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'Postcolonial Germany' is an over-used yet under-theorised term. This paper discusses the question of what is actually happening when colonialism is invoked in comparisons and analogies with contemporary multi-ethnic Germany. By relating the assumed structural analogies of the colonial and the German multi-ethnic situation to the earlier analogy between Germans of Turkish descent today and the pre-war German Jewish community (a somewhat similar field where narratives of relatedness have been employed with similar reasons and objectives), the paper aims to shed some critical light on the more recent linking of colonialism and contemporary multiculturalism. The argument is that connecting the colonial past with the contemporary multi-ethnic present raises complex issues of comparability or incomparability and touches upon the issue of shared history - and is thus a more complex issue than German postcolonial studies deems it to be. Aside from rethinking the comparisons and analogies currently in use, it is also imperative to broaden the analytical framework to include the current needs and concerns of those cast as the 'colonised of today' in the concept of 'postcolonial Germany'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the curious phenomenon whereby GDR-era modernist buildings in Germany are being demolished and substituted with new buildings which appear older than those they replace. The most famous example is the 'reconstruction' of Berlin's Stadtschloss on the site of the GDR's Palast der Republik. This discussion concerns a lesser-known project: the 'reconstruction' of Potsdam's Stadtschloss. The project involves re-housing the Brandenburg 'Landtag' in a new structure with classical façades which replicate the Prussian palace that formerly stood on the site, and densifying the surrounding district in order to return it to an approximation of the pre-war layout. The Stadtschloss building will be a concrete-framed structure - like the modernist buildings to be demolished - but this time faced with classical decoration in brick and stone. The paper argues that this project displays a strange insecurity about the present and a desire to return to some nostalgic image of the 'olden days', replacing the recent past with a looser image of an older past. It concludes by discussing a polemical counter-proposal which seeks to make current values apparent architecturally as another historical layer in the city fabric. It argues against the selective removal of previous architecture, recommending instead that multiple interpretations and the images of multiple pasts might co-exist simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Günter Grass's novella Im Krebsgang has been widely received as a text that is central to the new literary and political engagement with German victimhood in 1944–5 that emerged at the turn of the century. The inherent danger in failing to address German suffering in mainstream discourse, the text appears to suggest, is that the way is left open to a neo-Nazi agenda that relativises the Holocaust and thus undermines Germany's attempts to come to terms with the consequences of the Nazi perpetration and German guilt. This paper argues that the text goes further by implicitly criticising not just the failure to address German suffering but also the way in which German guilt has been approached in (West) Germany. Investigating a theme that has been neglected in criticism of the novella, this paper argues that Grass uses the anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism of his central young protagonists to illustrate the inadequacy of all German reactions to the Nazi period and the Holocaust. The legacy of the Holocaust, both before and after German unification, is portrayed as an internal German argument about coming to terms with the past, an argument that has always been primarily about the Germans themselves rather than their victims. Die Novelle Im Krebsgang von Günter Grass ist zu einem zentralen Text in der um die Jahrhundertwende entstandenen neuen literarischen und politischen Beschäftigung mit deutschen Opfern im Zweiten Weltkrieg geworden. Der Text deutet an, so erscheint es, dass Versäumnisse bei der Aufarbeitung deutschen Leidens im vorherrschenden bundespolitischen Diskurs den Weg freimachen könnten für eine neonazistische Agenda, die den Holocaust relativieren und deutsche Versuche, nationalsozialistische Täterschaft und deutsche Schuld zu bewältigen, unterminieren will. In diesem Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass der Text nicht als einseitige Kritik an der mangelnden Auseinandersetzung mit deutschem Leiden gelesen werden soll, sondern auch als implizite Kritik an den Mängeln in der Art und Weise, wie sich die (alte) Bundesrepublik sich dem Thema ‘deutsche Schuld’ angenähert hat (und hatte). Anhand einer Analyse der bisher in der Sekundärliteratur vernachlässigten jüdischen Aspekte des Textes wird argumentiert, dass der Antisemitismus bzw. Philosemitismus der zentralen jungen Protagonisten die Unzulänglichkeit bisheriger deutscher Reaktionen auf die NS-Vergangenheit bzw. den Holocaust illustrieren soll. Die Bewältigung dieser Vergangenheit, sowohl vor als auch nach der deutschen Vereinigung, wird als ein deutscher Streit über den Umgang mit dem Holocaust dargestellt, in dem schon immer die Rolle der Deutschen selbst wichtiger war als die ihrer Opfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1949, Martin Heidegger published a collection of essays under the title Holzwege, which effectively represented his second and final ‘turn’ towards the establishment of the poetic as the central term in his philosophy. This paper contends that a major factor in Heidegger's development in this direction was the philosopher's discovery of the poetry of