Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910196
Reviewed by: African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach Katherine Pence African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975. By Sara Pugach. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 256. Paper $29.95. ISBN 9780472055562. In the Cold War battle for affinities of peoples around the globe, socialist states, such as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), decried ongoing racism and imperialism of the capitalist West and declared themselves as bastions of anti-racism and of solidarity with decolonizing nations in the Global South. One concrete way that East Germany and other Soviet-bloc states practiced this solidarity was by offering African students scholarships to study in university and vocational training programs, so they could return to build up their home countries through technical expertise. Sara Pugach's excellent new book shows that studying in East Germany was much more complicated for African exchange students than the official anti-racist party dogma purported. Using interviews and extensive research in German, British, Kenyan, and Ghanaian archives, Pugach finds that legacies of prewar racism continued into the GDR, creating deep ambivalence toward non-whites there. The book also helpfully analyzes humanitarianism and development aid by focusing not on state-level or European actors but on the perspectives of average students whose scholarships were [End Page 513] one aspect of aid and cultural diplomacy. As such, Pugach's work takes its place among the best new works that analyze the intersection of the Cold War and decolonization. The book is rich in its approach since it straddles both a transnational framework of flows across borders and a micro-history of everyday interactions between East Germans and African students. Pugach has importantly sought out sources giving voice to individual students, and she includes archival photos of the students throughout. Pugach examines African students' experiences from their selection as scholarship recipients through their complex travel routes to East Germany to their life while studying. Chapter One focuses on the first set of eleven students who came from Nigeria in 1951. Other chapters profile subsequent groups from socialist-aligned countries, such as Ghana or Mali, and non-aligned nations, such as Kenya. Pugach maintains the specificity of these diverse contexts, showing how ethnic divisions and changing politics in the home countries affected the students abroad. Chapter Two traces how students traveled through circuitous and difficult routes to East Germany, often through transit hubs such as Cairo. Chapter Three focuses on Ghana to exemplify how African countries selected students for study abroad. The GDR Ministry of Foreign Affairs often worked with local trade missions or government agencies, such as the Ghanaian Scholarships Secretariat, to identify prospective students. Socialist-leaning leaders, such as Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, and parties, such as Kenya's ZI
{"title":"African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910196","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975 by Sara Pugach Katherine Pence African Students in East Germany, 1949–1975. By Sara Pugach. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 256. Paper $29.95. ISBN 9780472055562. In the Cold War battle for affinities of peoples around the globe, socialist states, such as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), decried ongoing racism and imperialism of the capitalist West and declared themselves as bastions of anti-racism and of solidarity with decolonizing nations in the Global South. One concrete way that East Germany and other Soviet-bloc states practiced this solidarity was by offering African students scholarships to study in university and vocational training programs, so they could return to build up their home countries through technical expertise. Sara Pugach's excellent new book shows that studying in East Germany was much more complicated for African exchange students than the official anti-racist party dogma purported. Using interviews and extensive research in German, British, Kenyan, and Ghanaian archives, Pugach finds that legacies of prewar racism continued into the GDR, creating deep ambivalence toward non-whites there. The book also helpfully analyzes humanitarianism and development aid by focusing not on state-level or European actors but on the perspectives of average students whose scholarships were [End Page 513] one aspect of aid and cultural diplomacy. As such, Pugach's work takes its place among the best new works that analyze the intersection of the Cold War and decolonization. The book is rich in its approach since it straddles both a transnational framework of flows across borders and a micro-history of everyday interactions between East Germans and African students. Pugach has importantly sought out sources giving voice to individual students, and she includes archival photos of the students throughout. Pugach examines African students' experiences from their selection as scholarship recipients through their complex travel routes to East Germany to their life while studying. Chapter One focuses on the first set of eleven students who came from Nigeria in 1951. Other chapters profile subsequent groups from socialist-aligned countries, such as Ghana or Mali, and non-aligned nations, such as Kenya. Pugach maintains the specificity of these diverse contexts, showing how ethnic divisions and changing politics in the home countries affected the students abroad. Chapter Two traces how students traveled through circuitous and difficult routes to East Germany, often through transit hubs such as Cairo. Chapter Three focuses on Ghana to exemplify how African countries selected students for study abroad. The GDR Ministry of Foreign Affairs often worked with local trade missions or government agencies, such as the Ghanaian Scholarships Secretariat, to identify prospective students. Socialist-leaning leaders, such as Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, and parties, such as Kenya's ZI","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":"110 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910190
Kumars Salehi
abstract: Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk's popularity among the German New Right is attributable to the fact that his perspective is identifiably conservative while eschewing rote traditionalism and anti-intellectual sloganeering. Sloterdijk portrays his critics as disingenuous or hysterical, but by harnessing the trappings of counterculture to undermine the perceived hegemony of liberal values, Sloterdijk's self-identified "left-conservatism" serves as both a model for the New Right and a gateway to their ideas for a mainstream audience. This paper explores why the primary concern of Sloterdijk's critics is the disinhibiting effect of his interventions on hierarchical instincts constrained by modest progress toward egalitarianism and inclusivity.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910191
William Christopher Burwick
abstract: Josef Winkler's fourth novel, Die Verschleppung. Njetotschka Iljaschenko erzählt ihre ukrainische Kindheit (The deportation: Njetotschka Iljaschenko narrates her Ukrainian childhood, 1983) contributes to the Austrian discourse of trauma narratives, the experience of alterity, and the representation of politically disenfranchised persons and groups, adding the aspect of forced labor, human rights violations with the emphasis on Ukraine, oral history, and postmemory. This article examines the intersection of ethics and language in Winkler's mediation of Iljaschenko's autobiography in Die Verschleppung and the 2022 reprint Die Ukrainerin. Njetotschka Iljaschenko erzählt ihre Geschichte (The Ukrainian. Njetotschka Iljaschenko narrates her story) and explores the challenges facing literary mediation while maintaining fidelity to the historicity of oral history and postmemory.
