Tim Senkbeil

Time and the Formation of Time in German Literature Dealing with 1989 and the Aftermath

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called ‚Wende‘ (turnaround) mark a central historic turning point, a peripety, and has a special place in the collective memory. What happened can be described as a „Zeit-Zäsur“ (caesura in time) (Detmers/Ostheimer 2016), an event that requires societies to generate new concepts of time and demands new narratives. In the last 35 years, the topic remains a popular subject in contemporary literature, and in recent years it has become particularly prominent again, with a focus on the post-reunification years, the 90s and early 2000s (cf. Schumacher 2023).

My doctoral dissertation examines the formation of time in a corpus of about 15 German–language texts published since the 1990s and explores its relation to the narrative of radical changes happening during 1989 and its aftermath. Starting from Käte Hamburger’s elaborations on ‚Zeitgestaltung’ (1955), who states: „Ist die Zeit nicht thematisch, nicht gestaltet, nicht erzählt, so ‚ist‘ sie nicht in einem Dichtwerk. Sie ist nicht trotzdem da wie in der Wirklichkeit […] (Hamburger 1955, 418) (If time is not topical, not constructed, not narrated, then it ‚is‘ not in a work of poetry. It is not there nevertheless, like in reality […]; translated by Meister/Schernus 2011, 90). Hamburger describes ‚Zeitgestaltung‘ as a feature a literary text can have, what distinguishes the texts from others.

Narratives of the ‚Wende’, the early ones as well as contemporary novels, show a particular affinity for narrating and forming time. Based on an aesthetically reflected understanding of ‚Zeitgestaltung‘, I would like to pursue an analytical approach that takes into account both the formal design and the semantic thematisation of time in narrative texts. I will argue that the changed perception of time after 1989 finds its way into the narratives on a formal level and influences the texts by narrating the ‚Wende’ as a loss of time, ‚in-between-time’ or transitional waiting time rather than as an immediate change, a peripetic moment or an instantaneous event.

Following Aristotle’s understanding of peripety and adding reflections of Viktor Šklovskij (1984), the temporal extension of the ‚Wende’ exceed the outlines of one single defining moment. Instead, these years are better described as a transitional period, which then follows or encompasses the peripety. Regarding the literary texts, it is characteristic that in confronting the disrupted temporal order, the texts often do not narrate a singular peripety but rather seem to shape this in-between-time through their formation of time.

• “Glossary: Zeitenwende,” in Baltic Peripeties – The Power of Narration and the Making of Regions, ed. Eckhard Schumacher and Cordelia Heß. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2025: 308-309, https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737017008.299.

• “Narrating the transition. The emergence of an in-between-time in German literature dealing with 1989 and its aftermath“, doctoral seminar at the 8th conference of the European Narratology Network (ENN), Limits of Narrative, University of Wuppertal, September 29, 2025.
• “How to do things with peripeties? Interdisciplinary approaches to the Baltic Sea Region”, keynote together with Prof. Dr Clemens Räthel, Prof. Dr Eckhard Schumacher, Charlotte Steinert and Dr Alexander Waszynski at the conference of the International Association of Scandinavian Studies Peripetier, katastrofer, happy endings: Vendepunkter i nordisk litteratur og kultur, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, July 30 – August 02, 2025.
• Organization of the international workshop Exploring Narrative Gaps in Literature. Identity, Memory, and the Absent, together with Paula Friedericke Hartmann and Hanna Horn, University of Greifswald, July 10 – 11, 2025.
• “Wende erzählen. Zeitgestaltung in der deutschsprachigen ‚Nachwendeliteratur’”, international summer school Schreibweisen der Gegenwart. Zeitdarstellung und Zeitreflexionen in der Gegenwartsliteratur, Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study Greifswald, June 30 – July 04, 2025.
• “Narrating 1989. Construction of Time in Contemporary German Literature”, international workshop From Crises to ‘Permacrisis’, organised by the IRTG ‘Baltic Peripeties. Narratives of Reformations, Revolutions and Catastrophes’ and the NTNU research group ‘Literature as a social resource’, Department for Language and Literature, NTNU Trondheim, May 07-08, 2025.
• “Time and the Construction of Time in German Literature Dealing with 1989 and the Aftermath,” international workshop Resonant Conflicts. Turning Points in the Baltic Sea Region, organised by the IRTG Baltic Peripeties. Narratives of Reformations, Revolutions and Catastrophes, Department for Language and Literature, NTNU Trondheim, May 22-24, 2024.
• “Zeit und Zeitgestaltung in der deutschsprachigen Wendeliteratur,” presentation of the doctoral project with focus on Angela Krauß’ narration Die Überfliegerin at the Kolloquium für Neuere Deutsche Literatur, organised by Prof. Dr Eckhard Schumacher, University of Greifswald, January 31, 2024.
• “Zeit und Zeitgestaltung in der deutschsprachigen Wendeliteratur,” presentation at the Forschungscolloquium Gegenwartsliteratur, Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study Greifswald, February 23-24, 2023.