Franziska Wolf

In January 2019 I started my PhD in German Studies at the University of Birmingham. My research is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Institute for German Studies (IGS). It is embedded in the current IGS project 'Shifting Constellations: Germany and Global (Dis)Order'. In my PhD I investigate how Germany is viewed from minority perspectives in selected texts by Abbas Khider (1973- ) and Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958).

I completed my MA in Theory of Literature and Culture at the University of Tübingen with a dissertation on colonial encounters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe(1719) and Kracht’s Empire [Imperium] (2012). I am also holding a BA in General Rhetoric (major) and Historical and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Tübingen.

My PhD research compares texts that are crucial to an understanding of the discourse of contemporary German migrant literature and German exile literature from the Nazi era, respectively, proving that in both genres minorities in Germany face similar types of exclusion and discrimination. The texts I am working on are Lion Feuchtwanger’s Wartesaal-trilogy – consisting of Success [Erfolg] (1930), The Oppermanns [Die Geschwister Oppermann] (1933), and Exile [Exil] (1940) – and Abbas Khider’s novels The Village Indian [Der falsche Inder] (2008) and A Slap in the Face [Ohrfeige] (2016).

While most research on both exile literature and migrant literature usually favour a historical or autobiographical interpretation within the same genre, my comparatist investigation examines the situation of different minority groups facing similar challenges in German-speaking literature in a larger historico-cultural context.