«Studi Germanici», 27 (2025)

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• Frontespizio e indice, pp. 1-6

Saggi

• Hannah Arendts Lachen. Versuch über die Sprachlosigkeit, pp. 9-32
  Nikolaus Müller-Schöll
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.01

  Hannah Arendt’s Laughter: An Essay on Speechlessness
  Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem draws on references to theatre and farce to articulate a theory of the comic as a paradigm of the experience of modernity. This theory challenges her own explicit, Aristotelian concept of theatre as tragedy, as well as her theories of public speech and politics. The much-criticized tone of Arendt’s book reflects her view of the Shoah as shattering the foundational axioms of Western thought. Her laughter – understood not as «powerful, liberating» (K. Jaspers), but as an expressionless expression of speechlessness, worldlessness and the chaos of articulation – can be read as a paradoxical attempt to give voice to the speechless horror in the face of radical evil. In Arendt’s view, the Eichmann trial was neither the emergnce of victim history (Sh. Felman), nor a retrospective founding myth of the state ex post facto in the sense of Carl Schmitt (H. Blumenberg), but rather the revelation of the absence of an international court capable of standing up for the most universal human right: the right to have rights, in the face of a «crime against humanity […] committed against the Jewish people».

• Thomas Mann e la reidentificazione creativa, pp. 33-49
  Antonio Alberto Semi
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.02
  

  Thomas Mann and the Creative Reindentification
  The author argues that the character of Clemens in The Holy Sinner by Thomas Mann represents – at least in part – a subtly ironic outcome of a process of empathetic engagement, identification and disidentification between Mann and James Joyce. This outcome is described as a form of ‘creative reidentification’, which may serve as a liberating mode of thought accessible to every human being.

• L’idea di corpo nella cultura tedesca: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, pp. 51-93
  Roberto Finelli
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.03
  
  The Idea of the Body in German Culture: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
  This essay links ‘epochal’ authors of modern German thought, such as Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, via a concise, schematic exegesis of their respective theoriesof the body and its capacities. The author argues that Marx exhibits a significant anthropological deficit: his thought lacks any appreciation of the body as a means of enriching and mediating the Marxist tradition’s absolute values – equality and ‘the common good’ – and the value of individuality, of that which cannot be reduced to what is shared in human beings. Nietzsche, on the other hand, radically expands the concept of the body. The whole of reality is basically reduced to bodily ontology: a vitalist philosophy in which the perpetual struggle between active and passive forces dissolves any fixed variance in human experience, thus opening the door to postmodern deconstruction, particularly in the Deleuzian sense. Only in Freud does the ‘dual’ nature of the human being – as both a biological animal and a historical-social subject –find its adequate expression.

Ricerche

• Il linguaggio inclusivo di genere nella comunicazione universitaria: un’analisi linguistica delle linee guida di atenei svizzeri e austriaci, pp. 97-125
  Ramona Pellegrino
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.04
  

  Gender-Inclusive Language in University Communication: A Linguistic Analysis of Guidelines from Swiss and Austrian Universities
  Gender-inclusive language can be implemented through various strategies: some aim to make gender visible – for instance, through splitting, which reflects the male-female binary, or through the use of so-called Genderzeichen (gender signs), which aim to include all genders. Others pursue gender neutralization, employing epicene or collective nouns. This study examines gender-inclusive language in university communication in Switzerland and Austria by analysing a corpus of 59 guidelines issued by 20 Swiss and 39 Austrian universities. The paper addresses the following questions: do guidelines favour gender explicitation or neutralization? What are the main strategies recommended for both types? The article also compares the guidelines developed by the Federal Chancellery of Switzerland and Austria, so as to highlight the specific features of gender-inclusive language in academic contexts.

• «Frena la locomotiva d’Europa»: il ‘linguaggio della ferrovia’ per raccontare la crisi economica tedesca. Analisi linguistica sul corpus LocoMIN, pp. 127-155
  Gloria Comandini
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.05
  

  «The locomotive is slowing down»: using the ‘railway language’ to recount the German economic crisis. Linguistic analysis on the LocoMIN corpus
  This work aims to explore the use of ‘railway language’ – a figurative language centred on the imagery and narratives of trains – in a specific context: Italian journalistic representations of German economic crises. The study is based on empirical data gathered from the LocoMIN (Locomotive as Metaphor in Italian Newspapers) corpus, a manually compiled database of Italian newspaper articles spanning three time periods (1985-1986, 1995-1996 and 2021-2023). Each text was annotated across four dimensions: polarity (positive, negative or neutral), target, comparison and macro-theme. The results of the annotation show that Italian journalism tends to employ railway metaphors in referring to Germany primarily during periods of economic crisis, emphasizing the decline of the so-called ‘locomotive of Europe’, especially in recent years.

