On the Denial of the Multicultural in the Novels of Hanns-Josef Ortheil

Intimacy and Resonance: Visions of Love in Hanns-Josef Ortheil’s Liebesnähe and Ronja von Rönne’s Wir kommen

“…After Die große Liebe (Ortheil 2003, True Love) and Das Verlangen nach Liebe (Ortheil 2007, The Desire for Love), Liebesnähe (Love's Closeness, 2011) is the third "Liebesroman" (romance novel) by Hanns-Josef Ortheil. Designed to self-consciously revert the tradition of unhappy love stories in the literature of modernity and to re-establish the literary representation of happy love stories, the three novels celebrate love as a feast of resonant experience, and metareflexively revise the literary tradition of love.…”

The Continuation of War Trauma in the Novels of Hanns-Josef Ortheil

“…This particular phenomenon is the central aspect and concern of Hanns-Josef Ortheil's novels, especially ofhis first and second novel, Fermer n and Hecke, 12 as well as his last book Abschied von den Kriegsteilnehmern. 13 Since these themes are historical it is necessary to give some biographical background.…”

“…For the earlier two divided states it was a problem of Entsorgung (the German term for the disposal of toxic waste), now it is an important active part of history'. 22 Furthermore, this laying-to-rest of the dead ancestors does not represent an act of finality, since it is connected with the discovery of the conditions of the subject as originating in the horrors of war. Ortheil's writing can be described as a continuous struggle against the silence that determined his early childhood.…”