Introduction                                          

Vier Familiengeschichten für unsere Zeit is a reader for college students of German, introducing them to literature or cultural studies courses at the advanced level. The short stories are postwar and contemporary, by German and Austrian writers, focusing on family life. "Am Rande" by Monika Helmecke centers on a young boy, poised between childhood and maturity, who starts to question parental ideas about right and wrong. Gertrud Fussenegger’s "Das Testament" explores a family’s greed and how a chance occurrence turns this on its head. Doris Dörrie’s "Gutes Karma aus Zschopau" highlights stereotyped expectations that eastern and western Germans have of each other. "Das Heimweh" by Hans Lebert depicts one family’s intergenerational chasm, displayed against a closed-minded and provincial rural village. All the stories present situations and characters that can be understood across time, cultures and distance; all concern the family, which, however much under the pressure of change, remains the touchstone of childhood and youth.

The stories are arranged in order of increasing complexity, in vocabulary and syntax as well as in style, topic, and approach. Many students will be able to read "Am Rande" at sight, and its incidents and central problem are clear and easily summarized. "Das Heimweh," the final story in the collection, on the other hand, is much longer and more complex in style, an exploration of character with less reliance on incident, and correspondingly demands much of readers.

What the stories have in common aside from their family themes is their challenge to accepted norms, norms which are for the most part shared by their culture of origin and current American culture. All four challenge the reader to rethink accepted everyday behavior and ethics, and may thus be considered "demanding" literature in the sense described by Janet Swaffar ("Written texts and cultural readings," in Text and Context: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Language Study, Claire Kramsch and Sally McConnel-Ginet, eds. Lexington, MA: DC Heath, 1992, 245).

The standard reading aids are provided, including footnotes for difficult or idiomatic phrases and a glossary including virtually every word found in the stories. To foster not just the comprehension of the story at hand, but also the development of literacy in German, a reading strategies approach underlies the discussion questions and essay topics provided for each story in the volume. These are designed to support the student in a process of moving from language comprehension to deeper reading and interpretation, as well as appreciation of the tools used by authors to create literary meaning.

Explicit instruction in reading strategies has gained new popularity in recent years in foreign language teaching (for example, see Bette G. Hirsch, Languages of Thought, New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995), but it has been part of teaching first-language literacy far longer. One early example is How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren (revised ed., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972, original ed. 1940), which was for decades the foundation of both classroom instruction and self-help for college readers who wanted to improve their high-level reading and critical skills. Additionally, it provided a principled foundation for the speed-reading courses popular in the 1960s and 1970s, which were marketed to those who wanted to read faster, but which proved effective also in increasing comprehension.

A reading strategies approach encourages students to coax meaning out of foreign language texts by figuring out instead of by looking up; multiple extensive readings of the text are recommended rather than an attempted single intensive reading. The typical (and counterproductive) learner’s method of looking up each unfamiliar word in a dictionary results not in comprehension but in a ‘word salad’ in the form of English equivalents, often inaccurate, written between the lines of the German text. A reading strategies approach urges students to develop the habit of scanning a text first, forcing themselves to move to the end even if not much meaning is clear to them on this first pass. Then, they should stop and think over whatever they have gleaned, and use this information as scaffolding for their own schema of the story during the next pass, and so forth to as many readings as are necessary. Some vocabulary look-ups will be necessary, but it is important not to let these look-ups dominate early readings, when the reader does not yet have an idea of the context of the story.

To support formation of this habit of reading and re-reading (which will demonstrate its superiority to the intensive look-up method after one conscientious application), some aids are provided. These include:

Preliminary questions (Vor dem Lesen)

Short-answer or true-false questions appear before each text or section of text. These should be first read through by the student, then answered after a first browsing of the text, helping the reader to create a preliminary outline of the story’s context. They will be even more helpful if they are revisited after the second, more detailed reading of the text.

Post-reading questions (Nach dem Lesen)

These ask readers to search the text for characteristics of style (such as alliteration or thematic repetition), for turning points in the plot, or for symbolism, or may call for short but thoughtful interpretive comments. Students may be advised to read these questions too before careful reading of the text, so that they may serve as advance organizers.

Zum Schreiben oder zur Diskussion

These questions, asking for more extensive interpretation, may be used as short essay questions (4-5 sentences) or for small-group or partner discussion, which may then be expanded to whole-class discussion. Typically, they focus on identification of the narrator’s standpoint, the characters’ standpoint, and the cultural norms being presented and/or put into question by the story.

Aufsatzthemen

Suggested topics for extended (2-3 pages) essays ask for reflection on a larger theme, at times comparing two of the stories. They provide opportunity for the instructor to address writing skills such as formulation of a thesis statement, construction of an argument, and organizing an essay into paragraphs that develop a theme.

The glossary

The glossary represents post-reform spelling, even though the stories, first published before the spelling reform, retain the traditional spelling. Authors generally prefer their work to be published without changes, including orthographic ones. Students’ attention may be called to this compromise solution, but the minor variations should present no difficulty.

The glossary lists English equivalents of the words as they are used in these stories; thus, in some cases, a common meaning of a word is absent, if this meaning does not occur in the text. An attempt has been made to provide a listing for every word in the stories without judgment as to whether students know or ought to know particular words. In the editor’s experience failing to list even common words will inevitably result in students’ consulting at least on some occasions an outside dictionary, which in turn will result in their losing confidence in the glossary. Of course this makes the glossary an enabler for students who persist in looking up large numbers of words in defiance of good advice not to do so. Still, it was thought preferable to provide a potential overabundance of information rather than to force students with a lookup habit to use a separate dictionary.