"Adelbert Chamisso und Hans Christian Andersen im Dialog": Medienschwellen in Adelbert von Chamissos Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte und Hans Christian Andersens Skyggen

Scholars of Andersen and Chamisso have largely overlooked the long-standing intellectual and aesthetic exchange between Anderson and Chamisso. They had an intensive friendship in 1831, thus leaving the intertextual connection between Chamisso's and Andersen's texts aside. Andersen read Adelbert von Chamisso's famous Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte just before writing his fairy tale Skyggen. Other writers at this time such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Eduard Mörike, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Edgar Allen Poe have also widely used the metaphor of the shadow. In this essay, Chamisso's and Andersen's texts are examined as texts that conform to their respective media boundaries, while also sharing an intertextual interdependency.