German Life and Civilization – serie

Bitter Witness is an intensive, factual study of Otto Dix’s war-related art. It is the first book to place Dix’s etching cycle, Der Krieg, alongside numerous paintings and drawings in the perspective of his war experience on two fronts from mid-1915 to 1918’s finale. It includes a full history of the war, the Weimar Republic’s socio-political upheavals, and the Nazi years, following Dix and his colleagues, including Kaethe Kollwitz, through the artistic movements and events in the first half of Germany’s most turbulent century.

Born of the dream of fostering a new caste of writers from working-class ranks, the «Movement of Writing Workers» (Bewegung schreibender Arbeiter) offers a paradigmatic view of the successes and failures of attempts to implement a socialist cultural revolution in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The abstract tenets of Marxist teleology and state-sponsored programmes ascribed to «writing workers» a central position in the efforts to overcome class divisions, educational privilege and, ultimately, the distinctions between workers and intellectuals, art and labour. This study, based largely on original archival research, traces the historical background and development of this major cultural initiative. It undermines the notion of servile obedience to Soviet direction in East German cultural affairs and displays the discrepancies between the official rhetoric of the ruling communist party and the realities of popular cultural participation. While there existed over 200 «Circles of Writing Workers» in the GDR – also known as «socialist literary salons» – the four case studies featured here highlight their diversity and stake out the broad parameters of state-sponsored literary production in East Germany.

Depicting the literary, erotic, political and clinical trajectory of the Swabian Frühromantiker Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), Solomon’s shapeshifting study presents an audacious English «remix» of Stephan Hermlin’s 1970 radio drama Scardanelli, amplifying the complex contexts of Hölderlin’s psychiatric committal and subsequent discharge into the home of a Tübingen carpenter in May 1807. Supplemented by a new translation of Hermlin’s memoir essay «Hölderlin 1944» and the author’s interdisciplinary texts and commentaries, this provocative volume furnishes a creative reinterpretation of a contribution to modern audio drama that will speak to playmakers and scholars engaged with German Romanticism, the poetics of translation and the cultural history of radio.

Pathology. Psychosis. Schizophrenia. These words often prove inseparable from the life and work of Robert Walser, who retreated to the sanatoria of Switzerland with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. In so doing, he came to embody our romantic image of the outsider, perhaps more fully than any other German-language writer of the twentieth century. This book takes Walser’s 1929 diagnosis as its point of departure and provides a cognitive study of the author’s writing. Clinical models of schizophrenic cognition from phenomenological psychology guide the analysis, and the book illustrates that underneath Walser’s literary production there is a cognitive process that is marked by the psychological concepts of hyperreflexivity and a loss of common sense. The book addresses four primary elements of Walser’s writing, including his flâneur texts, his singular prose, moments of stasis and epiphany in his writing, and the sense of psychological jeopardy that appears repeatedly in his work. This study proposes a new aetiology for Walser’s prose, one rooted in uncommon cognition. At the same time, it offers a bridge between two trends in Walser scholarship: one which has focused on his hospitalization and diagnosis of schizophrenia, and another that has stressed his unique literary style.

«This volume epitomizes Jost Hermand’s inimitable talent of synthesizing wide-ranging disciplines in an accessible and compelling style, bringing to life the experiences of musicians and their public in the context of their own times. These essays also give us a glimpse into how his own life experiences created the hunger for culture that defined his long and illustrious career.» (Pamela M. Potter, Professor of German and Musicology, University of Wisconsin—Madison)　«Jost Hermand’s final book is an enormously rich gift to posterity. The fifteen essays on musical culture that constitute this collection contain brief but illuminating glimpses of the whole glorious parade of serious music and those who composed, cultivated, and commented on it in the German lands, from Buxtehude to Stockhausen and beyond. His insight and well-observed contextualization reveals a lifetime of scholarship and experience.» (Celia Applegate, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University)　In contrast to the writings of many other musicologists, this book is not primarily concerned with the biographies of certain composers or a structural analysis of their major compositions, but rather with the stands they took in the ideological struggles during their lifetimes and how these affected some of their most important works. Beginning with the late seventeenth century, special emphasis is thereby given to Pietism, orthodox Lutheranism, the impact of the French Revolution, the restrictive measures of the Metternich period, the Wilhelminian era, Expressionism, the New Objectivity and the materialist aesthetics of the Weimar Republic, fascism, exile and the modernism of the early Federal Republic of Germany.