约瑟夫·温克勒的第四部小说《幻影》。njetoschka Iljaschenko erzählt ihre ukrainische Kindheit(驱逐出境:njetoschka Iljaschenko讲述她的乌克兰童年，1983)对奥地利的创伤叙事、另类体验、政治上被剥夺权利的个人和群体的表现做出了贡献，并增加了强迫劳动、侵犯人权的方面，强调乌克兰、口述历史和后记忆。本文考察了温克勒在《Verschleppung》和2022年重印的《乌克兰人》中对伊尔亚琴科自传的调解中伦理和语言的交集。伊尔亚琴科erzählt乌克兰人。njetoschka Iljaschenko讲述了她的故事，并探索了文学调解面临的挑战，同时保持对口述历史和后记忆的历史性的忠诚。
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910203
Reviewed by: Germany and the Confessional Divide:Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871–1989 ed. by Mark Edward Ruff and Thomas Großbölting Jeremy Stephen Roethler Germany and the Confessional Divide: Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871–1989. Edited by Mark Edward Ruff and Thomas Großbölting. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022. Pp. viii + 364. Hardback $149.00. ISBN 9781800730878. This collection surveys confessional relations from the inauguration of the Kaiserreich to the fall of the Berlin Wall, during which Germany transitioned from arguably Europe's most hyper-confessionalized polity, when hostility between Protestant and Catholic not only determined national political outcomes but also shaped intimate life, to the other end of the spectrum, when confessional identity hardly mattered, except, as narrated by Großbölting, in the realm of self-deprecating humor (326). The purpose of this collection is to explain why. While the book's title suggests a comprehensive survey, the distribution of chapters is uneven. After an Introduction by editors Ruff and Großbölting, Jeffrey Zalar singularly carries the burden of the Kaiserreich on his able shoulders. In his contribution about "The Kulturkampf and Catholic Identity," Zalar explains how Catholics sought to prove to their hostile liberal and Protestant countrymen that they were just as German as they were. Internal Catholic discourse admitted that Catholic parity required improved Catholic material conditions and culture, thus self-affirming a Protestant and liberal trope about inferior Catholics. Zalar also documents that Catholics used their deep organizational network (then known as the Catholic "milieu") to make their case as dependable Germans, attending national events, for instance, and participating more broadly in the "nationalization of the masses" (borrowing from George Mosse) (31). Compared to the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich receive more extensive coverage. Klaus Große Kracht's piece "The Catholic Kulturfront during the Weimar Republic" demonstrates that even when confronted with a perceived common enemy (Bolshevism), instead of moving closer to their Protestant co-religionists, right-wing Catholics such as Karl Adam, Carl Schmitt, and Franz von Papen pivoted towards fascist authoritarianism instead, with ominous consequences (62–63). It is well-documented that conservative Catholic influencers (for instance, Archbishop Faulhaber of Munich-Freising) railed against the Revolution of 1918/19 and supported Weimar only tepidly; Benedikt Brunner tells the less appreciated story about why the Revolution and Weimar also unhinged conservative Protestants, even if, reflecting the still confessionally charged times, they would not make common cause against Weimar with Catholics. The redoubtable Jürgen Falter makes an appearance in this volume, adding updated detail to account for Catholic voting patterns during the final years of Weimar. He repeats his well
由:德国和忏悔鸿沟:宗教紧张局势和政治文化，1871年至1989年，马克·爱德华·鲁夫和托马斯主编Großbölting杰里米·斯蒂芬·罗特勒德国和忏悔鸿沟:宗教紧张局势和政治文化，1871年至1989年。编辑马克·爱德华·拉夫和托马斯Großbölting。纽约:Berghahn Books, 2022。Pp. viii + 364。精装的149.00美元。ISBN 9781800730878。这本合集调查了从凯撒帝国的落成到柏林墙的倒塌之间的忏悔关系，在此期间，德国从可以说是欧洲最高度忏悔的政体过渡，新教徒和天主教徒之间的敌意不仅决定了国家的政治结果，而且塑造了亲密生活，到另一个极端，忏悔身份几乎不重要，除了Großbölting的叙述，在自嘲幽默的领域(326)。本文的目的是解释其中的原因。虽然这本书的标题暗示了一个全面的调查，但章节的分布并不均衡。经过编辑Ruff和Großbölting的介绍，Jeffrey Zalar在他强壮的肩膀上扛起了凯撒帝国的重担。在他关于“文化斗争和天主教身份认同”的文章中，Zalar解释了天主教徒如何试图向他们敌对的自由派和新教同胞证明他们和他们一样是德国人。天主教内部的话语承认，天主教的平等需要改善天主教的物质条件和文化，从而自我肯定了新教和自由主义关于劣等天主教徒的比喻。Zalar还记录了天主教徒利用他们深厚的组织网络(当时被称为天主教“环境”)使他们成为可靠的德国人，例如，参加国家活动，更广泛地参与“群众国有化”(借用乔治·莫斯)(31)。与德意志帝国相比，魏玛共和国和第三帝国得到了更广泛的报道。Klaus Große Kracht的作品《魏玛共和国时期的天主教文化前线》表明，即使面对一个共同的敌人(布尔什维克主义)，右翼天主教徒如卡尔·亚当、卡尔·施密特和弗朗茨·冯·巴本，也没有向他们的新教同道靠拢，而是转向法西斯专制主义，带来了不祥的后果(62-63)。有充分的证据表明，保守的天主教影响者(例如，慕尼黑弗雷因的大主教Faulhaber)反对1918/19年的革命，只是不温不火地支持魏玛;本尼迪克特·布伦纳讲述了一个鲜为人知的故事，讲述了为什么革命和魏玛也使保守的新教徒精神错乱，尽管反映出仍然充满忏悔的时代，他们不会与天主教徒共同反对魏玛。令人敬畏的j rgen Falter在本卷中出现，增加了更新的细节，以说明魏玛最后几年的天主教投票模式。他重复了他著名的论点，即天主教徒比其他人更不可能投票给希特勒。他重申了自己的观点，即天主教对中央党和巴伐利亚人民党(BVP)的组织忠诚解释了原因。但在他早期的研究之后，他继续使用“相对免疫”(120页)这样的语言来解释天主教徒在投票给希特勒或他的政党时的犹豫，仿佛投票给纳粹主义是一种疾病，而不是一种有意识的决定，这种观点在最近的学术研究中已经不受欢迎了。(公平地说，这篇文章是从德语原文翻译成英语的。)很有说服力的是，在下一章“德国普世主义的法西斯起源”中，詹姆斯·查佩尔反驳说，“不能再坚持认为天主教提供了某种抵抗纳粹主义的免疫力”(129)。如果天主教徒投票反对纳粹，那并不必然是因为他们是天主教徒。澄清一点，查佩尔的论点并不是1945年后联邦共和国的教派间合作起源于1945年前与法西斯主义的教派间合作(正如标题所暗示的那样);相反，他揭穿了基督教民主联盟代表德国第一个跨党派突破的神话;这个“荣誉”(我的话)不幸属于纳粹党(126)。这个收藏把最好的作品放在了1945年后的最后，这不仅仅是因为它填补了一个空白。玛丽亚·米切尔(Maria Mitchell)记录了基民盟女性活动家在联邦共和国成立初期对基督教优先事项(如重建家庭)的影响;不幸的是……
