Research Explorer – German Research Directory

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Collaboratively developed by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) and DAAD, Research Explorer is an online German research directory that contains over 19,000 institutes at German universities and non-university research institutions, searchable by geographic location, subject and other structural criteria.

To begin using the directory, go to: http://research-explorer.dfg.de/research_explorer.en.html

Leo Lensing on Michael Hofmann’s Ignorance of Karl Kraus and His Indifference to Jonathan Franzen’s The Kraus Project

The following letter, criticizing Michael Hofmann’s review for The New York Review of Books of Jonathan Franzen’s The Kraus Project, appeared in abridged form in the December 19, 2013 issue of the Review. What follows is the original version, which at the request of the editor was reduced by more than two-thirds.

To the Editors:02BOOK-popup

Michael Hofmann has a handful of perceptive things to say about Jonathan Franzen’s The Kraus Project [NYR October 24]. Most notably, he recognizes that it represents a unique experiment, “a strange, space-bending, Cubist, not unsimpatico book.” Unfortunately, this and other insights are buried in a misinformed, crudely formulated screed hurled at Karl Kraus, a writer whom Hofmann gives ample evidence of not having read carefully.

Hofmann “supposes” that The Last Days of Humankind is Kraus’s “chef d’oeuvre” even though this firmly established judgment of literary history need not be the object of hunches and maybes. The great anti-war drama, documentary and visionary in equal measure, not only directly influenced Brecht’s theory and practice of Epic Theater, but also set a powerful example of modernist textual collage that helped shape the famous political photomontages of John Heartfield as well as Alfred Döblin’s great city novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Hofmann seems not to realize that the play consists of more than things “heard or overheard by its author”; it also appropriates posters sighted, advertisements copied, films viewed, and countless newspaper clippings pasted onto the manuscript page before being satirically transformed into self-revealing dialogue. The play is consciously constructed in excess of “the conventional five acts” to which Hofmann reduces its form; it also contains a prologue and an epilogue, which, incidentally, brings the scene count to 220, not “209.”  Hofmann thinks that the play is “from 1917,” whereas it was actually published in four special issues of Kraus’s satirical journal Die Fackel (The Torch) in 1918-1919 with the expressionistic epilogue coming first. The red covers and the documentary photograph of Wilhelm II used as the frontispiece of “The Last Night” (the title of the epilogue) gave it the initial impact of a revolutionary pamphlet. Kraus continued to revise and add new scenes based on information suppressed under war-time censorship until the first book edition appeared in 1922.

Hofmann’s notion that the play is “rarely read, much less performed and only translated (thus far) in abridgment” is wrong on all counts. Beginning in the 1960s, a dtv two-volume paperback and, since 1986, the 848-page Suhrkamp edition have, together, sold thousands of copies in Germany.

Even though The Last Days of Humankind—at fifteen hours or ten evenings—has understandably not been a staple of the German-language repertory, productions have not exactly been rare. It might be more accurate to say, intermittent with increasing frequency in times of war. There have been countless staged readings and radio broadcasts since the 1960s. Full-scale productions have occurred less often, but have regularly inspired theatrical experiments of great intensity. In 1983, the Scottish playwright and director Robert David MacDonald staged his own translation of the play with the Citizens Theatre of Glasgow, which became the sensation of the Edinburgh Festival in that year. In 1991, Luca Ronconi, amplifying Kraus’s comments about the mechanization of everyday life accelerated by the war, created a furor by staging the play along the assembly lines of the former Fiat factory in Turin. Johann Kresnik’s 2003 version used an even more spectacular and daunting setting, a massive World-War-II-era submarine bunker in Bremen; this production had to be repeatedly extended and eventually reached a hundred performances.

Although there is thus far only a pair of abridged English versions of The Last Days of Mankind, complete translations exist in French, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese among other languages. Losing wars apparently quickens the appetite for the entire text of the drama.

Hofmann’s jumble of misperceptions about The Last Days of Humankind constitutes more than a refusal to observe philological and literary-historical niceties. It is symptomatic of his failure to understand the drama’s importance for the “Kraus Project.” While the literary essays on Heine and Nestroy may be the focus of the book, Franzen explains that they were originally an auxiliary assignment in a seminar about Kraus’s masterpiece offered at the Free University in Berlin in 1982. His description of the often comic dynamics of this course—a  patient, overly indulgent professor jousting and haggling with authoritarian leftist students, many of them all talk and no text; Franzen and his fellow students struggling to prepare a report on the monstrous drama—really does form part of a “bildungsroman about a clever and ambitious young man on a Fulbright in Germany,” just not the “entertainment” version that Hofmann thinks Franzen should have written.

