Sentimentale Beobachter und naive Beobachtete

This article is about differentiating the notion of cultural contact. Not every journey serves the exchange between different cultures when the travellers take on the role of an observer who does not or rarely interact with the observed, but rather projects his or her ideas and needs into them. Looking at the German authors Ernst Jünger and Edzard Schaper, the paper shows how this ,asymmetrical‘ cultural contact is realised in diaristic writings of both authors and what relationship of ,sentimental‘ observer and ,naïve‘ observed becomes visible in the process.