Abstract:
Analyses Hans Grimm's novel Dina using semantic and semiotic methods. The experience of the landscape of the colony Deutsch-S�dwestafrika of the main characters in the novella is related to their personal feelings and behaviour. The Bushman woman who is housekeeper turns out to be a home-maker, while the white wife of the desert policeman is a cold, sterile remnant of petty bourgeois life in Germany. The "nature" of the Namib desert is personified in Dina, the Khoi San woman, in its female qualities, and in the wild horse that cripples the white man physically, long after he is disabled psychologically by the strong grip of his so-called civilisation. The stallion breaks the man, the symbol of horse-rider as man in control of his animal urges is inverted, and the white man is expelled from his refuge, the desert, by this very crippling. The reason for this inherent disability is not an individual weakness, but a general German disorder - the incapability to "be free and serve the Reich", for the dependence of the individual man is too strong to let him be self-sufficient when physically alone.