Not content to dismiss Kraus’s dramatic masterpiece, Hofmann also belittles another entire genre in which he produced highly original work. Does Hofmann really believe that the aphorism is “not a robust and jolly English commodity,” but rather “a sort of Franco-Balkan form, La Rochefoucauld meets E. M. Cioran or Lichtenberg”? Leaving aside this mispotted history of the genre, what about Nietzsche, whose influence Kraus denied with suspicious vehemence, and Oscar Wilde, whose work he embraced and published in Die Fackel? Kraus’s aphoristic work has had a more vigorous afterlife in the English-speaking world than Hofmann realizes although he unwittingly explains why when he summarizes: “Just as Shakespeare seems to be full of quotations, so Kraus is full of aphorisms” – one has only to add “and quotations from and allusions to Shakespeare.” Hofmann the poet has also missed W. H. Auden’s energetic championing of Kraus and his inclusion of a disproportionate number of his aphorisms in A Certain World, his “commonplace book.”

For Hofmann the translator, Franzen’s rendering of Kraus’s texts is “overliteral and a little wooden throughout,” a judgment that ignores the sustained scrupulous attention to linguistic nuance, allusion and wordplay for which Franzen enlisted the expert assistance of the Austrian novelist Daniel Kehlmann and the American Kraus scholar Paul Reitter. Rather than dumbing down Kraus’s complex prose, Franzen throws himself into reproducing and explicating its complexities. Surely, this is preferable to flagrant re-writing, for which Hofmann himself has been taken to task in the Times Literary Supplement [March 2, 2001] and in these pages. As J. M. Coetzee remarked of his translations of Joseph Roth, “is it part of the translator’s job to give his author lessons in economy?” [NYR February 28, 2002]

Ultimately, Hofmann thinks it doesn’t matter because Kraus’s writing is “too artificial, too conniving, and above all too squalid” to be considered “brilliant.” He aims to demonstrate this point with four substantial quotations from the essay on Nestroy. Whether these passages actually lack brilliance is at least open to question. But why not choose a quotation from the essay on Heine—Hofmann’s “darling,” whom he is otherwise anxious to defend—for example, this one:

A person who makes fun of his adversary’s sex life is incapable of rising to polemical power. And a person who ridicules his adversary’s poverty can make no better joke than this: Platen’s Oedipus would “not have been so biting if its author had had more to bite on.” Bad opinions can only make bad jokes. The play of wit and word, which compresses whole worlds of contrast onto the tiniest of surfaces and can therefore be the most valuable kind of play, must, in Heine’s hands, as in the hands of the dismal Saphir, become a slack pun, because there are no moral funds to underwrite it.

 

This is neither artificial nor conniving, and the squalor comes with the homophobia and the misplaced ridicule directed at the poet August von Platen. As it happens, Hofmann does cite a single phrase from the same page where Kraus cites Heine’s text; “two words,” all, he implies, that he has “taken away from Kraus”: “schöne Köchin,” “a crooked female cook” in Franzen’s rendering.

In a long concluding paragraph, Hofmann indulges in a giddy riff about this “skewed cook,” in which he explains that Heine is “protesting his love of women.” He would rather “have” a misshapen lower-class female than “the most aesthetic aesthete,” as Hofmann willfully renders the original “der schönste Schönheitsfreund” (“the most beautiful friend of beauty”). In a footnote, Daniel Kehlmann explains that in this context Heine’s persona is clearly saying that he prefers a coarse woman to the most beautiful “gay aesthete.” Does Hofmann really not know that when he exclaims “Goodness, how I love my ‘schiefe Köchin’!” he is mimicking the homophobic voice of Heine’s narrator, or does he just not care? Perhaps this is simply more evidence of careless reading. As for many other things, Kraus had a solution for this problem, too. “One has to read my pieces twice, in order to acquire a taste for them. I don’t mind, however, if one reads them three times. But I prefer that they not be read at all rather than only once. I would just as soon not take responsibility for the mental congestion of a bonehead who doesn’t have time.”

Kaffee und Plätzchen

KekseKekseCome to the German House  this Friday afternoon to converse in German, play boardgames, eat cookies, and enjoy a cup of coffee.

