Transformation durch Adaption. Eine Vergleichsstudie am Beispiel des Romans Berlin Alexanderplatz von Alfred Döblin (1929) und der Literaturverfilmung Berlin Alexanderplatz von Burhan Qurbani (2020)

Burhan Qurbani's free adaptation of Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz was released in 2020 and uses it as a backdrop for the narrative of a refugee story in the present day. This thesis takes this circumstance as an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between the two works and to relate them to each other. Based on theoretical groundwork that revolves around the phenomenon of literary adaptation and highlights the obstacles and possibilities of comparison, the adaptation process is understood as a concrete operation by the filmmaker, who systematically establishes intermedia references to the original novel in order to present it as a transformation of it.
In a comparative analysis, this basic framework is used to identify the references and forms of reference in the categories of aesthetic form, settings, characters and plot in order to develop an attempt to characterise the cultural metatext that emerges from the synopsis of the works, on the basis of which the thesis was developed that the intersections of both works are mythologised, whereas blurring effects arise with differently manifested elements.