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DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies Imaginaria of Force

Photo: Creative Commons/YaYapas

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'.