Abstrakt
This proposed presentation analyses the particular techniques and forms of German novels in 18th century multilingual Prague around 1800. While other novels and poetic techniques have been frequently discussed in research for years now, the production of longer and shorter German prose in the periphery (i.e., countries and regions not dominated but well populated by Germans) still remains rather unknown.
However, Prague is not widely acknowledged as one of the "prominent" centres of European enlightenment, often described as "delayed Enlightenment", this place developed its very own way of novels. Since the period of Counter-Reformation Prague was an important town for theatre due to religious plays led and written by Jesuits as well as travelling theatre groups and opera societies.
Apart from the political and religious propaganda stage used to be a mass culture phenomenon, which had a huge impact on the emergence of German and certainly later Czech novels in Prague. In the 1770s young female author, Maria Anna Sagar published Prague's first "Originalromane".
It is highly interesting that already these early novels have to deal with technical poetic problems. In Sagar's second novel "Karolinens Tagebuch" (Prague, 1774) it is not possible anymore to finish the novel in an ordinary way, therefore it turns into a dramatized scene that is introduced and concluded by the narrator.
Her novel seems to struggle in finding its own poetic way apart from the usual paths influenced by other German or foreign texts. Prague (as well as other minor centres within the Czech Countries) becomes a laboratory for novels and shorter prose therefore Sagar's novels are just the beginning of an even more elaborate system of dramatized novels.
Especially in the 1790s authors like J.F.E. Albrecht, Chr.
H. Spiess or J.M.
Czapek had brought dramatized novels or "Erzählung halb Roman halb Dialog" to perfection (ages before Bertolt Brecht). This proposed presentation was meant to get more familiarized with a lesser noticed part of German enlightened texts, authors and (local) discourses.
By short examining a few exemplary texts the presentation has shown the innovative forms, techniques and motifs that are typical for Prague's Enlightenment or Post-Enlightenment novels around 1800