«Pohlmann’s study offers points of departure for scholarship on authorship, authenticity, and irony in the public sphere; anyone entering debates surrounding Christian Kracht's tricky public persona, for example, would do well to read Pohlmann's study first. All in all, Pohlmann’s book is a clear, readable, well-argued, succinct, and insightful work on an author who often invites dense, impenetrable scholarship.»(Michael Wood, German Studies Review 47.3 (October 2024) «All das ist erkennbar in dieses Buch mit eingegangen, das neben statistischen Grafiken zu Interviewpartnern und Kurven für Aufführungszahlen ein Paradox des immer noch geltenden Müller-Bilds zu erhellen versteht: Nämlich, dass der avantgardistische Autor mit seiner Kapitalismuskritik nicht nur Preisverleihungsgesellschaften verstörte, sondern auch zum begehrten Personal von Boulevardmedien werden konnte.»(Thomas Irmer, Theater der Zeit, 05/2024) «Pohlmann’s study of Müller’s media presence is one of the few English-language books on this important postwar dramatist in the past two decades. Embedded in a discussion of avant-garde aesthetics and ‘branding’ in capitalist market contexts, its nuanced focus examines Müller’s strategies for navigating the East-West divide prior to and after Germany’s unification in 1990.»(Marc Silberman, Professor Emeritus of German, University of Wisconsin–Madison) «The Creation of an Avant-Garde Brand is an impressive scholarly achievement that enlarges our understanding of postwar German culture in general and Heiner Müller in particular. Pohlmann convincingly demonstrates that Müller’s status as a leading figure of the avant-garde needs to be understood in light of his dynamic engagement with mass culture. Highly recommended.»(Matthew W. Smith, Professor of German Studies and Theater & Performance Studies, Stanford University) Branding became a crucial technique over the course of the twentieth century. It changed the way we perceive politics and goods, but also works of art and authors. This development has called into question the traditional idea of authenticity as well as the intention to resist capitalist marketing practices.This book examines the extent to which an author like Heiner Müller adopted branding strategies to present himself in the public sphere, investigating the impact that this had on his public persona. By focusing on Müller, this study analyzes the self-presentation and promotion of an adversarial author who drew on the ideals of the avant-garde and the artistic critique of capitalism. Yet Müller also inserted himself into the mainstream public sphere and the media, arenas that are highly influenced by the laws of the market. Thus, the author asks whether Müller’s use of marketing methods and media environments undermined his outsider credibility and the integrity of his work, or, alternatively, how he may have been able to develop strategies to engage with marketing principles and the media in ways that allowed him to remain subversive nonetheless, perhaps working within the system and against it at the same time.

This book is based on a symposium which took place in April 2009 and was part of a year-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It presents ten essays by scholars from North America and Europe working in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences that endeavor to move the discipline of German-American studies away from the narrowly conceived historical investigation of the migration of ethnic Germans to America that has dominated the field for decades. The traditional understanding of what it meant to be German-American as well as the myths associated with the ethnicity, language, and literature of this large group of immigrants are thrown into question and reassessed, and potential directions for the future of the field – as it exists on both sides of the Atlantic – are posited. The novel approach of this volume examines German-American studies from historical, literary, cultural, geographical, and linguistic perspectives, among others, and seeks to redefine the field as the study of the total experience of German-speaking immigrants and their descendants as seen in a global, multicultural, and interdisciplinary context.

This book offers an in-depth study of the rich tapestry of happiness discourses in well-known philosophical novels by Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse and Ernst Jünger, published between 1922 and 1949. The study is prompted, in part, by an awareness that despite the interdisciplinarity of happiness research, Western literary scholarship has paid scant attention to fictionalized constructs of happiness. Each of the four chapters uses extended textual analysis to explore the sites in which happiness (Glück) and serenity (Heiterkeit) are sought, experienced, narrated, reflected upon and enacted. The author theorizes, with particular reference to Bachelard and Foucault, the interfaces between interior and exterior spaces and states of well-being. In addition to providing new interpretive perspectives on the canonical novels themselves, the book makes a significant contribution to a broader history of the idea of happiness through the appraisal of key intellectual cross-currents and traditions, both Western and Eastern, underpinning the novelists’ varied and nuanced conceptualizations and aesthetic representations of happiness.

