Willkommen und Abschied: Thirty-Five Years of German Writers-in-Residence at Oberlin College

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; it includes 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. Undine Griebel was formerly and Dorothea Kaufmann is currently a member of the Faculty in Residence, and Heidi Thomann Tewarson is Professor and Chair, all in the Department of German Language and Literatures at Oberlin College.