to identify the needle of truth in the haystack of falsehoods in his journey, but Pernath has better luck with his spiritual mentors.

Several figures assist Pernath in his journey. One of them is his cellmate in prison, Amadeus Laponder. Pernath is appalled when he first meets Laponder, who is condemned to death on charges of rape and murder. Yet Laponder is not completely what he seems. An important lesson Laponder teaches Pernath is the composition of the soul: Here again the unity of the soul is necessary for the ultimate goal of immortality to be achieved.

Laponder expands upon the notion of immortality: Laponder then speaks more directly to the seminal figure in this enterprise. This in fact is precisely what happens after Pernath gains his freedom from prison. After his release, Pernath returns to the ghetto only to find it in shambles. The quarter has been torn down, and all that he had known is no more. While sitting in his little attic room, he has a vision: At that moment, fire breaks out and Pernath is forced out of the building and falls to the street below. Of importance here is the culmination of the journey toward sal- vation.

Pernath becomes receptive to the supernatural through somnambulistic fugues. He learns and interprets the symbols of the language of intuition with the help of gurus and guides. This knowledge liberates an individual from a fundamental fear — the fear of death. The current reality is merely one among many, and Meyrink claims that one can recall the memories of past lives through yoga. Once again, yoga, an exercise that induces a somnambulistic condition, is the key to accessing the beyond.

In the same text, Meyrink attempts to shed more light on the nature of yoga by employing a metaphor of the divided self. He writes that the human being is a Doppelwesen, das [ The unification of the self results in the knowledge of immortality, knowledge that Pernath also gains. After the fire scene in the embedded narrative, Pernath plummets to the street below, and the narrator of the framed narrative awakens with a start. He learns that he had slept for less than an hour and is still confused when he realizes that he had taken the wrong hat after High Mass.

The narrator then sets out to find the place where Pernath lived. Making his way to the Hradschin, he comes upon an idyllic vision in the Alchimistengasse, with which he became acquainted during his wanderings as Pernath. On the gate is the god Osiris in the form of a hermaphrodite — the symbol of unification. The servant of the house approaches, and the narrator hands him the hat.

Once the gate is opened, the narrator spies the miraculously unaged Pernath. Moreover, Pernath and the narrator share a striking resemblance: Pernath has achieved the unification of his soul and resides with Miriam in the shadow of the hermaphrodite. Intrinsic similitude — the defining mark of metonymic allegory — appears again and again through the analysis. Figures from different philosophical and cultural traditions such as August Comte, Helena Blavatsky, and Walter Benjamin framed epistemological questions in terms of a duality between the material and the mystical. Some rejected one realm in favour of the other, some sought to meld the two together, and others lamented the separation of the two in art.

Meyrink sought his own resolution in the occult; his solution to the epistemological crisis is outlined in both his autobiographical and his fictional texts. His best-selling novel, Der Golem, is an example of how his texts express his own epistemology. This knowledge is attainable through occultist means and resides within the individual.

At the core of this endeavour is the somnambulist, for in order to experience true awakening, one must wander the realm between waking and deep sleep. All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. U of Virginia, Phantastische Literatur im ersten Viertel des Meyrink, Das Haus zur letzten Latern 7— The Self as the Other. Kniesche, Thomas, and Stephen Brockmann. Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Cultures of the Weimar Republic. A Narrative Approach to Genre. Okkultismus und Phantastik in den Romanen Gustav Meyrink.

An der Grenze des Jenseits. Das Haus zur letzten Latern — Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. Das Haus zur letzten Latern: Das Haus zur letzten Latern — Aus dem Tagebuch eines Unsichtbaren. Books on Demand, The Interwar Years — The Life of Gustav Meyrink. Constructions of Allegory in Modernism.

New Directions in Emblem Studies 4 The Language of Allegory: On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism. A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern. The Johns Hopkins UP, Double Visions in German Literature. Das Cabinet des Dr. Written by Hans Janowitz and Conrad Mayer. Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt. Meyrink, Der Engel — Chopped up, Grilled and Shrunken to the Size of a Hedgehog: Dat es e Hellijebooch! Ich spitzte die Ohren. Was hatte ich da gelesen? Also hatten diese Laute eine wirkliche Bedeutung. Derheiligeaufdemrost meinte wirklich einen Heiligen auf dem Rost.

While the grandfather harbours some concerns about the brutality of certain stories, the grandmother is sure: With regard to the cultural heritage of European Christianity, the passage is illuminating for a number of reasons. First, it reminds us that stories of saints were the most popular literature of premodern times and still resonate in Christian contexts today.

The stories collected in the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine established an especially strong tradition of transmitting, preserving, and representing the sacred for European Christians, and probably provided much of the background for the text mentioned in the passage cited above. Being deeply rooted in religious culture, hagiography assumed a status seminar Second, the level of ex- cessive violence portrayed in some of these narratives is especially noteworthy.

In medieval hagiography, as well as in visual art, bodies of saints are subjected to cruel treatments. They are beaten, mutilated, burned, boiled, or tortured to death in the most brutal ways imaginable. Third, the function of these passages is not always immediately clear to the modern reader. Because the episodes are more often than not excessively brutal, they have raised questions about the mentality of the historical audience for which they were written. Why were they fascinated by such brutality? The religious content, however, seems to speak less to her, and perhaps this hints at how religious memoria came to lose its potency over time.

All the same, the succession of violent acts and the final resurrection does not follow the usual causalities of time, space, or mortality and can be adequately understood only in the context of a religious culture. From the Middle Ages to modernity the sacred makes a transition to the literary through a number of major alterations, especially with respect to the status of the narrator. However, the primary focus of this article lies in an attempt to understand selected body concepts of saints from medieval times to modernity — their position between materiality and transcendence, their relation to space, and conceptualizations of the sacred.

In this story, Mann introduces the peculiar notion that with time a saint might shrink to the size of a hedgehog. It builds upon recent scholarly work on medieval concepts of saintliness and sexuality, the body, and pain. Special attention will be given to the fact that the body itself can become a space for encountering the sacred. During the Middle Ages, European Christians could expect to encounter the sacred in a number of different locations.

