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The commemorative publication "Didactica, Cultura, Lingua - Perspectives of German" is a collection of contributions dedicated to Ulrich Steinmüller on his 80th birthday. The first part of the commemorative publication honors Steinmüller's contribution to the development of German language teaching in China. The second part deals with various topics in the field of culture and language, such as the significance of debating in German as a foreign language instruction and the role of media in learning. The third part addresses linguistic topics, such as the acquisition of spatial expressions in children with German as a second language and vocabulary in narrative texts by students with German as a mother tongue, second language, and foreign language. The fourth part presents contributions from the academic junior sector. The commemorative publication is a significant contribution to German-Chinese scientific cooperation. [Extracted from the article]

The protection principle describes the logic by which the mental processing is determined when, beyond the pleasure principle, the unconscious dynamic is no longer dominated by conflicts but by trauma. Trauma damages and disrupts symbolic structures and inscribes itself into the body itself. The recall of this damage is manifested in a permanent disorganization of the body itself and is accompanied by a threat of annihilation, which the subject seeks to avert by petrification and a systematic blocking of the perception of the body (encapsulated body engram). The mental activity tries to protect itself from encounters with the memory of the trauma. Various defensive strategies have been described, as far as suicidal tendencies. Both the memory and also the protection against the threat of annihilation are physically constituted and form the physical unconscious beyond the symbolic unconscious. Typical forms of protection are described. The therapeutic technique of the somatic narration is explained based on a case example. The bodily perception of the patient is actively included and explored. The traumatic solitude is now relieved by the specific presence of the analyst. A nondestructive encounter with the traumatic material reduces the necessity for protection. It is possible to return from the protection principle to the pleasure principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tattoos have been detectable since early human history and in various cultures. They can be understood as a communication signal and indicate hidden and unconscious motive strands. They serve to cope with intense affects, impulses or stressful events. These are often either not sufficiently mentalised or first symbolised and then warded off by separating the body decoration and the underlying motifs and no longer involved in communication and reflection. While the tattoo can hardly be changed anymore, the attribution of meaning in the tattoo narratives can be modified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines a stele from the 2nd century AD, on which it is claimed that a woman named Julia became the goddess Hekate. The stele was discovered in Mesembria and contains figurative reliefs depicting Julia as a goddess. The authors argue that the stele, through its origin and certain narrative strategies, allowed for the belief in Julia's transformation into Hekate. However, the exact age indication of Julia on the stele is unclear. The stele is considered as evidence for the belief in immortality after death among the Thracians. [Extracted from the article]

The author argues that the implications from Freud’s discoveries in Beyond the Pleasure Principle have not yet been fully drawn in the theory of structural psychoanalysis, but especially not in treatment technique. With regard to the structure of the unconscious, the author proposes distinguishing the symbolic unconscious on this side of the pleasure principle from the bodily unconscious in which traumatic inscriptions disorganise the bodily self beyond symbolic structures. The concept of the encapsulated body engram is used to describe the dynamic structure of the bodily unconscious. Processes of disorganisation, petrification, sensory defence, and secondary self-stimulation are elaborated. The author proposes a method for confronting these inscriptions in the analytic process. The somatic narration method systematically examines the patient’s bodily sensations, reverses the defensive processes of the engram, and enables a reorganisation of the bodily self, which can then reconnect with symbolic structures. For this, a more active analytic stance is required that responds to the defensive processes used by the subject to ward off the threat of annihilation to which he or she was exposed in the traumatic inscription. A clinical vignette illustrates the method. The treatment controversy surrounding conventional treatment technique is elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present text is a book review of the work "Literary and Everyday Narration from a (Foreign) Language Didactic Perspective" by Renate Riedner and Simone Schiedermair. The book examines the significance of storytelling in German language teaching for foreign and second language speakers and develops didactic concepts to integrate everyday and literary storytelling into the classroom. The anthology "Narration" contains contributions on various aspects of storytelling, such as the use of poetic structures in creative writing in primary school, storytelling in welcome classes for teenagers, and the possibilities of interactive German learning at Egyptian universities. Other topics include the narration of refugee stories, the visual poetry of Ernst Jandl, and the importance of storytelling in language teaching. [Extracted from the article]

