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Achberger presents at conferences in Germany, U.S.

By David Gonnerman '90
January 26, 2007

Last fall St. Olaf Professor of German Karen R. Achberger was invited to participate in an international symposium in Freiburg, Germany, that commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Nobel Prize in Literature being awarded to the German-Jewish poet Nelly Sachs. (Sachs was born in Berlin 1891 and escaped to Sweden in 1940, where she died in 1970). Achberger delivered a 40-minute paper in German on music and suffering in Sachs' poetry: "'Ein Schrei [?] unter den Singenden': Musik und Leiderfahrung in der Lyrik von Nelly Sachs."

Also in the fall, Achberger participated in the annual Women in German conference in Utah, and the annual German Studies Association (GSA) conference held in Pittsburgh. In her GSA paper on "The 'luminous sphere' of Stefan George's 'Book of the Hanging Gardens,'" she connected the invented language of George's cycle of 15 poems (completed in 1895) to the highly artificial musical language of Schonberg's Opus 15 setting of George's text (completed in 1910). Achberger showed how the poet's strange, new language was instrumental in helping Schonberg break through to a new, atonal writing technique.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.