Completed research projects

Literary and theatrical sociology was not offered as a specialization at any of the Austrian German studies Departments and gave the field of modern German-language literature a specific profile that is unique in Austrian German studies.

LiTheS saw itself as a hub for existing and future contacts at research and, above all, teaching level. This was linked to existing international university, faculty and institute cooperation. This was first implemented through regular conferences with researchers from the fields of sociology, cultural studies, literature, theater, art and musicology as well as philosophy and theology. Following a start-up workshop in 2007, the following conference topics took center stage: "Habitus" (2009), "Laughter and the Comic" (2011), "Person - Figure - Role - Type" (2013), "Fashion - Taste - Distinction" (2015) and "The Political, the Correct and Censorship" (2017). The conferences were offered as courses within the German studies and sociology curricula in the Master's and dissertation programs. The LiTheS teaching focus was deepened by further opening up to the outside world: through regular topic-related guest professorships or guest lectures.

Documentation

LiTheS. Journal of Literary and Theatrical Sociology
The journal, which has been published biannually since 2008, offers an international forum for the previously scattered literary and theatrical sociological research activities worldwide (journal languages: German, English, Spanish), even after the closure of the teaching and research focus. It contains: Methodological outlines as developed by individual sociologists or sociological schools also for the historical and philological disciplines (e.g. Elias, Bourdieu, etc.); essays on interdisciplinary interfaces in the sense of possible points of contact or thematic as well as methodological similarities between sociological approaches on the one hand and cultural studies, gender studies, postcolonial literary theory, poststructuralism, etc. on the other; literary-sociological and theater-sociological case studies. LiTheS is published as an open access journal on unipub, the publication server of the University of Graz, at https://unipub.uni-graz.at/lithes?lang=de.

Editors:
Ao. Univ.-Prof^{.in i.R.} Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Beatrix Müller-Kampel
E-mail: beatrix.mueller-kampel(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-2453

Prof.ⁱⁿ Dr.ⁱⁿ Marion Linhardt
E-Mail: marion.linhardt(at)uni-bayreuth.de

LiTheS publishing house and archive online
The studies and editions produced by the LiTheS research group have been made accessible via the publishing house and archive, currently available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20221129151945/http:/lithes.uni-graz.at/

7th Annual Conference of the Society for Cultural Studies (KWG)

May 25 to 28, 2022, University of Graz

Concept and organization: Hildegard Kernmayer, Marietta Schmutz

In the face of expanding bio- and information technologies, the question of what it means to be human is being posed anew. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, AI research and, last but not least, the human-machine interactions that have become commonplace through the digitalization of everyday life all aim to 'improve humans' by exceeding their limited biological capabilities. Popular representatives of so-called transhumanism, which aims to modify and optimize the unspecialized biological 'deficient being' human, predict a not-too-distant future in which artificial superintelligences will determine and 'facilitate' human everyday life and free humans from reifying production and reproduction processes, in which functions of the human body will be gradually optimized and technologies such as 'mind-uploading' will ultimately enable 'immortality'.

For 'critical posthumanism', on the other hand, which primarily discusses the ethical and philosophical consequences of seemingly unstoppable technological progress, the dissolution of the boundaries between mind and matter, human and nature, human and thing also "erases the spatial, ontological and epistemological distinction that separates human beings" (Karen Barad). The realization that we are no longer the 'measure of all things' could also promote a reflective and sustainable approach to our environment and so-called resources.

The conference will shed light on this wide-ranging topic from various angles, but primarily from a cultural studies perspective.

To the program

Bookmarks in public spaces as a network of remembrance

This project by Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister and Priv.-Doz^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Andrea Hofmeister brought the wealth of medieval Styrian literature closer to a wider public, and in particular to Styrian schools.

The literature trails can now also be visited virtually in the literature trail documentation created by the Center for Information Modelling at the University of Graz.

Duration: 2012-2022

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister in collaboration with Priv.-Doz^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Andrea Hofmeister
E-Mail: wernfried.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at

E-Mail: andrea.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2456

Project staff: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Ylva Schwinghammer, Mag. phil. Jürgen Ehrenmüller

Further information on the project can be found on the project website.

Building on a sub-project funded by the Province of Styria in 2000 and completed in 2003, this long-term language education project aims to make the influence of various historically formative areas of life on the metaphorics of contemporary German language conscious and comprehensible.

Duration: 2000-09.2022

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister
E-mail: wernfried.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at

Further information on the project can be found on the project website.

D-A-CH project to research the German usage standard

Grammatical variation in the German standard language is an area of linguistic research that has received little attention to date.

This trinational project (D, A, CH) was intended to counteract the tendency to classify linguistic variation as an "error". Acceptance and presentation of this variability was therefore not only of scientific and linguistic didactic importance, but above all of linguistic political significance.

Duration: 2011-2018

Project management: Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Arne Ziegler
E-mail: arne.ziegler(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-8165

Project staff: Elisabeth Scherr, MA, Anna Thurner, MA

Funded by: FWF and SNF

Further information about the project can be found on the project website.

