SOURCE: Lützeler, Paul Michael. “Multiculturalism in Contemporary German Literature.” World Literature Today 168, no. 3 (summer 1995): 452-58.

[In the following excerpt, Lützeler argues that multicultural studies in Germany and Europe have been largely underdeveloped, noting several German authors who have composed works within a multiethnic context.]

A striking feature of today's culture debates is the postmodern criticism of the Modern, of the dire consequences of the Modern, of the frequently catastrophic burden of the legacy of their conceptualization of progress. This criticism, which can also be perceived as self-criticism of the Modern, is expressed in ecological, multicultural, feminist, and postcolonial discourses. The universalistic metanarratives of the Modern—to use Lyotard's terms—are being questioned here. Symptomatic of the postmodern frame of mind is the rejection of models of totality, which became most evident in the implosion of the communist states during the eighties and the early nineties.

If one wants to put a theoretical framework around the international discussion of culture, it is best to start with the theme of identity. According to Joachim Matthes, identity refers to the existence of elementary definitions—shared by a number of people—of truth and constancy as well as the translation of these definitions into regulations governing action and decision-making. A person is subject to multiple identities throughout: one moves in many identity circles. There is subjective participation in the problems or goals of groups like the family, society, of a generation or a belief system, a political party, a religion, of general semipolitical movements (such as those dealing with the environment or peace), of an ethnic association, a nation, a cultural sphere, and, ultimately, the human race and creation as a whole. Friction between subjective and collective identities is a daily occurrence. The individual can leave one identity circle and enter another, either maximizing or minimizing the circle: maximization accentuates the pluralism of identities; minimization emphasizes fundamentalism. It is significant for the postmodern concept in the Western world that the identities of the subject are multiple, fluid, and overlapping. One can hardly speak of “pure” identities; the subjective identity must be continually renegotiated and reconstituted.

In Germany as in Western Europe in general, the migration of workers, which has lasted for decades, and the emigration from Eastern Europe, which has gained strength since 1989, have in fact created a multicultural society. In a number of large West European cities foreigners constitute between one-fourth and one-third of the inhabitants. However, since the immigrants from the southern and eastern countries of Europe, from North Africa, and from the Far East as a rule still have the status of non-integrated minorities, the majority has little inclination to accept the reality of multiculturalism in its own country. People here are seldom ready to perceive themselves as a segment of a culturally fragmented society, to initiate a dialogue about the new circumstances, to urge the majority to promote the acculturation and assimilation of the minority, to practice tolerance toward the culturally different, the stranger. Multicultural thinking and behavior are underdeveloped in Germany, as in all of Europe. Although in many large West European cities there are mass demonstrations against hatred of foreigners, there are only a few rudimentary stirrings toward a positive answer in the form of a discourse on multiculturalism, involving an ever larger circle of the populace.

If one looks for models of multicultural identity, one is more likely to find them in Australia, Canada, and the United States than in Europe. In Australia people have turned away from the traditional ideologies of nationalism. Australia did this in response to the new realities of its continent. Until the end of World War II the orientation of the land was homogeneous, white, racist, British. Instead of relying on the traditional integration model of radical acculturation and integration. Australian intellectuals and politicians worked out the model of a multicultural identity and established it in law. Consideration of the various cultural traditions of the diverse population groups plays an important role in political statements, in the administration of justice, in the politics of immigration, in the educational system, and in the media. In the U.S. there is also a defined discourse on multiculturalism, and here too (in no small measure thanks to the African American civil-rights movement) it has not failed to make its mark on politics, the legal system, education, and the media. The ideology of unity represented by the “melting pot,” which predominated until the early sixties, has given way to cultural models designated as “rainbow” or “salad bowl.” The melting-pot model was based on a representation of an American monoculture dominated by an imaginary white Anglo-Saxon civilization.

In Canada multiculturalism has likewise become a part of the national self-concept. Here the favorite metaphor is the culture mosaic, which designates the progress from English-French biculturalism to multiculturalism. In Canada the philosopher Charles Taylor has animated the international academic discussion with a plea for multiculturalism. He has shown how multiculturalism is caught in the tension between two opposing demands which have been raised by the advocates of ethnic minority groups: the demand for judicial and social equality, and the demand for recognition of the cultural particularities and their consideration. In his reply to Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas has pointed out in reference to the German and West European situation that one must expect from the minorities an acceptance of the democratic political-constitutional and judicial systems, but that the majority can in no way insist on a cultural assimilation of the minority. Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Thomas Schmid put forth similar arguments in their book Heimat Babylon. They also make a plea for a framework of legal liability and legal security for all fellow citizens and, at the same time, punishment for discrimination on religious, social, or ethnic grounds.