{"title":"Germany and the Confessional Divide:Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871–1989 ed. by Mark Edward Ruff and Thomas Großbölting (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910203","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Germany and the Confessional Divide:Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871–1989 ed. by Mark Edward Ruff and Thomas Großbölting Jeremy Stephen Roethler Germany and the Confessional Divide: Religious Tensions and Political Culture, 1871–1989. Edited by Mark Edward Ruff and Thomas Großbölting. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022. Pp. viii + 364. Hardback $149.00. ISBN 9781800730878. This collection surveys confessional relations from the inauguration of the Kaiserreich to the fall of the Berlin Wall, during which Germany transitioned from arguably Europe's most hyper-confessionalized polity, when hostility between Protestant and Catholic not only determined national political outcomes but also shaped intimate life, to the other end of the spectrum, when confessional identity hardly mattered, except, as narrated by Großbölting, in the realm of self-deprecating humor (326). The purpose of this collection is to explain why. While the book's title suggests a comprehensive survey, the distribution of chapters is uneven. After an Introduction by editors Ruff and Großbölting, Jeffrey Zalar singularly carries the burden of the Kaiserreich on his able shoulders. In his contribution about \"The Kulturkampf and Catholic Identity,\" Zalar explains how Catholics sought to prove to their hostile liberal and Protestant countrymen that they were just as German as they were. Internal Catholic discourse admitted that Catholic parity required improved Catholic material conditions and culture, thus self-affirming a Protestant and liberal trope about inferior Catholics. Zalar also documents that Catholics used their deep organizational network (then known as the Catholic \"milieu\") to make their case as dependable Germans, attending national events, for instance, and participating more broadly in the \"nationalization of the masses\" (borrowing from George Mosse) (31). Compared to the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich receive more extensive coverage. Klaus Große Kracht's piece \"The Catholic Kulturfront during the Weimar Republic\" demonstrates that even when confronted with a perceived common enemy (Bolshevism), instead of moving closer to their Protestant co-religionists, right-wing Catholics such as Karl Adam, Carl Schmitt, and Franz von Papen pivoted towards fascist authoritarianism instead, with ominous consequences (62–63). It is well-documented that conservative Catholic influencers (for instance, Archbishop Faulhaber of Munich-Freising) railed against the Revolution of 1918/19 and supported Weimar only tepidly; Benedikt Brunner tells the less appreciated story about why the Revolution and Weimar also unhinged conservative Protestants, even if, reflecting the still confessionally charged times, they would not make common cause against Weimar with Catholics. The redoubtable Jürgen Falter makes an appearance in this volume, adding updated detail to account for Catholic voting patterns during the final years of Weimar. He repeats his well","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910207
Reviewed by: February 1933: The Winter of Literature by Uwe Wittstock Paul Michael Lützeler February 1933: The Winter of Literature. By Uwe Wittstock. Translated by Daniel Bowles. Hoboken, NJ: Polity Press, 2023. Pp. ix + 278. Cloth $29.95. ISBN 9781509553792. Uwe Wittstock hat mit seinem Buch über die Flucht der Hitlergegner in den ersten Wochen der Naziherrschaft eine Studie veröffentlicht, die bei den zeitgeschichtlich interessierten Mitgliedern der GSA auf großes Interesse stoßen wird. Es geht hier nicht nur um das Schicksal von Autor*innen, die in mehr oder weniger fremde Länder verbannt werden, sondern auch um ein historisches Lehrstück über die unglaublich schnelle Verwandlung einer liberalen Demokratie in ihr politisches Gegenteil: die terroristische Diktatur. Innerhalb von sechs Wochen werden die wirkungsmächtigsten Repräsentant*innen der deutschen Literatur der Weimarer Republik vertrieben—man denke an Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Oskar Maria Graf, Mascha Kaléko, Else Lasker-Schüler, Heinrich und Thomas Mann, Erika und Klaus Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Gabriele Tergit, Ernst Toller, Carl Zuckmayer. Das geschieht, weil ein föderativ organisierter Rechtsstaat durch einen zentralistisch strukturierten Terrorapparat ersetzt wird. Nach der Ernennung Hitlers zum Reichskanzler am 30. Januar 1933 unterzeichnet Reichspräsident Hindenburg alle vom "Führer" der Nationalsozialisten gewünschten sogenannten Notverordnungen. Der Präsident gibt auch dem Drängen des Kanzlers nach, Neuwahlen fünf Wochen später anzusetzen. Von freien Wahlen kann da schon nicht mehr die Rede sein, weil Hitler die gegnerischen Parteien Parteien (Zentrum, SPD, KPD) massiv im Wahlkampf behindert und für seine NSDAP alle nur denkbaren staatlichen Mittel für propagandistische Zwecke missbraucht. Zudem füllen Industrielle die leeren Kassen der Hitlerpartei. Wittstock schildert den rasanten