Vorwort der Redaktion

From the beginning, Brecht’s poetry is characterized by a certain ambivalence. This could well be tactically motivated, for example when it came to opening up media in order to publish the first works. Brecht cultivated this ambiguity to the end. The Buckow Elegies were written in 1953 against the background of the workers’ uprising of June 17, 1953, which was violently ended by the Soviet army. Here again intelligent behavior was required from Brecht, who on the one hand owed a lot to the GDR and on the other hand was only too aware of the totalitarian oppression of art. With the image of a flower garden, which stands for the
GDR and is bordered by a wall that fulfills different functions depending on one’s point of view, he addresses this topic – eight years before a wall was actually built.

The article examines the role of Rilkeʼs panther in Marica Bodrožićʼs Pantherzeit, an essay about the first corona lockdown in spring 2020. The approach is based on the methods of cultural animal studies. What can human-animal relationships contribute to understanding exceptional situations and crises such as the Covid19 pandemic? To answer this question, Bodrožićʼs panther is examined in terms of its contextualization, historicization and poetization. It becomes clear that human-animal relationships that deviate from conventional, anthropocentric readings can trigger a reorganization of self-images, identities and attitudes towards life.

In response to the current pandemic, novels with a pandemic crisis topic are being created in contemporary Austrian literature. The article analyzes how the current pandemic is presented in literary terms and how the resulting crises are dealt with in Marlene Streeruwitz’s novel So ist die Welt geworden, Maria Jelenko’s Quarantäne and Peter Zimmermann’s Corona 2021. Beginn einer neuen Welt in terms of literary aesthetics. Answers are sought to the questions of how restrictions in public life are perceived and to what extent literary depictions of crises can offer potential.

This paper attempts to provide an overview of new motifs, protagonists and concepts in literary works conceived as aesthetic representations of various models of social withdrawal and isolation. To illuminate the social context, sustainable lifestyles and trends that emerged at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (homing, cocooning, hikikomori syndrome) were used and interpreted as counter-designs to the social changes brought about by globalisation and digitalisation.

The article examines the quite extraordinary phenomenon of literary texts, that limit themselves, like anagrams or palindromes. Limited texts are often reduced to their playful appearance, while they have a close relation to experimental practises as well. Experiments as well as limited literature construct their objects of research within a manipulated environment. This self-limiting literary expression is specified with Deleuze’ and Guattari’s concept of a “minor” literature, by pointing out the defamiliarization of the text production and the irritation of linguistic automatisms initiated by limitations. Strongly restricted literature allows due to its limitation only, the release of new linguistic possibilities and insights, which is further demonstrated with a concluding example.

This article discusses delimitations in the field of pejoratives on various levels. The scope of consideration is continuously extended: from delimitations on the paradigmatic level (on the basis of the structure of meaning and lexical features), to demarcations on the pragmalinguistic level (demarcations among aggressive speech acts, intentions), and finally to the differentiation of the terms “verbal aggression” and “verbal violence”. Empirical basis: written and oral surveys of 700 Viennese, conducted in 2006–2008 and 2014–2016. Methods: component analysis, lexical-semantic, descriptive, and contextual analysis.

Fidelity in the translation of legal texts is the overriding qualitative criterion. Its meticulous observance is obliged by the Polish Professional Code of a Sworn Translator. However, from the perspective of prescriptive norms in the target language and the principles of textual and normative equivalence, adding or omitting
specific elements of the text may even be an obligatory translational action. The article discusses selected contexts in which these procedures are justified.

The aim of the presented paper is to specify the micro-level of encoded communication between contemporary dancers. The focus of the statements is the identification of the key words that contemporary dancers use in the creative process while working on the performance. During the non-participating observation, which is considered a methodical approach, the key words are identified, their function and the motives for their use are determined on the basis of the analysis of the context. Thus, it becomes possible to answer the question about the legitimacy of using the term encoded for the communication of contemporary dancers.

The article deals with the question of how linguistic data obtained through discourse linguistic analyses are communicated outside linguistics. The focus is on the didactics of German as a foreign language, with a special focus on university German teacher training in Slovakia. It will be examined how the more recent disciplines such as discourse linguistics can be effectively integrated into the curriculum beyond classical linguistics.
This requires an interdisciplinary perspective, which is offered here through the visualizations. Based on this background, case studies from the German and Slovakian migration discourse of 2015 will be used to show how optimized knowledge can be conveyed using visualizations, even across complex subject areas.

Prior to the Katastrofe (Yiddish for ‘Holocaust’), Warsaw was the world’s capital of Yiddishland, or the Ashkenazic civilization of Yiddish language and culture. In the terms of absolute numbers of Jewish inhabitants, at the turn of the 20th century, New York City surpassed Warsaw. Yet, from the perspective of cultural and political institutions and organizations, Warsaw remained the center of Europe’s Jewish life. This article offers an overview of the rise of Warsaw as such a center, its destruction during World War II, and the
center’s partial revival in the aftermath, followed by its extinction, which was sealed with the antisemitic ethnic cleansing of Poland’s last Jewish communities in 1968. Twenty years after the fall of communism, beginning at the turn of the 2010s, a new awareness of the Jewish facet of Warsaw’s and Poland’s culture and history has developed during the past decade. It is a chance for a new opening, for embracing Jewish culture, Yiddish and Judaism as inherent elements of Polish culture and history This country’s history and culture was not created exclusively by Catholics, as ethnonationalists are wont to claim incorrectly. Hence, the essay is intended to serve as a corrective to this anachronistic preconception.