Cultural Studies - a new perspective for German Studies in Africa?

The paper investigates the perspectives of cultural studies for researching and teaching in the field of German within an African context. Taking the discussion about the relationship between Eastern and Western Germany today as an example, a specific concept of Cultural Studies is developed, which takes up well established approaches of the humanities such as interpretative anthropology, symbolic interactionism, and discourse analysis, and which sees, culture. as a resource for creating shared meaning in discourse. Finally the role of literature within German Cultural Studies is discussed.