The present study is a comparative analysis of the works of the German expatriate writer W.G. Sebald and the East-German author Jenny Erpenbeck, in which the foundations of belonging in modernity is placed under scrutiny: What does it mean to be at home? How do the authors imagine homelessness?
The research probes the history and ideology of Heimat to examine how the possibilities of being at home change throughout the 20th century, affected by the years of Nazism, the Shoah, the division of Germany and the fall of the Berlin wall. At the center of the study stands the figure of the homeless subject, whose presence presents a challenge, both political and moral, to the contemporary understanding of belonging.
Analyzing stories moving from the turn of the 20th century to Berlin in the 2010s, and the authors’ narrative modes, the study finds that whereas for Sebald home is a corrupted figure irretrievably lost, for Erpenbeck the loss of an old home carries within itself the possibility of creating new forms of belonging. The study argues for the literary work’s importance in making visible other, open forms of belonging – based not on similarity, but on the recognition and acceptance of difference.
Even Teistung successfully defended his thesis on 20 March 2026.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: Postmemory and the ethics of narration in contemporary German literature.
Evaluation committee
- Professor Helen Finch, University of Leeds (first opponent)
- Professor Torgeir Skorgen, University of Bergen (second opponent)
- Professor Anne Birgitte Rønning, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
Supervisors
- Professor Johan Schimanski, University of Oslo
- Professor Christian Janss, University of Oslo
- Professor Mary Cosgrove, Trinity College Dublin