German Studies Review最新文献

{"title":"Revisiting Sebastian Haffner’s memoir Geschichte eines Deutschen in the Context of Contemporary Political Trends","authors":"F. Finlay","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0038","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Recent years have seen an authoritarian turn on a global scale which has stoked worries about the future of democracy and its institutions. Commentators, particularly in the United States, have made widespread comparisons with the 1920s and 1930s that bred fascism. Via a primary focus on a close reading of the fragmentary memoir Geschichte eines Deutschen by Sebastian Haffner (1907–1999), this article problematizes the drawing of historical analogies and assesses their validity and utility. Re-reading Haffner points to significant differences and also certain parallels between the experience of Weimar Germany and the political landscape of the present-day United States.","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45717971","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":"Beyond the Simulation: Reading, Trans-Corporeality, and Juli Zeh","authors":"Necia Chronister","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0039","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Few contemporary authors challenge the binaries that govern our reading experience—mind/body, fictional/real, self/other—like Juli Zeh does. She creates fictional worlds in which the material body, the physical environment, and the world of discourse are shown to be enmeshed; collapses distinctions between fictional and real worlds; and foregrounds the material body within her own political discourse. Zeh’s works thus provide an opportunity to think through the role of embodiment when we read fiction. I contend that reading Zeh through Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality supports findings in the neurosciences on “embodied semantics.” Reading fiction is a full-body endeavor.","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46724569","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":"“A Temporality of Imminent, Never-Consummated Arrival”: Contemporary German Documentaries on North Korea","authors":"Qing Zhou","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0042","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article investigates two contemporary German documentaries that attempt to look beyond negative stereotypes of North Korea: Eine Postkarte aus Pjöngjang (Gregor Möllers and Anne Lewald, 2019) and Meine Brüder und Schwestern im Norden (Cho Sung-hyung, 2016). I argue that the films put forward “a temporality of imminent, never-consummated arrival” by projecting multifaceted imagination onto the natural and urban landscapes of North Korea. In Postcard, the future of transnational solidarity has remained forestalled from the GDR era to the present; in Cho’s film, the affect of ethnic unity is suspended in a perpetual oscillation between identification and non-belonging.","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44772280","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":"Forms of Life: Aesthetics and Biopolitics in German Culture by Andreas Gailus (review)","authors":"Johannes Türk","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0048","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43447694","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":"Coping With Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) by Sigrun Haude (review)","authors":"Peter Thaler","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0049","url":null,"abstract":"Stimulated by pertinent anniversaries, researchers have reexamined the history of the Thirty Years’ War in recent years. A noteworthy aspect has been the widespread focus on individual suffering. Sigrun Haude’s study of personal experiences and coping strategies during the great central European cataclysm of the seventeenth century fits in perfectly with this scholarly reorientation. Having analyzed the confessional era in central Europe in several previous books, Haude came well-prepared for her task. In her current study, she explores how people tried to survive the Thirty Years’ War; on what resources they drew to endure violence, hunger, loss, and disease; and how they tried to make sense of a conflict that appeared ever more meaningless (6). To answer these questions, she primarily turns to well-known contemporary diaries, which she complements with archival sources from southern German archives. Haude centers her investigation on Bavaria and Franconia, which provides for both regional proximity and denominational variation, as Bavaria was strictly Catholic, whereas significant parts of Franconia were Lutheran. The core of the study draws on personal accounts by members of the clergy. These sources might be described as ego-documents, but Haude considers this term insufficient because the texts are strongly colored by their social context and thus reflect more than an individual perspective. Most important for the study are the testimonies provided by the Augustine prioress Clara Staiger, the Benedictine abbots Maurus Friesenegger and Veit Höser, the Dominican nun Maria Anna Junius, and the Lutheran pastor Bartholomäus Dietwar. These personal accounts show a complex web of experiences. Most universally, they express fear. Life had lost all stability—people lived in constant expectation of violence, dislocation, hunger, and poverty. Local governments tried to ameliorate these consequences of war but to little avail. In fact, troops sent to protect the populace were just as likely to commit violence or cause starvation as the invading armies they were supposed to repel. The ravages of war deepened the need for protection not only in military terms but also in spiritual terms. With regard to the latter, the religious remedies offered by the churches frequently proved insufficient, which increased the demand for more unorthodox measures commonly denoted as magic. Another source of resilience was humor, which several protagonists were able to muster even during the most challenging periods. Finally, some of the authors also describe the possibility of respectful interactions and exchanges between supposed enemies. Oftentimes it","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47061046","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":"GSA Awards 2022","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46702094","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":"Heidegger in the Literary World: Variations on Poetic Thinking ed. by Florian Grosser and Nassima Sahraoui (review)","authors":"Elias Schwieler","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0025","url":null,"abstract":"the film is in critical dialogue with Walter Benjamin’s views on childhood and youth; recent developments in cinema and the rise of child stars in Hollywood; and the current political situation between Nazi Germany and France. It is less clear how the text, based on a “Rashomon effect” of subjective perception, should be read not only as a plea for political realism and enlightenment but also as a critique of the Enlightenment famously elaborated in his “Ornament der Masse” (1927), as Rühse argues (210–212). Chapter six starts with the observation that Kracauer intended in his “Marseiller Entwurf,” his most developed attempt to write a book on film during his last year in France (1940/1941), to include a final chapter on one of Eisenstein’s unfinished film projects in Mexico, the short film Death Day (1934), independently edited by Sol Lesser. While Kracauer’s view of Eisenstein turned more critical in his Theory of Film towards the end of his life, Rühse pursues the striking claim that Kracauer’s theory of film originally hinged on his—misguided—understanding