Literature and City. Urban Identity in East-Central Europe

This project seeks to bring together two dimensions that have one aspect in common, but belong to different scientific disciplines: city as a literary described area and city as built-up area. City descriptions can be found in various forms in different languages and literatures. All these descriptions refer to specific urban areas, cities that are more or less known, and as a setting for either fictional or historical activities. They also serve as a subject for artistic statements. The question of the connection between these two variables has been defined many times, but never been answered in detail. Our project proposes a new methodological approach: the connection between the described and the built-up city will be established by the biography of authors, closely associated with the particular city. In this process, biography is to be understood in a broad sense, including the city`s culture as the habitat of an author in a social sense as well as his or her personal biography in a concrete urban environment. Such an investigation will not, however, be made in an abstract and general way, but through specific concrete examples of cities in present western Ukraine like Lviv/Lemberg, Chernivci/Czernowitz, Brody, Drohobych and Buchach, in the 19th Century, belonging to the Habsburg monarchy, in inter-war time to Poland or Romania, after 1945 to the Soviet Union and after 1991 to Ukraine. All these cities are in special ways "literary cities", partly because significant writers, using German, Polish, Yiddish or English language, lived there and partly because the cities have been subject of literary description. The built structure of these cities, connected with descriptions from the past is partly preserved, but also partly disappeared. Thus, the literary text of the city is partly in a dialogical, partly in a mnemonic relationship with the built-up city. Such an investigation can only be accomplished in a sensible way - and herein is its innovative character justified if conducted jointly by literary historians and architects, experts in urban planning and conservation. An innovative research design organizes their cooperation in well-defined steps and tasks. Together with experts from Austria and Sweden, leading specialists from Ukraine and Poland on city literature and town planning will work with the realization of the project described in the various cities. The results of this study are also of practical use, because they can be harnessed for tourism and urban projects.

Starting from a short historic introduction this project compares descriptions or Central European cities (Buczacz, Brody, Drohobycz) in architecture and literature. All these cities today are situated in Western Ukraine. From 1772 to 1918 they belonged to the Habsburg Empire, in the interwar period to Poland, then became occupied by Nazi-Germany and after 1944 to the Ukrainian Socialistic Soviet Republic. All these cities had a multinational population, dominated by Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. Due to the Holocaust and the politic changes after World War II., these cities today are more or less Ukrainian. In all these cities a rich literary life was to be found producing texts in Polish, Ukrainian, German and Yiddish (most Jewish authors wrote in German). Each of these cities is marked by a world famous author Shmuel Y. Agnon was born in Buczacz, Joseph Roth in Brody, Bruno Schulz in Drohobycz. Usually these authors today are associated with these cities; our investigation, however draws attention to less known or forgotten authors connected with these cities to reconstruct their literary life in its fullness. Our project consists of three separate studies, portraits of the named cities. Each of these portraits starts with a historic overview showing the special character of each city as well as common features in their history. Studying this history one has to take into account that there are remarkable differences between the national narrations of the history of each city. The history of Buczacz, Brody and Drohobycz is presented differently, when being told from a Polish, Ukrainian or Jewish point of view. Our study mainly concentrates on the differences.The second part of every city portrait is devoted to the built space, the historic development of the cities centers and their closer environment. Destructions, caused already by World War I and by following cataclysms of 20th century are documented. The description of the built city undertakes an attempt to reconstruct the built urban space before World War I, what concerns the city as a whole, as well as singular buildings. Describing these buildings from the point of view of architecture and urban environment the portrait tries to attribute different buildings to different national narratives Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish. The third part of each city portrait focusses on the authors born in these cities ore closely related to them, and their works devoted to them. Again the presentation undertakes an attribution of authors to national groups (Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish). After a short biographic sketch of all the mentioned persons the investigation concentrates on the special literary contribution to a certain city, on its descriptions in literary texts. For this aim buildings and monuments of architecture are of special importance, they prove a link between architectural and literary description. Remarks on history, social, national and economic life of the named cities complete the city portrait.