The Representation of the Refugee Crisis since 2015 in German Young Adult Literature: A Study in Manfred Theisen’s novel Checkpoint Europe

This article deals with the topic of flight and migration as well as the metaphorical conceptualizations of the “refugee crisis” from 2015 onwards in German youth literature.
The central question of the introductory part of this work is the significance of the topic of the “refugee crisis” from 2015 onwards in youth literature. The focus of this study is the novel Checkpoint Europa, which represents an empirical model of a multicultural approach. Within this framework, the selected text takes into account the most important internal and external elements of the text and, in addition, sheds light on and analyses its intercultural specifications.
I chose Manfred Theisen’s novel Checkpoint Europe because the novel depicts the story of refugees fleeing from the Syrian civil war. With reference to the “refugee crisis”, Checkpoint Europe presents a living example of the situation in Germany after the strong immigration of refugees since 2015. In this novel, Theisen, who is a good connoisseur of the Middle East and North Africa, has taken up the fates of numerous refugees and woven them into characters.
A further question of this work concerns the metaphorical conceptualizations of the “refugee crisis” in the novel Checkpoint Europe. The metaphors used by Manfred Theisen are divided into five metaphorical concepts which refer to the metaphorical theory of Lakoff and Johnson.