I am a German literary scholar at the University of Würzburg and I completed my PhD on the narratology of space, later examining themes of space, migration, health, and environment in the works of Döblin, Kafka, Timm, and Kracht. I also have a keen interest in the apprenticeship novel, researching its origins, with Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (1795/96) as the most prominent example, and tracing the genre’s history up to the present day.
In recent years, I have also delved deeply into the history of drama, exploring humor in German comedy from the 17th to the early 19th century in my second book. I have since published on the rise of emotionally moving writing strategies in Zemire et Azor (1771), the book and performance history of popular libretti, as well as examining Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767/69) and Kleist’s Der Zerbrochene Krug (1808/1832).
It is very important to me to study literature hermeneutically. I love to engage in thorough philological work on both printed and handwritten fiction, connecting it with the history of ideas and cultural capital. During the last years I have also started to investigate large language models and their relation to interpretation and literary history (see „Emotions in Drama„).
I am currently putting together an essay collection on ethics of emotions in drama together with Daniel Fulda („Ethik der Emotionen im Drama vom Anfang des 17. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts“), writing papers on peacefull mobility in times of war („Friedliche Moiblität in Zeiten des Krieges in Adelbert von Chamissos Peter Schlemihl„), on the close relationship of philology and sociology of literature as well as on recent German novels.