Intermixing German and Russian in Lou Andreas-Salomé’s Travelogue Russland mit Rainer and Katja Petrowskaja’s Autobiographical Narrative Vielleicht Esther

Lou Andreas-Salomé’s travelogue Russland mit Rainer (“Russia with Rainer,” 1900) and Katja Petrowskaja’s autobiographical narrative Vielleicht Esther (“Maybe Esther,” 2014) mix German with Russian in their descriptions of travel eastward from Germany. Both writers value switching into Russian as a way to open up multiple perspectives that are attached to language and to express their nostalgia for the language with which they grew up. In Petrowskaja’s text, Russian expressions are also used to articulate traumatizing experiences and repressed events of the past. Considered together, the texts shed light on the relationship between identity and language as well on intercultural identity determined by multilingualism.