Mutual intelligibility: depictions of England in German literature and thought

ABSTRACT Inspired by the English comic stereotype of the ‘humourless German’, this article attempts to hunt out similar caricatures of the English within German language culture. This is given in the form of a historical overview of the English in German literature stretching from Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's tragedy ‘Der Englander’ to the work of the exiles Elias Canetti and Franz Baermann Steiner in wartime London. Canetti's posthumously published memoir Party im Blitz (2005) is the subject of particular attention. The essay concludes with an assessment of the disproportionate historical relationship between Germano- and Anglophilia, and an assertion of hope for increased reciprocal mockery between the two nations.

摘要：受英国漫画中“没有幽默感的德国人”这一刻板印象的启发，本文试图在德语文化中找出对英国人的类似漫画式描绘。这是以对德国文学中英国人形象的历史概述的形式呈现的，涵盖从雅各布·米夏埃尔·赖因霍尔德·伦茨的悲剧《英国人》到流亡者埃利亚斯·卡内蒂和弗朗茨·贝尔曼·施泰纳战时在伦敦的作品。卡内蒂死后出版的回忆录《闪电中的聚会》（2005年）受到了特别关注。文章最后对亲德和亲英情绪之间不成比例的历史关系进行了评估，并断言希望两国之间能增加相互的调侃。