A volume of carefully focused essays illuminating the works of one of the leading 20th-century German writers. Alfred Doeblin (1878-1957) was one of the great German-Jewish writers of the 20th century, a major figure in the German avant-garde before the First World War and a leading intellectual during the Weimar Republic. Doeblin greatly influenced the history of the German novel: his best-known work, the best-selling 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, has frequently been compared in its use of internal monologue and literary montage to James Joyce's Ulysses and John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer . Doeblin's oeuvre is by no means limited to novels, but in this genre, he offered a surprising variety of narrative techniques, themes, structures, and outlooks. Doeblin's impact on German writers after the Second World War was considerable: Gunter Grass, for example, acknowledged him as "my teacher." And yet, while Alexanderplatz continues to fascinate the reading public, it has overshadowed therest of Doeblin's immense oeuvre. This volume of carefully focused essays seeks to do justice to such important texts as Doeblin's early stories, his numerous other novels, his political, philosophical, medical, autobiographical, and religious essays, his experimental plays, and his writings on the new media of cinema and radio. Contributors: Heidi Thomann Tewarson, David Dollenmayer, Neil H. Donahue, Roland Dollinger, Veronika Fuechtner, Gabriele Sander, Erich Kleinschmidt, Wulf Koepke, Helmut F. Pfanner, Helmuth Kiesel, Klaus Muller-Salget, Christoph Bartscherer, Wolfgang Dusing. Roland Dollinger is Associate Professor of German at Sarah Lawrence College; Wulf Koepke is Professor Emeritus of German at Texas A&M University; Heidi Thomann Tewarson is Professor of German at Oberlin College.

Chronicles the first 35 years of the oldest program of its kind in the US, with biographical information on and creative contributions from the participants. Since 1968, Oberlin College has hosted a German writers-in-residence program, the oldest program of its kind in the United States. The list of participants during its first 35 years is impressive, including some of the most prominent writers from Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland. Christa Wolf, Jurek Becker, Helga Novak, Ulrich Plenzdorf, Barbara Frischmuth, Tankred Dorst, and Peter Bichsel were early participants. More recently, the German-Turkish writer and poet Zafer Senocak was representative of multicultural trends in German literature, while Anna Mitgutsch, Doron Rabinovici, and Peter Stephan Jungk have represented the new generation of German-Jewish writers.This book chronicles the writers-in-residence program from 1968 to 2003. A section on each author includes an introductory write-up dating from the time of the author's visit; information on the author's life and career since that time; a new fictional or biographical contribution; and an updated bibliography. The authors' contributions range from prose texts and poems featuring or inspired by Oberlin to personal testimonies, reminiscences, diary entries,and letters. The book is bilingual, with most of the new contributions in German, while the introductory texts and most of the biographical updates are in English. The book recalls moments of the last 35 years of European history-- and European views of America and of a small town in Ohio that has changed yet remained the same. Dorothea Kaufmann is a member of the Faculty in Residence, and Heidi Thomann Tewarson is Professor and Chair, both inthe Department of German Language and Literatures at Oberlin College.