The Confrontation With the Stranger and Intercultural Considerations in the Travel Report: The German Bildungsreise

Introduction

F.C. Delius‘s narration based on the report by the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) citizen Klaus Müller who succeeded in a daring escape by sailboat across the Baltic Sea to the west, to visit his dream destination of Italy and then return to the GDR, presents traveling as a problem at a time when Germany was divided. The motif of travel as a longing for education and freedom stands here in contrast to travel constraints and the restriction of individual rights. Delius' literary account of a real case of escape from the GDR at the time of German separation by walls and systems presents the reader both with the planning and execution of the trip and with a critique of the former living conditions in East Germany. The escape story of the protagonist from his hometown Rostock over the Baltic Sea in a sailboat offers learners a sense of a virtual journey in his footsteps, enabling them to get to know the places mentioned (Rostock, Usedom, Rügen, Dresden). At the same time, the history of German separation (the death strip, the Stasi¹, the surveillance of citizens and restriction of their rights) is depicted through this individual‘s fate, thoughts and feelings. The journey to Sicily is therefore a daredevil decision of life or death significance. However, the travel report is much more than an East-West story: it is that of a loner, a last classic German traveler to Italy (Delius, 1995)², according to the author of this unusual Bildungsreise, despite the protagonist‘s all legitimate attempts to follow in the footsteps of Johann Gottfried Seume, who had first inspired him as a 19-year old reader of his travel report. Seume, whom the protagonist refers to as his countryman, set off on foot from Grimma in East Germany on 6th December 1801 on a journey to Sicily, published in German literary history as the Walk to Syracuse in 1802; Seume then travelled via Prague, Vienna, Venice and Rome to Naples, from where he continued by ship to Sicily. On the way back he crossed Switzerland and drove to Paris. When he arrived back in Leipzig at the end of August 1802, he had traveled a distance of about 7,000 km having covered long stretches of this journey on foot.

It quickly becomes clear that the preparation and execution of the planned project by the protagonist has little to do with the actual variety of meanings of a walk in the sense of a pleasurable foray into nature. Using this vocabulary and meaning analysis, learners quickly realize that it may be important to take a close look at specific parts of the text. Due to the difficult project of escape, the first and longer part of the narrative covers the most important stages of his plans and preparations for the journey and his final escape across the Baltic Sea; the second shorter part deals with the Bildungsreise itself, Gompitz's impressions and experiences as well as his return. The topic of longing for a Bildungsreise thus presents itself as a challenge for the learners, which facilitates lively a discussion. In this context, the participants learn from the topic-related approach to check the text information for a specific question. In order to accomplish this task, they must search, collect, organize and process various items of textual information. In order to broaden this topic, one might look for corresponding texts or pictures that deal with the same topic or artists as the selected literary text. The aim is to provide a thematic approach by connecting a topic to the text and referring to a context presented in the text. The learners have to develop and deepen the text information on the basis of their prior knowledge and by taking into account the understood sense of the text in relation to the topic.