Die deutschsprachige Lyrik und die 'Stunde Null' 1945

Abstract

If one attempts to establish periods of the development of German poetry in the 20th century, the year 1945 proves to be rather an ambivalent date. On the one hand, the political upheaval clearly had its effects on poets; on the other hand, a strong continuity can be observed in the style and subject-matter of many works written in the 1930s and the 1940s or even later. The aim of this paper is to show whether and how the year 1945 influenced German-language poetry by examining texts written by authors as different as Nazi-sympathizer Hans Egon Holthusen, resistance fighter Albrecht Haushofer, authors of the so-called 'Innere Emigration' – Gottfried Benn, Marie Luise Kaschnitz and Günter Eich – and by taking into account the famous poem about the Shoa, Death Fuge by Paul Celan, who emigrated.

Keywords

• caesura constructiones in literature
• German poetry from the 1930s to the 1950s
• the 'Stunde Null' 1945
• Hans Egon Holthusen
• Gottfried Benn
• Günter Eich