These were exquisite places where space and imagination came together in a complex way to make transcendental experiences possible. However, the body of a devout believer could also be considered a locus within which an experience with God might be possible. Among other medieval narratives, this sort of intercourse with God has often been related in stories of the saints, in other words, hagiography.

This can best be illustrated with an example of the legend of Saint Vincentius, as narrated by Jacobus de Voragine in the Legenda Aurea, from the second half of the thirteenth century. It pushes the tendencies outlined above to an extreme. Whereas just one of these tortures would have sufficed to kill a person, the martyr survives a whole series of them. Thus a rather laconic, repetitious, and mechanical quality is another curious aspect to be found in the physical torture portrayed in legends of saints. It makes the grisly depictions physically and physiologically somewhat implausible.

The brutality sometimes leaves an almost comical impression on the modern reader — the story of St. George, for instance, reminding Sarah Kay of a Tom and Jerry plot This association is actually not out of place. Instead of suffering from pain and agony, they seem to feel joy in anticipation of new afflictions to come. They demand and even long for further torment: The corporeal experience suggested in the text is most surely grounded in feelings of pain, and we are supposed to believe that the martyr is indeed suffering.

In addition, the saint also willingly embraces the pain in an effort to experience it to the fullest and to transform it into a spiritual encounter. Connections and differences to the descriptions of masochistic pleasures provided by torture in modern literature, most notably in the works of the Marquis de Sade, have been discussed, among others, by Kay and Niklaus Largier Lob der Peitsche. It is therefore safe to assume that one important historical element of an ideologization of eroticized pain is the fact that the experience of intense suffering is considered a form of imitatio Christi. According to this Christian tradition, the feeling of pain is one way to become especially close to Jesus.

The fierce desire for such divine intimacy finds expression in the fact that the abuse of the saints was meant to be at least as bad as that suffered by Christ. And in the process of this experience, the saintly martyr supposedly undergoes a specific act of transformation in which pain is ultimately replaced by beauty, sweetness, and good fortune.

While the saint embraces his pain, God intervenes and causes a miracle. According to Ingrid Kasten, the material body undergoes a transformation into a spiritual body: The body literally becomes a stage upon which the sacred is enacted — a contact zone for divinity. On the contrary, the body plays an active part in the search for a spiritual experience that can be achieved by an act of transforming pain. The fact that the body is at first reduced to the essence of its pure materiality through its ability to experience pain is the pre- condition that opens possibilities to encounter the transcendental.

It is instead an example of the so-called conversio. Conversio also represents the other dominant style of saintly legend. It is in most cases related to the realization that a person has lead a sinful life, which elicits an intense wish for change. The person is moved to ask for atonement and forgiveness and engages in ascetic practices.

However, the suffering of the body plays a similarly central role in the lives of ascetics as in the lives of martyrs, and it involves a very similar emphasis on physical affliction. The violent maltreatment of the body through nutritional and other deprivations can also be interpreted as a form of martyrdom — in the end, another route to sanctity through the body. A short hagiographic version is extant in the Latin Gesta Romanorum the differences between this legend and Gregorius outlined by Haug — Even less than its French model, the text is not simply a legend, but a generic hybrid between hagiography and courtly novel.

By opening the hagiographic content and structure to that of the courtly novel, the text has moved a significant step further away from cult to fictional literature Kiening The generic hybridity reflects the opposition of chivalry and clergy that is outlined in the story. Gregorius is the product of an incestuous relationship between his parents, who were brother and sister. After having left behind a life that was destined by his adoptive father, an abbot, to be spent within the spiritual community of a cloister, Gregorius begins a knightly career. Then, unwittingly, he commits incest himself with his mother.

Therefore, the story is in essence one of many medieval adaptations and expansions on the classical tale of Oedipus Archibald; Huber. However, Gregorius is involved not only in one, but in two illicit relationships. As Walter Haug has pointed out, this represents one of the greatest challenges of the plot and the way it is structured in the German version. Besides the puzzling question about the nature of his sin, the point of special interest here is how Gregorius deals with it. He decides that his extreme behaviour demands extreme punishment, and he voluntarily chains himself to a stone in the middle of the ocean.

His bodily consumption consists only of a little water. Thus is Gregorius portrayed as an ascetic. The life of the religious ascestic should instead be regarded as a highly active one in which the imagination is mobilized to carry out a specific practice: Ascetics are fundamentally creators of vision- ary images, activities, and spaces.

They use the body with all its different senses, allowing it to be gripped by the process and to become conduits for the powerful images and emotions involved. Well-known paradigms for this type of saint are the so-called Stylites, those ascetics following the example of the Syrian Symeon Stylites, who supposedly spent forty years standing atop a stone column in the desert. Largier is interested in the fact that this type of isolation from the world leads to the production of new, imaginary, artificial worlds.

These are commonly known as visions or demonic temptations. Largier analyzes the connection between asceticism and imaginary worlds as a cultural-historical phenomenon. Gregorius, on the contrary, is clearly a sinner involved in an act of penitence.

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However, like Symeon resting almost motionless on his column in the desert, Gregorius is confined to a physically small and isolated space. It really makes no difference that the desert is replaced by its opposite elemental environment, the ocean. It is physically torturous and unbearable, but rich in emotional experiences. Both scholars seem to follow the conventional view that an ascetic is attempting to mortify the flesh, instead of aiming to stimulate its sensitivity. However, in the scene in which Gregorius is finally freed from the rock, it is made clear that the life he experienced in isolation has not been confined to loneliness and self-denial: During this whole time he was nourished by the biblical wisdom of God.

The passage reveals exactly the connections between text, imagination, and holiness to which Largier refers when he speaks of a rhetorical application of the senses in asceticism. It is by no means accidental that the metaphors used for his skin and bones — thorns and linen — hint of objects associated with the suffering body of Jesus on the cross.

