German Culture And The Uncomfortable Past

Author : Helmut Schmitz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781351933827

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German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past by Helmut Schmitz Pdf

Beginning with the question of the role of the past in the shaping of a contemporary identity, this volumes spans three generations of German and Austrian writers and explores changes and shifts in the aesthetics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The purpose of the book is to assess contemporary German literary representations of National Socialism in a wider context of these current debates. The contributors address questions arising from a shift over the last decade, triggered by a generation change-questions of personal and national identity in Germany and Austria, and the aesthetics of memory. One of the central questions that emerges in relation to the Hitler youth generation is that of biography, as examined through Günter Grass' and Martin Walser's conflicting views on the subject of National Socialism. Other themes explored here are the conflict between the post-war generations and the contributions of that conflict to (West)-German mentality, and the growing historical distance and its influence on the aesthetics of representation.

Author : Helmut Schmitz
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351933834

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German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past by Helmut Schmitz Pdf

Beginning with the question of the role of the past in the shaping of a contemporary identity, this volumes spans three generations of German and Austrian writers and explores changes and shifts in the aesthetics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The purpose of the book is to assess contemporary German literary representations of National Socialism in a wider context of these current debates. The contributors address questions arising from a shift over the last decade, triggered by a generation change-questions of personal and national identity in Germany and Austria, and the aesthetics of memory. One of the central questions that emerges in relation to the Hitler youth generation is that of biography, as examined through Günter Grass' and Martin Walser's conflicting views on the subject of National Socialism. Other themes explored here are the conflict between the post-war generations and the contributions of that conflict to (West)-German mentality, and the growing historical distance and its influence on the aesthetics of representation.

Author : Ernest Belfort Bax
Publisher : Hardpress Publishing
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2012-08-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1290847460

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German Culture, Past and Present by Ernest Belfort Bax Pdf

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Author : Susan G. Figge,Jenifer K. Ward
Publisher : Camden House
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781571134448

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Reworking the German Past by Susan G. Figge,Jenifer K. Ward Pdf

Coming to terms with the past has been a preoccupation within German culture and German Studies since the Second World War. In addition, there has been a surge of interest in adaptation of literary works in recent years. Numerous volumes have theorized, chronicled, or analyzed adaptations from novel to film, asking how and why adaptations are undertaken and what happens when a text is adapted in a particular historical context. With its focus on adaptation of twentieth-century German texts not only from one medium to another but also from one cultural moment to another, the present collection resides at the intersection of these two areas of inquiry. The ten essays treat a variety of media. Each considers the way in which a particular adaptation alters a story - or history - for a subsequent audience, taking into account the changing context in which the retelling takes place and the evolution of cultural strategies for coming to terms with the past. The resulting case studies find in the retellings potentially corrective versions of the stories for changing times. The volume makes the case that adaptation studies are particularly well suited for tracing Germany's obsessive cultural engagement with its twentieth-century history. Contributors: Elizabeth Baer, Rachel Epp Buller, Maria Euchner, Richard C. Figge, Susan G. Figge, Mareike Hermann, Linda Hutcheon, Irene Lazda, Cary Nathenson, Thomas Sebastian, Sunka Simon, Jenifer K. Ward. Susan G. Figge is Professor of German Emeritus at the College of Wooster, Ohio, and Jenifer K. Ward is Associate Provost, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle.

Author : Stuart Taberner,Paul Cooke
Publisher : Camden House
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : History
ISBN : 1571133380

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German Culture, Politics, and Literature Into the Twenty-first Century by Stuart Taberner,Paul Cooke Pdf

This volume features sixteen thought-provoking essays by renowned international experts on German society, culture, and politics that, together, provide a comprehensive study of Germany's postunification process of "normalization." Essays ranging across a variety of disciplines including politics, foreign policy, economics, literature, architecture, and film examine how since 1990 the often contested concept of normalization has become crucial to Germany's self-understanding. Despite the apparent emergence of a "new" Germany, the essays demonstrate that normalization is still in question, and that perennial concerns -- notably the Nazi past and the legacy of the GDR -- remain central to political and cultural discourses and affect the country's efforts to deal with the new challenges of globalization and the instability and polarization it brings. This is the first major study in English or German of the impact of the normalization debate across the range of cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and historical discourses. Contributors: Stephen Brockmann, Jeremy Leaman, Sebastian Harnisch and Kerry Longhurst, Lothar Probst, Simon Ward, Anna Saunders, Annette Seidel Arpaci, Chris Homewood, Andrew Plowman, Helmut Schmitz, Karoline Von Oppen, William Collins, Donahue, Katharine Schödel, Stuart Taberner, Paul Cooke Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture, and Society and Paul Cooke is Senior Lecturer in German Studies, both at the University of Leeds.

