Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations (CAGCR) Annual Report for the Academic Year 2010-2011

www.qmul.ac.uk/cagcr

Introduction

It is with an eye on both the past and the future ofthe CAGCR that I write the Introduction to this, thefifth Annual Report of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations. I was recruited to theCAGCR in September 2005 by the CAGCR’sFounder and Director, Professor Rüdiger Görner.At that time we were a brand new research Centreand the beneficiaries of faith, good will, andfinancial support from a range of parties andinstitutions. The academic community inHumanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary,under the leadership of Professor Philip Ogden,and in the School of Languages Linguistics andFilm, under the stewardship of Professor PeterEvans, believed in and supported our vision of aresearch centre devoted to the study of the closeand complex cultural relations between theAnglophone and German-speaking worlds. At thelaunch of the Centre in December 2005, the thenGerman Ambassador to the United Kingdom,Thomas Matussek, commenced what has been afruitful relationship between the CAGCR and theGerman Embassy in London, which has seencollaborations on a number of important andhigh-profile events and initiatives. My ownacademic post between the years of 2005 and2010, firstly as Deputy and then as ActingDirector of the CAGCR, was financed by theClaussen-Simon Foundation under the auspicesof the Stifterverband für die deutscheWissenschaft. And our general activities over thepast six years have seen us working closelytogether with institutions such as the GoetheInstitut in London, the German AcademicExchange Service (DAAD), the DeutscherLiteraturfonds, and more recently Shakespeare’sGlobe and the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache.

Six years is not – when seen against the backdropof the cultural relations between the Anglophoneand German-speaking worlds over hundreds ofyears – a particularly long time. But in this shortperiod we have achieved some worthwhile goals:launching our Yearbook for Anglo-GermanCultural Relations, ANGERMION, and seeing itbecome an important publication in the field;having three successive years of graduates fromour MA in Anglo-German Cultural Relationsfinishing their degrees, winning prestigiousacademic prizes, and entering the workforce; andenjoying the lectures of prominent cultural figuressuch as A.S. Byatt, Durs Grünbein, Anthea Bell,and Alfred Brendel at our events and in ourteaching sessions. This year has also seen theCAGCR working at the very heart of the GermanStudies community in the United Kingdom andIreland, in our capacities as hosts, alongside theDepartment of German, of the Association ofGerman Studies Conference at Queen Mary.

This taking of stock arises from the fact that fromOctober 2011 until April 2013, I will be on leavefrom the CAGCR, in my capacity as an Alexandervon Humboldt Research Fellow at the DeutschesLiteraturarchiv in Marbach and at the Institut fürLiteraturwissenschaft at the University ofStuttgart. It is with a sense of confidence in thefuture of the CAGCR – arising from this reflectionupon our short but eventful and productive past –that I will temporarily be relocating to Germany,and also very much looking forward to my return.

Dr Angus NichollsActing Director of the CAGCR

01 Queen Mary, University of London

The Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary, University of London was founded in December 20051. Aims and Structure of the CAGCRThe Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relationsat Queen Mary, University of London wasfounded in December 2005. The Centre ishoused in the Department of German, within theSchool of Languages, Linguistics and Film. TheCentre’s website can be found at:www.qmul.ac.uk/cagcr

The CAGCR aims to: facilitate research on Anglo-German cultural relations with special referenceto the fields of literature, language, intellectualhistory and comparative cultural practice;disseminate said research through colloquia,international conferences, and the CAGCRYearbook ANGERMION; provide high qualitypostgraduate teaching through the Centre’s MAProgramme on Anglo-German Cultural Relations.

The CAGCR’s Director is Professor RüdigerGörner; Dr Angus Nicholls is Acting Director andDr Martina Deny runs the CAGCR’s Writer inResidence Programme. The Centre’s researchactivities are divided into the following foursections of research interest, each of which isconvened by a staff member in the Departmentof German at Queen Mary:

• Literature (Dr Astrid Köhler)

• Language and Linguistics (Dr Falco Pfalzgraf)

• Intellectual History (Dr Angus Nicholls)

• Cultural Transfers and Drama (Dr Robert Gillett)

Within any given academic year, one of thesesections functions as the principal area ofresearch interest for the CAGCR. The principalarea of research interest for 2009-10 wasLiterature; due to a preponderance ofconferences and public events on literature andculture, the principal area of research in 2010-11was again literature, alongside a broaderemphasis on the reception of German culture inthe British context.

