Gegenwartsliteratur als Provokation der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung.

During the institutional consolidation of German literary studies at the end of the 19th century, contemporary literature slowly emerged as a field of academic study, and challenged the traditional separation between academic scholars and literary critics. This challenge was astutely perceived and commented on at the time, engendering a set of theoretical and methodological reflections on the possibility of treating contemporary literature in a discipline whose traditional operations were historical. This paper focuses on the critical account of the inclusion of contemporary literature into literary historiography given by the editor, writer, and literary critic Rudolf von Gottschall; in particular his account of the work of Berthold Litzmann - a professor at the University of Bonn, and early advocate for the integration of contemporary literature into academic curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]