Underdeveloped as it may be, the multicultural discourse has also been initiated in the German-speaking countries. Whether and to what extent one can speak of a multicultural dimension in contemporary German literature was the question to be clarified during a symposium that I organized at Washington University in St. Louis from 24 to 26 March 1995. The papers by the authors and the reports by the Germanists which appear here in print were presented there for the first time. The twelve invited authors had taught seminars on contemporary literature in their capacity as Max Kade Writers in Residence at the Center for Contemporary German Literature over the past ten years. They lectured about the multicultural aspects of their own literary works, thereby outlining biographical backgrounds and intertextual references to other writings. Their answers to the query regarding the multicultural elements of their own opus turned out to be quite distinctive. Without the authors' having consulted one another previously (some of them were not even personally acquainted prior to the symposium), a dialogue took place in which almost every argument had a counterargument; nevertheless, during the course of this dialogue the topography of a multicultural contemporary German literature took shape.

Barbara Frischmuth, who had spent several years as a student in Turkey, demonstrated in several of her narrative works what was involved in embarking upon writing on a different culture. She asserted that this endeavor was doomed to failure if one persisted in clinging tenaciously to one's own identity or if one fell into the opposite extreme of summarily dismissing one's own heritage in order to devote oneself completely to the foreign culture. Her central question is: “How can I come as close as possible to the Other without losing my own identity?” In the encounter of previously foreign cultures one finds the whole gamut of eagerly learning from each other, of separate interests, of tolerant coexistence, of suspicious distancing, of hostile competition, of potentially long-standing military conflict, and of civil war that can go as far as genocide. The spokespersons of multiculturalism, according to Frischmuth, advocate a peaceful cooperation among the various cultural and linguistic groups. They do so, however, not because they labor under any false illusions about the difficulty of such cooperation but rather because they are only too realistically aware of the danger for explosiveness that the confrontation of divergent mentalities and identities entails.

The author herself—probably without setting out systematically to do so—has shown in her books what positive aspects the Islamic and the Christian cultures owe to each other, and it is her opinion that awareness of this needs to be strengthened. Above all, she writes, the intercultural dialogue brings out the fact that we must live and deal with our own prejudices as well as with those of strangers. Nothing is more deeply ingrained than a cultural stamp, and this identity is determined through prejudices toward one's own culture no less than toward foreign ones. As Yüksel Pazarkaya also believes, tolerance can serve as a common platform for the contact between the European and the Islamic worlds. This virtue, which has a rich tradition in both cultural circles, has again and again been forced to fight against stubbornness and fanaticism. According to Frischmuth, cultures are theses for the operation of the world. Looking over the fence of one's own culture at the premises of another entails changes that can result in identity crises but also in the fortunate expansion of a constricted horizon. Through her writings Frischmuth sees herself as the border crosser and the intermediary between two cultures, and she is justified in claiming that literature is exactly the appropriate instrument for initiating a discussion about the problems of multiculturism, which today is almost universally prevalent.

Lectures on poetics, which belong to the essayistic genre, are themselves a part of literature, not separate from it. Silvio Blatter's discussion of multiculturalism is not based on his own books but rather on the biographical assumptions and conditions within which he moves as an author. He describes graphically his surroundings in District 5 in the city of Zürich, where he lived for many years, as well as the circumstances in Los Angeles, California, where he has spent almost a year. Zürich's District 5 has been settled by people belonging to the most varied social classes from seemingly all the counties adjacent to the Mediterranean; it is a multiracial state in miniature with a multitude of sociolects and as many distinctive behavioral philosophies as languages. He notices here a lack of fit, an ultimately unproductive, strained coexistence of Europeans, Africans, and Near Easterners. One who has not lived in such circumstances, Blatter thinks, can easily speak of tolerance. The limits of tolerance can be reached quickly when shots ring out and motorcycles burn, when educational measures consist primarily of whipping children, and when the relationship with women is characterized by anything but signs of emancipation.

