It is certainly no exaggeration to state that research into Christian literature has fallen asleep. An overview of the history of literary research in recent decades reveals that there have been hardly any large-scale attempts to identify the specific nature of Catholic literature and that even conference anthologies and studies on individual figures in literary history are few and far between. Nevertheless, a dictum by the journalist Alexander Kissler still seems to be valid, an assumption he made 16 years ago on the occasion of a predecessor project to the idea outlined here: "Catholicism is no longer the contrast medium of literature, but literature can be the place where a form-conscious, present-sceptical religiosity hibernates."
Individual scholars have by no means been inactive in the past, however, if one thinks of the preliminary work on transcendence in contemporary literature - Michael Braun's work Probebohrungen im Himmel. Zum religiösen Trend in der Gegenwartsliteratur - or the research landscape on Catholic literature - see Klaus Wolf's contribution Joseph Bernhart - ein Autor des Renouveau Catholique? in the work Perspektiven bayerisch-schwäbischer Literaturgeschichtsschreibung by Thomas Groll and Klaus Wolf.
Reopening the field of research
However, in order for the topic to regain the interest of cultural and media studies, it was all the more urgent to send out a clear signal in research once again with this conference. This is why the project of an international literary and media studies conference was to be designed, which would pose the question of Catholic literature and its media: Where can Christian/Catholic traces be found in the media, in the novels of contemporary literature from Sibylle Lewitscharoff to the emergence of the trend of the new mysterious, from series such as The Young Pope to the magic discourse in Game of Thrones, etc.? What happens when the Renouveau catholique is understood and analysed historically, but its reflections are also projected onto the 21st century?
The core idea of this conference was therefore to open up a new field of research for the future, even beyond a Catholic or general Christian history of literature and media. The central thesis is that every medium has an affinity for transcendence. The central chain of questions is: How does this affinity take shape in relation to textual structures? Are the mysterious, numinous or magical varieties of the media's transcendental affinity and how is this fascinating power of uncanny material or enigmatic text structures unfolded in the interpretation?
The return of religion?
Following discussions that have now been going on for some time, which play a not insignificant role in this field of research outlined here, the supposed return of religion was recognised at the beginning of the 2000s in the context of the holy year, 11 September and in the context of the question of the Christian foundation of Europe in the face of religions claiming validity such as Islam. These discussions resulted in the term "the return of religion", which is used again in the subtitle of this conference; visible, for example, in Martin Riesebrodt's book Die Rückkehr der Religionen. Fundamentalism and the "Clash of Civilisations", which traces the fundamentalisms in Christianity and Islam in equal measure. Or Wolf Schieder's reflections under the title Wieviel Religion verträgt Deutschland. More than five years later, Bernd Posselt asked Is religion dangerous? Truth and terrorism.
And a book such as Friedrich Wilhelm Graf's Kirchendämmerung (Twilight of the Church) is part of the broad discussion, where the questions of what tasks the church or churches should fulfil, to what extent they are becoming obsolete or are constitutive for the community, are debated as if on an endless field. How the churches are gambling away our trust. There he names seven vices, which are also interesting for the history of literature and media, if one follows up with further questions: First virtue: speechlessness, Second virtue: lack of education, Third virtue: moralism, Fourth virtue: forgetfulness of democracy, Fifth virtue: self-importance, Sixth virtue: denial of the future, Seventh virtue: social paternalism. Such topics are also dealt with in Christian material and media with an affinity for transcendence. In his book Probebohrungen im Himmel (Test Drillings in Heaven), published in 2018, Michael Braun notes a religious trend in contemporary literature, which he spans a very wide range (see also the range of our conference tableau), from Martin Walser to Ulrike Draesner, from Martin Mosebach to Patrick Roth, among others.
Claudia Stockinger (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) kicked things off by asking whether there is a post-secular Catholic literature. The Catholic literary history(ies) then brought together individual case studies: Peter Czoik from Literaturportal Bayern spoke about the work of Carl Amery, Jan-Heiner Tück, professor of theology at the University of Vienna, focussed on Thomas Hürlimann and Botho Strauß. Erich Garhammer, Emeritus Professor of Pastoral Theology and Homiletics at the University of Würzburg, focussed on the work of Arnold Stadler, and Jørgen Sneis, colleague in German Studies at the LMU Munich, deepened his reflections on Sibylle Lewitscharoff. In a panel discussion with the actor and cabaret artist Ottfried Fischer, we were able to gain new insights into Catholicism.
The Christian explorations in the broadest sense continued with Brigitte Pfau, a doctoral student of Klaus Wolf; she opened up a search for traces of the connection between sustainability and religion in literature. Verena Gawert, a member of staff at the University of Augsburg and also a doctoral student, gave an insight into the editorial workshop on Joseph Bernhart. Then we had already arrived at transcendental media. Marcus Stiglegger, a relevant expert in film theory and history and an interesting podcaster, introduced us to the idea of the sacred in feature films, while I then explained the series The Young Pope for thematically obvious reasons. Finally, Georg Langenhorst, theologian at the University of Augsburg, demonstrated his experience with the profession of crime fiction and his own successes in this field, before Thomas Pittrof, emeritus professor at the University of Eichstätt, presented the history of Catholic literature in the truest sense of the word with a long-awaited encyclopaedia project. As a crowning finale, Ijoma Mangold spoke in a panel discussion about his own Christian life stories.
Catholic literature passé
A few years ago, the German writer Martin Mosebach made a significant contribution to the debate on the question: What is Catholic literature? Originally formulated as a lecture, later published in an essay that has received far too little attention, including in Mosebach's collection of essays Schöne Literatur, Mosebach circles and answers the question to the extent that he says that the time of Catholic literature in the broadest sense is basically over, as the self-evident and unquestioned Christian foundation of society is over, which means that what is Catholic in the most general sense is no longer expressed in literature. He firmly rejects Catholic confessional and 'propaganda literature', as he sees it realised in the Renouveau catholique, for example in Georges Bernanos or Werner Bergengruen, as a field of committed literature that drums up conviction.
Mosebach also explicitly does not categorise his own work under this term. After a comprehensive reading of various examples of literary history, he comes to the astonishing conclusion that Catholic literature no longer exists because the Christian foundation and the self-evident Catholic context of faith have now disappeared. In this sense, Proust's research could still be described as a genuinely Catholic novel, i.e. permeated by a spirit or referring to it, but also contradicting or caricaturing it. So if this time we were not looking at purely Catholic media, which perhaps no longer exist in the Mosebachian sense, we were interested in precisely my question from the beginning. That is why we were shown many facets of how transcendental the texts are, right up to contemporary culture.
