Images of Siberia in German Paraliterature of the 19th and 20th centuries

Siberia is a most significant geographical and sociocultural space on the "mental map" of modern Germans, which is confirmed by the following conclusions from the studies of German scholars: 1) modern Germans perceive Siberia as a geographical point where all of Russia is located; 2) stereotypical images of Siberia, actively translated into modern German culture in a variety of genres and discourses, show surprising stability; 3) the vibrant ambivalence of Siberia's image (schon / schaurig) is what explains its stability as well as attractiveness for Germans. Due to their broad appeal, the works by Karl May and Heinz Konsalik had a great influence on the formation of myths, stereotypes and cliches that formed the basis for the mental image of Siberia as an object of imaginative geography in the German collective consciousness of the 19th and 20th centuries. Karl Friedrich May (1842-1912) was the author of popular adventure novels (200 million publications worldwide, about 100 million in Germany). In his novel Deutsche Herzen - Deutsche Helden (1885-1888), Siberia epitomises Western ideas about Russia as a mysterious and wild "alien". In the context of colonisation, the image of Siberia is modeled similar to that of the American Wild West, whose features are hyperbolized in the Western imaginative geographies. May's collective image of Siberian population is especially representative in terms of his imagologic attitudes related to the cultural design of the image of the "other" during the Enlightenment. Following them, May describes the Tungus as primarily undercivilised people, which is realised in several motifs simultaneously (threat, asiaticism, barbarism) and marked with the adjective "halbwild". Adventure bestsellers by Heinz Gunther Konsalik (19211999) gained wide popularity in Germany in the second half of the 20th century (over 150 novels with the total circulation of more than 85 million copies). Many of them represented Siberia as a permanent locus of imaginative geography (Die Verdammten der Taiga, Ninotschka, Herrin der Taiga, Liebesnachte in der Taiga, Das sibirische Kreuz, etc.). In Konsalik's novels, the image of Siberia translates the ideological myth of the Soviet Union as a symbol of totalitarianism threatening Europe from the East. However, the imagological basis of the image remains unchanged - the emphasis on the Asiatic nature of Russian civilization, alien to the West, with its wild features becoming especially apparent in Siberia. In Konsalik's novels, the whole of Russia is an "Asian landscape" extending over an infinite space (Weite). It epitomises "alien", i.e. "Russian", carrying negative connotations (huge, cold, hostile, merciless, etc.) and opposed to "own" space (Enge), which carries positive connotations. In Siberia, this space manifests its extreme and, aggressive forms. Konsalik employs the image of the Siberian taiga to show that the Russians have a beastly nature, which reinforces his idea of the Russians as a dangerous and wild nation. Thus, the German mass literature of the 19th-20th centuries actively employed the image of Siberia to form the general image of Russia within the colonial (civilizing) discourse of the Enlightenment (K. May) that received an additional ideological dimension after the two world wars (H. Konsalik). In this context, imaginary Siberia was the locus that most clearly expressed Russia's cultural remoteness from the West. Siberia was represented as a territory that especially needed a civilising influence. The images of Siberia and Siberians in the works by K. May and H. Konsalik demonstrate a tendency to create static representations of the Russian "aliens", whose wild Asiatic nature was undoubtedly opposed to "own" West European culture, which was typical within the colonisation paradigm of German paraliterature of the 19th and 20th centuries.

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