There has been a long-standing debate in the theoretical literature at the semantics-pragmatics interface regarding exhaustivity in cleft sentences. While in recent years the majority of theoretical approaches tends towards a semantic analysis of the phenomenon of exhaustivity in clefts (see, e.g., Velleman et al 2012, Büring and Kriz 2013), new experimental studies (e.g., Onea and Beaver 2009, Drenhaus et. al 2011, Washburn et al. 2013) rather support the pragmatic position; cf. Horn (1981). At closer inspection, however, the experimental studies do not appear to be entirely conclusive. This is primarily due to the difference between at-issue and non-at-issue inferences (see, e.g., Tonhauser et. al. 2013) not being sufficiently taken into consideration. Moreover, existing studies were not systematically handled.In this project we aim to bridge the divide between several theoretical analyses of cleft sentences and the experimental literature through a series of systematic experiments which will allow one to answer the question whether clefts are semantically or pragmatically exhaustive. Our experiments are able to check subtle differences in the predictions made by diverse theories on exhaustivity in clefts, for instance, the predictions from theories that ascribe exhaustivity to implicatures, conditional presuppositions, maximality presuppositions, and (non-)at-issueness. The predictions which we are concentrating on concern contextual enrichment dependent on factors such as salience, expectation, and crosslinguistic differences.

Funding period: 2014-2017. This project is continued by "Exhaustiveness in embedded questions across languages (ExQ)".

Principal investigators: Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Edgar Onea Gaspar
E-Mail: edgar.onea-gaspar(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2633

Prof. Dr. Malte Zimmermann
E-Mail: mazimmer(at)uni-potsdam.de
Tel.: +49 331 977-2319

Staff: Joseph P. DeVeaugh-Geiss, Swantje Tönnis, Anne Mucha, Anna-Christina Pavlovic

Funding organization: DFG

For further details please visit the website.

Theoretical literature offers an ongoing debate about the interpretation of embedded questions, such as "Ms. Smith knows who solved the problem". Under a strong exhaustive reading, the sentence suggests that Ms. Smith has to know the complete list of people who solved the problem, and moreover that this list is complete. Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984) argued that this is the only available reading, whereas other scholars (e.g. Guerzoni & Sharvit 2007, Uegaki 2015) point out the possible existence of weak or intermediate readings. Under a weak exhaustive interpretation, Ms. Smith would not need to know that the list is complete as long as she knows the complete list. The theoretical literature focuses strongly on the various ways in which the respective readings, and only the respective readings, can be derived. The main research question is whether the different readings are semantic in nature, or whether they result from pragmatic inferencing based on various factors such as the domain of quantification, at-issueness, utility etc..

The empirical basis of this theoretical discussion is less clear, however. There is only one experimental study (Cremers and Chemla 2016) that tries to elucidate the empirical situation, but this study is limited to two embedding verbs in English. Experimentally controlled data on embedded questions in other languages and with more verbs of embedding are not available.

The proposed project attempts to close this research gap by conducting a series of experiments on the interpretation of embedded questions in a wide range of unrelated languages (from Ulster English to Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo)). The questions are embedded under various verbs (e.g. "know", "surprise", "predict", "tell") and tested in two independent experimental paradigms against all combinations of readings discussed in the literature: Experimental paradigm I employs a sentence-verification task, whereas experimental paradigm II employs a felicity-judgment task. The two experimental paradigms complement each other, and they will provide clear evidence as to which of the exhaustive readings of embedded questions are pragmatic in nature, and what contextual factors affect their derivation.

Since the exhaustivity of embedded questions is of fundamental importance for the theoretical discussion of what questions are (e.g. partitions or Hamblin-alternatives), the theoretical implications of the expected results of the project are far-reaching. They pertain to all areas in discourse semantics and pragmatics that rely on questions as semantic objects, including presupposition projection, exhaustification, derivation of scalar implicatures etc.

Funding period: 2017-2021

Principal investigators: Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Edgar Onea Gaspar
E-Mail: edgar.onea-gaspar(at)uni-graz.at
Tel. +43 316 380-2633

Prof. Dr. Malte Zimmermann
E-Mail: mazimmer(at)uni-potsdam.de
Tel.: +49 331 977-2319

Staff: Lea Fricke, MA
Former staff: Carla Bombi, Dr. Dominique Blok

Funding organization: DFG

For further details please visit the website.

On the interaction of dialect and age-preferential language use

The lively debate on the language use of young people in German studies in Germany and Switzerland contrasts with the de facto non-existence of youth language research in Austria. Research into age-preferential variants with regard to the interplay of different speech styles, varieties and (foreign) languages is an urgent desideratum in Austria. The project is therefore dedicated to youth language(s) in Austria from a variationist and pragmatic perspective and provides analyses of grammatical and prosodic phenomena in the oral utterances of young Austrians.

Youth language use is understood as part of the spectrum of native or local language competence. Since youth languages in Austria are strongly influenced by dialects, the project includes a dialectological perspective, but also takes into account - especially in urban centers - phenomena of language contact with migrant languages.

Three central objectives are being pursued: Firstly, for the first time, leisure conversations among young people and, by way of comparison, conversations among adults in Austria are to be documented as a corpus with a diatopic weighting and made available to the scientific public once the project has been completed.

Secondly, the linguistic aim is to record and describe age-preferential variants with a particular focus on the relationship between youth language and dialect.

Thirdly, the project has a didactic goal: the project results are to be methodically and didactically prepared and offered in excerpts as materials for native German lessons, but also for DaZ and DaF lessons.

Duration: 08.2013-12.2017

Project leader: Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Arne Ziegler
E-mail: arne.ziegler(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 b316 380-8165

Project staff: Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Melanie Lenzhofer-Glantschnig, Georg Oberdorfer, MA, Anna Weiß, MA

Funded by: FWF

Further information can be found on the project website.

