Hermann Bausinger never published his first book.

The title read: "Living Storytelling.

Studies on the life of folk tales based on investigations in north-eastern Württemberg".

It is Bausinger’s dissertation from 1952. The opening sentence already outlines the program with which the future professor at the Ludwig-Uhland Institute for Folklore and Empirical Cultural Studies in Tübingen was to fundamentally change narrative research: “The aim of the work is: storytelling , as is customary among the people today, to examine its interpretation, its objects, its manifestations, its conditions and driving forces.”

This was directed against the narrow focus of (folk) narrative research on sagas, myths, fairy tales and farces as traditional forms of “folk poetry”.

Bausinger, on the other hand, was also interested in current narratives that crossed genre boundaries - for which he invented the beautiful term "genus twilight".

Brought to the point with a light hand

In passing, he expanded the subject of his research to include “everyday storytelling”, embedded in the flow of conversation, which he traced in comics and magazines, among other things.

It is not characterized by aesthetic quality, but by its social function in people's lives.

His social science approach, which also explored the supposed depths of popular literature and colloquialism, was provocative at the time.

Bausinger was portrayed as a "Tarzan professor," and he gave up his license to teach German in protest after the ministry showed little sympathy for his accepting a thesis on the image of women in the magazines Quick and Stern .

Bausinger has always remained true to his broad narrative concept.

He dedicated his last book, completed a few days before his death last November, to him, which is now published under the title “Vom Narration.

Poetry of everyday life” was published: “The term narrative”, it says, “must not be narrowed down by the principles of content exclusion, it describes a form of communication that is open to all sides.

The attraction of storytelling and storytelling lies not least in the fact that with its help the whole diversity of life and the world is revealed.” For Bausinger, storytelling is “a central form of expression of human culture”.

Culture in the sense of Bausinger's cultural studies is not limited to the ridge of the fine arts.

It includes everything that helps people to order their lives and organize their coexistence.

Consequently, Bausinger defines narratives as a social practice, as “communication of the highest importance.

The participation of the listeners strengthens the connection, even when the utterance is poor in information or even tautological.”