Ocean or 'holy water' - the dwindling basic building block of life is the topic of the schliff series Elementarwelten. Water knows how to talk' (Ingeborg Bachmann): Especially in literature, the liquid element possesses a symbolic power as idiosyncratic as the tides and as mutable as its aggregate states. As a vital principle, water permeates all being. It guarantees life and diversity in nature and regulates the anthropogenic economy of body and mind. At the same time, the knowledge of the necessity of water for human life knows its technical-cultural flip side in dealing with the element itself: Dams are built to defy the violence of the liquid, and ships are built to master it. Sometimes fascinating, sometimes threatening, water displays an ambivalence that can be traced through literary history since antiquity and used to explore the depths and shallows of cultures and their forms of domination. schliff N°14 brings together literary and literary/cultural studies articles as well as visual art works on the topic of 'water'.