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Abstract
Between 1979 and 1986, the Institut für Deutsch als Fremdsprache at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich was active in the promotion of exophonic writing — writing by non-native speakers of German — through the organization of writing competitions and the publication of anthologies with Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. The Institute’s efforts culminated in the inauguration of the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1985 and ran parallel to the development of grassroots initiatives such as ‘PoLiKunst’. This paper traces the development of the Institute’s activities and argues that they were neither simply an imperialistic and depoliticizing appropriation of ‘Gastarbeiterliteratur’, nor were they entirely without self-interest, but rather that the Institute was as much reactive as proactive with regard to the goals of its own initiatives, their shape, and the manner in which they were received. The success of the Institute’s activities is assessed against their effects on grassroots publishing and promotional endeavours.
Notes
I would like to thank the staff of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar for their help in accessing the relevant materials within the Adelbert von Chamisso Sammlung. I would also like to thank the Robert Bosch Stiftung for giving me permission to access the collection.
1 For an overview of the various terms see Carmine Chiellino, ‘Interkulturalität und Literaturwissenschaft’, in Interkulturelle Literatur in Deutschland: Ein Handbuch, ed. by Carmine Chiellino (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007), pp. 387–98 (pp. 389–92).
2 Harald Weinrich, ‘Der Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preis’, in Chamissos Enkel, ed. by Heinz Friedrich (Munich: dtv, 1986), pp. 11–13 (p. 12). The criteria for the prize have been altered since 1985, most recently in 2012.
3 Harald Weinrich, ‘Um eine deutsche Literatur von außen bittend’, Merkur, 37 (1983), 911–20.
4 The term ‘exophonic’ captures the ‘Fremdsprachigkeit des Deutschen [als] conditio sine qua non’ for entry into the competitions. Peter Seibert, ‘Zur “Rettung” der Zungen’, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 56 (1984), 40–61 (p. 57). On the emergence and application of the term exophony see Susan Arndt, Dirk Naguschewski and Robert Stockhammer, ‘Die Unselbstverständlichkeit der Sprache’, in Exophonie, ed. by Susan Arndt, Dirk Naguschewski and Robert Stockhammer (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2007), pp. 7–27; and Chantal Wright, ‘Writing in the “Grey Zone”: Exophonic Literature in Contemporary Germany’, German as a Foreign Language, 3 (2008), 26–42 (pp. 38–40).
5 See, for example, Peter Seibert, ‘Zur “Rettung”’; Arlene Akiko Teraoka, ‘Gastarbeiterliteratur: The Other Speaks Back’, Cultural Critique, 7 (1987), 77–101; and Carmine Chiellino, Am Ufer der Fremde: Literatur und Arbeitsmigration 1870–1991 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), pp. 294–96.
6 See, for example, Franco Biondi, ‘Einige Betrachtungen zur “Gastarbeiterliteratur”’, Fremdworte, 1 (1985), 13–15 (p. 15).
7 Harald Weinrich, ‘Vorwort’, in Als Fremder in Deutschland: Berichte, Erzählungen, Gedichte von Ausländern, ed. by Irmgard Ackermann (Munich: dtv, 1982), pp. 9–11 (p. 9).
8 Marbach, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Adelbert von Chamisso Sammlung, Ordner 1. All information pertaining to the first competition can be found in this file.
9 Cf. Weinrich, ‘Vorwort’, p. 10.
10 Three entries each came from areas of Bavaria outside Munich, Baden-Württemberg and Nordrhein-Westfalen; one entry came from Berlin.
11 Neither writer was well known at the time.
12 Harald Weinrich, ‘Deutsch als Fremdsprache — Konturen eines neuen Faches’, in Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 5 (1979), 1–13 (p. 1).
13 Ibid., p. 10.
14 Ibid., p. 9.
15 Although the majority of the archival materials are Ackermann’s, it seems likely that these handwritten notes are Weinrich’s.
16 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 1. Letter dated 20 February 1980.
17 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2.
18 Six entrants did not list their place of residence. DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2.
19 Schami wrote to Ackermann to complain that he had not received notification of the competition’s result (letter dated 6 February 1981); this was due to confusion created by his use of a pseudonym. DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2.
20 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 6.
21 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2. Letter dated 27 January 1981.
22 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2. Press release dated 6 February 1981.
23 ‘Diese ethnozentrische Sichtweise zielte darauf ab, den Dialog mit den Minderheiten zu pflegen, das Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit aber nach wie vor selbst zu belegen, um dadurch Akzeptanz bei den ausländerfreundlichen Leser/innen zu erwecken.’ Chiellino, ‘Interkulturalität’, p. 390.
24 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2. Verwendungsnachweis.
25 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2. Letter dated 18 April 1981.
26 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2. Letter dated 11 February 1981.
