Ereignisgeschichten

On the one hand, events are excellent opportunities for literary narrations. On the other hand, for more than half a century, political events in contemporary history have been so extensively visualized by modern mass media that history is disintegrating into images, not into stories (W. Benjamin).The present enquiry analyzes the at-first-sight improbable transformation of history into (literary) stories - covering six events in recent history which have become landmarks in collective memory: 1968 (and the Vietnam war), 1977 ('German Autumn'), Chernobyl' (26.4.1986), 1989 (Fall of the Berlin wall), the Post-Yugoslavian Wars (1992-1999) and 9/11. An excursus deals with alternative, fictional contemporary history. The studies are substantiated by a theoretical and a historical section, in which the conditions under which written accounts of contemporary events, their literary history and the relationship between literature and visual history or culture are examined.