Willkommen und Abschied

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.

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.

Foreword
Introduction
Kuno Raeber, 1968
Fritz Hochwälder, 1969
Tankred Dorst, 1970
Christoph Meckel, 1971
Peter Bichsel, 1972
Helga Novak, 1973
Christa Wolf, 1974
Ulrich Plenzdorf, 1975
Barbara Frischmuth, 1976
Max von der Grün, 1977
Jurek Becker, 1978
Johannes Schenk, 1979
Christoph Geiser, 1980
Walter Helmut Fritz, 1981
Bernd Jentzsch, 1982
Peter Rosei, 1983
Gert Hofmann, 1984
Rainer Malkowski, 1985
Karl-Heinz Jakobs, 1986
Gernot Wolfgruber, 1987
Helga Schütz, 1988
Josef Haslinger, 1989
Hanna Johansen, 1990
Jürg Amann, 1991
Richard Wagner, 1992
Ralph Rothmann, 1994
Thomas Rosenlöcher, 1995
Barbara Neuwirth, 1996
Anna Mitgutsch, 1997
Werner Söllner, 1998
Gert Loschütz, 1999
Zafer Senocak, 2000
Irina Liebmann, 2001
Doron Rabinovici, 2002
Peter Stephan Jungk, 2003
"Oberlin, so weit, so nah" --A Kind of Afterword
Notes on the Editors
Index