This pious man is undoubtedly involved in the practice of imitatio Christi.

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Ultimately, this also leads to his elevation as rightful leader of the entire Christian world. In the end, for suffering and surviving so long, Gregorius is ultimately granted a reprieve and made pope. While no sin is so great that it cannot be pardoned, the assumption would be false that every sin is ultimately assured forgiveness. This is one of the aspects of the story that became especially interesting for Mann: This becomes manifest in the differing ways they relate body to space. To be sure, Mann had no intention of writing a historically based medieval narrative.

As in all his novels dealing with historical or mythical themes, he set out instead to establish a dialogue between the past and present. His references to the Middle Ages serve to illuminate modernity, and vice versa. The most important point of contention has been an intentional transfer of religious to fictional motivation. Yet scholars still have difficulty coming to terms with the religious dimension of the book. It is worth remembering that the potential tensions between literary and religious discourses have always been an element of hagiographic writing.

More important seems the question: In the medieval text the liquid is described simply as water. In a sophisticated style, he even combines detailed de- scriptions of bodily functions with religious poetry. It is not by coincidence that this somewhat off-putting ascetic, dripping fluid out of his mouth, reminds one of a full, freshly nursed baby.

Its effect, however, is just the opposite. The initial drinking of the food stuff starts a transformation process by which he gradually regresses towards an embryonic state: Should one conclude from this description of an eremitic lifestyle that in order to become a saint it is necessary to revert to an infantile condition? The previously quoted passage seems to support this perception. His peculiar choices modify the interpretation of physi- cality concerning the relationship between body and space that was outlined earlier and presents a different condition for experiencing transcendence.

Religious discourse re- mains a strong subtext throughout the modern version. Mann does not seem to describe any act of intentional penitence similar to the one referred to earlier. According to Andreas Urs Sommer, Mann did not want to describe any kind of internal process of penitence either. Sommer notes the absence of desperation, guilty conscience, or strain under punishment Mann does not describe an act or practice of penitence at all, but rather a form of passive resignation.

As observed by a contemporary reviewer of the novel, its religious parallels, if any, would lie more in the protestant doctrine of pre- destination than in the catholic concept of active penitence Sommer The message here seems to be that forgiveness or grace is something that cannot be actively sought. In- stead, the tiny space overpowers the prisoner with claustrophobia, causing him literally to shrink away from existential possibilities.

Instead of the wracked, yet still noble and sublime body described in the medieval story, which brings tears to the eyes of those who see it, the modern version presents us with a repulsive, scuttling little creature. The transcendental transformation of the body that one finds in tales of medieval martyrs and ascetics seems nowhere to be found.

The metamorphosis of this body is neither miraculous nor realistic. It appears to be grotesquely material, which is all the more accentuated by the accompanying pseudoscientific descriptions Mann provides. Mann was specifically interested in the concepts of degeneration and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. A famous example of this exploration is his novel Buddenbrooks Michler ; Otis — A metaphorical interpretation might hold that his bodily depletion would be attributed to the lack of emotional and spiritual experience that medieval ascetics experienced under similar duress — an insight for which I am indebted to Susanne Balmer.

Stavroula Constantinou has examined this term as a tool for describing concepts of sacred bodies in Byzantine collections of miracle stories, especially those focussing on affliction and healing. As Constantinou explains, many protagonists of these stories suffer from diseases such as dysentery, colic, elephantiasis, dropsy, and genital illnesses. As a result of these diseases, the bodies are involved in processes of transformation. They gradually lose their form and size through swellings in various lower parts of the body.

They also produce excessive quantities of bodily fluids and flux such as vomit, diarrhoea, urine, pus, and blood. In many cases, the saints contract these diseases from the bodies of patients they are tending. In others, however, they have acquired a grotesque body as a result of the hardships of their own austere, ascetic lives.

She finds all of the features that for Bakhtin characterize the grotesque body represented in Byzantine miracle stories, including: The grotesque body builds on a form of inversion of high and low. This does not hold for saints of the Byzantine tradition alone. Bynum has emphasized this aspect in her works on female religiosity, giving the salient example of Catherine of Siena, who according to several of her hagiographers, debased herself by taking the putrid breast of a dying woman into her mouth and by willingly in- gesting pus — The idea that degradation should be embraced is another important aspect of imitatio Christi and, as such, of medieval asceticism.

The grotesque little body of his hero does not reflect the idea that making oneself smaller might bring one closer to God. Through extreme practices, the medieval ascetic could turn the body into a medium for religious experiences. There is no epiphany of the imagination that leads to intercourse with God. Instead, the suffering hero succumbs passively to his situation and is physically and emotionally reduced to a primogenial state.

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To be sure, Mann might not have known anything about this religious tradition at all. His work with medieval texts is regarded as being rather eclectic Schork; Wimmer. He apparently also had difficulty relating to a cultural-historical tradition that sees the body as a location for the experience of transcendence, and literature as a form of physical nourishment. His parody might lead to the impression that he sees religious traditions as rather dated, pathetic, or infantile. However, Mann criticized his contemporary reviewers for not having understood his work in this respect. Mann saw no contradiction between ironic narration and serious content.

The more important question seems to be why Mann chooses not to grant his hero any kind of spiritual experience. Mann draws no connection between penitence and grace. Apparently, for- giveness is not something one may actively seek. His malnourished hero does not contemplate biblical wisdom, he is simply radically and socially isolated, and this induces a steady decline to a foetal state. Thus we are able to recognize two very different concepts of development when assessing a body deprived of proper food and drink: Guot, however, means an exemplarily humble and pious man, not necessarily a holy man.

Aside from its physical grotesqueness, the life described is nearly devoid of the necessary prerequisites for holiness in the medieval sense of the word. It can never be acquired through acts of penitence. Again, this might be a comment on how to deal with unthinkable guilt. Instead of the body as an exquisite space for religious transcendence, Mann offers a metaphorical body, a literary figure. Works Cited Archibald, Elizabeth. Incest and the Medieval Imagination.

