Search results for ""Author Professor Stephen Brockmann""

Examines the literature produced from the very beginnings of what became the GDR through the 1950s, redressing a tendency of literary scholarship to focus on the later GDR. Twenty-five years after the demise of the German Democratic Republic, there is perhaps more scholarship being produced on all aspects of that country than ever. This is true also in the field of literary studies, but especially inEnglish-language literary scholarship there has been a strong imbalance toward a focus on the last three decades of GDR literature. The literature of the earlier GDR has mostly been dismissed or ignored by scholars, as the discontinuities between the early and late GDR have been emphasized over the considerable continuities. This book seeks to redress that state of affairs, examining the literature produced from the very beginnings of what became the GDRthrough the 1950s. In doing so it applies to GDR literature the insight gained by scholars over the past few decades that the immediate postwar period was more complex, more meaningful, and more rewarding of study than it was longdeemed to be. Far from all being mere propaganda or rote socialist realism, the literature of the early GDR has much to tell us about the budding socialist state, even as it goes far in explaining the developments in the later GDR.

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Traces the development of ideas of Nuremberg as cultural and spiritual capital, thus offering a coherent view of German cultural and intellectual history. Nuremberg: The Imaginary Capital is a broad study of German cultural history since 1500, with particular emphasis on the period since 1800. It explores the ways in which Germans have imagined Nuremberg as a cultural and spiritual capital, focusing feelings of national identity and belonging on the city -- or on their image of it. Chapters focus on the city of Dürer and Sachs at the threshold of the modern era, the glory of which became the basis forall the other imaginary Nurembergs; the Romantic rediscovery of the city in the late 18th century and the institutionalization of Nuremberg discourse through the Germanic National Museum in the mid 19th; Wagner's Meistersingervon Nürnberg, the most famous artistic invocation of the Nuremberg myth; the Nazi use and misuse of the Nuremberg myth, along with Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph des Willens, not only the best-known Nuremberg film butalso the most significant documentary of Hitler's Third Reich; and finally the postwar development in which "Nuremberg" became the symbol of a new kind of international law and justice. Stephen Brockmann analyzes how the city came to be seen, in Germany and elsewhere, as representative of the national whole. He goes beyond the analysis of particular historical periods by showing how successive epochs and their images of Nuremberg built on those precedingthem, thus viewing German cultural and intellectual history as an intelligible unity centered around fascination and veneration for a particular city. Stephen Brockmann is Professor of German at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the recipient of the 2007 DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies/Humanities.

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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.

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The most comprehensive, readable history of German cinema now appears in an expanded, up-to-date new edition that is particularly useful for students and teachers of German film history. From early masterpieces such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927) to the post-1945 films of Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders, German film constitutes a crucial part of the history of world cinema. It helped to shape Hollywood cinema and had a major impact on other cinemas as well. This tried and tested book, popular in college classrooms and among general-interest readers, is the most comprehensive and readable introduction to the history of German cinema, specifically designed to meet the needs of those who want a comprehensible, accessible introduction to the subject. There is no other book that covers the history of German cinema in the same depth and also explores the genesis and meaning of the most important masterpieces in German film history. It does so in chapters devoted to each of thirty-two individual films and in seven interchapters that provide context for historical periods from early German cinema to postunification. The book now appears in an improved, expanded, and up-to-date second edition that covers five additional films, expands the coverage of women's cinema, and brings the history of filmmaking in Germany up to the present moment. The book is specifically designed to appeal to cinema aficionados and for use in college classrooms, where it has been greeted with acclaim by students and teachers alike. Stephen Brockmann is Professor of German at Carnegie Mellon University.

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