Matthias Kandziora, Dr.

Dr. Kandziora was a PhD student from 2016-2020 and a post-doc in 2020 at the DFG Research Training Group.

Abstract of the Research Project

Critical Literature of Modernism. From Goethe to Brecht

My project investigates the critical approach, which I observe in the literature of modern times and which realizes itself throughout the forms of the literary texts. Starting from the Critical Theory of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno I am going to read different authors whose works are also inscribed with a critical impetus. Often Benjamin and Adorno develop their theories through the analysis of literature and thereby connect these analyses with the construction of modernism. This is the reason why I use the term modernism in a broader sense and in order to capture the initiations of what can be called modernist style. Through the analyses of Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heine, Kafka, Th. Mann and Brecht I want to evoke a theory of critical writing. In this sense the project is interested in the research of modernism, of Critical Theory and of the interconnectedness of society, aesthetics and politics.

Abstract of the Dissertation 

Christa Wolf and Durs Grünbein. East German Selfs after 1989

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain there is a huge GDR-boom in contemporary German literature, which the numerous book prices for new East German voices and their writing testify for. Subsequent to this observation my project takes a closer look at two authors, whose work has been discussed in different intensity in the debate about Post-GDR-literature: Christa Wolf and Durs Grünbein.

Starting from the hypothesis that identity is an impossible approach my dissertation shows that instead of one identity there are compartmentalized processes of identification, which form theirselves throughout retrospections and drafts of futurity. Especially the two autodiegetic texts »City of Angels« (Wolf) and »The Years in the Zoo« (Grünbein), show processes of identification and engage in the question of remembrance of the lost and sunk GDR as well as reflect this state in the context of a new globalized world, which has evolved after 1989. In the ambivalence of remembering and of the confrontation with globalization Wolf and Grünbein both develop different East German identifications. The works of both authors assemble remarkable references to the literatur of modernism refering to a literary and historical experience of crises reframing their own crisic self in the light of the changes after 1989. The use of intertextuality shows an exceptionally high degree of self-theorization of both Wolf and Grünbein.

With this perspective my dissertation manly relies on the theories of Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno as well as Jacques Derrida and uses their studies to develop a general theory of identification, which understands identification as a failing attempt of the construction of ‘identity’.

The project attempts to get a broader view on the various forms of Post-GDR-literature by considering as well the works of Uwe Tellkamp (»The Tower«) and Jana Hensel (»Zone-Children«).

Post-GDR-literature is nonetheless a part of contemporary German literature, which constructs its singularity in this wide field using special subjects: the ‘lost’ state that was unified with another one as well as the social experiences of crisis that show continuing effects until the present. All this makes it possible to observe the process of identification and their whole effects and Wolf’s and Grünbein’s texts are therefore paradigmatic representatives of this style of writing.

Publications

Books

Christa Wolf und Durs Grünbein. Ostdeutsche Selbstbilder nach 1989 (=Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Bd. 161), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2021.

Contributions

„Der Phallus und der Drache. Psychoanalytische Dimensionen bei Game of Thrones“, in: Conrad, Maren (ed.): Moderne Märchen. Populäre Variationen in jugendkulturellen Literatur- und Medienformaten der Gegenwart, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2020, p. 41-68.

„Erinnerte Überwachung? Doppelte Überwachungsszenen in Christa Wolfs Stadt der Engel“, in: Schüller, Liane/Jung, Werner (eds.): Orwells Erben. Überwachungsnarrative, Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2019, p. 127-146.