2. Principal Area of Research for 2010-11:German-Language Literature and Culture in BritainThe relations between Britain and the German-speaking world, and the reception of German-language literature and culture within the BritishIsles since 1800, are complex and many-facetedsubjects. These subjects were addressed by arange of the CAGCR’s activities during 2010-11.One of the key events for both the CAGCR and forthe Department of German at Queen Mary wasthe Seventy-Fourth Conference of theAssociation of German Studies for Great Britainand Ireland (see point 4 below), the lead panel of

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Goethe Institute London screened a number ofGerman screen adaptations of Shakespeare’sworks, including Paul Felner’s Kaufmann vonVenedig (1923), and Helmut Käutner’s Hamletadaptation Der Rest ist Schweigen (1959). This

series of events gained widemedia attention, includingcoverage by The Guardian,The Evening Standard,BBC Radio 3 and BBCRadio 4 in the UnitedKingdom, and by DeutscheWelle, Deutschlandfunkand MitteldeutscherRundfunk in Germany.

4. Seventy Fourth Association of German Studies(AGS) Conference at Queen MaryOn 13-15 April 2011, the Seventy Fourth Meetingof the Association of German Studies for GreatBritain and Ireland was hosted by theDepartment of German at Queen Mary. This wasthe first London meeting of the AGS – formerlyknown as the CUTG or Conference of theUniversity Teachers of German – since 1982. TheCAGCR’s Acting Director, Dr Angus Nicholls,coordinated the conference in collaboration withthe AGS Conference Secretary Dr MelaniSchröter. In order to highlight the importance ofGerman-language contributions to London’scultural life, two of the CAGCR’s sectionconvenors – Dr Astrid Köhler (Literature section)and Dr Robert Gillett (Cultural Transfers / Dramasection) – organised the conference’s lead panelsunder the theme of London in German Culture /German Language and Culture in London. The

which was concerned with the theme of Londonin German Culture / German Language andCulture in London. Other important CAGCRevents dealing with the reception of British textsand themes within German-language cultureincluded the series of events on the subject ofShakespeare is German (see point 3 below), theANGERMION lecture with Alfred Brendel andKlaus Reichert (see point 10 below), and twointernational conferences on German-languageauthors (Wolfgang Hildesheimer and IlseAichinger), both of whose fates were connectedwith life in Britain during the years of NationalSocialist rule in Germany, and who accordinglyengaged with British life and culture in theirworks (see point 6 below).

3. Shakespeare is GermanThe 2010-11 academic year began for theCAGCR with a new collaboration between theCAGCR, Shakespeare’s Globe, the GermanEmbassy London, the Goethe Institute London,and the Institute of Germanic and RomanceStudies. This series of events, held under theprovocative proposition that “Shakespeare isGerman”, was comprised of staged readings, alecture series, and film screenings. Theprominent German actor Sebastian Koch (DasLeben der Anderen), gave a well attended stagedreading of selections from Shakespeare’s worksin the German translations by August WilhelmSchlegel and Johann Ludwig Tieck. ProfessorRüdiger Görner opened a series of lectures onthe German reception of Shakespeare by offeringa rich overview of this complex and many facetedcase of cultural transfer, under the title “A Tale forAll Seasons: Reflections on the GermanPreoccupation with Shakespeare”, while the

The programme for Shakespeare is German, producedby Shakespeare’s Globe

03 Queen Mary, University of London

literary component of these panels saw speakersengaging with images of London in works byauthors as various as Elias Canetti, Stefan Zweig,Paul Celan and Thomas Bernhard. On the finalday of the conference, a special round tablepanel was devoted to practitioners of German-language culture in London, with an emphasis onliterary translation, theatre and cultural heritage.Guests included: the publisher Maike Ziervogel(of Peirene Press, the renowned publisher ofGerman language literature in Englishtranslation, including authors such as FriedrichChristian Delius, Matthias Politycki, AloisHotschnig and Richard Weihe); Mark Leipacherof the Faction Theatre Company (currentlyengaged in staging productions of Schiller’stheatrical works in English translation); the EditorofNew Books in German Charlotte Ryland;Stefan Tobler of the publisher And Other Stories(publisher in English translation of the youngGerman author Clemens Meyer); and StevePilcher of St. George’s German Lutheran Churchin Aldgate, the oldest German Church in Britain.

