Barbara Becker-Cantarino – författare

This collection of essays breaks new ground in looking at Berlin after the fall of the Wall as the city struggles to re-establish itself as the cultural and political capital of Germany. The essays offer insightful readings of the metropolis, its people and institutions, as a paradigm for modern Germany. They focus on important cultural developments and changes as they occurred especially, but not exclusively, in Berlin. Issues explored include women's role in the restructuring of higher education in Berlin, the impact of State Security at Humboldt University, problems of a growing immigrant population, and the innovative counter-culture ventures in the Prenzlauer Berg district. Other chapters address major cinematic responses to the city by reknowned filmmakers Wim Wenders, Walter Ruttman, and Helke Sander; and the representation of Berlin and the Berlin Wall in modern fiction. This volume makes an important contribution to the discourse on German identity.

New essays tracing the 18th-century literary revival in German-speaking lands and the cultural developments that accompanied it.The Enlightenment was based on the use of reason, common sense, and "natural law," and was paralleled by an emphasis on feelings and the emotions in religious, especially Pietist circles. Progressive thinkers in England, France, and later in Germany began to assail the absolutism of the state and the orthodoxy of the Church; in Germany the line led from Leibniz, Thomasius, and Wolff to Lessing and Kant, and eventually to the rise of an educated upper middle class. Literary developments encompassed the emergence of a national theater, literature, and a common literary language. This became possible in part because of advances in literacy and education, especially among bourgeois women, and the reorganization of book production and the book market. This major new reference work provides a fresh look at the major literary figures, works, and cultural developments from around 1700 up to the late Enlightenment.They trace the 18th-century literary revival in German-speaking countries: from occasional and learned literature under the influence of French Neoclassicism to the establishment of a new German drama, religious epic and secular poetry, and the sentimentalist novel of self-fashioning. The volume includes the new, stimulating works of women, a chapter on music and literature, chapters on literary developments in Switzerland and in Austria, and a chapter onreactions to the Enlightenment from the 19th century to the present. The recent revaluing of cultural and social phenomena affecting literary texts informs the presentations in the individual chapters and allows for the inclusionof hitherto neglected but important texts such as essays, travelogues, philosophical texts, and letters. Contributors: Kai Hammermeister, Katherine Goodman, Helga Brandes, Rosmarie Zeller, Kevin Hilliard, Francis Lamport, Sarah Colvin, Anna Richards, Franz M. Eybl, W. Daniel Wilson, Robert Holub.Barbara Becker-Cantarino is Research Professor in German at the Ohio State University.

Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859) ist eine der wichtigsten Autorinnen der deutschen Literatur. Die mit einflussreichen Romantikern eng verbundene Autorin (Schwester Clemens Brentanos, Ehefrau Achim von Arnims) wurde mit ihrem kontrovers rezipierten "Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde" (1835) berühmt, mit ihren autobiografischen Briefbüchern und preußenkritischen, sozialpolitischen Schriften zur Mentorin junger Intellektueller des Vormärz und zu einer Identifikationsfigur für Generationen von Frauen.Das Handbuch bringt erstmals eine detaillierte Gesamtschau ihres literarischen, politischen und künstlerischen Schaffens in Weiterführung der neuesten Forschung. Dargestellt werden ihre autobiografischen Brief- und Gesprächsbücher im literarischen Feld, ihre Vernetzung mit Intellektuellen und Künstlern, ihre publizistischen und politischen Aktivitäten, sowie ihr von der Zensur verhindertes „Armenbuch“ und die anonym publizierte „Polenbroschüre“. Einzelartikel zeigen die ästhetische Qualität, den Bezug zu Romantik und Vormärz, die Modernität des Werkes, Poetik und Briefwechsel und ihre Rolle im literarischen Markt. So bietet das Handbuch ein wissenschaftliches Kompendium für die Beschäftigung mit Bettina von Arnims Persönlichkeit, Werk und Epoche.