Yazma Miras / Written Heritage: The Image of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars as a Transferred Stereotype in German Literature

Abstract

If we look at the subject of Islam and Eastern Europe in the context of the literatures of our countries, we encounter two paradoxes. On the one hand, there are two long-distance literatures that conveyed via translation narratives about Islam of the East into German literature. This is the Russian and Tatar literature. On the other hand, there are the near-distance literatures, e.g. the Polish and Lithuanian literature, as well as in earlier times the German literature of the Baltics and Silesia. The following paradox seems worth investigating in this literary paradigm: while Tatar literature would have been able to mirror a real picture of Tatar Islam, German literature has instead used almost exclusively narratives from Russian literature, often with a corresponding pejorative connotation. On the other hand, texts dealing with autochthonous Islam in Poland- Lithuania are very rarely translated into the German language. Nevertheless, there is literature in German in this context. However, it is not written by Polish-Lithuanian Tatar, but written by German authors about them. In this article, we will concentrate on the following topics: the culture translations in texts from long-distance literatures of the Russians, shortdistance literature translations from Polish and Lithuanian literature into German and the literatures originally written in German, e.g. Silesia, East Prussia and in today’s Germany concerning Tatars of Poland-Lithuania. The text highlights these phenomena as an overview and is not complete and comprehensive, but representative enough to indicate what the subject of transferred Tatar stereotypes is all about.