In order to determine narrative moments in comics, both from an analytical and a didactic perspective, the main focus is usually on its sequentiality. In doing so, it is easy to overlook the fact that the comic page itself is structured by its layout like a coherent picture. In this coherent pictoral unit the panels are designed and composed in a distinct way. This article delivers a poietic perspective on conventionalized ways of page design as well as the compositional knowledge and skills that go along with it. From this point of view further conclusions are drawn with regard to comics as a subject in art classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his comic Rückwärtsland (2021), Henning Wagenbreth uses the possibilities of literature and art to stop and reverse time. On the one hand, this calls into question existing (pictorial) conventions. On the other hand, the retrograde operations achieve an absurdly humorous effect on a linguistic and pictorial level. This article illustrates on which narrative techniques the illustrator calls in order to discuss philosophical questions about existing causal relation. Furthermore, impulses for didactic follow-up actions are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses empirical data to show how a discursive engagement with the literary-aesthetic medium of comics can stimulate learning processes. By approaching the narration as well as the design of the comic through communication and interaction, the students’ personal view of the interdependence of word and image is sensitised. This article discusses how such an interactional approach can be successfully supported by teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernard's of Clairvaux Vita Prima offers various situations of social, physical, and ascetic withdrawal through different stages of life. In this article, such scenes of separation and contemplation are progressively traced in order to allow a specific analysis of solitude as monastic ideal. Within the narration, it becomes apparent that the unusual course of Bernhard's life is harmonized with spiritual values, whereby solitude occupies a central position. From his parental socialization to his later position on the stage of contemporary church politics, the vita strives to maintain the outer and inner withdrawal as a central component of Bernhard's life and his sanctity. An imperative of self-care stems from concrete actions and behaviors, which is sustained by the genre-typical stylization of the unachievable. Because of this function, it becomes evident that the hagiographic work can be read as a mirror of contemporary interpretations of spiritual solitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines a stele from the 2nd century AD, on which it is claimed that a woman named Julia became the goddess Hekate. The stele was discovered in Mesembria and contains figurative reliefs depicting Julia as a goddess. The authors argue that the stele, through its origin and narrative strategies, allowed for the belief in Julia's transformation into a goddess. The stele is considered as evidence for the belief in immortality after death among the Thracians. The use of the concept of "affordance" allows for understanding the specific narrative strategies through which the story of Julia/Hekate became real for the viewers. [Extracted from the article]

