▼ In this thesis, I aim to show through a close analysis of three canonical works—Novalis’ blonde Eckbert, and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, all found in the epoch of German Romanticism—that one of the major themes within this period is the idea of rethinking what it means to be human. Furthermore, I will show that there exists a common thread between the Romantic period of German literature and the developing philosophy of Posthumanism through the fact that both genres rethink the definition of what it means to be human. The anthropocentric view of Humanism —the definition of which is developed further in the thesis —was questioned by the many of the German Romantics and is presently being investigated by Posthumanists. Novalis, I argue, believed that humanity needed to return to a state of unity with nature, because it was through nature that man was able become his best. Novalis, much like the Pro-nature Humanist (a form of Posthumanism) understand that nature was not a force to be subdued but one to be worked with. Through this, humanity would realize their position outside the center of the world and be able to live in unity and equality with the organic universe. Like Novalis, Ludwig Tieck wrote on forces outside the realm of man’s power. He struggled most with the idea of the supernatural and its impact on man’s life, believing that it was a real and powerful force that had the ability to alter the way one lived his or her life. This idea is further developed through the eyes of a Posthumanist, who sees the supernatural, or irrational, as an influential force in the daily life of a 21st century human being. Similar to Tieck’s perspective, which was not necessarily fully positive or completely negative, Posthumanists do not have a strong stance towards one side or another. They, I argue, settle in the middle with the understanding that the supernatural can be beneficial if the human being is able to accept and walk in agreement with it. However, Posthumanists do differ from one Romantic author although they write and work through the same issues within the scientific world: robots. E.T.A Hoffmann’s work Der Sandmann, is a negative critique on the possible future of the scientific developments that were happening during the 19th century. Hoffmann believed that if humanity continued to toy with science they would create an image of themselves that would cause their future destruction, in this case Olimpia the robot, while Posthumanists see the positive in the development of science and its capabilities. In conclusion, it is possible to see the threads that run between German Romanticism and Posthumanism through these three works as both generations rethink the human being in relation to the world around them. Many of the exact same questions were asked in the 19th century are being asked in the 21st Century, and they will continue to be asked in upcoming generations as humanity progresses. Advisors/Committee Members: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara.

▼ From the man who wakes up one morning transformed into a bug, to the man arrested in his bedroom by a shadowy, extra-legal police force despite, seemingly, having done nothing wrong, the author Franz Kafka has put his protagonists into some of the most identifiable and bizarre predicaments of twentieth century literature. It is no surprise then that many notable directors have undertaken the challenge of translating the tales of these protagonists onto film. Themselves possessed of inspired and unique minds themselves, it should also come as no surprise that these filmmakers each take a distinctly individual approach to the source material, often with an agenda markedly different from Kafka’s own, and, by extension, produce final products that differ greatly both from each other and from the source material. The goal of this thesis is to provide case studies of three such adaptations of Franz Kafka’s work: Orson Welles’s The Trial (1962), adapted from the novel Der Prozeß; Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s Klassenverhältnisse (1984), adapted from the incomplete novel Der Verschollene; and Michael Haneke’s Das Schloß (1997), adapted from the novel of the same name. These case studies will explore the problems inherent in adapting literature to film in general, and more specifically, present an analysis of those elements of the original texts which the filmmakers in question retain in their respective adaptations as well as those they eschew and the rationales behind these decisions. Advisors/Committee Members: Herzog, Harold.

▼ The concern of this thesis is a discussion of the way German-Jewish identity manifests itself in two literary texts before and after 1933. Using the examples of Sammy Gronemann’s novel Tohuwabohu and Martin Beradt’s Die Straße der kleinen Ewigkeit, it offers a textual analysis of two works which share close connections in terms of subject matter, style, and their respective authors’ background, but are historically divided by the fundamental experience of the rise of National Socialism in Germany. I argue that space is a crucial factor through which identity is constituted in each text, both of which use and partially subvert the romanticized image of the Eastern European shtetl brought to Germany by authors such as Arnold Zweig in the aftermath of World War I. Space in this context always has a twofold quality to it. It functions as a space of identity, but also as a space of identification through which a group of people label others as either belonging or not belonging to a specific space. Furthermore, both texts reject monolithic definitions of Jewish identity, emphasizing instead the diversity of Jewish life in Europe before the Rise of National Socialism. Advisors/Committee Members: Gerstenberger, Katharina.

▼ In this thesis I will examine Angela Krauß' post-Wende prose literature to show how she deals with fragmentation stylistically and thematically, ultimately leaving her narrator and the reader with a desire for balance. Stylistically, Krauß' work can be described as postmodern, but thematically it is more informed by early Romantic and specifically the philosophy of Novalis. Both the postmodern and Romantic writer embraces fragmentation in theory and artistic output, but with differing perspectives and ultimate goals. The postmodernist revels in the chaos of fragmentation as a sign of unavoidable diversity and the lack of utopian harmony. The Romantic, particularly one in a Novalisian tradition, can use it to express yearning for unity and the real possibility of transcendence. Krauß shows her Romantic take on the issue by creating a narrator with an identity profoundly affected by the fragmented nature of the post-Wende and postmodern culture in which she lives. She is in a perpetual state of searching for balance, first between East and West and then, as the immediate tension of the Wende fades, within herself and in love with other people. Though fleeting, the narrator's moments of transcendence over fragmentation are presented in earnest as escape from postmodern culture. The primary texts that I have chosen—Die Überfliegerin (1995), Weggeküßt (2002), and Wie Weiter (2006)— write into each other. The texts trace a linear development from the sudden, peaceful, yet earth shattering moments surrounding the fall of the wall, to the identity issues that came with Westernization, and finally to finding a balanced identity in the 21st century. As these texts unfold, so does the scope widen. In Die Überfliegerin, Krauß is in the midst of the Wende and the East / West dynamic is a driving force behind action and travel between the two recently brought together hemispheres. The narrator goes on a journey that is decidedly informed by the German Romantic. Weggeküßt takes several steps forward in time and takes place about twelve years after the Wende. The narrator takes a more passive, reflective approach in an examination of herself in westernized Leipzig. She must reconnect to her surroundings by finding balance between her own Romantic tendencies and the postmodern culture of the 21st century. Wie Weiter takes place in the narrator's Leipzig apartment, which she never leaves during the main plot, but rather spends two quiet hours thinking about the past, present, and future. The narrator's memories of growing up in the GDR are centered on themes of love and finding oneness in a relationship with others. Angela Krauß is not championing a conservative movement by allowing her Romantic narrator to live in the present, postmodern culture, but rather taking a more nuanced progressive stance. To some degree, she questions the severity of postmodern culture and asks us to question how much it has infiltrated the imaginations of the people and, further, which of those aspects are worth combating. Advisors/Committee Members: Gerstenberger, Katharina.