As for himself, Blatter turned his back on District 5, because there the multicultural is too identical with the divided coexistence of the monocultural. Surely there exist more fortuitous multicultural constellations, but according to his experiences, Los Angeles is no model for these either. Here one sees an international monoculture whose mark is its “multiculturelessness,” with McDonald's as the centerpoint of this multicultureless society. Blatter's sympathies belong to a multiculture (more utopian than actual) that he designates with the term salad bowl. Here the most disparate life-styles exist side by side as equals, with respect and readiness to accommodate counting as virtues. Here one is given the impression—which Frischmuth holds dear—that the cultures enrich one another in a positive way. If this were real, it would be wonderful; but formulated as a goal, it raises expectations too high and can only result in disappointment. Since such a multicultural society does not yet exist, according to Blatter, it is not representable in literature.

Erica Pedretti too demonstrates that the feeling of culturelessness is not site-specific; one can experience it during a flight from Zürich to New York, when the demeanor of the stewardess unknowingly imitates that of a character from a mediocre TV series, and one can be overwhelmed by it at home in Switzerland when one hears a broadcast whose placating phrases seem to deride everything admirable about a culture. The fact that today an American student can read enthusiastically Heine's Harzreise appears like a beacon of hope in the author's essay. Evidently there exists a trans- as well as an intercultural dialogue during a time in which a Western, modern, internationalistic civilization seems to consider this dialogue on cultures to be superfluous.

Paul Nizon's lecture is also biographically oriented, but since he has different perceptions of multiculturalism than does Silvio Blatter, he fails to see any problems with their literal representation. Nizon understands the multicultural to be a stimulant, consciously chosen. A Swiss author who writes in German and lives in Paris, he plays, as he puts it, on no literary national team. He has always found the foreign to be alluring, and what he hopes to capture in language is the unknown, not that which is already established. As an author he has always preferred a sort of cultural exile rather than staying home and settling down. The paradox can be expressed thus: for him, home is always a foreign country, the constant in his life is nomadism, and for this reason he has lived only in the major European cities of Rome and, mostly, Paris. He owes everything to his multicultural upbringing, and in his writing he also sees the multicultural as a stylistic catalyst. Nizon illustrates this with references to his own books, such as Das Fahr der Liebe and Im Bauch des Wals, as well as to his Paris journal Die Innenseite des Mantels.

In contrast to Nizon, Jurek Becker stays away from statements about his own books, and he does not wish to comment on the multicultural dimension of his work. Just as the centipede should not and need not think about the mechanics of its marvelous locomotion, so the author should not and need not talk about his work. He has not been charmed by literary works with an urban inspiration; the multicultural does not fascinate him. He likes village authors whose books are monocultural—the more monocultural, the better. Nor does he wish to analyze his cultural identity, although he then allows himself to be carried away by remarks about the East German part of his identity and starts to speak about the identity problem he has encountered as a former GDR writer who has at the same time become a successful author in West Germany. He speaks so readily about his silence on the subject of multiculturalism that he slips in confessions and premises which could have been formulated by Frischmuth or Nizon: namely, that the literature of a country should be accessible to the world and should take advantage of the entire store of knowledge of mankind, and that familiarity with a foreign culture gives one the desirable ability to see the world from a different perspective.

And so Becker cannot altogether deny recognition to the works of authors with multicultural influences. What he opposes is a definite, multiculturally constituted effort which introduces a sociopolitical orientation into the artistic work, turning the author into a kind of activist. Here Becker manifests a sensitivity that is probably associated with his East German experience. Just as those Bitterfeld slogans “Writers into the factories!” and “Grab your pen, chum!” must have seemed to him expressly hostile toward the arts, so today he guards against expectations that prescribe multiculturalism as a theme.

Sten Nadolny belongs to those authors with multicultural influences who can in no way be characterized as “activists.” For years he lived in Berlin, a truly multicultural conglomerate that encompasses—with its Kreuzberg district—one of the largest Turkish communities. In Berlin, Turkish culture is part of the everyday, and thus it is almost self-evident to those authors who write about Berlin that the fate of the Turks is included in their novels; as a matter of fact, it can be viewed as a conscious suppression if foreigners are not present in the contemporary urban literature. Like most of the authors who have contributed to this special issue, Nadolny reflects on the process of overcoming his prejudices toward the cultural Other. In choosing a Turk as the hero of his novel Selim oder die Gabe der Rede, Nadolny himself tried to understand foreigners in order to be able to let the reader see through the eyes of a foreigner. He considers understanding and, above all, respect for the foreign to be one of the abilities that are worth developing in the multicultural society of the present. His essay can be read as a complement to his novel; here it becomes evident how the constraints of the genre and the expectations of the reader cause the cleft between the real-life model and the novelistic hero. In his presentation he uncovers in essayistic form another piece of multicultural reality that had remained concealed in the novel.

