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Last winter, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain sculpture. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo’s David was damaged in 1991 by a purportedly mentally ill artist. With each incident, intellectuals must confront the unsettling dynamic between destruction and art. Renowned art historian Dario Gamboni is the first to tackle this weighty issue in depth, exploring specters of censorship, iconoclasm, and vandalism that surround such acts. Gamboni uncovers here a disquieting phenomenon that still thrives today worldwide. As he demonstrates through analyses of incidents occurring in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and Europe, a complex relationship exists among the evolution of...
United City, Divided Memories? focuses on the basic question of how Berlin today deals with three specific Cold War-era legacies: the presence of the four Great Powers, the East German Stasi, and the Berlin Wall. Dirk Verheyen looks at monuments, museums, and memorial sites as illustrations of Berlin's struggle to craft an effective shared identity that ties together its western and eastern halves. Verheyen's comprehensive and critical analysis is considered against the broader background of Germany's efforts at coming to grips with its dual twentieth-century totalitarian past. This book demonstrates that important elements of east-west contrast linger and complicate the city's efforts at crafting a more definitively future-oriented united identity. United City, Divided Memories? will stimulate debate among German studies scholars, as well as among those interested in German history and cultural studies.
Structures of Memory turns to the landscape of contemporary Berlin, particularly places marked by the presence of the Nazi regime, in order to understand how some places of great cruelty or great heroism are forgotten by all but eyewitnesses, while others become the site of public ceremonies, museums, or commemorative monuments.
“Fascinating material . . . This book will likely be the last word and the standard work on the Thälmann myth and its role in East German history.” —Catherine Epstein, author of Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths Throughout the 1920s, German politician and activist Ernst Thälmann (1886–1944) was the leader of the largest Communist Party organization outside the Soviet Union. Thälmann was the most prominent left-wing politician in the country’s 1932 election and ran third in the presidential race after Hitler and von Hindenberg. After the Nazi Party’s victory in that contest, he was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement for eleven years before being executed at Buchenwal...
“Written in a clear and elegant style, The Ghosts of Berlin is . . . a superb guide to this process of urban self-definition, both past and present.” —The Wall Street Journal In the twenty years since its original publication, The Ghosts of Berlin has become a classic, an unparalleled guide to understanding the presence of history in our built environment, especially in a space as historically contested—and emotionally fraught—as Berlin. Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the remarkable fusion of architecture, history, and national identity in Berlin. Returning to the city frequently, Ladd continues to survey the urban landscape, traversing its ruins, contempl...
Borders represent an intriguing paradox as globalization continues to leap barriers at a vigorous pace, merging economies and cultures through world trade, economic integration, the mass media, the Internet, and increasingly mobile populations. At the same time, the political boundaries separating peoples remain pervasive and problematic. Borders and Border Politics in a Globalizing World offers a carefully selected group of readings to enhance student understanding of the complexities of border regions. The reader brings together key writings on the histories of borders, their social development, their politics, and the daily life that characterizes them. The authors place their analyses of...
A unique insight into the U-boat war in World War II, focusing on FAGr 5, the Luftwaffe's only long range maritime reconnaissance and U-boat operating unit, which sought to direct the German submarines at the Allied convoys vital to prosecuting the war in Europe.
The study focuses on the mutual transfer of military knowledge between the German and the Ottoman/ Turkish army between the 1908 Young Turk revolution and the death of Atatürk in 1938. Whereas the Ottoman and later the Turkish army were the main beneficiaries of this selective appropriation, the German armed forces evaluated their (prospective) ally’s military experiences to a lesser extent. Through the analysis of archival and published sources and memoir literature the study provides evidence for the impact of this exchange on the armies of both countries and on the Turkish civil society. Indeed, the officer corps in both countries was a small but influential group of the society for the further development of their nations.
This book reviews the intense spatiality of conflict over identity construction in three cities where culture and place identity are not just post-modernist playthings but touch on the raw sensibilities of who people define themselves to be.
This collection of essays, written by leading scholars in the fields of East German art, film, literature, music, and museum studies, seeks to renegotiate the artistic legacy of the German Democratic Republic. Combining a range of theoretical and practical perspectives, the volume challenges the narrow frameworks of totalitarianism and Ostalgie that have dominated discussions of art produced in the GDR. It explores the diversity of art produced in the state and contests the long-held perception that socialist realism and artistic innovation were mutually exclusive. Crucially, the collection puts art itself to the fore; GDR art is considered not simply as a political by-product, as is so often the case, but as an entity of innovation and aesthetic value in its own right.