Prof. Dr. Sigrid G. Köhler

DFG Project: Ziméo and Oroonoko in the Transatlantic World.

Literary Translations and Adaptations in the Context of Colonialism and Enslavement (1688-1809)

Current

Recent Publication

Nesselrode zu Hugenpoet: Zamor und Zoraide. Ein Schauspiel in drey Aufzügen (1778), with a postscript and edited by Sigrid G. Köhler and Julia Rebholz (Wehrhahn Verlag, 2023). 

Project Description

Ziméo and Oroonoko are fictional Black characters that appear in 18th century European literature through stories, plays and poems. More than 60 translations and adaptations can be traced for this period, almost 30 of them in German-language literature alone. The story told through these two characters is one of resistance, namely the struggle of these Black actors against the contemporary slavery plantation system in the Caribbean. Apart from colonialism, enslavement and a right to resistance based on natural law, the texts also address the legitimacy of a capitalist world of consumption which is brought about by globalization. At the same time, questions of the anthropological, political, and legal equality of people, respectively their cultural, religious, and ‘racial’ differences are also raised and negotiated by the texts. The aim of this three-year project is to show how German-language literature participates in transnational debates about the globalization of the contemporary transatlantic world. What is more, it aims to show how literary texts thereby reflect their knowledge of a ‘German’ involvement in the global world and in its spaces of trade, communication, and culture. In an overarching perspective, the project then also examines the relationship between canonized and popular literature in the 18th century with regard to their treatment of contemporary history as global history. That this happens in the mode of and through practices of translation and adaptation shows how central these are to the mediation of world knowledge in a world that is increasingly perceived as global and diverse. This does not mean, however, that the texts are free of racism, exoticism, or Eurocentrism. Through their contradictions and paradoxes, the texts document the critical examination of the aforementioned topics and questions and they attempt, within the framework of cultural-historical discourses and narratives, to reflect and translate them through and into literature. 

Publications

In Preparation

Nesselrode zu Hugenpoet: Zamor und Zoraide. Ein Schauspiel in drey Aufzügen (1778), mit einem Nachwort herausgegeben von Sigrid G. Köhler und Julia Rebholz (Wehrhahn Verlag, 2023) 

Heribert von Dalberg: Oronooko, ein Trauerspiel in fünf Handlungen (1786), mit einem Nachwort herausgegeben von Sigrid G. Köhler und Julia Rebholz (Wehrhahn Verlag, 2023) 

Köhler, Sigrid G.: Black Revolution – Or: Historical reflection in the form of the tragedy. Resistance and Enslavement a as Subject in Popular German Theatre (1775-1810), in: Priscilla Layne, Lily Tonger-Erk (Hgg.), Staging Blackness. Representations of Race in German-Speaking Drama and Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2023. 

Köhler, Sigrid G.: Showing and Feeling the Atrocities of Slavery. Abolition, Human Rights Violations, and the Aesthetics of the Drastic in Popular German Theatre Around 1800, erscheint in: Mads Anders Baggesgaard, Madeleine Dobie (Hgg.), Comparative Literary History of Slavery, Vol. 1: Emotion and Slavery [Manuscript present]. 

Essays

“The Politics of Truth-Telling. Black Resistance and the Transatlantic World in Nesselrode’s Drama Adaption of the Ziméo-Plot Zamor and Zoraide(1778)”, in: Sarah Adams, Jennifer Gibbs, Wendy Sutherland (Hgg.), Performances of Colonial Slavery and Race from International Perspectives, 1770-1850, London: Routledge 2023, 77-93.

Köhler, Sigrid G.: Drastische Bilder: Journalnachrichten auf der Bühne. Versklavung und Abolition als Gegenstände moderner Geschichtsreflexion in deutschsprachigen Journalen und Theaterstücken um 1800, in: Niels Penke, Niels Werber (Hgg.), Medien der Literatur. Themenheft der "Lili", Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 48 (2019), 376-398. 

Köhler, Sigrid G.: Nachwort, in: August von Kotzebue, Die Negersklaven. Ein historisch-dramatisches Gemählde in drey Akten, hg. v. André Georgi, Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag 2019, 87-102. 

Köhler, Sigrid G.: Ein ‚historisches Gemälde‘ gegen Sklaverei. Kotzebues dramenästhetische Bildpolitik und die Abolition im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert, in: BDG Network (Hg.), The Black Diaspora and Germany / Deutschland und die Schwarze Diaspora, Münster 2018, 67-83. 

Köhler, Sigrid G.: „Menschenrecht fühlen, Gräuel der Versklavung zeigen – Zur transnationalen Abolitionsdebatte im deutschsprachigen populären Theater um 1800, in: dies., Sabine Müller-Mall, Sandra Schnädelbach, Florian Schmidt (Hgg.), Recht fühlen, Paderbon: Fink Verlag 2017, 63-79.