Die deutschen Möglichkeiten einer Insel: Gegenwartsromane zwischen utopischen und dystopischen Entwürfen

Year 2015, Volume: 2 Issue: 34, 18 - 32, 01.10.2015

Sabine Zubarik

Abstract

Die deutschen Möglichkeiten einer Insel: Gegenwartsromane zwischen utopischen und dystopischen Entwürfen

Keywords

Möglichkeiten, Gegenwartsromane

The German Possibilities of an Island: Contemporary Novels between Utopian and Dystopian Sketches

Abstract

Based
on the observation that since the turn of the millennium many German authors
deal with the literary topos of islands, this paper focuses on three recent
novels that take place on small islands off the German coast:

Die Insel
by Matthias Wegehaupt (2005) draws a precise picture of the socialist
reorganization of a fictitious island in GDR times. The possibility of an
idyllic retreat for artists oscillates continuously with a claustrophobic
battle with the political dictatorship.

Kruso
by Lutz Seiler (2014) is situated on Hiddensee shortly before the Berlin wall
came down. The island is depicted as a haven for refugees who don’t leave the
country. They enjoy an exceptional freedom, but are again part of a tight
system with expropriating measures, which questions whether any organization of
a utopia can exclude dystopian traits.

Insel 34
by Annette Pehnt (2003) takes place at the northern coast of Germany, where a
young woman longs for the most remote island of a (fictitious) archipelago. Her
voyage along the closer islands results in the insight that the last one can
only remain a utopian place if it is never visited.

The
three utopian-dystopian sketches in the novels rely on the prototypical
characteristics of islands as limited and limiting spaces with restricted
access and exit, whose model size is suitable for all kinds of sociopolitical,
geobiological or psychological experiments. The analysis aims to show how
utopian and dystopian aspects in each text are differently intertwined, in ways
that construct as well as deconstruct each other.

Keywords

islands, closed spaces, utopia / dystopia, East Germany, contemporary literature

References

• Booth, Wayne C. (1961): Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago.