This master thesis is about the Estonian-Swedish astro-optician Bernhard Schmidt (1879-1935) and his legacy. He was born on the island of Nargö outside Tallinn in Estonia. In 1930 he invented a special optical system for telescopes called the Schmidt telescope or Schmidt camera. At that time Bernhard Schmidt was working as a freelance at the Bergedorf observatory outside Hamburg in Germany. His invention contributed to astronomical research which changed our view of the sky and of the universe. The time he was living in was politically turbulent and science was flourishing. The written sources about Bernhard Schmidt and his telescope are mainly published in German, Russian, Estonian and English. Almost nothing is published in Swedish. The sources to his personal history and the archive material concerning him are partly scattered and it is difficult to assemble a complete picture. The purpose is to find and to map out what kind of archive material is preserved about him. The aim is also to find out who is in charge of it and how accessible it is. Is there global access to the material? Observatories, museums and archives in Sweden, Germany and Estonia were visited to map his legacy. The theories of James Cuno (2008) and the triad or three principles of management: preservation, knowledge and access were used in the analysis of the findings. Most material is kept and preserved at the Hamburg Bergedorf observatory, University of Hamburg. This is also the place where Bernhard Schmidt spent the last years of his life and it is here we can find his burial site. At the Hamburg Bergedorf observatory today there is a Bernhard Schmidt archive, a Schmidt museum with the first prototype of his telescope and an archive of photographic plates with photographic pictures of the stars and other astronomical objects. The two archives are in a digitalizing process and when completed they will be globally accessible and a part of our global heritage.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanties, English Literature, 2013 / This dissertation functions as an exploration of German author Bernhard Schlink’s engagement with the genre of Vӓterliteratur (Literature about Fathers). By examining how Schlink has used adaptations of this genre in his novels The Reader (1998), Homecoming (2009) and short story Girl with Lizard (2002), this project will attempt to ascertain the extent to which one can view these texts as part of a new wave of father writing that has emerged in the German post-unification space. The question dominating this research project and contained in the first part of the title: “How do I speak about the Past”, implies that part of this research will examine Schlink’s portrayal of the second-generation’s attempt to understand and give voice to their experiences in postwar Germany. As such, my work engages with the emergence of Vӓterliteratur as being the result of an incomplete attempt by second-generation Germans to confront Germany’s national traumatic past during the 1968 Student Movement. However, while Schlink’s work demonstrates a familiarity with the content, structure and themes present in the first wave of Vӓterliteratur he appears to rewrite these into a fictionalised format, demonstrating the continued need in German society to work through the past. In many respects the texts selected for analysis in this dissertation deviate from the traditional conventions found within the earlier father novels, and interestingly appear to emphasise the previously marginalised role of women both during and postwar. What I will demonstrate is that while Schlink’s work makes use of the conventions found in Vӓterliteratur, and by doing so explores the postwar relationships between fathers and sons, it also indirectly engages with the experiences of German women and their own perpetration of, or suffering as a result of the patriarchal attitudes present in, Nazism. Through this dual portrayal (the presence of both men and women) Schlink gives a new perspective to the complexities of German postwar life as seen through the eyes of the second-generation.

Ce mémoire se présente comme une réflexion qui vise à démontrer que le développement de la conscience, qui est analogue à l'avancement du signe peircien, nécessite la participation de l'altérité sous peine de conduire au dépérissement de l'identité. L'altérité amène à la conscience un non-dit qui, une fois rendu présent, entraîne l'altération et la disparition de l'identité ou, au contraire, l'amène à se développer indéfiniment. Tel est l'enjeu des personnages principaux des romans La pornographie de Witold Gombrowicz et Le naufragé de Thomas Bernhard, en l'occurrence le narrateur Witold Gombrowicz et le narrateur anonyme. L'ensemble de ma réflexion se déroule en trois temps. Le premier chapitre, Pour une sémiotique du récit de soi, reconstitue les événements marquants qui ont fondé les enjeux des oeuvres littéraires étudiées qui sont fondamentaux pour la présente recherche, à savoir, pour Gombrowicz, l'expérience de l'altérité apportée par l'exil, et pour Bernhard, l'isolement et la résistance à l'intérieur de la culture autrichienne. Les difficultés inhérentes à leurs expériences illustrent comment chez ces auteurs le sujet perçoit le monde et comment il essaie de se définir à l'intérieur de cette représentation. Au second chapitre, Écriture de l'altérité, la théorie du signe de C.S. Peirce permet d'analyser La pornographie et Le naufragé afin de saisir les actions et les modalités reliées à l'acceptation et au rejet de l'altérité chez les deux narrateurs. Le troisième chapitre, L'icône, lieu de la relance ou de l'entropie du signe, examine de façon comparative le développement diégétique des deux romans par la notion peircienne de l'icône face à l'acceptation ou le rejet de l'expérience de l'altérité qui modifie rétroactivement la perception et l'identité des narrateurs des deux romans. La notion de l'icône permet de comprendre pourquoi le récit de l'un s'inscrit comme une promesse d'ouverture alors que celui de l'autre traduit un échec et une fermeture de la conscience. Au terme de la présente réflexion, il est permis d'affirmer que l'acceptation ou le rejet de l'altérité provoque d'importants changements chez les narrateurs, tant sur le plan de la perception et de la représentation du monde que de l'identité. Le personnage narrateur de Gombrowicz assume l'expérience de l'altérité y trouvant une opportunité de se confronter à la réalité et de reconstruire son identité; au contraire, celui de Bernhard s'engage dans une tentative de résistance pour protéger son individualité en s'acharnant à épurer sa perception du monde de tous changements possibles issus de l'altérité, combat à la fois ardu et fatal puisqu'il conduit inévitablement à la figure du suicide. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Altérité, Icône, Identité, Sémiotique, Signe.

Freie Univ., Diss.--Berlin, 2005. / Literaturverz. S. [295] - 314.

Diss.--Halle - Wittenberg--Martin-Luther-Universität, 2002. / Notes bibliogr.

Zugl.: Wien, Univ., Diss., 2006

No description available.

Holy war against the aberration and the newspaper terrorism Heligt krig mot förvillelsen och tidningsterrorismen   This paper explores Bernhard von Beskow’s (1796-1868) conservative critique of the, for the early 19th century, new dominating voice in public matters namely the liberal press. There are competing narratives about the emerging liberal press and its critics. On the one hand the conservative critics were seen as hopeless reactionaries which acted against freedom of the press, themselves stripped of positive ideals and/or handled with little interest as footnotes in the great story of the liberal victory over its opponents. On the other hand this story has been questioned and an alternative has been presented of how to understand the conservatives and their critique of the press. This other story suggests that the critique was merely a critique of the new type of biased publicists that the liberal press brought about. The older form of newspapers, supposedly defended by the conservatives, were more of organs for the readers and their conversations amongst each other. The readers would send in whatever they had to say and the editor’s duty was to print it. The new type of newspapers, however, spoke in its own name for the people, it wasn’t longer a conversation from person to person. This paper doesn’t fully agree with any of the stories. Instead the paper shows how the conservative von Beskow had positive ideals, that he wasn’t against the freedom of the press as such, and that the conservative strain in von Beskow’s critique was not his will to preserve an older type of press. It was instead his opinion that the liberal press had an abstract understanding of politics and therefore wasn’t rooted in concrete political work, making it nonsense. Therefore the critique was mainly directed against a new and potentially destructive force of the political life of Sweden.

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Diss., 2007