«Studi Germanici», 29 (2026)

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• Frontespizio e indice, pp. 1-6

Saggi

• Kafka in München – Eine Spurensuche, pp. 9-33
  Dirk Heißerer
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.01

  Kafka in Munich – A Search for Traces
  Franz Kafka visited Munich four times between 1903 and 1916. In 1903, the student made a mistake that would prove momentous with the address of his guesthouse on Sophienstraße. A city tour in 1911 turned into the chapter of one of his novels. A half-day in October 1913 remains in the dark. And the unsuccessful reading of Strafkolonie in 1916 in the Goltz bookshop in the Luitpoldblock, billed as a «Tropical Münchhausiade», oddly enough, gave rise to the parable Der Kübelreiter after a meeting with the poet Gottfried Kölwel. The parable can be interpreted as an « Arctic Münchhausiade» and a mocking response to the Munich reading. In 1903, two artworks from Munich were hanging in Kafka’s Prague studio, and in 1908 he made his debut in the luxury Munich magazine «Hyperion». Despite the well-defined theme, the accounts available so far are one-sided, superficial, and even flawed. But what has disappeared can be reconstructed, and offers new insights. Despite the well-defined scope of the topic, existing studies on Kafka’s presence in Munich are, to date, one-sided, superficial, and at times even erroneous. This essay proposes a more nuanced reconstruction, enabling a critical reassessment of the available evidence while offering new interpretive perspectives.

• Il ritmo dell’epos: alcune considerazioni sull’esametro in August Wilhelm Schlegel, pp. 35-57
  Lorella Bosco
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.02
  

  The Rythm of Epic Poetry: Reflections on the Hexameter in August Wilhelm Schlegel
  While August Wilhelm Schlegel’s leading role in outlining a European Romantic pro­ject from a philological, translation-theoretical, and literary-historical perspective is fully recognised in contemporary studies on Romanticism, the significance of his reflections on rhythm and prosody still awaits further examination. This turns out to be a crucial aspect for reconstructing the process that led to an aesthetic definition of rhythm and metrics in poetry and poetics at the turn of the 19th century. Several recent studies clearly demonstrate how this topic is attracting increasing attention within German studies. Starting with Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaaß und Sprache (1795-1796), and from the famous review of Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea, my contribution will thus explore the notion of rhythm as both a dynamic and organic element of differentiation between literary genres and between ancient and modern poetry in the poetic reflections and poetological poems of August Wilhelm Schlegel (collected posthumously under the title Rhythmische Gedichte), with particular attention to the hexameter.

• Sognare la fine: la simbologia degli uccelli morti nel Nibelungenlied, pp. 59-78
  Davide Bertagnolli – Alessandro Zironi
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.03Dreaming of the End: The Symbolism of Dead Birds in the Nibelungenlied
  This article examines the symbolic and narrative function of dead birds in the Nibelungenlied, focusing on Queen Ute’s prophetic dream before the Burgundians’ departure for Etzel’s court. Unlike Kriemhild’s better-known dreams, Ute’s vision of all the birds in the kingdom lying dead has received limited scholarly attention. The study analyses this dream within the broader system of prophetic visions in the poem and investigates the symbolic value of birds as omens of death. Through a comparative analysis of medieval German literature, biblical passages, dreambooks such as the Somniale Danielis, and Old Norse tradition, the article argues that the image of dead birds is not a fixed literary topos inherited from a specific source. Rather, it emerges from the creative reworking of widespread symbolic associations linking birds, warfare, collective death, and prophecy. The Nibelungenlied thus transforms a traditional imagery into a highly effective poetic anticipation of the Burgundians’ doom.

Ricerche

• Zone autonome. Normatività, anticonformismo, malattia e salute nella trilogia su Stoccolma di Jonas Gardell, pp. 81-106
  Giovanni Za
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.04

  Autonomous Zones. Normativity, Non-Conformism, Illness, and Health in Jonas Gardell’s Stockholm Trilogy
  The aim of this article is to study space and place in the literary trilogy by the Swedish author Jonas Gardell Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar (Gardell 2012-3; 2012, ‘Never Wipe Tears Without Gloves’). Set in the cityscape of Stockholm in the early 1980s, the plot revolves around a defining encounter between Benjamin, a Jehovah’s Witness, and Rasmus, a young student hailing from Värmland. The small community they shape with fellow friends/outsiders challenges the visible edgings that normativity has erected. This creates an underworld that can be interpreted as a «temporary autonomous zone» (Bey 1985), or as a «heterotopia» (Foucault 1986) within city borders. Benjamin, Rasmus, and their group are eventually affected when AIDS spreads through the capital city. Illness plays a significant role in the outlining of new boundaries and eventually results in the application of a geographical sanction of segregation that the majority, conformed to normativity, imposes on the minority. The process of segregation is finally overcome with a public act of national contrition, as evidenced by Gardell’s work. The outcome of this process is the achievement of an awareness of the past and a firmer social cohesion.

