When Goethe met Vuk...: Views on selected pages of Serbian-German relations
Serbian-German relations were viewed within a specific social and cultural-historical development of both nations, and were also interpreted from the standpoint of cognitive and semiotic theory of culture. The first part of the paper deals with the dominant trends and spiritual tendencies in German culture, from the transformation of the humanist interest in 'exotics' into Herderian romantic understanding of nation and into Grimm's equalization of the poetic and the folk quality, thanks to which in the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as during the Serbian liberation wars against the Turks, the Serbian way of life gained the position of an ideal cultural model. Therefore, special attention is dedicated to Vuk's relations with the most important German minds of the so-called golden age. The paper particularly underlines the contribution of Talfj, who adjusted her translations of Serbian poetry to German sensibility, as well as to the entire contemporary European taste. The second part of the paper follows the changes in the Serbian-German relations from the second half of the nineteenth century till our days, conditioned by unhappy historical-political occurrences. Illustrated both from the German and Serbian standpoint with works, experiences, thoughts and feelings of statesmen and warriors scientists and writers, as well as ordinary people - these relations are presented as ambivalent, but never broken.