Unter Beweis: Das Leben

Dr. Bernadette Rieder, Jahrgang 1970, studierte Theologie und Germanistik in Innsbruck. Sie ist als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin und Lehrbeauftragte an der Universität Innsbruck sowie in der Erwachsenenbildung und als Texterin und Lektorin tätig.Für dieses Buch hat sie den Preis der »Landeshauptstadt Innsbruck für wissenschaftliche Forschung an der Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck« erhalten.

In this work "autobiography" is understood as a communicative act of the writers' self-portrayal addressed to the general public. By writing about their own lives, autobiographers want to prove a specific view of themselves. Research hypothesises that there is a group of conventional topoi, which lead an author's memory and writing. 15 topoi referring to subject matter and 3 topoi referring to the literary genre "autobiography" are described in their function for the self-notification of the authors. In this thesis the autobiographies of Max Brod, Lola Landau, Max Zweig, Anna Maria Jokl, Alice Schwarz-Gardos und Willy Verkauf-Verlon are studied, whether they contain these topoi and how they use them. The term "topos" is critically analysed, because there has been a semantical confusion since its reintroduction by Robert Ernst Curtius as a scientific term into the textual sciences. By linking research on topos with a literary genre this research is used in a way which goes back to its roots in the classical rhetoric. The method of analysing texts, which is derived from this terminology, allows a wide analysis, which does not only focus on the obvious. Thus, what is generally expected in research on exile and autobiography in the context of national-socialistic persecution and ban, is avoided. Even though, this book tries to focus on the genre of the studied texts, it also gives an overview of the German language life and literature in Palestine/Israel and the research about German language literature in Palestine/Israel. At the end of the analysis, there are hypotheses about the intentions of the authors. Six authors' different levels of self-awareness can be seen, even though they share important experiences, such as, for example, losing their homeland. In this piece of research the well-known paradigm of exile discourse such as, for example, the feeling of guilt of having survived, or broken identities, are supplemented by different individual issues which are equally important.