This thesis deals with the short story “Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ...” (1950) by the German author Heinrich Böll (1917-1985). The well-established interpretation of this famous short story is that it deals with the dismal fact that the Nazis ended the development of Western culture, which cumulatively had been on its way since Greek antiquity. In this paper another reading is proposed, namely that the short story sheds light on the influence of the Romantic era in Germany and that a certain interpretation and use of Romanticism provided some of the seeds to the obscure ideas of the Nazi era. Research on Böll´s early writings is presented. The notion of cultural memory is introduced. The intertextual connections between Bölls text and other texts are being uncovered. Most fruitful proves the connection between “Wanderer” and the poem “Der Spaziergang” (1795) by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) to be. “Wanderer” can be read as a satirical version of Schillers poem. Reasons for Böll to choose Schiller’s elegy as a target are discussed at length. A parable in the story, ”wie ein Gesicht eines Schlafenden” / like a face of a sleeping person, unfolds an undertext to the short story, a Catholic text. Jesus, the Holy Communion, prayers and the eternal cross are present. Wanderer can be read as a requiem over the young soldier. Further, the inability of the wounded soldier to connect to his surroundings is interpreted as a parallell to Germany at the end of the war; the Nazis had stolen the Heimat from the people and it was no longer possible to interpret the world as something you belonged to. While Heinrich Böll on the surface of the text tries to recapture the German language from its nazi-poisend condition, the protagonist within the text regains his identity by means of his own handwriting - a part of his language.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-134896 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Eng, Tord |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för litteraturvetenskap och idéhistoria |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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