[Summary Tradition and innovation. Representatives of medical concepts in Uwe Tellkamp's novel The Tower].
Uwe Tellkamp's novel Der Turm. Geschichte aus einem versunkenen Land (The Tower. A Story From a Lost Land) tells the story of a physician's family in Dresden during the last seven years of the GDR's existence. Crucial in this narration of this family, the Hoffmanns, are the medical aspects. I'm particularly interested in how various concepts of clinical diagnostics and therapies are introduced and linked to specific characters, respectively. While the physicians of the Hoffmann family follow a traditional and rather conservative notion of their profession and use orthodox medical methods, the novel presents a number of figures that are linked to alternative complementary healing methods. In the end, those characters searching for alternative ways of practicing medicine, in contrast to the traditional doctors, are also actively involved in the political uproar that led to the fall of the wall in 1989. Hence the text presents analogies that capture both the medical and the political spheres.
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Institut für Geschichte der Medizin. katrin.max@uni-wuerzburg.de
Katrin
K
Max
D000529:Complementary Therapies / Q000266:history*; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D005859:Germany, East; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D010819:Physician's Role / Q000266:history*; D012950:Socialism / Q000266:history*