Sania Reddig, PhD 2009

Supervisor: Prof. RC Speirs

Images of movement represent a ubiquitous element in Kafka’s writings. This study explores the role of these images as a form of patterning in the fictions. With an eye to continuity and evolution, the study explores the patterns of movement pervading Kafka’s early collection Betrachtung and a selection of texts written between 1915 and 1917. What emerges is a persistent concern with the condition of restlessness, its origins and consequences. The condition emerges from a conflict between the protagonists’ desire for stability and purposive activity and their experience of dynamic forces that escape or resist any form of containment.

This conflict results in an oscillating motion that dominates the physical, mental and narrative movements shaping Kafka’s stories. Analysing the relation between early and later texts, the thesis argues that Kafka deploys this central conflict productively to capture a wide spectrum of states of mind. As he explores restlessness in ever wider circles of life, he explores psychological, social and ideological structures, as well as some of the grand narratives of life, death and myth. This differentiated view on the inner dynamics of Kafka's narratives provides a fruitful perspective on questions concerning the development of the oeuvre as a whole.

Tara Windsor, MPhil 2008

Supervisor: Dr NCT Martin

The thesis is that Anglo-German academic exchange between 1919 and 1932 reflected key political concerns and currents of the period. It argues that the political dimensions of Anglo-German academic exchange were determined largely by the legacy of the First World War, displayed in the increasing institutionalisation of this exchange, and characterised by the tensions between international and national concerns symptomatic of diplomatic relations at this time. Anglo-German academic exchange had been left in ruins by the military and intellectual conflicts waged between 1914 and 1918, and remained in a fragile state in the immediate post-war years. From the mid-1920s academic exchange between Britain and Germany underwent a period of careful reconstruction, albeit on a limited scale, in order to rekindle cultural contact between these former adversaries. Institutions such as the Anglo-German Academic Board, the London Bureau of the Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the Rhodes Trust facilitated this. Against the background of broader diplomatic patterns, the thesis demonstrates that organisers recognised the potential of such cultural reconstruction to contribute to wider political reconstruction, and examines the varying emphases placed on academic exchange as a means to foster international understanding and/or (re-)assert national interests and identities in the aftermath of the Great War.  

Andrew Jones ,  M.Phil  2008

Supervisor: Prof. WJ Dodd

This dissertation analyses the spoken linguistic behaviour of a sample of young people between the ages of 14 and 25 in the ‘Ruhrgebiet’ region of the German state of North Rhine Westphalia. The analysis is based on a carefully-designed programme of fieldwork interviews, and findings are compared with those of previous studies over the last quarter of a century. A secondary aspect of the current study concerns the correlation between linguistic behaviour and ‘youth scenes’, many of which are based on a musical, sporting, religious or political identification.

The analysis produces new findings, providing information on current usage in ‘youth language’, and on the respondents’ perceptions of their own language use, that of their peers, and of their elders. It is shown that modern ‘Jugendsprache’ contains a large number of new expressions, and that, whilst some of the terms considered ‘Jugendsprache’ in the 1980s are still used in the same context today, others are still current with different meanings or have become obscure. In the evaluation of the fieldwork research, a number of further research questions and methodological issues are identified and discussed, as a contribution to establishing a more comprehensive investigation of ‘scenes’, in particular, and their correlation with language use.

Sebastian Martin, MPhil (Modern European Cultures) 2008

Supervisor: Dr J Sayner

The thesis examines contemporary German Hitler humour and its demythologisation of the dominant representational forms of Hitler and Nazism within German society. The principal stages of the movement from its beginnings in 1995 will be explored. The case studies featured are the satirical illustrations of Hitler by Achim Greser and Walter Moers, the critique of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Serdar Somuncu’s Kabarett routine and Dani Levy’s cinematic comedy Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler. These case studies will be investigated using theories of humour to understand their function within contemporary society. The analysis considers not only the multifaceted approaches involved in the characterisation and contextualisation of the humorists’ representations of Hitler but also the reception of their work in German society, as gauged through an overview of the reception by the critical media. Audience responses will also be explored in relation to the factors of author positionality and post-war generational conflict. The sensitive issue of Nazi genocide in the comedic arena will also be incorporated. This study will demonstrate how the contemporary Hitler humour case studies formed a coherent movement, sharing a desire to deconstruct the dictator’s posthumous myth.

