The „Petersburg text“: a Russian conceptualization of „cultural identity“ and its perception in Germany.

• Applicant: Dr. Yury Lileev
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538299748

Speaking of "cultural identity" and "cultural memory" in the context of German-Russian cultural contacts, V. Toporov's concept of the "Petersburg text" appears to be particularly productive. This term - originated in the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics around Yuri Lotman - is understood to refer to the semantic unity of the texts of Russian literature, which are spiritually and thematically connected with the St. Petersburg area. The topic offers a broad transcultural potential and can be considered on different levels under the aspect of the interweaving of cultural contents. The project aims not only to present in detail for the first time the German reception of the St. Petersburg text, but also to fundamentally investigate the problematic of this concept as an essential component of Russian cultural identity in the European context: through which mediation processes did the idea of St. Petersburg constitute itself in German cultural memory? What external conditions affected the activation, reactivation, or recombination of certain elements in the reception of the cityscape? The German Petersburg discourse would be understood as the totality of all texts of German culture, which in this or that way shaped the figure of St. Petersburg in the cultural memory of the Germans and were deposited in the memory of the foreign cultural memory. How is this semiotic offer accepted and realized in the German-speaking cultural space? And further: Is the duality of the Russian Petersburg discourse, split into a panegyric-positive and a cultural-philosophical-critical component, also taken up in the German-speaking cultural space and, if necessary, newly functionalized there? Many existing examples show the difference between own- and foreign-cultural approaches to texts. Behind this there is a difference of own- and foreign-cultural readings of all those texts that deal with the Petersburg discourse. The project is not concerned with clarifying supposed textual misunderstandings on the German side, but rather with analyzing the processes of transformation and nostrification that the Russian texts underwent in the German-speaking cultural sphere. The following should be mentioned as further perspectives of the research project: - the definition of the text corpus: both literary texts and non-fiction texts, which at different times shaped the German reader's conception of St. Petersburg - the revision of the semiotic concept of "St. Petersburg text" with regard to its reception in German literary studies. Methodologically, the project draws primarily on approaches from cultural transfer research, as well as narratology and discourse research.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position