Prof. Dr. Maximilian Bergengruen

Curriculum

Maximilian Bergengruen is the holder of the Chair of Modern German Literature and History of Ideas at the Institute of German Philology at the University of Würzburg. He obtained his habilitation in 2005 with a work on literature and magic in the early modern period. After a Heisenberg Fellowship at the University of Konstanz, he became a full professor at the Département de langue et de littérature allemandes in 2009, followed by an full professorship for Modern German Literature at the Institute of German Studies at KIT/University of Karlsruhe in 2014. His research focuses on the relationship between literature and knowledge (theology, medicine/psychiatry, natural sciences, law, economics) from the early modern period to the 20th century as well as on questions of literary theory, in particular on form.

Publications (selection)

Die Formen des Teufels. Dämonologie und literarische Gattung in der Frühen Neuzeit, Wallstein: Göttingen. 2021.
Verfolgungswahn und Vererbung. Metaphysische Medizin bei Goethe, Tieck und E.T.A. Hoffmann, Wallstein: Göttingen, 2018.
Mystik der Nerven. Hugo von Hofmannsthals literarische Epistemologie des Nicht-mehr-Ich. Rombach, Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach Wissenschaft, 2010.
Nachfolge Christi/Nachahmung der Natur. Himmlische und natürliche Magie bei Paracelsus, im Paracelsismus und in der Barockliteratur (Scheffler, Zesen, Grimmelshausen). Meiner: Hamburg, 2007.
Schöne Seelen, groteske Körper. Jean Pauls ästhetische Dynamisierung der Anthropologie. Meiner: Hamburg, 2003.

Research project: Forces of the Market, Forces of Nature. On the Literary Economy of the 19th Century

During my fellowship, I would like to explore the concept of 'force' in 19th century economic conceptions. On the basis of the theories of the Historical School and the novels and novellas of Poetic Realism, I would like to examine how the interplay of market forces, with a focus on 'Arbeitskraft', is imagined and narrated. In this context, I will concentrate on the novels and novellas of Gustav Freytag, Gottfried Keller and Theodor Fontane. The latter is of particular interest for the topic of the centre insofar as he analogizes economic and biological forces in his late novels ('Irrungen, Wirrungen', 'Mathilde Möhring') with his poetological concept of 'finesse'.

Research results: Forces of the Market, Forces of Nature. On the Literary Economy of the 19th Century

The aim of my project was to reconstruct 19th-century discourses on labor and the specific role of literature within them. In a monograph, I was able to demonstrate that 19th-century novels are remarkably informed by economic theory. In Fontane’s late novels, the female protagonists appear as—seemingly private—micro-entrepreneurs who are forced to use their labor force productively in order to survive economically. In this context, they develop strategies to organize their available resources in such a way that they can make optimal use of their limited scope for action and scarce capital.

Furthermore, my research has shown that the relationship to work in Poetic Realism is not merely one of many themes, but a privileged one, because it always also creates an implicit writing scene. Describing how consumption is transformed into production means, at the level of the plot—and thus on a more concrete, less complex level—simultaneously reflecting on how reading is transformed into writing. The distinctive features of the poetics of Poetic Realism—particularly the concept of “transfiguration” (which Keller and Fontane also refer to as “rounding,” “refinement,” or “purification”)—are taken into account insofar as the portrayal of work as the further processing of consumer goods remains committed to the truth of things on the one hand, while at the same time appearing as a refining and creatively transformative activity on the other.