Carina Schneider, MPhil (Modern European Cultures) 2008

Supervisor: Dr NCT Martin

Despite a comprehensive amount of research conducted into the historical background, and museological and architectural aspects of the Museumsinsel and the Neues Museum, no academic account exists of the recent developments of the Museumsinsel, in particular the restoration of the Neues Museum. However, as the Neues Museum appears as a public building of Prussian heritage with continuing importance for representations of the past in the pubic domain, the discourses evident in both restoration practice and the ensuing public controversies surrounding these can provide valuable insight into contemporary issues regarding German national self-understanding. This is particularly viable with regard to notions of ‘normalisation’ of Germany’s past in its public discourses during the past two decades, as well as the particular status of Central Berlin in relation to critical representations of its layers of history. Through an examination of the parameters of its historical context, the practices employed by authorities and architects, and the discourses of the controversies surrounding the restoration, notions of official critical positions towards representations of the pasts inscribed in the Neues Museum’s historical fabric, and the more nostalgic historicist tendencies in the public sphere become apparent, allowing valuable insight into perspectives on German histories and their contemporary representation.

Alan Suter, PhD 2008

Supervisor: Professor DD Hill

This study sets out to analyse utopian elements in a selection of Lenz’s works. Based on an analysis of Thomas More’s archetypal novel, the genre of utopia is defined as an attempt to create a fictional ideal of society as a totalizing alternative to an existing society, the dystopia. This utopia operates by defining itself against the dystopia, which it is never quite able to dispel. While none of the texts by Lenz attempts to describe in full the components of a better society in this way, they all refer to a vision of this alternative. The particular contribution of Lenz to the tradition of utopian writing lies in the way that he shows the relationship between this vision and the dystopian reality from which it emerges, which it attempts to overcome, but to which it is inevitably anchored.

Joel Love, PhD 2008

Supervisor: Dr NW Harris

My thesis is centred on a reading of two dialogue texts by the Swiss author Utz Eckstein: the Concilium (1525) and Rychsztag (1526), from which specific stylistic, theological, and sociological elements emerge. Stylistic features are compared with the genre markers of the so-called ‘Reformation dialogue’, which is interpreted as a twentieth-century construct of limited usefulness. The works are also compared with the Fastnachtspiel tradition, as it is found in Niklaus Manuel, and with the contemporary works of Erasmus.  Ultimately, Eckstein’s dialogues are seen to participate in a process dubbed the “textualization of disputation”, which manipulates this apparently dialogic form for monologic ends. Among the monologic purposes of the Concilium and Rychsztag are the advancement of the Zwinglian Reformation and a socially conservative agenda. Eckstein’s attempts to distance the local Reformation from Rome, Luther, and the Radical Reformation are discussed, while Zwingli’s theology emerges as, in many respects, a synthesis of Erasmus and Luther. Eckstein’s depiction of the common people stands out as unusually nuanced, and his attitude to temporal authorities is explained as a result of his faith in the Zűrich council, as well as his Christian idealism. A full transcription of the Concilium is presented in an appendix.

James Lambert, MPhil 2008

Supervisor: Dr NW Harris

Chapter 1 considers the importance of the manuscript and looks at previous research; it assesses how that research is now out-of-date, has not kept up with newer knowledge and codicological methodology and identifies uncorrected inconsistencies and inaccuracies.  It sets out aims and purposes for this current study along codicological, literary and socio-literary lines.

Chapter 2 provides a general description of the manuscript before considering more specifically its Bavarian dialect and possible Nuremberg provenance.  Questions of dating are also considered.  A list of contents is provided and its structure examined.

Chapter 3 looks at the background to the manuscript, Nuremberg in the fifteenth century, and attempts to gauge the owner of the manuscript’s place within that society before analysing the religious, moral and social themes treated in the works contained in the manuscript.

