Film and Memory in East Germany

Anke Pinkert is Assistant Professor of German and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has published on postwar German literature, film, and cultural history in German Quarterly, Seminar, and Germanic Review.

"[F]or advanced scholars in the fields of film history and cultural theory Pinkert's study opens up a range of new and important perspectives. 27. 4 2009"—German History"Film and Memory in East Germany is an important addition to the literature in this rapidly growing area of investigation for a number of reasons. . . . This is an excellent study and will be required reading for all students and scholars of this period in German film history.Spring 2010"—Slavic Review". . . These accounts give rise to new psychoanalytical approaches to the study of post-WW II German cultural identity and East German film. The book concludes with a critical reexamination of altered patterns of loss after the collapse of communism. A good resource for those interested in film (East German in particular) and trauma studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, researchers, faculty, and professionals. —ChoiceMay 2009"—B.Tautz, Bowdoin College"These accounts give rise to new psychoanalytical approaches to the study of post-WW II German cultural identity and East German film. . . . A good resource for those interested in film (East German in particular) and trauma studies.May 2009"—Choice"[Film and Memory in East Germany] will appeal to specialists on East German cinema who will discover here challenging and new readings of familiar films, but it will also appeal more generally to those in German studies who are grappling with issues of postwar culture as well as to those in culture studies who will be interested in the strategies Pinkert develops for reading trauma and memory in visual culture."—Marc Silberman, University of Wisconsin, Madison

• ContentsIntroduction: Cinematic Specters of History as MemoryPart 1. Vanishing Returnees: War Trauma, Antifascism, and the Crisis of Masculinity (1940s)1. Flashbacks and Psyche—The Murderers Are among Us2. Grieving Dead Soldiers—Somewhere in Berlin3. Psychotic Breaks and Conjugal Rubble—Wozzeck4. Suicidal Males and Reconstruction—Our Daily BreadPart 2. Fantasmatic Fullness: Strained Female Subjectivity and Socialist Dreams (1950s)5. Silent Mothers: Air War as Intimate Memory—Rotation6. Stalin's Daughters on the Verge—The Story of a Young Couple and Destinies of Women7. Missing Smile: Psychic Paralysis and Production—Sun SeekersPart 3. Germany, Year Zero: Recasting the Past in the Present (1960s)8. Postmelancholic Memory Projections—I Was Nineteen9. Modern Loss and Mourning Plays—Born in '45Epilogue: Vacant History, Empty Screens—Postcommunist Films of the 1990sFilmographyNotesWorks CitedIndex