"Gruppe 47" in Context: German Literature from 1945-1968

The "Gruppe 47" was the most important and most powerful literary association in western Germany after World War II. During 20 years (1947 – 1967) its founder and organiser Hans Werner Richter invited writers to meetings, where unpublished texts were read and afterwards discussed by an audience of colleagues and literary critics. In our course we’ll study the works of some of the best-known members (like Günter Eich, Heinrich Böll, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ilse Aichinger, Martin Walser, Günter Grass, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Peter Weiss, Peter Bichsel) and try to reflect the mechanisms of the literary scene, the „business of literature“. The course will also give a survey of German cultural history in this period. (1 unit)


Required Texts: Grass, Das Treffen in Telgte (dtv); Walser, Ehen in Philippsburg (Suhrkamp); Weiss, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung des Jean Paul Marat (Suhrkamp)