Neil McGowan, MPhil 2005

Supervisor: Prof DD Hill

The origins of modern psychiatry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries lie in debates about the way in which society should treat those that it labelled ‘mad’. Should they be locked away or put on show? Should they – could they – be corrected and returned to normality, or was there perhaps some validity in the view of the world to which they had access? Or should we limit ourselves to the attempt to understand their mental processes? These too are the questions to which literary authors in the German-speaking world were turning at this time. The present thesis takes selected literary texts by four authors – Wieland, Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Büchner  – and compares their imaginative portrayals of madman, visionaries and eccentrics with some of the early discussions of madness and the proper responses of society to it. Wieland’s  Agathon of 1767 expresses many of the values of the later Enlightenment, which are challenged in Goethe’s Tasso by the suggestion that society plays a part in engendering madness, and that madness may offer perspectives closed to the world of political representation, In Hoffman’s hands madness becomes not at all times an affliction to be cured, in line with the conceptions of the psychiatry of the day, but a key to insights into alternative realities which pulse behind the surface of normality. By the time Büchner is writing in the 1830s, he has disentangled literature from debates about madness and the treatment of the mad, and creates in his works a new form of psychiatric investigation, which goes beyond the clinical psychiatry of the time and seeks to penetrate the thought processes of protagonists in mental extremity.

Jason Mahoney, MPhil 2005

Supervisor: Dr WJ Dodd

In Negative Dialectics Adorno states that Hitler has imposed a new categorical imperative on contemporary humanity that Auschwitz not happen again.  His reflections on Auschwitz are bound up intimately with what he considers to originate in a fundamental failure of European culture.  Adorno’s negative dialectical critique considers barbarity to be immanent in the very structure of the enlightenment traditions of thought and highlights how they have manifested this hidden nature in the historical event of the Holocaust.  He indicates how the containued adherence to these same traditions threaten a repetition of similar barbarity for as long as they remain unreflected and their repercussion within the web of contradictory social relations are allowed to remain rampant.  The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust agrees that the event manifested a fundamental challenge to civilisation, but presents the divergent view that it was fascist ideology that distorted and prevented civilised traditions.  In conclusion, whist Adorno’s critique carries a measure of validity, its logic becomes overextended when it considers the entirety of European civilisation to be complicit in the barbarity of Auschwitz.

Sarah Guest, MPhil 2004

Supervisor: Dr R Whittle

The thesis examines the self-representations of women who pursued careers in universities, medicine, law and aviation during the Weimar Republic, areas which were opening up to women. Previous research on women in the professions has focused on a biographical survey of their lives. My thesis focuses specifically on the associations which these women make between their professional paths and ideas of gender, faith and nationhood in their autobiographies, travel accounts, published interviews and articles in professional journals.

The self-images of these individuals reflect the political, social and cultural tensions which dominated Weimar society. The professional women examined here symbolised independence and modernity; they benefited from new opportunities in public life, they had financial independence and thanks to more reliable methods of birth control could take control of their own bodies. Women in the professions defined their professional roles along gendered lines. Doctors, for example, used their insights as women to improve health provision for women and to promote a more holistic approach to medicine within the Weimar welfare system.  Women pilots made use of the modern media to define their role within this new technological area. At the same time, however, many of the women examined here distanced themselves from the political cause of female emancipation and defined their professional success in terms of individual talent and hard work rather than a desire to advance opportunities for all women.

While many of these women were less collectivised in gendered terms, they did identify their professional activities with a wish to contribute to the interests of the German national community at home and abroad. In this respect my thesis reveals that many women in the professions epitomised the polarization of political, social and cultural attitudes which prevailed during the Weimar period and reveals how these attitudes allowed some of them to continue their careers during the Third Reich.

