Border and Border Experience: On a German Post-War Philosophical and Literary Leit-Motiv

Abstract

This enquiry examines aspects of 'borders' and analyses their consequences, as characterized by contemporary German writers and thinkers in the post-war period. To understand the essential features of 'borders' prompts an examination of their theoretical and pragmatic characteristics. The aim is to contribute to the interdisciplinary study of what is called the German border experience. Karl Jaspers' method of Existenzerhellung provides a hitherto rarely considered framework for analysing the manifold consequences of border experience. While the exposition of "existential situations" constitutes a theoretical understanding of 'borders'’, suggesting their perception as a mental threshold, Jaspers’ aim is to clarify our thinking about reality. His approach is to consider life in terms of human existence. He recognized the ethical status of existence as a context for evaluating Germany's post-war division. Jaspers’ ideas lead to an important conceptual root for this study, as represented by his understanding of Kierkegaard's aesthetic discourse on 'borders' as thresholds of tolerance between apparently contradictory views. It is noteworthy that Jaspers’ contemporary, Helmuth Plessner, by analysing human behaviour in terms of its anthropological study recognized 'borders' as physical entities whose pragmatic implications support both Jaspers’ theoretical views and their aesthetic representation. The subsequent assessment of a selection of prose and poetry follows authors' interpretations of'borders', to establish analogies that demonstrate the value of applying theoretical notions to literature. Eugen Gottlob Winkler's 'neo-platonic' treatment of ‘borders' is one essential poetic representation that is assessed in the light of Durs Griinbein's recent appraisal. The effects of Germany's physical division are analysed by a contrasted interpretation of narratives by Christa Wolf and Uwe Johnson. The assessment of aspects of the writer's environment, whether real or imaginary, is to advance our understanding of one of the essential, albeit rarely analysed features of German literary discourse after 1945.