Location:  65 Lawn Ave,
Time: Friday,  November 15th 4:30-6pm

Iris Bork-Goldfield to speak at Middletown Film Festival

Tuesday, November 5, 7 PM, Center for Film Studies

In July – directed by Fatih Akin, Germany, 2000, 99 min.im-juli_77007

A charming comedy focusing on a somewhat naive and geeky teacher Daniel (Moritz Bleibtreu) as he embarks on a wondrous road trip in search of his dream girl. And it all starts at the beginning of his summer holiday, when he buys a ring from the aspiring artist and street vendor Juli (Christiane Paul). The ring bears a Mayan sun symbol, which, according to Juli, has the power to lead him to the woman of his dreams.  Will he find her?

Introduction by Iris Bork-Goldfield

Organized by Russell Library

 

 

Kaffee und Plätzchen

Plätzchen

 

Come and join us this Friday afternoon to  converse in German, while eating cookies and drinking coffee.

Location: German House, 65 Lawn Ave

Time: Friday, November 1st 4:30-6pm

If you have any questions, please contact house manager  Kaito Abe.

You can also join the German House on facebook.

DAAD Summer course grants

Upcoming Deadline for Two DAAD Grants

The Summer Course Grant provides scholarships to attend a broad range of three- to four-week summer courses at German universities which focus mainly on literary, cultural, political and economic aspects of modern and contemporary Germany. Extensive extracurricular programs complement and reinforce the core material.

For additional information on this grant and application details, visit: www.daad.org/summercourse

The Intensive Language Course Grant provides scholarships to graduate students at North
American universities to attend 8-week intensive language courses at leading institutes in
Germany.

For additional information on this grant and application details, visit www.daad.org/languagecourses

DAAD CONFERENCE FUNDING IN GERMAN STUDIES

Faculty members and advanced students in the humanities, social sciences and related fields are invited to apply for co-funding to organize workshops, seminars and conferences that embrace the interdisciplinary and/or comparative study of the history, politics, economics, law, society, culture and the arts of Germany.Deadline for application is October 31, 2013, for conferences between January – June 2014.

For more information, please visit: www.daad.org/conference2

DAAD GERMAN STUDIES RESEARCH GRANT


This specialized DAAD program offers up to ten German Studies Research Grants to highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students who are nominated by their department/program chairs. The grant may be used for short-term research (one to two months) in Germany or – in exceptional cases – North America.

Deadline for application is November 1, 2013.

For more information, please visit: www.daad.org/germanstudies2

OKTOBERFEST at Wesleyan

Come and celebrate and try some

Weißwurst (veal sausage)Sauerkraut, Kartoffelsalat (potato salad) and Apfelsaftschorle (sparkling apple juice)

at the German House on 65 Lawn Ave.,

on October 11, at 6 p.m.

sponsored by the German House and the German department

Hannah Arendt, directed bu Margarethe von Trotta

Hannah

Please join us for the screening of Hannah Arendt, directed by Margarethe von Trotta.

September 27, 8:00 p.m. at the Goldsmith Family Cinema

Introduction by Leo Lensing (Professor of German and Film Studies), followed by a Q&A with Pam Katz P ’16, the film’s co-screenwriter

 

A second screening will take place on September 28, at 10:00 a.m. at the Powell Family Cinema.

Exercising Judgment in Ethics, Politics, and the Law

arendtconference

Wesleyan University is hosting a conference on Hannah Arendt on September 26-28, 2013. The conference is made possible by the generous support of David Rhodes, COL ’68. It is hosted by the Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by the College of Letters; Jewish and Israel Studies; German Studies; Government; Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory; and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).

Uli Plass is moderating the session on Judging Evil on September 27, 4:00-6:00 p.m. in Bechkam Hall.

Leo Lensing is introducing the the film Hannah Arendt, directed by Margarethe von Trotta on September 27, 8:00 p.m.

Conference Program 

More Information about the conference

Kaffee, Plätzchen, and Study Abroad


Oscar in BerlinKaffeeundPlaetzchenpostkarte regensburg

 

Location: German House, 45 Lawn Ave

Time: Friday, September 20th 4:30-6pm

Missed socializing in German in our cozy living room?  We’re back with COOKIES!

This Kaffee und “Plätzchen” (coffee and cookies) will feature the director of Study Abroad, Carolyn Sorkin, Frau Bork, our very own German professor, and a couple of current Wes students who just came back from Germany.

