This thesis is a critical analysis of W.G. Sebald‘s Luftkrieg und Literatur (On the Natural History of Destruction) and its reception in the German media and in scholarship. Sebald‘s essay caused a public debate in 1997 over the ethical implications of a cultural memory of the Allied bombings of German cities in the Second World War. Since then, the essay has come to be understood as a foundational moment in the discourse surrounding 'German victimhood' in representations of the bombings and the expulsions of ethnic Germans from the Eastern territories. The thesis argues that Sebald‘s essay has been widely mis-read and mis-appropriated in the service of the discourse. Re-inscribing the essay into the aesthetic and philosophical framework of Sebald‘s wider prose oeuvre, from which it is frequently divorced in scholarship, it argues that the text is exemplary of Sebald‘s creation of an archive of 'natural history' with regard to the representation of past catastrophes. Situating the essay within a 20th century tradition of German thinking on history and the enlightenment that informs Sebald‘s thought, I use this thick contextualisation to argue that Sebald‘s fascination with the bombings and the ruined cities provides an intersection between his academic and aesthetic practice, offering important insights into his natural historical gaze, archival technique and preoccupation with the catastrophic history of his country of origin. With this examination of an important but often mis-understood text, the thesis aims to enrich the field of memory studies in relation to post-reunification Germany and correct an oversight in the recent history of cultural memory regarding the Nazi past. It also aims to fill a gap in the scholarship on W.G. Sebald, a writer who has increasingly been understood as one of the most significant in the recent German canon, by reinscribing Luftkrieg und Literatur into his body of work.

This thesis examines the literary output and influence of Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974) and - since he devoted his writing to the service of the party and its leader - his resultant cultural contribution to the establishment and consolidation of the National Socialist dictatorship. To date, Schirach's political role as Reichsjugendführer has overshadowed his literary work and influence. By demonstrating that his poems were not only supported by the National Socialist regime but also widely read in nationalist and right-wing circles in and before the Nazi party's rise to power, I aim to complement and correct the current perception of Schirach's role in the Third Reich. A clearer picture of Schirach's cultural persona and ideological development is achieved by considering literary sources as well as historical and biographical data. Based on the analysis of his published and unpublished texts (poems, songbooks, articles, speeches, correspondence, interviews), this study outlines Schirach's position within the National Socialist movement and also situates his writing within the wider context of his times. To this end, it establishes his literary role models and investigates the extent of their influence on Schirach. It explores his literary response to debates around the role of the author in the politicised sphere of the Weimar Republic. Analysis of his poems in comparison with the war writing of the 1920s, in particular with that of Ernst Jünger, reveals that there is more ambiguity in Schirach's poetry than scholarly accounts of his poems have previously allowed. I identify central features of his writing that can be found in Communist poetry but also in non-political poetry written during the same period, especially as regards use of intertextuality and the blurring or merging of the literary and political spheres. These commonalities reaffirm the existing impetus in scholarly research made by Helmuth Kiesel, Uwe Hebekus, Walter Delabar, Sebastian Graeb-Könneker and others to rethink our binary understanding of modernist and National Socialist literature. The example of Schirach, this study concludes, reveals not only the contrasts but also continuities between the literature of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. It is also possible here for the first time to extend these reflections to the post-1945 period, as unpublished correspondence and poems from Schirach's twenty-year prison sentence, provided by his family, are analysed in the final chapter. Engagement with Schirach as an author is not an attempt to rehabilitate him, or to rebut his categorisation as a National Socialist writer. Instead, by analysing his literary works and how they relate to other literary and ideological currents of his time, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the role literature played in National Socialism at all stages of the party's development and thus to a broader understanding of the movement as a cultural as well as political phenomenon.

In this thesis, I discuss the representation of German history in six historical novellas by Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910), analysing his use and deconstruction of heroic characters as well as his view of historical processes. I also compare Raabe's representation of German history with contemporaneous discourses in order to reassess his works in their historical context and in the context of political memory debates of the period. Recent research into cultural memory studies tends to focus on memorialisation of events during the twentieth century. In my thesis, I show that collective memory was just as relevant to nineteenth-century political and cultural discourse as it is now. In the period before the foundation of the German Reich in 1871, for example, debates on German identity time and again recurred on memorialisation of the past as a common national experience. Moreover, I show the shift in Raabe's historical narratives reflecting his development as a writer during the 1860s. In his earlier period, he depicts heroic characters in rather classical fashion, whereas later these characters disappear. Raabe's view of history clearly becomes more pessimistic, emphasizing man's inability to act in a historically relevant way. This places Raabe in an unorthodox position concerning the period's understanding of history. Contemporaneous historical statements in public debate tend to emphasize the possibility and duty of man to play an active role in history. The call for heroic commitment was particularly prominent during the 'unification wars' of the 1860s. My analysis focuses on selected texts from Raabe's intermediate period engaging with recurring historical themes and on which little or no research has been done to date: Die schwarze Galeere, Sankt Thomas, Else von der Tanne, Der Marsch nach Hause, Nach dem grofJen Kriege and Im Siegeskranze.