Literature and knowledge transfer in the public and digital space

Since 2012, the working case for the Styrian Literature Trails of the Middle Ages has not only seen itself as a supplement to the educational tourism offer of the Styrian Literature Trails of the Middle Ages, but also conducts independent didactic research, which is dedicated to the central questions of German didactics from the special perspective of teaching older German literature in schools as well as in public spaces, whereby the understanding of a literary text as a store and catalyst of knowledge plays a central role in the third term, which is to be developed in close cooperation between researchers, teachers and learners for the school sector as well as for cultural mediation in public spaces. At the heart of the project is the text portal developed with the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities, which enables independent access to the medieval literary testimonies prepared by the pupils and provides a wealth of accompanying materials.

Duration: 07.2017-12.2019

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister
E-mail: wernfried.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at

Project coordinator: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Ylva Schwinghammer

Project staff: Mag^.a phil. Lisa Glänzer, Mag. phil. Wolfgang Holanik, Magdalena Laura Halb

Student assistants: Selina Galka, Stefan Hofbauer

Funding body: Sparkling Science

You can find more information on Facebook.

As one of the basic human needs, nutrition is an important topic in all cultures and covers the most diverse areas of life. In the medieval way of thinking, it plays a particularly important role, not only as a physical necessity, but in the entire lifestyle (dietetics), including health prophylaxis and also in a symbolic sense. The conceptual basis for historical health care is the holistic view of the interplay of numerous influencing factors, handed down from antiquity and systematized in oriental medicine, to which man as a microcosm is constantly exposed in the macrocosm. The symbolic significance stems on the one hand from the Christian religion, which dominated everything at the time, and on the other from the social ordo system characteristic of the Middle Ages and socio-economic conditions. Medieval European cuisine was not only influenced by seasonal and regional factors, but was also in active exchange with other cultural regions, especially the Orient. Recipe texts from this period are therefore not only to be read as instructions for the preparation of dishes, but also convey a great deal of cultural-historical information.

As part of the project, lines of tradition and the dissemination of selected medieval recipes are to be researched in more detail together with pupils from different school levels, tested in practice and examined and evaluated according to today's standards. The contrastive comparison of dietary habits and health teachings of the Middle Ages with the current state of knowledge is not only diachronically insightful, but is also suitable for promoting the exploration and assessment of one's own position in the present and - transferred to cultural differences in today's society - can be used for integration policy.

Duration: 10.2017-12.2019

Project management: Priv.-Doz^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Andrea Hofmeister
E-mail: andrea.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-2456

Project coordinator: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Ylva Schwinghammer

Project staff: Mag^.a phil. Lisa Glänzer, Mag. phil. Wolfgang Holanik, Magdalena Laura Halb

Funded by: Sparkling Science

The project has a Wordpress blog and a Facebook account.

The mediation of medieval texts in the medial field of tension between word, writing and memory

Building on the results of the first "Arbeitskoffer" run, which dealt with the content and language of the texts surrounding the "mother project" of the "Styrian Literary Paths of the Middle Ages", the follow-up project Arbeitskoffer 2.0 project focuses on the origins and transmission of medieval texts and the topic of mediality in the cooperation between academics, students, teachers and pupils, linked by the topic of memory on a written and oral level. This is the first time that a truly comprehensive didactic approach to teaching older texts in the classroom has been developed.

Duration: 2014-2016

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister
E-mail: wernfried.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at

Academic advisor: Priv.-Doz^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Andrea Hofmeister

Project coordinator: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Ylva Schwinghammer

Project staff: Mag^.a phil. Lisa Glänzer, Mag. phil. Wolfgang Holanik, Magdalena Laura Halb

Student assistants: Michael Ackerl, BA, Sabrina Bamberger, Tatjana Lüppens

Funding body: Sparkling Science

Further information and materials can be found in the working case text portal.

Dialectal art was already flourishing in the Bavarian-Austrian language area before 1800. "Peasant" entertainers appeared on the stage, dialectal propaganda was used to make the people loyal or critical of the ruler, Emperor Leopold I, Mozart and Haydn composed to dialect texts and taboo subjects were addressed in the "common" language. This project aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the aesthetic and functional possibilities of dialect art in the 17th and 18th centuries. It aims to open up sources and visualize the impressive spectrum of manifestations, it wants to bring together approaches from different disciplines in order to make the historical significance of the artistic use of dialect visible on a philologically sound basis. The core of the project is a database that currently comprises over 1300 works in more than 1900 variants.

Duration: 05.2013-04.2016

Project management: Priv.-Doz. Mag. Dr. phil. Christian Neuhuber
E-Mail: christian.neuhuber@uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316-380-8363

Project staff: Stefanie Edler, Katharina Forstner, Elisabeth Zehetner

New concepts and materials for teaching older German texts. Supplement to the educational tourism offer of the Styrian Medieval Literature Trails

The Sparkling Science project Arbeitskoffer zu den Steirischen Literaturpfaden sees itself as a supplement to the educational tourism offer of the Styrian Medieval Literature Trails and offers an innovative didactic mediation offer that focuses on Styrian medieval literature.Developed together with teachers, pupils and students, tried-and-tested materials for different school levels and types open up the (literary) world of the Styrian Middle Ages as a (non-)educational and digital place of learning. Texts, materials and an accompanying wiki with background information on medieval Styria are freely available via the Arbeitskoffer text portal.

Duration: 10.2012-09.2014

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister
E-mail: wernfried.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at

Scientific advisor: Priv.-Doz^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Andrea Hofmeister

Project coordinator: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Ylva Schwinghammer

Project staff: Mag. phil. Jürgen Ehrenmüller, Magdalena Laura Halb

Funded by: Sparkling Science

Duration: 05.2010-10.2013

Project management: Priv.-Doz. Mag. Dr. phil. Christian Neuhuber

Funded by: FWF

Funding body: Province of Styria, City of Graz, University of Graz

Further information can be found here.

