{"title":"PROVINCIALISING BERLIN IN MENSCHEN IM HOTEL","authors":"Meindert Peters","doi":"10.1111/glal.70010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70010","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, I take the peculiar source of Vicki Baum's <i>Menschen im Hotel</i> (1929) in a Southern Moravian town as a starting point to reveal the ways in which the hierarchies between metropolis and province are negotiated and complicated by the novel. Focusing on the provincial in this big-city novel sheds light not only on how the popular image of Weimar-era Berlin — as glamorous and progressive, bountiful and exciting — emerges as the construct of petit-bourgeois, provincial unfamiliarity and excitement, but also on how the novel shows the province itself as less parochial, ignorant and close-minded than the stereotypes suggest. It shows how the novel brings together local and global geographies by entangling provincial life with global and colonial trade. It shows how the newspaper in which it was first printed equally painted a picture of a more provincial Berlin. And it shows how the novel complicates the relation between modernist and conservative aesthetics both in Berlin and in the provinces. Re-reading Baum's novel from the margins thus starts to decentre Berlin from the geographies of Weimar-era modernism and modernity.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"79 1","pages":"57-74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glal.70010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146256488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘QUOD NON EST IN BEROLINA, NON EST IN MUNDO’: VIEWS FROM THE PERIPHERY","authors":"Frank Kessler, Sabine Lenk","doi":"10.1111/glal.70014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70014","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The historiography of Weimar cinema has focused almost exclusively on film production and exhibition in the German capital Berlin, generally neglecting other geographic regions, in particular the Rhineland which, after the First World War, remained under Allied control until the mid-1920s for some parts, for others even longer. This contribution analyses the situation in Düsseldorf, a film distribution hub that was occupied by Belgian and French troops until 1925, based mainly on reports in the trade press and documents issued by the Allied High Commission. The perspective from the periphery makes it possible to ‘provincialise Weimar cinema’ both geographically and by shifting the emphasis from films and production companies, which dominate German cinema historiography, to distribution and exhibition.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"79 1","pages":"37-56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glal.70014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146256487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"AFTERWORD: WEIMAR AND NOW — CULTURE, RACE, POLITICS","authors":"Uta G. Poiger","doi":"10.1111/glal.70015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"79 1","pages":"114-126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147269013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"INTRODUCTION: THE WAITING ROOM OF WEIMAR HISTORY","authors":"Nicholas Baer, Jochen Hung, Britta Schilling","doi":"10.1111/glal.70011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"79 1","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146256426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE PROVINCIAL GLOBALISM OF WEIMAR CINEMA: POLA NEGRI, FRANZISKA GAAL AND THE FOREIGN ACCENT IN GERMAN SILENT AND SOUND FILM","authors":"Anjeana Hans, Philipp Stiasny","doi":"10.1111/glal.70012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70012","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Die Filmindustrie in der Weimarer Republik war ein internationaler Schmelztiegel. Hier arbeiteten Schauspieler, Produzenten, Autoren, Komponisten, Kameraleute und Regisseure aus den verschiedensten Ländern und Kulturen zusammen. Ihre Präsenz war ein Zeichen der Weltoffenheit und der Anziehungskraft der deutschen Filmindustrie. Um ein internationales Publikum zu erreichen, bedienten sich die deutschen Produktionsfirmen mehrerer Strategien, darunter der Einsatz ausländischer Stars. Was daraus folgt, zeigen wir am Beispiel zweier Stars des Weimarer Kinos, die explizit als nicht-deutsch positioniert wurden: die Polin Pola Negri und die Ungarin Franziska Gaal. Wir untersuchen, wie ihre Filme „mit einem Akzent sprachen“ und welche Bedeutung dieser „Akzent“ für ihre Karriere, ihren schauspielerischen Ausdruck und ihre Rollen besaß, nicht erst im Tonfilm, sondern schon im Stummfilm. Artikulieren diese eine mit dem Akzent verbundene Differenz? Was bedeutet es, dass die Industrie auf so viele Stars zurückgriff, die aus dem Ausland kamen, für Internationalität standen und dennoch „provinziell“ erschienen? Denn vielfach verkörperten sie Figuren und Eigenschaften, die mit einer ländlichen oder kleinstädtischen Umgebung assoziiert waren und auf jeden Fall nicht als so „kosmopolitisch“ wie das künstlerische Milieu Berlins wahrgenommen wurden. Infrage steht damit die Vorstellung, dass das Weimarer Kino entweder national oder international, kosmopolitisch oder provinziell sei.