Susan Meeks, MPhil 2005

The following analysis of four novels by Margrit Schriber derives from my curiosity as to who are the female writers whose works have been recently published in German in Switzerland . Further investigation revealed, unsurprisingly, that in the wake of female emancipation – not granted in Switzerland until 1971 – a number of women writers in German-speaking Switzerland came to the fore with works published in the 1970's. These included writers such as Adelheid Duvanel, Gertrud Leutenegger, Maja Beutler and Margrit Schriber, whose first novel, Aussicht gerahmt , was published in 1976. Since then, Schriber's literary output has consisted of a further seven novels, three collections of short stories and five works for stage and radio. Although Schriber continues to be a part of the contemporary Swiss literary scene, her works have received a relatively small amount of academic critical attention. A notable exception is Linda Hess-Liechti's study “Das Gefängnis geht nebenan weiter…” Studien zur mentalen Gefängnis- und Befreiungsthematik in Prosatexten von Margrit Baur, Maja Beutler und Margrit Schriber . Although Hess-Liechti investigates the theme of mental imprisonment in Vogel flieg! and Tresorschatten, I have also chosen these two texts for analysis, but alongside the earlier Kartenhaus and the later Rauchrichter, with regard to problems of integration and loneliness. The date of publication of these works, 1979, 1980, 1987 and 1993, influenced my choice of texts as they map a sizeable portion of Schriber's Literary activity. More importantly however, is the thematic link of absence and longing which makes it difficult for the female narrators in each of the works to connect with others. The problematic relationships are predominantly with men, be they father, son, male superior in the workplace, or ex-lover. Although no clear plot is discernable in the texts themselves Schriber employs a fluid style set in elusive time frames, so creating an ambiguity of meaning that avoids condemning the actions of the characters that populate her narratives as either right or wrong. The female narrator in each of the four texts is fundamentally lonely, though for differing reasons, and this study attempts to highlight this link between the four different women. Each is aware of problematic issues in her life, to which no lasting solution is found. At best, like Plüß ( Vogel flieg! ) they make “winzige Schritte” (Vf 132) and, at the other extreme, like Agatha Ott ( Rauchrichter ), they can only look back and reflect on years that were “eine, lange, eintönige Kette vergeudeter Tage” (RR 148). My analysis is firmly based in the texts themselves, amply supported by quotation from them. The broad range of tertiary literature that I have referred to is undoubtedly a reflection of the equally broad range of themes that Schriber touches upon her writing. This may well signal the presence of derivativeness in her writing, but surely also its irreducibility. Consequently, the multi-facetted nature of Schriber's writing renders a summary of her texts difficult. Even the theme of “Woman as Outsider” is handled very differently in Kartenhaus and Rauchrichter , although both works deal with problematic familial relationships and the family home. Similarly, although the setting of a bank links Vogel Flieg! with Tresorschatten , the one narrator needs to escape whereas the other is compelled to leave the apparent safety of the vaults in which she has spent “ein halbes Leben” (TS 26).

The most interesting part of my research was undoubtedly meeting and interviewing Margrit Schriber herself. She provided me with background to the text of Rauchrichter , which can be found in Appendix 2, in addition to talking about her life, her approach to writing and her relationship to her fictional narrators. Her detailed responses to my questions are in Appendix 1. Margrit Schriber is a writer who draws frequently on her own life and experience. The many autobiographical echoes in her work enable her to portray general human dilemmas with a particularly personal intensity.

John Malcolm Spencer, PhD 2004

Modernity is not a single story, but a kaleidoscope of situations in which there is a consciousness of being 'modern'. This thesis examines a number of key situations of evolving modernity as reflected in fiction written by Austrians between 1920 and 1970. Austria in the 20th century acts as a prism, refracting these situations in particular colours. In Musil's

Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Roth's Radetzkymarsch, and Bachmann's Drei Wege zum See, the three authors respond to the crisis of modernity in different ways determined by the changing historical conditions under which they wrote. Musil grows up in Austria before 1914, aware that the state is hollow, but as an engineer and scientist, he believes that modernity is a constructive, experimental enterprise. Roth's more negative perspective is strongly influenced by the war and disintegration of the empire in 1918 and its replacement by 'modern' nation states that, in his view, will destroy ethnic diversity. Bachmann, from the standpoint of a different gender and generation, grows up in the shadow of an empire now darkened by fascism. Austria acts again as a paradigm for hollowness: that of the globalised world she inhabits, made more frightening in Austria by the suppression of crimes committed under fascism. These individual perspectives illuminate different general stages in the evolution of modernity; they show how the private Utopian possibilities envisaged by Musil in the 1930s had become impossible for Germans and Austrians of Bachmann's generation, who see modernity through their historical experience.

Joel Love, MPhil 2004

The dialogue literature of the Reformation offers insights into the popular imagination of the period and the presentation of Evangelical doctrine. Drawing on recent historiography and literary theory, this thesis attempts a multi-disciplinary approach to the material, with particular reference to themes of dialogicity and authority. It locates the dialogues within the historical context of the Peasants’ War, the development of print culture, and the phenomenon of urban literature.