Thaddädl, Staberl, Kratzerl & Co. Viennese folk comedy in transition.From the type comedy of Anton Hasenhut to the character comedy of Ferdinand Raimund

For years, the buzzword "Austria's cultural heritage" has increasingly penetrated our consciousness, for years the call for a renewed, for years, there have been calls for a renewed, less Austriakian ideologized and instead factually deepened examination of Austrian cultural history, and for decades now, research has been calling specifically for the development of literary-theatrical texts that were excluded from the canon formation out of simple ignorance or a fixation on value standards alien to the text and thus fell into oblivion. The Kasperl's Comic Heirs project aims to correct this mistake: The rediscovery of the socio-cultural life of Vienna (and its suburbs) at the turn of and in the early 19th century. The rediscovery of the socio-cultural life of Vienna (and its suburbs) at the turn of and in the early 19th century is to take place on the basis of plays - specifically the comedies of the theater most relevant to Viennese social life, namely the Leopoldstadt Theater - through in-depth study of the authors, actors, the audience and, of course, the texts, which are to be critically edited as a basis for the literary-sociological study and at the same time for an interested readership, especially since they have for the most part never been printed - such as the handwritten textbooks of Franz Xaver Karl Gewey or Therese Krones.

In terms of content, the project deals with the development of comedy after the death of Kasperl-La Roche (1806), whose acting made the Leopoldstadt Theater a center of attraction for Austria's cultural elite around 1800. After his death, Anton Hasenhut continued the tradition of the funny character as "Thaddädl" and was soon joined by other characters - "Staberl" (Bäuerle), Lorenz (Gewey) and finally "Kratzerl", the funny man brilliantly embodied by Ferdinand Raimund. What is remarkable here is the transformation of the comedy, the provisional end point of which is Raimund's genius. It is not just one character who is the sole fun-maker, the comedy is carried by several/many and expresses itself in an incredibly diverse way; at the same time, the funny character is increasingly socialized and bourgeoisified and can be appropriated by the audience as a kind of identification figure - even if it is the bad qualities of the unloved neighbor. All in all, the aim of the study on comic change is to extend the findings on the comic habitus of La Roche-Kasperl in the theatrical field around 1800 from a diachronic perspective, based on the findings obtained synchronously in the preliminary project Patrons of Kasperl. The initial research allows for a twofold hypothesis: that the comedy diversifies (from one character to several characters), individualizes (from character type to authorial characters) and possibly also differentiates in terms of gender roles.

In addition to the authors mentioned (Bäuerle, Gewey, Krones), Joseph Alois Gleich, Friedrich Joseph Korntheuer, Ferdinand Kringsteiner, Karl Meisl and, as a kind of "guest", Emanuel Schikaneder (who did not write poetry at the Leopoldstadt Theater, but is nevertheless of great interest to the study) should also "have their say"; In addition, the actors Ignaz Schuster, Anton Hasenhut, Jakob Lessel, Ferdinand Raimund, Anton Schmitt and, of course, the actresses Katharina Ennöckl, Johanna Huber, Josepha Sartory and the first "diva" Therese Krones must be given attention, as their acting brought the plays to life and thus made the implied social space of theater life comprehensible.

Duration: 08.2009-09.2011

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Beatrix Müller-Kampel
E-mail: beatrix.mueller-kampel(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-2453

Project staff: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Andrea Brandner-Kapfer, Mag^.a phil. Jennyfer Großauer-Zöbinger

Funded by: FWF

For all questions relating to handwritten text transmission from medieval times, certainty regarding the authenticity of all scribal hands involved in the production of a codex is of central importance. Only if we are able to distinguish their writing from one another, i.e. to assign it to individual persons, will we gain an individual fingerprint, as it were, which allows us, for example, to assess the writing system in its tension between norm and individual or to relate the interests and abilities of different scribal personalities to our observations on the shaping of the tradition (for example in the selection, improvement or occasional additions to the text inventory).

The pilot project DAmalS (Database for the Authentication of Medieval Scribal Hands) has set itself the goal of establishing new criteria for distinguishing scribal hands in medieval German-language manuscripts and developing more reliable methods and tools for this task. DAmalS is based on the three pillars of element-faithful basic transliteration in XML, computer-based graphetic analyses and a novel method of image-oriented pattern recognition. These pillars are integrated into a database structure that performs both the archiving and the technically highly complex processing of the image and text documents. In this way, DAmalS offers a kind of spectacles through which paleographic experts are supported in their assessment of written documents.

Publication

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister
E-mail: wernfried.hofmeister(at)uni-graz.at

Project staff: Priv.-Doz^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Andrea Hofmeister; Mag^.a phil. Andrea Gamweger, Mag. Dr. phil. Helmut Klug, DI Georg Thallinger

Funded by: Province of Styria

Cooperation partner: Forschungsgesellschaft Joanneum Research

Film reports:

• 3sat, Nano from 29.09.2008
• ORF, Newton from 12.04.2008
• ORF, Steiermark heute, Traces of the Middle Ages from 11.03.2008

Press (excerpt):

• UniZeit, 4/2008
• APA Online Journal: Research, 11.03.2008

Further information can be found in the final report of the pilot study.

Duration: 07.2009-06.2011

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Beatrix Müller-Kampel
E-Mail: beatrix.mueller-kampel(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2453

Funded by: Province of Styria

Punch and Judy Plays in the Repertoire of the Leopoldstadt Theater. Critical edition and literary-sociological localization

Although the Leopoldstädter Schaubühne (opened by Karl v. Marinelli in 1781) can probably be called the most important venue of the Viennese folk play, the repertoire of the most famous actor of this theater, the Punch and Judy actor Johann Josef La Roche, has received little attention in literary and theater studies research.

