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In the course of the pandemic since 2020 we have experienced different ways of life in public and private spaces, healthcare as well as work. Doris Bachmann-Medick talks about a 'pandemic turn' and claims, that the coronavirus pandemic implies a kind of crisis situation for human existence in our global reality. Everything has changed with the pandemic. Especially the biopolitical measures as well as health policy have entailed significant changes in social and individual living conditions. Literary discourses as a particular part of culture have the significant potential to reflect and criticize certain aspects of society and culture. Thea Dorn's Corona novel Trost. Briefe an Max can obviously be described as a reaction to and literary reception of the Corona-era since 2020. The first-person narrator Johanna works as a culture journalist. She recently lost her mother, who travelled to Italy despite the pandemic. In her letters to her philosophy teacher, she expresses her immeasurable sadness and anger due to the new way of living because of the pandemic. The critical attitude of the novel is remarkable in terms of absolutization since helping becomes a part of biopolitics in times of the pandemic that leads to a tragic situation for the subject. In this article, I will analyze Thea Dorn's Trost. Briefe an Max with reference to the approaches of Giorgio Agamben in Homo Sacer concerning biopolitics. In this context, especially the critical potential and attitude of this novel get important.

In spite of its ironic posture, Christian Kracht's novel Imperium (2012) contains a serious criticism of civilization, which is illustrated along the protagonist August Engelhardt. Through the fictionalization of this historical character, the novel critically reflects German colonialism, but also the "German madness" (Setz 2015: 155). This way, Imperium highlights the dialectical dimensions of culture as well as of colonialism and thus calls for a postcolonial reading. The aim of this study is to work out that Kracht's novel Imperium by means of the fictionalization of the historical figure August Engelhardt offers a postcolonial perspective on the colonial as well as totalitarian ambitions of the Wilhelminian Era. This perspective is intensified through a critical view in sense of the cultural criticism that was developed by Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (2006). Doing so, the novel presents the inhuman dimensions of unilateral concepts in a remarkable way. After mapping out the theoretical foundation of the study in the context of Postcolonial German Studies and outlining of the interrelations of cultural criticism and postcolonial approaches, I will investigate the critical dimension of the novel with regard to the progress optimism as well to the German colonial expansion politics at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Thereby, I will concentrate on the ambivalent protagonist August Engelhardt and his strange philosophical ideas, which celebrate the coconut as a sacred fruit. Based on the regression of the protagonist, the subversions of the colonial discourse will be explored with respect to the arguments of Horkheimer and Adorno.

In spite of its ironic posture, Christian Kracht's novel Imperium (2012) contains a serious criticism of civilization, which is illustrated along the protagonist August Engelhardt. Through the fictionalization of this historical character, the novel critically reflects German colonialism, but also the "German madness" (Setz 2015: 155). This way, Imperium highlights the dialectical dimensions of culture as well as of colonialism and thus calls for a postcolonial reading. The aim of this study is to work out that Kracht's novel Imperium by means of the fictionalization of the historical figure August Engelhardt offers a postcolonial perspective on the colonial as well as totalitarian ambitions of the Wilhelminian Era. This perspective is intensified through a critical view in sense of the cultural criticism that was developed by Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (2006). Doing so, the novel presents the inhuman dimensions of unilateral concepts in a remarkable way. After mapping out the theoretical foundation of the study in the context of Postcolonial German Studies and outlining of the interrelations of cultural criticism and postcolonial approaches, I will investigate the critical dimension of the novel with regard to the progress optimism as well to the German colonial expansion politics at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Thereby, I will concentrate on the ambivalent protagonist August Engelhardt and his strange philosophical ideas, which celebrate the coconut as a sacred fruit. Based on the regression of the protagonist, the subversions of the colonial discourse will be explored with respect to the arguments of Horkheimer and Adorno.

