German Studies Review最新文献

{"title":"The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage, 1832–1937 by Skye Doney (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910201","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage, 1832–1937 by Skye Doney Beth Griech-Polelle The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage, 1832–1937. By Skye Doney. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. Pp. xxii + 345. Hardcover $85.00. ISBN 9781487543105. Skye Doney's work challenges many of the long-held assumptions regarding Catholicism in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany. Rather than examine German Catholicism from the top-down approach of political and bureaucratic elites, Doney presents an interaction between what clerical leaders, secular authorities, and average German Catholics expected from participation in pilgrimages to venerate sacred relics held in Aachen and Trier. This work also presents a new interpretation of notions of the feminization of religion, demonstrating the multitude of ways that men participated in religious life through their involvement in the pilgrimage process. Finally, the author points to ways in which many in the Catholic Church leadership engaged with larger issues in German society, particularly in their attempts to overcome the legacy of the Kulturkampf, proving that Catholics were just as respectably German as their Lutheran counterparts were. Through the use of a multitude of primary source materials, Doney is able to present how many average Catholics interpreted their participation in pilgrimage. Chapter One's examination of pilgrim songs, processions, and prayers reveals the changing attitudes of many Catholics toward relics, moving toward the belief that the Holy Coat of Jesus was symbolic of the sacred and not the literal coat that Jesus wore. This change in belief corresponded to the increased emphasis on science and reason present in modern German society, yet Church leaders and their parishioners never truly denied the possibility that the relics were genuine. Through prayers, pilgrims prepared themselves for the journey to venerate the holy objects; with songs, they praised the power of God; and in their processions, they publicly affirmed their Catholic identity. Chapter Two, \"Modern Miracles,\" tracks the quest that so many pilgrims were on: to visit the relics in the hope that illnesses would be cured. In this fascinating chapter, [End Page 491] Doney points out that while modernity moved forward, with modern transportation and scientific advancements in health and medicine, Rhenish Catholic culture still held firm to the belief that coming into contact with holy relics could provide the miracle of healing. This chapter flows seamlessly into Chapter Three with its examination of how pilgrims and clergy created Andenken (remembrances) and Abzeichen (badges), which commemorated participation in the pilgrimage. Moreover, Andenken also came to have significant meaning for most pilgrims in that many believed that by coming into contact with the Andenken, physical or spiritual suffering could be healed. No matter how clergy might attempt to count","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Demokratisierung nach Auschwitz: Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Sozialwissenschaften in der Nachkriegszeit by Fabian Link (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910193","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Demokratisierung nach Auschwitz: Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Sozialwissenschaften in der Nachkriegszeit by Fabian Link George Hong Jiang Demokratisierung nach Auschwitz: Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Sozialwissenschaften in der Nachkriegszeit. By Fabian Link. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2022. Pp. 640. Paper €66.00. ISBN 9783835351981. How the public and intellectuals reacted to the Nazi past has been a common theme of both popular culture and academic research. The rise and fall of Nazi Germany are not just a calamitous event in terms of physical destruction but also a negative sea change for intellectual circles. Many untamed brains were banished or chose to emigrate when the Nazis started to construct a totalitarian leviathan, while other scholars stayed and engaged in the government's activities in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Martin Heidegger and Helmut Schelsky. The Frankfurt School, where many members and its heads, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, were Jews, had to live in exile, firstly in Geneva and Paris and then in New York. The various ways different figures dealt with their Nazi past and reengaged in German academia after 1945 shaped Germany's social sciences and democratization process. Focusing on two prominent groups, i.e., the Horkheimer circle and the Schelsky circle, Link's monograph offers a comprehensive and detailed record of their academic and social activities for the three decades between 1931 and 1961. The book has a very clear and coherent structure. The central theme is how the two groups, \"those who came back\" (Rückkehrer) and \"those who stayed [in Germany]\" (Dabeigewesene), conducted social research and thus contributed to Western Germany's democratization after 1945. Part A, as the introduction, presents the historical background of the status quo of social sciences after 1945 in Western Germany. Part B, which occupies over two-thirds of the length of the book, illustrates how the Horkheimer circle and Schelsky circle differed from each other in three fields: social empirical research, sociological analysis, and educational policies. In the first field, while the Horkheimer circle utilized interviews and group experiments to investigate social-psychological sources of totalitarian tendency, the Schelsky circle conducted sociological analyses of families, sexuality, and youngsters after 1945. In the second field, the two groups carried out their respective sociological analyses of [End Page 507] the industrializing society. In the third field, by dint of their administrative positions at universities and their interpersonal relationship