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Gilles Deleuze defines “minor literature” as a literary production created by a minority group within a dominant language, aiming to subvert its established norms and offer political potential. Long before the current immigration debate, minorities have been part of the German-speaking world as contributors to various forms of culture as well as cultural objects themselves. In this course we will engage with current arguments about identity and value systems in German, European and global societies. We will investigate how “minority” and “minor culture” have been defined in the past in comparison to “major culture,” and how are they defined today, by focusing on the literary productions of minorities and the oppressed whose very subject positions present a challenge to the universalist claims of the post-Enlightenment West.