• Un modello ‘caché’? Il Baudelaire di Theodor W. Adorno, pp. 107-140
  Gabriele Gallina
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.05

  A ‘Hidden’ Model? Theodor W. Adorno’s Baudelaire
  This article explores the relationship between Charles Baudelaire and Theodor W. Adorno, arguing that Baudelaire functions not merely as an object of interpretation but as a concealed model within Adorno’s philosophical project. Through close readings of a broad range of Adorno’s philosophical, aesthetic, and literary-critical writings, the article demonstrates that central categories in his thought such as Erscheinung, allegory, constellation, negativity, metaphysical experience, reification, and non-identity are deeply informed by Baudelaire’s poetic articulation of the modern. The poet’s dialectic of the transient and the eternal, together with his acute awareness of commodified modern life, emerges as a historical image that informs Adorno’s aesthetics and social critique alike. The poet of Les Fleurs du mal is therefore not merely a privileged interlocutor, but a condition of possibility for Adorno’s philosophy of non-identity: melancholy, disgust, allegory, and decay become theoretical constellations through which dialectic articulates truth in and through the negative.

• Karen Blixen e la tradizione del gotico: prospettive critiche, pp. 141-162
  Emilio Calvani
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.06
  

  Karen Blixen and the Gothic Tradition: Critical Perspectives
  This article presents the initial findings of a broader, ongoing study dedicated to analysing the echoes and variations of the Gothic in the work of Danish author Karen Blixen. The aim is to reconstruct the main existing critical approaches and to open new perspectives of interpretation. The way in which Blixen reworks the Gothic reveals a personal approach that departs from the canonical interpretations of the genre. The paper is divided into two parts: the first section outlines the main historical and thematic characteristics of the Gothic, with particular attention to its development in Scandinavia; the second examines the critical studies that have explored the relationship between Blixen’s work and this literary tradition. A detailed research proposal will then be formulated to suggest new interpretive perspectives.

• Heimskringla in Transition: Language, Translation, and Power in Early Modern Scandinavia, pp. 163-184
  Andrea Romanzi
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.07

  Heimskringla in Transition: Language, Translation, and Power in Early Modern Scandinavia
  Early translations of Heimskringla show how language, politics, and scholarly networks reshaped the Norse past in early modern Scandinavia. This study juxtaposes Laurents Hanssøn’s Bergen excerpts (c. 1550s) with Peder Claussøn Friis’s Norske Kongers Chronica (1599; printed 1633) to trace systematic departures from Old Icelandic formulations. Based on a sample of prologue material and Ynglinga saga episodes, two patterns stand out: Hanssøn retains archaic lexis, mythic toponyms, and skaldic citation practices, suggesting a plural antiquarian ethos; Friis streamlines syntax, rationalises myth, and foregrounds Danish-Norwegian genealogy in ways congruent with court-oriented centralising agendas. Read against the distinct circles that enabled each translation, Bergen’s clerical manuscript exchangers versus Copenhagen’s court-episcopal patrons, the article proposes an analytical lens for reading translation as a negotiable instrument of cultural memory and power during Scandinavia’s transition from medieval plurality to early modern centralisation.

Rassegne

• Geht die Liebe weiter? Ein Theaterbrief zur italienischen Kultur und Literatur auf den deutschsprachigen Bühnen, pp.  187-193
  Kai Bremer
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.08
  

  Does Love Endure? A Theatre Review on Italian Literature and Culture in Contemporary German Theatre
  Continuing his reflections from last year, in this article the author analyses the status of Italian literature and culture in contemporary German-language theatre, highlighting a shift from traditional drama to postdramatic adaptations of prose and film. The article focuses on two major cultural phenomena from the 2025/2026 season. Firstly, Pinar Kara­bulut’s production of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo at Schauspielhaus Zürich transformed the novel into an immersive, opulent stage experience. Secondly, the essay examines how the 50th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s death was commemorated in both Italy and Germany in 2025. This includes Roberto Ciulli’s documentary production Pasolini. Io so in Mülheim and Albert Ostermaier’s stage reading at the Berliner Ensemble. These case studies reveal that while German stages embrace purely aesthetic adaptations of canonical texts, they remain profoundly fascinated by the biography, political weight, and critical authority of the author figure as a contemporary benchmark.