Gottfried Benn, whose Statische Gedichte had appeared just one year earlier. Focusing upon Heidegger's major essay of this period, ‘Das Wesen der Sprache’ (1957), this paper seeks to explicate the convergences, parallels and direct points of contact between Benn's poetry and Heidegger's theory, convergences that were both thematic and tropic. The mutual respect between Benn and Heidegger did not last, and the paper concludes by looking at the radically differing visions of modernity, a source of poetic inspiration for Benn but the site of historical negativity for Heidegger, that brought an end to their affiliation. Im Jahre 1949 veröffentlichte Martin Heidegger eine Aufsatzsammlung mit dem Titel Holzwege, die tatsächlich seine zweite und endgültige ‘Kehre’ zur Etablierung des Lyrischen als dem zentralen Thema seiner Philosophie bedeutete. Dieser Aufsatz behauptet, dass Heideggers Entwicklung in dieser Richtung maßgeblich dadurch beeinflusst wurde, dass er als Philosoph die Dichtung Gottfried Benns entdeckte. Dessen Statische Gedichte waren gerade ein Jahr zuvor erschienen. Durch die Konzentrierung auf Heideggers umfangreiche Abhandlung über Das Wesen der Sprache (1957) versucht der Verfasser in seinem Aufsatz die Übereinstimmungen, Parallelen und direkten Berührungspunkte zwischen Benns Lyrik und Heideggers Theorie herauszuarbeiten. Dabei ergeben sich sowohl thematische als auch tropische Übereinstimmungen. Der gegenseitige Respekt zwischen Benn und Heidegger war jedoch nicht von Dauer. Der Aufsatz schließt mit dem Hinweis auf die grundsätzlichen Unterschiede in den Anschauungen von der Modernität, die für Benn eine Quelle dichterischer Inspiration und für Heidegger der Ort geschichtlicher Verneinung war. Diese unterschiedlichen Sichtweisen führten schließlich zum Ende ihrer Gemeinsamkeiten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT '68 has become a powerful cipher for the political renewal of post-war (West) Germany, but references to women and their impact on social (and political) changes are mostly absent from personal and collective memorials. Using the notion of cultural memory work as social constructivism, the paper explores how the politics of memory, femininity and gender reflecting un-negotiated gender issues, especially the lingering myth of traditional femininity, are pivotal in second-wave feminism's low visibility and esteem in spite of the movement's apparent success in promoting women's legal and social equality. Dating back to the contested relationship between '68ers and second-wave feminism, anti-feminist discourse in the media employs strategies of displacing the social arguments of equality feminism into the erotic and personal, presenting feminist gender negotiations as ridiculous, irrational, prudish, anti-democratic, and even dangerous. Equality feminism as a social movement promoted and supported mostly by women does not easily fit into the traditional categories of German paternalistic national history and present memory culture in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT One of the most enduring stereotypes concerning the history of Central and Eastern Europe is the notion of a German Drang nach Osten. While the German impact on the region is beyond doubt, its alleged motivation in terms of a 'drive to the East' has been dismissed almost universally by historians (especially in Germany and Poland) as a 'myth' that obscures the complexities of history more than it illuminates them. Starting from this observation, the present article approaches the phrase Drang nach Osten from a linguistic point of view for the first time. The historical content and background of Drang nach Osten are surveyed first, including its origin in the crisis of German-Polish relations during the 1848 revolution. Three linguistic approaches to stereotyping are then presented with regard to their application to Drang nach Osten. Starting from general cognitive-discursive strategies of stereotyping, Drang nach Osten is defined linguistically as a 'Nominationsstereotyp'; its characteristic syntactic and semantic stabilisation is explicated in frame-semantic terms, and its use as a German phrase in non-German discourse is analysed from a semiotic point of view. The paper closes with thoughts concerning the interdisciplinary nature of 'Stereotypenforschung'. Ein besonders hartnäckiges Stereotyp in Ost- und Ostmitteleuropa ist die Vorstellung, die Geschichte dieser Region sei in hohem Maße von einem deutschen Drang nach Osten geformt worden. Nachdem der Begriff Drang nach Osten als motivationale Kategorie von Historikern nahezu einhellig ins Reich der Mythen verwiesen worden ist, die die unzweifelhafte Komplexität und Ambivalenz der historischen Wirklichkeit eher verdunkeln als erhellen, versucht der vorliegende Beitrag, sich dem Ausdruck Drang nach Osten erstmals aus linguistischer Sicht zu nähern. Zuerst wird kurz der historische Gehalt und Hintergrund des Ausdrucks Drang nach Osten dargestellt, ausgehend von der Krise der deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen in der Revolution von 1848. Danach werden drei verschiedene linguistische Annäherungen an sprachliche Stereotypisierung im Hinblick auf Drang nach Osten diskutiert. Ausgehend von allgemeinen kognitiv-diskursiven Stereotypisierungsstrategien wird Drang nach Osten als Nominationsstereotyp definiert, dessen semantische und syntaktische Stabilisierung in frame-semantischen Kategorien beschreibbar ist; zusätzlich wird die Verwendung des deutschen Ausdrucks Drang nach Osten in nicht-deutschsprachigen Diskursen aus semiotischer Sicht interpretiert. Überlegungen zu den interdisziplinären Aspekten einer historisch-linguistischen Stereotypenforschung runden den Beitrag ab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the role of Germany's so-called 1968 generation in the ongoing