Deutschsprachige Reiseberichte über Korea um 1900

englischThe period around 1900 marks the threshold from “not knowing” to “knowing” about Korea. During this time the first German-language travelogue appeared. The study is based on four selected travelogues written between 1880 and 1915 and analyzes the representational strategies of the text and pictures on their “knowledge of Korea”. The material has hardly been explored to date. It is examined against the background of the complex relationship between travel literature and the generation and transfer of knowledge about the “other culture”, as well as the cultural practices and power structures associated with it. The perspective of the South Korean Germanist on the writings of “the others”, the German-speaking Europeans, about her “own” heritage, the Korean Culture, is extraordinarily revealing.