This critical edition of plays from the repertoire of the Leopoldstadt Kasperl alias Johann Josef La Roche is intended to revive forgotten rarities that were performed at the Marinellische Schaubühne with Kasperl as the most popular protagonist and make them accessible to researchers. The accompanying, detailed study will paint a differentiated picture of the actor La Roche and the authors (Ferdinand Eberl, Leopold Huber, Karl Friedrich Hensler, Karl Marinelli and Joachim Perinet) who "wrote the plays to suit him". According to the categories of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, the authors will be located in terms of literary sociology and the specifics of the theatrical-cultural field in Vienna and in German-speaking Austria at the time will be reconstructed.

Duration: 01.2008-01.2009

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Beatrix Müller-Kampel
E-mail: beatrix.mueller-kampel(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-2453

Project staff: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Andrea Brandner-Kapfer, Mag^.a phil. Jenyfer Großauer-Zöbinger

Funded by: FWF

Press: Die Presse, 06.09.2009

In the course of the project, the correspondence of the Grün (pseudonym for Anton Alexander Graf von Auersperg) correspondents Eduard von Bauernfeld, Franz Vinzenz Ignaz Castelli and Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (Scholz) and Bartholomäus von Carneri and Josef Freiherr von Hormayr zu Hortenburg (Payer) was transliterated and (partially) annotated.

Duration: 07.2007-09.2008

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Beatrix Müller-Kampel
E-mail: beatrix.mueller-kampel(at)uni-graz.at
Phone: +43 316 380-2453

Project staff: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Birgit Scholz, Dr. Margarete^Payer

Funded by: Province of Styria

Editing and Commentary, Vol. 1-4

Project management: Em. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Anton Schwob
E-mail: anton.schwob(at)uni-graz.at

Project staff: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Karin Kranich, Ao. Univ.-Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Brigitte Spreitzer-Fleck

Funded by: FWF

Historical-critical complete edition with commentary and study

The first complete edition of the High German comedies of P. Maurus Lindemayr OSB (1723-83) is intended to make available to researchers plays that have hitherto only survived in manuscript form and - with a detailed study - to provide a more differentiated picture of both the famous Upper Austrian dialect author and the theater production of the time.

Duration: 05.2003-06.2004

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Beatrix Müller-Kampel
E-Mail: beatrix.mueller-kampel(at)uni-graz.at
Tel.: +43 316 380-2453

Project staff: Priv.-Doz. Mag. Dr. phil. Christian Neuhuber

Funded by: FWF

Our most striking linguistic "memories" since the Middle Ages and before include warlike experiences, and the number of defensive-martial words and word combinations in use today is correspondingly high. As metaphors that have become commonplace, they are often found in the vocabulary of politics and the press, where people come under fire, are targeted or are in the crossfire of criticism on a daily basis. However, it is also common to hear that someone is up to something, has smelled a rat, fears a gauntlet or that a bomb is about to explode.

Duration: until 2003

Project management: Ao. Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Wernfried Hofmeister

Project staff: Mag^.a phil . Petra Kern, Mag. Dr. phil. Helmut Klug, Gabriele Schmölzer

Funded by: Province of Styria

Further information can be found in the final report.

The research project "Literature and Media" takes up the challenge posed by the modern technical-media communication environment - not, however, in the form of speculative considerations about the future of poetry in the media age (as is currently the mainstream in university German studies), but in the form of the historical reconstruction of technical-media culture. The project focuses explicitly on the technical history of the media, based on the assumption that the technical logic of communication systems has always been reflected in the form and structure of literary/poetic textures. In its forms and structures, literature/poetry is "sedimented technical media history" insofar as these constitute its historical character. For literary studies, this means that it has the task of developing a corresponding paradigm of interpretation in order to understand poetry in its conditionality through the technical-media state of development. We must begin with the media-technological paradigm shift of book printing, from which the category of autonomous aesthetic literature first emerges; we must continue with the emergence of technologies for recording, storing and reproducing analog optical and acoustic information, which suspend the poetic from its fundamental functions of mimetic illusion and must therefore be regarded as an essential moving force of poetic structural change in modernity. Considering the wealth of Romantic poetry in optical and acoustic fictions, hallucinations, simulations, etc., it does not seem surprising that the media technology of film (even in its early days) translates these optical and acoustic poetic realities into analog screen reality.

Poetry, for its part, reacts to this break in its monopoly in a variety of ways. On the one hand, it can become "cinematic", as in F. Kafka's "The Missing Man"; its mimetic narrative techniques can adapt to those of the new medium. On the other hand, it can reflect on its own mediality; the wordplay or letter poetry of J. Joyce, A. Schmidt etc. illustrate this. In any case, the historical appearance of a "new" medium will evoke a structural and formal change in poetry. These technically-medially conditioned literary changes are largely unexplored. This applies to the change in poetry due to the transition from orally transmitted poetry to written and finally printed literature as well as to the increasing differentiation of literary forms in the face of competing analog and digital media technologies.

The project aims to contribute to the examination of the interdependence between media history and literary history in the following ways: Firstly, the history of technical media is to be researched, with the emphasis on their technical logic, the principles of their technical functioning and their scope of performance, without completely ignoring the social and economic aspects of the new technologies. This compilation, which is not yet available in a systematic concept, is intended to provide the basis for a systematic correlation between literature/poetry and the technical media. The aims of the project are the discussion of methodological-theoretical problems, the conception of hypotheses with regard to the media-logical guidelines of text comprehension to be developed as well as exemplary individual analyses, on the basis of which the concept can be tested.

