Academic literature on the topic 'German literature (1945-1989)'

How is Brecht regarded in Germany? His reputation in the two Germaniesrose and fell and rose again during the period from 1945 to the Fall of the Wall in 1989. Then, in the s a new, less ideological, less moralistic understanding Brecht was introduced. Haunting this and all other recent German opinions about Brecht is Heiner Mller.

The title of the story What Remains by Christa Wolf denotes one of the main topics of the present discussion about German literature after 1989. The article presents the new questions (e.g. one or two German literature(s)? What does ‘GDR literature‘ mean? Is it a ‘special case’?) and changing conditions of the study of East German literature. A few new historical works discussing German literature since 1945, mainly since the reunification, and a few theoretical approaches (e.g. GDR literature as a chronotope and as regional literature) are presented.

The article aims to indicate what freedom models have been created in post-1945 German literature. What seems particularly interesting is looking into the development of literary motifs in correlation with political events and social movements. The articles refer to such significant milestones as 1945, 1968, 1989, 2011, and finally, 2015. Theses surrounding the theories of contemporariness and modernization are key to those thoughtful considerations. The processes of individualization and hybridization occurring within one world experiencing globalization are also important.

In this essay Habermas contends that, until 1989, four phases are discernible in how postwar Germany attempted to come to terms with its “unmasterable past.” Between the end of the war in 1945 and the foundation of two German states in 1949, the first reconstruction generation mythologized the Nazi period as a criminal abyss. If this strategy allowed the government of the Federal Republic to assume legal responsibility for reparation claims, it also served to release individuals from working through their own painful pasts. This stage yielded to a second phase, one of “communicative silencing,” during the Adenauer years from 1949-63 in which the second reconstruction generation chose not to speak of the past but rather to concentrate on building the Wirtschaftswunder. The student movement of the 1960s challenged this presentism with demands for disclosure and accountability, and from the mid-1970s until 1989 this quest for unmasking existed in tension with an ongoing desire for evasion. This tension drove the “Historians’ Debate” of those years. Since reunification in 1989, Germany’s attitude toward its past has remained ambivalent. Today a New Right calls for the self-confident reassertion of a German nation unburdened by its past. But the past will lose its hold over Germany, Habermas argues, only through the work of a truly faithful memory.

SURVEILLANCE AND SPYING IN NEW GERMAN LITERATURESurveillance is a remarkably prominent issue in the actual political debate in Germany. It is undoubtedly connected with past experiences. Both the Nazi-regime and the communist dictatorship in East Germany from 1945‑1989 developed sophisticated systems for controlling citizens, thus the modern sensibility in Germany toward surveillance is explicitly a reaction against those regimes. “Never more a GDR” is a slogan that is often seen in newspapers and Internet sites.It is surprising however that this topic has had a relatively insignificant position in new German literature since the fall of the wall. In the late eighties and early nineties surveillance and spying was treated with humour and forbearance: there was something comical about the spy-game; the spies were often poor guys and it was the general conviction that the system would disappear with the reunion.All this has changed after September 11th and the fight against terrorism which it activated. The opening up of the Stasi archives has also drawn new attention and sensibility to the issue. Two examples of this new tone are presented: Susanne Schädlich writes about her uncle spying on her father Hans-Joachim Schädlich – also after his emigration to Western Germany. It is a story about a family fission and of how to continue one’s life with the treachery of a once beloved person. Juli Zeh uses her education and training as a jurist to scrutinize the total system of surveillance in a society still claiming to be democratic. She does so in a collection of essays (with Ilija Trojanow) and in her best seller novels, latest Corpus delicti with the Kafka-sounding subtitle “a process”. Juli Zeh is the most prominent example of the tendency in new German literature to take up the tradition from the GDR-literature with its ethical obligation and fight against the totalitarian state. She is an example of the tendency to activate this special German tradition under new political circumstances – and new global perspectives.

