Mapping Channels Between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross-Cultural Relations

From the middle ages to the twenty-first century, India has held a fascination in the German imagination, not only as geographical location, but also as a philosophical and spiritual concept. Similarly, India has long held an interest in German language and culture, including wide recognition of several German authors, philosophers, and Indologists. This cross-cultural interest between the Indian subcontinent and the German-speaking world has manifested itself in literature, linguistics, the performing arts, religion, philosophy, history, politics, and many other fields. Concepts and names that mark some of the channels of exchange and communication between the two cultures include Balthasar Sprenger, Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, Kalidasa's Sakuntala, Herder, the Schlegel brothers, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heine, Nietzsche, Max Muller, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore, the ideology of the Aryan, Subhash Chandra Bose and his affiliation with Hitler, Gandhi, Annemarie Schimmel, Gunter Grass, and others. In recent years, Orientalist Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Intercultural German Studies, and Transnational Studies have given new impetus and directions to the interest in Indo-German relations. The aim of this book is to achieve an overview over the current state and trends of research in this field.
About the Author: Jorg Esleben is an Assistant Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Ottawa. His primary areas of research and publication include intercultural studies, the work of Georg Forster, German-Indian cultural relations, and the Faust theme. Christina Kraenzle is an Assistant Professor in the German Studies Programme in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at York University. She is also an Affiliate of the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies. Her primary research interests include issues of migration, travel and globalization in transnational literature and cinema as well as current methodological debates regarding models for transnational literary and cultural analysis. Sukanya Kulkarni was Mellon Fellow in German Cultural Studies at the Univerisity of Toronto from 2004-2006. Her prime interests include travel literature, colonial literature, transnational literature, Post-Colonial studies, and German-Indian cross-cultural relations. She has published a chapter on exotic dangers in Thomas Mann's Tod in Venedig and Waldemar Bonsels' Indienfahrt in addition to writing book reviews for literary journals.