Das Genre ‚Studentenroman‘ und die Rezeption von Karl Hans Strobls Werk

In the first half of the 20th century, the student novels by the Czech German-speaking writer Karl Hans Strobl became the subject of scholarly debates with regard to their genre classification. This paper analyzes the paratexts and the reception (critiques, literary reviews etc.) of Strobl’s novels at specific points of time, and reconstructs how Strobl’s novels were communicated and interpreted, and how these communication strategies and interpretations changed over time. This paper focuses on Strobl’s first bestseller, the autobiographical novel Die Vaclavbude (1902), the novel Das Wirtshaus Zum König Przemysl (1913), and the novel Die Flamänder von Prag (1932), which was the second edition of the novel Der Schipkapaß (1908). While most interpretations at the beginning of the century tended to categorize these books as “student novels” (Studentenroman) and “Prague novels,” the same works were recategorized in the 1930’s as novels about conflicts or the ethnic frontier (Kampfroman or Grenzlandroman).