The dissertation investigates how anthropological discourses in lexica, novels, moral weeklies, and essays shaped the constitution of the moral individual during the Enlightenment. By integrating historiography and methods from the history of religions, philosophy, the history of medicine, and literary scholarship, the project addresses anthropology's interdisciplinary nature and European heritage. German-language texts published between 1719 and 1798 are featured, in particular those published between 1740 and 1770. During this period, scholars questioned how body and soul interacted, analyzing sensory perception, bodily motion, memory, imagination, psychological and physical illness, genius, and emotion. Though anthropology as a term first appeared in the title of a German-language work in Platner's Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise (1772), I maintain that anthropological discourses appeared in popular literary media beginning in the 1740's. The main thesis of this dissertation is that anthropological knowledge spread not only through academic writing, but also through new modes of writing and reading in novels and moral weeklies. Thus, in addition to Platner's famous work, Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, and Kant's Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, the dissertation argues anthropology develops in works by Halle intellectuals: Stahl's Negotium Otiosum, Wolff's Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, Pietist Joachim Lange's Bescheidene und ausführliche Entdeckung, Meier's Theoretische Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen, and Unzer's Neue Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen. This continuity is further manifest in the European novel of sensibility (Richardson's Pamela), followed by Gellert's Leben der schwedischen Gräfin von G*** and Hermes' Miß Fanny Wilkes as predecessors to Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon. Halle moral weeklies Der Gesellige and Der Mensch popularized humankind's double nature as defined in Walch's Philosophisches Lexicon. Many of these sources did not refer to anthropology by name, but they investigated the interrelation of body and soul, of the physical and the moral via the following anthropological discourses: (1) occasionalism, preestablished harmony, physical influence; (2) dietetics; (3) observation, self-observation; (4) theories of emotion; (5) polyperspectival narration and the combination of essays and stories in fictional texts; (6) physical sensibility.

This dissertation proposes a new interpretation of the concept of mimesis, viewed through a recent paradigm derivative of the natural sciences: complexity theory. The apparent universality of what are considered complex phenomena suggests that human systems, such as historical and cultural events, societies, and also narratives, are shaped by seemingly chaotic scenarios. Rejecting reductionism and determinism, chaos and complexity theory favour a holistic embrace of complexity and flux. In this project, complexity theory provides a matrix for examining the deep structure that underlies the act of creating a poem. In an analytical study of selected works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Friedrich Nietzsche I establish the link between the natural sciences and the humanities by extending to the moral realm the notion of natures relentless drive to create. The concept of autopoiesis forms the basis of my discussion of Emersons and Nietzsches concepts of defining the self. The continuous re-creation of the self within its environment also underlies my subsequent analyses of poems by two twentieth-century poets, Gottfried Benn and Wallace Stevens. This dissertation suggests that the act of poetic creation in the continuous and dynamic re-creation of form is grounded in natural forces themselves. In a world of ever changing and fleeting phenomena, the poem functions like a periodic center, that is as a salutary moment of confluence between subject and object.

This study of the constellation of terrorism and literature focuses on how three recent German metafictional novels have used terrorism as a tool for their own self-reflection as literary texts. The creation of subjectivity in literature is examined in Rainald Goetz Kontrolliert, while Georg Kleins Libidissi is treated with an emphasis on how the narrative process can repress undesirable realities and mediate violence. Finally, the problem of pathos and politics is examined in regards to terrorist characters in Uwe Tellkamps Der Eisvogel; it is shown that the novels collage-like form bears the strongest critic to the extreme ideologies expressed. While the dissertation does investigate interesting insights into terrorism offered by the novels, the main focus is on how and why terrorism plays an important roll in either the act of writing or as a means of examining that act; in these texts terrorism functions as either a metaphor for writing or as the opposite of writing and therefore as the element in the novel that delineates writing and its attendant values.