This book offers a study of West-East cross-cultural and cross-contextual literacy by investigating Goethe’s relationship to the poetics of fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in the West-östlicher Divan. Goethe’s collection of poetry, this book argues, constitutes a turning point in the history of German poetic subjectivity. The intellectual and historical significance of the Divan is examined by considering Goethe’s conception of history both in relation to Hegel’s philosophy of history as well as the linear notion of progress throughout the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the book demonstrates how the rise of aesthetics and the transition from a theological to a secular-humanistic conception of history and humanity in Europe positively influenced the reception of non-European literatures at the end of the eighteenth century. Hafiz, as argued here, owes his textual presence in the Divan to a cross-cultural and cross-temporal poetic vision that has its roots in the European Enlightenment. The book also elaborates on the role translation plays in the development of poetry and poetics as exemplified in the works of Sir William Jones (1746-1794) and Josef Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856), translators of Oriental poetry into English and German.

Following the development of the German Lied after the nineteenth century – when it was widely known as the setting of Romantic poetry to music – this book explores the changing artistic scene in the early twentieth century, as rapid social, economic and environmental changes affected German cultural production. The Lied then faced not only a crisis of identity, but also a threat to its survival. This book considers the literary and musical ideas that both challenged and complemented each other as new directions in songwriting were developed across the modern period.The composers selected for their relevance in Lieder composition during this time illustrate not only the diversity of their musical thought but also a changing approach to the relationship between the poetic text and its musical counterpart. Hans Pfitzner represents the determination to maintain established tradition; subsequently, a chronological progression through the individuality of Paul Hindemith and social integrity of Hanns Eisler leads to the point where transformation of the genre can be said to have begun, with Arnold Schönberg. With the Lieder of Alban Berg and Anton Webern, the genre arrived at a point of convergence with the ideals of German modernism. This study offers new insights into the cultural significance of German songwriting in the first part of the twentieth century.

In February 1943 intermarried Germans gathered in Berlin’s Rosenstrasse to protest the feared deportation of their Jewish spouses. This book examines the competing representations of the Rosenstrasse protest in contemporary Germany, demonstrating how cultural memories of this event are intertwined with each other and with concepts of identity. It analyses these shifting patterns of memory and what they reveal about the dynamics of the past–present relationship from the earliest post-unification period up to the present day. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book provides insights into the historical debate surrounding the protest, accounts in popular history and biography, an analysis of von Trotta’s 2003 film Rosenstraße, and an exploration of the multiple memorials to this historical event.The study reveals that the protest’s remembrance is fraught with competing desires: to have a less encumbered engagement with this past and to retain a critical memory of the events that allows for a recognition of both heroism and accountability. It concludes that we are on the cusp of witnessing a new shift in remembering that reflects contemporary socio-political tensions with the resurgence of the far right, noting how this is already becoming visible in existing representations of the Rosenstrasse protest.

This book offers a thorough examination of the novels of Irmtraud Morgner (1933-1990), one of the most talented, compelling and overlooked writers within East German feminist and avant-garde circles. Using a combination of theoretical approaches – including Adorno’s aesthetic theories and Bakhtinian analyses of dialogism and the carnivalesque – the author traces Morgner’s engagement with postmodernist aesthetic strategies back to her efforts, beginning in the early 1970s, to pose questions about effective political practices. Morgner’s work sheds new light on the fraught relationship between GDR intellectuals and the state, a hotly debated topic that marks most recent attempts to understand literary culture in the German Democratic Republic. Situating Morgner’s fiction at the intersection of postmodern and feminist theory, this study also offers new evidence for viewing literature from the GDR as significantly more complex and aesthetically interesting than has been previously assumed.

Focusing on the ideological contradictions inherent in the German alliance with Japan during World War II, this book analyses German discourse about Japan from the distinct yet intricately connected standpoints of the German-Japanese historical relationship, the scientific and pseudo-scientific presentation of Japan in Germany, and German fictional depictions of Japan.The volume examines the historical relationship between Germany and Japan in the light of their alliance. It also traces the origins and development of the image of Japan in Nazi Germany. Through non-fiction texts, the points of emphasis, friction, and outright contradiction are discovered between Nazi ideology and an alliance with Japan as they were discussed both publicly and privately in Germany at the time. Finally, by examining fictional depictions of Japan and the Japanese under the Nazis, the work reveals the means by which fiction addressed these ideological issues and incorporated the historical and non-fictional arguments of its contemporaries. This book looks carefully at its connection to other historical, political, racial, and ideological thought of the time.

