Ereignisgeschichten

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On the one hand, events are excellent opportunities for literary narrations. On the other hand, for more than half a century, political events in contemporary history have been so extensively visualized by modern mass media that 'history is disintegrating into images, not into stories' (W. Benjamin). The present enquiry analyzes the at first sight improbable transformation of history into (literary) stories - covering six events in recent history which have become landmarks in collective memory: 1968 (and the Vietnam war), 1977 ('German Autumn'), Chernobyl' (26.4.1986), 1989 (Fall of the Berlin wall), the Post-Yugoslavian Wars (1992-1999) and 9/11. An excursus deals with alternative, fictional contemporary history. The studies are substantiated by a theoretical and a historical section, in which the conditions under which written accounts of contemporary events, their literary history and the relationship between literature and visual history or culture are examined.