{"title":"‘Christliche und Abendländische Kultur’? Readings of Augustine and Ecclesiastes in the White Rose Pamphlets","authors":"D. Lloyd","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2023.2180949","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2023.2180949","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the use of references to specifically Christian texts in the White Rose pamphlets. It situates them in their original context, and argues that, whilst the pamphlets of the White Rose are not framed as theological works, the intended audience includes those who are familiar with such a cultural perspective, as is the case with references to other literary and philosophical works. The paper also examines the opinions of the philologist Richard Harder on the pamphlets in his analysis undertaken for the Gestapo, suggesting that in Harder they found the kind of reader at which they were aimed.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"52 1","pages":"95 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48722885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why Theodor Haecker Spoke to the White Rose","authors":"Helena M. Tomko","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2023.2171033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2023.2171033","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the resonance of Theodor Haecker’s writing within the White Rose movement. Haecker met with the students multiple times in 1942, the year they circulated their first five leaflets, and on 4 February 1943, two weeks before the final leaflet’s distribution. Why did this Catholic inner exile, translator of Newman and Kierkegaard, and one-time Weimar public intellectual speak to the students so powerfully as they conceived their political action and wrote their leaflets? The article draws on recent departures in inner-exile studies to propose that their fluency in the rhetorical techniques of non-conformist discourse in the Third Reich equipped them to embed arguments in their leaflets that were gleaned from the interpretive community within which they encountered Haecker. His final reading to them from his book about theodicy — why things are as they are — offers a case study in reading with care the texts they read with purpose.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"52 1","pages":"105 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46885839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Goethe’s Politics and Political Uses: Nazi and Anti-Nazi Readings of Des Epimenides Erwachen","authors":"E. Pilsworth","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2023.2170956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2023.2170956","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the first leaflet produced by the anti-Nazi White Rose group in 1942, focusing on its use of a quotation from Goethe’s festival play Des Epimenides Erwachen. I begin by exploring the appropriation of Goethe by the Nazi Regime, in particular the instrumentalisation of his works during wartime. In contrast, I then consider how the White Rose use their chosen Goethe passage to send an anti-war message and to incite passive resistance, reclaiming Goethe for an anti-Nazi agenda. Finally, I consider the passage’s political significance in Goethe’s own context ca. 1813, which was characteristically ambivalent, reflecting the lack of a singular political, nationalist narrative at the time of the Wars of Liberation.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"52 1","pages":"15 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46047488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"G. L. Crusius’s Visual-Critical Reading of Lichtwer’s Das Recht der Vernunft (1758)","authors":"Kwinten Van De Walle","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2022.2172909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2022.2172909","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the headpiece engravings produced by the Leipzig-based artist Gottlieb Leberecht Crusius for Magnus Gottfried Lichtwer’s philosophical-didactic poem Das Recht der Vernunft (1758). An analysis of the designs demonstrates how the visual paratexts generate textual meaning and function as an iconic lens, bringing into focus in new ways the abstract contents of the poem. Developing a complex intermedial interpretation in his vignette series, Crusius invites reader-viewers to take part in a symbolic journey of critical reflection and moral self-improvement. The article establishes that Crusius’s illustrations represent a significant metacritical intervention and expanded the text-interpretative potential of the eighteenth-century German illustrative vignette.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"51 1","pages":"455 - 469"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41430994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Buchillustration als Textinterpretation und Literaturkritik im 18 Jahrhundert: Spielarten, Funktionsspektrum, Transformationen","authors":"A. Lütteken","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2022.2172905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2022.2172905","url":null,"abstract":"Im Laufe des 18. Jahrhunderts wandelten sich Darstellungsformen und Verwendungszusammenhänge von Buchillustrationen auf markante Weise. Ausgehend von der Überlegung, dass dieser Stil- und Funktionswandel schlaglichtartig auch die Errungenschaften des Zeitalters der Aufklärung selbst erhellt, wird im Beitrag der Emanzipationsprozess des Schauens als sukzessive Befreiung von Bildkonventionen typologisch beschrieben. Das Spektrum reicht dabei von den weit verbreiteten, künstlerisch hochwertigen Klassiker-Illustrationen französischer Prägung über erotische Abbildungen zu libertinistischen Texten bis zur Vergegenwärtigung eines Ovid-Texts bei John Collet und Hogarths Sterne-Interpretation. Letztere belegen zudem die besondere Relevanz von Humor und doppelbödiger Ironie bei der Genese eines individualisierten Literaturverständnisses, das durch die Buchkunst weniger bevormundet als befördert worden ist. In diesem Kontext wird schließlich analysiert, wie durch Bilder angereicherte Texte von bedeutenden Literaturkritikern bewertet wurden: Als substantielle Bereicherung dort, wo das Bild als programmatische poetologische Aussage verstanden wurde, aber auch als Zeichen moralischer Verwerflichkeit von Autor wie Buchkünstler dann, wenn Illustrationen Zweideutig-Frivoles im Text drastisch vereindeutigten, was Lessing als unwürdig verurteilte.