This preface to the special theme section “Historical narration in pre-modern Japan” addresses the terminological ambiguity of the expression “historical narrative” and its varying implications in the framework of literary studies. The individual papers approach the topic in a philological manner from different angles, i.e., from literary, historical, linguistic, and buddhological points of view. This preface introduces all the essays in this theme section and outlines their commonalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents methods for a systematic analysis of the emotive mechanisms of narrations. Thus, important premises such as the questions that should be asked when dealing with emotions in narrative texts are pointed out. All layers of emotional processes have to be distinguished carefully. For example, we have to differentiate between explicitly addressed emotions and those that are to be evoked in the readers. For the analysis of the latter, first the process of emotional text reception will be discussed. Thereafter, practical methods of narratology to examine texts more closely will be introduced. Every aspect will be illustrated by the Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14,15--24). The paper closes with a short outlook on the work with children and adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrative abilites are decisive concerning participation in social and professional contexts. This review summarizes background and typical development of narration in German-speaking children. The authors describe interdependencies between narration and different language areas. As morpho-syntactic complexity affects microstructure in narratives, the connection between narration and productive grammar is considered in detail. Narrative deficits frequently occur in children with language impairment and need to be perceived at (pre-)school age. Untreated difficulties persist into adulthood and might hamper professional development. Communication at text level is relevant for participation (ICF) and should be included into language therapy. Therefore, a close consultation of parents and teachers is necessary. A child's narrative abilities as well as morpho-syntactic performance should be considered in both diagnostics and therapy planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article pursues the question of to what extent narration as a universal and intermedial process (cf. Wolf 2002, S. 23 ff.) also touches on narrative forms in drawing for children and young people and what specific concepts are present here. To this end, findings from the reference discipline of literary studies are drawn on and the concept of narrativity subjected to a particular inspection. A distinction is to be drawn within the concept with respect to the “work-side narreme" and to the “recipient-side narrativisation". For this purpose, selected case studies from children and youth drawing are investigated according to certain indicators of the narrative. In the described multimedia system, the concept proves to be not only unqualifiedly motivating, but also meaningful for human thinking and negotiation of the world. At the same time, the drawing is a probative resource not only for initiating narratively imaginative action, but also for illustrating and deepening accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The picture book is currently under frequent debate in elementary and primary didactic discussion and its didactic potential is being empirically explored. As Preußer (2015) documented in her research report, a great challenge lies in the medium's hybridity. Despite the palpable convergence and co-operations between representatives of German and art didactics, until now there seems to be only partial success in formulating an autonomous picture book didactic. The model of transversality (Valsangiacomo et al. 2014) could offer a practicable path towards picture book didactics. What didactic added value is offered by transversal approaches to the picture book, which can only be arrived at in this way? The intention in the article is to select by way of an example, with the focus on image reception, an art-didactic perspective that aims to render a contribution to the development of children's pictorial literacy, and a German-didactic perspective that focuses on the development of literacy. The intention thereby is to render commonalities, differences and transitions of the two subject-specific approaches visible and tangible. The research hypothesis at the same time is that transversal aesthetic approaches to picture books make use of discipline-specific image reception targets and can lead to a deeper understanding of a hybrid medium. This is understood as an irreplaceable basis of access to understanding visual narratives and one's own composition of the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Giovanni Manzini della Motta (c. 1362-before 1422) is now considered an important exponent of early Italian humanism. This judgement is based on three considerations: first, he profoundly venerated Petrarch, second he was in contact with famous scholars like Antonio Loschi and Coluccio Salutati, and finally he composed a tragedy based on ancient models. By contrast, his work as a historiographer has hitherto been little studied. A manuscript in the Vatican Apostolic Library (BAV, Vat. Lat. 14162), mainly written in his own hand, allows us to follow Manzini's development from writer to author of historiographical narratives and to trace his idea of tragic historiography, influenced particularly by Boccaccio among others. This article describes the contents of the Vatican manuscript, investigates the sources of the chronicle it contains compiled by Manzini, and provides a critical edition of the final part of this chronicle covering events contemporary with its composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stifter's 'Erzählungen' belong to a metaphysically oriented tradition of narration which does not share the modern notion of aesthetic autonomy. Instead art has a moral duty to scrutinise the human heart and to console it in its limitations. With reference to the story Abdias, this essay examines Stifter's narrative techniques of moral explication, exemplification and inculcation, which grant his short stories a strong moral sense. The essay shows how Stifter intimately connected art with the purpose of moral education and sensual pleasure. In this aim, Stifter is not modern. He is, however, modern in the way his stories emphasise subjective perspective and a form of insight only to be achieved through art. That is why his stories belong to a specific type of metaphysical and moral narration within modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The article analyses the use of three different modes of writing ('Schreibweisen') by Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807). It is argued that at the beginning of her literary career La Roche wrote in a comic-parodistic style, while moral-didactic and hybrid writing are typical characteristics of her entire œuvre. La Roche's use of moral-didactic and hybrid modes needs to be seen as one of the reasons for the growing marginalisation of the author at the end of the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is dedicated to aspects of a successful identity of executives in their last few years before retirement in a changing organisation. It examines the practices which contribute to satisfy the human needs at work or those which rather lead to the suffering short before retirement in re-organisational processes. First precedence will be given to the conceptual considerations, and a methodological frame for a qualitative discussion of a case study will be set. In the main part, the example of an executive in a changing organisation will be introduced. Accompanied by a research project stretching over several years, exemplary stages of experience taken from interviews can be demonstrated and discussed with the consequences of work experience on identity in mind. A summary leads to recommendations for organisational practices for management as well as each executive individually. Additionally theoretical considerations, conducted with respect to the example, round up this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a conference on the representation of early modern history in video games, held in Düsseldorf, Germany, from March 15-17, 2013. Topics of discussion included the "Civilization" series of video games, historical narrative and story-telling in video games, and the representation of early modern architecture and early modern urban planning in such games.

