The Crisis Interval: German Literature of Bukovyna at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

The article under studies deals with the German language literature of Bukovyna at the turn of the century, which may be referred to as the crisis interval of its development. It was the so-called “respite” between the two periods: the 60s-80s of the XIX century (E. R. Neubauer, L. A. Simiginowicz-Staufe, J. G. Obrist, K. E. Franzos) and the inter- and post-war years, the latter two related to the activities of two generations of German-Jewish poets (A. Margul-Sperber, R. Ausländer, M. Rosenkranz, A. Kittner, D. Goldfeld; P. Celan, M. Winkler, S. Meerbaum-Eisinger). The creative activities of Chernivtsi German-speaking authors of the ”fin de siècle“ period (L. Rosenzweig, K. Pekelmann, A. Norst, F. R. Kaindl, F. Porubski), unlike that of the previous and the following stages, did not acquire broad recognition and remained a literary phenomenon of local significance. This is why the time span at the turn of the century has been marked with a kind of “decay”. It has been regarded as an accumulative interval, whereby the German-speaking writers of Bukovyna were building up their force to give birth to the powerful generation of Chernivtsi poets (A. Gong, I. Weißglas, P. Celan, M. Winkler, S. Meerbaum-Eisinger). Apparently, the basic function of crisis intervals lies in accumulating the creative power for the forthcoming creative rise. In this respect, it is interesting to compare the activities of German-speaking authors with the Ukrainian literature of Bukovyna, which gained its highest achievements at the same time (O. Kobylianska, O. Makovei, E. Yaroshynska, S. Yarychevsky, and others).