The research project, part of a broader study on the poetics of diplomacy, deals with practices and concepts of translation in diplomacy and German literature from the early modern period to Romanticism. Since its widespread establishment in the seventeenth century, diplomacy has been understood as a crucial form of political mediation, negotiation, and representation that not merely relies on intercultural translation, but functions as its precondition. As a practice that operates through language and script, it is moreover connected to questions of language policy in terms of the function of multilingualism,the concept of a lingua franca, and translation as a means of understanding. By focusing on the figure of the “writer-diplomat,” a potent functional union, the project further asks how literature—as cultural and aesthetic practice—translates, reflects, and comments on new figures of political representation, forms of communication and interaction, and political-juridical scenarios of diplomacy.

Mareike Schildmann studied German Literature and Philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin. She wrote her dissertation about Robert Walser and the modern knowledge of childhood. 2015–2018 she worked and tought as a research fellow at the University of Zurich; 2018–2019 she was a postdoc at the ZfL Berlin. Her research interests include: Kowledge and literature, cultural childhood studies and literary genres and forms.