Trilingualität in der Ungarndeutschen Kinderliteratur am Beispiel von Christina Arnolds Texten
Trilingualism in Hungarian-German Children’s Literature Using the Example of Christina Arnold’s Texts

Summary/Abstract: The present study investigates the historical development of German-language children’s literature in Hungary, with particular emphasis on the past three decades during which the works by German authors for children were republished in Hungary. In addition, the article examines the current state of this literary field through the analysis of selected texts. This situation is marked by a significant loss of language competence among Hungarian-German families. While the traditional mother tongues of this community were the respective local dialects, these have largely receded from everyday family life. Consequently, children’s literature produced by Hungarian-German authors is now primarily encountered in educational settings. Central to this study is the analysis of poems and short stories by Christina Arnold, an author residing in southern Hungary, who composes her works partly in dialect and partly in Standard German. This bilingual practice provides valuable insight into her life experience of multilingualism. The analysis considers not only text-internal features but also, and more importantly, text-external factors at the micro level. The texts were systematically examined using the ATLAS.ti software. In addition to recurrent multilingual and contact-induced phenomena, cultural references were identified and analyzed. The findings indicate that Hungarian-German literature functions as a cultural bridge between three traditions, which – despite the ongoing language erosion – remains deeply embedded in the everyday life of the community.

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