Peter Schneider asserts that multicultural reality has progressed much farther than one can gather from contemporary novels. If one refuses to acknowledge foreigners, if one avoids them, if one represses them from one's consciousness, if one has no experience with them, then one cannot describe them. Schneider sees a disparity between the expressly meager representation of foreigners in literature and their large proportion of the population, which continues to swell through migrations, emigration, and the search for asylum. Like Blatter, he describes the community in which he resides as a society in which many cultures live side by side and deal with one another—sometimes well, sometimes badly—without attempting to engage in a real dialogue. In this respect, the notable lack of literarily constructed intercultural conflicts in contemporary literature is a reflection of reality. As in the case of Nadolny, Schneider's presentation is a complement to his narrative work. He talks about the origins of the books Lenz and Paarungen and explains the reasons that foreign characters are either altered or play diminished roles. (Paarungen is actually a novel about a major city in which the multiculturality of Berlin is constantly and pervasively present).

In a manner similar to Frischmuth's, Ursula Krechel develops her conception of the multicultural symbioses surrounding her, with references to her own literary work, in which she depicts the dissonant constellations that arise from the friction between Self and Other. Also like Frischmuth, Krechel feels that time and again the term multiculturalism is used far too euphemistically; often it mutes the enormous problems of adjustment imposed daily upon the migrants. Nevertheless, she herself employs it—as do all the authors who raise objections to it—probably because no comparable term exists that incorporates all its meanings in the same way. Like Nizon, she is familiar with life in a multicultural city—in her case, Frankfurt am Main, a community of which foreigners comprise nearly thirty percent. Krechel draws a remarkable parallel between writing and the migrant: both have too often been denied access to a country; they share the recurrent fate of being turned away, of finding no motherland; and alienation, exile, abandonment, and loneliness are all too familiar experiences for both. Like most authors, Krechel expresses her ambivalent attitude toward the multiculturalism of the present; the Janus-like nature of multiculturalism consists of the fact that whereas for some, trying the unknown results in an auspicious newness, for others the expanded language ability is countered by an abrogation of speech as a result of their adaptation to the language and culture of the foreign country or of the new homeland.

Hanns-Joseph Ortheil's comments, like those of Krechel, are based on his own work. Since it is difficult to build a bridge between his books and the theme of multiculturalism, he invents a letter that poses questions about the reasons for the monoculturalism in his novels. The letter writer, who introduces himself as an old school friend of the author, belongs to the jet-set trendies and does not know how to make a distinction between internationalism and multiculturalism. Internationalism, which the letter writer advocates, stands for the dissemination of the modern Western life-style of politics, commerce, and industry among the metropolitan elites. Ortheil's school friend lives in a uniformly gray global monoculture, in which English is the language of commerce and other cultures are reduced to folkloristic or culinary trivialities, to attributes that are highly welcomed as decorative spots of color in the dreary monotony of daily chores. Thus this feigned letter does not come across as a self-criticism of the author but rather as an indirect defense of his novels, which are circumscribed by a portrayal of an experiential sphere bearing the stamp of German culture. If Ortheil were to write his novels according to the formula recommended by his friend, one would see nothing but a sort of plastic work with no depth. To embark upon the multicultural is psychically and spiritually taxing and is the opposite of the pleasure tour through the international party landscape that Ortheil's letter writer seems to enjoy.

The efforts of wandering among various cultures are not so difficult when one is born into a social situation that bears the stamp of multiculturalism, as was Yüksel Pazarkaya. In his Turkish birthplace of Izmir, he learned from childhood to think and feel as an Ionian, a Lydian, a Trojan, a Lykian, a Hittite, a Byzantine, a Selchuk, an Ottoman, a shaman, a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim as well as a citizen, an anarchist, a bohemian, and an ascetic. This upbringing in a district with multiple populations on the border between Europe and Asia sharpened his perception mostly for the similarities among the cultures surrounding him. Like Frischmuth, Pazarkaya speaks of the traditions anchored in cultures with a Christian as well as a Muslim stamp, of the practice of tolerance and the search for recognition. Here he detects the aftereffects of the prophet Mohammed's demands and of Lessing's enlightened postulates. The appropriation of knowledge, the search for recognition, the exploration of the alien and the unknown tend to mitigate a misgiving about the Other and thereby bring about an understanding of one's own situation.

