Research project Paths, boundaries, nodes: Urban and literary forms in German-language narratives of homelessness

Homelessness is currently one of the most urgent humanitarian issues in European cities. Only in Germany at least 531.000 people currently lack a stable home of their own according to a recent report from the German government (2024). Despite the prevalence of homelessness, literary narratives that represent the lack of a home are remarkably understudied, especially relating to literature in German. My project therefore fills a research gap in literary studies as well as urban studies.

Statistically, the lack of a roof over one’s head (Ger. Obdachlosigkeit) or the lack of a home of one's own (Ger. Wohnungslosigkeit) is an urban phenomenon, and therefore also a recurring feature of urban literature. Urban planning and design – as well as an individual's age, sex, health and other factors of potential vulnerability – create fundamental differences in how people without a home are able to experience and live in a city, for example when it comes to where they can or cannot sleep, sit or store their belongings. Through literature's ability to give direct insight into the subjective and existential dimension of homelessness, my project will contribute to a more accurate cultural understanding of what it means to lack a home of one's own in Europe today.

Drawing on Caroline Levine's formalist method of analysis, I will examine the intersection of urban and literary forms in a selection of literary texts in German from the 21st century where homelessness is a significant theme and/or where a person without a home is a significant character. Narratives of homelessness occur in classical literary genres such as novels and short stories, for example in Albrecht Selge's novel Fliegen (2019) in which the elderly female protagonist copes with her homelessness by constantly travelling on trains from city to city and collecting deposit bottles at the stations. Homelessness also appears in for example crime novels and other works of genre fiction, children's books, digital literature formats as well as comics and graphic novels. A much-debated example from the Berlin street magazine Strassenfeger is the superhero comic strip "Superpenner" (Eng. "Supertramp", my transl.) which was created as a charity by a marketing agency in 2014. In my project, I will focus especially on invisible and unexpected aspects of homelessness such as those in the examples above in order to shed new and thought-provoking light on homeless lives.

Three concepts from urban planning and urban sociology will serve as analytical tools for the study: the path (Ger. Weg, Swe. stråk), the boundary (Ger. Rand, Swe. gräns) and the node (Ger. Knotenpunkt, Swe. nod). These concepts are applicable and relevant for urban as well as literary forms and will make some of the movements, obstacles and social spaces visible which shape the everyday practices of homelessness in cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Vienna and Zürich. The results of the study will contribute to interdisciplinary method development and create potential for dialogue between several areas of research in the humanities and social sciences about the prevalent and urgent humanitarian issue that homelessness is today.