At first glance, romance seems an improbable angle from which to write a cultural history of the German Democratic Republic. By most accounts the GDR was among the most dour and disciplined of socialist states, so devoted to the rigors of Stalinist aesthetics that the notion of an East German romantic comedy was more likely to generate punch lines than lines at the box office. But in fact, as John Urang shows in Legal Tender, love was freighted as a privileged site for the...

Schools reflect the state of society. If society is materialistic, competitive, egoistic, technological, and without concern for human values and long-term thinking, our schools will tend to reflect those values. However, what if education were about something else? What if education were about the future? What if education were a about nurturing a new generation of human beings, integrated in body, soul, and spirit and able to think for themselves and have the capacity to love? Perhaps the w...

"Zipes ably demonstrates that moral, political, religious, and other ideologies have shaped these apparently innocent narratives." — Lore and LanguageThis revised, expanded, and updated edition of the 1979 landmark Breaking the Magic Spell examines the enduring power of fairy tales and the ways they invade our subjective world. In seven provocative essays, Zipes discusses the importance of investigating oral folk tales in their socio-political cont...

The first comprehensive critical examination in any language of the German national tradition of historiographyThis is the first comprehensive critical examination in any language of the German national tradition of historiography. It analyzes the basic theoretical assumptions of the German historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and relates these assumptions to political thought and action.The German national tradition of historiography had its ...

German National Cinema is the first comprehensive history of German film from its origins to the present. In this new edition, Sabine Hake discusses film-making in economic, political, social, and cultural terms, and considers the contribution of Germany's most popular films to changing definitions of genre, authorship, and film form.The book traces the central role of cinema in the nation’s turbulent history from the Wilhelmine Empire to the Berlin Republic, with special ...

At the end of World War II, Germany was a broken nation. Split in two and occupied by the victorious Allies, it would have to be rebuilt, literally, from the rubble of its own defeat. Volumes of books have been published chronicling its structural and economic rebirth; this unique study reveals how Germany rebuilt itself culturally.Rubble Films is a close look at German cinema in the immediate postwar era, and a careful examination of its relationship to Allied occupation....

Terror was central to the Nazi regime, and the Nazi concentration camps were places of horror where prisoners were dehumanized and robbed of their dignity and where millions were murdered. How did prisoners cope with the brutal and degrading conditions of life within the camps?In this highly original book Maja Suderland takes the reader inside the concentration camps and examines the everyday social life of prisoners - their daily activities and routines, the social relationships a...

Short-listed for the Tractatus Essay Prize, an examination of the innovative strategies Arendt used to achieve intellectual freedomAfter observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt articulated her controversial concept of the “banality of evil,” thereby posing one of the most chilling and divisive moral questions of the twentieth century: How can genocidal acts be carried out by non-psychopathic people? By revealing the full complexity of the trial with re...

Growing Up Female in Nazi Germany explores the world of the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), the female section within the Hitler Youth that included almost all German girls aged 10 to 14. The BDM is often enveloped in myths; German girls were brought up to be the compliant handmaidens of National Socialism, their mental horizon restricted to the "three Ks" of Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, and church).Dagmar Reese, however, depicts another picture of life in the BDM...

Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse offers an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of fundamental shifts in German cultural memory. Focusing on the resurgence of family stories in fiction, autobiography and in film, this study challenges the institutional boundaries of Germany's memory culture that have guided and arguably limited German identity debates. Essays on contemporary German literature are complemented by explorations of heritage films and muse...

Screening the East considers German filmmakers’ responses to unification. In particular, it traces the representation of the East German community in films made since 1989 and considers whether these narratives challenge or reinforce the notion of a separate East German identity. The book identifies and analyses a large number of films, from internationally successful box-office hits, to lesser-known productions, many of which are discussed here for the first time. Providing an in...

In this original study, Scharf investigates issues of national identity in films of the New German Cinema. Using a cultural studies analysis, Scharf argues that the conflict between this generation of critical filmmakers and their ‘German-ness’ translate into feature films that construct, and are pervaded by, a sense of "homelessness" at home.As the first cultural studies investigation of this cinematic movement, the book challenges existing film studies accounts by analyzing the N...