Revista de Filología Alemana (ISSN 1133-0406, ISSN-e 1988-2823) is an annual journal that took its current name in 1993 when it broke away from the former Revista de Filología Moderna, published by the four Modern Languages departments at the Complutense University of Madrid. It compiles research work on literary theory, linguistics, literature and culture in German-speaking countries and how they relate to other languages and literatures. The journal is structured into: Linguistic studies, literary studies, Cultural studies and Reviews.
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Revista de Filología Alemana is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.
The Werther-Type in the novel "Flavio" by Rosalía de Castro
This paper presents an analysis of the influence of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther on Rosalía de Castro's novel Flavio. Highlighted is as well the critique of social norms governing relations between the sexes in Castro’s novel. To provide a broader perspective, the book Fragments d'un discours amoureux by Roland Barthes was used as tertius comparationis to show that both Castro’s and Goethe's novels share the discourse of love. In particular, it is shown how the character Flavio identifies with the archetypal lovesick person prone to melancholy and attributed to geniuses.
Copyright (c) 2025 Revista de Filología Alemana
Value, Transcendence and Cultural Death in Hermann Brochʼs Thinking
Hermann Broch is a little-known author in the philosophical field. My purpose in this paper is to make his thoughts known through his philosophical essays. In these writings, two of the most important concerns of the Austrian philosopher and novelist are the decline of Western culture and the crisis of values of our time, a crisis that is due to the loss of contact with the transcendent. Through his concept of "degradation of values" (Wertzerfall) and his critique of positivist culture, I will present an interpretation of Broch's philosophy in a Platonic-medieval and metaphysical-existential key, considering some authors of special relevance in his work. Our author, in order to save philosophy, proposes a vindication of the Middle Ages and a critique of modernity that becomes more pressing as the years go by. For Broch, the materialism must be transmuted into a kind of innovative spiritualism.
Correcting Sophocles? Feminine perspective in the "Antigone"-adaptations of María Zambrano and Grete Weil
In addition to the canonized adaptations of the myth of Antigone by Anouilh and Brecht, other versions by women-authors who were victims of the repression of authoritarian regimes appeared. The texts of the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano (La tumba de Antígona, 1967) and the Jewish-German author Grete Weil (Meine Schwester Antigone, 1980) are examples of this. In the field of feminist criticism, the figure of Antigone also served as an inspiration to reflect on the position of women within patriarchal society, as shown by Woolf, Irigaray and Butler. Based on the concept of “myth correction” (Vöhler/Seidensticker/Emmerich), the aim is to determine to what extent it is possible to identify this feminist imprint in the works of Zambrano and Weil. For this purpose, the conditions of Antigone's death will be analysed, paying special attention to the combination of suicide and virginity.
Multidirectional Memory in “Daniel, der Gerechte” (1954): From Colonial Psychiatry to “Aktion T4”
This article studies, through the concepts of ‘prememory’ and ‘multidirectional memory’, the aesthetic elements of the colonial context used to construct the fictional universe of Heinrich Böll's Daniel, der Gerechte (1954). This Kurzgeschichte, published shortly after the end of World War II, refers to the National Socialist euthanasia program “Aktion T4” and, to construct de plot, draws on concepts already present in the previous European colonial experience – such as trauma, psychiatry and the biologization of social.
Digital and Pathic World Experience: Clemens J. Setzʼs novel "Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre"
Against the background of Bernhard Waldenfels' phenomenological approach, this article analyses the novel Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre by Clemens J. Setz, in which two types of world experience are juxtaposed: digital and pathic world experience. The digital experience of the world characteristic of the characters in the novel, which stems from an excessive use of new media, leads to a weakening of the qualities that characterise subjects: Perception, attention and empathy. This raises the question of the status of the subject. Digitalisation leads to an impoverishment of the experience of the world and is broken up by a pathic experience in which the subject appears as an answerer, i.e. in relation to something or someone else. The novel shows that change can only occur on the basis of a pathic experience in which the subject is called upon to respond and act.
From Art to Propaganda: Degenerate Art and Aesthetic and Ideological Manipulation in National Socialist Germany
This article examines the discourse of “degenerate art” in Germany, from its initial gestation to its consolidation as a propaganda tool of National Socialism. It examines how this concept was instrumentalized to discredit, criminalise and censor German avantgarde artists, especially those who were Jewish. The study focuses on the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937, comparing it with the antagonistic exhibition at the House of German Art in Munich. As this article shows, the instrumentalization of modern art in Germany not only affected the art and society of the time, but also had international repercussions, contributing to the stigmatization of modernism. It also examines the consequences of Nazi anti-modernity, including its influence in Spain at the time, and raising the challenge for museum spaces today to present works by artists who moved between the “degenerate” avant-garde and “pure German art”.
This article aims to relate the extraordinary life of Gregor von Rezzori (1914 -1998) with the cities that shaped his personality and his work. From his native Czernowitz to Vienna, his cultural homeland, and Bucharest, where he spent an important period of his life. All of them are a source of inspiration for his novels and are studied in relation to his biography. For its analysis, the article draws on research methods from the study of urban space and literary analysis with incursions into literary-historical research from a semiotic point of view, which makes it possible to treat the city as a text.