Author : William John Niven,James Jordan
Publisher : Camden House
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : History
ISBN : 1571132236

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Politics and Culture in Twentieth-century Germany by William John Niven,James Jordan Pdf

This is the first book to examine this crucial relationship between politics and culture in Germany, not only during the Nazi and Cold War eras but in periods when the effects are less obvious.

Author : Heather Snell,Lorna Hutchison
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2013-11-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781134498635

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Children and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood by Heather Snell,Lorna Hutchison Pdf

The essays in this collection address the relationship between children and cultural memory in texts both for and about young people. The collection overall is concerned with how cultural memory is shaped, contested, forgotten, recovered, and (re)circulated, sometimes in opposition to dominant national narratives, and often for the benefit of young readers who are assumed not to possess any prior cultural memory. From the innovative development of school libraries in the 1920s to the role of utopianism in fixing cultural memory for teen readers, it provides a critical look into children and ideologies of childhood as they are represented in a broad spectrum of texts, including film, poetry, literature, and architecture from Canada, the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, India, and Spain. These cultural forms collaborate to shape ideas and values, in turn contributing to dominant discourses about national and global citizenship. The essays included in the collection imply that childhood is an oft-imagined idealist construction based in large part on participation, identity, and perception; childhood is invisible and tangible, exciting and intriguing, and at times elusive even as cultural and literary artifacts recreate it. Children and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood is a valuable resource for scholars of children’s literature and culture, readers interested in childhood and ideology, and those working in the fields of diaspora and postcolonial studies.

Author : Stuart Taberner,Karina Berger
Publisher : Camden House
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN : 9781571133939

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Germans as Victims in the Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic by Stuart Taberner,Karina Berger Pdf

An opening section on the 1950s - a decade of intense literary engagement with German victimhood before the focus shifted to German perpetration - provides context, drawing parallels but also noting differences between the immediate postwar period and today. The second section focuses on key texts written since the mid-1990s and examines shifts in perspectives on the Nazi past, on perpetration and victimhood, on "ordinary Germans," and on the balance between historical empathy and condemnation."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Stuart Taberner
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2004-11-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781441131775

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German Literature in the Age of Globalisation by Stuart Taberner Pdf

Literary fiction in Germany has long been a medium for contemplation of the 'nation' and questions of national identity. From the mid-1990s, in the wake of heated debates on the future direction of culture, politics and society in a more 'normal', united country, German literature has become increasingly diverse and seemingly disparate - at the one extreme, it represents the attempt to 'reinvent' German traditions, at the other, the unmistakable influence of Anglo-American forms and pop literature. A shared concern of almost all of recent German fiction, however, is the contemporary debate on globalisation, its nature, impact and consequences for 'local culture'. In its engagement with globalisation the literature of the Berlin Republic continues the long-established practice of reflection on what it is to be 'German'. This book investigates literary responses to the phenomenon of globalisation. The subject is approached from a wide range of thematic and theoretical perspectives in twelve chapters which, taken together, also provide an overview of German fiction from the mid-1990s to the present. The book serves both as an introduction to contemporary German literature for university students of German and as a resource for scholars interested in culture and society in the Berlin Republic.

Author : Kirstin Gwyer
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2014-09-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780191019913

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Encrypting the Past by Kirstin Gwyer Pdf

Encrypting the Past puts forward the interpretative category of the first-generation German-Jewish Holocaust novel and examines its representational strategies. With reference to works by H.G. Adler, Jenny Aloni, Elisabeth Augustin, Erich Fried, and Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and a concluding section on W.G. Sebald, it shows how Holocaust literature was being written decades before postwar authors such as Sebald were credited with having found new ways of reflecting the unspeakable. It demonstrates that, before the theoretical debate over the fundamental representability of the Holocaust was even fully under way, first-generation authors were already translating un-narratable trauma into a literary strategy of un-narrating: a strategy of encrypting the Holocaust into the form and structure of their texts. The implications of treating these writers as a set, and their body of work as a hitherto unacknowledged category of Holocaust fiction, go well beyond drawing attention to a number of important but critically neglected authors. This study frames the analysis of first-generation narrative strategies in the broader debate on the ethics and aesthetics of Holocaust writing. In revealing how certain kinds of testimony have been privileged above others in international Holocaust studies, it raises questions of a more general nature concerning canon formation and our theoretical responses to the Holocaust. In considering foremost among these responses the theory of deconstruction and trauma theory, it finally invites a re-examination of the relationship between the (post-)modern and trauma.