On the first evening of the conference, followingthe conference dinner held in the Octagon inQueen Mary’s Queens Building, delegates wereaddressed by Dr. Emil Brix, the AustrianAmbassador to the United Kingdom, by GeorgBoomgaarden, the German Ambassador to theUnited Kingdom and by Minister Urs Schmid,Deputy Swiss Ambassador to the UnitedKingdom. All three speakers focused in theirremarks on the importance of teaching theGerman language and its diverse (Austrian,German and Swiss) cultures. This was animportant demonstration of support for BritishGerman studies during difficult economic andpolitical times, and underscored the importanceof foreign government led initiatives to the futureof the discipline in the United Kingdom. TheCAGCR would like heartily to thank the Austrian,German and Swiss Embassies for supportingboth the AGS Conference and also the on-goingactivities of the CAGCR.

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Maike Ziervogel of Peirene Press entertains (from leftto right): Dr. Robert Gillett (CAGCR), Stefan Tobler ofthe publisher And Other Stories, Mark Leipacher of theFaction Theatre Company, and Charlotte Ryland, editorof New Books in German (photo by Margit Dirscherl)

The Director of the CAGCR, Professor Rüdiger Görner,addresses AGS delegates at the conference dinner held inthe Octagon at Queen Mary (photo by Margit Dirscherl)

A special event on the second evening of the AGSconference was a reading given by the renownedGerman author Ingo Schulze at St. George’sGerman Lutheran Church in Aldgate. After beingintroduced to the history of St. George’s by MrSteve Pilcher, delegates were treated to a readingof Schulze’s Wenderoman of 2005, Neue Leben.

5. International Conference on British and GermanNationalist and Anti-Semitic Discourse (1871-1945)This conference, held on 10-11 November 2010,was part of an on-going Leverhulme fundedresearch project coordinated by Professor FelicityRash (Queen Mary), Dr Geraldine Horan(University College, London) and Dr StefanBaumgarten (Queen Mary). Held in associationwith the Leo Baeck Institute at Queen Mary and itsDeputy Director, Dr Daniel Wildmann, theconference brought together a range of local andinternational scholars from disciplines such asdiscourse analysis, political science andhistoriography in order to analyse British andGerman expressions of nationalism and anti-Semitism between 1871 and 1945, includingtheir similarities, differences and interrelations.Topics covered by speakers ranged acrossanthropological, sociological and psychological

theories during the period in question, presscoverage of nationalist and anti-Semitic issues,anti-Semitic propaganda in both nations,nationalism and anti-Semitism in youthmovements, nationalism in imaginative literature,British perceptions of German anti-Semitism, andthe colonial discourses of both nations. Keynoteaddresses were given by Professor Ruth Wodak(Lancaster) on “The Discourse of Syncretic Anti-Semitism”, and Professor Andreas Musolff (EastAnglia) on the “body politic” metaphor leading up

to and during the ThirdReich. Selected papersfrom the conferencewill appear in a volumeto be edited by theorganisers.

6. Two Conferences on Twentieth-Century GermanLanguage Authors and Their Relations with EnglandTwentieth-century Anglo-German CulturalRelations were of course marked by the eventsleading up to, during and following the SecondWorld War. Due to the catastrophe that unfoldedon the European continent during this period,many German-language authors and culturalfigures, or members of their families, madeconnections with the British Isles, often out ofnecessity in the case of those who were subject topersecution. This aspect of Anglo-GermanCultural Relations is of particular interest to theCAGCR, particularly due to its academic homebeing at Queen Mary in London’s East End, whichwas formerly home to many German-speakingimmigrants who fled the European Holocaust.

