Manfred Jurgensen

Robert Adamson

Australian Writing Now

Symbole als Idee

Materialien Max Frisch, Homo faber

Manfred Jurgensen was born between Denmark and Germany in the coastal border town of Flensburg in 1940, a 'midnight child'. He has always been sensitive to boundaries and what's beyond the borders, emotionally and physically. He has chosen to reveal his life history - to a very large extent dominated by World War II and its aftermath - in a highly original and unusual form. The protagonist and his lifetime experiences are wrapped within a semi-fictional presentation that he suggests might be called 'autofiction', or perhaps a 'bio-novel'. Throughout the narrative he philosophises about the nature of 'coincidence' as a life-force. Switzerland, formerly known as the excessively clean and prosperous 'neutral' country of war-torn Europe, is the symbolic present-day setting for this imaginative narrative. It begins just after he suffers a nervous breakdown while delivering a doctoral seminar at the University of Basle. In a luxurious sanatorium for mentally disturbed patients called Humanitas, he is asked to write about his life experiences, including his own awareness of the Nazi era and what it meant to be one of 'Hitler's children'; he is regularly interviewed by a Board of distinguished psychiatrists based on these accounts. An involuntary prisoner, he longs to achieve his freedom and be reunited with his wife.

Five Weeks at Humanitas

This is a unique collection of prose, verse and visual art in acknowledgment of the German-Australian writer Manfred Jurgensen and his prodigious literary work over the past 55 years.

A Life in Letters

Three Suns I saw

Autorinnen, Perspektiven, Konzepte

Frauenliteratur

Diese Sammlung vereinigt Beiträge über einige der wichtigsten Vertreterinnen zeitgenössischer deutscher Frauenliteratur. Konkrete Einzeluntersuchungen veranschaulichen die Vielfalt dieser Literatur und ihrer Betrachtungsweisen. Unterschiedliche Deutungsversuche einer spezifisch weiblichen Literatur werden vorgelegt. In einem einführenden Essay stellt der Herausgeber die grundsätzliche Frage: Was ist Frauenliteratur? Schriftstellerinnen und Interpreten sorgen für unterschiedliche Schwerpunkte im Verständnis eines geschlechtsbezogenen Literaturkonzepts. Die Sammlung untersucht nicht nur Werke individueller Autorinnen wie Bachmann, Wolf, Aichinger, Reinig, Seghers, Drewitz, Wohmann, Leutenegger, Frischmuth, Kerschbaumer oder Struck. Sie ist darüber hinaus insgesamt eine kritische Würdigung der Frauenliteratur allgemein.

Christa Wolf; Gabriele Wohman; Karin Struck.

Bachmann, Reinig, Wolf, Wohmann, Struck, Leutenegger, Schwaiger

Deutsche Frauenautoren der Gegenwart

These essays and papers constitute a first comprehensive and authoritative stock-taking of German-Australian relations since the end of the Second World War. Studies by scholars, diplomats, artists and public servants address themselves to a wide range of subjects, including German-Australian Political Relations, Foreign Policy Perspectives on the Australia-Germany Partnership, German Migration to Australia, German-born Artists and Academics on the Fifth Continent, The Reception of Aboriginal Art in Germany, German-Australian Academic Relations, Comparisons of the Political Economies of Germany and Australia, German Business and Business German in Australia, Images of Australia in German Cinema and a Critical Review of the Role and Future of Germanistik at Australian Universities.

Manfred Jurgensen

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