The reception of literature written in German in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War was (and still is) in a hybrid position, oscillating between aversion to historical events that still resonate in Czech culture and society, and interest due to intensive cultural contacts and exchange projects between Germany and the Czech Republic. The reception of works by Paul Celan was all the more complicated because Jewish issues were by and large considered undesirable by the communist regime. The regime was officially only anti-Zionist, but de facto, as is well known, this meant anti-Semitic. In this article, attention is drawn to a neglected aspect of the surprising history of the reception of Celan’s poems in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1989 (with a brief excursion into the period 1990–2020) – namely, the “mediating function” of paratexts in the totalitarian regime. The first part briefly presents a definition of the term “paratext” and outlines the function of this type of text (taking into account the specific situation in which literature found itself in socialist Czechoslovakia). The following part illustrates the “mediating function” of paratexts in the Czechoslovak and the Czech editions of Celan’s poems.

Great Britain participated in the decision at the Potsdam Conference to hand over to Poland the territory of the former Free City of Danzig. The area was not recognized as part of Germany by the Great Powers. The aim of the article is to analyze the role that Gdańsk played in British policy towards Poland from the end of the Second World War to the fall of communist rule. It is based on archival research in the National Archives, Kew, supplemented by published British and Polish diplomatic documents, diaries and academic literature on the subject. Based on these sources, the author argues that the importance of the city of Gdańsk in British policy toward the region of East Central Europe diminished during the Cold War in comparison to the city’s role as the Free City of Danzig 1919–1939. However, its place was dynamic as Gdańsk became an important center of protests against the communist authorities in the 1970s and 1980s. The city played a special role since the strikes in August 1980, becoming the center of activity of the Solidarity Trade Union. The culmination of British interest was Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Gdańsk in 1988.

Among the various “natural laboratories” of high natural or technical enhanced natural radiation environments in the world such as Kerala (India), Brazil, Ramsar (Iran), etc., the areas in and around the Central European Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) in the southern parts of former East Germany, but also including parts of Thuringia, northern Bohemia (now Czech Republic), and northeastern Bavaria, are still relatively little known internationally. Although this area played a central role in the history of radioactivity and radiation effects on humans over centuries, most of the valuable earlier results have not been published in English or quotable according to the current rules in the scientific literature and therefore are not generally known internationally. During the years 1945 to 1989, this area was one of the world's most important uranium mining areas, providing the former Soviet Union with 300,000 tons of uranium for its military programs. Most data related to health effects of radon and other carcinogenic agents on miners and residents became available only during the years after German reunification. Many of the studies are still unpublished, or more or less internal reports. By now, substantial studies have been performed on the previously unavailable data about the miners and the population, providing valuable insights that are, to a large degree, in disagreement with the opinion of various international bodies assuming an increase of lung cancer risk in the order of 10% for each 100 Bq/m3 (or doubling for 1000 Bq/m3), even for small residential radon concentrations. At the same time, other studies focusing on never-smokers show little or no effects of residential radon exposures. Experiments in medical clinics using radon on a large scale as a therapeutic against various rheumatic and arthritic disease demonstrated in randomized double-blind studies the effectiveness of such treatments. The main purpose of this review is to critically examine, including some historical references, recent results primarily in three areas, namely the possible effects of the inhalation of very high radon concentrations on miners; the effect of increased residential radon concentrations on the population; and the therapeutic use of radon. With many of the results still evolving and/or under intense discussion among the experts, more evidence is emerging that radon, which has been inhaled at extremely high concentrations in the multimillion Bq/m3 range by many of older miners (however, with substantial confounders, and large uncertainties in retrospective dosimetry), was perhaps an important but not the dominating factor for an increase in lung cancer rates. Other factors such as smoking, inhalation of quartz and mineral dust, arsenic, nitrous gases, etc. are likely to be more serious contributors to increased miner lung cancer rates. An extrapolation of miner data to indoor radon situations is not feasible. Concerning indoor radon studies, the by far dominating effect of smoking on the lung cancer incidence makes the results of some studies, apparently showing a positive dose-response relationship, questionable. According to recent studies in several countries, there are no, or beneficial, residential radon effects below about 600 to 1000 Bq/m3 (the extensive studies in the U.S., in particular by B. Cohen, and the discussions about these data, will not be part of this review, because they have already been discussed in detail in the U.S. literature). As a cause of lung cancer, radon seems to rank — behind active and passive smoking, and probably also air pollution in densely populated and/or industrial areas (diesel exhaust soot, etc.) — as a minor contributor in cases of extremely high residential radon levels, combined with heavy smoking of the residents. As demonstrated in an increasing number of randomized double-blind clinical studies for various painful inflammatory joint diseases such as rheumatism, arthritic problems, and Morbus Bechterew, radon treatments are beneficial, with the positive effect lasting until at least 6 months after the normally 3-week treatment by inhalation or bathes. Studies on the mechanism of these effects are progressing. In other cases of extensive use of radon treatment for a wide spectrum of various diseases, for example, in the former Soviet Union, the positive results are not so well established. However, according to a century of radon treatment experience (after millenniums of unknown radon therapy), in particular in Germany and Austria, the positive medical effects for some diseases far exceed any potential detrimental health effects. The total amount of available data in this field is too large to be covered in a brief review. Therefore, less known — in particular recent — work from Central Europe has been analyzed in an attempt to summarize new developments and trends. This includes cost/benefit aspects of radon reduction programs. As a test case for the LNT (linear non-threshold) hypothesis and possible biopositive effects of low radiation exposures, the data support a nonlinear human response to low and medium-level radon exposures.