COMPETING GERMANIES: THE FREIE DEUTSCHE BUEHNE AND THE DEUTSCHES THEATER IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, 1938-1965 ROBERT VINCENT KELZ Dissertation under the direction of Professor Meike G. Werner Based on extensive archival research and interviews conducted in Germany, Argentina, and Brazil, this project focuses on two of the most influential German language theaters abroad in the 20th century. Founded in 1940 by antifascist and Jewish refugees, the Freie Deutsche Buehne was the only Exiltheater worldwide to stage regular productions throughout World War II. Funded by Joseph Goebbels Ministry of Propaganda, from 1938-45 the Deutsches Theater performed völkisch comedies and the German Classics both to German farming communities in rural Argentina as well as sold-out audiences at the most prestigious venues in Buenos Aires. No other major metropolitan city saw immediate, fully open competition between nationalist and antifascist German theaters during this period. The Freie Deutsche Bühne and the Deutsches Theater played prominent roles in Nazi Kulturpolitik in the Southern Cone, integrated with the national theater scene, and introduced new staging and acting techniques (such as pedagogical theater, open air performances, and Stanislavskis system) to Argentina. Informed by the ongoing discourses on performance theory, cultural transfer, and migration studies by Erika Fischer-Lichte, Ottmar Ette, and James Clifford, respectively, I analyze the Freie Deutsche Bühne and the Deutsches Theater as community-building institutions; explore how their performances expressed the clashing cultural values of antifascist and nationalist German populations; and assess how these stages divergent, evolving identities and community-building strategies conditioned their relationships with the Argentine host society during WWII, Peronism, and the outset of the Cold War. Drawing from local German, Yiddish, Spanish, and English language sources, my transnational approach to German theater illuminates host and expatriate populations from within, and traces German-speaking Jewish, antifascist, and nationalist thespians as they transition from emigrants to immigrants in South America.

Based on an analysis of Christoph Martin Wielands political novel "Der Goldne Spiegel" (1772), his libretto "Die Wahl des Herkules" (1773), and his essays on music theatre (1773/1775) in the broader context of the German Enlightenment, this dissertation argues that late eighteenth-centurys anthropology, moral philosophy, political thought, and musical aesthetics subscribe to the ideal of a pastoral exercise of power. Discourses committed to this ideal hold that any exercise of power be it in the sphere of politics, education, and aesthetics, or with regard to the subjects comportment towards itself is legitimate only insofar as it realizes, or at least strives to realize, the Glückseligkeit of those submitted to it. Within the pastoral paradigm, melancholy, an enigmatic paralysis that threatens to cancel all striving for happiness, poses a latent threat to any exercise of power.<p> Presenting the universal acknowledgment of the pastoral ideal as a necessary precondition for realizing the common good, Wielands works present the creation of a new order in which private and public happiness will be secured as the vocation of quasi-pastoral agents. Comprising characteristics of God, prince, father, educator, and author, these imaginary figures, and those who take them as their model, are driven by fantasies of power that cannot be lived. Bound to rigid regimes of self-control and constant control of others, they fall prey to, and cause in others, the very melancholy they set out to overcome.<p> Their failure to live up to the pastoral ideal enables a new form of critique that draws upon literature, opera, and dreams, in order to foster conversations between those in power and those who are powerless, about the causes of melancholic suffering. These conversations are crucial for the ongoing process of establishing a new social and political order in which such suffering will be overcome. Music and literature partake in this project. While literary authorship provides a metaphor for melancholic sovereignty, music subverts any notion of what may be considered a legitimate exercise of power. As an ambivalent cultural practice, it has a critical function in its own right.

My project addresses the representation of dance, dance-like, and pedestrian movement within the urban space in German literature around 1900. The dynamic cosmopolitan centers of Berlin and Paris not only attracted authors and intellectuals like August Endell, Rainer Maria Rilke, Alfred Döblin, and Else Lasker-Schüler but also the pioneers of early modern dance such as Loïe Fuller, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis from America and the Ballets Russes from Russia. As a representative of a new generation, the diplomat Harry Graf Kessler detailed his keen observations of their live dance performances in his diaries. His aesthetic senses underwent a transformation by growing tired of the bourgeois balls and academic ballets of the 19th century and by developing a deep enthusiasm for the freer, modern dance. Similarly Endell, Rilke, Döblin, and Lasker-Schüler grew aware of the changing aesthetics and began writing texts that resisted traditional genres by reflecting the fragmented perception of the modern individual living in the urban landscape. Instead of depicting dance in the traditional confines of a theater space, I argue that these authors experimented with new forms of representations of the expansive urban space by setting the dynamic modern body and its movement possibilities in large squares (Endell), streets (Rilke), hospitals (Döblin), and cafés (Lasker-Schüler). Their texts aim at both capturing the display of movement in a crisp, precise, picturesque language and attempt to recreate the feeling as if the dances take place in front of the readers eyes. The texts demand the reader to feel both a combination of kinesthetic empathy with as well as intellectual abstraction based on the protagonists or narrators depictions. My readings of these literary scenes are informed by theoretical texts by Andreas Huyssen, Gabriele Brandstetter, and Susan Leigh Foster.

