Blaubart und Pygmalion?

2018

Die Erzählung Blaubart, seit der Veröffentlichung von 1797 als Märchen von Charles Perrault bekannt, gilt als besonders ambivalent, dies auch durch zahlreiche Weiterschreibungen und Neuinszenierungen. Die hier dokumentierte Forschung zur Stoffgeschichte von Blaubart benennt zahlreiche nicht bekannte Adaptionen. Auch wird sichtbar, wie Blaubart, besonders in deutsch- und französischsprachigen Versionen um 1940, unter schwierigen Zeitumständen sich einer tragischen Lesart widersetzt und die Erzählung als Parodie gegen Potentaten benutzt wird. Wie bei Jacques Offenbach (1866) zeigt Blaubart hier als komische Figur eine Auseinandersetzung mit der extremen Ungerechtigkeit und den Verbrechen im Zweiten Weltkrieg, besonders des Nationalsozialismus. Im Mittelpunkt stehen ein Knetfigurenfilm von René Bertrand (1938), ein Roman von Hans Natonek (1938–44 verfasst), eine Radiooper von Jacques Ibert (1943), ein Schauspiel von Bernt von Heiseler (1950) und ein Spielfilm von Christian-Jaque (1951).

2021

Textildruck in Tirol. Vortrag gehalten auf Burg Heinfels in Osttirol 2021

The Australian artist, Konstantin Dimopoulos, has been creating his environmental installation, The Blue Trees, at many locations worldwide. The color and the trees come together, transform and affect each other, and heighten the awareness of ecological issues. Published in German. Bäume ziehen den Künstler Konstantin Dimopoulos seit seiner Umsiedlung von Neuseeland nach Australien in ihren Bann. Als enga- gierter Umweltschützer setzt er sich gegen die fortschreitende Abholzung der letzten Urwälder der Erde ein. Mit seiner Installation „Blue Trees“ erregt er Aufsehen.

Fabula, 2000

Starting out with Perrault's tale, the present large-scale study of the Bluebeard theme includes Freud's and Benjamin's analyses as well as comparisons with Milton's Paradise Lost and Hitchcock's movies. The tale cannot only to be read as an allegory of female thirst for knowledge, caused by meanly constriction and boredom, and its consequences, namely punishment by death which she deserves from a male point of view; it is also a psychosexual ensign offemale sexual autonomy, the exploration and sinful satisfaction of which is downrightly provoked by handing over the key to her. For the curious bride, Bluebeard's lethal artwork of dismembered female bodies becomes a memento mori, conjuring up the fate that would have awaited her, while she reveals the murderous installation and unmasks Bluebeard as a ripper. It is precisely as a forbidden place that the 'wondrous chamber' not only stimulates the desire to intrude in order to snatch away the secret which is as horrible as it is beautiful, but also functions as an incentive to transgress the interdiction, with a readiness to bear any risk, beyond excitement, passion and squandermania.

Von Kopf bis Fuß. Bausteine zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Kleidung, 2015

Zeitschrift für Bildungsforschung, 2014

This article reports and discusses results of a study conducted within the framework of the large scale NOESIS research project to evaluate the Austrian school reform program the "New Middle School" which aims at improving trajectories and reducing marginalizing processes within an inclusive school setting. With a special interest in processes involving immigrant students, the study replicates and expands on a study on teachers' implicit biases, relations to teacher expectations and the ethnic achievement gap. Sixty teachers and 626 students at 11 school sites participated in the study. Data analysis shows that teachers' explicit judgments and expectations of student performance do not distinguish between immigrant and non-immigrant students, whereas their implicit associations measure clearly reveals bias, which correlates with students' achievements. Drawing on resistance theories and acknowledging human agency, the article explores the complexities of culture, ethnicity, language, religion and other constructs of otherness to interrogate the intricate dynamics of interactions and relationships between minority students and their mainstream teachers.

Fabula , 2012

Bluebeard is a ‘great strategist’ (Ingeborg Bachmann) who calls for unquestioning obedience, ties his relationships with women up with conditions and tries to make them work by means of sophisticated machinations. All of his relationships are planned as asymmetric in advance and are based on prohibition. Bluebeard’s relationships are characterized by male authoritarian features: while a woman has to be obedient and her love ought to be unconditional, love should not cause any major discomforts as far as a man is concerned. This article aims at analyzing Bluebeard’s philosophy of marriage and love from the perspective of gender research, as a system based on domination and violence. It not only deals with Bluebeard’s logic concerning relationships and its connection with cultural concepts of masculinity, but also the aporias and the ambivalence that constitute the Bluebeard system. The analysis is based on numerous twentieth century Bluebeard texts, including Eulenberg’s Ritter Blaubart (1905) and stories from the Blaubärtchen (1990) volume, which places Bluebeard’s bankruptcy in the context of the post-modern crisis of masculinity.

Rezension des Buches "Blaubart als neuer Mythos", erscheinen in der Zeitschrift Fabula 58, H. 1-2 (2017), S. 157-160.