• Forme agentive della materia nella letteratura di lingua tedesca: prospettive elementali negli studi di ecocritica,  pp. 195-213
  Luca Baruffa
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.09

  Agentic Forms of Matter in German-Language Literature: Elemental Trajectories in Ecocriticism
  This review examines four recent publications on the representation of nature in German-language literature. The aim is to trace how contemporary ecocritical research has recently come to identify, a distinct strand of Naturschreiben, within this cultural and literary tradition. More specifically, by bringing Alexander Robert Phillips’s Ecology and German Realism (2025) into dialogue with the volume edited by Gabriele Dürbeck and Christine Kanz, translated into English as German-Language Nature Writing (2024), as well as with two collections of essays edited by Roland Borgards, Frederike Middelhoff, and Barbara Thums (Romantische Ökologien, 2023; Wasserlandschaften, 2025), the review highlights a broader reorientation towards understanding nature as a domain endowed with its own forms of agency that exceed anthropocentric frameworks. To map this shift, the analysis turns to nature’s material elements – particularly water and earth – as key conceptual anchors for rethinking the relations between nature and culture, the human and the non-human, the organic and the inorganic, thereby outlining a line of continuity linking the proto-ecological thought of German Romanticism to the ethical challenges posed today by the Anthropocene.

I quaderni dell’AIG

Transizione. I. Contatto / Kontakt
a cura di Camilla Miglio – Miriam Ravetto

• Ein Blick auf die Dualkategorie in germanischen und slawischen Kontaktsituationen: Was sagen die Desiderata der Dualforschung über methodentheoretische Fragen der Kontaktlinguistik aus?,  pp. 217-235
  Goranka Rocco
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.10

  A Look at the Dual Category in Germanic and Slavic Contact Situations: What Do Desiderata in Dual Research Reveal about Methodological Issues in Contact Linguistics?
  The study focuses on the dual category and its traces against the background of the question of how contact-related language changes can be interpreted. It explores contact situations between German and other Germanic languages (e.g., varieties of Frisian) and between German and some Slavic languages, and addresses some methodological questions and desiderata in contact linguistics arising, among other things, from a standard-oriented representation of language. The first part of the study addresses the questions of what exactly is meant by ‘dual and ‘dual tracesʼ and to what extent and in what form variation, context, and other factors relevant to the system and contact are taken into account. Subsequently, a few selected language contact situations (e.g., Frisian varieties, German, and Slovenian) are examined in more detail and analysed for certain trends, with particular attention paid to some methodological aspects and limitations of contact linguistic research.

• «Lebendige Geschichte im Fluss»: rappresentazioni letterarie dell’Elba come contact zone,  pp. 237-254
  Angela Conzo
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.11

  «Lebendige Geschichte im Fluss»: Literary Representations of the Elbe as Contact Zone
  Adopting a diachronic approach, the paper offers a critical reading of selected literary representations in German language, from the post-war period to the present day, in which the Elbe emerges both as a setting and as a symbolic contact zone. In the drama Draußen vor der Tür (1947), Wolfgang Borchert personifies the river as a dramatic interlocutor in the protagonist Beckmann’s failed suicide attempt: the Elbe appears simultaneously as a space of exclusion and as a symbol of a renewed desire for life. Many decades later, Uwe Rada interprets the Elbe in Die Elbe. Europas Geschichte im Fluss (2013) as a ‘European biography’ – a place where individual destinies and major historical events intersect. Finally, in Die Elbe: Porträt eines Flusses (2024), Burkhard Müller offers a critical and narrative journey along the river, blending landscape, memory, and cultural reflection. Through the reading of these texts, the article seeks to highlight how the Elbe has been portrayed as a metanarrative instrument of lebendige Geschichte, where historical borders, frictions, and meetings intertwine to generate new forms of identity and meaning.

