What influence does Friedrich Schiller’s aesthetic of the beautiful and the sublime have on the work of Uwe Johnson? The tension between the yearning for reconciliation of the beautiful and the experience of loss of the sublime forms the structural basis for Johnson’s novels. Thus, on the one hand Johnson confronts his protagonists with historical and personal experiences of fragmentation and alienation, loss and powerlessness. An attitude of sublime spiritual strength thereby proves to be the strategy for coping with life. This interacts dialectically, on the other hand, with the unfulfillable yearning for harmony, reconciliation and playful unison with the world.weiterlesen