of Eisenstein’s political film work in Mexico and his view of the relationship between film and death, of which only a brief and enigmatic passage survives as a draft for an introduction to his “Marseiller Entwurf” (237). The book closes with a concise resume (chapter seven) that will prove useful for a hurried reader of Rühse’s work, as it contains several insights for scholars interested in Kracauer, film history, and cultural histories of Weimar Germany. In addition, Rühse’s book includes towards the ends of the chapters several passages that “update” Kracauer’s early work by connecting it further to literature, art, architecture, and film, including works by the French author and former cashier Anna Sam and the American artist Edward Hopper, contemporary dine-in cinema in New York, the Swiss short film Sounds of Nature (2013) by Simon Weber, as well as recent Academy award winners such as The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino (2013) and Coco by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina (2017). These digressions, while largely convincing in their respective analyses, leave the reader somewhat puzzled, as their relevance to the book largely rests on the fact that motifs of early cinema persist—as mirrors—under considerably different circumstances in the contemporary popular culture of the Western world. Frederic Ponten, University of Regensburg","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42953211","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 Enduring Radicality of Hannah Arendt","authors":"S. Lederman","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Interest in the mid-twentieth-century German Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt seems to be anything but waning. For many, it seems, she remains an important companion to come to grips with the contemporary world, how it came to be, and how scared or hopeful we should feel. The three books reviewed here are centered on significantly different themes, but they all reflect thought-provoking attempts to keep Arendt as a companion for thinking about the present, even when they deal with the past or with seemingly abstract philosophical questions. Toward the end of the introduction to her biography on Arendt, Samantha Rose Hill notes that while Arendt did not expect her poems, journals, and love letters to be made public, she might have imagined others “discovering her papers and finding friendship in them as she had done with Rahel [Varnhagen]” (15). Perhaps more than anything, Hill’s biography is indeed an intimate portrayal of Arendt, as if she was writing about an old friend. It is an especially common tendency among commentators on Arendt to write either with a sense of palpable hostility or, as here, a strangely deep familiarity and intimacy. One may even speculate that the choice to write a biography of Arendt was driven more by a wish to share this intimacy and familiarity than by a","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42245637","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":"Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Philosophy ed. by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and C. Allen Speight","authors":"Tanvi Solanki","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0018","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Philosophy ed. by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and C. Allen Speight Tanvi Solanki Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Philosophy. Edited by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and C. Allen Speight. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 296. Paper $39.81. ISBN 978-0190859251. Philosophical approaches to Goethe's oeuvre generally do not include Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, but rather Goethe's morphology, theory of colors, or explicit literary engagements with philosophers such as Spinoza. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a novel of formation or a Bildungsroman, tells of a young man from a well-off merchant family, who rebels against his father and flees his home to join precarious traveling theater troupes, falls in love and has several affairs, and eventually is somewhat socialized into bourgeois society. It is unusual to suggest that it is a philosophical novel or philosophy as such. As of 2021, the collaborative \"Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts\" treats Goethe as a philosopher rather than a poet, dramatist, or novelist and selects terms treated as philosophical rather than poetic concepts, most of which do not concern Wilhelm Meister specifically. Eldridge and Speight's timely volume can thus be situated as a valuable contribution to recent debates about how Goethe's literary works can be approached philosophically. The editors seek to explore what the particularities of a work of literature can tell us about universal and fundamental questions about life such as gender and sexuality, contingency, and authority. Rather than limiting their aim to argue for the novel to be included within the Western philosophical canon, the editors seek to redefine what would and would not count as a philosophical question, and how such questions could be best addressed in the open-ended, all-inclusive genre of the novel. While this might be new to some contemporary philosophers, especially those hailing from the Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy, it is still worth emphasizing, though it was already an inspiration for Friedrich Schlegel's 1799 philosophical novel Lucinde. For anyone reading, writing about, and teaching Wilhelm Meister in the current political climate, the question concerning the protagonist Wilhelm's identity is unavoidable. It is no longer possible to treat as unmarked and normative that the central figure of Goethe's hugely influential Bildungsroman hails from a wealthy [End Page 155] family and is a white, heterosexual, European male who has the privilege to opt to lead a wayward life of an artist who earns little or no money, though he has the option to follow his father's profession as a businessman. While the editors acknowledge Wilhelm's privileged identity, they argue that the novel nonetheless has relevance today and raises important questions with which all can engage. One strength of the volume is its inclusion of a collection of high-quality ess","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135003427","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":"Ideologies on Learner Subjectivity in the German Integration Course","authors":"Richmond Embeywa","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.0009","url":null,"abstract":"These questions should be discussed in a polyphonic way in German studies, as they also trigger a reflection on the discipline itself. Can German studies—here I refer to Max Czollek’s quote at the beginning of my paper—really afford to exclude a significant portion of society (students, readers, scholars, etc.)? The answer is clearly no. Falling student numbers show that German studies must expand to include new content, methods, and theories, and critically question itself. Black German literature is not a trend, but has long been a part of German society, and it should be treated with such respect. I see my research as a contribution against its simplification, marginalization, and racialization. For the near future, I would like to see Black German literature brought into the spotlight as a part of literary history and society in all its beauty, complexity, and plurality. If German studies wants to continue to exist and become part of a pluralistic society, it must change, or it will no longer be.","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44185712","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}