05 Queen Mary, University of London

Professor Felicity Rash (Queen Mary) withProfessor Ruth Wodak (Lancaster)

Ingo Schulze reading in Berlin in 2004(photo by Caren Müller)

The first of these two conferences, held on 15-17September 2010 and organised by ProfessorRüdiger Görner and his PhD student IsabelWagner, was concerned with WolfgangHildesheimer. The son of German-Jewishparents, Hildesheimer came to Britain during the1930s in order to study painting and set design.One of Hildesheimer’s major contributions toAnglo-German cultural relations was his work asan interpreter during the Nuremburg Trials of1945-6, and his prodigious linguistic abilitieswere also reflected in his work as a literarytranslator, through his translations of Germanauthors such as Stefan George and Franz Kafkainto English, and of English language authorssuch as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and DjunaBarnes into German. This conference, involving anumber of important international guest

speakers andorganised withthe collaborationof the SwissEmbassy to theUnited Kingdom,focused onHildesheimer’smanifoldactivities as atranslator, travelwriter, author offiction,biographer andart historian.

The eminent Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger willcelebrate her 90th birthday in November 2011.On 10-11 March 2011, the CAGCR staged aninternational conference in honour of Ilse

Aichinger, organised by Professor RüdigerGörner and Dr Christine Ivanovic in collaborationwith the Austrian Cultural Forum in London. Thedaughter of an Austrian-Jewish mother,Aichinger’s life was shaped by the GermanAnschluss of Austria in 1938. In 1938Aichinger’s twin sister, Helga Michie, was able toescape to Britain on one of the lastKindertransporte. Aichinger herself was,however, forced to remain in Austria with hermother, where she survived the war years andthen established herself as one of the mostprominent German-language authors of the post-war period, associated with the Gruppe 47. Thisconference focused on the Anglo-Germandimensions of Aichinger’s life, with a particularemphasis on her correspondence with HelgaMichie and on translations into English ofAichinger’s novels and poetry.

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Wolfgang HildesheimerIlse Aichinger (left) with her twin sister Helga Michie,early 1950s

7. Postgraduate Colloquium on Alltags-Surrealismus(nicht nur) in der deutschen Literatur Held on 28-29 April 2011, this two-daypostgraduate colloquium was organisedcollaboratively by Professor Sven Hanuschek(Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich) and byMargit Dirscherl, a PhD student in Queen Mary’sDepartment of German. Chaired and introduced byProfessor Hanuschek, it invited research studentsfrom Munich and London to present theirinterdisciplinary research in fields such as filmstudies, comparative literary studies and sociology.Presentations were held on works by Louis Aragon,Wolfgang Bauer, Josef Holub, Heinar Kipphardt,Stanislaw Lem, Arno Schmidt, Yoko Tawada, RorWolf, and Juli Zeh, followed by extensivediscussions, which enabled a comparison of theindividual approaches to “Everyday-Surrealism,” aswell as a clarification of this concept.

The conference was funded by Queen Mary’sSchool of Languages, Linguistics and Film and bythe Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich,thereby continuing the collaboration between theseinstitutions that dates back to an Erasmus Exchangeagreement signed in 2004. By extending thisagreement to postgraduate activity, the colloquium

aimed at deepening the relationship between bothuniversities, and at offering a forum where theacademic cultures of Britain and Germany couldinterchange. In 2012 the papers delivered at theconference will be published by edition text + kritikas part of the series NeoAvantgarden.

8. MOVENS Conference on Anglo-German-IndianCultural RelationsMOVENS is an academic network for internationalcollaboration and postgraduate mobility in the fieldof German Studies, which was founded in Swedenin 2005. This network organizes a conferenceevery year at one of the participating institutions toexplore aspects of ‘Grenzüberschreitungen’ or‘crossover phenomena’. Postgraduate studentsare particularly welcome at these conferences, sothat PhD projects can be explored and developedin collaboration with established internationalscholars. On 15-19 June 2011, the MOVENSConference was hosted by the CAGCR’s convenorof Cultural Transfers and Drama, Dr Robert Gillett.Drawing on ERASMUS mobility agreements andfunding from the German government, hebroadened the scope of the event to include asummer school for MA students. The aim of theconference was to explore the many facets ofcultural relations, including the multiculturalsetting of Queen Mary within London’s East End.Dr Angus Nicholls, Acting Director of the CAGCR,prepared the ground with a lecture on ‘Anglo-German Conceptions of Culture in LateNineteenth-Century Britain’. One of the definingthemes of the conference was the relationshipbetween the British and German cultures and thediverse cultures of the Indian subcontinent. On thefirst day of the conference, Dr Nazneen Ahmed(University of Kent) delivered a lecture on the

