Steffen Martus »Erzählte Welt. Eine Literaturgeschichte der Gegenwart«

Literature reflects the upheavals of society, it experiences the crises that make up our present - social, political, economic and also aesthetic. In 1989, people wanted to hear the authors on the big stage: the demonstrators on Berlin's Alexanderplatz expected orientation from Christa Wolf and others. In the “German-German literary dispute” and in the scandals surrounding Strauss, Grass, Handke and Walser, the public changed fundamentally. “Pop literature” declared authors to be brands among others. In the background, Amazon tested the possibilities of digital capitalism for the first time using the book as an example.

The award-winning literary scholar Steffen Martus, Professor of Modern German Literature at the Humboldt University in Berlin, talks about this with Thomas Hummitzsch and Daria Razumovych, also literary scholars, but from different generations and in different professions. Which of these debates since 1989 (still) concern us today, what has become literary history and what (still) has a direct impact on the present around the debates about migration, identity or classism? Which questions are unnecessary and which discussions need to be held urgently?