gesellschaftlich-politischen Umbruch von Tag zu Tag, von Woche zu Woche. Das Bemerkenswerte ist, dass er die Gleichzeitigkeit der erfolgreichen Schachzüge Hitlers und der ständig scheiternden Versuche von Opposition und Widerstand in Erinnerung ruft. In Hitlers Partei gilt das Führerprinzip: seine Stör-, Verfolgungs- und Verhaftungsbefehle werden von SA und SS sofort befolgt. In der Sektion Dichtung der Preußischen Akademie der Künste will ihr Vorsitzender [End Page 503] Heinrich Mann sich nicht zu Loyalitätserklärungen Hitler gegenüber erpressen lassen. Er tritt zurück, überlässt aber dadurch das Schicksal seiner Akademie-Sektion dem Nationalsozialisten Hanns Jost und dem Mitläufer Gottfried Benn. Noch nie ist in der Literaturgeschichte so genau im Zusammenhang beschrieben worden, wie, auf welche Weise, mit welchen Mitteln und bei Berücksichtigung der familiären Verhältnisse fast gleichzeitig Autor*innen oder Verleger, Kritiker*innen und Akademieangehörige die Flucht vor der neuen Diktatur ergreifen. Zuweilen helfen nur rasche Geistesgegenwart oder glückliche Umstände, di
{"title":"February 1933: The Winter of Literature by Uwe Wittstock (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910207","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: February 1933: The Winter of Literature by Uwe Wittstock Paul Michael Lützeler February 1933: The Winter of Literature. By Uwe Wittstock. Translated by Daniel Bowles. Hoboken, NJ: Polity Press, 2023. Pp. ix + 278. Cloth $29.95. ISBN 9781509553792. Uwe Wittstock hat mit seinem Buch über die Flucht der Hitlergegner in den ersten Wochen der Naziherrschaft eine Studie veröffentlicht, die bei den zeitgeschichtlich interessierten Mitgliedern der GSA auf großes Interesse stoßen wird. Es geht hier nicht nur um das Schicksal von Autor*innen, die in mehr oder weniger fremde Länder verbannt werden, sondern auch um ein historisches Lehrstück über die unglaublich schnelle Verwandlung einer liberalen Demokratie in ihr politisches Gegenteil: die terroristische Diktatur. Innerhalb von sechs Wochen werden die wirkungsmächtigsten Repräsentant*innen der deutschen Literatur der Weimarer Republik vertrieben—man denke an Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Oskar Maria Graf, Mascha Kaléko, Else Lasker-Schüler, Heinrich und Thomas Mann, Erika und Klaus Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Gabriele Tergit, Ernst Toller, Carl Zuckmayer. Das geschieht, weil ein föderativ organisierter Rechtsstaat durch einen zentralistisch strukturierten Terrorapparat ersetzt wird. Nach der Ernennung Hitlers zum Reichskanzler am 30. Januar 1933 unterzeichnet Reichspräsident Hindenburg alle vom \"Führer\" der Nationalsozialisten gewünschten sogenannten Notverordnungen. Der Präsident gibt auch dem Drängen des Kanzlers nach, Neuwahlen fünf Wochen später anzusetzen. Von freien Wahlen kann da schon nicht mehr die Rede sein, weil Hitler die gegnerischen Parteien Parteien (Zentrum, SPD, KPD) massiv im Wahlkampf behindert und für seine NSDAP alle nur denkbaren staatlichen Mittel für propagandistische Zwecke missbraucht. Zudem füllen Industrielle die leeren Kassen der Hitlerpartei. Wittstock schildert den rasanten gesellschaftlich-politischen Umbruch von Tag zu Tag, von Woche zu Woche. Das Bemerkenswerte ist, dass er die Gleichzeitigkeit der erfolgreichen Schachzüge Hitlers und der ständig scheiternden Versuche von Opposition und Widerstand in Erinnerung ruft. In Hitlers Partei gilt das Führerprinzip: seine Stör-, Verfolgungs- und Verhaftungsbefehle werden von SA und SS sofort befolgt. In der Sektion Dichtung der Preußischen Akademie der Künste will ihr Vorsitzender [End Page 503] Heinrich Mann sich nicht zu Loyalitätserklärungen Hitler gegenüber erpressen lassen. Er tritt zurück, überlässt aber dadurch das Schicksal seiner Akademie-Sektion dem Nationalsozialisten Hanns Jost und dem Mitläufer Gottfried Benn. Noch nie ist in der Literaturgeschichte so genau im Zusammenhang beschrieben worden, wie, auf welche Weise, mit welchen Mitteln und bei Berücksichtigung der familiären Verhältnisse fast gleichzeitig Autor*innen oder Verleger, Kritiker*innen und Akademieangehörige die Flucht vor der neuen Diktatur ergreifen. Zuweilen helfen nur rasche Geistesgegenwart oder glückliche Umstände, di","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":"150 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910206