07 Queen Mary, University of London

Participants in the postgraduate colloquium, includingMargit Dirscherl (centre) and Professor SvenHanuschek (far right)

literature of the Bengali-Bangladeshi diaspora,which touched upon the position of Bengali-Bangladeshi culture in Britain and particularly inLondon’s East End. This research strand of theconference was strengthened throughcollaborations with Queen Mary/Geffrye MuseumCentre for Studies of the Home and the College’sCentre for the Study of Migration. Alison Bluntfrom Queen Mary’s Department of Geographydelivered a lecture on ‘City and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian and Chinese attachments to Calcutta’,while Annja Neumann, a PhD student in QueenMary’s Department of German, ran a PhDworkshop on the ‘Poetics of the Orient: The Indo-German Ideal from Goethe to Grünbein.’ On thefinal day of the conference, Dr Gillett and Dr AstridKöhler (Literature convenor, CAGCR), exploredBritish-Indian film productions in their seminar on‘The Indian Sub-continent and the East End ofLondon:My Beautiful Laundrette, Brick Lane,Slumdog Millionaire.’ Delegates were also able toenjoy extra-curricular cultural experiences in BrickLane and at Neasden Hindu Temple. A furtherfeature of the Summer School was the presencethere of Dr Gisela Holfter, Director of the Centre forIrish-German studies, who gave an account of herwork and expressed interest in collaboration withthe CAGCR.

9. Writer in Residence ProgrammeEstablished in 2005, the CAGCR Writer inResidence Programme showcases recentdevelopments in contemporary Germanliterature. This initiative is financed by theDeutscher Literaturfonds and on a regular basisby the German Academic Exchange Service(DAAD). It is administered by the GermanDepartment’s DAAD Lektorin, Dr Martina Deny.

The CAGCR hosts writers whose work isrepresentative of contemporary literature inGerman and enables visiting authors to reside atQueen Mary for periods of approximately tenweeks. The CAGCR writer in residence for 2010-11 was Kai Weyand. Born in 1968, Weyand wasformerly Director of the Freiburger Literaturbüro.During a well attended event at Queen Mary’s

Lock-Keeper’sCottage, Weyandread from his comicnovel Schiefereröffnet Spanish(Wallstein Verlag,2008), which dealswith the tribulationsand pitfalls ofworking as asecondary schoolteacher in Germany.

10. Launch of the third issue of ANGERMION,Yearbook for Anglo-German Cultural Relations(2010), with Alfred Brendel in conversation withKlaus Reichert. The third issue of the CAGCR’s Yearbook forAnglo-German Cultural Relations, ANGERMION,was launched at an event held in the Residenceof the German Ambassador on 7 December2010. The focus of this event were two nativeGerman speakers with long and distinguishedhistories of engaging with the culture of theBritish Isles: the Austrian born pianist and poet,renowned interpreter of German classical music,long time resident of London, and Patron of theCAGCR, Alfred Brendel KBE, and the Presidentof the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache undDichtung, Professor Klaus Reichert. Chaired by

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Kai Weyand, the CAGCR’sWriter in Residence during2010-11

Professor Rüdiger Görner, this fascinatingconversation ranged across themes such as theGerman speaking diaspora in London during thepost-war period, German languageinterpretations of Anglophone literature(Shakespeare, Joyce), the relationship betweenliterature and music, and the cultural locales ofLondon and their transformation over time (theBritish Library, the British Museum). The eveningwas concluded with readings from Brendel’srecent poetry, which explicitly refers to mattersconcerning Anglo-German cultural relations.

