Diss.--Stuttgart, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 363-386.

Poetic Spaces of Memory (on Chosen Czech Poets of the Second Half of the 20th Century) Abstract The dissertation Poetic Spaces of Memory (on Chosen Czech Poets of the Second Half of the 20th Century) offers interpretations of six Czech poetic works of the second half of the 20th century, with focus on the perspective of cultural memory. Chosen poetic works represent synecdoches of poetic description of (general) historical events and experience that are connected with the time during the World War II (the Nazi regime) and with communist regime after 1948 and to some extent are connected with spatial dimension - be it poetic reflection of space which is modelled on a phenomenon from real, "topical" world, be it (completely) imaginary description of space. Methodology of this dissertation is based on the concept of cultural memory by Aleida Assmann, particularly as presented in her book Cultural Memory and Western Civilization. Functions, Media, Archives. Individual chapters of the dissertation deal with interpretations of following poetic works: "Návrat" by Vladimír Holan is a poetic story that develops the topos of coming back - coming back home, to a space that the lyrical narrator enters after twenty years in order to look for his mother's grave in local graveyard; he fails. A verse book Dům Strach by Jan...

Thesis (MA (Modern Foreign Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / The Deutsche Chronik, a nine volume family saga by the German author Walter Kempowski (1929 – 2007) modelled on Kempowski’s own family parallels the travails of a people seeking to wrench themselves loose from a past that is however always present. In this analysis, two of the novels of these chronicles of the Rostock middle class will be studied according to their portrayal of the question of German guilt. Thus far in secondary literature, the question of Kempowski’s portrayal of guilt in his novels has only been sparsely dealt with. The novel Tadellöser and Wolff (1971) in which the setting is the port city of Rostock in the Second World war and Uns geht’s ja noch gold (1972) in which the post-war years under soviet occupation are detailed lend themselves to an analysis of the question of guilt, as they cover a time period in German history (1939 – 1948) which is decisive in its examination. In this analysis, the question of guilt in the two novels by Kempowski will be examined according to a theoretical framework presented by two important studies on the question of guilt in Germany, firstly the study Die Schuldfrage. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Frage (1946) by Karl Jaspers and secondly Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit (2006) by Aleida Assmann.

In der Modernisierungstheorie hatte das Wort ‚Bruch‘ einen positiven Klang, weil ‚Bruch‘ automatisch mit Innovation und Wandel einherging. Seit die Menschheit jedoch mit einem Wandel konfrontiert ist, den sie zwar induziert aber so nicht beabsichtigt hat, können Begriffe wie dieser nicht mehr so unbefangen benutzt werden. Es bedarf – so Aleida Assmann – einer neuen Sprache und neuer Begriffe, um die Aufmerksamkeit umzulenken auf neue Perspektiven, Werte und Handlungsfelder.

Archiv bezeichnet eine Einrichtung, in der Schriftstücke, Dokumente, Akten und andere Zeugnisse gesammelt, geordnet, bewahrt und restauriert werden. Archive erfüllen als Verwaltungs- und Erinnerungsorte eine Vielzahl von Funktionen und sind eng mit institutioneller Macht verschränkt. Kulturwissenschaftliche Analysen zeigen, dass analoge und digitale Archive bestimmten Akteur*innen mehr Raum und Sichtbarkeit gewähren als anderen. Dabei strukturieren soziale Kategorien wie gender, race und class den Zugang zum und den Eingang ins Archiv. Eine intersektionale Heterogenisierung des Archivs wird in Teilen der Wissenschaft sowie von privaten Initiativen deshalb angestrebt, löst aber auch Kritik aus.