Le présent travail est une étude en littérature sur la représentation de la catastrophe nucléaire dans la littérature germanophone entre 1945 et 1989. Cette thématique est mise en relation avec les débats actuels sur la nouvelle ère géologique de l'anthropocène. En effet, plusieurs géologues estiment qu'une des preuves les plus significatives du début de l'anthropocène réside dans l'utilisation du nucléaire à partir des années cinquante. En analysant des œuvres littéraires parues entre la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale et la chute du mur de Berlin, ce travail s'efforce de traiter plusieurs questionnements. Il consiste à montrer les différentes manières dont la littérature aborde le thème de la catastrophe nucléaire. La question centrale est de savoir à quel point cette littérature et la représentation de la catastrophe nucléaire sont une première prise de conscience précoce de l'ère de l'anthropocène avant même l'émergence du terme au début des années 2000. La première partie de notre recherche souhaite montrer dans quelle mesure le récit catastrophique de l'anthropocène se manifeste dans cette littérature sur le nucléaire. Dans la deuxième partie, la question soulevée concerne le personnage du « dernier homme » (terme introduit par le philosophe Günther Anders) comme un personnage de l'anthropocène et un personnage central de la littérature qui s'attache à la question du nucléaire. Se basant sur les thèses de Günther Anders, la dernière partie questionne l'existence, dans le corpus retenu, de la critique de l'anthropocentrisme de l'homme, démontrant que le raisonnement d'Anders contribue à enrichir ce narratif de la catastrophe. L'objectif de cette étude n'est pas de montrer qu'une littérature de l'anthropocène n'a pas existé avant 1945 mais bel est bien de prouver que la littérature sur l'utilisation du nucléaire est par excellence une littérature de l'anthropocène
The present work is a study of literature on the theme of nuclear power, with particular reference to the representation of nuclear catastrophe in German literature from 1945 to 1989. This theme is linked to current debates on the new geological era of the Anthropocene. Indeed, many geologists assume that one of the most significant signs of the onset of the Anthropocene is the use of nuclear power from the 1950s onwards. By analysing literary works published between the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, this work seeks to address several issues. It shows the different ways in which literature deals with the theme of nuclear catastrophe. The central question is to what extent this literature and the representation of nuclear catastrophe represent an early awareness of the Anthropocene era, even before the emergence of the term in the early 2000s. The first part of our research aims to show the extent to which the catastrophic narrative of the Anthropocene manifests itself in this nuclear literature. In the second part, the question raised concerns the character of the “Last Man” (a term introduced by the German philosopher Günther Anders) as a figure of the Anthropocene and a central figure in the literature that focuses on the nuclear issue. Based on the theses of Günther Anders, the final part questions the existence, in the selected corpus, of the critique of man's anthropocentrism, demonstrating that Anders' reasoning contributes to enriching this narrative of catastrophe. The aim of this study is not to show that a literature of the Anthropocene did not exist before 1945, but rather to prove that the literature on the use of nuclear energy is par excellence a literature of the Anthropocene

