City poetry

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Metropolitan poetry refers to poetry that thematically treats life in a big city and / or is shaped by it in its form. The latter means that the city is important in formal terms: New or changing forms of perception and ambivalent contexts of experience in urban space (e.g. pluralism, simultaneity, dimensioning, anonymization) contribute in particular to the development of modern aesthetic modes of representation (e.g. polyperspectivity or fragment).

German-language urban poetry

The first anthology in 1903 with book decorations by L. Sütterlin

The German-language term metropolitan poetry originated at the turn of the century around 1900. In 1903, Heinz Möller published the first anthology on this topic. However, German-language urban poetry developed as early as the 1880s. The creation of German-language urban poetry thus falls into the epoch of naturalism . Naturalists such as Otto Erich Hartleben or Johannes Schlaf illustrate feelings of life and perceptions of modernity based on the big city . Topics taken up by the naturalists striving for objectivity deal with presumption, social misery and the powerless individual.

The first anthology of German-language metropolitan poetry, published in 1903, contains more poems from the counter-movements of naturalism, which are less oriented towards objectivity-seeking patterns of perception than towards the individual's perception of the subject. In contrast, in the second German-language poetry anthology, mainly naturalistic poems are included. Finally, urban poetry is of Expressionism in the 1920 edited collection Menschheitsdämmerung . The big city is at the center of subjective structures of consciousness. In the expressionist poems of the early Gottfried Benns or Georg Trakls , the space of experience in the big city is linked to both end times and visions of progress. Another big city anthology appeared in 1931, containing poems by Bertolt Brecht , Erich Kästner , Joachim Ringelnatz and others. Neither naturalistic nor expressionistic lyrical treatments of the big city can be found here. The authors of the New Objectivity that can be found here focus on the topicality and applicability of their literary adaptations of political, social and economic topics. This phase is also described as the high phase of urban poetry and produces authors like Mascha Kaléko . This phase came to an end when the National Socialists came to power. After the end of the war, the subject of the big city found its way back into poetry. Now this symbolizes the fields of ruins left by the war.

European urban poetry

The phenomenon of modernization that began in the course of the 18th century and the associated processes of urbanization were initially reflected in Europe where these processes first began: in England and France. In the English and French-language literature, there are particularly lyrical treatments of the metropolises of London and Paris. Charles Baudelaire , with his poem Spleen de Paris from 1859, is considered by some to be the first city lyricist in world literature. The later development of German-language urban poetry corresponds to the industrialization and urbanization processes that began later than in England and France.

Using French-language urban poetry, Florian A. Henke demonstrates that the big city has a formal meaning in particular: "The new forms of perception in urban space make the semantic fixation of complex reality precarious and contribute significantly to the development of modern aesthetic modes of representation such as context simultaneity, polyperspectivity and Fragments that are closely linked to dynamic vision in the big city. This leads to characteristic superimpositions of perception and reflection in the text. "

criticism

In her reflection on urban poetry, which was published in 1989, Ellen Lissek-Schütz judges that contemporary urban poetry has become "boring". Waltraud Wende, on the other hand, comes to the conclusion that urban poetry "is still today the impetus for a rich palette of poetic attempts at articulation." In this context, Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek made the suggestion that the evaluation criteria strongly influenced by expressionist urban poetry - in particular the "I dissociation" "- with a view to postmodern poetry to be replaced by concepts of a more" immersive "experience of urban spaces.

Quotes

  • "For the sake of a verse, you have to see many cities [.]" (Rainer Maria Rilke)
  • “He was sitting in the big city of Berlin | at a small table. | The city was big, even without him. | It wasn't necessary, it seemed. | And all around it was plush. "(Erich Kästner)

literature

  • Hofmann, Fritz a. a. (Ed.): About the big cities. Poems 1885-1967 . Construction, Berlin / Weimar 1968.
  • Krischker, Gerhard C .: The motif of the city in German poetry after 1945 . Erlangen / Nuremberg 1975. (Philosophical dissertation).
  • Krischker, Gerhard C .: Vienna in poetry . Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 1993. ISBN 3-45-833188-3 (1st edition).
  • Lissek-Schütz, Ellen: Big City Poetry . Schöningh im Westermann, Berlin 1989. ISBN 3-14-025460-1 .
  • Möller, Heinz (ed.): Metropolitan poetry . Voigtländer, Leipzig 1903. (first edition).
  • Riha, Karl: German city poetry . Artemis Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1983.
  • Rothe, Wolfgang: German metropolitan poetry from naturalism to the present . Reclam, Stuttgart 1973. ISBN 3-15-009448-8 .
  • Thiele, Herbert: The city in German poetry . In: Wirkendes Wort 1961, Heft 2, 103-11.
  • Wende, Waltraud (ed.): Großstadtlyrik . Reclam, Stuttgart 1999. ISBN 3-15-009639-1

Web links

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  1. ^ Möller, Heinz (ed.): Großstadtlyrik . Voigtländer, Leipzig 1903. (first edition).
  2. Hübner, Oskar / Moegelin, Johannes: In the stone sea . Berlin, 1910.
  3. Pinthus, Kurt: Twilight of Man . A Document of Expressionism (1920). New ed. from dems. 1959, Hamburg.
  4. Wende, Waltraud: Introduction. "Eyes in the big city - the big city, a space of perception of modernity". In: dies (ed.): Großstadtlyrik . Reclam, Stuttgart 1999, 5-37.
  5. Wende, Waltraud: Introduction. "Eyes in the big city - the big city, a space of perception of modernity". In: dies (ed.): Großstadtlyrik . Reclam, Stuttgart 1999, 16.
  6. Henke, Florian A .: Topographies of Consciousness. Big city perception, memory and imagination in French literature since Baudelaire . Freiburg i.Br. 2005 (dissertation). (PDF; 1.5 MB)
  7. Lissek-Schütz, Ellen: Großstadtlyrik. Schöningh im Westermann, Berlin 1989, p. 109.
  8. ^ Wende, Waltraud (ed.): Großstadtlyrik. Reclam, Stuttgart 1999, p. 36.
  9. ^ Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek: The mood of a city. Urban atmospheres in 20th century poetry, in: Weimarer Contributions, issue 4/2013, 59th year, pp. 558–579.
  10. From: Rilke, Rainer Maria: The records of Malte Laurids Brigge . 1973, 11.
  11. From: Kästner, Erich: So to speak in der Fremde (1932), published in ders .: Doctor Erich Kästner's Lyrische Hausapotheke. Dtv, Munich 2008, 34th (first edition 1936, Atrium Verlag, Zurich)