Stephen Brockmann

A historical survey of German films as works of art from the beginnings to the present, suitable for classroom use.

A Critical History of German Film

Shows that while the GDR is generally seen as - and mostly was - an oppressive and unfree country, from late 1989 until autumn 1990 it was the "freest country in the world" the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained. Stephen Brockmann's new book explores the year 1989/1990 in East Germany, arguing that while the GDR is generally seen as - and was for most of its forty years - an oppressive and unfree country, from autumn 1989 until the autumn of 1990 it was the "freest country in the world," since the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained. That such freedom existed in the last months of the GDR and was a result of the actions of East Germans themselves has been obscured, Brockmann shows, by the now-standard description of the collapse of the GDR and the reunification of Germany as a triumph of Western democracy and capitalism. Brockmann first addresses the culture of 1989/1990 by looking at various media from that final year, particularly film documentaries. He emphasizes punk culture and the growth of neo-Nazism and the Antifa movement - factors often ignored in accounts of the period. He then analyzes three later semiautobiographical novels about the period. He devotes chapters to dramatic films dealing with German reunification made relatively soon after the event and to more recent film and television depictions of the period, respectively. The final chapter looks at monuments and memorials of the 1989/1990 period, and a conclusion considers the implications of the book's findings for the present day.

East Germany's Final Year in Culture and Memory

The Freest Country in the World

Bertolt Brecht in Context examines Brecht's significance and contributions as a writer and the most influential playwright of the twentieth century. It explores the specific context from which he emerged in imperial Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as Brecht's response to the turbulent German history of the twentieth century: World Wars One and Two, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship, the experience of exile, and ultimately the division of Germany into two competing political blocs divided by the postwar Iron Curtain. Throughout this turbulence, and in spite of it, Brecht managed to remain extraordinarily productive, revolutionizing the theater of the twentieth century and developing a new approach to language and performance. Because of his unparalleled radicalism and influence, Brecht remains controversial to this day. This book - with a Foreword by Mark Ravenhill - lays out in clear and accessible language the shape of Brecht's contribution and the reasons for his ongoing influence.

Bertolt Brecht in Context

Jürgen Hillesheim

Mathias Mayer

Brecht and Death addresses fundamental issues in Brecht's relationship to death: from his own personal approach to death to the complex ways that death is addressed or evaded in his major literary and theatrical works, as well as in his theoretical writings. Brecht's status as a revenant (a Wiedergänger) in contemporary society is explored: the various ways in which “Brecht” as a cultural signifier continues to exist over five decades after the death of Brecht as a person. Essays ask how a materialist and atheist like Brecht was or was not able to find consolation in aesthetic-political theories and practices that, for him, replaced religious beliefs and rituals that he rejected. The volume includes essays by some of the leading figures in international Brecht scholarship—among others, Jost Hermand, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Marc Silberman, Karen Leeder, and Tom Kuhn.

Brecht and Death

Bertolt Brecht in Context examines Brecht's significance and contributions as a writer and the most influential playwright of the twentieth century. It explores the specific context from which he emerged in imperial Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as Brecht's response to the turbulent German history of the twentieth century: World Wars One and Two, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship, the experience of exile, and ultimately the division of Germany into two competing political blocs divided by the postwar Iron Curtain. Throughout this turbulence, and in spite of it, Brecht managed to remain extraordinarily productive, revolutionizing the theater of the twentieth century and developing a new approach to language and performance. Because of his unparalleled radicalism and influence, Brecht remains controversial to this day. This book – with a Foreword by Mark Ravenhill – lays out in clear and accessible language the shape of Brecht's contribution and the reasons for his ongoing influence.

Examines the intense intellectual debates in immediate postwar Germany, often conducted in literature or literary discourse.

German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour

Frank Trommler

The Emergence of Postwar German Culture

Revisiting Zero Hour 1945

James D. Steakley

As Brecht's Galileo observed, a country which needs heroes is unfortunate indeed – words which suggest that a society's need for heroes is always a function of its shortcomings. By examining the role that heroes and heroism have played in German literature and culture over the past two centuries, the essays in this volume illuminate and contour both a flawed German society in need of heroes and the flawed but essential heroes brought forth by that society. Beginning in he era of the anti-Napoleontic Wars of Liberation, advancing to the challenging situation Germany faced at the end of World War II, and concluding with the current reemergence of a unified Germany after almost half a century of division, this volume broadens our understanding of the inadequacies and breakdowns of German society. In addition to analyses of heroism in German culture during the last two centuries, this volume contains the first major essays in English on cultural representations of disability in German culture and on AIDS in German literature, as well as two essays on the scholarly accomplishments of Jost Hermand, to whom all of the essays in the volume are dedicated.

Essays in Honor of Jost Hermand, April 2000

Heroes and Heroism in German Culture

Traces the development of ideas of Nuremberg as cultural and spiritual capital, thus offering a coherent view of German cultural and intellectual history.

Stephen Brockmann

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