Reviewed by: The Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin's Critical Program by Kevin McLaughlin Esther Leslie The Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin's Critical Program. By Kevin McLaughlin. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023. Pp. iv + 208. Paper $32.00. ISBN 9781531501693. This book is a concentrated contribution to the diverse field of Walter Benjamin studies, a crowded field but one that endlessly offers unploughed vistas, lending credence to Benjamin's own concern with the unfurling afterlife of works. Kevin McLaughlin's new study is about the life of creative work and its relation to life in general, as theorized by Benjamin in the early part of his writerly career, through essays written at a point when he was still a student under the umbrella of the university. Across three chapters, McLaughlin's study focuses on Benjamin's essay on two poems by Friedrich Hölderlin, "Timidity" and "The Poet's Courage," written around the start of World War I; "The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism," Benjamin's PhD dissertation, submitted in 1919; and the long essay "Goethe's Elective Affinities," written around 1924, just before Benjamin was compelled to strike out as an independent scholar. These writings by Benjamin are compact, difficult works in which are developed and extended critical vocabularies of truth, myth, the poeticized, inner form and content, and so on. McLaughlin's central interest is in the ways in which the critical works initiate discussions of what he conceives of as a specifically Benjaminian take on the idea of the Book of Life. This is worked through in relation to a concept of densely layered textures in language, which evokes a complex notion of Geschichte (history or story), understood critically through its core embedded word Schicht or layer. McLaughlin's study undertakes an unpicking of terms, focusing on questions that revolve, in complex and unpredictable ways, around language. This is unsurprising. As well as being a renowned commentator and critic of Benjamin's contribution, McLaughlin is also one of the translators of Benjamin's Arcades Project. He has stared deeply into words, divining in them panoplies of connotation and resonance. Under investigation here is the meaning of the word philology, or more [End Page 501] broadly, the resources of the practice of philology for opening texts up to historical understanding, which means an opening up to lived life. Equally under examination are the caverns of meaning in the small word life and the ways in which it multiplies and repeatedly extends in Benjamin's work as Lebenden, Erdleben, Fortleben, and so on. How to translate these terms is put under pressure here: life, living, life on Earth, and continuing life might be only some ways of rendering the conceptual heft of these terms in English. To be attentive to resonances is to be alert to what theoretical insights are carried across in translations. A compound word used by Benjamin lends the book its title: Lebens
{"title":"The Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin's Critical Program by Kevin McLaughlin (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910206","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: The Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin's Critical Program by Kevin McLaughlin Esther Leslie The Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin's Critical Program. By Kevin McLaughlin. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023. Pp. iv + 208. Paper $32.00. ISBN 9781531501693. This book is a concentrated contribution to the diverse field of Walter Benjamin studies, a crowded field but one that endlessly offers unploughed vistas, lending credence to Benjamin's own concern with the unfurling afterlife of works. Kevin McLaughlin's new study is about the life of creative work and its relation to life in general, as theorized by Benjamin in the early part of his writerly career, through essays written at a point when he was still a student under the umbrella of the university. Across three chapters, McLaughlin's study focuses on Benjamin's essay on two poems by Friedrich Hölderlin, \"Timidity\" and \"The Poet's Courage,\" written around the start of World War I; \"The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,\" Benjamin's PhD dissertation, submitted in 1919; and the long essay \"Goethe's Elective Affinities,\" written around 1924, just before Benjamin was compelled to strike out as an independent scholar. These writings by Benjamin are compact, difficult works in which are developed and extended critical vocabularies of truth, myth, the poeticized, inner form and content, and so on. McLaughlin's central interest is in the ways in which the critical works initiate discussions of what he conceives of as a specifically Benjaminian take on the idea of the Book of Life. This is worked through in relation to a concept of densely layered textures in language, which evokes a complex notion of Geschichte (history or story), understood critically through its core embedded word Schicht or layer. McLaughlin's study undertakes an unpicking of terms, focusing on questions that revolve, in complex and unpredictable ways, around language. This is unsurprising. As well as being a renowned commentator and critic of Benjamin's contribution, McLaughlin is also one of the translators of Benjamin's Arcades Project. He has stared deeply into words, divining in them panoplies of connotation and resonance. Under investigation here is the meaning of the word philology, or more [End Page 501] broadly, the resources of the practice of philology for opening texts up to historical understanding, which means an opening up to lived life. Equally under examination are the caverns of meaning in the small word life and the ways in which it multiplies and repeatedly extends in Benjamin's work as Lebenden, Erdleben, Fortleben, and so on. How to translate these terms is put under pressure here: life, living, life on Earth, and continuing life might be only some ways of rendering the conceptual heft of these terms in English. To be attentive to resonances is to be alert to what theoretical insights are carried across in translations. A compound word used by Benjamin lends the book its title: Lebens","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910198