Steffen Kopetzkys im Jahre 2015 erschienener Roman "Risiko" kann in der Tat als ein historischer Abenteuerroman gesehen werden. Bei genauerer Betrachtung seines Erzählgegenstandes wird deutlich, dass der Roman eine am Anfang des Ersten Weltkriegs angesiedelte deutsche Expedition nach Afghanistan behandelt, bei der das Osmanische Reich ebenfalls mitgewirkt hat. Das Ziel der Deutschen bestand hierbei darin, die Muslime in dieser Region und vor allem in Indien zu einem Aufstand zu bewegen, um auf diese Weise eine Überlegenheit gegenüber den Briten zu begründen. Entlang der Thematisierung einer in Vergessenheit geratenen historischen Facette der deutschen Kolonialpolitik legt Kopetzkys Roman, so die These der vorliegenden Arbeit, unterschiedliche Facetten des deutschen Kolonialismus frei und bietet vor allem anhand der Darstellung dieser exzentrischen Expedition in den Orient eine dezidiert kritische Perspektive auf die kolonialen Machtdiskurse des Westens. Vor allem die kuriose Verfasstheit des erzählten Gegenstandes, den der Roman fiktional bearbeitet, stellt eine produktive Grundlage für einen Perspektivenwechsel im Sinne einer postkolonial orientierten Literaturwissenschaft dar. Nach einer kurzen Skizzierung der theoretisch-methodischen Grundannahmen der postkolonialen Literaturwissenschaft sowie der Erläuterung des Begriffs 'postkolonial' fokussiert die vorliegende Arbeit zunächst die Fiktionalisierung der Diskurse des Kolonialismus und Orientalismus und nimmt dabei auf die Ansätze von Edward W. Said, Homi K. Bhabha und Gayatri Ch. Spivak Bezug. Anschließend konzentriert sich die Arbeit auf die 'subalternen' bzw. postkolonialen Blicköffnungen, die mit der Darstellung der Niedermayer-Expedition verknüpft sind. ; Steffen Kopetzky's novel "Risiko" can definitely be considered as a historical novel. In further consideration, it becomes clear that this novel deals with a German expedition to Afghanistan at the beginning of the World War I, in which the Ottoman Empire was also involved. The goal of the Germans was to get people living in this region and, especially in India, to riot so that Germans would achieve a victory over the British. By focusing an important but forgotten facet of the German history, this novel uncovers diverse aspects of German Colonialism. At the same time, the novel offers a fictional presentation of an eccentric expedition into the Orient from a particularly critical perspective of the colonial power discourses of the West. The curious character of the content of the novel creates a productive basis for a perspective change in the sense of postcolonial literary studies. After a short outline of the basic assumptions of postcolonial literary studies and an explanation of the term 'postcolonial', the study will concentrate on the fictionalization of discourses of colonialism and orientalism. In doing so, the approaches of Edward W. Said, Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Ch. Spivak will constitute the theoretical framework of my argument. Subsequently, the study will examine the 'subaltern' and postcolonial aspects which are linked to the representation as well as the description of the Niedermayer-Expedition to Afghanistan.

Die auf die 1950er Jahre zurückreichende Arbeitsmigration nach Deutschland hat die gesellschaftliche Situation in Deutschland nachhaltig geprägt. Mittlerweile haben viele Menschen aus unterschiedlichen Ländern, die zunächst als 'Gastarbeiter' nach Deutschland migriert sind, in diesem Land ihr Zuhause gefunden. Diese durch 'Interkulturalität' geprägte Situation und Lebenswirklichkeit der deutschen Gesellschaft zieht auch große Herausforderungen mit sich, die nicht nur die Politik oder etwa Wirtschaft betreffen, sondern vor allem auch bildungspolitische Fragen aufwerfen. Ist Interkulturalität lehr- bzw. lernbar? Wie und wann aber können interkulturelle Kompetenzen effektiv vermittelt werden? Die Dissertation von Inga Pohlmeier, die unter dem Titel Deutsch-türkische Erzähltexte im interkulturellen Literaturunterricht. Zur Funktion und Vermittlung literaturästhetischer Mittel in der Reihe Beiträge zur Literatur- und Mediendidaktik im Peter Lang Verlag erschienen ist, setzt sich im Grunde mit diesen Fragen auseinander und versucht somit den Anforderungen der interkulturellen Lebenssituation am Beispiel des deutschen Literaturunterrichts nachzukommen. Dabei geht es der Autorin vorrangig um die Hervorhebung des ästhetisch-literarischen Wertes von deutsch-türkischer Literatur im Rahmen der interkulturellen Literaturdidaktik.