Eine ewig offene, schwelende Wunde. Lenz und das Ungesagte in Albert Ostermaiers Roman Lenz im Libanon (2015)

A Constantly Open, Smouldering Wound: Lenz and the Unspoken in Albert Ostermaier’s Novel Lenz im Libanon (2015) In his lifetime as well as in the centuries that followed, the German writer Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751-1792) was often interpreted in terms of the unspoken. Particularly in times of crisis and social change connected with German history, different authors have revisited Lenz and his works to make unspoken wounds and traumas visible and tangible. This article begins by outlining the relevance of the theme of the unspoken among different writers who have worked on Lenz over the past two centuries, such as Georg Büchner, Peter Schneider, Christoph Hein and Heiner Müller. The main part of this article focuses on the recent novel Lenz in Libanon (2015) by Albert Ostermaier and illustrates how, even in the present age and against the background of the recent Lebanon wars, the unspoken remains a major topic in an on-going literary discourse about Lenz.