Rabelais and his World. Essai sur la signification du comique. Presses Universitaires de France, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: U California P, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature. Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue. Tobin, Kim Vivan, and Richard H. Pennsylvania State UP, Literaturtheorie im deutschen Mittelalter: Von Hartmann von Aue zu Lars von Trier. Die Kunst des Begehrens: Dekadenz, Sinnlichkeit und Askese.

Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung. The Culture of Pain. U of Nebraska P, Religious Motifs in German Literature and Thought. Eckhard Heftrich, Helmut Koopmann. Most of its several dozen characters are East Germans undergoing a bewildering transition, caught between the familiar structures of a GDR that has ceased to exist and an un- fathomable, emerging German society. This article is especially concerned with the representation of this ungrounded condition. These characters include a migrant author, a blind woman whose sight is restored, women in exploitive heterosexual re- lationships, a transsexual undergoing gender reassignment, and a postcolonial Thai woman who remains unscathed by modernity.

The narrative brings these tropes into dialogue with East German experience and with each other. Given the primary focus on the Wende, these other transformations work allegorically in the narrative, allowing the implied author to explore facets of East German experience and to locate it as part of a broader human experience. How do they frame memory of German unification, and what do they imply about German, and eastern German, identity? To pursue these questions, it is helpful to recall debates in German studies about postcolonialism and memory work in the literature of the Berlin Republic.

From Colonization to Nostalgia. That is, for Cooke, postcolonial concepts such as hybridity and mimicry are relevant to German unification, if only as means of understanding the peripheral discourse. But Bhabha is controversial in postcolonial studies owing to the wide applicability of his concepts and the concomitant danger of obfuscating socio- logical and historical distinctions Loomba — Within German studies, both Todd Herzog and Leslie Adelson have aspired to historicize the use of hybridity, in the contemporary Jewish-German and Turkish-German contexts respectively. Both Herzog and Adelson object that the rhetorical figure of the hybrid may reassert, rather than destabilize, the imaginary, historically contingent identities of which it is composed.

To extend this historicizing gesture to Brussig, it is important to examine the possibilities and limits of hybridity in texts focussed on eastern German identity, including Wendeliteratur. Strikingly, the aforementioned scholarship finds hybridity an effective aesthetic strategy in eastern German, but more prob- lematic in Jewish-German or Turkish-German, literature. Narratives exploring Jewish-German identity, for instance, must contend with longstanding discourses emphasizing Jewish-German difference.

But then the situation is fundamentally different for former East Germans. Against this ideological background, nationalist iconography can be mobilized in the interest of eastern German identity politics, with differences between eastern and western Germans cast as scandalous. Though beyond the scope of this article, the interplay of genders, sexualities, and colonial discourses is complex and con- troversial, as Ania Loomba demonstrates at length — Most important for this analysis is that the narrative of Wie es leuchtet forces these realms together by relating them to East German experience.

His gendered metaphors also evoke prevalent discourses, as this discussion will demonstrate. Moreover, the allegorical use of the situations of migrants or women is by no means confined to representations of eastern Germans. How does the narrative weave together hybridity, sexual politics, and eastern German identity, and to what effect?

It is at odds with itself, aesthetically and thematically, and the aesthetic tensions are related to the thematic ones. Aesthetically, the novel flaunts multiple perspectives but grafts these into a rather homogenous narrative. To express this contradiction in the gendered terms implied by the narrative, the valorized sphere of everyday East Germans is coded as feminine but susceptible to moments of masculine triumphalism.

The aesthetic contradictions in Wie es leuchtet derive in large part from the conceit structuring the narrative: To be sure, on the plot level, the destinies of East German characters are varied. Ultimately, any conclusion that might be drawn by reading a particular character as a representative of the East German experience is undermined elsewhere in the narrative. Yet the repre- sentation of West Germans and non-Germans is more reductive, with both in supplementary roles that augment the East German quest for identity. The novel lacks an exploration of Turkish-German or Jewish-German perspectives — of any perspectives, in fact, that might complicate the binary opposition between Germans and non-Germans.

Beyond this, though, the notion of multiple perspectives is at odds with the omniscient, third-person narrative voice employed in all chapters but the first. What emerges is a retelling of nationally iconic moments, infused by the marginalized perspectives of East Germans. His earlier novels all focus on the GDR, where he lived from his birth in until German unification. His pseudonymously published novel Wasserfarben garnered little attention. But Helden wie wir brought acclaim and controversy, relating the satirical tale of a picaresque, megalomaniacal Stasi agent who credits his sex organ with the opening of the Berlin Wall.

Beyond the already mentioned similarities in tone, thematic parallels in two areas are noteworthy. In the more recent novel, the elusive realm of power is a puzzling new society dominated by West Germans; in the earlier one, it is East German state authority. The novel highlights its own fictitiousness as a way of remembering that is distinct from historical memory. The emphasis on personal and conciliatory memory, grounded in narrative, corresponds to the focus on everyday life in the GDR, rather than on political history.

Thus he further established his identity as a public figure, distinguishing himself from a discredited generation of East German literati, including Christa Wolf, after the Literaturstreit. Wie es leuchtet also satirizes characters who attempt, despite their ineptitude, to rise in status through code switching. For example, the hotel manager Alfred Bunnzuweit imagines erroneously that thriving in the new Germany depends on a new vocabulary: Moreover, Wie es leuchtet contains a character, Waldemar, whose success as an author derives from his eccentric use of language.

Another character in Wie es leuchtet is more successful at representing precisely, and with authenticity, what has thus far eluded representation. The narrative casts this act as a masculine triumph. Significantly, he works primarily in a medium other than language, but his voice narrates the opening chapter of the novel. The third-person narrative voice that relates the remainder of the novel affirms this characterization, noting that it applies except at the fall of the Berlin Wall: This passage metaphorically equates representation and masculine sexual conquest.

Personal interview The first chapter dispenses with photographs in a sense.

