An article by Anna Katharina Schaffner, Head of Comparative Literature, has made the front cover of this week’s Times Literary Supplement (TLS), dated 14 February 2014.
In an article reviewing Wolfgang Martynkewicz’s study Das Zeitalter der Erschöpfung [The Age of Exhaustion] (Aufbau, 2013) and Sighard Neckel and Greta Wagner’s collection Leistung und Erschöpfung [Achievement and Exhaustion] (Suhrkamp, 2013), Anna discusses the specifically German preoccupation with exhaustion. She explores why exhaustion lends itself so readily as a vehicle for various forms of cultural discontent. Being ‘burned out’ in Germany today, she argues, is almost a sign of prestige, implying, as it does, that one has simply worked too hard.
To read the article, please see the TLS page here:
www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1374502.ece