Much has been written about the reception of Miguel de Cervantes in the age of Goethe, but aside from the pre-war figure of Thomas Mann (1) there has been little comment on his influence on the literature written in German-speaking countries in the twentieth century, especially after World War II. In 1969, Lienhard Bergel, in his thorough study "Cervantes in Germany," stated: "with Heine and Immermann ends the period in which Cervantes was an active ingredient in German life" (343); afterwards, Cervantes became "exclusively the object of philological specialists" (344). This statement is no longer valid. In this article, I will present an overview of Cervantes' reception in the literature written in the post-war period. After World War II, there have been five important adaptations of Cervantes' texts, which use and transform his protagonists within very different historical contexts and with very different purposes. In West Germany, there are Paul Schalluck's novel Don Quixote in Cologne (Don Quichotte in Koln, 1967) and Margarete Hannsmann's collage Don Quixote's Driver (Chauffeur bei Don Quijote, 1977), published under the pseudonym Sancho Pansa. In Austria, Zsuzsanna Gahse published the book-length story Berganza (1984). In Switzerland, Maja Beutler published The Picture of Dona Quixote (Das Bildnis der Dona Quichotte, 1989), and in East Germany Fritz Rudolf Fries published The Dogs from Mexico City (Die Hunde von Mexico Stadt, 1997). Another East German text that is very important for our study is Volker Braun's The Opportunist (Der Wendehals, 1995). It is not an adaptation of one of Cervantes' texts, but it plays with references to his work. All intertextual strategies in the texts mentioned above are directed either to Don Quijote de la Mancha or "El coloquio de los perros"--the same works that German Romantics favored. (2)
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