A Stranger in Europa?: Two worlds in me - based on Texts by Rafik Schami, Yoko Tawada and Byoung Chul Han

In today’s globalized age there are a number of writers worldwide who do not write in their mother tongue, but in a foreign language. This study examines the characteristics of these writings, focusing on the texts of Syrian writer Rafik Schami, Japanese writer Yoko Tawada, and Korean philosopher and essayist Byung Chul Han. These three writers have a lot in common. They all came to Germany as adults, received their Ph.D. in Germany and they speak German with an accent, namely syrian, japanese, and korean. The question arises as to whether the literature by authors who write German and whose mother tongue is not German can simply be called migrant literature, migration literature or guest worker literature. In addition, the question of what mother tongue and homeland means in a globalized age is fundamentally raised. When looking at these three writers, the mother tongue is no longer “the house of being” in the Heideggerian sense, but an instrument with which one expresses one’s (mother) linguistic thoughts. In my study I tried to explain aspects of writing in a foreign language using the example of the authors mentioned above and to look at writing in terms of “a not only German literature” in the Schami case and the thesis “from mother tongue to language mother” by Tawada. The approach of Schami and Tawada, a culture without thresholds, can also be named with the term hyperculture, as Han Byung Chul describes it. Writing in a foreign language can always create a new perspective and mutual strangeness. Is it only possible to express your feelings authentically in your mother tongue and not in a foreign language? Japanese Tawada notes, however, that there were no words in her mother tongue that corresponded to her feelings. Syrian Rafik Schami has found a new home in the German language. South Korean essayist and philosopher Han Byung Chul writes only in German and for him, the mother tongue literally means a language that is spoken with the mother. “Language is taken away from language today”, he says, examining the problem of language and silence in the question of thought in detail. Through their writing methods, we examine what their mother tongue or language is and what they mean in the globalized era, the relationship between hometown and language, and who I am.