Bagdad und der arabische Raum als fiktive Orte in der deutschen Literatur an ausgewählten Beispielen : „West-östlicher Divan" von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe und „Märchen-Almanach" von Wilhelm Hauff

Table of Contents: The following work is an attempt to fill a desideratum and is at the same time a research’s contribution to carry out the influence of the Arab culture on the German literature in the 18th and 19th centuries. Regarding the themes of „Orient“ and „Orientalism“ over the past few years or decades, much has been written ;nevertheless,- and according to my opinion- the Arabian works are not fairly mentioned in the most reviews. However, The gap in the German research on Arabia as an independent component of the great Orient and its influence on the German literature remained noticeable in the recent years. Therefore, this research occasion and this initial situation were the incentive for my attempt to research the details of this approach. My attempt could be a kind of contribution to a better mutual exchange and a reciprocal understanding in the domain of intercultural dialog between Germans and Arabs as well as an invocation for a new literary arguments. I do aspire that this could lead to a good life together particularly at our present time. Today, I find it so much important to contemplate on this topic again and to present it from an Arab germanist’s point of view. As already explained, this work has the task of filling the gap and combining the interdisciplinary research-traditions. The aim of the current work is, even so, to provide the readers and the germanists with a wide range of the Arabian influences on the German literature. "Baghdad and the Arab world as fictional places and their influence on the" West- Eastern Divan "by Goethe as well as on the "fairy tales" of Wilhelm Hauff, we found it a suitable title for this attempt. In order to do this, I analyzed Goethe's "Divan" and his comprehensive literary approach to Arab and Islamic culture and Hauff’s "Fairy Tales" and his peculiar, pragmatic and interesting use of the foreign-wide-culture in the light of the Arabic- Islamic relatedness and protagonists. Two different works related to two different authors logically show a different picture and different perceptions. These differences appear to me as characteristic of the range of these perceptions at the time of these works’ incurrence. I have attempted to present the Arabs’ role through their relatedness and through their characters in the " West-Eastern Divan ". Moreover, I tried to present this role with the help of numerous proofs from the text. The engagement in Hauff’s "fairy tales" was to me like we are leaving the Goethe’s world and getting into another world, which is also oriental shaped like the first one but in different approaches -and let us say- in variant ways. Here the voyage does not go with a philosopher’s or a critic’s tendency into the Orient’s depths, as in Goethe’s, but rather it is followed by commercial considerations in the common clichés. Thus, Hauff wanted to make his "fairy tales" look so superficial. Precisely saying, he wanted to use the ready-made Oriental and Arabic pictures for his "Fairy Tales" in order to achieve one or several purposes. Hopefully and I do hope so, that my dissertation can be a modest supplement, which would be a tip of the iceberg of the other studies, and at the same time it has sown a significant seed for a vigorous research-tree.