Project management: Em. Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Hans Hiebel
E-mail: hans.hiebel(at)uni-graz.at

Project staff: Dr. phil. Heinz Hiebler, Dr. phil. Karl Kogler, Mag. Dr. phil. Herwig Walitsch

Funded by: FWF

The aim of this project was to completely record local dialects and geographical names (micro- and macrotoponyms) in the three Styrian survey districts of Deutschlandsberg, Hartberg and Judenburg. This documentation on the basis of direct surveys was to fulfill a supplementary and updating function with regard to older records (German Language Atlas, German Word Atlas, etc.). In the field of eponymy, an initial basis for a Styrian toponymy dictionary was to be created.

Conception and implementation phases

Surveys in the area under investigation, in neighboring Styrian communities, but also in neighboring districts of other federal states have been carried out since the mid-1970s. In this first implementation phase of the project, this was done through a corresponding range of topics for teachers' homework. In the second phase, from winter semester 84/85, a seminar entitled German dialect research, language sociology and name studies was designed and continuously offered as a seminar on the German language. In these courses, students were trained as specifically as possible as explorers. The seminar participants independently carried out scheduled surveys in a community of their choice and delivered the annotated data material in the form of a project seminar paper. From SS 93, the beginning of the third implementation phase of the project, the seminars German Dialect Research and Language Sociology (Hutterer/Pauritsch) and Theoretical and Empirical Aspects of Name Research (Hutterer/Windberger-Heidenkummer) were held alternately in order to provide in-depth training in the two main areas. Additional theoretical and practical training for the student assistants was provided in the accompanying aural training and transcription course.

Survey documents and data material

All dialectological surveys contain language data that was obtained by querying a "word list" (with picture section) compiled according to phonetic and word-geographical aspects. The toponymic data is based on a systematic and comprehensive survey. Questionnaires were developed and used as further survey instruments for the dialectological and onomastic research. Without exception, the naming surveys were supported by cadastral entries in original document form. Audio recordings of all surveys exist, as well as interview transcripts in the dialectological field.

Project management: Em. O . Univ.-Prof. Dr. Claus Jürgen Hutterer (deceased 1997)

Project staff: ORätin Mag^.a phil. Gertrude Pauritsch, Priv.-Doz^.in Mag^.a Dr^.in phil. Erika Windberger-Heidenkummer

Anton E. Schönbach (1848-1911) worked for 38 years at the former Department of German Philology, first as an associate professor and then as a full professor, and left behind a partial estate which became the property of the department and is still kept at the Graz Institute of German Studies.

The prerequisite for the project was to make this estate accessible in accordance with the rules for the cataloging of estates and autographs of the German Research Foundation.

The aim was the scientific processing of this partial estate.

Schönbach's estate consists mainly of works on older literature and language. These include, above all, transcriptions of shorter and longer text passages from 113 medieval manuscripts, manuscript indexes of the libraries Schönbach visited most frequently, glossaries and notebooks on medieval texts. On the other hand, we have also preserved life documents, three work diaries, 44 German university calendars, which contain Schönbach's notes, and three letter books.

The transcriptions date from May 1873 to June 1905 and are mainly spiritual texts, sermons and legends, the focus of Schönbach's research. Schönbach's work was characterized by the compilation of texts with the same or similar content. He seems to have chosen certain topics, such as the legend of Amicus and Amelius, and attempted to record the entire tradition for them and uncover the dependencies between the manuscripts. With glossaries for certain texts, e.g. the Benedictine Rules, he was able to determine the dating and location of the respective text in its language area.

The period from October 1, 1877 to June 22, 1911 is well documented in the diaries, letter books and calendars, which also contain Schönbach's entries, as Schönbach meticulously recorded all his activities.

172 files, which were sent to the directors of the Seminar for German Philology, Schönbach and Bernhard Seuffert, from December 1886 to August 1911, vividly illustrate the personnel, spatial and economic conditions of this seminar.

When sifting through and archiving the estate, it also became apparent that the collection had been considerably enriched by several collections. 443 seminar papers from the period from the winter semester of 1878/79 to the summer semester of 1914, i.e. three years after Schönbach's death, convey the teaching content of the time. A card catalog with the topics of the seminar papers even goes back to the 1940s.

The following results can be summarized:

• Schönbach's life and work can be traced relatively clearly for his time in Graz.
• The existing reports and files on the German department reflect the development of the Graz Institute of German Studies under the leadership of Schönbach and Seuffert.
• The enriched collections document part of the academic history of German philology, which Schönbach shaped.

Project management: Em. Prof. Dr. Anton Schwob
E-mail: anton.schwob(at)uni-graz.at

Project assistant: Dr. Margarete^Payer

Funded by: Jubilee Fund of the Austrian National Bank

The research assignment comprises the presentation of different behaviors of Austrian women authors during National Socialism 1933/1938-1945, illustrated by Ingeborg Teuffenbach, Erika Mitterer and Veronika Rubatscher. The spectrum of forms of reaction ranges from unreserved enthusiasm for the Nazis to resistance against the Third Reich.

Ingeborg Teuffenbach embodies the type of the successful author promoted by the political system, Erika Mitterer that of the Inner Emigrant, Veronika Rubatscher finally symbolizes the transition from Inner Emigration to resistance. So far, a clear classification can only be made in Teuffenbach's work, as the problems surrounding the term Inner Emigration are too diverse. Just as Teuffenbach represents the area of ns-compliant forms of reaction, Rubatscher stands at the other end of the non-ns-compliant forms of reaction, while Mitterer symbolizes the transition from one side to the other. However, the forms of reaction must always be seen against the contrasting backdrop of the living and writing conditions of Jewish authors who were excluded from the literary system from the outset, such as Alma Johanna Koenig. Viewing the literary system as a whole thus leads to a clarification of the individual's scope for action.

