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Finding a Voice
Finding a Voice explores aspects of the use and function of language in East Germany which resulted from Party control of public discourse during the period of the German Democratic Republic. A distinctive feature of the volume, which brings together essays by British and German scholars, is the wide variety of areas which are incorporated in this survey - from political and public discourse, through aspects of sociolinguistics and the teaching of German, to a spectrum of artistic forms ranging from rock music and film to poetry and the novel. In particular, the relationship between public discourse and the events of the ‘Wende' is explored in a number of contributions. Most of the works and issues considered are discussed in English here for the first time, and the volume as a whole should be of interest to scholars concerned with the GDR and with contemporary German culture, to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and also to others interested in the history and culture of Germany since 1945. Nine of the essays are in English and four in German.
German-speaking Exiles in Great Britain
Eleven essays, most in English and a handful in German, reflect the experience of German and Austrian refugees who landed in Great Britain during the Nazi era. Three are case studies of academics and professionals who built new careers in England; two focus on refugee children, one concentrating on the fate of those educated at leading German-Jewish institutions, and one on the reading habits of children across two cultures; and the remaining essays examine developments in the political and cultural spheres. The index lists names only, not subjects. c. Book News Inc.
Coming Home to Germany?
The end of World War II led to one of the most significant forced population transfers in history: the expulsion of over 12 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1950 and the subsequent emigration of another four million in the second half of the twentieth century. Although unprecedented in its magnitude, conventional wisdom has it that the integration of refugees, expellees, and Aussiedler was a largely successful process in postwar Germany. While the achievements of the integration process are acknowledged, the volume also examines the difficulties encountered by ethnic Germans in the Federal Republic and analyses the shortcomings of dealing with this particular phenomenon of mass migration and its consequences.
Mapping the Contours of Oppression
Despite all the assertions towards the end of the twentieth century that the literary subject had expired along with the author, the wave of autobiographies published in German after the Wende was a clear indication that, on the contrary, life stories were very much alive. In this study, Owen Evans examines the work of eight authors - Ludwig Harig, Uwe Saeger, Ruth Klüger, Günter de Bruyn, Günter Kunert, Christoph Hein, Grete Weil and Monika Maron - who all published personal texts after 1989 dealing either with life in Nazi Germany or the GDR, and in some cases both. By means of close textual analysis, Evans explores the impact these regimes had on the individuals concerned and the contr...
Recasting German Identity
A collection of essays offering a nuanced understanding of the complex question of identity in today's Germany.
Libuše Moníková in Memoriam
The novelist and essayist Libuše Moníková (1945-1998) made a unique contribution to German, Czech and world literature, writing in German from a distinctly Czech perspective in a manner which can best be described as encyclopaedic and highly intertextual. Positively received abroad, particularly in Germany and the US, her works remained until recently relatively unknown in the land of her birth. This volume, whose appearance marks what would have been the sixtieth anniversary of her birth, is the first in-depth study of the work of this truly European writer. It contains specially commissioned articles by Czech, German, US and British scholars, as well as an appreciation by her friend and...
The Real Devil
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Landmarks in the German Novel
The nine essays in this volume deal with major achievements in the German novel since 1959. They range from the very well known, such as Brussig's Helden wie wir, an extravagant treatment of life under the Stasi and the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the much more recondite, such as Hubert Fichte's Detlevs Imitationen «Grünspan», one of the first, and most important, products of the abolition of the discrimination against gays in 1969. What is most surprising about this collection is that, in contrast to the majority of successful novels written in German before 1959, only one of these is by a clearly 'West' German author: Hubert Fichte. There is, by contrast, a surprising number who have their roots in the GDR (Plenzdorf, Wolf, Brussig, Schulze), or in Austria (Bachmann, Bernhard). This is also a period in which women writers emerge powerfully (Bachmann, Wolf, and Özdamar). Virtually all these novels aroused controversy in some quarters at the time of their publication, often for their treatment of semi-taboo, or at least uncomfortable, subject-matter. These essays, all by specialists in the relevant field, were originally delivered as lectures in the University of Cambridge.
Moving Subjects
Procession, arguably the most ubiquitous and versatile public performance mode until the seventeenth century, has received little scholarly or theoretical attention. Yet, this form of social behaviour has been so thoroughly naturalised in our accounts of western European history that it merited little comment as a cultural performance choice over many centuries until recently, when a generation of cultural historians using explanatory models from anthropology called attention to the processional mode as a privileged vehicle for articulation in its society. Their analyses, however, tended to focus on the issue of whether processions produced social harmony or reinforced social distinctions, potentially leading to conflict. While such questions are not ignored in this collection of essays, its primary purpose is to reflect upon salient theatrical aspects of processions that may help us understand how in the performance of "moving subjects" they accomplished their often transformative cultural work.
'Diese merkwürdige Kleinigkeit einer Vision'
Christoph Hein is one of the best-known authors of the former GDR, and his works of fiction have been widely interpreted as responses to and critiques of socialist society. In this study, David Clarke undertakes a detailed analysis of all of Christoph Hein’s major works of fiction from Der fremde Freund (1928) to Willenbrock (2000) in order to explore Hein’s critique of the GDR regime, whilst also demonstrating how aspects of that critique provided a starting point for Hein’s rejection of capitalism both before and after German unification. For Hein, socialism had failed to make good its promise to create a community bound together by common values and goals, preferring instead to impose conformity upon its citizens. Capitalism, he believed, was equally unable to meet the need for community, and Hein sought to demonstrate the consequences of this state of affairs in the figure of Wörle in his first post-unification novel, Das Napoleon-Spiel (1993). After this point, Clarke argues, Hein was nevertheless forced to re-examine his criticism of capitalism, a process which ultimately led to the more differentiated and convincing portrayal to be found in Willenbrock.