The narrative then proceeds to show that words have previously been the domain of western Germans. Through this triumphant — and again, by implication, masculine — narrative act, the implied author appropriates words in the service of the collective memory of a marginalized group, the former East Germans whose perspective predominates. Und so war es mit dem, was jetzt in Bewegung gekommen war: Erst in Deutschland findet es Ruhe. Die Frage war nicht, ob und auch nicht, wann.

Deutschland is a signifier to be used in performing identity and appropriating power. To some characters, Germany appears burdened by its Nazi past. Yet the diffuse fears about the historical gravity of Germany give way to the realization that the past is in many ways irrelevant to the post-Wende present. Through an absurd series of misunderstandings, Bode has narrowly escaped a Nazi execution order, then nearly died in Siberia after being captured and mistaken for an SS-man on the eastern front, only to be imprisoned later in East Germany for allegedly conspiring against the communist party — Having achieved celebrity status with his autobiography at the end of the s, he is dumbfounded when, at a public reading after the fall of the Wall, his criticisms of real existing socialism suddenly interest no one.

With this glass eye, Bode can no longer see and bear witness; rather, all other eyes gawk at this uncanny object. Later, this reification of history is symbolized by a pinball machine called Das Auge Bodes, in which a glass eye rolls past fields of corpses, the Kristallnacht, labour camps, and the Berlin Wall The political promise that Deutschland holds proves similarly incon- sequential. She views the political changes as an opportunity: Thus in Wie es leuchtet the prominent advocate for a hopeful reimagining of socialism is an East German tainted by a Stasi past. In the case of Gysi, the allegations have been disputed; for the character Blank, they are simply true.

This contrivance is a reminder that the eastern German identity Brussig champions is entirely distinct from socialism and, by contrast, grounded in everyday experience. In the novel, the economic success of the FRG eclipses both the German past and the new political possibilities. The latter is addressed by another on the same occasion: As a fourth answer to the German question, the narrative of Wie es leuchtet emphasizes that the word Deutschland is a signifier to be employed as a prop in performing identity and asserting power. Germanness appears primarily as the province of West Germans, who have the upper hand in the performance of identity and mastery of the requisite vernacular.

Through this reconfiguration, the novel implies that eastern Germans might still inject some authenticity into the narrative construct of German national identity. However, the expectations and behaviours of East Germans enable him to perform most effectively. For instance, he understands the self- demeaning behaviour of the hotel manager Alfred Bunnzuweit as an invitation to develop his feigned identity Und sie wird seine Erfindung immer wieder in Kraft setzen, auch vor ihm. When Schniedel is finally arrested, his West German grandmother buys his freedom with money from the sale of an East Berlin apartment building that she has reacquired since the collapse of the GDR —79, — Thus beneath the overtly fraudulent claims that sustain this young West German for a while in the east, economic developments work more subtly and permanently to his advantage.

In effect, the outright con and the new economy are two sides of the same coin. The other West German protagonist is Lattke, in essence a more sophisticated version of Schniedel. As a West German journalist, he considers himself best suited to interpret the East German experience for the nation. But this proves untrue. The results are disastrous. Lattke must write an unpublishable piece about a woman who is devastated because, after a life of blindness, she cannot make sense of visual stimuli — So befriedigte sie Werner Schniedel — freiwillig und so gut sie eben konnte.

Here the implied author turns the fairy-tale marriage metaphor on its head by introducing the con man as the prince. She first appears in the novel among a group of seven transsexuals complaining to the Minister of Health of having been abandoned in mid-sex-reassignment by East German doctors. These transsexual characters fit neither of the ostensibly fixed gender categories: The narrative emphasizes the perils of living in a social world that expects, and projects, fixed categories of identity.

One transsexual character laments: Wir sind doch Freiwild! She performs not only her gender but also East or West German identity to correspond to the desires of male customers Commodification is central to both images: Here East German men, rather than women, are the consumers, but the desire to consume titillating western sex is likewise central. In both cases, the commercial exchange involves deceit, suggesting a darker side to the free-market, consumer culture of the west.

However, once the narrative has cast Lena in this allegorical role, it disrupts the expected trajectory of the story. Lena eventually rejects the prospect of moving to New York with Lattke and ends the relationship. Instead, the political unification provides her with an opportunity to confront the theatre director Paul Masunke, who sexually abused her as a child and has recently returned to the east after a career in the west.

Masunke exhibits a sadistic ob- session with histrionics and power; his productions involve the physical abuse of the actors This adds another, darker dimension to the theme of acting and role playing, which the narrative associates with West Germans. When Lena confronts Masunke in the cafeteria of his new theatre, causing him to spill soup on himself just as he once spilled semen on her, she acts out a reversal of gender roles and power relations, striking a triumphant masculine pose that is a staple of pornography: The cathartic confrontation with Masunke suggests that rather than passively accepting societal conditions, eastern Germans might treat the political unification as an opportunity to exercise power in their own interests.

Brussig destabilizes the sexual union metaphor and the gendering of the GDR, exposing power dynamics and the performative aspects of identity.

In support of eastern German identity politics, he interrupts these gendered discourses that make relations between eastern and western Germans appear natural. By representing eastern Germans as subaltern and recasting predominant discourse about eastern and western Germans, Brussig employs strategies reminiscent of postcolonial literature. Though appearing only rarely, non-Germans in Germany i. First, they embody an extreme difference that emboldens the East Germans to assert their own divergence from West German norms.

The exotic otherness of the street performers Lena encounters in Berlin is undeniable: Enraptured by the spectacle, Lena thinks: But non-German characters also reinforce the Germanness of the East Germans. After identifying exotic flowers for two East German women on a shopping expedition in the west, a cheerful Turk assures them of their identities in nonstandard German: Such char- acters give East Germans a model for navigating a life that diverges from the norms of the majority culture. Yet their more pronounced difference emphasizes the commonality of eastern and western Germans, supporting a normative, German nationalist element.