competition between collective memories of Germans as perpetrators and Germans as victims. I argue that collective memories of Germans as victims as well as collective memories of Germans as perpetrators were present in the thinking of the West German student movement, which had a more ambivalent attitude to the Nazi past than is sometimes assumed. In particular, while one current within the West German student movement focused on the Nazi past and saw Germany as a nation of perpetrators, other key figures within the movement such as Rudi Dutschke ignored the Nazi past and in particular the Holocaust and tended to see Germany as a nation of victims. These two competing currents were also both reflected in the foreign policy of the 'red-green' government (1998-2005), which is often thought of as a government of 'Achtundsechziger'. The debate in Germany about the Kosovo war in 1999, in which Joschka Fischer played a central role, was dominated by collective memories of Germans as perpetrators, while the later debate about the Iraq war in 2002-3, in which Gerhard Schröder played a central role, was dominated by collective memories of Germans as victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the effects of partition in both Germany and Ireland on national identity. It identifies certain parallels in the ways that official and unofficial attitudes developed over time in the two countries during partition/division and aims to show that attitudes towards the question of national identity among large sections of the populations of all four states were frequently at variance with officially stated positions on the question. Thus the definition of Germanness in the Federal Republic and Irishness in the Republic of Ireland became ambiguous with time, serving to define as the occasion demanded either a cultural identity that went beyond the territory of the state or a political identity based on the de facto territory of the state. Similarly, in both the GDR and Northern Ireland official attempts to create a new national identity that was no longer shared with citizens of the larger state were ambiguous and riddled with contradictions, more often rooted in denial than in any affirmation of a positive alternative, and as such they were rejected by significant portions of the populations. The ambiguities that arose in all states led to the situation whereby in both Germany and Ireland an all-embracing national identity came to reside primarily in those sections of the populations in the smaller states which rejected a separate national identity but whose adherence to a national identity tied to ‘Germany’ or ‘Ireland’ was not compromised by the territorial ambiguities that arose with time in the larger state claiming the name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of the fact that German writers with a German background do not seem to be very interested in casting Germans with a migrant background as their literary characters, this paper focuses on two of the rare exceptions that deal with Muslim women of Turkish origin, Uwe Timm's Rot (2001) and Hermann Schulz's Iskender (1999). In discussing these novels, I am mostly interested in the way these writers take part in current debates on Muslims in Western societies and in how they engage in their specific vision of a multicultural Germany. The results are at least twofold; on the one hand one has to conclude that both Hermann Schulz and Uwe Timm are dividing Muslims into good and bad, desired and not desired; on the other hand their novels also provide facets of a counter image and introduce largely unfamiliar aspects – which can count as a major achievement in the light of the prevailing idea of the Islamic world in the imagination of the German public. Ethnische Minderheiten sind selten in Werken von einheimischen Schriftstellern zu finden. Vor diesem Hintergrund konzentriert sich der vorliegende Essay auf zwei der wenigen Ausnahmen, Uwe Timms Roman Rot (2001) and Hermann Schulz' Iskender (1999), in denen türkisch-muslimische Frauen Teil des literarischen Ensembles sind. Das Interesse gilt insbesondere der Art und Weise, wie ihre Autoren an gegenwärtigen Debatten über Muslime in westlichen Gesellschaften Teil haben, und es wird nach ihrer Vision eines multikulturellen Deutschland gefragt, wie es in den Texten zum Ausdruck kommt. Dabei fällt auf, dass Muslime sowohl bei Hermann Schulz als auch bei Uwe Timm in gute und schlechte, erwünschte und weniger erwünschte aufgeteilt werden. Andererseits entwerfen die Romane jedoch auch Gegenbilder und beziehen Aspekte ein, die der Mehrheit der Deutschen nicht vertraut sind – was angesichts gängiger Vorstellungen über die islamische Lebenswelt als bemerkenswerter Beitrag zur Multikulturalismusdebatte gelten kann. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of our jobs as ‘AuslandsgermanistInnen’ is to promote an understanding of German culture in the home community. In our particular case, in the UK, this involves teaching a language and concepts which are – at least on the surface – fairly foreign to the target audience. How does the transmission of cultural and linguistic knowledge take place between motherland and linguistic enclaves? This paper will address this question with regard to the retention and loss of German culture and language by recent and settled immigrants in America at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. In particular, evidence from German school grammars printed in the USA will be examined to investigate what kind of cultural references were taught to school children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the coverage of the Boxer uprising in the German mainstream press in 1900 as a shaper and reflection of public opinion. Through comparative analyses of contrasting strategies of reporting in three major daily papers with