The present article has been inspired by a reflection that, despite the transformations that have taken place in the Upper Silesia region, primarily in the new millennium, this region is still perceived through the prism of industry, and its perception is dominated by black colour, in a literal and metaphorical sense. The author of the article tries to break this stereotypical image by making a review of selected forest landscapes recorded on the pages of German literature inspired by local colours.

The author of the article analyses the historical book for children and teenagers Ich war dabei. Geschichten gegen das Vergessen (2004) by Gudrun Pausewang and focuses on the problem of presenting history, recognizing and admitting guilt in the context of contemporary literature for children and teenagers. The author examines in what way and for what purpose the topic of national socialism and holocaust is introduced into the literature. She demonstrates that literature for children and teenagers can also be a genre that makes it possible to deal with national socialism and can contribute to the political education of children and youngsters. The stories subjected to analysis address traditional patterns of guilt suppression and show how children and teenagers approach the propagation of Nazi ideology. Pausewang points with her stories to the individual and collective importance of settling accounts with the past in books for children.

Oberösterreich [Upper Austria] (1972) by Franz Xavier Kroetz is a play belonging to the genre of new folk art, whose authors aimed at initiating emancipatory processes in society. Essentially, the dramatic art of the 1970s is characterized by
a considerable amount of subversion to the existing order. It applies equally to political and social systems, including the emerging consumer society in West Germany at that time. Contemporary German-language dramaturgy, represented in this article by the drama Vereinte Nationen [United Nations] (2017) written by the Austrian writer Clemens J. Setz, explores similar problems in no lesser extent, although the means undertaken to achieve the goal seem to be fundamentally different. Both plays address the topic of child commodification in order to critically sharpen the structures that govern a society based on the assumptions of consumption philosophy. On the basis of the theory of consumption developed by Jean Baudrillard, Zygmunt Bauman, and Norbert Boltz, the author in the present article tries to trace similarities and differences in the approach to the ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour of the consumption-based society.

For Heinz Piontek (1925–2003), a German writer from Silesia, the period of greatest popularity lasted from the 1950s to the 1980s. After initial success, especially in poetry, he was placed among the most interesting phenomena in the literature of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, at the end of his life he found himself on the margins of literary life and gradually fell into oblivion. Although his texts were translated into many foreign languages, he himself was never widely known in Poland. For many decades, the only book by Piontek published in Polish translation was the volume of short stories Gorące Kasztany [Hot Chestnuts] (1966). The article presents the Polish reception of this writer from its beginnings in the 1960s to the present day. The promisingly launched presentation of the writer in Poland includes translations of his poetry and few works in prose, scattered mostly in the press and in a few anthologies. It also includes sketches, reviews, articles, his presence in university scripts, textbooks on the history of German literature and dictionaries of writers, and in recent decades also in academic works (including book monographs) by Polish Germanists.

Michael Opitz: Wolfgang Hilbig. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2017: 663 S.

Isabel Hernández, Dorota Sośnicka (Hg.): Fabulierwelten. Zum (Auto)Biographischen in der Literatur der deutschen Schweiz.
Festschrift für Beatrice Sandberg zum 75. Geburtstag. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2017: 255 S.

Lothar Pikulik: Natur und die westliche Zivilisation. Literarische Kritik und Kompensation einer Entfremdung. Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2016: 242 s.

Heinrich Böll: Wybór pism. Red. Bruno Arich-Gerz i Paweł Piszczatowski. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Eperons-Ostrogi, 2017: 225 s.

Rolf Peter Sieferle: Das Migrationsproblem. Über die Unvereinbarkeit von Sozialstaat und Masseneinwanderung.
Hg. von Frank Böckelmann (Die Werkreihe von Tumult, Nr. 1) Dresden: Manuscriptum, 2017: 135 S.

Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Europäischer Master für Lexikographie/European Master in Lexicography (EMLex)

Konferenz „Tabubrüche in der Deutschschweizer Literatur” (Szczecin, 17.–19.05.2018)