Literary Images of West Berlin (PDF)

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction:
This paper is a study of the image of West Berlin in (predominantly West) German literature of the past four decades. There are two aims of this work: one is to illustrate how literature can be an appropriate tool for geographic research, the second is to draw attention to the exceptional political, geographic, and existential situation of the city of West Berlin. I will present some of the psycho-social mentalities connected to living in West Berlin and expose diverse impressions and creative human responses to the living conditions in that city with its unique circumstances.
My inquiries center around certain aspects of the human experience. I plan to delineate literary examples of these concepts and show how literature is able to illuminate certain experiential factors concerning the sense of place. To 'sense' can have several meanings. First, it can refer to the function and action of the sensory organs. Then it may imply a more intuitive usage, as in ¿do I sense hostility?¿ When outside of common rules or understanding sense becomes nonsense, or one is out of one's senses. A sense of place is something that goes beyond these usages, it is an impression which is influenced by the sensory organs, but takes its shape in the mind. It is sensing with the help of the imagination, thereby actively involving experience, environment, and emotions.
This study does not try to conclude with a nomothetic theory or make a definite statement that can be proved or disproved with statistical or empirical data. Rather it sets out to show that a sense of a place as reflected in creative writing is not only art, but also geography in practice. I shall begin this paper with a review of literature about the combination of geography and literature. This will be followed by a methodology section and a history section which briefly outlines the developments within Berlin that lead up to the Cold War, the city's division, and finally, the dismantling of the wall. Following this, the main body of the work will present and discuss appropriate literary examples. The literature passages comprise four chapters organized according to types of literary images. I have approached the organization of these themes with the help of a geographical structure - gradually moving from the outside of the city further inward until we reach deep emotions. This is essentially an organizing framework that would tie the various images together.
Thus, the first [...]