Focusing on transborder travel narratives by two German authors and one Polish author, “Cold War Crossings” investigates how their writing responds to the postwar demarcation of separate Eastern and Western spheres of influences. Central to each of their oeuvres is the topos of the border broadly conceived, from the material, ideological, and psychic boundaries of the Iron Curtain to the Saussurean bar of the linguistic sign. By presenting border-crossing as an act of both political and aesthetic transgression, these writers advance uniquely literary alternatives to the rigid geopolitical divisions of their age. This dissertation analyzes the way in which each author’s poetics of the border informs, among other things, their manipulation of narrative structure, their unique employment of figurative language, and their shared proclivity for intertextuality, all of which address and reorient different kinds of textual boundaries. In this way, it is a contribution to the ever-expanding field of border studies and other scholarly investigations of the discursive production of mental maps. At the same time, however, the dissertation argues by way of its three case studies for a closer examination of the formal elements of literary texts that often go overlooked in such analyses. Conceived as an interdisciplinary and comparative study, “Cold War Crossings” seeks to overstep barriers between national literatures as well as disciplines by combining cultural studies, literary criticism, and historical analysis. Furthermore, the dissertation’s joint study of German and Polish literatures also contributes to recent debates on Europe as it counteracts traditional Eurocentric approaches that disregard Eastern Europe.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, public discourse in German society has been repeatedly riven by debates prompted by three leading figures of the literary scene: Günter Grass, Martin Walser, and Christa Wolf. The tremendously emotional controversies regarding Wolf's purported cowardice as a GDR-writer, Walser's alleged anti-Semitism, and Grass's membership in the Waffen-SS served to confirm the significance of these writers, which, I argue, stems not only from their literary merits, but also from their status as former members of the Hitler Youth. Building upon Sigrid Weigel's claim that generations in post-war Germany act as symbols of the country's relationship to the Nazi past, my dissertation elucidates the process by which Grass, Walser, and Wolf were adopted--and adopted themselves--as proxies for a "better Germany." The biographies of these three writers, I argue, came to represent the overarching political goal of both post-war German states: the successful transition from an intimate association with the Nazi regime - in the authors' case, their associations with the Hitler Youth - to a full embrace of democratic values. The conflation of the writers' biographies with national identity explains their authority and popularity in both German societies. It also explains why the process of detachment from these writers as political figures began after 1990 as national identity changed after reunification. With the waning of the Hitler Youth generation's dominance in the public sphere, a re-evaluation of the writers' political and literary work, set against the backdrop of their generational identity, is long overdue. In four chapters, this dissertation examines key moments in the careers of Grass, Walser, and Wolf. I emphasize the striking similarities between the generational discourse of the two West-German writers and the East-German writer, while pointing out where their shared generational background led to distinct political agendas. I show that the literary output, self-understanding, and public reception of arguably the three most significant writers in the post-war Germanies cannot be understood without a consideration of this mutual historical-biographical legacy. My dissertation thus rewrites an important part of post-1945 and post-1989 cultural history.

This chapter examines the historiography of the post-war British Army. It demonstrates that the Army’s nuclear mission in Germany is underrepresented in the mainstream literature, in spite of this being its most important commitment after 1945. The chapter explains how the Army became a potential agent of nuclear warfare and its role in national and alliance strategy. It argues that the Army was largely successful in overcoming the conceptual difficulties of planning for future war, but that it displayed a cognitive dissonance when faced with uncomfortable realities about the nature of nuclear warfare.