The Change of an Author’s Image: Wolfgang Koeppen’s Travel Books and Their Reception

With his self-produced image as a non-conformist author, Wolfgang Koeppen contributed essentially to the fact that his post-war trilogy, containing the novels Tauben im Gras, Das Treibhaus and Der Tod in Rom, was received as a social-critical work since its publication in the early 1950s. However, Koeppen was a highly aesthetically oriented author. His post-war trilogy can be seen as an attempt to classify himself into the context of literary modernism. Its strong reality content is connected with the conditions of contemporary literature: in the face of the fact that literary non-conformism had high chances of success, Koeppen was well-advised to balance or legitimize the anachronistic aesthetics of his novels by commenting on contemporary issues. But after the publication of Das Treibhaus he had increasing difficulties in harmonizing his poetic interests with his non-conformist author image and the public expectations in this connection, respectively. This role conflict, which was accompanied by writing scruples, is the starting point of the following investigation. The central hypothesis is that Koeppen’s travel books Nach Ru？land und anderswohin, Amerikafahrt and Reisen nach Frankreich make up a counter-design to the post-war trilogy, which was ended a few years ago. In the course of their reception the view of the reading public was widened to the aesthetic impact of Koeppen’s prose, in general, so that it would be only fair to say that they have caused a change to the author’s image