Überbürdung – Subversion – Ermächtigung

Around the year 1900, one can note a remarkable surge in literary texts dealing with the subject of school. So far, this boom has been perceived, but the body of texts has not been made accessible systematically from a perspective of discourse analysis and in a context of the history of knowledge. This study analyses, but also goes beyond canonical authors and texts in order to give a conception of the full scope of the genre and the reciprocal relationship that exists between the literary discourse on the subject of school and a whole range of other contemporary fields of knowledge. The process of transformation which the genre undergoes is portrayed with regard to three such interrelationships in particular: the role of 'Uberbürdung' – the contemporary discussion of the supposedly excessive physical and intellectual demands on pupils; forms of artistic subversion of the institutions' requirements and forms of parody of the still fledgling genre tradition; and finally, scenarios showing a transformation of pedagogical objectives into political ones. In consequence, the school emerges as a mirroring image – as an institution that helps the era of modernity to understand and come to terms with itself.