His prominence in the wake of his publishing successes of the s has made him a spokesperson for former East Germans as a group. Also, Edgar Reitz chose Brussig to represent East German perspectives as the co-writer of the screenplay for Heimat 3 , the latest installment of the iconic Heimat television series. During her campaign for the German chancellorship, Angela Merkel included Brussig among her expert advisors Kramer Thus he makes himself indispensable: But his focus on eastern German experience insulates him from other stakeholders in the Berlin Republic.

In Wie es leuchtet, the portrayal of eastern Germans as virtual migrants would be less problematic were it not for the rise of German antiforeigner violence in the early s, which the novel does not address at all. One might argue that the focus on —90 in the novel precludes the exploration of such topics, but the narrative makes ironic allusions to later events in other contexts, most notably the Persian Gulf War of , and could have done so here Significantly, the absence of such topics demonstrates the extent to which the narrative is concerned with the situation of eastern Germans specifically, relegating other characters to supplementary roles.

The narrative shows East Germans and non-Germans in parallel situations but also separated by the impermeable barrier of national identity. Though it emphasizes characters in an ungrounded, transitional state, the narrative posits an emergent German identity. In New York, Lena sees rampant materialism: The subtext is clear: Thailand, in turn, appears idyllic and nurturing. The masseuse Noy, Warthe, and his wife are among those with a justifiable existence; not so the judge and interrogator who persecuted him in the GDR.

Though several passages imply that identity is fungible and predicated on performance, the narrative maintains rigid boundaries between Germans and non-Germans. The text employs the situations of migrants, non-Germans, women, and transsexuals as metaphors for eastern German experience without exploring the full consequences of the performative aspects of identity that come to light through these metaphors. It focusses instead on eastern German entitlement within a German national context.

Hybridity in this text serves a primarily metaphorical function, rather than opening up room for all residents of the Berlin Republic to contribute to German memory work. Hendersons Rezepte sind zeitlos gut. Spiegel Online Peter Wagner. The book that chanced the way we eat. Geschichten, die von der Zubereitung der Speisen handeln und mit viel Charme und Witz ausgestattet sind. Ein Buch, das wirklich Spass macht beim Lesen.

Und kochen Sie vermehrt Henderson-like. Oder lesen Sie wenigstens sein Buch. Es lohnt sich alles sehr.

Zentralschweiz am Sonntag Hans Graber. Schnell wird klar, dass dieser Koch nicht nur Herzen zubereitet. So einfach wie genial. Dieses hier ist allerdings ein besonderes: Witzig formuliert, klug und kritisch. Galler Tagblatt Katja Fischer de Santi. Hinter jedem Ding steckt eine kleine Geschichte. Auf die Idee Zuckerwatte kam ausgerechnet ein Zahnarzt. Das hat so viel Suchtpotenzial, dass einem unweigerlich der Gedanke durch den Kopf geht: Sie empfehlen historische Kapellen, Hinkelsteine, Heiligensarkophage zur Besichtigung.

Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen Maja Brunner Schweizer Illustrierte Isabel Notari. Wird mit Sicherheit ein Lieblingskochbuch. Schweizer Buchhandel Anna Pearson. Der Landbote Stefan Busz. Bolero Priska Hofmann Amstutz. Galler Tagblatt Peter Surber. Neue Luzerner Zeitung Michael Graber. Nun legt Thomas Widmer nach. Und ebenso glasklar den Tod. Die unterirdische Schweiz ist strahlend und kurios. Jost Auf der Maur hat sich in diese Unterwelt begeben, von der viele eine Ahnung haben, aber kaum jemand Genaues weiss.

Sein Bericht deckt auf und reisst mit. Ein packendes Buch voll mit aberwitzigen Geschichten. Galler Tagblatt Marcel Elsener. Dicht und zupackend geschrieben, mit hohem Informations- und Unterhaltungswert. Schweiz am Wochenende Mathias Balzer. Jost Auf der Maur dringt mit seiner warmen Schreibe ein in diese geheimnisvoll verdunkelte Unterwelt und zupft Sie waren begehrt und teuer. Reichtum, Ansehen und Elend waren der Lohn. Die Folgen sind bis heute erkennbar. Nicht in der blutleeren Sprache von Historikern, sondern mit dem Saft journalistischer Prosa beschreibt der Autor schonungslos den wirtschaftlichen Niedergang der Herrenlinie der Auf der Maur.

Der Bund Regula Fuchs. Nicht alles, was in der Wurst drin ist, klingt appetitlich. Nun gibt es diesen Fundus, gerafft in unterhaltsamen Texten, endlich auch als Buch: Paul Imhof ist Journalist und Buchautor. Eine gut lesbare und unterhaltsame Zusammenfassung einer grossen Forschungsarbeit. Kleines Land, grosse Speisekammer. Der Sonntag Pascal Cames. Die Schweizer Bundesverfassung von ist ein Geniestreich. Das Zerrbild wird Standard und bleibt es bis heute.

Das Buch hat das Zeug zum Bestseller. Rolf Holenstein hat neue Quellen entdeckt, alte Quellen neu gewertet und eine meisterhafte Biografie geschrieben, die Bestand haben wird. Figuren wie Ochsenbein fehlen heute. Dieses Buch ist ein Appetitanreger. Zum Beispiel schadet es nicht, zu wissen, was sich der Spitzenkoch denkt, wenn man sich in einem Gourmetrestaurant danebenbenimmt. Oder wie man schwarzen Schnaps macht. Es zeigt, weshalb die Schweiz eine Hauptrolle in der Saga des Superagenten spielt. James Bond und die Schweiz ist spannend wie eine Agentenstory und ein einzigartiges Seherlebnis.

Michael Marti ist Germanist und Historiker. Wer Bondfan ist, muss dieses Buch lesen. Neue Luzerner Zeitung Arno Renggli. Sie kreierten einen neuen Musikstil. Berner Zeitung Samuel Mumenthaler. Rysers Buch macht klar: Galler Tagblatt Philipp Reichen. Elisabeth Bronfens Rezepte sind raffiniert, weltoffen, aber immer mit einem Hang zum Pragmatischen und Praktischen. Bronfens Gedanken und Rezepte machen Lust, sofort an den Herd zu stehen. Wer die Leidenschaft der Autorin zum Kochen teilt, wird auf Seiten mehr als satt. Basler Zeitung Christoph Heim.

