The development of Ausländerâs poetic identity is tracked by analyzing a distinctly Romantic aesthetic in her oeuvre. These aesthetics are placed into historical and literary context by examining the influence of other poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Heinrich Heine, Annette Droste-Hülshoff, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Rainer Maria Rilke on Ausländer. This analysis also reveals the strong affiliation of the poet to place and the appropriation of literary figures like the Loreley and Scheherazade.

The focus of this dissertation is on Theodor Fontane's relationship to his audience. In particular, I investigate the question of how Fontane saw his own role and responsibility as a writer with regard to his actual and desired reading public. Theodor Fontane lived and worked in the late phase of the epoch that Jürgen Habermas describes in his study Strukturwandel der Ãffentlichkeit (1962) as an era when the bourgeois public sphere declined. Habermas explains this process as the change from a critical-rational discourse of early bourgeois culture to late capitalist mass culture, characterized by its lack of critical discourses. Today there is an ongoing debate on the decline of public life, the role of writers and intellectuals, and on the social function of literature in general. The analysis of Fontane's relationship to his public is an important contribution to this discussion, because he is one of the first authors who experienced the so called "structural transformation" of the public sphere in the second half of the 19th century and had to deal with its consequences: the emergence of a mass culture, the difficulties of publishing, and an uncritical public. <p> Compared to earlier studies that identify Fontane's audience mainly in the "Bildungsbürgertum" (teachers, professors, pastors), Jews, a small group of nobility, and a group of young intellectuals, this essay proposes that the new mass public including women and the lower social classes should also be considered. It also provides a wider and more precise picture of Fontane's targeted and actual reader by determining different audiences during the three phases of his career. <p> Fontane became increasingly aware of the uncritical reading public and showed great concern at the low social status of the professional writer. Nevertheless, he tried to establish as critic and novelist a close relationship with readers of all stripes and to educate and expand his audience via his writings to mature and critical readers. I demonstrate these trends in two of his late novels Effi Briest and Die Poggenpuhls.<p>

The early nineteenth century was a time of religious conversion in Germany, marked by a shift away from publicly practiced religion and toward a private, individualized form of spirituality. The conversions of Clemens Brentano, Georg BuÌchner, and Heinrich Heine provide case studies of very different kinds of religious conversion: religious intensification (Brentano), deconversion or loss of faith (BuÌchner), and repeated religious switching that leads to creative syncretism (Heine). This dissertation adds the perspective of literary analysis to the previously available studies of conversion in the fields of sociology, theology, and history by demonstrating how the conversions of Brentano, BuÌchner, and Heine are manifested in the aesthetics of their literary works. It traces the outcomes of their religious transformations that are evident in their evolving identities as authors and in their modes of self-expression, revealing ultimately that transformation, and more specifically conversion, is fundamental to the human poetic experience.

This dissertation explores the representation of masses in the works of Austrian exile author Hermann Broch. I argue that the largely indirect representations of the mass in Brochs work are indicative of a persistent problem of conceiving the mass as an entity. In the dissertation, I trace this problem of conception and representation through Brochs novels Die Schlafwandler, Der Tod des Vergil, Die Verzauberung, and Die Unbekannte Größe, the play Die Entsühnung, and end with his unfinished Massenwahntheorie. Where other scholars have analyzed Brochs novels as a reflection of his theory, I instead demonstrate that the novels and the theory are part of a largerultimately unsuccessfulattempt to represent the unrepresentable. Brochs inability to clearly define the mass, I conclude, undermines the potential of his theory and fiction to deliver meaningful solutions to the scourge of mass hysteria.

