Der Text, Der (Produktive) Unverstand Des Abschreibers Und Die Literaturgeschichte

The book is a study of Johann Friedrich Oberlin's report "Herr L..." (1778), an account of Storm and Stress poet Jakob M. R. Lenz' sojourn in Steintal/Alsace. The account has a dual relevance for literary historians. It is a) the most important testimony we have for Lenz' enigmatically disastrous biography, and b) it served as Georg Büchner's main source when he was writing his (ultimately unfinished) novella "Lenz" in 1835. The material and the studies assembled in this volume cover a spectrum ranging from text critique and editing to historical-critical text interpretation. The findings they come up with have a bearing on the source material itself and are of interest in terms of literary history, the history of mentalité, and deep psychology.