Subsequently, a typology is to emerge from the research work, with the help of which the often only gradually different forms of reaction of female (and male) authors under National Socialism can be defined more precisely. As I have chosen women for my project, particular attention will be paid to the female life and writing contexts under the special conditions of the Third Reich.

Apart from a few monographic studies, there has been no research to date that focuses on the behavior of Austrian women writers under National Socialism. Due to my many years of work (1986-1998) in the FWF project Austrian Literature under National Socialism 1938-1945, I am very familiar with the literary and cultural-political system of the Third Reich and am able to define the scope of action of individuals in the terror regime against the backdrop of many, often only gradually differing behaviors and to assign them to the overall system.

In contrast to monographic methods, which draw conclusions from the individual to the system, a panorama of many possible reactions can be shown before the empirical breadth is known. Since my research project is gender-specific and focuses on the reactions of women writers, specific conditions must also be taken into account. Female living and writing conditions in the Führer's state differed fundamentally from those of their male colleagues.

Even access to literary production was much more difficult for women, as the membership lists of the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK) prove. The RSK's list of writers published in 1942 lists 10,118 authors for the entire German Reich, 7,993 men and only 2,125 women. (The high total number results from the fact that writers of all genres are listed, including the large group of so-called specialist writers).

The "Ostmark" accounts for 811 authors, 630 men and 181 women. My experience from the above-mentioned project confirms these figures: Of approximately 900 authors edited for the three-volume Handbook of Austrian Literature under National Socialism [in preparation], only about 200 are women.

These authors reacted differently to the circumstances of the Third Reich. The basis of the analysis is the functional integration of the individual into the National Socialist complex; the forms of reaction are described against the backdrop of knowledge of the overall cultural and political context, and general and individual living conditions are taken into account. The latter in particular often had a formative effect: Ingeborg Teuffenbach and Erika Mitterer married in 1937 and became mothers after the Anschluss. These very personal experiences had an impact on their writing, especially in terms of its effect on the outside world. Teuffenbach was at the center of literary attention in Vienna, while Mitterer - also living in Vienna - hardly appeared in public. Interestingly, their incomes were nevertheless almost at Gauleiter level (e.g. 24,271 Reichsmark/1941; salary of a Gauleiter 30,000 Reichsmark).

The women selected for the research project represent particularly pronounced patterns of behavior in their reaction to National Socialism. The spectrum of reactions ranges from unreserved enthusiasm for the Nazis to resistance against the Third Reich. Ingeborg Teuffenbach embodies the type of successful author supported by the political system, Erika Mitterer that of the Inner Emigrant, Veronika Rubatscher finally symbolizes the transition from Inner Emigration to resistance. So far, a clear classification can only be made in Teuffenbach's work, as the problems surrounding the term Inner Emigration are too diverse. Just as Teuffenbach represents the area of ns-compliant forms of reaction, Rubatscher stands at the other end of the non-ns-compliant forms of reaction, while Mitterer symbolizes the transition from one side to the other.

I presented new methodological considerations for a more precise determination of the non-ns-conformist forms of reaction in the article Innere Emigration in der "Ostmark"? Versuch einer Standortbestimmung in the anthology Literatur der "Inneren Emigration" aus Österreich (1998) for discussion. This methodological approach forms the theoretical starting point of my investigation and will be extended to the area of ns-compliant forms of reaction. An analysis at the work level, i.e. an examination of the literature written by women writers under National Socialism, is indispensable for the description. Here, a differentiated relationship to terms such as "covert writing", "camouflage", "slave language" etc. must be established, especially in the area of non-Ns-compliant behavior.

The aim of the research project is to draft a descriptive typology of behavioural patterns of female writers under National Socialism, with the help of which a mass of individual phenomena can be systematically organized. In this way, empirical diversity is systematically structured and other forms of reaction can be classified within the broad spectrum.

Project management: Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Karin Gradwohl-Schlacher

Funded by: FWF (Hertha-Firnberg-Stelle)

Raoul Hausmann (1886/Vienna-1971/Limoges), writer and painter, sound poet and photographer, pamphleteer and collagist, discoverer of the Klytemnästra complex, dancer and much more, was one of the co-founders of the Berlin Dada movement and at the same time one of its most provocative and dazzling protagonists. His life resembles a "permanent emigration" (Alfred Kolleritsch, 1966): born in Vienna, he moved with his parents to Berlin around 1900, had to emigrate from Nazi Germany in 1933, in particular because of his political satires, arrived in Peyrat-le-Château (western France) via the exile stations of Paris, Barcelona, Ibiza, Zurich, Prague and Paris again in 1939 and retired to Limoges in 1944. There, at the age of 58, he began an extensive late oeuvre, continued to work in multimedia despite almost complete blindness and lived largely forgotten, isolated and in rather poor circumstances until his death (1971).

In the course of the general Dada renaissance since the early 1980s, greater attention was gradually paid to the self-proclaimed "Dadasopher", and his stimulating contribution to literature and art after 1945, especially in Austria, received a hesitant but lasting academic response. But "Hausmann's texts were not easy to access and still aren't." This shortcoming, which Ernst Jandl complained about in 1966 and which has hardly improved noticeably since then, is due in no small part to the situation of Hausmann's estate, which is fragmented and has remained unprocessed.