The article reports on a conference on the effect of the Internet on reading and writing, held in Gießen, Germany, from June 28-30, 2012. Topics of discussion included electronic scholarly communication, conspiracy theories about historical events available online, and the effect of electronic books and electronic publishing on narrative strategies in fiction and nonfiction writing.

The article reports on a conference on the challenges of the historical and narrative representation of the Holocaust, held from June 9-11, 2011, in Jena, Germany. The conference consisted of two panels that discussed the books "Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination" by Saul Friedländer and "Ordinary Men" and "Remembering Survival" by Christopher Browning. It also featured a panel discussion about the historiography of the Holocaust and 20th-century history more broadly.

This essay explores the various meanings and connotations of the term 'vorführen' in order to highlight a particular movement in Kleist's narrative technique (and one which, I argue, represents a 'post-metaphysical' stance in his œuvre). In Kleist's prose fiction in particular, this term encapsulates a multitude of complex tensions that arise when plot devices, individual figures, or the narrator (willingly or often unwillingly, knowingly or often unknowingly) tackle sets of metaphysical assumptions, seemingly consensual presuppositions, and presumed ideological certainties. Kleist's protagonists demonstrate a particular metaphysical system, act it out, exhibit it, but at the same time sport it, summon it, set it up, and expose it. The result invariably is that narrator, hero, and reader alike get caught in their own strategies and - though often unnoticed by both hero and narrator, and barely noticed by the reader - end up as the ones exposed, set up, fooled, undermined, and 'vorgeführt'. This narrative performance ('Vorführung') is demonstrated on the basis of a close reading of individual scenes, dialogues, monologues, figurations, descriptions, and narrative (auctorial) comments from a range of texts, including Das Erdbeben in Chili and Der Zweikampf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By surveying the European history of narrative research on the one hand, and the history of collecting oral ethno-texts on the other, this paper presents different theoretical concepts reflecting the individual and collective shares in production and transmission. The discovery of the author in the narrator (and of the narrator in the author), and the distinction between plot, story, and discourse or between narrative structure and its phenomenological realization in the act of storytelling, allows us to determine the individual achievement of the narrator, who is also an author. What status has been accorded to this achievement since the twentieth century? Does it establish the narrator's literary ownership of his narrated text? And what are the roles of the researcher recording the text on tape and transcribing it, or of the editor who publishes the text in an anthology? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not language but speech that is claimed as the subject matter of psychology. Psychoanalysis represents the most important projects to investigate speech. In this paper, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan is given priority. He explicitly incorporated the social sphere into psychoanalysis by ways of putting the speaking subject in the center of social theory reflexions. Lacan's discourse in this article becomes the discourse of the media and as such represents the post-democracy and the unfolding of the discourse of power. As such, subjectification becomes understandable as defrayment of the paroles of the discourse of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the importance of certain stylistic aspects while translating the German tense “episches Präteritum” into Romanian. The translation criticism is carried out on Süskind’s novel “The Perfume”. The paper focuses on the difficulties on rendering the same stylistic values of the epic narration into Romanian. The difficulties arise, because in German there is only one single tense for narration, the so called epic past tense, while in Romanian the translator has three choices – the tenses “perfect compus”, “perfect simplu” and “imperfect”. Which choice is to be considered adequate is to be discussed on the basis of several theoretical points of view appropriate to the field of translation criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The numerous intertextual references between Vertigo and the work of Kafka are part of a process of poetic self-confirmation; for Sebald the rejection of the traditional gestus of realistic narration is fundamental. The "Kafkaisation" of Sebald's biography could be understood as an attempt to integrate a version of his life with events that are very distant to it into a particular order of literary formation. Kafka's work presents Sebald with building blocks that allow him to create in his own work a dense texture of motifs and symbols in which one picture, time and again, becomes the focus of the narration: the heightened, often overstimulated perception of the homeless, migrant poet. But Kafka's story of "Gracchus the Hunter" is also being transformed and its narrative continued - albeit on the basis of the co-ordinates prescribed by Kafka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sebald's literary-critical works are framed by two studies in which Sebald, whose technique of literary description and narration is characterised by great sensibility and intertextual refinement, attacked two authors with polemical fury, namely Carl Sternheim and Alfred Andersch, who he 'finished off' as blind producers of ideology and as non-writers. The two authors dealt with by Sebald in his studies - Carl Sternheim. Critic and Victim of the Wilhelminian Era (1969) and The Author Alfred Andersch, (1993) - are at the centre of this essay that tries to give answers to two questions: Which concept of literature does Sebald argue here, ex negativo? And: Is there a possible inner connection between Sebald's own literary texts and his literary polemics? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking for his individual history the protagonist of Sebald's Austerlitz passes through various areas of cultures and memories. This gives the narrative the structure of a topo-logic in the literal meaning of the word. The narrator's and protagonist's act of remembering is evoked by historical monuments, oral and written narrations and visual presentation. The visual segments of the text in particular trigger an interactive reaction in the reader. Thus, Sebald shows the close correspondence between psychological processes and the transformation of immediate perception by photography and film. The crucial point is that Sebald's text presents violence not only as historical fact but also as an effect of different media. The only escape from this order of things can be found in the production of imaginary worlds: Sebald's text confronts the order of suppression with the strategies of poetic subversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

