The Group "Das jüngste Elsaß" - Border Literatures and their European Openings
Final Report Abstract
The texts of the eight writers Otto Flake, Salomon Grumbach, Bernd Isemann, Hans Koch, René Prévôt, René Schickele, Ernst Stadler and Hermann Wendel, who founded the group „Das jüngste Elsaß“ in Strasbourg in 1901, can be read in their main features as a literature of the border, for which Alsace, the problem of the border between France and Germany and the question of identity formed the writing reason from its beginnings until the 1960s. Under the sign of a supranational ideal, called ‚intellectual Alsatianism‘ before 1914 and ‚balancing Europeanism‘ after 1918, this literature was committed above all to a Franco-German confederation and a united Europe. In both cases, the group attributed to Alsace a central role as a mediator, for which it was virtually predestined due to its cultural complexity, which resulted historically from the border situation and the national non-identity that was associated with it – and, according to the ideal, that pointed to the future. The way in which the texts problematised identity at borders, uncovered hierarchies and the drawing of borders, and attempted to rewrite a geopolitical disadvantage into a cultural advantage, shows them to be an exemplary paradigm of supranational European literature, which provides important insights for the study of border experiences and living at borders, of the creation, interpretation and relativisation of borders in permanently changing political contexts – not least in contexts of war. The selected literature can be described as avant-garde not only in the field of Alsatian literature: The discussions led by numerous intellectuals in the 1920s about a Franco-German reconciliation as a prerequisite for a united Europe were already being conducted by these writers a decade before the First World War, just as they were already thinking about Europe as a way out of national limitations before 1914. To this intellectual lead came along a bordersensitised view of asymmetries: If Alsace seemed to them to be a country colonised by Prussia, they could – in contrast to most contemporary conceptions of Europe – also perceive Europe as a colonising power. For this literature, Europe was merely a step on the way to a postnational world in which the colonised ‚Other‘ of Europe, to which it juxtaposed Alsace as a comparison, enters the arena of history.
Publications
-
‘You do not become a European by choice but by necessity’: The Alsace border region and its opening up to Europe in the writings of Otto Flake, René Schickele and Hermann Wendel. Journal of European Studies, 51(3-4), 252-261.
Luckscheiter, Christian
-
,,eine Brücke, ein Band zwischen den Völkern“. : Hermann Wendels Vortrag ,,Der Rhein. Deutschlands oder Europas Strom?“ von 1927 und seine (,jüngst-elsässischen‘) Kontexte. Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 33(3), 524-542.
Luckscheiter, Christian
