Anna Seghers

Helen Fehervary, Professor Emerita/Academy Professor of German Studies, Ohio State University, has published widely on German literature, theatre, and intellectual history, is author of Anna Seghers: The Mythic Dimension, and editor of the text-critical Anna Seghers Werkausgabe published by Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin.Christiane Zehl Romero, Professor Emerita of German, International Literary/Cultural Studies, Goldthwaite Professor of Rhetoric, Tufts University, has authored articles on German and comparative literature, a two-volume biography of Seghers, and coedited two volumes of her letters in the Anna Seghers Werkausgabe.Amy Kepple Strawser, Lecturer, Ohio State University, has published on German poetry and women writers. She translated Ursula Krechel’s Voices from the Bitter Core (2010) and with Helen Fehervary tales by Seghers including “The Excursion of the Dead Girls” (2017).

• ContentsNote on TranslationsNote on OrthographyChronology of Seghers’s Life and WorksNotes on ContributorsIntroductionPart 1: The Seventh Cross: Origins, Relevance, Adaptations1 Topographies of Escape, Flight, and Migration in Seghers’s ProseHelen Fehervary2 Heroes: The Seventh Cross and Seghers’s “Heldenbuch”Christiane Zehl Romero3 Allusions to the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish-Christian Gospel and Apostolic Narratives in The Seventh CrossHelen Fehervary4  The Seventh Cross: Dignité humaine and Human RightsBirgit Maier-Katkin5  The Seventh Crossand Fred Zinnemann’s Cinematic AdaptationPeter Beicken6 Expressionism in Pictures: Exploring William Sharp’s Comic Adaptation of The Seventh CrossKristy BoneyPart 2: From the Historical Avant-Garde to Socialism and Antifascism7 Netty Reiling’s Student Years at the University of HeidelbergChristiane Zehl Romero8 Die Gefährten: Poised Aesthetically between Modernism and Lukácsian Socialist Realism and Politically between Rosa Luxemburg and LeninKaterina Clark9 Narrative Approaches to the Holocaust: A Pivotal Decade in Seghers’s OeuvreHelen Fehervary10 The French Connection: Seghers’s Friendships and Work Relationships in and with FranceChristiane Zehl Romero11 Seghers’s Efforts to Write about Postwar GermanyUte Brandes12 Anna Seghers, Walter Janka, Wolfgang Harich, and the Events ofStephen BrockmannPart 3: Seghers and her Contemporaries13 Visual Encounters: Seghers, Kafka, and BenjaminPeter Beicken14 Notes on Seghers and Adorno: Marxism, Post-Fascism, and the Question of CultureHunter Bivens15 “Die herrliche Anna Seghers”: Her Role for Christa Wolf and Brigitte ReimannChristiane Zehl Romero16 “… diese unerträgliche Sehnsucht”: Life Journeys and Longing in Reimann, Seghers, and WolfJennifer Marston William17 Heiner Müller’s Three Confessions: Late Letters to His Father, His Grandfather, and His Literary Mother Anna SeghersJanine LudwigPart 4: Seghers in Translation18 Introduction to The Wayfarers: Chapter OneHunter Bivens19 Introduction to “Shelter”Helen Fehervary20 Introduction to “The Reed”Amy Kepple StrawserIndex

“This is an excellent introduction to and scholarly appraisal of one of the 20th century’s most important women writers.”-E.G. Wickersham, Rosemont College USA, in CHOICE Vol. 57.11 2020