Der mexikanische Drogenkrieg ist das brutalste Gemetzel der Gegenwart. Der Killer, der nachts von seinen Opfern heimgesucht wird. Frauen, die sich in Drogenbosse verlieben und morden. Benini kommt nahe an die einzelnen Protagonisten heran und reichert deren Einzelschicksale gekonnt mit Fakten an. Basler Zeitung Mischa Hauswirth. Die Bilder sind von einer hypnotischen Tiefe.

Das Magazin Christian Seiler Basler Zeitung Christine Richard. Die Zeit Urs Willmann. Eine bewegende Geschichte eines abenteuerhungrigen jungen Schweizers. Mit grosser Sorgfalt hat Jost Auf der Maur recherchiert und das Abenteuer spannend niedergeschrieben. Jede Reise beginnt mit einer simplen Frage: Wie schmeckt das wirklich? Wie ist die Pizza in Neapel? Was zeichnet den gebratenen Hering in Stockholm aus? Des Lesers Hunger nach solcher Literatur ist gewaltig.

Das Buch macht definitiv Lust, selbst auf kulinarische Entdeckungsreise zu gehen. Er schmeisst das Gymnasium und jobbt als Kuhhirt auf der Alp. Er wird drakonisch bestraft, kann fliehen, taucht ab. Eine lesenswerte Chronik eines bewegten Lebens. Es ist ein journalistisches und biografisches, kein politisches Buch. Junge Welt Patricia D'Incau. Das Einfache zieht uns hinan. Ein Buch zum Verschnabulieren. Jede einzelne Geschichte hat ihre eigene Magie, ihr eigenes Drama. Deshalb sollte man bei aller Liebe zu den Frauen die Rezepte nicht ausser Acht lassen.

Jost Auf der Maur ist auch an seinem professionellen Handwerk gereift wie ein guter Wein. Er ist nicht einfach Reporter, er ist eine gottverdammte Edelfeder, ein durchtriebener Wort-Magier, der unentrinnbar in die Seelen schreibt. Witzige, schnelle und oft ironische Geschichten. Wenn es um den praktischen Nutzen geht, so ist Marcella Hazan unschlagbar. Marcella Hazan hat mit Lifestyle nichts zu tun, ihre Gerichte sind einfach und klar.

Diese Rezepte sind Teil einer Lebensgeschichte: Am Anfang war die Irritation gross. Was bisher noch gefehlt hat: Ein handlicher Wegweiser im Dickicht des Kunstbetriebs: Der Bund Magdalena Schindler Le Temps Lorette Coen. Wer in diesem Kunstsommer mitreden will, muss dieses Buch gelesen haben. Nun gibt es diesen Fundus, gerafft in unterhaltsamen Texten und veranschaulicht durch Illustrationen, endlich auch als Buch: Schneider schildert die Erlebnisse ohne Bitterkeit, manchmal gar lustig, tragikomisch.

Schweizer Buchhandel Carlo Bernasconi. Eine faszinierende Biografie mit wachen, heiteren Sinnen geschrieben, Kaltenbach-like. So lautet der Titel. Mehr braucht er auch nicht zu sagen, denn Marianne Kaltenbach ist eine Legende und fast ein bisschen so etwas wie ein Nationalheiligtum. Paul Imhof schreibt behutsam und mit genauem Auge. Oftmals unterhaltsam, immer fundiert und mit viel Passion. Diese Buchserie widmet sich gutem Geschmack, innovativen Produzenten und einheimischen Traditionen. Ein Metallrahmen mit Stacheldraht, zwei Rollen breit und sieben hoch.

Hier also beginnt und endet Europa. Entstanden ist eine Sammlung von Recherchen und Stimmen: Die detaillierten Schilderungen der Einzelschicksale, von Hunger, Obdachlosigkeit und Gewalt, gehen unter die Haut und werfen im Hinblick auf den eingeschlagenen Weg in der Migrationspolitik Fragen auf. Galler Tagblatt Christian Kamm. Surber begibt sich an Ort und Stelle. Aargauer Zeitung Stefan Schmid.

Badische Zeitung Pascal Cames. In Miniaturen wird in diesem Buch ein Ganzes sichtbar. Und, dank umfangreicher Register, ein einzigartiges Nachschlagewerk, in dem jede und jeder der Spur seiner eigenen Geschichte mit dem Jazz nachgehen kann. Das ist ein Buch nach meinem Herzen. Kein blosses Nachschlagewerk, sondern das Zeugnis einer lebenslangen Passion und ein Wunderwerk der Abschweifung.

Die Zeit Stefan Hentz. Spiegel Online Hans Hielscher. Neue Musikzeitung Roland Spiegel. Nur wer von vielem etwas versteht, versteht auch eine einzelne Sache richtig. Ein Ziegelstein von einem Buch. Gewichtig, in jeder Hinsicht. Tracks Magazin Christoph Hug. Hessische Allgemeine Peter Fritschler. Eine sprachintensive Hymne auf den Jazz. Galler Tagblatt Bettina Kugler. Hier ist ein Gourmet am Werk, ein Liebhaber, der den Jazz als moderne Kunstform in einen Gesamtzusammenhang stellt und ein erweitertes Zielpublikum anspricht.

Willkommen im digitalen Leben. Muss ich immer erreichbar sein? Darf ich mein Date googeln? Und wo fahre ich ganz altmodisch analog besser? Das digitale Leben ist unsere Gegenwart und unsere Zukunft. Knigge hat in vergangenen Jahrhunderten mitgeholfen, die gesellschaftliche Etikette zu wahren. Jahrhundert kommt nun von David Bauer. Der Abstieg von Guido T. Und doch schafft es Guido, sich mit eigener Kraft aus dem Sumpf zu ziehen. Und er konvertiert zum Islam. Thurgauer Zeitung Christoph Fust. Ein Leben, das alles beinhaltet: Luzerner Zeitung Arno Renggli. Zentralschweiz am Sonntag Hans Graber Lieben uns unsere Katzen?

