Public evening lecture by Professor Dr. Martina Wernli (Humboldt University of Berlin, Institute for German Literature) as part of the lecture series "Femi
Period overviews, literary histories and textbooks often do without female authors from around 1800 - students are then familiar with writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Novalis, Eichendorff or Friedrich Schlegel. Between 1980 and 2000, however, feminist literary studies researched and published on authors such as Dorothea Schlegel, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Sophie Tieck and Karoline von Günderrode. Most of this research is now out of print, and the works of these women writers have still not been edited - as a result, they are only included in teaching with great effort. What mechanisms play a role here and how can these dynamics be broken? The lecture will present individual authors and excerpts from their works, outline the current state of research and reflect on the relationship between traditional literary studies and activist projects such as the open network #breiterkanon.
Martina Wernli is Professor of Modern German Literature at Humboldt University in Berlin. Doctorate in 2012 with a thesis on writing in psychiatry around 1900, habilitation in 2020 with a thesis on the literary history of the goose quill from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. In 2020 she initiated the open network #breiterkanon. Her research interests include: Material Culture Studies, works of the Romantics, thing narratives, questions of canonization.
Selected publications: Thinking and Writing Truth. Rahel Levin Varnhagen's Diaries and Philosophical Notes. In: Hegel Bulletins. Cambridge University Press 2022, vol. 43/3, pp. 467-485 https://doi.org/10.1017/hgl.2022.20; Haltung annehmen. Luise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched's whalebone skirt and the staging of femininity and fashion in the 18th century. In: Alexandra Karentzos, Iris Schäfer, Martina Wernli (eds.): Erzählte Mode. Transdisciplinary perspectives on text and image fabrics. Bielefeld: transcript 2025, pp. 65-86; module "Die Schriftstellerinnen der Romantik" for the upper school (Westermann Verlag 2025)
Moderation: Professor Dr. Elisabeth Flucher, Professor Dr. Katrin Horn