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"79 1","pages":"75-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147275049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"REVOLUTION AND ROMANTICISM — THE MEDIATION OF LATIN AMERICAN POETRY IN DEFA DOCUMENTARY FILM OF THE 1970S","authors":"Carla Steinbrecher","doi":"10.1111/glal.70008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70008","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht die Darstellung lateinamerikanischer Lyrik im DEFA-Dokumentarfilm der 1970er Jahre anhand der Filme <i>Pablo Neruda</i> (1973) von Uwe Belz und <i>Erinnerungen an Otto René Castillo</i> (1979) von Karlheinz Mund. DEFA-Dokumentarfilme über die Kulturen der sogenannten „Dritten Welt“ spielten eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Wiederbelebung romantischer Topoi in der kulturellen Produktion der DDR. In beiden Filmen wird Lateinamerika zur exotischen Projektionsfläche, über die Fragen der eigenen politischen und kulturellen Identität verhandelt werden. Hierbei mobilisieren die Filme Bilder und Tropen, die romantische Topoi, wie die des Goldenen Zeitalters und des „edlen Wilden“, reproduzieren. Der Vergleich der Filme macht allerdings auch eine Verschiebung in der Art und Weise sichtbar, wie Fragen über den gegenwärtigen Zustand (und die Zukunft) des Sozialismus auf die historische und kulturelle Landschaft Lateinamerikas projiziert wurden. <i>Pablo Neruda</i> lässt Narrative des revolutionären Kampfes und der sozialistischen Staatenbildung wiederaufleben, die Vorstellungen von „Volkskultur“ und „Volkspoesie“ entsprechen, wie sie den Gründungsdiskurs der DDR geprägt hatten. In <i>Erinnerungen an Otto René Castillo</i> dominieren dagegen spätromantische Tropen von Sehnsucht und Entfremdung, die teleologische sozialistische Fortschrittsnarrative im Kontext internationaler Konflikte hinterfragen.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"78 4","pages":"508-526"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145341463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ZWEIGS SAMMLUNG | SAMMLUNG ZWEIG: LITERARY PROVENANCE AND THE STEFAN ZWEIG COLLECTIONS IN BRITAIN","authors":"Stefanie Hundehege","doi":"10.1111/glal.70003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70003","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Libraries and archives increasingly have to face questions concerning the origins and transmission paths of their holdings. Based on acquisition records as well as private and institutional correspondence, this article traces the history of book and autograph collections formerly owned by Austrian writer and collector Stefan Zweig which are held in Britain today or were held there temporarily in the past. Investigating the provenance of these holdings not only contributes to meeting the demand for more transparency; the history of the Stefan Zweig collections within the different institutions also shows how migration and war affected material politics and awareness in libraries and archives after 1945. What was collected and handed down where? What were the collection policies and research interests these institutions had at the time and how have these changed, along with the institutions themselves and their sponsors, and what impact has this had on the Zweig collections themselves? Finally, investigating these collections’ translocations further substantiates the complex interconnectedness of private collectors, institutional acquisition policies, the commercial book trade, and literary research interests in the twentieth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"78 4","pages":"456-479"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glal.70003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145341504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"STADTMITTE UMSTEIGEN? HEINZ KNOBLOCH AND THE ‘ARCHAEOLOGICAL’ TRACES OF BERLIN'S GHOST STATIONS","authors":"Laura Bradley","doi":"10.1111/glal.70007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 1982, the East German journalist Heinz Knobloch published a volume entitled <i>Stadtmitte umsteigen</i>. Its title was provocative: since the construction of the Berlin Wall, it had not been possible to change trains at Stadtmitte in East Berlin, as one of the two lines functioned only as a transit route between the north and south of West Berlin. In the