This dissertation is concerned with the topic of storytelling, and by extension narrative, in the works of Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. My interest is aimed not only at storytelling as a topic in the authors works, but also at storytelling as it becomes a compositional element of their respective theoretic narratives. From the perspective of theoretic reflection my study has two major themes: narrative and the break in tradition, and narrative and space. Both these aspects arise from specific historical, political and philosophical conditions in modernity that I address throughout my work. My reading of Benjamin and Arendt presupposes that the break in tradition, which is a terminology found in both authors, is an experience that fundamentally shapes their thinking and writing. In the course of approaching the tradition, narrative undergoes in Benjamin and Arendt a process of dissolution, and then what the former calls at one point the restitution of the epic. I demonstrate how, in the course of this restitution, properties of narrative become visible that were formerly concealed, and I propose that in both authors a new awareness and application of spatial principles in narrative arises. In this context I focus on the functional and compositional aspects of space for narrative, and the consequences this emphasis of space has for the writer reader relationship. Concerning space in narrative my study thus implements a distinction between space as place or topos, and space as an inherent, formative element of narrative. In general the aim of my dissertation is to open up and present (again) from a unique angle the question of narrative possibilities in modern theoretic discourse.

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.

In the thesis entitled Natur als Utopie: Novalis Heinrich von Ofterdingen im Kontext der romantischen Naturphilosophie, the concept of nature and its many different meanings developed throughout history will first be presented with a special focus on the understanding of nature during the epoch of Romanticism and its connection to Romantic poetics. At this point, the development of the special Romantic understanding of nature will be discussed from different perspectives, including historical, philosophical and poetic. This first part is the initial step toward an understanding Novalis poetics, which are investigated in the second part of the thesis. After a short analysis of the poet Novalis, the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which is fundamentally linked with the Romantic understanding of nature, will then be investigated as an exemplary representative of his poetics. The principal object of this thesis is therefore to show how Novalis poetics are informed by the Romantic view of nature, and furthermore, how the author employs this view within his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen in both form and content.

To be sure, the state of medicine today is technologically, professionally and economically different from that of eighteenth century Germany; nevertheless, a continuous, humanistic thread exists and has existed since the ars medica of antiquity. This thesis examines two closely related manifestations of this humanistic push: Karl Philipp Moritzs late eighteenth-century Erfahrungsseelenkunde or experiential (empirical) psychology, and todays narrative medicine. Until now, the historical understanding of narrative medicine has relied heavily on Freudian theories of psychology; however, I argue that Karl Philipp Moritzs theory of empirical psychology, as a predecessor to Freudian psychology, offers even more to our understanding of narrative medicine. Naturally, the marrow of this paper will be a definition of narrative medicine and its assorted advocates as well as an in depth examination of K.P. Moritzs philosophy one which, like narrative medicine, pushes narrative understanding and capability to the forefront of the healing arts. In addition, it will include a brief appraisal of Moritzs influences from the German Enlightenment, thus further underscoring the continuity of the humanistic trend leading to narrative medicine.

The worldwide and continuous reception of Lessings play Nathan the Wise (1779) is an acknowledged phenomenon in German literary studies. Despite its many interpretations, little attention has so far been paid to the plays political implications and how these are politicized. Naturally, a political interpretation gains more importance in times of polarization when a theater staging can potentially have a more influential outlook on politics. In 1779, Nathan the Wise referred to the conflict between German Jews and Christians, who considered themselves religiously superior. To overcome this hierarchy, Lessing draws a tolerant society based on the common values of all three monotheistic creeds. But Lessing was far ahead of his anti-Semitic time and his piece was condemned as heresy against Christianity. In 1933, when Hitler seized power, German anti-Semitism had changed from a religious to racial competition. Forced back into the ghetto of the Jüdische Kulturbund, Jewish artists pointed at the values Jews shared with Germans and chose Nathan the Wise for their theater premiere, though the play was condemned by critics as a fatal illusion. Just four years ago, after 9/11, Islamist fundamentalists began to constitute a new powerful force in world politics. Theaters both in Germany and the United States reacted to the terrorist attacks with new plays and the staging of classics such as Nathan the Wise. Strikingly, German performances stick to traditional interpretations with the forgiving Jew at centre, while in America thematically new adaptations have evolved. It is here where the political validity of Lessings classic is being updated.