27 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 2. Letter dated 9 February 1981. Ackermann replied that some of the winners lived abroad and would therefore not be available to participate in such a programme. (Letter dated 16 February 1981.) This raises the question of whether the Institute realized that there were distinct advantages, on a publicity level, to shifting the emphasis of the competition to foreigners living within Germany.
28 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8.
29 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8. Letter dated 2 February 1982.
30 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8. Letter dated 28 February 1981.
31 Chiellino, ‘Interkulturalität’, p. 387.
32 It is likely that Ackermann is referring to WIR ausländischen Mitbürger. DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8. Letter dated 28 March 1981.
33 Ibid.
34 Although Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt was a German organization, Franco Biondi was a member and co-edited Sehnsucht im Koffer in that capacity, as did Jusuf Naoum in his capacity as a PoLiKunst member. WIR ausländischen Mitbürger was initially financed by a German politician, Erich Nitzling, but the editorial team was composed of various Ausländervereine in Frankfurt. Cf. Ateff Salama, Ausländer schreiben: Deutschsprachige kulturpolitische Ausländerzeitschriften in der BRD am Beispiel der Zeitschriften ‘Die Brücke’, ‘Fremdworte’ und ‘WIR ausländischen Mitbürger’ (Münster: Medien & Kommunikation, 1990), pp. 99–101.
35 Weinrich, ‘Vorwort’, p. 9. The term ‘Gastliteratur’ carefully avoids the term ‘Gastarbeiter’ and stresses the openness and hospitality of the host nation. It also serves, however, to protect the integrity of German literature in the face of an alien body of texts by according these texts a position on the margins. Weinrich’s choice of terminology reveals that he is operating firmly from within a ‘monolingual paradigm’ and that exophonic writing, a feature of the postmonolingual condition, represents a threat to this position. On the postmonolingual condition, see Yasemin Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012).
36 Weinrich, ‘Vorwort’, p. 9.
37 Dieter Krusche, ‘Zu einem durch fremde Augen “gebrochenen” Deutschlandbild’, in Als Fremder in Deutschland, pp. 189–202.
38 Weinrich, ‘Vorwort’, p. 11.
39 In correspondence with Ackermann, Franco Biondi was to describe Weinrich’s foreword as an ‘etwas zurückhaltende und (aber nur) stellenweise unglücklich ausgefallene Stellungnahme’. DLA, AvCS, Ordner 20. Letter dated 25 April 1983.
40 Die Herausgeber, ‘Nachwort’, in Sehnsucht im Koffer, ed. by Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1981), pp. 170–71 (p. 170). This sentiment was echoed by Suleman Taufiq in 1985: ‘[Die meisten ausländischen Schriftsteller] haben sich selbst aufgebaut.’ Suleman Taufiq, ‘Plädoyer für eine Literatur von innen’, Fremdworte, 1 (1985), 5–6 (p. 5).
41 Rita Chin, The Guest Worker Question in Postwar Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 136.
42 Franco Biondi and Rafik Schami, ‘Literatur der Betroffenheit’, in Zu Hause in der Fremde: Ein bundesdeutsches Ausländer-Lesebuch, ed. by Christian Schaffernicht (Fischerhude: Atelier im Bauernhaus, 1981), pp. 124–36 (p. 133).
43 Rafik Schami, ‘Der offene Garten der Literatur’, in Damals dort und heute hier, ed. by Erich Jooß (Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 1998), pp. 84–93 (p. 84).
44 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 20. Letter dated 2 December 1982. Biondi is referring to Die Tarantel, his collection of stories published by Verlag Atelier im Bauernhaus in 1982.
45 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 20. Letter dated 26 May 1981. This may be incorrectly dated, since it is filed with correspondence from 1983, and since Chiellino did not enter the Munich competition until 1982. As an academic and expert on intercultural literature, Carmine (Gino) Chiellino has been fiercely critical of the attitude of the German literary and academic establishment towards exophonic and intercultural literature. As a writer struggling for recognition in the 1980s, he entered one of the Munich competitions and was in the same position of dependency as other writers.
46 It may also help mitigate criticism of the ‘collective statement’ approach of the dtv anthologies, and indeed of the anthologies produced under the editorship of non-Germans, which has been viewed as holding back the individuation of exophonic authors, both on a publishing and on a reception level. Ülker Gökberk, ‘Understanding Alterity: Ausländerliteratur between Relativism and Universalism’, in Theoretical Issues in Literary History, ed. by David Perkins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 143–72 (p. 158).
47 Cf. Ulrike Reeg, Schreiben in der Fremde: Literatur nationaler Minderheiten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Essen: Klartext, 1988), pp. 136–37. Reeg borrows Seibert’s formulation, see footnote 5.
48 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8. Letter dated 22 January 1981.
49 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8. Letter dated 27 February 1981.