opening text, Knobloch invites readers to join him in an imaginary excavation of Stadtmitte station, uncovering memories of its status as an interchange and its role during the final days of the Third Reich. By exploring this text alongside Knobloch's manuscripts, GDR government files, eyewitness accounts and press material, this article expands the range of his ‘archaeological’ approach, shedding new light on Berlin's ghost stations. What Knobloch could never have imagined is that the GDR government planned to reintegrate the transit routes into East Berlin's underground network. These plans would have brought the ghost stations back to life, blocking the transit route used by the 50,000 West Berlin passengers who passed through Stadtmitte each day. The repeated deferral of these plans shows how logistical ties helped to maintain a precarious stability beneath the Iron Curtain.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"78 4","pages":"527-543"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glal.70007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145341696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"DER KOMPONIST ALS „VERBRECHER“. BÜLOW CONTRA NIETZSCHE – NIETZSCHE VERSUS WAGNER: EINE RETOURKUTSCHE MIT ADRESSATENWECHSEL?","authors":"Barbara Neymeyr","doi":"10.1111/glal.70004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70004","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This essay develops new perspectives on Nietzsche's complex relationship with Richard Wagner by including an area of conflict that is important for the overall picture but has been overlooked in research to date: the profound insult to Nietzsche's ambitions as a composer caused by the harsh, almost scathing criticism of the musician Hans von Bülow from Wagner's circle. As will be shown, there are striking parallels between Bülow's criticism of Nietzsche's composition <i>Manfred Meditation</i> (1872) and Nietzsche's polemical attacks (between 1887 and 1889) on Wagner. This suggests that the vehement criticism of Wagner by Nietzsche also reflects his early traumatic experience at Bülow's hands. In fact, Nietzsche uses the same harsh judgement that Bülow had directed against him to attack Wagner, especially his opera <i>Parsifal</i>, right down to the details of the wording. While the middle section of this article explores these astonishing connections for the first time, the contextual framework of Sections I and III focuses on the conflict-laden life situation of the early Nietzsche as well as key aspects of the tense friendship between Nietzsche and Wagner, a relationship characterised by striking ambivalences until contact was finally broken off.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"78 4","pages":"432-455"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glal.70004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145341490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"FROM MILAN TO WEST BERLIN: SPATIAL ALIENATION AND THE POST-1945 ANXIOGENIC CITYSCAPE IN ANNA MARIA ORTESE'S SILENZIO A MILANO AND INGEBORG BACHMANN'S ‘EIN ORT FÜR ZUFÄLLE’","authors":"Roberto Interdonato","doi":"10.1111/glal.70006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70006","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines Anna Maria Ortese's collection of journalistic reportages and short stories, <i>Silenzio a Milano</i> (Silence in Milan, 1958), and Ingeborg Bachmann's speech ‘Ein Ort für Zufälle’ (17 October 1964). It focuses on their topophobic images of Milan and West Berlin, the anxious representations of these post-1945 urban landscapes. Their pathographies of 1950s Milan and 1960s West Berlin are explored by linking contemporary studies on alienation with the polarity of affective responses to space. The analysis especially resorts to Gaston Bachelard's and Yi-Fu Tuan's discourses of topoaffective polarities, that is topophobia and topophilia, as a starting point to highlight Ortese's and Bachmann's shared focus on the material, psychic and social character of peacetime Italian and West German societies. While recognising the texts’ differences in genre and degree of negativity, the article reads the complex representations of the ‘pathological’ relationality between the self and the socially constructed world in <i>Silenzio a Milano</i> and ‘Ein Ort für Zufälle’ as topical metaphors for alienation in urban capitalism. It positions Ortese and Bachmann as critics not only of the haunted histories of Nazi-fascism but also of post-1945 European models of growth.</p>","PeriodicalId":54012,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS","volume":"78 4","pages":"544-566"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glal.70006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145341485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}