• Il contatto come categoria analitica e la memoria dello sminamento tedesco-danese, pp. 255-271
  Riccardo Bettini
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.12

  Contact As an Analytical Category and the Memory of German-Danish Mine Clearance
  The concept of contact is a central analytical category in literary and cultural studies, particularly when it takes on the form of a liminal zone of conflict and transformation. In German-language literature, border areas and transfer processes reveal the function of Schnittstellen, or ‘connections’, where discursive practices and historical memories intertwine to produce new cultural configurations. A diachronic approach to these phenomena allows us to highlight the stratification of relationships and their role in defining contemporary cultural and political relations. From this perspective, the case of German-Danish relations after World War II is paradigmatic. The use of German prisoners of war in clearing mines from the Danish coast, initially interpreted as an act of retaliation and later as a practice of shared trauma management, marks a point of contact where violence and reconciliation coexist. This contribution aims to analyse these dynamics and also to critically question the ways in which cultural memory shapes contemporary European discourse.

• Diamesische Kontaktzonen: Syntaktische Phänomene zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit am Beispiel von Elias Canettis Die Blendung,  pp. 273-291
  Benedetta Rosi
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.13

  Diamesic Contact Zones: Syntactic Phenomena Between Orality and Literacy As Exemplified by Elias Canetti’s Die Blendung
  This paper focuses on intralinguistic contact zones between different varieties of German. Particular emphasis is placed on the interaction between diamesic varieties, specifically the interplay between written and spoken language. The permeability of grammatical structures from spoken to written language is examined using Elias Canetti’s 1935 novel Die Blendung as a case study. The focus will be on syntactic constructions considered typical of spoken language and their function within the text. Canetti’s novel is ideally suitable for investigating the chosen contact phenomenon. Syntactic constructions that are typical of spoken language are intertwined with strategies at other linguistic levels, as well as diatopic and diaphasic peculiarities. This contributes not only to the narrative’s authenticity, but also to the characterisation of the ‘acoustic masks’ constructed by Canetti. With this term, the author refers to the poetological strategy through which the characters in the novel and their social roles are typified linguistically. The analysis aims to exemplify how grammatical phenomena linked to the dialogical dimension of orality can be integrated, adapted, and refunctionalised in literary language.

• Cornice e stretta di mano: etica e struttura in Nachtgespräche di Auguste Hauschner, pp. 293-310
  Maria Diletta Giordano
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.14

  Handshake in the Framework: Ethics and Structure in Auguste Hauschner’s Nachtgespräche
  The essay investigates Auguste Hauschner’s work Nachtgespräche (1919). Apart from her works, the Czech-German writer of Jewish heritage Auguste Hauschner (1850-1924) is famous for her engagement in philanthropy and her activism as a pacifist and a feminist, elements that are clearly mirrored in her whole body of work. The contribution analyses Nachtgespräche as an example of literary self-reflectivity where Hauschner presents stories that were written in the previous thirty years in a new structure that appears as a collection of tales connected by a shared framework. Narratological aspects related to the transition from this framework to the tales are identified as manifestations of the author’s will to create a philosophical dialogue between the narrators. This dialogue is meant to culminate in a new perspective on the contact with otherness.

• Politisch-religiöser Kontakt im Kriegsdiskurs. Eine diskurslinguistische Analyse des Schlüsselwortes Sieg in den frühen Kriegspredigten des Ersten Weltkriegs, pp. 311-328
  Nadia Centorbi
  DOI: 10.82007/SG.2026.29.15

  Political-Religious Contact in War Discourse: A Discourse-Linguistic Analysis of the Keyword Sieg in Early World War I War Sermons
  The article examines World War I war sermons as a paradigmatic site of contact between religion and politics. At its core lies the discursive figure of the just war, exemplarily analysed through the keyword Sieg. Starting from the premise that war theology is to be understood as contextual theology and that the sermon functions as a social and political resource, the study conducts a discourse-lexicological analysis of a corpus of ten Protestant war sermons from the early phase of the war (August-December 1914). Methodologically, the analysis adopts a semantic-lexical approach within the framework of historical discourse linguistics. Sieg emerges as a semantic crystallization point in which religious legitimation, moral evaluation, and national self-affirmation converge. Military amplification and theological attribution jointly stabilize the notion of a just and God-willed war. The sermon discourse thus functions as a space of resonance for political meaning-making, religiously elevated and collectively identity-forming.

Hanno collaborato

• Le autrici e gli autori, pp. 329-332

Ultimo aggiornamento 23 Luglio 2026 a cura di Luisa Giannandrea