different readerships, the Kölnische Zeitung, the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Morgenpost, it shows how certain events emerge as ‘key experiences’, resulting in a surprisingly convergent, patriotic narrative for the literate German public. This stresses both Germany's moral obligation to civilise the ‘backward’ and also its duty to punish the ‘barbaric’. The essay further reveals a tendency in the relevant journalism to celebrate Germany's rise to enhanced status as a colonial power. This, in turn, is cast as a second foundation myth, elevating the nation to the eminence of a ‘Weltmacht’ in rivalry with its new ally, France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing literary history has been understood as giving a politicised historical account of German culture ever since the inception of this genre in Germany with the publication of the Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen by Georg Gottfried Gervinus in 1835. 1 The concerted view today is that it was the ‘shockwaves’ of the Napoleonic Age which had fuelled a desire to construct an order and propose a unity, at least in book form, which would prevent similar chaos ever happening again, and this intention informed the first histories of German literature. 2 This paper will explore the role women were accorded in such histories, and the selection criteria which contributed to their exclusion or gave them the best chance to be included. It examines the intersection of the narrative of German literary history in the service of nation building, women's writing, and ‘Wissenschaftsgeschichte’ from a gendered perspective by comparing how women writers fared in notable works of contemporary literary history just before the events of the German Revolution of 1848/49 (Gervinus) until the unification of Germany in 1872 (Prutz, Gottschall and Kreyßig). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ideological complexity of issues connected with matriarchal myth within National Socialism's view of women and motherhood by examining the controversy over the Ura-Linda-Chronik, which purported to demonstrate that the Germanic ‘Urvolk’ was organised along matriarchal lines. Exposed as a clear forgery soon after its publication in 1872, it was forgotten until 1933, when its republication by the ‘völkisch’ scholar Herman Wirth provoked a far-reaching debate on theories of matriarchy and patriarchy, masculinity and femininity in the ‘völkisch’ movement and on the role of women in the construction of the Third Reich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Having been responsible for Der alte und der junge König, Robert Koch , and Ohm Krüger , Hans Steinhoff is generally regarded as one of the key directors of films produced during the Third Reich, and his output has been analysed extensively in the context of Joseph Goebbels's propaganda machinery. This approach ignores the fact that, prior to 1933, he was an established director of popular commercial films made with a medium-size budget for audiences in the German provinces. Using Steinhoff's screen version of Angst as point of reference, this paper examines the wider production conditions and commercial considerations behind the transformation of Stefan Zweig's famous short story into a product of mass entertainment for the cinema, and suggests that similar thoughts also governed the making of Hitlerjunge Quex (which – though he never joined the NSDAP – significantly contributed to Steinhoff's reputation as an ‘arch Nazi’ and holder of the ‘Goldenes Parteiabzeichen’). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers some of the ways in which foreign propaganda and espionage were organised by the National Socialists and the methods employed by the Gestapo abroad against their opponents. In particular, it looks at the workings of the Gestapo in Britain as illustrated by the case of Hans Wesemann, who managed to infiltrate both Socialist exile and progressive British circles in order to report back to Germany on the anti-Nazi activities he observed there. Wesemann's espionage career culminated in the abduction of the journalist Berthold Jacob, an incident that was linked in British press and parliament to the mysterious death in London of two refugees involved in investigating Wesemann's nefarious exploits. These events and their wider ramifications are examined here, as are the British and German official reactions to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 3 October 2000, Germany celebrated ten years of unification. Predictably, comparisons were drawn to a ten-year wedding anniversary, just as there were complaints of the ‘seven year itch’ in 1997. The reference to a troubled German marriage has been persistent in various media, and invariably the female partner in the relationship is represented as the former GDR. This metaphorical framework is so ingrained that it shapes thinking on unification, and even those who approach it consciously become ensnared in it. By assigning gender to nation, the linguistic framing of the situation establishes a hierarchy. This paper examines two aspects of this linguistic relationship: first, the marriage of ‘male’ and ‘female’ nations, and, second, the role of gender dynamics among ‘feminists’ from both societies. Three published post-unification dialogues of prominent German figures — psychoanalysts, writers, and a politician — in which the metaphor surfaces, will be analysed. The marriage metaphor of unification, while it explains some aspects of the power dynamic, is problematic in its reduction of complexities and its self-perpetuation. The fact that it recurs frequently to describe the effects of unification is indicative of the gendering of politics and political language which takes place in an unequal, uneasy unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]