Journal Article

German realism in the postal office: mail-traffic, violence and nostalgia in Theodor Storm's Hans und Heinz Kirch and Wilhelm Raabe's Stopfkuchen

Iurascu, Ilinca

2009

Overview

How do German realist writers re-imagine the epistolary event in the modern era of postal revolutions, characterized by standardized transmission interfaces? Looking more closely at Storm's and Raabe's narratives, in light of the conceptual shift between the 'human' and the 'technological' in the field of communication, this article argues that the birth of the Reichpost, alongside new practices and categories of mail (the pre-stamped letter, the postcard, the telegraph) had become associated with the threat of violence and death. But by that token, they also engendered epistolary nostalgia, a no less troubling sentiment that pervaded late nineteenth-century cultural production. Reprinted by permission of the German Studies Review

• Subject: Communication / Correspondence / Fiction / Germany / Literary history / Nostalgia / Postal services / Realism / Technological change