Petra Boden (HU Berlin): Eberhard Lämmert und die Frage, wie sich Geschichte erzählen lässt
How is history told? It was this central question of the humanities that comparatist Eberhard Lämmert (1924–2015) addressed in his lecture at Freie Universität Berlin in the summer semester of 1986. On the occasion of the first edition of this lecture (Eberhard Lämmert: Geschichten von der Geschichte. Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsdarstellung im Roman, ed. Petra Boden, Stuttgart: S. Hirzel 2024), Petra Boden’s lecture will trace how Lämmert sifts through the multitude of interferences, rivalries, and shifts in traditional narrative techniques in historiography and literature, as well as their historical-philosophical, historical-theoretical and philological reflections. In his lecture, the comparatist delineates a development in which the history of historiography and literature unfolds in reciprocal dependence and in which the texts of writers and historians alike cannot be regarded independently of their readers. As such, Lämmert succeeds in creating a comprehensive, singular account of the historical novel and the history of theory from the Enlightenment to the end of the 20th century.
Moderation: Eva Geulen
The admission is free, no registration required.
Petra Boden is a research associate at the Institut für deutsche Literatur at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From 1983 to 1991 she worked at the Central Institute for Literary History at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and from 1992 to 2007 at the Forschungsschwerpunkt Literaturforschung at the Fördergesellschaft Wissenschaftliche Neuvorhaben e.V. and the ZfL that emerged from it. There she was a research team leader for the projects Zum Wissenschaftsverständnis der Literaturwissenschaften in Deutschland in ihrem Bezug zu natur-, sozial-, technik-, und kulturwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen 1890–2000 and Popularisierung literaturgeschichtlichen Wissens 1850–1930, among others. She subsequently worked at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach and as a freelance author.
Publications (selection):
- Ed.: Poetik und Hermeneutik im Rückblick. Interviews mit Beteiligten, Paderborn: Fink 2017 (with Rüdiger Zill)
- So viel Wende war nie. Zur Geschichte des Projekts “Ästhetische Grundbegriffe”. Stationen zwischen 1983 und 2000. Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2014
- Ed.: Vielfacher Blick. Eberhard Lämmert zum 90. Geburtstag. Siegen: Universi 2014 (with Ralf Schnell and Justus Fetscher)
- Ed.: Modernisierung ohne Moderne. Das Zentralinstitut für Literaturgeschichte an der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (1969–1991). Literaturforschung im Experiment. Heidelberg: Winter 2004 (with Dorothea Böck)
- Ed.: Deutsche Literaturwissenschaft 1945–1965. Fallstudien zu Institutionen, Diskursen, Personen. Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1997 (with Rainer Rosenberg)
Fig. above: Eberhard Lämmert at the festive event to mark his 80th birthday at the Literaturhaus Berlin, October 22, 2004, © ZfL