A comparative analysis of discrimination against minorities in Germany in selected texts by Lion Feuchtwanger and Abbas Khider

Wolf, Franziska (2023). A comparative analysis of discrimination against minorities in Germany in selected texts by Lion Feuchtwanger and Abbas Khider. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis undertakes a comparative analysis of selected texts of so-called German ‘exile literature’ and German ‘migrant literature’ in order to investigate how different minorities are discriminated against in Germany in these texts, especially in Bavaria and Berlin, in different historical contexts. In doing so, this thesis seeks to challenge the conceptual division between exile literature and migrant literature to disrupt staid categories of thought, thereby fruitfully updating the research on these authors’ texts.

The texts under investigation are Lion Feuchtwanger’s Wartesaal-trilogy, consisting of Erfolg (1930), Die Geschwister Oppermann (1933) and Exil (1940), as well as Abbas Khider’s novels Der falsche Inder (2008) and Ohrfeige (2016). By investigating these novels comparatively with regard to minority discrimination, this thesis seeks to arrive at a more holistic understanding of the writings and their position within the field of German-language literature.

This thesis explores overlaps and similarities in discrimination phenomena, as depicted in these texts, and how these phenomena are based on processes of racialisation and different concepts of race, as well as how discriminatory behaviour is implemented and performed systemically by state institutions. Moreover, this thesis analyses how socio-economic factors motivate some characters to participate in discrimination against minorities, which can be illuminated through Bourdieu’s theory of capital and social classes. This investigation of socio-economic factors is complemented by a psychoanalytic interpretation of unconscious incentives that motivate certain characters to sanction or participate in minority discrimination, which can be addressed through Freudian psychoanalysis as well as Horkheimer and Adorno’s psychoanalytic theorisation of antisemitism in ‘Elemente des Antisemitismus’ and Fanon’s theory of racism, as developed in Black Skin, White Masks.

These findings are contextualised locally and temporally, considering that Feuchtwanger’s and Khider’s novels are set predominantly in Bavaria and Berlin, which are constructed by both authors as cultural opposites whose specificities influence discrimination processes. A reading of the novels through Simmel’s urban sociology illuminates these spatial specificities. Moreover, the novels under scrutiny demonstrate a manipulation of time and history as a linear sequence of events, which will be interpreted through Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence of the same and Bloch’s synchronous nonsynchronicity in the case of Feuchtwanger’s texts, and through narrative loops and the concept of ‘racial time’ in Khider’s.

Given the similarities and overlaps in discrimination against minorities which these texts depict, this thesis argues that a fruitful approach to reading Feuchtwanger’s and Khider’s novels comparatively is the notion of ‘world literature’. This re-conceptualisation contributes to overcoming the artificial division and the overemphasis on the authors’ biographies, which the labels ‘exile literature’ and ‘migrant literature’ impose. As the novels under scrutiny depict discrimination phenomena primarily in the form of (historical) antisemitism (in the case of Feuchtwanger’s novels) and (contemporary) anti-Muslim racism (in the case of Khider’s texts), thereby revealing remarkable similarities, they allow for a re-evaluation of contributions of different minorities to ‘German culture’. By opposing exclusionary notions, particularly that of German Leitkultur, this thesis argues that the similarities revealed in the novels under scrutiny can be read in light of utopian concepts of belonging, recognition, and solidarity, such as Czollek’s concept of Jewish-Muslim hegemony.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):