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This thesis is motivated by a notable new wave – intensifying from 2007 onwards – of autobiographically inspired writing on illness/ disability, death and dying in the German-speaking world. By taking this writing seriously as literature, it examines how the authors of such personal narratives come to write of and negotiate their experiences between the poles of cliché and exceptionality, in text and in the wider public realm. Identifying shortcomings in the approaches hitherto displayed to texts that have arisen out of personal experiences with illness/ disability, the introduction makes methodological suggestions as to how to better read these new illness narratives from the stance of literary scholarship. The thesis goes on to demonstrate the value of a literary disability studies approach to autobiographical illness writing in its four main chapters, which present close readings of five examples of contemporary illness narratives, namely: Charlotte Roche’s Schoßgebete (2011), Kathrin Schmidt’s Du stirbst nicht (2009), Verena Stefan’s Fremdschläfer (2007), and – in the final, comparative chapter – Christoph Schlingensief’s So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung (2009) and Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Arbeit und Struktur (2010-2013). Each chapter analyses narrative strategies, aesthetic forms and experimentations with genre that can be observed in this kind of life writing. Its grounding in the field of disability studies gives the thesis an innovative perspective on each of the texts, and helps to identify gaps and contortions in the dominant readings of the analysed texts – readings which tend to disregard the illness experience at their centre or contest the texts’ literary quality. This thesis shows that when sharing their stories publicly with a wide audience, authors do so with a distinct awareness of the precarious subject position they take up in the public eye; a position they negotiate consciously and creatively in their literature. Writing the liminal experience of serious illness along the borders of genre(s), frequently moving between fictional and autobiographical modes, they carve out for themselves a space from which it becomes possible to speak up and share their personal story in the realm of literature, to political ends.

This study investigates the different purposes for which apocalyptic thought was employed in early Germanic texts. The main focus lies on Anglo-Saxon sources. Both prose texts and poetry are taken into consideration, and cross-references to tenth-century material from the Continent are made wherever appropriate. The first three chapters provide an investigation of the ways in which Church authorities used apocalyptic material for purposes of instilling an urge to repentance and/or conversion in their audiences. Chapter 1 discusses patristic and Anglo-Saxon responses to the thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20 and finds a significant difference in the way the material was discussed by learned monastics and by populist preachers. Chapter 2 traces the Antichrist motif in Continental and Anglo-Saxon sources, with special regard to regional preferences in the treatment of the material. Chapter 3 broadens the view to consider Anglo-Saxon preaching in general. It discusses the different use of apocalyptic material by AElfric, Wulfstan, and the Blickling homilists, before approaching the prose and poetry found in the Vercelli Book and manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201.Chapter 4 discusses material in Old Norse since sources relating to late tenth- and early eleventh century Scandinavia offer a unique opportunity to hear the voices of the laity at whom apocalyptic material was directed. The chapter starts with an overview of the conversion of Norway and Iceland by King Óláfr Tryggvason and his missionaries before moving on to discuss skaldic verse from the conversion phase. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the curious mixture of pagan and Christian themes in the Eddie poem Vqluspá. Previous studies on the Judgement Day motif show either a regional focus (e.g. Anglo-Saxon England), limit themselves to a specific genre of texts (e.g. Old English poetry), or focus on the act of Judgement itself and/or discuss descriptions of the tortures of Hell or the joys of Paradise. In contrast to these, the present study's comparative and interdisciplinary approach provides a more detailed picture of early medieval ideas about the end of the world, and responses to them by the laity.

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Although a prolific writer and leader in the women’s movement, Clementine Krämer (1873-1942) is relatively unknown today. Despite recent research interest into women’s history, much of the research centred on the German Jewish community focusses on the experiences of men. Clementine Krämer’s life and works offer a fascinating insight into a challenging period for this community. She was a prolific writer of fiction, non-fiction and reportage from about 1893 until about 1933 and, as this thesis will show, she wrote on many topics to chronicle her time, but she also played a significant role in shaping the response of her community to the difficulties they encountered. The analysis in this thesis will expand the current knowledge about the German Jewish community at the end of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth, and offer an insight into the complexity and range of German Jewish responses to the changes they experienced. This thesis uses close reading of the wealth of Krämer’s work, both published and unpublished, and including her private correspondence, to create a “thick description” of who she was and how she interacted with the world. Her writings reveal her sustained concerns about her identities and this thesis will explore the ways in which she tried to reconcile her identities as a woman, as a German and as a Jew during a life in which she experienced social and political upheaval on a dramatic scale. She struggled to balance her identities and her engagement with the women’s movement, and to retain a coherent sense of self in the face of changes which threatened to fragment the integral parts of her identity. This reading, which is the first to engage with the full range of her work, reaches conclusions about Krämer that challenge statements made by her contemporaries, revealing her as a complex, intelligent and insightful individual, deeply rooted in both German and Jewish culture, who was both representative and atypical of her community. A comprehensive study of Krämer’s life and work, her influences and motivations, will therefore nuance and complicate the current scholarly understanding about the German Jewish community during a key period in German history.

An analysis of the religious and social factors contributiong to the motivation of authors of German-Swiss literature, 1850-1940.