RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Violence, Ritual, and Community: On Sacrifice in Keller’s Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe and Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter JF Monatshefte FD University of Wisconsin Press SP 361 OP 381 DO 10.1353/mon.0.0131 VO 101 IS 3 A1 Hillard, Derek YR 2009 UL http://mon.uwpress.org/content/101/3/361.abstract AB This study explores Keller‘s Romeo und Julia and Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter to show the persistence of myth in German realism. Although the ciphers for myth differ significantly in the two novellas, they have a common source—the discourse of sacrifice. In both texts, sacrifice delimits violence, generates ritual in the social sphere, and demonstrates how community is engendered. The key difference is that in Romeo und Julia the sacrificial concern is with the production of an enigmatic space that functions aesthetically, as it relates to play and childhood. In the case of Der Schimmelreiter, by contrast, the concern is with instrumentalizing the sacrificial object with the effect that it becomes society’s mythical founder and shield. The texts share motifs of entombment, crypts, specters, secrets, and uncanny spaces, motifs that are at once the repression and disclosure of myth. (DH)