The main written legacy of Raoul Hausmann, until recently in the care of his partner of many years, Marthe Prévot, forms the basis for a project that began in October 1993 at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Graz, financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Marthe Prévot, to whom Hausmann had transferred "le droit de disposer de tous mes biens et avant tout de toutes mes oeuvres littéraires", i.e. all copyrights, publication and translation rights, by means of a "procuration" in 1942, allowed our project to examine, systematically organize and scientifically index the writings she had left behind. After many years of "wrangling over the inheritance", the final fate of the main estate (a larger part of the estate is in Berlin) is now sealed: The entire correspondence from/to Hausmann as well as all the text volumes, which until just over a year ago were still stored in Hausmann's former apartment, have been purchased by the Musée départemental of Rochechouart and transferred to a Raoul Hausmann documentation center set up especially for this purpose, albeit still under construction. The castle of Rochechouart, which is about 40 km from Limoges, already contains substantial holdings of Hausmann's pictorial and photographic estate, the largest collection of Hausmann's works apart from Berlin. The archiving of Hausmann's writings, which began in November 1993 as part of our project, can be continued directly at Rochechouart Castle in the future; the entire material will remain inaccessible to users until our work is completed.

If the question arises as to what should be considered a "literary" estate when it comes to defining the scope and content of a poet's legacy, the particular problem in Raoul Hausmann's case lies in the heterogeneity and interdependence of his legacy resulting from his diverse artistic activities. In the example of the poster poems and other visual poetry alone, the obvious separation of artistic and literary legacy is broken to the extent that the "Dadasoph" strove throughout his life to overcome rigid categories of art and thought. As a working hypothesis, however, it seemed sensible to assume that there was an artistic legacy - in the broadest sense - and a literary legacy - just as broadly defined.

In his first letter to Friederike Mayröcker dated December 8, 1964, Raoul Hausmann stated that he had written "4 or 5000 pages in his lifetime, of which perhaps 500 pages have appeared in print since 1916". While we originally assumed an estimate of a maximum of 5,000 pages, the following picture emerges after a thorough examination and organization of the written legacy: of the almost 14,000 manuscript and typescript pages, more than a third is made up of typescript transcripts and variants of the texts and articles published in countless journals and collected works, as well as of print templates and various versions of the independent publications; the correspondence can also be estimated at around 5,000 pages, and the Hyle site collection alone comprises around 2,000 pages. There are handwritten originals in both loose and bound booklet form (a total of around 2000 sheets). The proportion of unpublished texts - especially from the years 1965-1970 - is also estimated to be higher than originally assumed. When Raoul Hausmann stated in a letter to Otto Breicha on June 2, 1969: "There is almost nothing of mine that has not been published", this by no means corresponds to the preliminary findings, which indicate that around 700 texts have not yet been published.

A more or less detailed index is being compiled for the text and letter bequest, which should facilitate its future consultation and use in Rochechouart's Raoul Hausmann Archive. The annotated inventory of the estate, which is currently being compiled, contains not only the registry of the bequeathed writings kept in Limoges and Rochechouart, but also a precise survey, documentation and description of the partial, fragmentary and crypto bequests and autographs scattered across various archives, galleries and private collections; this inventory is to be published together with the personal bibliography and will provide Hausmann research with reliable and indispensable basic information.

Parallel to the review and indexing of the estate, work on the content of the material will be carried out, i.e. intensive reading and annotation of the texts in order to establish references and cross-references; on the other hand, the compilation of a personal bibliography that is as complete as possible, which will go beyond the relevant preliminary work (cf. Sheppard 1980) and will be indexed by several registers.

Building on this bibliographical and analytical research, texts by Raoul Hausmann are to be edited, especially those that have so far remained in the "portfolio grave" and have never been able to cross the horizon of the provincial city of Limoges despite the "Frenchman in exile's" most intensive efforts to place them with German-language publishers. The selection of texts brings to the fore particularly important German-language works that are significant for his oeuvre as a whole and have not yet been published in full or at all. Another aim of our project is to translate some of Hausmann's French texts that are unknown in the German-speaking world and publish them in two languages.

The results of the project work, which will already be included in a volume on Raoul Hausmann planned for 1996 in the book series on Austrian authors "Dossier" (Literaturverlag Droschl) (personal bibliography and index to the estate; essays on posthumous material), will therefore lead directly to the publication of selected texts from Hausmann's estate. In general, editing the estate is an important and multifaceted task, especially in the 20th century, which is all the more exciting in this particular case because Raoul Hausmann's oeuvre is characterized by a plurality that transcends conventional artistic categories. It is also all the more urgent as the "Dadasoph" was not able to achieve the success and recognition during his lifetime that he should have received from today's perspective - especially from an Austrian one. The selected texts are to be edited in the sense of a historical-critical and at the same time "readable" edition, annotated, provided with a foreword or epilogue and illustrated - "Hausmann-style" - with accompanying pictures, photographs and drawings. They pursue the common goal of making Raoul Hausmann accessible to a broader literary and literary studies public and thus to scholarly investigation in general.

"An edition of all my works?" - This question, which Raoul Hausmann addressed to Friederike Mayröcker in 1969, also stands - despite the knowledge of the legal, financial and temporal adversities - with its hopeful and at the same time skeptical undertone over our project, which aims to set a first milestone for the "Collected Writings" of Raoul Hausmann with exemplary editions.

Project management: Ao. Univ-Prof. i. R. Dr. phil. Kurt Bartsch
E-mail: kurt.bartsch(at)uni-graz.at

Project staff: Mag^.a Dr.ⁱⁿ phil. Adelheid Koch, Mag. phil. Stefan Schwar