This book traces the development of the monist world-view in Germany from the Age of Goethe to the 1920s. Originally a core idea in the philosophy of Spinoza, monism, the idea of a universe of one substance that is both mind and matter, inspired many German thinkers from Goethe to Fechner, especially the infamous social Darwinist Ernst Haeckel. This study contrasts Haeckel’s monism with the more benign monist world-views of his predecessors and of his socialist and left-liberal contemporaries and followers, above all Bruno Wille and Wilhelm Bölsche.

This volume examines selected works of German literature from Gustav Freytag to Joseph Goebbels in relation to ethical, socio-economic, and political texts from the economic «take off» period in the middle of the nineteenth century up to the rise of National Socialism and investigates two aspects of anti-Semitic anti-capitalistic representations contained therein. First it traces how the Jews gained the dubious distinction of being the inventors, even embodiment, of capitalism and elaborates on negative traits assigned to both of them. Second it examines how representations of specifically Jewish capitalists were instrumentalized both to discredit laissez faire and simultaneously to assist in the definition of a specifically «German» socio-economic ethos.

Drawing on a variety of techniques from history, anthropology and literary criticism the author argues toy consumption helped adults negotiate the transmission of middle-class values regarding modernity, technology, gender roles and nationalism to their children. Practices of consumption permitted self-fashioning from above and below; women used their control over childhood to insert themselves into political debates about the future shape of the nation at a time when they lacked the vote. Although the project to build a middle-class utopia via shopping never succeeded, millions of Germans happily bought toys at Christmas and birthdays showing their faith in the ability of modern society to make the world a better place. To understand why ordinary consumers made these choices, the book draws on a variety of sources including periodicals, trade journals, advertisements, pedagogical literature, memoirs, and toys.

This study comprises an analysis of public spheres in National Socialist Germany. It investigates where and under what circumstances resistance to Hitler’s regime was possible. The author focuses on the space of the crypto-public – defined as a politicized private sphere – as a potential realm for anti-state activism. Based on the activities of four organizations operating in Germany between 1933 and 1944 – the Jewish Cultural Association Berlin, the Kreisau Circle, the White Rose, and the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Organization – she analyzes how this social locus functioned to foster resistance to National Socialism. She examines the artifacts of these groups – leaflets, pamphlets, politico-economic treatises, and theater performances – in order to establish models of crypto-public spaces and evaluate their possibilities and limitations as sites of resistance.

The 1990s saw the appearance of many new works that have redefined and embellished the canon of Holocaust literature. While many of these works have quickly become classics, some have raised new questions about the processes of canonicity. This study concentrates particularly on works in German by Jewish Holocaust survivors written and published approximately fifty years after the fateful cataclysm, focusing on such crucial issues as genre and testimony. Despite the long shadow cast by the Holocaust on subsequent generations, the author shows that narratives on the Holocaust have continued to thrive, offering inventive interpretations of questions that have been thought to defy explanation.

Eingekesselt schliesst eine Forschungsluecke in der literaturwissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Kriegsliteratur. Erstmalig werden alle in Deutschland zwischen 1945 und 1993 erschienenen Romane zur Schlacht um Stalingrad analysiert. Dieses Buch versucht, Aufschluesse ueber die politischen und moralischen Implikationen der Texte, aber auch ueber die Problematik der Erzaehlform zu gewinnen. Anhand der Rezeptionsgeschichte der einzelnen Romane wird die gesellschaftliche Bedeutsamkeit dieser Art von geschichtlicher Darstellung sowohl in West- als auch in Ostdeutschland erkundet und ihre Aktualitaet ueber die Jahre 1989/1990 hinaus verfolgt.

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) has often been regarded as a symbol of "Germanness." Despite this view, few studies have been undertaken regarding his nationalistic thinking. Imagined Germany focuses on Wagner’s idea of Deutschtum, especially during the unification of Germany, 1864–1871. Salmi discusses how Wagner defined Germanness, what stereotypes, ideas, and sentiments he attached to it, and what kind of state could realize Wagner’s national ideals.