With steaming body

Sports and the athletic body repeatedly emerge as motifs in literary texts. Often, these motifs are more than just decorative and fashionable embellishments. In texts such as Ludwig Hohl's "Bergfahrt," Annemarie Schwarzenbach's "Flucht nach oben," Walther Kauers' "Abseitsfalle," and Lorenz Lotmar's "Bisst," the athletic body manifests in various ways as a focal point of self-perception and external determination, social roles, and gender images; as a reservoir of capital, a means of self-affirmation, as a mere machine, part of the class struggle, or as an element of a counter-discourse that questions the prevailing order. The exemplary analyses of these four texts from German-speaking Switzerland reveal not only insights into the creation of literary texts through the motif of the athletic body but also special aspects.