▼ Shortly before his death in 2001, W.G. Sebald made what amounts to a mission statement for his literary endeavors under the title “Ein Versuch der Restitution” (An Attempt at Restitution). In this brief address, Sebald maintains that his work can be seen as an attempt to make amends for a history of catastrophe. I argue in this dissertation that Sebald’s self-appointed and self-proclaimed mission of mending history’s tragedies corresponds to a view of the modern world as broken and needing redemption that Sebald adopted as he read Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment). Sebald came to see the modern world as broken by instrumental reason and in need of redemption. He rejected, however, the strategies others had adopted to realize a better world. Sebald remained estranged from organized religion, eschewed the kinds of political engagement adopted by his contemporaries, and ultimately even refused Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s own solution, the application of supposedly ‘healthy’ reason to counteract instrumental reason. What was left to him was the creation of an idiosyncratic “literature of restitution” which relied on willed association rather than on the discovery of causal relationships to structure the episodic narratives he collected and to reclaim individual histories from the anonymity of a history of calamity. This vision of a redemptive function for literature grew out of one of his early academic fascinations: the German-Jewish messianic discourse, particularly as it found expression in the work of Ernst Bloch, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem and Franz Kafka. I will argue that Sebald’s concept of the messiah, developed in his scholarly pursuits, played itself out in his imaginative literature as the adopting of a melancholic register. The paradoxical sensibility of hopeful despondency characterized a number of German-Jewish thinkers in the first quarter of the 20th century, all of whom informed, to one degree or another, Sebald’s understanding of what constituted an ethical response to the disasters of human history. Sebald’s goal in invoking this melancholia is to point toward a need for an as-yet impossible solution to ongoing human crimes (both against other humans and nature). The Hebrew term Tikkun—roughly translated as “mending the world”—to which Sebald refers in his early writing, represents the mission of the messiah; but this mission, rooted in the ancient world, is no longer as clear-cut and plausible in the wake of modernity and the seeming irrelevance of metaphysics. Melancholia is then both a signpost pointing to the need for redemption as well as a dirge born of the recognition that redemption has never seemed so unattainable. Advisors/Committee Members: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara.

▼ In my dissertation "Atomic Apocalypse – 'Nuclear Fiction' in German Literature and Culture," I investigate the portrayal of the nuclear age and its most dreaded fantasy, the nuclear apocalypse, in German fictionalizations and cultural writings. My selection contains texts of disparate natures and provenance: about fifty plays, novels, audio plays, treatises, narratives, films from 1946 to 2009. I regard these texts as a genre of their own and attempt a description of the various elements that tie them together. The fascination with the end of the world that high and popular culture have developed after 9/11 partially originated from the tradition of nuclear fiction since 1945. The Cold War has produced strong and lasting apocalyptic images in German culture that reject the traditional biblical apocalypse and that draw up a new worldview. In particular, German nuclear fiction sees the atomic apocalypse as another step towards the technical facilitation of genocide, preceded by the Jewish Holocaust with its gas chambers and ovens. This study is primarily a literary one. However, I place the discussion in the vast cultural framework in which the texts of German nuclear fiction were embedded: science, history, philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies. I draw on various secondary sources from a plethora of disciplines to shed light on the nuclear age in German literature and culture. The study is divided into three chapters that analyze the following aspects: the philosophical question of the ultimate evil of the nuclear disaster in an all-encompassing war, traditional apocalyptic imagery versus the modern science-aided apocalypse, the employment of nuclear science in literary accounts and how it is absorbed by fiction, the dynamics of miscommunication and risk communication and why that inevitably sucks fictional characters into the maelstrom of disaster. Finally, the depiction of nuclear war in fiction is in opposition to traditional war literature, turning the three-dimensional world of Euclidean geometry upside down and bestowing new meaning on the term "total war." An outlook on the future of nuclear fiction concludes this study, trying to show how the tenets of the Cold War and its apocalyptic culture have informed German writings and culture in the new millennium. Even though this study focuses on German literature, the themes of German nuclear fiction appeal to a global readership. Advisors/Committee Members: Friedrichsmeyer, Sara.

▼ Jules Massenet re-imagined Goethe’s novella Die Leiden des jungen Werthers as an opera. The audience gains great psychological intimacy with Goethe’s Werther because of the Briefroman format, while the audience of Massenet’s work is forced into the third person. This results in a fundamental change in how the audience relates to the two Werthers. This project strives to understand th relationship between the two works, and to demonstrate how both the media shift and the different movements affect the narrative. Advisors/Committee Members: Gerstenberger, Katharina.