The author Helga Königsdorf, a scientist herself, deals in several of her literary works with the situation of the scientist in the GDR. The aim of this thesis is to explore the image of the scientist within the two novels Respektloser Umgang and Im Schatten des Regenbogens. The first novel was published before reunification and has received much critical attention, while the second novel appeared after the collapse of the state and has not been as extensively examined. The investigation of this thesis focuses on the portrayal of the various scientists that appear in the two novels. This thesis is divided into three parts. The first part provides an introduction to the situation of the scientist before and after the ‘Wende’. The question arises whether or not there is a radical change in the portrayal of the scientists in the novels, and how this change is manifested. The second part deals with the historical context that underpins my analysis, in particular, with regard to the fate of scholars in the former GDR. It also contains a short discussion of Helga Königsdorf, both as a person and a scientist. Part three provides a close analysis of each of both novels. Aspects such as the sense of responsibility or the lack thereof in regard to science and relationships between colleagues, friends and family are examined. In order to show how the portrayal of the scientist develops, a comparison of the novels is undertaken. It becomes evident that radical changes occurred not only on the professional, but also on a personal level. This thesis provides a first comparison of two major works by Helga Königsdorf and gives insight into the changing literary portrayal of the scientist in the former GDR during the process of unification.

This thesis looks at laughter in conversations in order to find out what functions laughter can fulfil. The data that are used for the analysis are conversations involving four different families and one or two researchers. Laughter plays an important role in communication, as it depends on social factors. For example people laugh more when other people are present and how often we laugh also depends on who these other people are and in what situation we find ourselves. Because laughter is a social signal it is interesting to find out which role laughter can play in a conversation. Much has been written about the relationship between laughter and humour or jokes but there is not much research on laughter in everyday conversations, that doesn’t only look at laughter as a response to humour. As laughter cannot only be seen as an indicator of humour, this thesis looks at the different functions of laughter in conversations and tries to give answers to questions like: Which participant initiates the laughter and how do other participants react to the laughter? What different functions does laughter have in different situations? So for the analysis the context of the laughter is very important. The methodology used for the analysis is primarily conversation analysis but the analysis also contains elements of interactional sociolinguistics. The analysis looks at the functions of laughter in five different contexts: laughter and irony, laughter and trouble-telling, laughter and teasing, laughter and disagreement and finally laughter and narratives. The analyzed examples show that laughter can fulfil different functions for each context.

The goal of this paper is to problematize allegorical readings of Kafka. Ever since the first publication of his works, commentators have constructed escapes from his difficult texts into external systems of thought, starting with Max Brod's negative theology and continuing today with unreflective applications of poststructuralist theory. I will focus on "Die Sorge des Hausvaters" (1917) as a case study, though I will also touch on Die Verwandlung (1915), "Von den Gleichnissen" (1922) and the aphorisms. Allegorical readers of "Die Sorge des Hausvaters" have sought to tame the text and its wild creature, Odradek, by establishing stable correspondences between text and theory, replacing Odradek, in all its unknowability, with some element of their own understanding. Some readers have been more careful, building their allegories based on the coherence of the text instead of its correspondence to an external system of ideas: Wilhelm Emrich was first among them. Through an analysis of Emrich's reading of "Die Sorge des Hausvaters," I will show that this self-allegorizing route, too, is insufficient. Using Kafka's aphorisms, I will argue that an interpretation of his works must deal only with their sensus literalis. Their truth is autonomous: independent of reference, undetermined by a conceptual framework. While my analysis is indebted to Deleuze and Guattari, I will move beyond their interpretation of the animal stories as failed escapes and show how Gregor Samsa's metamorphosis and Odradek's ontological evolutions point the way to a new kind of experiential and textual truth. Kafka's texts serve as markers of ecstatic transformation that Kafka sought in the possibilities of writing. Our task as readers is not to reduce these deeply ambiguous flights of language to representation but to engage creatively those very becomings that reading Kafka entails.

Fuer die Wahl des vorliegenden Themas waren zwei Faktoren von ausschlaggebender Bedeutung: Zunaechst das Interesse des Verfassers fuer Lyrik, in Sonderheit fuer Rainer Maria Rilke als hervorstechendsten Dichter in moderner Lyrik. Dann der Vorteil einer guten, bis ins einzelne gehenden Rilke-Bibliothek, der die Entscheidung nicht mehr schwer fallen liess. [...]