Cobbs, Alfred L.

Dr. Alfred L. Cobbs received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati and is now Associate Professor of German at Wayne State University. He is the author of the book, The Image of America in Postwar German Literature: Reflections and Perceptions (Peter Lang, 1982) and has also published articles on Günter Grass, Wilhelm Hauff, Franz Kafka, German-American literary relations, and German migrant’s literature.

Migrants’ Literature in Postwar Germany

2007 0-7734-5475-6
The question of “identity” and “citizenship” in contemporary German society as a whole has resurfaced as an issue since unification, and the term “multicultural society” has became an important theme in the reexamination of the question of what it means to be “German,” not only for citizens of the former FRG and the GDR, for the newly emerging German Jewish community, but also for the foreign migrants who have lived and worked in the FRG since the early 1960s. This study discusses a selection of texts – by and about foreign migrants in the Federal Republic – in which the main characters assert their ethnic or cultural identity and/or oppositional political consciousness against that of the majority culture. Such an emphasis foregrounds the issues of “identity” and “citizenship,” which are central to a discussion of whether and/or to what degree the Federal Republic has become a multicultural society since unification.