The Wonder (of) Woman

The following text is the German original followed by the English translation of a previously unpublished essay by Julia Franck, winner of the 2007 German Book Prize. Although Franck has received critical acclaim most recently for her novel Die Mittagsfrau (Lady Midday, 2007), she came to the attention of the mainstream German media with the publication of her second novel, Liebediener (Love Servant, 1999), which coincided with the Fräuleinwunder craze. The Fräuleinwunder, or "Girl Wonder" phenomenon, existed briefly at the turn of the millennium, when Volker Hage first observed in Der Spiegel that many of the young, female authors writing at the time had a matter-of-fact approach to representing love and sex. When the newspaper Die Welt asked several of the authors included in the Fräuleinwunder to write essays about the popularity of German women authors, Franck penned "Das Wunder Frau," or "The Wonder (of) Woman." Here she strongly criticizes the Fräuleinwunder label, yet she does find some truth in Hage's assertion that women write differently than men. Franck proposes the term "weibliche Nüchternheit," or "Female Sobriety," which both acknowledges Hage's observation and provides an alternative way to talk about the writing style of female authors. Deeming "Das Wunder Frau" too feminist for publication, Die Welt declined to print it. Julia Franck has expressly given her permission to the Women in German Yearbook to publish the German original as well as the English translation of the essay. (AMH)