The Anthropocene artwork is situated at the art/science interface because the Anthropocene is itself a scientific construction. Since the Anthropocene is based on effects of technological development that are by no means intentional, it cannot be contained by ethical imperatives. Rather, it is the result of an epistemology that fails to recognize actants as objects. Therefore, Bruno Latour calls for an aesthetics that propagates feedback effects. Such an epistemically centered art should limit itself to the multiplication of the possible and give up its autonomy. This doctrine is contradicted by Latour himself, insofar as the ensemble of actants, together with the celestial body Gaia populated by life in the Critical Zones, is an unknown and hardly scientifically penetrated phenomenon. Thus, a border of non-knowledge runs through ecological art, which is located in the middle of a transformation movement.

he cinematic confrontation with the Cold War was both real and symbolic, and repeatedly concerned with the powerful metaphor of political confrontation—the Iron Curtain. The films did not only focus on phenomena of inclusion and exclusion along these system boundaries, but dealt also with the problem of how to overcome the Iron Curtain, i.e. with its permeability. This can be made particularly clear using the example of the German-German-Polish ménage à trois, since the relations between the two German states and the People’s Republic of Poland were specific in many respects. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Poland was seen as the key to the Eastern Bloc, in the GDR as a potential threat, since it was considered far less loyal to the Soviet system of power, downright libertarian, in both West and East Germany. Using a number of film examples, the article shows how the permeability and (in)surmountability of the Iron Curtain, which was literally carved in stone in the middle of Berlin in 1961, was addressed in these films and what role Poland played in this context. The change in the audio-visual representation of flight and transition through the Iron Curtain is traced in a comparative manner, with films for cinema and television being used equally.

With her debut novel Außer sich (2017), Sasha Marianna Salzmann undertakes a journey through the history of the last hundred years and explores the themes of flight, migration, gender, the search for identity, and generational trauma through four generations. The plot centers on Alissa, called Ali, a woman in her mid-20s, who travels to Istanbul driven by the search for her twin brother Anton. Boundaries and their transgressions are at the heart of the novel. Gender boundaries are subverted in the form of transgender characters, geographical boundaries are transgressed through changes of place and time. Cultural and
linguistic boundaries are concomitants of memory work that shifts in space and time. The article will focus on three limit-concepts essential to the novel: Geographical boundaries, temporal boundaries, and gender boundaries.

The article examines Paul Heyse’s novella Incurable with regard to the borderline experiences of the supposedly dying Marie. She has been incorrectly diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis by a doctor and henceforth stays in a sanatorium. On the one hand, the article sheds light on the extent to which Marie prepares herself for her supposed death between the art of living and the art of dying. On the other hand, the sanatorium is also understood as a borderline space between life and death and examined under Foucault’s implications of heterotopia. Here, the interplay between spatiality and the first-person narrator
Marie is focused on more closely. She sees her new freedom in her loneliness. She strives to free herself from social constraints and outdated moral concepts in the heterotopic place of the sanatorium.

Bertolt Brecht wanted to become an important writer from his youth. In his self-image, success was an essential part of this: reputation, fame, money that he wanted to earn with his poetry. He planned his career almost strategically. A certain moral flexibility was an advantage, which led, among other things, to the fact that he always sought contacts with influential personalities without paying particular attention to their political position. Particularly noteworthy in this context are his contacts with representatives of the National Socialist cultural elite, which Brecht had sought and cultivated since the late forties. So far, this has not been adequately investigated in research. Perhaps in order not to question Brecht’s image as a socialist pillar saint?

 In this article, selected contemporary historical articles with narratives about the Upper Silesian emigrants to Texas in the 19th century, the so-called Silesian Texans, are cited and discussed. The attributions of national categories with regard to identity, language, cultural and local origin are critically examined. The method used is comparative imagology according to the “Aachener Programm”. This is especially suitable for alike studies in transnational areas such as Upper Silesia and its oversea diaspora in Texas, USA. The cited sources of the last three decades are contrasted with the latest scholarly findings regarding research on the Silesian Texans, as well as the (Upper) Silesian language itself. This article can be seen as a survey of current sources on the phenomenon of the Silesian Texans, as well as a critical discussion of them. The study highlights historical errors and anachronisms in historical narratives in which the Silesian Texans’ region of origin is perceived as neither multicultural nor transnational according to its character as a borderland.

This article is devoted to the topic of “language and violence”, “language and war” as exemplified by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. It explores connections between verbal and physical violence, and the role of expressive lexis, verbal aggression, and linguistic creativity and humor in everyday warfare.