What Makes Caroline Wahl So Popular
Three novels, three bestsellers, a film adaptation, and an intense public debate: Caroline Wahl is one of the most successful contemporary German-language authors. Under the title “Problematized Popularity: Caroline Wahl’s Literature,” literary scholars from all over Germany gathered at the University of Siegen for two days to discuss her novels, her public presence, and the significance of popularity in contemporary literature.
With her novels “22 Bahnen,” “Windstärke 17,” and “Die Assistentin,” Caroline Wahl has reached a wide audience within just a few years. Her books are being adapted for film, used in school settings, incorporated into teaching materials, and featured in podcasts, television programs, and book tours. At the same time, the author and her work are the subject of controversy: While many readers appreciate the accessibility of her texts, literary columns and debates focus on her narrative styles, her literary status, and the relationship between entertainment and contemporary literature. Wahl’s great popularity proves to be a problem because disparaging her works belittles hundreds of thousands of readers, yet characterizing her novels as opportunistic adaptations to the market is also denounced. The forms and techniques of the novels play hardly any role in this debate and were therefore made the focus of the workshop, which was organized by Dr. Matthias Schaffrick and Prof. Dr. Niels Werber. “Our motivation for organizing this conference was the author’s extraordinary success on the bestseller lists. But above all, as we read the novels, we realized that this is a form of literature that is surprisingly different from what is usually found on the bestseller lists today.”
The nine presentations explored various facets of the literary and public phenomenon that is Caroline Wahl. Topics included the role of social media and public self-presentation, the connection between literary success and the author’s public persona, and the question of which methods can be used to conduct scholarly research on bestselling literature.
The focus was not on contrasting popularity with literary quality. Rather, the discussion centered on the specific aesthetic techniques of the texts: What narrative styles, themes, and character constellations characterize Caroline Wahl’s novels? What role do emotions such as grief, anger, joy, or empowerment play in the texts and their reception? And how does the way we engage with literature change when reach, sales figures, and public visibility increasingly become part of literary debates? “The novels are always searching for the right form for the story being told. In doing so, the texts unfold a widely ramified system of pop-cultural and literary references, ranging from hip-hop to Rilke,” explains Matthias Schaffrick.
The small, discussion-oriented, and text-savvy workshop garnered significant media attention outside the university setting. The popular name promptly thrust the research on questions of popularity into the spotlight itself. Matthias Schaffrick: “Caroline Wahl shared our conference announcement on her Instagram Story and also briefly commented on individual presentation titles there. We’re pleased that the conference garnered attention in this way. But above all, we’re pleased with the intense discussions and the results of the conference.” A publication on the topic is in the works.