Elements of Colloquial Syntax in "Winterkartoffelknödel" by Rita Falk
This paper examines how the characteristic features of colloquial German syntax are recreated in the fictional novel Winterkartoffelknödel, by Rita Falk. It aims to explain how the use of a selection of linguistic resources not only allows to reproduce the distinctive properties of oral grammar in a written medium, but also to evoke the unique communicative conditions of unplanned spoken interactions. The research carried out has made it possible to identify a remarkable variety of mechanisms belonging to four areas: the organisation of propositional content, the grammar of the utterance, the sentence periphery and the informative functions. Throughout the paper, it is shown how each of them contributes to generating the impression of immediacy, dynamism and spontaneity that defines colloquial conversation and distinguishes it from other discourse genres.
Historiography, Memory and Identity in German Children and Youth Literature: The GDR and FRG in Klaus Kordon’s "Auf der Sonnenseite" (2009)
35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the GDR and FRG, processing and addressing the (shared) history of the two countries remains an ongoing responsibility of the contemporary society. The analysis of the youth novel Auf der Sonnenenseite (2009) by Klaus Kordon, a well-known author of German Children- and Youth Literature, examines from a multidimensional perspective the literary memory that emerges from autobiographic memories and translates into an auto fictional novel. Besides a reflection on the political system of the GDR, by sharing his individual memories, the author permits his readers to gain an insight from a double and emotional perspective into sociopolitical aspects and everyday life in the two German states. In consequence this article starts from the assumption that reading of Kordon may contribute to complementing current historical discourses and to avoiding stereotypes.
Fehlig, Juliane / Jirku, Brigitte E. (Hrsg.): Lebendige Erinnerung – Archiv DDR. Berlin: Peter Lang. 422 Seiten
Lajarrige, Jacques / Prédhumeau, Alfred (Hrsg.): Literaturbeziehungen im Kalten Krieg – Österreich und die DDR. Berlin: Frank & Timme 2025. 436 S.
Montané Forasté, Anna / Jané-Lligé, Jordi / Siguan, Marisa (eds.): Paraules per a un poeta. Una aproximació als discursos del premi Georg Büchner. Barcelona: Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona 2024. 239 pp.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Briefe 1782-1784. Historisch Kritische Ausgabe. Band 5 I Text, Band 5 II A und 5 II B: Kommentare. Hrsg. von Héctor Canal und Elke Richter unter Mitarbeit von Sören Schmidtke und Bettina Zschiedrich. Berlin Boston: de Gruyter. 2024. 1872 S.
Buck, Isabella: Wissenschaftliches Schreiben mit KI. Tübingen: UVK Verlag 2025. 242 S.
Vives Martínez, Mireia: Theodor Fontane y la paradoja de la inocencia en la culpa: el caso de Effi Briest. Berlín: Peter Lang 2024. 220 pp.
"Nach einem andern Stern Wollen": Kafka and the Search for the Jewish Self
This article addresses Franz Kafka's complex relationship with his Jewish identity, exploring the intersection between his biography, writings, and cultural context. Within his personal writings, Kafka depicted the tension between assimilation and tradition, rebelling against the former by seeking an ideal Jewish self across various facets of Jewishness: from Yiddishism to Zionism. His quest posed a challenge to the dynamics of assimilation and served as an attempt to emancipate himself from the overwhelming figure of his father, Hermann, who embodies the consequences of the assimilation in Kafka’s self-narration The quest for his Jewish identity led Kafka to confront inherent tensions within the experience of anti-Semitism, but also to yearn for a stable identity that, like many of his contemporaries, constituted a lifelong pursuit.
Copyright (c) 2024 Revista de Filología Alemana
Proposal of a New Type of Lexicographic Tool for the Production of German and Spanish
In this article we use some Spanish and German verbs that lexicalise the concept of lending (e.g. alquilar, ausleihen) as an example to explain the basis and describe the main features of the tool CombiDigiLex. It is a multilingual digital lexicographic tool of verbal and deverbal lexemes from Spanish, German and Portuguese, with a conceptual organisation of the lexicon that allows access to the lexicon from an onomasiological perspective. It is based on empirical material extracted from linguistic corpora and is especially designed to meet the needs of consultation for the purpose of free production or translation.
Aufständische Undine. Geschichte und zeitliche Modalitäten in Undine (Petzold), Undine geht (Bachmann) und Undine kommt (Stelzmüller)
This article reflects on the figure of the 'undine' and its allegorical values, focusing on three different works that manifest 'family resemblances': Ingeborg Bachmann’s Undine geht, Christian Petzold’s Undine, and Petra Stelzmüller’s Undine kommt. These three objects of study are also contrasted according to the artistic languages that make them up (writing, film, urban installation). Taken together, they constitute three different models of the feminine as an insurrectionary subject, both as an individual and as a collective body: a sign of radical rebellion mediated by writing; symbol of a global critique –enhanced by the so-called 'moving images'– of human existence under advanced capitalism; finally, icon of an artistic activism that no longer critically confronts the very institution of art.
