Contested Memory and Narrative within GDR-Polish Intercultural Landscapes: Ursula Höntsch’s Wir Flüchtlingskinder (1985) and Wir sind keine Kinder mehr (1990)
TRANSIT vol. 14, no. 1 Jean E. Conacher Download PDF Abstract Over centuries, the mutual existence of German- and Polish-speaking communities formed expansive cultural borderlands stretching down from the southern Baltic coast across frequently moving, and at times aggressively enforced, political dividing lines. The 1945 Potsdam Agreement saw the establishment of the Oder-Neisse line, only […]
Train Journeys in Postmemorial Narratives of Heimatverlust: Reinhard Jirgl’s Die Unvollendeten and Sabrina Janesch’s Katzenberge
TRANSIT vol. 14, No. 1 Sabine Egger Download PDF Abstract In the last two decades, flight and expulsion have emerged as critical topics in contemporary German literature and culture, with authors exploring narrative modes in literary texts that open transnational perspectives. Reinhard Jirgl’s Die Unvollendeten (2003) and Sabrina Janesch’s Katzenberge (2010) are examples of such […]
The Reconciliatory Potential of Objects in Stefan Chwin’s novel Death in Danzig
TRANSIT vol. 14, no. 1 Svetlana Vassileva-Karagyozova Download PDF Abstract This article examines the artistic rendering of post-German objects in Stefan Chwin’s 1995 novel Hanemann [Death in Danzig] through the lens of new materialism theories. In his depiction of the historical transformation of Danzig/Gdansk from a German to a Polish city Chwin applies two strategies: […]
Remembering and Remapping Breslaff: Resurfacing German and Queer Topographies in Contemporary Polish Literature
TRANSIT vol. 14, no. 1 Alicja Kowalska Download PDF Abstract This article focuses on the role of contemporary Polish literature in bringing back that which has been repressed under communism: the Germanness of the so-called “regained territories”, i.e. territories that became Polish due to the changes of national borders after the Second World War, as […]
Introduction: German-Polish Borderlands in Contemporary Literature and Culture
TRANSIT vol. 14, no.1 Download PDF Karolina May-Chu and Paula Wojcik In this issue of TRANSIT, we are proud to present a special section with contributions on the representation of borders and borderlands in the literary and cultural landscapes of Germany and Poland. We have brought together scholarship, excerpts from an essayistic historical study, a […]
Lessons from the Southern German Borderlands
TRANSIT vol. 14, no. 1 H. Glenn Penny Download PDF Abstract This essay engages the borderlands region joining contemporary Austria, Germany, and Switzerland as a ‘central periphery’ in the heart of Europe. As a region in which multiple and varied notions of belonging have long stretched across the borders that animate our modern political maps, […]
Displacement vs. Mobility; or, Who Owns the World: An Aesthetic Inquiry into Infrastructure, Comm on Possession, and Violence in Karim Aïnouz’s Documentary Film Central Airport THF (2017)
by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky TRANSIT vol. 14, no. 1 Translated by Ross Shields Download PDF Abstract Central Airport THF is a documentary film about the temporary housing of refugees in the halls of the former Tempelhof Airport, located at the edge of Berlin’s Tempelhofer Feld. As if by accident, the director contrasts the arrested life in […]
Foreword by the Managing Editor
DEAR READERS, With this foreword, I present to you the first issue of the fourteenth volume of TRANSIT on Borderlands. As a Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World, a volume on the theme of borderlands speaks to one of TRANSIT’s most enduring themes. Indeed, over the past few years, members of […]
Reimagining the German-Polish Borderlands in Nowa Amerika and Słubfurt
TRANSIT vol. 14, no. 1 Karolina May-Chu Reimagining the German-Polish Borderlands in Nowa Amerika and Słubfurt[1] Download PDF Abstract Nowa Amerika and Słubfurt are two related activist art projects that are set in the German-Polish borderland. Nowa Amerika is an imagined country, and Słubfurt its capital. This contribution introduces these projects and examines their underlying […]