11. First Issue of the Postgraduate Journale-Transfers is PublishedThe first issue of the online postgraduate journalfor literary and cultural studies, e-Transfers, waslaunched in early 2011. This is a collaborativeproject between the CAGCR and the GraduateCentre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at theJustus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, and wasinitially funded by a Westfield Trust Grantawarded to the German Department’s thenGerman Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)Lektorin, Dr Susanne Frane. This project isdesigned to give postgraduate students in Britain

and Germany the opportunity to gain experienceof either running an academic journal (includingwriting calls for papers, organising peer-review ofsubmissions, editing submissions, preparingcopy, gaining publicity) or in publishing in arefereed publication for the first time. Allsubmissions to the journal are double-blindrefereed by one postgraduate student and oneestablished member of academic staff. At QueenMary, the editorial team for e-Transfers consistsof both academic staff (Dr. Angus Nicholls), andof postgraduate students from the GermanDepartment (Margit Dirscherl) and the School ofEnglish and Drama (Philipp Hunnekuhl andAmmara Ashraf); a similar mix of academic staff(Beatrice Michaelis, Kai Sicks) and postgraduatestudents (Mirjam Bitter, Anna Rettberg) exists atthe GCSC in Giessen. The first issue of the journalincluded the following papers: an interpretationof Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday from theperspective of cognitive science (StefanFreissmann); a reading of James Joyce’sFinnegan’s Wake through the lens of MartinHeidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein(Michael Gilbert); an examination of Britishwritings on the German Democratic Republicbetween 1973 and 1989 (Jamie Lee Searle); anda gender- and religious-studies influencedreading of Nadeem Aslam’s novel aboutcontemporary Pakistani migrant communities inBritain,Maps for Lost Lovers (Jutta Weingarten).

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Left to right: Alfred Brendel KBE, Professor RüdigerGörner, the German Ambassador to the UK GeorgBoomgaarden, and Professor Klaus Reichert

12. Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship Awardedto the CAGCR’s Acting DirectorThe CAGCR’s Acting Director, Dr Angus Nicholls,has been awarded an 18 month ResearchFellowship for Experienced Researchers by theAlexander von Humboldt Foundation, which willsee him being based at the DeutschesLiteraturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar and theInstitut für Literaturwissenschaft at the Universityof Stuttgart. Dr Nicholls will be writing amonograph for the publishers Routledge on thetwentieth-century German philosopher andliterary theorist Hans Blumenberg. TheAlexander von Humboldt Foundation, funded bythe Federal Republic of Germany, fostersacademic cooperation between German andinternational scholars. Dr Nicholls’ membershipof this Foundation will provide the CAGCR withon-going access to academic exchange networksboth within and beyond Germany. Dr FalcoPfalzgraf will take over from Dr Nicholls as ActingDeputy Director of the CAGCR in 2011-12 and2012-13.

13. The Year Ahead: 2011-12The 2011-12 academic year will see the CAGCRhosting the conference of the Friedrich NietzscheSociety of Great Britain and Ireland on 9-11September – entitled Between Reason andUnreason: Nietzsche, the Enlightenment,Romanticism – including an emphasis onNietzsche’s reception in Britain; and aninternational conference on the subject of StefanZweig and England in collaboration with theInternational Stefan Zweig Centre, Salzburg, andthe Austrian Cultural Forum, London.

One major thrust of the CAGCR’s activities in2011-12 will also be laying the foundations for anAnglo-German TV/Internet channel, facilitated bya number of eminent media advisors and themanagement consultancy firm Roland Berger UK.

14. Follow the CAGCR on Facebook and Twitter!You can now befriend the CAGCR on Facebook athttp://facebook.com/anglo-germanand you can follow us on Twitter atCAGCR_QMUL.

Dr Angus Nicholls, Acting Director of the CAGCR andAlexander von Humboldt Fellow

This guide has been produced by the Publications and Web Office for the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations – Pub8463

Enquiries Concerning the CAGCR can be directed to:Dr Falco PfalzgrafActing Deputy DirectorCentre for Anglo-German Cultural RelationsQueen Mary, University of LondonMile End Road, London E1 4NSTel: +44 (0) 207 882 8321Email: f.pfalzgraf @qmul.ac.uk