Subject: The Shadow of Empires and multicultural Germany
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 17:23:50 +0200


7th July 2000

Dear Students of Postcolonialism,

I've been doing a bit of scrounging lately, to obtain sample copies of
literary magazines I might subscribe to. One of the mags I got through the
post today is a monthly with a 1997 theme issue on "The Shadow of Empires".

The issue includes several essays on empire and its effects, the first of
which is a nine-page essay on the future of Northern Ireland. The next is
about Fazil Iskander, whom the Soviets plugged as a Soviet Russian writer.
He is in fact Abkhazian, as he takes care to point out in the interview with
him, which comes next.

Perhaps the most interesting essay "A Layer Cake in the Desk Drawer" is
about literature written by exiled people and other immigrants living in the
Federal Republic of Germany during the last 30-40 years. The author divides
these authors into five groups:

1) Those who know German but write in their mother tongue, e.g. Ingvar
Ambjornsen (from Norway), Aras Oren (from Turkey), Abdul Jabir (from Iraq),
Behzad Keshmiripour (from Iran), Giuseppe Scigliano (from Italy) and Yoko
Tawada (from Japan);
2) Those who abandon their mother tongue and write principally in standard
German, e.g. Pavel Kohout, Ota Filip and Libuse Monikova (all from Czechia)
and Rafik Schami (from Syria);
3) Those writing in a kind of German which promotes multiculturalism and
thus feel close to their country of origin, e.g. many writers from Turkey,
Poland but mostly from Italy such as: Ozdemir Basargan, Gulbahar Kultur from
Turkey, Iwona Mickiewicz from Poland and Franco Biondi and Gino Chiellino
from Italy;
4) Second or third generation immigrants, but who have retained contact with
the mother tongue of their forebears. For them, German has become a
quasi-mother tongue. Examples given are Jose F.A. Oliver and Zafer Senocak
(origin unknown);
5) Those immigrants for whom German is, de facto, their mother tongue
because they come from the Banat, or Transylvania, in Rumania. Examples
given are: Herta Mueller, Richard Wagner [young, namesake of the composer],
Gerhardt Csejka, Klaus Hensel, Rolf-Frieder Marmont, Werner Soellner and
Ernst Wichner.

Hope this essay written by Dariusz Muszer and published in the 6/7 1997
issue of the Polish cultural monthly "Tygiel" (Melting Pot / Crucible) gives
food for thought about a multicultural Germany.

Best wishes,

Eric Dickens



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