Von Inseln im Strom der Zeit und den Zeiten der Inseln

From the beginning of traditional textual narration, the conception of the island has been linked to the potential for spatio-temporal otherness, as it inherently offers the possibility for differentiation and deviation. This work on the history of ideas focuses on the first half of the 20th century, a period in which this utopian potential was exposed to various threats and the otherworldliness of the island became the literary island's own time. Confronted with the densification of space and the synchronisation of time in the course of social modernity and the anti-insular programme of an exaggerated relation and synchronisation of the island in the National Socialist ‘land policy of the future’, the texts examined here must find new ways of processing the tensions of the idea of the island with literary means in such a way that the utopia of a new creation of the world through the island can be preserved.