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Journal review: German Life & Letters, 1/2013

coverIn the current issue of German Life and Letters, Kristen M. Hylenski analyses Valeska Gert’s four autobiographical texts, Mein Weg (1931), Die Bettlerbar von New York (1950), Ich bin eine Hexe (1968), and Katze von Kampen (1973), revealing ‘the ways in which Gert revisits and revises her life story. While each text recycles material from the previous ones, Gert continually reframes her narrative according to the changing audiences and historical contexts. Continue reading “Journal review: German Life & Letters, 1/2013”

New Perspectives on Weimar

The new book Beyond Glitter and Doom. The Contingency of the Weimar Republic, edited by Jochen Hung, Godela Weiss-Sussex and Geoff Wilkes and based on the proceedings of a conference of the same name, gathers the latest research on Weimar history and culture:

‘The Weimar Republic has received more attention in academic research and popular culture than almost any other period in German history. Nevertheless, its prevailing historical image remains surprisingly simplistic: it is often seen as an era of accelerated cultural progress on the one hand and extreme political unrest, social upheaval and economic crisis on the other, a view epitomized in the ubiquitous image of the ‘dance on the volcano’.

Continue reading “New Perspectives on Weimar”

CfP: The Ullstein company, 1900-1950

25 – 27 April 2013, at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz

In the first half of the 20th century, but especially during the 1920s, the publisher Ullstein occupied a central role in German print media. With its innovative business methods, modern printing technology and American-style advertising methods, Ullstein became a dominant force in German culture.

The conference “Der ganze Verlag ist einfach eine Bonbonniere.” Der Ullstein Verlag in der ersten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts aims to bring together research on inividual Ullstein publications, significant journalists, editors, authors and publicists working for the company, and its wide social, cultural, political and economic role in history.

Proposals for papers of thirty minutes are invited on any of the above-mentioned topics. Proposals should be no longer than 3,500 characters long.

Offers of papers should be sent by 30 May 2012 to David Oels (oels[at]uni‐mainz.de) or Ute Schneider (uschneid[at]uni‐mainz.de)

Cultural History of WWI in France and Germany

No. 54 of the Historische Zeitung‘s Beihefte series takes a comparative look at the political consequences and literary interpretations of Burgfrieden and Union sacrée after the war. Contributions include a juxtaposition of French republican and German völkisch nationalism by Manfred Kittel, and a study on the use of literary sources in historical research by Nicolaus Beaupré. David Midgley adds a British perspective.

Wolfram Pyta, Carsten Kretschmann (eds.): Burgfrieden und Union sacrée. Literarische Deutungen und politische Ordnungsvorstellungen in Deutschland und Frankreich 1914-1933

>> review (in German)

Weimar Writers on Project Gutenberg

The German branch of the online library Project Gutenberg hosts many texts by authors active during the Weimar Republic, including journalists like Carl von Ossietzky, Kurt Tucholsky, Karl Kraus and Larissa Reissner; politicians like Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin; dramatists like Ernst Toller; philosophers like Walter Benjamin and Oswald Spengler; poets like Joachim Ringelnatz and Klabund; and writers like Joseph Roth, Hugo Ball, Artur LandsbergerRené Schickele and Alfred Schirokauer.

The British in Weimar

The image of the Weimar Republic in the English-speaking world (and the image of the English visiting Weimar Germany, for that matter) has long been dominated by Christopher Isherwood and his circle. In fact, Isherwood’s 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin could be credited with creating the long-lasting picture of the Weimar Republic as a ‘dance on the volcano’ – a burst of progressive culture and sexual licentiousness before the backdrop of political chaos and economic crisis.

Colin Storer’s new study Britain and the Weimar Republic: The History of a Cultural Relationship injects some much-needed academic rigour into this legendary part of Anglo-German relations, challenging Isherwood’s hegemonic account of British life in Weimar Germany. (Thanks to Tara Windsor for pointing it out).

>>> review (in English)

Utopian theories of state in Austria

In the new book Staatsfiktionen. Denkbilder moderner Staatlichkeit, Marion Löffler analyzes the utopian elements in political sciences in Austria from 1918-1939. The volume is published by the research centre Tropen des Staates at Vienna University, a project focusing on Austrian political philosophy and theories of state during the interwar years.

Anyone interested in reviewing this volume should contact Katharina Fischer (katharina.fischer[at]facultas.at).

New JAHRBUCH volume published

The new volume of the JAHRBUCH ZUR KULTUR UND LITERATUR
DER WEIMARER REPUBLIK (published April 2011) assembles articles on a recently discovered photograph by August Sander, Marieluise Fleißer’s short story ‘Abenteuer aus dem Englischen Garten’, Joseph Roth’s travel writing, the role of femininity and masculinity in ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ and the journalistic work of Hans Sahl.

Expressionists Online

German Literary Expressionism Online is a fully searchable database of 40,000 articles from 151 journals, magazines and anthologies from the Expressionist period, including key texts by Hugo Ball, Johannes R. Becher, Gottfried Benn, Georg Heym, Klabund, Else Lasker-Schüler, Georg Trakl and Franz Werfel.

The archive can be accessed (amongst others) in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.

‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ reconsidered

The concept of ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ as an aesthetic movement has been much criticized over the years. This older article by Sabina Becker is an important contribution to the discussion and a good starting point for people interested in the culture of the Weimar Republic:

‘The essay presents the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) as a predominantly aesthetically oriented movement and an independent literary aesthetic. The article also takes into consideration the important poetological premises of this literature, which are linked to the term Sachlichkeit. The point of departure here is the thesis that the Neue Sachlichkeit can be considered the last phase of modernism.’

Rethinking Weimar’s Political Culture

WEIMAR PUBLICS/WEIMAR SUBJECTS. Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s (ed. by Kathleen Canning, Kerstin Barndt, and Kristin McGuire) is a collection of ‘interdisciplinary scholarship on Weimar political culture […] uncovering arenas of conflict and change that had not been studied closely before, such as gender, body politics, masculinity, citizenship, empire and borderlands, visual culture, popular culture and consumption.’

Contributions include:

Anton Kaes: The Return of the Undead: Weimar Cinema and the Great War

Thomas Mergel: High Expectations – Deep Disappointment: Structures of the Public Perception of Politics in the Weimar Republic

Peter Fritzsche: The Economy of Experience in Weimar Germany

Kathleen Canning: Claiming Citizenship: Suffrage and Subjectivity in Germany after the First World War

>> Review (in German History, 1/2012)

Weimar Culture Revisited

Weimar culture has often been portrayed quite one-dimensionally as a ‘dance on the volcano’, a surge of avant-garde, high art before the backdrop of political and economic crisis. The contributors to the new publication Weimar Culture Revisited (ed. by John A. Williams) take a different apporach:

‘Since the 1990s there has been a dramatic shift in the research on culture in general away from the strict focus on high arts and literature to everyday popular culture. A younger generation of scholars now takes the broad view of culture as not merely the work of elite artists and intellectuals, but as constructed in everyday practice and thorough popular participation.’

Literature and History

Erhard Schütz, reknowned expert on Weimar literature, has written a review (in German) on two new volumes on the relationship between literature and the history of the 20th century:

Hürter, Johannes; Zarusky, Jürgen (eds.): Epos Zeitgeschichte. Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts in zeithistorischer Sicht

van Laak, Dirk (ed.): Literatur, die Geschichte schrieb

Among others, these books include articles by historians on Jewgenij Samjatin’s Wir (1920) and Hans Fallada’s Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben (1931).