The Old World and the New: Literary Perspective of German-speaking Canadians

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

Walter E. Riedel, professor of German at the University of Victoria, has gathered in The Old World and the New a number of essays by Canadian scholars, which focus on the literary contributions of German-speaking Canadian writers to the Canadian mosaic.

The immigrant experience forms the essence of the writings of these authors. Rodney Symington’s essay, “Else Seel: Survival, Assimilation, Alienation,” shows how an immigrant from Berlin transformed her experiences of pioneer life into aesthetic form, much as Susanna Moodie did. Anthony Riley examines the European roots of Frederick Philip Grove, alias Felix Paul Greve, German novelist, poet, and translator.

Roots or burden? That is the question which Günter Hess addresses in his study of Walter Bauer, while Harry Loewen examines Mennonite literature as an expression of a sense of loss. Karin Gurtler’s essay, “Henry Kriesel: A Canadian Exile Writer?,” reflects upon the exile experience of German-speaking Canadian authors. Professor Riedel himself contributes an essay on Carl Weiselberger, an Austrian Jewish refugee, who came to Canada through deportation with another 7,700 internees from the Isle of Man and remained interned near Sherbrooke until 1943. A proofreader for the Ottawa Citizen and later its art and music critic, Weiselberger speaks of walking his “small ersatz shadow through the columns of English newspapers.” In his European publications, the grateful and enthusiastic Weiselberger shows Canada as vast, beautiful, and incredibly potential. Charles Wasserman is another immigrant through internment. Son of the well-known Austrian-Jewish author Jakob Wassermann, he worked as a CBC reporter, producer, foreign correspondent, and film maker, was an expert on Quebec folklore and a translator and adapter of German and Italian plays, wrote for German television, and published eleven books in Germany. A prolific author whom H. Seliger presents with great respect.

Peter Liddell examines the works of the author and photographer Ulrich Schaffer, which have appeared in English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese. Schaffer’s meditative verse and prose deal with questions of faith and personal relationships. Liddell analyses Schaffer’s debt to Kafka as well as his otherness, revealing a writer of great interest.

The last essay, by Arnim Arnold, deals with the Swiss-Canadian Hermann Böschenstein, to whom the entire book is dedicated. Böschenstein, teacher and scholar, published an expressionist novel at the age of 21, then a series of short stories, and a Bildungsroman at 77 — not to mention his scholarly publications. Like most of these German-speaking Canadian writers, Böschenstein amazes us with his incredible energy, his scholarly output, his literary accomplishments. The Canadian mosaic scintillates with emigrants’ strength and its German-speaking parts are of great richness. The Old World and the New is an important contribution to Canadian literary scholarship.