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"51 1","pages":"384 - 406"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43037719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Woran erkennt man einen Klassiker? Frontispize und Kupfertitel als Klassifizierungsinstrumente in Werkausgaben Zeitgenössischer Autoren im 18. Jahrhundert","authors":"Daniel Fulda","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2022.2172906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2022.2172906","url":null,"abstract":"Der Kostenaufwand für Buchillustrationen, den Verleger und Käufer auf sich nehmen, soll häufig zugleich ästhetische Kostbarkeit signalisieren. Eine spezifischere Wertauszeichnung als ‘Klassiker’ ist zudem möglich vermittels bestimmter Bildsemantiken. Der Beitrag untersucht, wie Frontispize und Kupfertitel im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert dafür eingesetzt wurden, dem Publikum ad oculos zu demonstrieren, dass die zeitgenössische deutsche Literatur nun zu Klassikerhöhen aufgestiegen sei. Untersuchungsgegenstand sind sowohl verschiedene Darstellungsstrategien als auch das jeweils ausgedrückte Klassikerverständnis: Klassizität wurde sowohl durch bildliche Antikisierung suggeriert wie auch als Resultat gegenwärtig oder sogar zukünftig vollzogener Dichter-Verehrung behauptet. Die These des Beitrags lautet: Für die seit der Jahrhundertmitte sehnsüchtig erwarteten ‘deutschen Klassiker’ und deren käuflichen Erwerb ließ sich durch augenfällige Demonstrationen ihrer Verehrungswürdigkeit und ihres Verehrtwerdens überzeugender werben als durch ein Referieren der ästhetischen oder literatursoziologischen, vor allem aber kontroversen Debatten, welche die Spezialisten der Literaturkritik führten. The expense for book illustrations, which publishers and buyers undertake, is often intended to signal aesthetic preciousness at the same time. A more specific marking of value as a ‘classic’ is also possible by means of certain pictorial semantics. This article examines how frontispieces and copperplate titles were used in the late 18th century to demonstrate ad oculos to the public that contemporary German literature had now risen to the heights of classicism. The object of investigation is both the various strategies of representation and the understanding of the classics expressed in each case. The status of a classic was both suggested by pictorial antiquisation and asserted as the result of present or even future veneration. The thesis of this article is that the ‘German classics’, which had been eagerly awaited since the middle of the 18th century, could be advertised more convincingly through eye-catching demonstrations of their venerability and veneration than by referring to the aesthetic or literary-historical, but above all controversial, debates conducted by specialists in literary criticism.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"51 1","pages":"407 - 436"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45594608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preissler’s Plates for Zachariae’s Die Tageszeiten (1756): Strategies of Iconotextual Meaning-Making and Visual Criticism","authors":"Sandro Jung","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2022.2172908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2022.2172908","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the set of four full-page illustrations and a title-page vignette that the Rostock publisher Johann Christian Koppe commissioned Johann Justin Preißler to produce for his edition of Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae’s Die Tageszeiten (1756). It offers an account of the ways in which the plates fulfil a literary-critical function of making textual knowledge present by reordering textual meaning through a selective reconstitution of the poem’s discursive systems. Creating narrative illustrations that in the scenes they construct create new connections between otherwise distinct textual passages, the full-page plates reinvent Zachariae’s poem by not following the poem’s progressive structure. Instead, they foreground the episodic through the combination of different modes of representation, ranging from realist and sentimental to allegorical, at the same time redacting the sensational.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"51 1","pages":"437 - 454"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42466202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Plastic and Queer Desire — A Queer Ecological Reading of Josef Winkler’s Contemporary Writing","authors":"Daniela Dora","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2022.2141446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2022.2141446","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the relationship between plastic matter and the queer in Roppongi. Requiem für einen Vater (2007) and Der Stadtschreiber von Kalkutta (2019), two texts by contemporary Austrian author Josef Winkler that depict the narrators’ travels to India and Japan. Two modes of critique within queer ecological theory are found to be fruitful for the analysis of Winkler’s text: a ‘queer as noun’ model focusing on queer people, here the narrator and his relationship to the environment, as well as the ‘queer as a verb’ critique, questioning and defamiliarizing foundational categories such as humanity and futurity. Based on Heather Davis’ invitation to imagine plastic, rather than biological children, as our planetary legacy, the function of plastic matter and its potential to question inside-outside dichotomies and divisions such as human vs human-made or waste vs nature are discussed. Despite a near dystopian vision on India, Winkler’s work also conveys a ‘queer desire’ — a desire that cannot undo the effects of plastic’s omnipresence or its participation in waste colonialism, but suggests ways of living with plastic. The work is permeated with what Davis calls ‘a queer ecological sensibility’, which instead of yearning for a pristine past offers a curious and openminded perspective on the present.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"51 1","pages":"272 - 287"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49549178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Communing with Figs and Palm Trees. Nature Mysticism, Migration and Moral Maturity in Marica Bodrožić","authors":"Yvonne Zivkovic","doi":"10.1080/00787191.2022.2116824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2022.2116824","url":null,"abstract":"In her writings, the German-Croatian author Marica Bodrožić develops a new form of feminist ecocriticism from a postmigrant perspective, which portrays the mystical encounter with the natural world as essential for the understanding of the postmodern self and the survival of diverse postmigrant communities. Drawing on Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of moral maturity, Bodrožić suggests that the epistemological and aesthetic qualities of nature may help educate individuals towards critical, independent, but also empathetic thought and action. The key to this educational experience lies in contextualizing nature within political and social processes, while also acknowledging its transcendental dimension. In her novel, Mein weisser Frieden (2014), Bodrožić merges the genres of autobiography and essay to explore the relationship between memory, nature and identity via the lens of a hybrid German and post-Yugoslav intellectual heritage. By weaving together personal narrative and intertextual references from Romanticism to the contemporary period, she also challenges common assumptions about postmigrant writing and national belonging. Bodrožić suggests that a re-enchantment of the world is necessary to create the community of morally mature citizens that is needed to meet the challenges of alienation, displacement, and systemic violence in the postmodern world.","PeriodicalId":53844,"journal":{"name":"OXFORD GERMAN STUDIES","volume":"51 1","pages":"350 - 367"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48648503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}