DAS HANDWERK DES ERZÄHLENS. POETOLOGISCHE ENTWÜRFE IN UWE TIMMS <i>ALLE MEINE GEISTER</i>

Abstract Uwe Timm's autobiographical story Alle meine Geister , published in 2023, describes how Timm became an author. The story unfolds through explicit and implicit reflections on the nature and art of oral and written storytelling, against the backdrop of the author's apprenticeship and self‐employment as a furrier in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Timm develops central points of his poetics by reference to two important texts in German‐language cultural and literary history. The first is Walter Benjamin's essay ‘Der Erzähler’ (1936), in which Benjamin deals with oral narration in everyday life from the perspective of narrative theory and locates the origin of narration in the artisanal environment. In his memoirs, Timm repeatedly emphasises the interconnections between craftsmanship and storytelling by depicting the craft workshop as a social place of storytelling and the craftsperson as an artist. Second, Timm refers implicitly to E. T. A. Hoffmann's story ‘Des Vetters Eckfenster’ (1822), in which Hoffmann connects narrative productivity and visual perception. In this context, Timm engages with the topos of the window view, which stimulates the viewer's imagination, and with the genesis of narrative from a remembered, imagined or actual image.