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The question of truth and reality is, so to speak, the “Gretchenfrage” of literature. On the one hand, Plato insisted that poets had "no knowledge of the real thing". In the aftermath of the literature, one has assigned to the accusation its own territory: that of fiction. It does not seem to be about truth, but about probability. On the other hand, for example, Friedrich Schiller has explicitly declared his story ‚Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre‘ as a "true story". Recently it was said that poetry could "make the impact of climate change on people understandable". That, too, sounds like a claim to reality.

The aim of this lecture is to investigate the exciting relationship between fact and fiction in selected examples such as the key novel or the documentary theater. In doing so, she spans a wide historical arc that stretches from antiquity to the present day.

lecture

written test

to be announced

Cf. Curriculum