«ANGST KENNT KEIN PARDON» (CAMP DISCOURSE)

Abstract

The article “Angst kennt kein Pardon” (camp discourse) deals with the camp literature, provides examples from the poetic and prose works, analyses the reproduction of the person’s internal state during the stay in the camp. The camp literature is a concept which belonged to the off-limits subjectsin the Soviet linguistic space. Since the 1980s and to this day, a considerable amount of archival data has been issued, they include evidence of the former prisoners of the concentration camps, as well as scientific studies on this subject in Europe. The aim of the article is the study of the German-language camp texts and analysis of the lexical units that denote the feeling of hunger, fear and homesickness in the novel of a famous German writer, a representative of the Romanian Germans Herta Müller “Atemschaukel” (“Breath-Swing”). The main objectives of the article include a review of the German-language camp literature, its brief description, study of the denotations “Hunger”, “Angst”, “Heimweh”, etc., which can be followed the camp texts. Acknowledged with the Nobel Prize Award in 2010, the novel “Atemschaukel” is written on the bases of real events and memories. It tells about a Romanian guy who finds himself in the camp in Donetsk steppes; depicts the camp life, way of life, struggle for survival, inhuman attitude toward prisoners. The analysis of the lexical corpus of the work piece fixes the dominance of the denotations “Hunger” (hunger), “Angst” (fear), “Flucht” (escape), “Heimweh” (homesickness), indicating the physical and psychological state of life in the camp. The instinct of self-preservation as an important factor of survival in the camp is closely related to the need of food, evidenced by the dominance of such lexemes as Brot (bread), Zucker (sugar), Salz (salt) and generalized concepts Essen / essen / fressen (food, eat, guzzle). The most common colour denotation is weiß (white), which competes with the denotations grau (grey), rot (red) and schwarz (black), which make up the contrasting palette of the reality and imagination of the camp residents. Despite the unbearable desire to escape that prevails in the camp, the novel does not focus on the word “Hölle” (hell), which belonged to the frequently used in many descriptionsof the concentration camps.