Transkulturelle Grenzüberschreitung, ethisches Reisen und das Gespenst des Kolonialismus am Beispiel von Ilija Trojanows Der Weltensammler und Christof Hamanns Usambara

(eng) What does it mean to travel across transcultural boundaries in the colonial as well as in the postcolonial era? Has our so-called postcolonial society completely emancipated itself from the paternalistic and racist attitudes of the colonial era or does it still harbour behaviours and representations that are still reminiscent of this time period? The aim of this master thesis is to answer these questions about the nature of travelling by examining two works of fiction in contemporary travel literature, which foreground cross-cultural contacts and the complex relationship between past and present in the unreliable reconstruction process of historical events, namely Ilija Trojanow’s Der Weltensammler and Christof Hamann’s Usambara. To this end, the first chapter of this master thesis presents an overview of the research carried out on travel writing, in which the basic features of this literary genre are reconstrued, the different types of travel and their representation in literature are described, and the underlying relationship between colonialism, capitalism, globalism and travel writing is examined. The second chapter analyses the non-fictional works of Ilija Trojanow and Christof Hamann and shows that they both aim to deconstruct the imperialist and capitalistic strategies employed by the West to exploit other populations, their land and natural resources both in the colonial and postcolonial era. The third and fourth chapters examine from two different angles how the two authors translate their view on journeys across transcultural boundaries as well as their ethical and decolonial commitment into their work of fiction, namely Der Weltensammler and Usambara. After examining Trojanow’s and Hamann’s literary strategies that consist in the (re)fictionalisation of historical events and the (re)construction of authenticity, the first part of the third chapter focuses on the representations of hybridity and diversity in Der Weltensammler through the creation of ambiguous, multicultural characters, which elude social classifications and cultural boundaries as well as through the book’s very own hybrid design. It is argued that Ilija Trojanow articulates his ethical and decolonial commitment through the promotion of this plurality and hybridity of voices, views and perspectives. The last part of the third chapter is devoted to the analysis of the relationship between past and present in Usambara, its influence on the life of the main protagonist and his confrontation with the traumatic past of his family. This interaction between past and present is crucial for the analysis of Der Weltensammler and Usambara in the fourth chapter, insofar as it examines the principle of unreliability inherent to the reconstruction of past and traumatic events in both fictional texts. Indeed, in the course of these books one can observe that the narrators consciously or unconsciously render their stories unreliable in order to repress a traumatic past marked either by the atrocities linked with colonialism or National Socialism, which makes them unwilling or incapable of coming to terms with these events. Highlighting the difficulty to reconstruct past traumatic events in these works of fiction constitutes, in my opinion, the literary achievement of Trojanow and Hamann, insofar as through their unreliable narrators and their representations of these part fictional, part historical worlds they give voice to their ethical and decolonial commitment as well as their criticism of the global, so-called postcolonial society. This also allows them to open a productive, multidirectional and intergenerational site to discuss issues of ecological sustainability, cultural, religious adaptation and exclusion as well as to discuss the processing of a traumatic past in the colonial as well as in the postcolonial era.