Reviewed by: Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin by Bettina Stoetzer Thomas Sullivan Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin. By Bettina Stoetzer. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. Pp. xvii + 328. Paper $28.95. ISBN 9781478018605. Ruins, voids, and overgrown spaces have long been a distinctive feature of Berlin's built environment. Scarred by massive destruction during World War II, divided during the Cold War, and then subject to major development and speculation following [End Page 517] reunification, Berlin has been shaped by cyclical patterns of rupture, destruction, and re-imagination. Repeated regenerations produced a city, over time, with fragmented gaps that often became overgrown, hosting spontaneous, ever-evolving botanical communities. Within these spaces of ruination and spontaneous growth, unplanned and unique environments emerged, combining expected plant and animal species with "unexpected newcomers": non-native species arriving via war, displacement, migration, and trade (37). The study of these sites by celebrated urban ecologist Herbert Sukopp and his collaborators made Berlin a center for the study of "ruderal ecologies": unexpected, unplanned, and unpredictable assemblages of plants and animals spontaneously emerging within disturbed urban spaces. A substantial number of scholarly publications, including recent books such as Jens Lachmund's Greening Berlin: The Co-production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature (2013) and Matthew Gandy's Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space (2022), have further examined and analyzed these spaces. Bettina Stoetzer's book, Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin (2022), similarly takes Berlin's ruderal ecologies as a starting point but utilizes them in a new way, arguing that they offer an alternate way of examining urban life and processes. Positing that ruination and rubble are "central to the urban landscapes we inhabit" and the constant product of "social exclusions, capitalist urbanization, and profound environmental change," Stoetzer proposes and advocates the use of a "ruderal analytic" (25–26). Building on the ecological understanding of the term, Stoetzer conceptualizes "ruderal" organisms as arising in conditions of hybridity, disturbance, and inhospitableness. The ruderal, then, is "neither wild nor domesticated" and arises as the product of "juxtapositions of contrasting environments" (4). This conceptualization of ruderal-as-analytic echoes the ecological version in multiple ways. Just as ruderal plants arise in disparate, in-between, and unexpected spaces, a ruderal analytic encourages an ethnographic approach focused on "catching glimpses of seemingly disparate worlds" (5) and focuses attention on the gaps and cracks of modern urban life (25). Echoing the hybridity of ruderal plants, which often trouble categorization, this approach calls on researchers to quest
{"title":"Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin by Bettina Stoetzer (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/gsr.2023.a910198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2023.a910198","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin by Bettina Stoetzer Thomas Sullivan Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin. By Bettina Stoetzer. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. Pp. xvii + 328. Paper $28.95. ISBN 9781478018605. Ruins, voids, and overgrown spaces have long been a distinctive feature of Berlin's built environment. Scarred by massive destruction during World War II, divided during the Cold War, and then subject to major development and speculation following [End Page 517] reunification, Berlin has been shaped by cyclical patterns of rupture, destruction, and re-imagination. Repeated regenerations produced a city, over time, with fragmented gaps that often became overgrown, hosting spontaneous, ever-evolving botanical communities. Within these spaces of ruination and spontaneous growth, unplanned and unique environments emerged, combining expected plant and animal species with \"unexpected newcomers\": non-native species arriving via war, displacement, migration, and trade (37). The study of these sites by celebrated urban ecologist Herbert Sukopp and his collaborators made Berlin a center for the study of \"ruderal ecologies\": unexpected, unplanned, and unpredictable assemblages of plants and animals spontaneously emerging within disturbed urban spaces. A substantial number of scholarly publications, including recent books