Introduction

Summary

THIS BOOK BRINGS TOGETHER thirty-five German-language writers of quite varied backgrounds who nonetheless share the common experience that underlies this retrospective volume. All were writers-in-residence at Oberlin College. Annually since 1968, Oberlin's German Department has invited a distinguished writer from Germany (before 1989 East and West Germany), Austria, or Switzerland for a semester of teaching, writing, and a public reading. For each author who joined the Oberlin community, the experience was different. Each was met and welcomed by his or her own group of students, and each became attentive to different issues on campus and the larger American political, cultural, social, and even geographical landscape. And, although the German Department faculty remained fairly stable, it too changed over time, as the gradual disappearance of certain names and the appearance of others indicate. The writer-in-residence program, although well established, begins anew with each arriving author. The unique and diverse impressions with which each author returned home are reflected in the great variety of contributions sent to us and featured in this volume.

Some of the contributions were written in Oberlin and reflect the authors’ thoughts and observations of that time, while others describe the college and the town and its surroundings, or incorporate them into a literary work as its setting. Many contributions were new, of a personal nature and written expressly for this occasion. We received stories, excerpts from novels, newspaper reports, interviews, memoirs, diary entries, poems, essays on poetics, and letters. Letters were indeed a favorite way of responding; this genre seemed best suited to express the often very personal effect the Oberlin visit had on an author. In one case, that of poet Johannes Schenk, we received a series of nostalgic letters written from the famous artist colony Worspwede, where he lives and works in two circus wagons. A few writers, including Anna Mitgutsch, Hanna Johannsen, Gert Loschütz, and Karl-Heinz Jakobs, are represented by essays on fundamental issues of writing presented at the conclusion of their stay.

This heterogeneous collection offers a surprisingly comprehensive image of Oberlin — the town, the college, its people, even its flora and fauna — from various points of view. It also tells about the writers’ psychological disposition, their first teaching experiences, love affairs, attitudes towards American history and politics, and their newly critical and distanced views of their own countries.