The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture

The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture PDF Author: André Fischer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780810146686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"André Fischer draws on key examples from German postwar literary, performance, and cinematic culture to show that myth is an indispensable human practice in times of crisis"--

The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture

The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture PDF Author: André Fischer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780810146686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
"André Fischer draws on key examples from German postwar literary, performance, and cinematic culture to show that myth is an indispensable human practice in times of crisis"--

The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture

The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture PDF Author: André Fischer
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 081014669X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Myths are a central part of our reality. But merely debunking them lets us forget why they are created in the first place and why we need them. André Fischer draws on key examples from German postwar culture, from novelists Hans Henny Jahnn and Hubert Fichte, to sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys, and filmmaker Werner Herzog, to show that mythmaking is an indispensable human practice in times of crisis. Against the background of mythologies based in nineteenth-century romanticism and their ideological continuation in Nazism, fresh forms of mythmaking in the narrative, visual, and performative arts emerged as an aesthetic paradigm in postwar modernism. Boldly rewriting the cultural history of an era and setting in transition, The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture counters the predominant narrative of an exclusively rational Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past”). Far from being merely reactionary, the turn toward myth offered a dimension of existential orientation that had been neglected by other influential aesthetic paradigms of the postwar period. Fischer’s wide-ranging, transmedia account offers an inclusive perspective on myth beyond storytelling and instead develops mythopoesis as a formal strategy of modernism at large.

Screening Art

Screening Art PDF Author: Seán Allan
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785339680
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
With internationalist aspirations and wide-ranging historical perspectives, East German films about artists and their work became hotly contested spaces in which filmmakers could look beyond the GDR and debate the impact of contemporary cultural policy on the reception of their pre-war cultural heritage. Spanning newsreels, documentaries, and feature films, Screening Art is the first full-length investigation into a genre that has been largely overlooked in studies of DEFA, the state-owned Eastern German film studio. As it shows, “artist-films” played an essential role in the development of new paradigms of socialist art in postwar Europe.

Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance

Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance PDF Author: Aneta Mancewicz
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319898515
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This collection of scholarly essays offers a new understanding of local and global myths that have been constructed around Shakespeare in theatre, cinema, and television from the nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on a definition of myth as a powerful ideological narrative, Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance examines historical, political, and cultural conditions of Shakespearean performances in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The first part of this volume offers a theoretical introduction to Shakespeare as myth from a twenty-first century perspective. The second part critically evaluates myths of linguistic transcendence, authenticity, and universality within broader European, neo-liberal, and post-colonial contexts. The study of local identities and global icons in the third part uncovers dynamic relationships between regional, national, and transnational myths of Shakespeare. The fourth part revises persistent narratives concerning a political potential of Shakespeare’s plays in communist and post-communist countries. Finally, part five explores the influence of commercial and popular culture on Shakespeare myths. Michael Dobson’s Afterword concludes the volume by locating Shakespeare within classical mythology and contemporary concerns.

German Postwar Films

German Postwar Films PDF Author: W. Wilms
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781349375042
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This volume offers a cultural, aesthetic, and critical reappraisal of German 'rubble films' produced in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and constructs their meaning in a historical context.

German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past

German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past PDF Author: Helmut Schmitz
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351933833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Beginning with the question of the role of the past in the shaping of a contemporary identity, this volumes spans three generations of German and Austrian writers and explores changes and shifts in the aesthetics of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The purpose of the book is to assess contemporary German literary representations of National Socialism in a wider context of these current debates. The contributors address questions arising from a shift over the last decade, triggered by a generation change-questions of personal and national identity in Germany and Austria, and the aesthetics of memory. One of the central questions that emerges in relation to the Hitler youth generation is that of biography, as examined through Günter Grass' and Martin Walser's conflicting views on the subject of National Socialism. Other themes explored here are the conflict between the post-war generations and the contributions of that conflict to (West)-German mentality, and the growing historical distance and its influence on the aesthetics of representation.

Cultures of Citizenship in Post-war Canada, 1940 - 1955

Cultures of Citizenship in Post-war Canada, 1940 - 1955 PDF Author: Nancy Christie
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773571442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The years between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s have usually been viewed as an era of political and social consensus made possible by widely diffused prosperity, creeping Americanization and fears of radical subversion, and a dominant culture challenged periodically by the claims of marginal groups. By exploring what were actually the mainstream ideologies and cultural practices of the period, the authors argue that the postwar consensus was itself a precarious cultural ideal that was characterized by internal tensions and, while containing elements of conservatism, reflected considerable diversity in the way in which citizenship identities were defined. Contributors include Denyse Baillargeon (Université de Montréal), P.E. Bryden (Mount Allison University), Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau, Karine Hebert (Carleton University), Len Kuffert (Carleton University), and Peter S. McInnis (St Francis Xavier University).

The German Patient

The German Patient PDF Author: Jennifer M Kapczynski
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472025279
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The German Patient takes an original look at fascist constructions of health and illness, arguing that the idea of a healthy "national body"---propagated by the Nazis as justification for the brutal elimination of various unwanted populations---continued to shape post-1945 discussions about the state of national culture. Through an examination of literature, film, and popular media of the era, Jennifer M. Kapczynski demonstrates the ways in which postwar German thinkers inverted the illness metaphor, portraying fascism as a national malady and the nation as a body struggling to recover. Yet, in working to heal the German wounds of war and restore national vigor through the excising of "sick" elements, artists and writers often betrayed a troubling affinity for the very biopolitical rhetoric they were struggling against. Through its exploration of the discourse of collective illness, The German Patient tells a larger story about ideological continuities in pre- and post-1945 German culture. Jennifer M. Kapczynski is Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the coeditor of the anthology A New History of German Cinema. Cover art: From The Murderers Are Among Us (1946). Reprinted courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek. "A highly evocative work of meticulous scholarship, Kapczynski's deftly argued German Patient advances the current revaluation of Germany's postwar reconstruction in wholly original and even exciting ways: its insights into discussions of collective sickness and health resonate well beyond postwar Germany." ---Jaimey Fischer, University of California, Davis "The German Patient provides an important historical backdrop and a richly specific cultural context for thinking about German guilt and responsibility after Hitler. An eminently readable and engaging text." ---Johannes von Moltke, University of Michigan "This is a polished, eloquently written, and highly informative study speaking to the most pressing debates in contemporary Germany. The German Patient will be essential reading for anyone interested in mass death, genocide, and memory." ---Paul Lerner, University of Southern California

Redeeming Objects

Redeeming Objects PDF Author: Natalie Scholz
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299344304
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Redeeming Objects traces the afterlives of things. Out of the rubble of World War II and the Holocaust, the Federal Republic of Germany emerged, and with it a foundational myth of the "economic miracle." In this narrative, a new mass consumer society based on the production, export, and consumption of goods would redeem West Germany from its Nazi past and drive its rebirth as a truly modern nation. Turning this narrative on its head, Natalie Scholz shows that West Germany's consumerist ideology took shape through the reinvention of commodities previously tied to Nazism into symbols of Germany's modernity, economic supremacy, and international prestige. Postwar advertising, film, and print culture sought to divest mass-produced goods--such as the Volkswagen and modern interiors--of their fascist legacies. But Scholz demonstrates that postwar representations were saturated with unacknowledged references to the Nazi past. Drawing on a vast array of popular and highbrow publications and films, Redeeming Objects adds a new perspective to debates about postwar reconstruction, memory, and consumerism.

The Total Work of Art

The Total Work of Art PDF Author: David Imhoof
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178533185X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideal of the “total work of art”—has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk’s lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea’s evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.