• Considerazioni tipologiche e diacroniche sull’uso e la morfologia del tempo e del modo nel cimbro settecomunigiano, pp. 157-181
  Luca Panieri
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.06
  

  Typological and diachronic considerations on the use and morphology of tense and mood in the Cimbrian of the Asiago Plateau
  The Cimbrian dialect of the Asiago Plateau is a Germanic language that exhibits surprising archaic features, especially at the morphophonological and lexical levels, which attest to its close ties with medieval German. However, a typological and diachronic analysis of its tense and mood usage and morphology reveals a mixture of conservatism and innovation in Cimbrian. The innovative traits, also shared by German, especially Bavarian, can be summarized as follows: the absence of tense agreement between subordinate and main clauses; the replacement of the Präteritum by the Perfekt; a conditional morphology similar to Bavarian’s Konjunktiv 2. Instead, the conservative features, which contrast with current German, is include the following: the association of the subjunctive with the semantic-logical feature [+ potential]; the widespread use of original synthetic conditional forms (< Germanic preterite subjunctive), that have not been replaced by periphrasis (cf. German würde + inf.).

• «Ma se un uomo adesso può con un solo gesto…»: giustizia, perdono e rivolta nel Michael Kohlhaas di Kleist e nel Kohlhaas di Baliani, pp. 183-214
  Beatrice Occhini
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.07

  «But if a man now can with a single act…»: Justice, Forgiveness, and Rebellion in Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas and Baliani’s Kohlhaas
  Marco Baliani’s Kohlhaas (1989), the play that represents one of the earliest and most influential examples of Italian «teatro di narrazione» (narrative theatre), shares with its source of inspiration, Heinrich von Kleist’s masterpiece Michael Kohlhaas (1811), the central and unresolved conflict between the protagonist’s pursuit of justice and the ethical limits of individual action. Baliani sets this theme against the political and social backdrop of late 1980s Italy – a country deeply affected by corruption scandals like Tangentopoli – while the main character embodies the turbulent era of far-left terrorism. As Baliani states, it was a time when «in the name of a higher ideal of social justice, streets and cities were drenched in blood». This study, based mainly on a comparative textual analysis, examines how the play’s dramaturgy departs from Kleist’s original story by introducing significant changes to the ethical and political framework of the nineteenth-century text, particularly in its views on justice, power, and forgiveness.

• Martin Opitz e il progetto di una nuova letteratura tedesca all’insegna del concetto di universalis reformatio, pp. 215-242
  Gloria Colombo
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.08

  Martin Opitz and the Project of a New German Literature in the Light of the Concept of universsalis reformatio
  The activities of the Philosophische Gruppe officially began with the conference given by Adolf Caspary on Das Proletariat als ökonomisches Hindernis der Weltrevolution on 15 November 1927. This important cultural ‘salon’ was organized in Berlin by the philosopher Erich Unger, together with the economist and jurist Adolf Caspary and under the spiritual aegis of the philosopher of religion and medical doctor Oskar Goldberg. Various scholars, intellectuals, artists, and politicians, many of Jewish origin, met regularly within this philosophical circle to discuss the most current philosophical and scientific ideas from diametrically opposed political-ideological positions, often with original and radical theoretical viewpoints. The aim of this investigation is thus the historiographical reconstruction of the meetings and exoteric intents of the group through the analysis of the archival material that has been collected so far within the research project carried out at the of the Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici titled The «Philosophische Gruppe Berlin» (1927-1932). Members, Program, Relevance.

Rassegne

• Ricerche sullo spazio asburgico, pp. 245-255
  Flavia Di Battista
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.09   
  

  Current Research on Habsburg Space
  This review discusses three recent publications, all related to spatial questions concerning the Habsburg Empire during its final two centuries: Catherine Horel‘s monograph Multicultural cities of the Habsburg Empire 1880-1914. Imagined Communities and Conflictual Encounters (2023), alongside two essay collections – namely Trennen, Verbinden, Überschreiten. Grenzen in der Habsburgermonarchie im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. by Márta Fata (2024), and Das integrative Empire. Wissensproduktion und kulturelle Praktiken in Habsburg Zentraleuropa, ed. by Johannes Feichtinger with Heidemarie Uhl (2023). An analysis of these works shows where the current debate on the Habsburg monarchy stands when it comes to issues such as post-colonialism and the expression of differences. Indeed, they all share the paradigm laid out by Pieter Judson in The Habsburg Empire: A New History (2016) which recognises the empire as a unified space which, for many people across all levels of society, served «as a screen on which to project their beliefs, values, hopes, frustrations, and above all, their visions for the future», regardless of their national background.

• Von leichtfüßigen und schwerfälligen Sprüngen über die Genregrenzen. Ein Theaterbrief über die künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit der italienischen Kultur im deutschen Gegenwartstheater,  pp. 257-263
  Kai Bremer
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2025.27.10

  From Light-footed and Ponderous Leaps across Genre Boundaries. A Theatre Review on the artistic engagement with Italian Culture in Contemporary German Theatre
  The review considers four volumes, which are linked by the aim to investigate a potential European dimension of German literature and culture in the period between 1870 and 1950. Of these volumes, and of the approximately sixty contributions collected therein, a transversal reading is proposed, organised through certain key thematic cores. These are mainly identified in Nietzsche’s conception of ‘good Europeans’, in the positions towards Europe held by Thomas Mann (often in response to those held by his brother Heinrich and son Klaus), and, lastly, in the essayistic and scholarly production of Ernst Robert Curtius. Although in different ways, these thematic cores nevertheless refer to a more general Weimar Workshop.

Hanno collaborato

• Le autrici e gli autori, pp. 265-267

Ultimo aggiornamento 18 Luglio 2025 a cura di Luisa Giannandrea