Wende und Körperdarstellung in Hensels Lärchenau

[EN] Kerstin Hensel’s literary universe is haunted by fallen heroes, outsiders and gregarious figures with no success. They experience the German Wende in a very peculiar constellation, they perceive Post-Unification Germany at times from a fantastic perspective, always from a painful experience. In this context the analysis of the representations of the body in Hensel’s narrative before and after 1989 offers a rich insight on Hensel’s critical view of Post-Unification Germany. By analysing her texts such as Hallimasch and Lärchenau this article shows that the suffering grotesque bodies in both works stand for a political metaphor of a social body with hardly a cure.

Body and Grotesque as Self-Disruption in Kerstin Hensel’s Gothic East(ern) German Novel Lärchenau (2008)

[EN] By analysing the novel Lärchenau and its -to a certain point- gothic features, this article interprets the elaboration of body in this novel as a site of the expression of power, but also as an alternative language. The grotesque dimension and the representation of the bodily numbness and pain as projections of historical awareness are key elements for the interpretation of Lärchenau in the context of Post-Unification Germany.

"Verwundete Orte" in Hettches Nox und Pareis Die Schattenboxerin

[EN] Body and space play a determinant role in the formation of societies, according to the social analyst Richard Sennet. His thesis that the configuration of spaces in history, such as that of the cities, is closely linked to the perception of the own body offers a relevant theorethical approach for the analysis of Nox (1995) by Thomas Hettche and Die Schattenboxerin (1999) by Inka Parei. In both novels bodies are perceived conscientiously by the self as a wounded and exhausted “I”, but also as a rebellious and fighting “self”. Both novels offer a concept of the body as an inadequate and wounded space, which is actually a key procedure to successfully face the similarly unstable geographical, social and political context of Germany after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.