''Böhmische Dörfer'' is a digital poem by

Alexandra Saemmer Alexandra Saemmer is a French professor known for Social semiotics, social semiotic research focusing on electronic literature and digital media and for her literary works, in particular digital poetry and narratives created for social media. Ac ...

about the forced evacuation of the

Sudeten Germans German Bohemians ( ; ), later known as Sudeten Germans ( ; ), were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of Czechoslovakia. Before 1945, over three million German Bohemians constitute ...

during the winter of 1945, also known as the

Brno death march The Brno death marchRozumět dějinám, Zdeněk Beneš, p. 208 () began late on the night of 30 May 1945 when the ethnic German minority in Brno ( ) was forcibly deported to nearby Austria following the capture of the city by the Allies during Wo ...

Topic of the poem

The title "Böhmische Dörfer" means Bohemian Villages. For Germans ''Bohemian Village'' is also the

idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a Literal and figurative language, figurative or non-literal meaning (linguistic), meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic speech, formulaic ...

to describe something they don't understand. Saemmer's mother was one year old in 1945, and a survivor of the march.

Interactivity and form

"Böhmische Dörfer" is written in the online presentation tool

Prezi Prezi is a Hungarian video and visual communications software company founded in 2009 in Hungary, with offices in San Francisco, Budapest and Riga as of 2020. According to Prezi, in 2021, the software company has more than 100 million users worl ...

. Individual words and phrases are placed on a large canvas that the reader moves through by interacting with the Press presentation online. It is available in German, French and English versions. The way the reader is forced to constantly move through the text of the poem parallels the forced march of the evacuees that "Böhmische Dörfer" describes. The spatial organisation of the digital poem thus mirrors the geographic displacement. A video in the background of the Prezi presentation shows a march in winter with sounds reminiscent of war.

Reception

The poem has been discussed by a number of scholars, and is part of the Electronic Literature Collection volume 3 from the

Electronic Literature Organization The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of a ...

. It has been taught at universities as an example of

electronic literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or Generative literature, algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature ar ...

External links

* Böhmische Dörfer in the NEXT archive. * In the Wiki of the "Netzliteratur authentisch archivieren und verfügbar machen" project * In ELMCIP * In the Electronic Literature Directory.

References

{{authority control, qid=Q122621027 2010s electronic literature works History of Brno Ethnic cleansing of Germans French electronic literature works World War II poems German poems French poems Digital poems German electronic literature works