Carolyn Sorkin and Frau Bork will be introducing the study abroad programs and the students will be sharing their experiences. There will be plenty of time to ask questions.

Come and join us this Friday afternoon to talk about studying abroad in Germany, converse in German, and eat cookies.

If you have any questions please contact house manager  Kaito Abe. And you can join the German House on facebook.

German Studies Majors 2013

Shemuel Garber
Shemuel
Alle
Professor Leo Lensing addressing German Studies majors and minors and faculty at our luncheon on May 10, 2013.

Shemuel Garber ’13, a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters, wrote his thesis for COL, entitled, The Circular Cut: Problematizing the Longevity of Civilization’s Most Aggressively Defended Amputation.

He will spend this summer in Brooklyn before leaving for Germany with a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship to teach English at a high school in Mainz, Germany.

James Gardner ’13 is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a German Studies major. His Senior Honors Thesis explores Afro-German history from 1871 to 2013. He has been awarded the Prentice Prize for his excellent work in German, the Heidemann Award, for helping others in the Wesleyan community, and the Butterfield Prize for his leadership, intellectual commitment and concern for the Wesleyan community.

James Gardner
James

James will continue his work with the Afro-German social work organization, Joliba, in Berlin, where he worked while studying abroad in Berlin in 2012. At Joliba, James will coordinate initiatives, tours, and events in line with his Afro-German academic work. He also hopes to obtain the International Parliamentary Scholarship (IPS), which offers young people the opportunity to gain practical experience in parliamentary work during a 15-week internship under the auspices of a Member of the German Bundestag. James is planning to apply for a DAAD scholarship this fall in order to continue his studies at the Free University of Berlin.

Max Kaplan ’13 will be working at The Fund for the Public Interest in Philadelphia. This is a national non-profit organization that works to build support for progressive organizations across the country. They run campaigns for USPIRG, Environment America, the Human Rights Campaign, and Environmental Action.

Adam Rashkoff
Adam

Adam Rashkoff   ’13, a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters wrote a senior essay for both departments on Freud’s theories of psychological repression to analyze Theodor Adorno’s appropriation of the German Idealist concept of Naturschöne, or natural beauty. He will spend the upcoming academic year teaching English at two secondary schools in Vorarlberg, Austria, under the auspices of USTA-Austria, a program administered by the Fulbright Commission and funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture. This summer, he will split his time between Stanford University, where he will work at a literature and arts summer camp for middle and high school students, and Brooklyn, NY. In New York,  he will intern on a project to develop a humanities curriculum for a network of charter schools. Ultimately, he plans to pursue his interest in German Studies at the graduate level. 

Avery Trufelmann
Avery

Avery Trufelman ’13,  a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters, wrote a senior thesis in both departments. Avery translated the autobiography of Hans Rosenthal, an iconic German gameshow host and holocaust survivor. She received high honors for this work Avery is also the recipient of the Scott Prize, awarded for excellence in foreign-language study. She will go on to intern for NPR Berlin (produced entirely in Washington, DC).

MariJarris
Mari

Mari Jarris ’14 This summer, Mari will conduct her thesis research on the Frankfurt School’s critique of German Idealist philosophy using the archives and libraries at the University of Frankfurt and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. She received the DAAD Undergraduate Scholarship, the Davenport Grant, and the Blankenagel Prize to support her summer research.

Maddy (R)
Maddy (right)

Maddy Smith-Huemer ’14  She is a German Studies and History major who has been studying at the Free University of Berlin with the Duke in Berlin program since January 2013. She will continue her studies there until the end of July, while also conducting research for her senior year thesis on resistance movements in the former GDR.

Oscar Takabvirwa
Oscar

Oscar Takabvirwa ’14, a double major in German Studies and Mathematics, hopes to be working for a consulting firm in New York City this summer. He will start research for his honors thesis for German, a translation of works by authors whose parents migrated to Germany and who grew up in a multi-cultural environment.

 

 

 

 

Colin, Jackie and Dan
Colin, Steffi and Dan

Jaqueline Heitkamp ‘15,  Colin O’Connor ‘15  and Daniel Hurlbert ‘15 have been studying in Regensburg since January 2013 and will continue their studies there until the end of July.

In the photo below, Colin is joined by former Wesleyan students and  Regensburg exchange students who visited the Regensburg Dult, an annual folk festival, in May 2013.Regensburg Dult 2013