The Experience of Cultural Otherness in Ida Pfeiffer's First Travel Book Reise einer Wienerin in das heilige Land
Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858) has a very prominent place in the history of women's travel literature, because travelling, writing and publishing meant challenging the division of gender roles of the time, which reserved these activities only for men. In this paper I briefly present the five journeys of this woman from Vienna who, with few resources, managed to visit far-flung enclaves in Europe, Asia, America and Africa and to publish a travel book on each of her travels. However, the main objective of this work is to analyse her first publication, Visit to the Holy Land. For this analysis I will consider, on the one hand, the importance of pilgrimages in the history of travel and, on the other, the experience of cultural otherness that the East represents for 19th century Europe.
„Mir schwätze Saarlännisch“. An overview of the special features of the Rhine and Moselle Franconian dialects in Saarland
The Saarland, the smallest territorial state in the Federal Republic of Germany, is rarely at the centre of dialectological studies, although it has a very diverse dialect landscape to offer. This research desideratum is addressed in the present study, which is based on a corpus of 25 language recordings from the three dialect areas found in the Saarland (Rhine Franconian, transitional area, Moselle Franconian). A questionnaire with a selection of Wenker sentences served as the basis for the recordings, which were collected specifically for this study. The material is analysed with regard to linguistic features on four levels: phonetic-phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic, with the focus on the first level, which is dealt with in more detail. The aim of the study is to provide an overview of how the various dialects are spoken in different areas of the Saarland and what similarities, differences and special features can be identified.
A Corpus-Based Analysis of the German Directional Adverb vorbei from Morpho-Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives
The paper presents a comprehensive, usage-based analysis of the directorial adverb vorbei, which has received little attention thus far. The PaGeS corpus, an extensive corpus of contemporary texts, serve as the data source for this investigation. The morpho-syntactic status of vorbei is critically examined, with a focus on its contentious classification as either a word-formation element ot a syntactic combination structure. The numerous structural and syntactic variations of the vorbei- phrases are detailed, and their topological properties and syntactic functions are also discussed. The main focus of the paper lies in the semantic analysis of the vorbei- constructions. Within the framework of Talmy's cognitive semanbtics and Lakoff and Johnson's metaphore theory, constructions that express both factual and abstract motion are described. Particular attention is paid to the temporal use of vorbei.
Youth Language in Digital Communication: on How to Sell Drugs Online (fast)
This paper intends to examine how the characteristic features of electronic communication among young people are recreated in the German fiction TV series How to sell drugs online (fast). It presents the results of the analysis of 108 conversations held by its characters on social networks, instant messaging applications, video games and internet platforms. The research has allowed to identify recurring linguistic mechanisms, which have been classified into six different levels: lexical-semantic, morphosyntactic, orthotypographic, pragmatic, visual and medial. All of them help to evoke the kind of conceptional orality that colloquial conversations maintained through these digital media typically reproduce and, consequently, to give verisimilitude to the plot as well as to the characters.
In the Sea of Diversity, Maintaining Balance: Transnationality and Identity in Terézia Mora's Auf dem Seil
Based on the conceptual framework of transnationality and its literary representation, possibilities for identification processes offered in Terézia Mora's novel On the Rope (2019) are explored. Transnationality proves to be an expression of how we deal with heterogeneity and a guarantor of the complexity and performativity of every identity configuration. In terms of content and structure, liminality, hybridity, mobility and radical openness characterise the novel. However, there are also strategies for orientation and for a balance that are located in the human and that indicate a development, from radical individualism to an opening and acceptance of commonality.
Sara Mesa in the Labyrinth of the Kafkaesque: A Comparative Reading
This article offers a reading of Sara Mesa's complete works in light of the Kafkaesque. Despite their aesthetic differences, Mesa and Kafka share an interest in the way power is exercised over the individual in different contexts such as the family or public administration. In this sense, Mesa's narrative chronicle Silencio Administrativo is the text that most openly embraces the Kafkaesque. An attention to animality and the grotesque as well as the inclusion of the perspective of characters who are anomalous, uprooted, and judged also link these two authors, each of whom understands literature as a search for truth, without concessions to the reader.
Ortiz-de-Urbina, Paloma / Macsotay, Tomas (Eds.): Recepción de Richard Wagner y Vanguardia en las Artes Españolas. Mitos y Materialidades. Madrid: Dykinson 2024. 392 pp.
Zubiaur, Ibon: Estímulo y censura. Aproximación al sistema literario de la RDA. Madrid: Punto de Vista Editores 2022. 253 pp.
Martín Arnedo, Santiago: Las sombras de la belleza. Madrid: Dairea 2023. 108 pp.
Maldonado-Alemán, Manuel (Hrsg.): Constelaciones híbridas. Transculturalidad y transnacionalismo en la narrativa actual de lengua alemana. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis 2023. 378 S.