Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere

Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere PDF Author: Marcela Knapp
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030400867
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This book develops a theory of aesthetic fiction’s impact on social identities. Throughout five case studies, the author develops the argument that social identities are nurtured by and may even emerge through the conflict between different aesthetic expressions. As it creates affective structures, narrative fiction enables the development and formation of political and cultural identities. This work is part of a field of research that deals with the aesthetics of the everyday and the idea of social aesthetics. It argues for a central role for the arts in the creation and formation of modern society. Social identities emerge in response to aesthetic-sensual patterns of perception. Focusing on five West German public debates in the years 1950 to 1990, this work sheds light upon the transformation of social reality through the discursive adaption of art.

Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere

Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere PDF Author: Marcela Knapp
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030400867
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This book develops a theory of aesthetic fiction’s impact on social identities. Throughout five case studies, the author develops the argument that social identities are nurtured by and may even emerge through the conflict between different aesthetic expressions. As it creates affective structures, narrative fiction enables the development and formation of political and cultural identities. This work is part of a field of research that deals with the aesthetics of the everyday and the idea of social aesthetics. It argues for a central role for the arts in the creation and formation of modern society. Social identities emerge in response to aesthetic-sensual patterns of perception. Focusing on five West German public debates in the years 1950 to 1990, this work sheds light upon the transformation of social reality through the discursive adaption of art.

Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800-1850

Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800-1850 PDF Author: James M. Brophy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521847699
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
A study of the politicisation of 'ordinary people' in western Germany in the 1850s.

Politics and Culture in Twentieth-century Germany

Politics and Culture in Twentieth-century Germany PDF Author: William John Niven
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571132239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This is the first book to examine this crucial relationship between politics and culture in Germany, not only during the Nazi and Cold War eras but in periods when the effects are less obvious.

The Authority of Everyday Objects

The Authority of Everyday Objects PDF Author: Paul Betts
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520941357
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
From the Werkbund to the Bauhaus to Braun, from furniture to automobiles to consumer appliances, twentieth-century industrial design is closely associated with Germany. In this pathbreaking study, Paul Betts brings to light the crucial role that design played in building a progressive West German industrial culture atop the charred remains of the past. The Authority of Everyday Objects details how the postwar period gave rise to a new design culture comprising a sprawling network of diverse interest groups—including the state and industry, architects and designers, consumer groups and museums, as well as publicists and women's organizations—who all identified industrial design as a vital means of economic recovery, social reform, and even moral regeneration. These cultural battles took on heightened importance precisely because the stakes were nothing less than the very shape and significance of West German domestic modernity. Betts tells the rich and far-reaching story of how and why commodity aesthetics became a focal point for fashioning a certain West German cultural identity. This book is situated at the very crossroads of German industry and aesthetics, Cold War politics and international modernism, institutional life and visual culture.

The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture

The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture PDF Author: André Fischer
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 081014669X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Myths are a central part of our reality. But merely debunking them lets us forget why they are created in the first place and why we need them. André Fischer draws on key examples from German postwar culture, from novelists Hans Henny Jahnn and Hubert Fichte, to sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys, and filmmaker Werner Herzog, to show that mythmaking is an indispensable human practice in times of crisis. Against the background of mythologies based in nineteenth-century romanticism and their ideological continuation in Nazism, fresh forms of mythmaking in the narrative, visual, and performative arts emerged as an aesthetic paradigm in postwar modernism. Boldly rewriting the cultural history of an era and setting in transition, The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture counters the predominant narrative of an exclusively rational Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past”). Far from being merely reactionary, the turn toward myth offered a dimension of existential orientation that had been neglected by other influential aesthetic paradigms of the postwar period. Fischer’s wide-ranging, transmedia account offers an inclusive perspective on myth beyond storytelling and instead develops mythopoesis as a formal strategy of modernism at large.

Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture

Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture PDF Author: Carol Poore
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472025317
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
"Comprehensively researched, abundantly illustrated and written in accessible and engaging prose . . . With great skill, Poore weaves diverse types of evidence, including historical sources, art, literature, journalism, film, philosophy, and personal narratives into a tapestry which illuminates the cultural, political, and economic processes responsible for the marginalization, stigmatization, even elimination, of disabled people---as well as their recent emancipation." ---Disability Studies Quarterly "A major, long-awaited book. The chapter on Nazi images is brilliant---certainly the best that has been written in this arena by any scholar." ---Sander L. Gilman, Emory University "An important and pathbreaking book . . . immensely interesting, it will appeal not only to students of twentieth-century Germany but to all those interested in the growing field of disability studies." ---Robert C. Holub, University of Tennessee Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture covers the entire scope of Germany's most tragic and tumultuous century---from the Weimar Republic to the current administration---revealing how central the notion of disability is to modern German cultural history. By examining a wide range of literary and visual depictions of disability, Carol Poore explores the contradictions of a nation renowned for its social services programs yet notorious for its history of compulsory sterilization and eugenic dogma. This comprehensive volume focuses particular attention on the horrors of the Nazi era, when those with disabilities were considered "unworthy of life," but also investigates other previously overlooked topics including the exile community's response to disability, socialism and disability in East Germany, current bioethical debates, and the rise and gains of Germany's disability rights movement. Richly illustrated, wide-ranging, and accessible, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture gives all those interested in disability studies, German studies, visual culture, Nazi history, and bioethics the opportunity to explore controversial questions of individuality, normalcy, citizenship, and morality. The book concludes with a memoir of the author's experiences in Germany as a person with a disability. Carol Poore is Professor of German Studies at Brown University. Illustration: "Monument to the Unknown Prostheses" by Heinrich Hoerle © 2007 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn A volume in the series Corporealities: Discourses of Disability "Insightful and meticulously researched . . . Using disability as a concept, symbol, and lived experience, the author offers valuable new insights into Germany's political, economic, social, and cultural character . . . Demonstrating the significant ‘ cultural phenomena' of disability prior to and long after Hitler's reign achieves several important theoretical and practical aims . . . Highly recommended." ---Choice

Ambiguous Memory

Ambiguous Memory PDF Author: Siobhan Kattago
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313074771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Ambiguous Memory examines the role of memory in the building of a new national identity in reunified Germany. The author maintains that the contentious debates surrounding contemporary monumnets to the Nazi past testify to the ambiguity of German memory and the continued link of Nazism with contemporary German national identity. The book discusses how certain monuments, and the ways Germans have viewed them, contribute to the different ways Germans have dealt with the past, and how they continue to deal with it as one country. Kattago concludes that West Germans have internalized their Nazi past as a normative orientation for the democratic culture of West Germany, while East Germans have universalized Nazism and the Holocaust, transforming it into an abstraction in which the Jewish question is down played. In order to form a new collective memory, the author argues that unified Germany must contend with these conflicting views of the past, incorporating certain aspects of both views. Providing a topography of East, West, and unified German memory during the 1980s and the 1990s, this work contributes to a better understanding of contemporary national identity and society. The author shows how public debate over such issues at Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, the renarration of Buchenwald as Nazi and Soviet internment camp, the Goldhagen controversy, and the Holocaust Memorial debate in Berlin contribute to the complexities surrounding the way Germans see themselves, their relationship to the past, and their future identity as a nation. In a careful analysis, the author shows how the past was used and abused by both the East and the West in the 1980s, and how these approaches merged in the 1990s. This interesting new work takes a sociological approach to the role of memory in forging a new, integrative national identity.

European Muslims Transforming the Public Sphere

European Muslims Transforming the Public Sphere PDF Author: Asmaa Soliman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351607022
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
Anti-Muslim voices have become louder in many places in the midst of ongoing atrocities undertaken in the name of Islam. As a result, much of the creative participation of Western Muslims in the public sphere has become overshadowed. This tendency is not only visible in political discussions and the media landscape, but it is also often reflected in academia where research about Muslims in the West is predominantly shaped by the post 9/11 narrative. In contrast, European Muslims Transforming the Public Sphere offers a paradigm shift. It puts forward a new approach to understanding minority public engagement, suggesting that we need to go beyond conceptualisations that look at Muslims in the West mainly through the minority lens. By bringing into dialogue minority-specific and non-minority specific concepts, the book offers a relevant complement. Using young German Muslims engaged in media, the arts and culture and civil society as ten case studies, this book utilises the concepts of counterpublics and participatory culture to re-examine Muslims' engagement within the European public sphere. It presents a qualitative analysis, which has resulted from two years of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation, in-depth interviews and primary source analysis of material produced by the research participants. This book is a unique insight into the outworking of multiculturalism in Western Europe. It illustrates the many-sidedness of young Muslims’ public contributions, revealing how they transform European public spheres in different ways. Therefore, it will be a vital resource for any scholar involved in Islamic Studies, the Sociology of Religion, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies and Media Studies.

Postwar Soldiers

Postwar Soldiers PDF Author: Jörg Echternkamp
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789205581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 570

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Book Description
Contemporary historians have transformed our understanding of the German military in World War II, debunking the “clean Wehrmacht” myth that held most soldiers innocent of wartime atrocities. Considerably less attention has been paid to those soldiers at the end of hostilities. In Postwar Soldiers, Jörg Echternkamp analyzes three themes in the early history of West Germany: interpretations of the war during its conclusion and the occupation period; military veteran communities’ self-perceptions; and the public rehabilitation of the image of the German soldier. As Echternkamp shows, public controversies around these topics helped to drive the social processes that legitimized the democratic postwar order.

Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1930

Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1930 PDF Author: Geoff Eley
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472084814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
Bold new essays on Germany's critical Kaiserreich period.