such as Jens Lachmund's Greening Berlin: The Co-production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature (2013) and Matthew Gandy's Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space (2022), have further examined and analyzed these spaces. Bettina Stoetzer's book, Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin (2022), similarly takes Berlin's ruderal ecologies as a starting point but utilizes them in a new way, arguing that they offer an alternate way of examining urban life and processes. Positing that ruination and rubble are \"central to the urban landscapes we inhabit\" and the constant product of \"social exclusions, capitalist urbanization, and profound environmental change,\" Stoetzer proposes and advocates the use of a \"ruderal analytic\" (25–26). Building on the ecological understanding of the term, Stoetzer conceptualizes \"ruderal\" organisms as arising in conditions of hybridity, disturbance, and inhospitableness. The ruderal, then, is \"neither wild nor domesticated\" and arises as the product of \"juxtapositions of contrasting environments\" (4). This conceptualization of ruderal-as-analytic echoes the ecological version in multiple ways. Just as ruderal plants arise in disparate, in-between, and unexpected spaces, a ruderal analytic encourages an ethnographic approach focused on \"catching glimpses of seemingly disparate worlds\" (5) and focuses attention on the gaps and cracks of modern urban life (25). Echoing the hybridity of ruderal plants, which often trouble categorization, this approach calls on researchers to quest","PeriodicalId":43954,"journal":{"name":"German Studies Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136094035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910187
Henry Holland
abstract: First Theodor Adorno in 1965, and then a second wave of scholars in the 1980s, noted that the philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) engaged substantially with theosophy, particularly when young. This included Bloch's critique of the new religious movement anthroposophy, which some see as an offshoot of theosophy, and of anthroposophy's founder, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). I address the lack of English publications on the content of this engagement, and integrate other current questions about Steiner, including the centrality of racism to his whole philosophy. Comparing Bloch's epistemology with Steiner's ultimately reveals much that is irreconcilable, alongside significant points of convergence.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910199
Reviewed by: Plants, Places, and Power: Toward Social and Ecological Justice in German Literature and Film by Maria Stehle Joela Jacobs Plants, Places, and Power: Toward Social and Ecological Justice in German Literature and Film. By Maria Stehle. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2023. Pp. 186. Cloth $99.00. ISBN 9781640141254. Maria Stehle's Plants, Places, and Power tackles the complex intersection of land and belonging in the German context, which brings together the reverberations of the Nazi Blut und Boden legacy as well as European colonizer history with the critical urgency of the environmental future. By examining contemporary literature and film with feminist and anti-racist tools, the book aims to put forward intersectional models of relating to places that are both socially and ecologically just. In doing so, Stehle highlights topographies, the layers of history that shape places in myriad ways, and she emphasizes that place-making entails the resignification of such meanings. In other words, she shows how the figures in her primary sources both fail and succeed in inclusive place-making for themselves and others. While some of them fail because of their violent colonizer approaches or because they continue to center whiteness, others stubbornly hold on to new places after the loss of their home or defiantly make place for themselves despite repeated rejection and thus change who gets to belong. In Stehle's own words, "to make place is to form new kinds of interrelations" (160). The new alliances and ways of kin-making that go along with this process involve not just other people but landscapes, gardens, and forests, as well as parks, cemeteries, and greenhouses, which are summed up in the book's titular focus on plants in the plural. While this is not necessarily an approach to plants for their own sake or in their species specificity (with the fascinating exception of the pencil cactus in chapter five), it is a tool to read texts and people in and through nature toward both social and environmental justice. In practice, this can entail a historical or environmental analysis of background landscapes and rural spaces, or the cultural and aesthetic significance of flowers, fruit, or potted plants, while on other occasions, it involves the unpacking of pervasive metaphors of belonging such as roots and stem. In doing so, Stehle reminds us that plants are everywhere and worth paying attention to because they are productive lenses for analysis—and what's more, that plants can be political actors in relationships of care and collaboration. In addition to its combined methodological focus on social and ecological justice, the book's second stated goal is the expansion of the canon of German studies materials in antiracist, feminist, and decolonizing ways. The primary works Stehle analyzes are all composed by artists who identify as female, queer, of color, and/or [End Page 520] have experienced forced migration, and they range from Juli Zeh and
