Metaphors and symbolism provide visual images to reinforce significant ideas and illustrate complex themes by evoking associations that are not self-evident in mere "literal" description. They refine and articulate nuances that become evident in the hermeneutic of context. The thesis identifies, maps, and categorizes the uses of literal metaphors, contextual metaphors, personification, simile, substitution-metaphors, and symbols in Richard David Precht's Die Kosmonauten and André Kubiczek's Junge Talente, two novels that thematize the colonization and loss of cultural identity in the former East Germany. This analysis reveals a broad correlation in metaphorical and symbolic intertextual discourse in texts originating in post-reunification Germany and specifically centering on Berlin. (Dissertation Abstracts)