Three Reformation dialogues form the basis of this thesis, in which transcriptions by the author are accompanied by analytical commentary. One dialogue is made available for the first time in a modern edition, and current editorial practice informs all three transcriptions. Themes of apocalyptic, anticlericalism, scholasticism, and the Radical Reformation are dealt with as they emerge in the dialogues.

Overarching themes that unite the three chapters are brought together in the conclusion. These include the presentation of the common people, attitudes to authority, and the formation of an Evangelical identity. The three dialogues are compared, and it is suggested that a progression can be seen, particularly between the first two (relatively early) dialogues, and the third. The relationships between the dialogues and Luther are evaluated, and the subsequent development of confessional identities anticipated.

Catherine Spencer PhD 2003

The discursive construction of Austrian national identity 1945-1955: a “new” Austria?

This thesis examines the discursive construction of Austrian national identity in the early years of the Second Republic. In applying discourse-analytical methods to a corpus of texts from Neues Österreich – Organ der demokratischen Einigung, this study examines a wide range of discourses, discursive strategies and linguistic choices that are instrumental in constructing an image of the Austrian nation after 1945 with which collective identification is possible. Of central importance in this study is acknowledgement of the important role of the political elite in Austria and their mediation of the collective historical consciousness upon which Austrian national consciousness was built.

This study’s identification of dominant sub-discourses of nationhood supports findings from more recent historiographical work; the dominant victim discourse and the anti-German tenor of the ‘new’ Austrian identity can be traced in the linguistic evidence that this study presents. The study seeks primarily to de-mystify the affective and persuasive nature of such discursive practices in texts and to highlight how both lexical and syntactical choices contribute to multiple sub-discourses of Austrian nationhood. By combining traditional historiographical and discourse-analytical approaches this thesis brings new material to the analysis of Austrian national identity and demonstrates a methodology for interdisciplinary research. In doing so it generates new perspectives and contributes important detail to our understanding of the area. It demonstrates, in particular, that historiographical research can be enriched and enhanced by a discourse-oriented approach by providing scope for the inclusion of texts as sites of strategic discourse practice.

Julia Struck-Soboleva, PhD 2003

This thesis explores communicative aspects of the integration process of Russian Germans (RG) in Germany in the period 1990-2001. Whilst the research literature on the integration of RG in Germany acknowledges the importance of these aspects, little attention has been paid to the detailed investigation of the communication between RG and NG (Native Germans). This dissertation fills this gap by focusing on verbal face-to-face interaction between RG and NG. It argues that there is a link between communicative practices in RG-NG face-to-face interaction and the deterioration of the integration process. This link is explored by describing the face-to-face interaction between NG and RG as a particular type of discourse. A conceptual and methodological apparatus based on a general model which was originally developed for research into the analysis of work systems in ergonomics is developed in order to facilitate this investigation. This model focuses of knowledge, information, process and purpose as the four components of communication. It is successfully applied in the analysis of the empirical data (in-depth interviews, observations, authentic conversations) collected during the fieldwork phase of this research project (and reproduced in an Appendix volume). A number of communicative settings are analysed in depth. Using the fieldwork data and on the basis of the analysis it is shown that the deterioration of RG integration into German society is inextricably linked to the way RG-NG discourse is constituted.

Alexandra Lawler,  MPhil 2002

The writer's political commitment and the German question: A study of Günter Grass and Martin Walser with special reference to Ein weites Feld, Dorle und Wolf and Die Verteidigung der Kindheit

This thesis examines twentieth-century German intellectuals' political commitment to the German Question. Martin Walser and Günter Grass have been selected due to their unconventional and much disputed views on Germany's division and unification. The similarities and differences of both intellectuals' opinions, as expressed in their essays, speeches and interviews are identified to set out the key points of the debate. This is followed by an analysis of the extent to which these views have influenced their literary work, specifically Grass' Ein weites Feld and Walser's Dorle und Wolf and Die Verteidigung der Kindheit . An examination of the immediate reaction of the German press to their work serves to indicate the challenges authors face as poltically committed intellectuals. The aim is to identify whether authors are able to change society through their creative work as well as through their public actions.