with the authorities, the two groups facilitated educational reforms and nurtured new generations of students. Highlighting the debates between relevant figures, such as the positivism dispute (Positivismusstreit), Part C illustrates the epilogue of the divergence. While the Horkheimer circle apparently experienced more physical changes regarding its remigrat","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vor hundert Jahren: Coudenhove-Kalergis Pan-Europa —der Traum von einer demokratischen Weltmacht als Friedensstifter","authors":"Paul Michael Lützeler","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910186","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: In 1922 Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi placed similar articles about a future unified European Democracy in leading newspapers: the Berlin Vossische Zeitung and the Viennese Neue Freie Presse . One year later he published the book Pan-Europa in which he addressed again the cultural, political, economic, monetary, and peace-keeping advantages of a United Europe as one of the world powers. Coudenhove-Kalergi started the first European unification movement, and after 1945 Pan-Europa still inspired the founding fathers of the new European institutions. The book deserves a new reading in times of continental military conflicts. In one regard the author failed miserably: He was a colonialist and did not understand the anti-colonial movements that had already started.","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ufa international. Ein deutscher Filmkonzern mit globalen Ambitionen ed. by Philipp Stiasny, Jürgen Kasten, and Frederik Lang (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910205","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Ufa international. Ein deutscher Filmkonzern mit globalen Ambitionen ed. by Philipp Stiasny, Jürgen Kasten, and Frederik Lang Barbara Mennel Ufa international. Ein deutscher Filmkonzern mit globalen Ambitionen. Edited by Philipp Stiasny, Jürgen Kasten, and Frederik Lang. Munich: edition + kritik, 2021. Pp. 454. Paper €39.00. ISBN 9783869168739. Extremely well-written, well-conceived, nicely illustrated, and thoroughly researched, Ufa international. Ein deutscher Filmkonzern mit globalen Ambitionen expands film studies, advances industry studies, and propels German film history. Each chapter presents significant stand-alone scholarship, while together the contributions map multiple perspectives on Ufa's importance for Germany, Europe, and global cinema. The volume's thematic clusters proceed along a loose historical chronology. The range of topics, from advertising to fashion and financing, exemplifies industry studies' broad scale. The volume serves as an interdisciplinary model for a burgeoning field. Philipp Stiasny's Introduction frames the collection by explaining its time frame, providing a brief overview of the significance of Ufa, and situating it in the context of previous studies. The first section on international co-production and distribution impresses with the combination of scope and detail, representative of the volume. Frederik Lang and Philipp Stiasny's co-authored essay on the relations between Ufa and European countries accounts for individual stars, directors, and films amidst national political tensions and interests. Michael Wedel's study of Hitchcock's time in Babelsberg traces the studio's influence in the director's later work. Similarly, Tobias Nagl's focus on science fiction demonstrates the influence of literature, war technology, the space race, and trick technology, all of which ran up against the Nazi prohibition of circulating information about rockets. The second section deepens the focus on the international circulation of Ufa films. Wolfgang Fuhrmann's essay stresses Ufa's distribution in Guatemala, Mexico, and Brazil. Karina Pryt offers a sophisticated account of the complex politics that defined the relation to Poland, while Karl Sierek traces cooperation with China and Japan, focusing on Japanese producers who visited Ufa and famous German directors abroad. Following the historical trajectory, Roel Vande Winkel recounts the restructuring of the studio during World War II, accounting for failures in the distribution abroad. In the context of international relations, the volume pays special attention to the relation between Ufa and Hollywood. Thomas J. Saunders analyzes the different agreements between Ufa and American studios, portraying the Parufamet-agreement [End Page 499] as an act of desperation. Patrick Rossler captures the challenges in creating advertising materials for other cultural contexts, and Rolf Giesen concentrates on technological transfer for trick and special features, such as m","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Against Kerygma: Blumenberg's Critique of Rudolf Bultmann's Theology","authors":"Peter Uwe Hohendahl","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910189","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: In St. Matthew Passion (1988) Hans Blumenberg singles out the theologian Rudolf Bultmann for harsh criticism. The polemic focusses on his reading of the passion narrative in the Gospel of Matthew. After presenting Bultmann's theological position, the present essay examines the evolution of Blumenberg's critique of Bultmann's theology. While the early criticism focuses on theological issues, in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966) Blumenberg stresses the philosophical-historical aspect, while Work on Myth (1979) foregrounds the question of myth. In St. Matthew Passion theological problems move to the center again, turning Bultmann into the prime example of harmful theology.","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136160793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture by Jacqueline E. Jung (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910192","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture by Jacqueline E. Jung Masha Goldin Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture. By Jacqueline E. Jung. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 327. Cloth $75.00. ISBN 9780300214017. As any researchers, art historians sometimes fail to acknowledge the outdatedness and problematics of the legacies of their discipline's founders. Preoccupied with our objects of study, we also occasionally pay little attention to our working toolkit—writing devices, photographic reproductions, etc. In the research of Gothic sculpture, the Wölfflinian tradition of fixation on an \"ideal\" point of view on sculptures and the attempts to capture it by camera are a case in point. Opposing the dynamic nature of this type of sculpture, such scholarly tendencies led to misconceptions of Gothic sculpture. In Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture, Jung suggests a remedy: through a rigorous reconstruction of medieval encounters between viewers and sculpted bodies, she demonstrates that Gothic sculpture was intended to be perceived and was indeed experienced via \"multifocal, embodied beholding\" (9). As a point of departure, in the first chapter, Jung describes how sculptures came to be designed as responding \"to the real movement of beholder's bodies\" (58). She dates the introduction of this interactivity to the beginning of the thirteenth century and contrasts it with earlier sculptural renderings of human bodies, characterized by physical stiffness and emotional reserve. Building on this dichotomy between \"presentational\" and \"interactional\" sculptures (19), Jung prepares the ground for her overarching claim that Gothic sculpture is particularly relatable, charismatic, and eloquent. In his review of the book, Paul Binski questioned Jung's claim of the exceptionality of Gothic sculpture, recalling that naturalism is but one of a variety of historical visual modes to charge figural representation with affective powers (Oxford Art Journal 44.1, 2021). We should perhaps ask ourselves whether Gothic sculpture seems relatable, especially to us, with our contemporary sensibilities conditioned by visual media with its incessant onslaught of depictions of the human figure. But the more important lesson that Eloquent Bodies imparts is that Gothic sculptors achieved this quality not merely through heightened emotionality but also through a dynamic sense of space and beholding. Chapters Two to Five present a thorough study of the effects of some famous thirteenth-century sculptural groups from cathedrals in the historical boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire (chosen both for their \"enlivenment of space\" and the author's determination to alter our approach to them, 6). Thus, optical corrections along the Pillar of Angels in Strasbourg; the carved soles of the Wise and Foolish Virgins from [End Page 489] Magdeburg; ","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso: Christoph Schlingensief's Opera Village Africa as Postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk ? by Sarah Hegenbart (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910200","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136161170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design ed. by Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910204","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design ed. by Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz Heidi Hakkarainen Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design. Edited by Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz. New York: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 278. Cloth $136.00. ISBN 9781032010526. The volume Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design brings together a number of essays that look into neglected and forgotten aspects of Viennese modernism from various perspectives. It expands the understanding of Viennese modernism by introducing and analyzing institutions, phenomena, and actors that have previously been understudied. The contributors of this edited collection include renowned academic experts who provide a rich variety of case studies that range from Max Oppenheimer and female artists participating in the secessionist and expressionist movements to Wiener Wohnkultur and the reception of Josephine Baker in interwar Vienna. The aim of the book is thus to challenge the grand narrative of Austrian modernism by looking into ideas, aspects, and achievements in Viennese modern art history that have been forgotten, overlooked, or deliberately omitted from narratives that have constructed the cultural memory of Viennese modernism. At the same time, as the front cover portraying the Vienna Secession building circa 1945 suggests, the book frames Viennese modernism within a larger historical framework that spans World War II and into the present. As the editors of the volume, Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz, remind us in the introduction, when the narrative of Viennese modernism around 1900 emerged after World War II as a counterpoint to National Socialism, museum exhibitions and visual culture played an important role in constructing Vienna 1900 as a site of memory in the sense of lieu de mémoire popularized by Pierre Nora. Museums and art institutions took part in shaping the cultural memory of Vienna around 1900 by supporting established art-historical narratives that centered around iconic figures such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka. By looking into the construction of cultural memory of fin-de-siècle Vienna from the perspective of art history, Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design aims to re-evaluate and widen the main narratives and interpretations of Viennese modernism. The book is thus dedicated to the erasure of marginalized artists and their return to the narrative of Vienna 1900 (1). The book proceeds in four sections. Part One discusses the erasure of Jewish artists and critics from the cultural memory of fin-de-siècle Vienna and continues an ongoing [End Page 497] academic discussion on the critical role of Jewish influence on Viennese modernism by focusing especially on visual arts. Although discussion of the Jewish contribution to the cultural production and art scene in fin-de-siècle V","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori ed. by Martin Kagel and David Z. Saltz (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910208","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori ed. by Martin Kagel and David Z. Saltz Michael Bachmann Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori. Edited by Martin Kagel and David Z. Saltz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022. Pp. vii + 200. Cloth $85.00. ISBN 9780472132843. Working tirelessly until his death at age 93, George Tabori (1914–2007) once claimed to be \"the longest-serving theater-maker in the world,\" adding that he had no other home than the stage. This not only speaks to an obsession with theater but also reflects the traumatic history of the twentieth century: Tabori's father was murdered in Auschwitz; his mother narrowly escaped deportation. Born in Budapest to a family of Jewish descent, Tabori spent much of his adult life in Britain and the United States before moving to Germany in 1969. It was there that he had his greatest successes as a playwright and director, most notably with productions of his Holocaust plays The Cannibals (1968/69), My Mother's Courage (1979), Jubilee (1983), and Mein Kampf (1987). As Martin Kagel writes in the insightful introduction to Open Wounds: Holocaust Theater and the Legacy of George Tabori, a collection co-edited with David Z. Saltz, these plays and productions introduced a new model of Holocaust theater. It was distinct from \"sentimental humanism,\" psychological realism, and documentary approaches. Instead, Tabori invested in transgressive humor, metatheatrical reflection, an unusual focus on the victim-perpetrator relationship, and \"the authenticity of the theatrical performance\" (14). This does not refer to a realistic mode of representing history but means an emphasis on the experiential dimension of performance, a disruption of representation through visceral moments of ritual, laughter, embarrassment, and shock. \"Memory? No! Experience\" is the apt title of Alice Le [End Page 505] Trionnaire-Bolterauer's chapter in the collection (50–64). For Tabori, \"true memory\" was only possible through reliving the past \"with skin, nose, tongue, buttocks, feet, and belly,\" as he wrote in his Shylock Improvisations (1978). In the eighties and nineties, Tabori was a towering figure in German theater. Academic studies of his work, such as Anat Feinberg's seminal Embodied Memory: The Theatre of George Tabori (1999), brought his unique memory theater to the attention of an international audience. In her opening chapter for Open Wounds, Feinberg revisits some of the material from the earlier book. Like Kagel's introduction, her contribution serves an important function for the collection. Tabori's work is less well known today than it was twenty years ago: many readers will need the overview given by Feinberg and Kagel, especially since the book's primary focus, as per its subtitle, is on \"the legacy of George Tabori.\" While it is easy to identify his influences—including Brecht, Beckett, Kafka, Open Theater, and Gestalt therapy—the question of Tabor","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin by Laura Bowie (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910195","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin by Laura Bowie Alexandria N. Ruble The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin. By Laura Bowie. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022. Pp 302. 9781789975819. $70.00. The physical destructionand division of Berlin after World War II is well documented, with scars that remain today. Laura Bowie's intriguing new monograph explores how 1968ers envisioned West Berlin's future and reshaped the urban landscape surrounding them. Bowie depicts West Berlin as a product of social, political, and intellectual impulses on a global scale. Her case study is Aktion 507, a group comprised of 120 architectural students at the Technical University of Berlin who sought to highlight the problems with Berlin's urban planning and, by extension, its social and political ailments. To understand 1968, she contends, we must examine micropolitics and everyday life in West Berlin. Dividing the book into three sections, Bowie begins with \"The Present.\" The first chapter, \"Urban Planning and the Formulation of Society,\" explores the impact of the modernist movement on postwar architecture. Prior to the war, the Nazis had wanted to demolish cities to construct the perfect modernist cityscape. Ironically, this wish came true; by 1945, destroyed cities gave postwar architects their opening to redesign urban landscapes. While some city planners had radical visions for a new Berlin, geopolitical realities of occupation and division soon tempered their whims. In addition, the demolition of working-class neighborhoods (such as Wedding and Kreuzberg) and the relocation of their residents were controversial. Planned districts such as Gropiusstadt and the Märkisches Viertel were then developed, but demand for more housing in West Berlin quickly led to revised blueprints and, consequently, unanticipated social problems. Chapter Two, \"Colour in the City,\" covers the use of color in urban planning. Postwar modernists traded prewar ornamentation for bright splashes of color. If drab [End Page 511] colors represented the fascist past and the depressing circumstances of war, then color signified a democratic and bright future. Moreover, color was inexpensive compared to stone carvings. Aktion 507, meanwhile, rejected the premise of city planners prescribing colors for buildings, arguing that it was an inadequate replacement for real social services, such as transportation and kindergartens. Furthermore, they claimed that color had to be determined by the residents, not imposed on them by authorities. Chapter Three, \"Functionalism under Attack,\" begins by placing Aktion 507's critiques in a transnational context. Sociologists worldwide noted that postwar urban environments were not pleasing to their inhabitants, but as Bowie points out, local context mattered. Aktion 507 took several different approaches to criticizing the new urban landscape surrounding them. For example, TU students ","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}