Ein Katzenbuch ganz ohne Kitsch. Christian Uetz ist ein philosophischer Poet und Romanautor. Da war Boris Beckers Hechtrolle ein Nichts dagegen. Kaum einer spielt mit dem Racket so virtuos wie Roger Federer, und keiner hat hierzulande ein lockereres Mundwerk als der Wortzauberer und Poet Christian Uetz. Lange haben wir auf so einen Text gewartet. Der Bund Alexander Sury. Applaus brandete auf, minutenlanger Applaus.

Das hat mich erquickt. Basler Zeitung Christian Mensch. Und vor allem beherrscht er die im Journalismus so wichtige Gabe des Vereinfachens und Reduzierens. Michael Schindhelm hat Quantenchemie studiert, Romane geschrieben, Dokumentarfilme gedreht und war Theaterdirektor und Kurator. Mit feiner, spitzer Feder beschreibt er etwa den Ordnungssinn.

Aargauer Zeitung Christian Fluri. Fernsehen ist unsere Droge.

Was treibt uns an? Eine Entdeckung im Archiv: Rund Glasnegative aus der Zeit zwischen und werden in der Bildagentur Keystone neu visioniert. Der in Biel geborene Jules Decrauzat ist der erste und zu seiner Zeit auch der bedeutendste Fotoreporter der Schweiz. Der Bund Daniel Di Falco. Fahrtluft, Motorenknattern und Extase: Das alles ist in Decrauzats Momentaufnahmen zu lesen, die mitunter den Charakter eigenartiger Genreszenen erlangen.

Schweizer Familie Susanne Rothenbacher. Jules Decrauzat war als rasender Reporter allen voraus. Galler Tagblatt Florian Weiland. Alle reden von der Zweiklassengesellschaft. Er schildert, wie leicht der soziale Aufstieg sein kann. Vanity Fair Ulf Poschardt Das Magazin Martin Beglinger. Kaum einer kennt das kulinarische Erbe der Schweiz besser als Paul Imhof.

Wer diese Einleitungen liest, versteht die Schweiz. Paul Imhof beschreibt die Produkte in Miniaturen: Ein Augenschmaus, der Lust auf kulinarische Wieder- Entdeckungen macht. Grosseltern Magazin Georg Gindely. Unterhaltung und Bildung zugleich. Mags Frisch Nicole Giger. Companion Magazine Leonie Volk. Mit Weys charmanter Fragestunde macht Sprachkorrektheit Spass. Weys Buch ist eine lehrreiche Entdeckungsreise, die grossen Spass macht. Ein Tagebuch in Bildern: Man ist nicht allein. Sind wir nicht alle ein bisschen Caspar? Sie sind perfekte Miniaturen. Es ist akustisches Dribbling der Extraklasse.

Eine Entlassung endet im offenen Konflikt. Rudolf Elmer kostet es beinahe den Verstand. Denn Detektive verfolgen und beschatten ihn. Doch dann trifft er auf die Macher einer Website, die damals noch kaum jemand kennt: Der Freitag Ulrike Baureithel. Ein Krimi, wie er im Buche steht, nur eben echt. Friday Magazine Melanie Biedermann. Ein schonungsloser Krimi aus der wahren Wirklichkeit. Ein ausgesprochen bemerkenswertes Buch. Der Whistleblower Elmer hatte nie versucht, zu fliehen. Die Person Elmer hingegen ist schwer zu fassen. Magazin Surprise Amir Ali. Erste Kinderworte gehen nie vergessen.

Basler Zeitung Nick Joyce. Wo ist die Welt? Die Welt ist dort, wo Isabelle Krieg sie sieht. Nichts verschenke ich so gern wie dieses Buch. Eine zierliche Elfe, die ordentlich zupacken kann. Leonur, Manapi und Nubbur sind das neue Heldentrio der Kinderliteratur, und gleich in ihrem ersten Abenteuer wollen sie hoch hinaus. Nicht bei diesem Kinderbuch. Die Mutter, weil sie sich an der kunstvollen Verpackung der Geschichte erfreut.

Januar schickt die! Adnan Hadzi und Daniel Ryser, der diesen Bericht verfasst hat. Bitniks Kunstaktionen lassen sich als dynamische Sinnbilder auffassen. Cavelty geht es um nicht mehr und nicht weniger als die letzten Dinge. Gott hat ein Loch. Cavelty ist ein weiteres, wunderbar versponnenes Buch gelungen. Basler Zeitung Christian Gebhard. Michel Mettler ist Musiker, Dramaturg und Schriftsteller. Aus Wort und Strich werden Fleisch und Blut. Schweizer Monatshefte Perikles Monioudis.

In seiner Sprechstunde nimmt uns Simon Libsig kritisch, aber wohlwollend in die Mangel. Herrlich, wie sein Publikum vor lauter angeregtem Mitdenken manchmal fast die Lacher verpasst! Michel Gammentaler, Zauberer und Comedian. Cineastische Leckerbissen im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes. Es ist doch alles scheissegal, weil wir nichts anderes mehr haben als Meinungen und die freie Wahl. Der Bund Gisela Feuz. Dieser Dramentext liest sich als Text hervorragend, er ist eigentlich eine Kurzgeschichte in Dialogform.

Mit bissig-witzigen Dialogen und einer Prise Selbstironie. SRF online Kaa Lindner. Tages-Anzeiger Daniel Di Falco. Berner Zeitung Michael Feller. Margrit Sprecher entwirft ein Psychogramm der Kampffliegerei. Galler Tagblatt Richard Clavadetscher. Schweizer Illustrierte Andrea Vogel Ich lese das immer gern. Roger Schawinski Doppelpunkt, Radio 1. Einen Werkstattbericht besonderer Art. Und schreiben Literatur im Minutentakt: Luzerner Zeitung Michael Graber.

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