Transatlantische Germanistik. Kontakt, Transfer, Dialogik by Paul Michael Lützeler (review)

In this fascinating volume, Paul Michael Lützeler provides a complex account of the transformation of the intellectual world of literary scholarship over a period of some forty years. With its rich array of depictions of specific historical moments, each of which sheds light on aspects of this transformation, Transatlantische Germanistik documents accomplishments, changes, and challenges on multiple levels. It certainly records the author’s own development as a scholar of German literature, from the moment of the student movement in West Germany through study opportunities in the United States leading to a distinguished career at Washington University in St. Louis. That autobiographical strand is inextricably intertwined with a record of the intellectual reorientations of literary study that have defined the past decades of scholarly debate, on which Lützeler provides astute and engaged comments. Yet those shifting terms of literary scholarship and theory are inseparable from wider cultural changes, the influence of the new social movements, the spread of a postmodern sensibility, and the impact of the process of globalization. In the end, a rich tapestry of scholarly thought emerges, including the new intellectual opportunities for the study of literature, even though, in the background, one can also hear the ongoing concern with the problem of the crisis of the humanities as evidenced by declining student numbers. To understand the state of the discipline of Germanistik, at least in North America, this book is a vital resource.

The book is organized into nine chapters dedicated to various aspects of the changing character of the study of German literature: transatlantic exchange, university reform, cultural relations between Germany and the United States, interactions between American and German intellectuals, the reception of German literature through specific institutional initiatives at Washington University, the professional journals of US Germanistik, the debates around the cultural turn, the relationship to European studies, and the internationalization of Germanistik in the era of rapid globalization. Each of these chapters includes two related articles. This volume is a significant contribution to disciplinary history, and it provides an opportunity to reflect on the elements of continuity and change in the North American study of German literature.

Underpinning all of the detailed studies and reflection is a set of convictions named in the subtitle: contact, transfer, and dialogue. In our current crisis of conscience about the value of the humanities, Lützeler reminds us of the distinctive role that scholarship concerning foreign literature plays in contemporary culture. Each foreign language department, whether in a small college or a large research university, provides opportunities to understand other cultures and therefore to build cross-cultural understanding; no matter how mundane that may sound, we should not lose sight of the indispensable contribution of this dialogue. This results not only from the object of study but from the experience of the scholars in foreign language fields who, typically, live between two (or more) places, who travel back and forth, and who generate a capacity for more supple interpretation thanks to the constantly shifting perspective. As Lützeler puts it in a valuable credo statement:

Die Doppelperspektive des Deutsch-Amerikaners bleibt nur dann scharfsichtig, wenn man in Deutschland die amerikanische Perspektive nicht vergisst und in den USA die Möglichkeit praktizierter Multi- und Interkultur wahrnimmt. Nicht das unflexible Beharren auf der Identität des Herkunftslands und nicht das Untertauchen im amerikanischen melting pot, sondern die dialogische Vermittlung zwischen Kulturen ist die Chance, die Pendler zwischen den Kontinenten wahrnehmen können.

(46)

The implied agenda for scholarship in a world characterized by multiple cultures, languages, and literatures, in which each single culture is itself a complex and constantly evolving hybrid, is therefore the promotion of a productive understanding through dialogue. The project of a national literary historiography, as it developed in the nineteenth century, does not disappear but is transformed radically once it takes on the task of mediation across cultural difference. On this point, the scholar of a “foreign” literature...