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/gsr.2023.a910194
Reviewed by: Year Zero to Economic Miracle: Hans Schwippert and Sep Ruf in Postwar West German Building Culture by Lynette Widder Philipp Nielsen Year Zero to Economic Miracle: Hans Schwippert and Sep Ruf in Postwar West German Building Culture. By Lynette Widder. Zurich: gta Verlag, 2022. Pp. 320. Cloth €52.00. ISBN 9783856764272. Lynette Widder's Year Zero to Economic Miracle charts the architectural practice of Hans Schwippert and Sep Ruf, two prominent West German architects. Widder focuses on five iconic public commissions from the late 1940s, immediately following the establishment of the Federal Republic, until the early 1960s, with Schwippert's St. Hedwig's Cathedral, completed in 1963, literally straddling the German division. Next to the cathedral, the buildings covered (in chronological order) are: the West German parliament building (Bundeshaus) in Bonn (1948–1949) by Schwippert and the Academy of the Arts in Nuremberg (1950–1954) by Ruf for the early years; the West German Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair in 1958, which both men designed together with Egon Eiermann; and the College for Public Administration (Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften) in Speyer (1957–1960) by Ruf. The book is structured into four chronological sections, three of which focus on the buildings and one on theoretical debates in postwar West Germany. In addition to the historical chapters, four more personal reflection chapters conclude each section: one on job books, one on the architecture critic Ulrich Conrads, one on the Ruf family archive, and one on construction drawings. These four reflection chapters chart Widder's own growing interest in Ruf and Schwippert and in becoming an architectural historian. Here, her evocative descriptions of architectural sources and of personal encounters do more than trace a personal journey. These chapters enrich the narrative of postwar architecture and architectural history itself when Widder describes the fate of the Ruf archive or the way the workbooks for the St. Hedwig's Cathedral reveal the complicated process of building across the German-German border. Widder's book forms part of a growing interest in postwar West German—and to a lesser extent East German—architecture and its preservation, which itself follows on the heels of a new wave of historiography on the postwar period. Notably, the book keeps East and West German architectural and political history connected by including St. Hedwig's Cathedral. The architectural clearly dominates, and Widder is an expert in making the field's materiality accessible to the lay reader. The impressive [End Page 509] visual quality of the book, with its over 150 images, many of them in color, further aids Widder in bringing her arguments and the architects' work to life. Widder has two wider objectives beyond recounting the careers of Schwippert and Ruf. For one, she situates the work of the two architects within the West German postwar debate about the genealogy of mod
《从零到经济奇迹:战后西德建筑文化中的汉斯·施威珀特和Sep Ruf》作者:Lynette Widder Philipp Nielsen作者:Lynette Widder苏黎世:gta Verlag, 2022。320页。布€52.00。ISBN 9783856764272。Lynette Widder的《从零到经济奇迹》描绘了两位著名的西德建筑师Hans Schwippert和Sep Ruf的建筑实践。Widder专注于五个标志性的公共项目，从20世纪40年代末开始，紧接着联邦共和国的建立，直到20世纪60年代初，其中包括Schwippert的St. Hedwig's Cathedral，于1963年完成，实际上跨越了德国的分裂。在大教堂旁边，覆盖的建筑(按时间顺序)是:西德议会大厦(Bundeshaus)在波恩(1948年至1949年)由Schwippert和艺术学院在纽伦堡(1950年至1954年)早期由Ruf;1958年布鲁塞尔世界博览会西德馆，两人与埃贡·艾尔曼(Egon Eiermann)共同设计;施佩尔的公共管理学院(Hochschule f r Verwaltungswissenschaften)(1957-1960)由Ruf。这本书按时间顺序分为四个部分，其中三个集中在建筑上，一个集中在战后西德的理论辩论上。除了历史章节，还有四个个人反思章节结束了每个部分:一个关于工作手册，一个关于建筑评论家乌尔里希康拉德，一个关于鲁夫家族档案，一个关于建筑图纸。这四章反映了Widder自己对Ruf和Schwippert越来越感兴趣，并成为一名建筑历史学家。在这里，她对建筑来源和个人遭遇的令人回味的描述不仅仅是追踪个人旅程。这些章节丰富了战后建筑和建筑历史本身的叙述，当Widder描述Ruf档案的命运或圣海德维格大教堂的工作手册揭示了跨越德国边境的复杂建筑过程时。威德的书体现了人们对战后西德建筑及其保护日益增长的兴趣——在较小程度上是对东德建筑及其保护的兴趣——这本身就紧跟在战后历史编纂学的新浪潮之后。值得注意的是，书中包括了圣海德威格大教堂，将东德和西德的建筑史和政治史联系在一起。建筑显然占主导地位，而Widder是一个让外行读者可以接触到这个领域的物质的专家。这本书的视觉质量令人印象深刻，其中有150多张图片，其中许多是彩色的，进一步帮助Widder将她的论点和建筑师的工作带入生活。除了叙述施威珀特和鲁夫的职业生涯，维达还有两个更大的目标。首先，她将两位建筑师的作品置于西德战后关于德国现代建筑谱系的辩论中。在20世纪50年代初，在达姆施塔特(Darmstadt)的一系列公开辩论中，这种讨论发生在期刊和公共会议(如Darmstädter Gespräche)的页面上，其关键是在西德建立一种现代建筑的可能性，这种建筑既没有被第三帝国玷污，又独立于现在主要活跃在美国的前包豪斯人员。除了这一理论辩论，Widder的目标是提供战后建筑的历史，特别是西德的建筑实践。在这里，她讲述了一个建筑师的故事，从战后的临时和个性化的工作，到更序列化和标准化的过程和设计，因为建筑业从20世纪50年代中期开始重建。在这一点上，韦德的叙述尤其有力。她从自己作为建筑师的经历中写作，使建筑师的计划和他们设想和制作的材料清晰可辨。Widder通过分析与Schwippert和Ruf的建筑相关的档案，展示了两位建筑师的不同风格，Schwippert在他的要求上更合作和开放，Ruf更严格和精确，如何使前者在早期蓬勃发展，而Ruf在后期蓬勃发展。当她离开他们的工作和特定的建筑，并参与到跨越…
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