50 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8. Letter dated 21 April 1981. Franco Biondi relates that some of his fellow authors argued they should be grateful such a reputable publisher was willing to take on the project. Biondi recalls that Ackermann phoned him to discuss the matter, and in all likelihood to check if his protest was genuine (personal correspondence, 19 March 2013).
51 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 8. Letter dated 16 July 1981.
52 Biondi’s invocation of colonialism is also nothing new. In ‘Literatur der Betroffenheit’, the quasi-manifesto of PoLiKunst principles published in 1981, he and Rafik Schami had compared the situation of Germany’s foreign-born population to that of a colonized people. Cf. Biondi and Schami, p. 124.
53 Chin, p. 135.
54 The initial suggestion for the theme of the third competition was ‘Unter Deutschen’, but this was not adopted. DLA, AvCS, Ordner 11. Antrag auf Finanzierung dated 16 February 1982.
55 Irmgard Ackermann, ‘Nachwort’, in In zwei Sprachen leben (Munich: dtv, 1983), pp. 247–57 (p. 248).
56 Ibid., p. 247. Chiellino views this as a further example of the ‘eigennützige Absicht’ that characterized the reception of this literature — not only could the Germans learn about themselves through the eyes of foreign writers, but their literary language was also being enriched by the foreign presence. Cf. Chiellino, ‘Interkulturalität und Literaturwissenschaft’, p. 387.
57 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 11.
58 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 17. Letter dated 10 February 1983.
59 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 19. Letter dated 21 April 1983.
60 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 23. Undated letter.
61 Ackermann, ‘Nachwort’, p. 249.
62 At this juncture it is worth noting that Weinrich’s notes on Biondi’s (unsuccessful) entry for the 1982 competition, which included the poem ‘nicht nur gastarbeiterdeutsch’, state: ‘Gedichte in Gastarbeiterdeutsch, falsch? (wohl nicht)’ (DLA, AvCS, Ordner 18).
63 Ackermann, ‘Nachwort’, p. 257.
64 Weinrich, ‘Deutsch als Fremdsprache’, pp. 8–9.
65 German participants in the symposium had been requested ‘sich mit eigenen Äußerungen und Deutungen möglichst zurückzuhalten. Ihre Aufgabe war es eher, Fragen zu stellen, zuzuhören und den Überlegungen der ausländischen Autoren sympathetische Resonanz zu verschaffen’. Irmgard Ackermann and Harald Weinrich, ‘Vorwort’, in Eine nicht nur deutsche Literatur, ed. by Irmgard Ackermann and Harald Weinrich (Munich/Zurich: Piper, 1986) pp. 9−10 (pp. 9−10).
66 Harald Weinrich, ‘Ein vorläufiges Schlußwort’, in Eine nicht nur deutsche Literatur, p. 98.
67 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 33. Antrag auf Finanzierung dated 8 November 1984.
68 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 32.
69 Karl Esselborn, ‘Nachwort’, in Über Grenzen, ed. by Karl Esselborn (Munich: dtv, 1987), pp. 262–70 (pp. 263-64).
70 Ibid., p. 262.
71 Ibid., p. 270.
72 DLA, AvCS, Ordner 33. Letter dated 4 February 1985.
73 Chiellino points out that the ‘begriffliche Unmöglichkeit’ of the Munich competitions — the insistence that deutsche Gastliteratur had to be written in German and the fact that one could enter the Munich competitions without being resident in Germany — is perfectly illustrated by the fact that Aras Ören, the first winner of the Chamisso prize, wrote only in Turkish. Cf. Chiellino, Am Ufer der Fremde, pp. 295–96.
74 At the Bad Homburg symposium in 1985, Suleman Taufiq complained: ‘Es gibt uns gegenüber eine bestimmte Form der Nachlässigkeit und sogar Arroganz, die dazu geführt hat, daß sich die Medien und die großen Verlage bis jetzt kaum die Mühe gemacht haben, sich mit unserer literarischen Produktion auseinanderzusetzen.’ Suleman Taufiq, ‘Natürlich: Kritik’, in Eine nicht nur deutsche Literatur, p. 75.
75 Harald Weinrich, ‘Gastarbeiterliteratur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 56 (1984), 12–22 (p. 12).
76 Ibid., p. 13.
77 If one takes a longer view of publishing success, Franco Biondi has returned to the autonomy of his roots — his first book was self-published in 1979 — and is utilizing the services of Book on Demand for his most recent publication, Kostas’ Stille Jahre (2012).
78 Chiellino, ‘Interkulturalität’, p. 390.
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Chantal Wright
Chantal Wright is an honorary fellow in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University and a visiting fellow in the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include the theory and practice of literary translation, stylistics and exophony. She is the author of Yoko Tawada’s ‘Portrait of a Tongue’: An Experimental Translation (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2013).