| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 德國文化學系 === 97 === Siegfried Lenz and Günter Grass, well-known German authors, had written lots of novels and dramas. All of their works reflect the core concept: the thought of the anti-Nazi, such as their criticism of the German blind obedience during World War II. The main Characters of the novels seem like inability to think or make any decision on their own, because they follow blindly. It is a point that Lenz and Grass criticize acutely. Therefore, in this thesis I aim to make use of the Schiller’s “duty and inclination”, in order to commend the positive meanings of the traditional obligation.
Deutschstunde and Katz und Maus disclose how the Nazi manipulates the power of medium to control the thoughts of people in Germany during World War II, even the Nazi mislead the people into thinking that obligation should be blind and absolute. Although Germany has the history of obligation, the Nazi represents the negative thinking. Since Martin Luther’s Reformation in the 15 century starts the religious obligation to God. Due to Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative” and Friedrich Schiller’s “duty and inclination” is there a complete system of the conception of obligation in the 18 century. Later, Friedrich Hegel developed the concept of “national philosophy”, which discussed the Prussia’s patriot and law-abidance. Therefore, this is a great contribution to obligation by Kant, Schiller and Hegel.
As a result, this thesis is a contribution to the understanding of the postwar literature in Germany. The concept of obligation is the key idea in the discussion of a comparative study of the German literary works: Deutschstunde and Katz und Maus. In this thesis, we aim to investigate into the main concept “obligation” in Lenz’s and Grass’s fiction. Siegfried Lenz and Günter Grass, the most important postwar German authors, attempt to express their “writing strategy of anti-Nazi”. In the first thing, they criticize that the Nazi mislead the obligation of people. Secondly, they advocate the beauty of traditional obligated concept, in order to clarify confusion and bring things back to order. Lenz and Grass try to make the Nazi obligation back to Kant’s and Schiller’s. That is exactly their strategy against Nazi, and also our main viewpoint to analyze the fictions.
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