Horst Wolfram Geißler (1893–1983)

This study analyses the work of Horst Wolfram Geißler and his poetics in the context of the post-1945 period. Its hermeneutical reconstruction focuses on questions relating to ontological reflections on freedom and destiny with regard to developmental challenges during the life cycle of individuals. Its central question relates to understanding the role of cheerfulness and merriment in confrontation with existential tasks of meaningfulness. The study’s autobiographical dimensions facilitate certain relevant intertextual mechanisms of hermeneutics. Understanding the compensatory role of the poetics of cheerfulness and merriment in relation to the melancholy and negativity of social reality’s critical theory is also one of its key points.