Bøger i Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur / British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature serien

This study of Edgar Reitz¿s 1984 film saga Heimat explores the cultural contexts of the Heimat tradition and examines the political debate surrounding the film¿s reception. Responses were largely supportive but some critics were disturbed by an apparent tendency to induce a sense of uncritical nostalgia in viewers. Reitz, by contrast, had wanted to make a film which would help people confront their memories of the Third Reich. The author tests hostile critiques not only against the film¿s elliptical narrative but also against Reitz¿s filmic techniques. She examines the interplay of realism and authenticity, and shows how Reitz dramatizes the confrontation between modernity and rural communities, while consciously alluding to the problematic and much-derided Heimat genre.

Offers nine essays that deal with major achievements that ranges from the 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 recondite, such as Hubert Fichte's Detlevs Imitationen Gruenspan, important products of the abolition of the discrimination against gays.

Includes topics that covered are: the reconstruction of the adventurous rescue of the manuscripts from Vienna in 1938 and a description of their current locations; an overview of the author's life, in its historical context, on the basis of such private documents as his diaries and letters.

Provides a comprehensive analysis of the writing of Monika Maron. Situating its reflections on her work against the backdrop of a changing critical landscape, this analysis takes account of the re-contextualisation of her writing necessitated by the collapse of the GDR.

This book examines the defining trends in German politics, history and thought between the Napoleonic wars and 1848, and reflects on how they shaped the verbal and visual satire of the age. Taking issue with the idea that German satire before 1848 is too fragmented for a coherent large-scale study, the author draws widely on the spheres of literature, history and philosophy to inform his work. In particular, he focuses on the all-important notion of the world order, of what constitutes the rightful path of history and of mankind ¿ a question with which German thought at the time was profoundly concerned. Whether clothed in the garb of orthodox theology or post-Enlightenment philosophy, various (and often conflicting) ideas as to the proper way of the world were fundamental in shaping satirical word and image in the first half of the nineteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of satirical print and polemic, the author traces these ideas through the rise and fall of Napoleon, the ideological battles of Hegelianism and Christianity, the growth of German liberalism and the evolution of Germany¿s national figure, der deutsche Michel. In doing so, he throws new light on an interesting and often neglected corpus of German art and literature. The book is richly illustrated with over 100 contemporary prints, 16 of them in colour.

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) absorbed the fertile ideas of the German Enlightenment, observed first-hand fresh developments in German Romanticism, and fostered one of Europe¿s last great Classical movements. His insights into the human condition have endured and are as valuable now as they were when he first wrote. His characterisations of human nature remain compelling and his stylistic achievements in language continue to be admired and studied. His writing spanned many genres ¿ poetry, prose, drama, history, philosophy ¿ and includes a rich correspondence with Goethe. In this volume, an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars examines the many sides that Schiller displays. The contributors illuminate key facets of his ideas by organising his writing around his various vocations: his medical training; work as a poet, young dramatist, and author of literary prose; his tenure as a university professor and historian; the mutually productive partnership with Goethe; his philosophical writings; and his final years as a mature playwright. His afterlife, what Schiller has meant to Germans for two centuries, is also considered.

This volume brings together a collection of essays focusing on selected aspects of inter- and multidisciplinarity in contemporary Austrian culture. These include the connections between literature and the media, literature and the visual arts, literature and travel, and the visual arts and public space. The individual contributions deal with central figures in the Austrian arts, including Thomas Bernhard, Franzobel, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Handke, Peter Turrini and Doron Rabinovici, as well as collective ventures such as Walter Grond¿s Odysseus project and the museum in progress. They analyse the impact of connections between disciplines on the cultural landscape in contemporary Austria, as well as examining the limits of such interaction between disciplines.

In this study the author elaborates a comparative framework for analysing literary texts from the Third Reich and the GDR in terms of the extent of assent and/or dissent expressed through them towards the National Socialist and SED regimes. The author maps out areas of similarity and difference in the workings of cultural policy in the two dictatorships. In the second part of the study, Günter Eich¿s work for the Nazi radio system and Bertolt Brecht¿s cultural activities in the GDR act as case studies to illuminate the patterns of interdependent assent and dissent generated under the conditions of dictatorship.

This study focuses on beliefs about music current in eighteenth-century Germany. Of particular interest are the conceptual metaphors through which major writers (Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Klopstock) used music as analogy and medium for perceptions of the world in their writing. The book surveys traditional metaphors (music as harmony/disharmony, music as like/unlike language, music as structured by mathematical proportion or by rhythm) inherited from Greek and French thought and looks at ways in which these writers also assimilated and developed contemporary ideas (especially from Leibniz, the French Rationalists, Rameau and Rousseau). German writers of this epoch had a remarkably rich and varied range of ideas of music at their disposal, some of which could also be realised in multi-media genres. With the help of modern theory from several fields, the study aims to show how they deployed these resources in ways both like and unlike the practice of Romantic writers with whom they overlapped at the end of the century.

This book gives an account of the literary representation of Jews as businessmen from the early nineteenth century to the onset of the Third Reich. The historical context provides the background for an examination of the literary representation of Jewish businessmen and presents evidence for the perpetuation, transformation, and combination of stereotypes. The double bind of assimilation - that the Jews were vilified whether they succeeded or failed - is illustrated from literary treatments by the Romantic writer Wilhelm Hauff and the early twentieth-century writers Lion Feuchtwanger and Paul Kornfeld of the historical figure of 'Jud Su Oppenheimer'. Gustav Freytag's use of the Jews as 'counter-ideals' in his notorious bestseller Soll und Haben (1855) and the onset of racial anti-Semitism in Wihelm von Polenz's Der Buttnerbauer (1895) are illustrative of how literary anti-Semitism hardened in the course of the nineteenth century. The book considers a number of literary texts, some well known, some less familiar, which are revealing of the way in which Jewish-Gentile relations were imagined in their time.