Author : Richard Lodge
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 1965
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:69129659

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German Culture by Richard Lodge Pdf

Author : Chloe Paver
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2007-02-22
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780191532818

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Refractions of the Third Reich in German and Austrian Fiction and Film by Chloe Paver Pdf

Six decades after the defeat of National Socialism, commemoration and mourning are ongoing, open-ended projects in Germany and Austria, and continue to generate a steady stream of literature and film about the Nazi past that, while comparatively modest in volume, is often disproportionately influential in public debates. At the same time, new museums and memorials are being established all the time in what Andreas Huyssen has called a 'memory boom', while what is remembered and how it is remembered is subject to continuous change. Scholars have to keep pace with each new development in this culture of commemoration. Rather than add to the growing body of surveys of literature and film about the Third Reich, this study instead puts scholars' critical approaches under the microscope. Chloe Paver considers how far the object of the study is not just analysed but also constructed by the scholar's approach and identifies the criteria by which academics judge the values of works that deal with the Third Reich. This book brings aspects of film, fiction, and memorial culture together in a single study that pays as much attention to images (and in the case of film to sound) as it does to text. The study of film, historical exhibitions, and sites of memory also demands consideration of social contexts and practices. A case study of memory at two of Austria's sites of terror demonstrates the methods used in the study of memorials and museums and considers the ways in which memory attaches itself to place.

Author : Caroline Schaumann
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2008-08-27
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783110206593

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Memory Matters by Caroline Schaumann Pdf

Memory Matters juxtaposes in tripartite structure texts by a child of German bystanders (Wolf), an Austrian-Jewish child-survivor (Klüger), a daughter of Jewish émigrés (Honigmann), a daughter of an officer involved in the German resistance (Bruhns), a granddaughter of a baptized Polish Jew (Maron), and a granddaughter of German refuges from East Prussia (Dückers). Placed outside of the distorting victim-perpetrator, Jewish-German, man-woman, and war-postwar binary, it becomes visible that the texts neither complete nor contradict each other, but respond to one another by means of inspiration, reverberation, refraction, incongruity, and ambiguity. Focusing on genealogies of women, the book delineates a different cultural memory than the counting of (male-inflected) generations and a male-dominated Holocaust and postwar literature canon. It examines intergenerational conflicts and the negotiation of memories against the backdrop of a complicated mother-daughter relationship that follows unpredictable patterns and provokes both discord and empathy. Schaumann’s approach questions the assumption that German-gentile and German-Jewish postwar experiences are necessarily diametrically opposed (i.e. respond to a “negative symbiosis”) and uncovers intersections and continuities in addition to conflicts.

Author : Helmut Schmitz
Publisher : Rodopi
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : History
ISBN : 9789042022096

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A Nation of Victims? by Helmut Schmitz Pdf

The re-emergence of the issue of wartime suffering to the fore of German public discourse represents the greatest shift in German memory culture since the Historikerstreit of the 1980s. The (international) attention and debates triggered by, for example, W.G. Sebald's Luftkrieg und Literatur, Günter Grass's Im Krebsgang, Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand testify to a change in focus away from the victims of National Socialism to the traumatic experience of the 'perpetrator collective' and its legacies. The volume brings together German, English and Israeli literary and film scholars and historians addressing issues surrounding the representation of German wartime suffering from the immediate post-war period to the present in literature, film and public commemorative discourse. Split into four sections, the volume discusses the representation of Germans as victims in post-war literature and film, the current memory politics of the Bund der Vertriebenen, the public commemoration of the air raids on Hamburg and Dresden and their representation in film, photography, historiography and literature, the impact and reception of W.G. Sebald's Luftkrieg und Literatur, the representation of flight and expulsion in contemporary writing, the problem of empathy in representations of Germans as victims and the representation of suffering and National Socialism in Oliver Hirschbiegel's film Der Untergang.

Author : Wendell G. Johnson,Katharina Barbe
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 463 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2022-03-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9781440864544

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Modern Germany by Wendell G. Johnson,Katharina Barbe Pdf

Modern Germany explores life, society, and history in this comprehensive thematic encyclopedia, spanning such topics as geography, pop culture, the media, and gender. Germany and its capital, Berlin, were the fulcrum of geopolitics in the twentieth century. After the Second World War, Germany was a divided nation. Many German citizens were born and educated and continued to work in eastern Germany (the former German Democratic Republic). This title in the Understanding Modern Nations series seeks to explain contemporary life and traditional culture through thematic encyclopedic entries. Themes in the book cover geography; history; politics and government; economy; religion and thought; social classes and ethnicity; gender, marriage, and sexuality; education; language; etiquette; literature and drama; art and architecture; music and dance; food; leisure and sports; and media and pop culture. Within each theme, short topical entries cover a wide array of key concepts and ideas, from LGBTQ issues in Germany to linguistic dialects to the ever-famous Oktoberfest. Geared specifically toward high school and undergraduate German students, readers interested in history and travel will find this book accessible and engaging.