W.G. Sebald's private library, which is held in part in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, contains a copy of Walter Benjamin's Illuminationen. This essay seeks to establish a theoretical framework for Sebald's narrative technique by investigating his annotations in the closing essay of the book, "The Narrator". With the help of his underlinings and marginalia, Sebald's own narrative structures can be interpreted as a means of depicting "natural history", as an aesthetic response to a philosophical concept. Two principles can be derived from this perspective: the strategy of "interlocking layers" (Einschachteln), and the strategy of montage. It is the dialectic between these two principles that drives Sebald's prose style. The tension in his work between fact and fiction derives ultimately from an uneasy relationship between his artfully constructed prose-style on the one hand and its quasi-documentary realism on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instead of tracing intertextual references in Bernhard's œuvre, this essay reads his inventories as "corpora"—"ectopic" entities—that disrupt conventional systems of narration and orders of knowledge. Taking into account the persistent materiality of writing, the essay identifies the narrator of Amras as a "floating organ," a textual (out)growth that traces the corporeal topography of Bernhard's narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wolf Haas's crime novels have been praised for their immersion into local contexts, moods, and sounds. Less attention has been paid to the fact that Haas's talkative narrator constitutes an interesting experiment with two distinctive types of narration: the I-narrator is mildly unreliable, but ventures at the same time into the domain of an ironic and rhetorically masked version of omniscient narration and metanarrativity. A close reading of selected passages illustrates how suspense and stylistic innovation can be achieved through unsuspected means, namely through substitutionary perception, second-person address, and strategic frame-breaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

W.G. Sebald's 1997 lectures,Luftkrieg und Literatur, sparked intense debate in the German media over the supposed taboo surrounding the literary depiction of German civilian victims of Allied attacks and the potential blurring of the already problematic‘Täter’/‘Opfer’ complex. On its publication, Grass's most recent workIm Krebsgangeither fuelled or became embroiled in this dispute and became front- page news. It is contended that such a media frenzy led to literary reviews at the time ignoring the aesthetic merits and failures of the novella and thus overlooking the complexities of its narratological structure, giving rise to over-simplistic interpretations of Grass's contribution to the‘Täter’/‘Opfer’ debate. The following article attempts to redress the journalistic imbalance by undertaking a detailed analysis of the various narrative strategies employed within the work and relating this to the generational and familial framework with which Grass addresses the issue of German suffering. This serves to illuminate further the topic of memory and memorialising the past which lies at the heart of Sebald's essay and of Grass's novella. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the photographic negotiations in German author Thomas Bernhard's novel "Auslöschung." Bernhard had a huge fascination with photography which reflects through his exceptional collection of photographs showcasing various stages of his life. The photographs of Bernhard, however, have a certain anxiety surrounding them. Auslöschung too contains extensive meditations on photography. The author in this article contends that the contexts within which photographs are taken and viewed are central to their meaning. The photographs discussed in the book play a central thematic and structural role in the telling of a family history.

The article analyzes and criticizes the narrative techniques used by German author Christa Wolf in her book "Kein Ort. Nirgends." Political influences on her writing due to her experiences under the Socialist government of East Germany are examined, as is the relationship between Wolf and Romantic writers including Bettina von Arnim and Karoline von Günderrode.