Whereas Pazarkaya documents in autobiographic references the positive value of growing up in a multicultural setting, Barbara Honigmann's biographical record reflects an increasing cultural alienation. Her great-grandfather tried to live as a Jew and at the same time as a Prussian, and he was still able to fight simultaneously for the emancipation of the Jews and the national German interests of the revolutionaries of 1848; her grandfather was already fully assimilated, having for the most part broken his ties to Judaism. Her father was driven into exile by the racial delusions of the National Socialists; however, rather than finding his way back to Judaism, he—as a citizen of the GDR—looked to socialistic internationalism for his identity. Honigmann writes that the generations of her ancestors represent the shattered hopes of the Jews in Germany. She has rediscovered Judaism for herself, and it provides her with support in her craft as an author. She admits to three related components of her identity: she is a Jew, she is a German-speaking author, and she lives in voluntary exile in Strasbourg, in the border region between German and French culture. In doing so, she does not wish to miss out on a multicultural environment, which also encompasses the Turkish immigrants; she does not want to become isolated in a monoculture. She wishes to live in proximity to the Other without sacrificing her Judaism.

While Honigmann has found in Judaism a direction with regard to her identity, Klaus Hoffer describes his sense of life as one of disorientation. Inspired by Kafka, Hoffer created with “the Bieresch” a set of novelistic characters who give expression to his sense of life, who act according to laws that they do not comprehend, who lose themselves in a labyrinth of change. The homeland and the foreign land are transposed, resemble each other, and become identical.

The twelve presentations by the German-speaking authors mirror the multitude of possible literary contributions to the multicultural discourse. These subjective reflections by the authors are supplemented by scholarly survey lectures which should serve to convey an impression of the quantity of literature produced by minority groups living in German-speaking countries. Since Germanistik has ignored this aspect of contemporary literature far too long, these essays should remedy the resulting deficiency of information. The Arabic, Turkish, Jewish, and Afro-German presence in German-language literature is an indication of its genuinely multicultural makeup. But just as in the social realm awareness always lags behind reality, recognition of the reality of multicultural literature leaves much to be desired. During the symposium, Ülker Gökberk reported on aspects of Turkish-German literature with examples from the works of Aysel Özakin, Aras Ören, and Yüksel Pazarkaya. Since there is already an abundance of studies and anthologies on Turkish-German literature, we will refrain from presenting another synopsis here. Furthermore, one article depicts how Germans are perceived in the literature of authors who immigrated from other lands; another summarizes the experiences of German writers traveling in Third World countries. This demonstrates just how beneficial the practice of multicultural thinking at home can be for an understanding of foreign cultures in other domains.

Works Consulted

Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, and Thomas Schmid. Heimat Babylon: Das Wagnis der multikulturellen Demokratie. Hamburg. Hoffmann & Campe. 1992.

Löffler, Sigrid. “Literatur der Fremde—Literatur in der Fremde.” In Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1968. Klaus Briegleb, Sigrid Weigel, eds. Munich. Hanser. 1992. Pp. 182-229.

Lützeler, Paul Michael. “Vom Ethnozentrismus zur Multikultur: Europäische Identität heute.” In Paradigma Multikultur. Michael Kessler, Jürgen Wertheimer, eds. Tübingen. Stauffenburg. 1995.

Lyotard, Jean-François. La condition postmoderne. Paris. Minuit. 1979.

Mathes, Joachim, ed. Zwischen den Kulturen? Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem des Kulturvergleichs. Göttingen. Schwartz. 1992.

Taylor, Charles. Multikulturalismus und die Politik der Anerkennung. With a contribution by Jürgen Habermas. Frankfurt a.M. S. Fischer. 1993.

Wierlacher, Alois, ed. Fremdheit: Leitbegriffe und Problemfelder kulturwissenschaftlicher Fremdheitsforschung. Munich. Iudicium. 1993.