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Ewald Mengel another job offer by Professor Jochum from the ture, so that I had to cover most of the well-known
University of Bamberg in Bavaria, and he offered
areas, and this also is important for my later
me this position of Akademischer Rat, which is career. I spread out from the 18th century into the
equal to an assistant professorship at the university, 20th century, as far as my publishing was concer-
Profesor Mengel z vídeňské univerzity je and the chance to write a post-doctoral (habilitati- ned. And I did the teaching from the Middle Ages
on) thesis. I was already a doctor at that time
to our present, mostly in English literature but
přednášejícím na Ústavu moderních jazyků because I had finished my doctor’s degree with also I dabbled a bit in American literature. I had
a literatur a rozhovor s ním realizoval přímo ředitel professor Goetsch at Freiburg University. So I took of course studied American literature at the
tohoto ústavu Roman Trušník. Profesor Mengel se the risk and went to Bamberg. Well, it was a risk university and I also published a few things on
indeed, as it turned out, because afterwards it was
American literature as well.
zaměřuje na anglickou a americkou literaturu very difficult to find a position as full professor at a
a kulturu od počátků po současnost. Mezi zvláštní German university. There were not enough vacan- My recent research concerns post-colonial litera-
cies. Luckily, I got a Heisenberg grant in English
ture in English, the post-colonial novel, to be
oblasti jeho výzkumu patří anglický román, anglický studies in 1986 which kept me and my family above more precise, South African literature, Anglo-Af-
historický román, současný jihoafrický román, water. There were two Heisenberg grants in Eng- rican literature and culture, that is, also literatu-
lish studies in Germany at the time. One was occu-
re in other English speaking African countries,
britské drama 20. století, teorie překladu. pied by a linguist, accidentally my best friend, such as Nigeria, Botswana, Rhodesia, Kenya and,
Edgar Schneider, also from Bamberg University, in recent years, I have also specialized a lot on
and the other one belonged to me for four years, trauma literature and here especially on the
For those who are not literary scholars, could very important stage, I would say, for my whole and this gave me the freedom to go to America with trauma novel. In this field, I have edited and
you please outline your career before joining development. my whole family. I had two little children at that published two books. One is a collection of in-
the Department of Modern time, 4 and 7 years old, and we spent a year in terviews on Trauma, Memory and Narrative in
Languages and Literatures? Later on, I started to study English and German at Columbia, South Carolina, at an American universi- South Africa which I did together with two
the University of Giessen, I spent a year abroad at ty, partly working for the Comparative Literature former PhD students, and the other is a collection
I think one of the decisive starting points was Newcastle University (England), and when I came Department teaching a course in German/English of essays by scholars from Europe, South Africa
when my mother sent me grazing the cow, our back I changed university as was usual at that time drama translation. Afterwards, I accepted a C3 but also America on Trauma, Memory and
cow, we had two in the stables. Well, I had the cow and went to Freiburg in Breisgau where I continued professorship at the University of Bayreuth where I Narrative: Essays which I edited together with
on a long leash in my left hand and Ernest Hemin- my studies. I wanted to become a teacher at stayed from October 1990 until I got offered a Chair Michela Borzaga. I have been interested very
gway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls in my right hand. grammar school but then I got the offer of becoming in English and American Language and Literature much in this relationship between the traumati-
And so, I and the cow (her name was Susi) had a an assistant at Freiburg with Professor Goetsch, one at the University of Vienna in October 2003. I zed nation on the one hand, which is the case of
lovely afternoon, the cow had lovely clover, you of my teachers, whom I preferred actually because finished my teaching at the University of Vienna in South Africa after the fall of apartheid in 1994,
know, and I had lovely Hemingway and that was he was very social-minded, left wing, you could say, September 2015 when I retired. And I got this and how this trauma could be fictionalized, if you
certainly a good experience. My mother wanted to and that was important at that time because I grew position here in Zlin by chance, I would say. I was like, could be put into a novel and how it changes
take the novel from me because she said: “That is up with the student rebellion of 1968 and the years told that they were looking for somebody in English the structure of the novel accordingly because
awful stuff, you should not read that!” I still following, and we were very critical of the es- studies and, well, I offered myself and I have been talking about trauma is not an easy thing. People
wonder if she knew about Maria in the sleeping tablishment and also of the University, of eve- here for four years by now. So that is it. are supposed to have become speechless, being
bag, but then, she never read novels, we were a rything that was taught to us. Goetsch was a very traumatized and how can a speechless person
non-reading household, and there were no books nice and good teacher in this way as well because he What is your research area? speak or be made to speak in a novel. That is
to be found. But I insisted on reading them and I always had this social attitude towards things, basically the structural problem.
sort of got interested in American literature and which became important for me. Unfortunately, the Basically, I became an “all-rounder” in the best
British literature and started spending my pocket position he wanted to offer me got lost and I was to sense of the word because I was teaching at Taking another step, I have been doing research on
money, for novels, but also for drama, and this is become a teacher at a grammar school in Lörrach. I smaller universities where there were not so many regionalism and the novel in South Africa, that is
how I sort of got interested in literature. It is a never started teaching, though, because I got professors, teaching English and American litera- the relationship between regionalism and the
