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Homework 7 for Wednesday 2/5 (links and readings)

I. Bring one important observation about the economy to class II. Review “Culture and Media” and “Society” on the Facts about Germany website:

http://www.tatsachen-ueber-deutschland.de/en/culture-and-media.html

with emphasis on:

The German cultural world

Literature

Theater

Music

Cinema

Fine Arts

III. Read through the additional information below in black; the grayed-out parts are optional. I recommend watching a few videos.

IV. Review current events (link on our website:

http://moderngermanculture.yolasite.com now also accessible from: http://homepages.utoledo.edu/bsulzer

V. Write your summary (100 words): focus on a few interesting „observations‘ you make and a few questions you want to ask in class.

You may focus on the following points:

German Expressionism

20th century art

Art during the Nazi regime

20th/21st century film

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20th/21st century literature

Art before WW II

Art after WW II

Anselm Kiefer

Christian Petzold

Nina Hoss

Herta Müller

…

Additional information: >>>>

You are not expected to know every single detail. These links are here to help you get a better idea.

The “Facts of Germany” website above always contains the most important information in relatively

short form. You can base your observations and questions on that. You can amend this for yourself by

choosing a topic you are interested in. Whatever you contribute in class from other information such

as below or from anywhere else will be discussed when mentioned or I might contribute some of that

information. Anything we talk about in class will be important for the quiz.

Additional information: >>>>

Art:

From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_art

The beginnings:

The area of modern Germany is rich in finds of prehistoric art, including the Venus of Hohle Fels. This

appears to be the oldest undisputed example of Upper Paleolithic art and figurative sculpture of the

human form in general, from over 35,000 years BP, which was only discovered in 2008;[1] the better-

known Venus of Willendorf (24–22,000 BP) comes from a little way over the Austrian border.

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Venus of Hohle Fels, 35,000 to 40,000 BP, the oldest known figurative work of art (true height 6 cm

(2.4 in)).

Middle Ages

The Bamberg Apocalypse, from the Ottonian Reichenau School, achieves monumentality in a small scale.

1000–1020.

German medieval art really begins with the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne (d. 814), the first

state to rule the great majority of the modern territory of Germany, as well as France and much

of Italy. Carolingian art was restricted to a relatively small number of objects produced for a

circle around the court and a number of Imperial abbeys they sponsored, but had a huge

influence on later Medieval art across Europe. The most common type of object to survive is the

illuminated manuscript; wall paintings were evidently common but, like the buildings that

housed them, have nearly all vanished. The earlier centres of illumination were located in

modern France, but later Metz in Lorraine and the Abbey of Saint Gall in modern Switzerland

came to rival them. The Drogo Sacramentary and Folchard Psalter are among the manuscripts

they produced.[3]

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No Carolingian monumental sculpture survives, although perhaps the most important patronage of

Charlemagne was his commissioning of a life-size gold figure of Christ on a crucifix for his Palatine

Chapel in Aachen; this is only known from literary references and was probably gold foil around a

wooden base, probably modelled with a gesso layer, like the later and rather crumpled Golden

Madonna of Essen. Early Christian art had not featured monumental sculptures of religious figures as

opposed to rulers, as these were strongly associated by the Church Fathers with the cult idols of Ancient

Roman religion.

20th

century:

Video: The mad square: modernity in German art 1910-37

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hmPHwlc7BQ

Rehe im Walde ("Roe deer in the forest") by Franz Marc

Even more than in other countries, German art in the early 20th century developed through a

number of loose groups and movements, many covering other artistic media as well, and often

with a specific political element, as with the Arbeitsrat für Kunst and November Group, both

formed in 1918. By the 1920s a "Cartel of advanced artistic groups in Germany" (Kartell

fortschrittlicher Künstlergruppen in Deutschland) was found necessary.

Die Brücke ("The Bridge") was one of two groups of German painters fundamental to

expressionism, the other being Der Blaue Reiter group. Die Brücke was a group of German

expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905 by architecture students who wanted to be

painters: Fritz Bleyl (1880–1966), Erich Heckel (1883–1970), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–

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1938) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976), with Max Pechstein and others later joining.[37]

The notoriously individualistic Emil Nolde (1867–1956) was briefly a member of Die Brücke,

but was at odds with the younger members of the group. Die Brücke moved to Berlin in 1911,

where it eventually dissolved in 1913. Perhaps their most important contribution had been the

rediscovery of the woodcut as a valid medium for original artistic expression.

Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider") formed in Munich, Germany in 1911. Wassily

Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin and

others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting Last Judgment

from an exhibition by Neue Künstlervereinigung—another artists' group of which Kandinsky had

been a member. The name Der Blaue Reiter derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses, and

from Kandinsky's love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality—the

darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the

Spiritual in Art). Kandinsky had also titled a painting Der Blaue Reiter (see illustration) in

1903.[38]

The intense sculpture and printmaking of Käthe Kollwitz was strongly influenced by

Expressionism, which also formed the starting point for the young artists who went on to join

other tendencies within the movements of the early 20th century.[39]

Video: German Expressionism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgTqTRrDrvg

Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926

Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter were both examples of tendency of early 20th century German

art to be "honest, direct, and spiritually engaged"[40]

The difference in how the two groups

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attempted this were telling, however. The artists of Der Blaue Reiter were less oriented towards

intense expression of emotion and more towards theory- a tendency which would lead

Kandinsky to pure abstraction. Still, it was the spiritual and symbolic properties of abstract form

that were important. There were therefore Utopian tones to Kandinsky's abstractions: "We have

before us an age of conscious creation, and this new spirit in painting is going hand in hand with

thoughts toward an epoch of greater spirituality."[41]

Die Brücke also had Utopian tendencies, but

took the medieval craft guild as a model of cooperative work that could better society-

"Everyone who with directness and authenticity conveys that which drives him to creation

belongs to us".[42]

The Bauhaus also shared these Utopian leanings, seeking to combine fine and

applied arts (Gesamtkunstwerk) with a view towards creating a better society.

[edit] Weimar period

A major feature of German art in the early 20th century until 1933 was a boom in the production

of works of art of a grotesque style.[43][44]

Artists using the Satirical-Grotesque genre included

George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, at least in their works of the 1920s. Dada in

Germany, the leading practitioners of which were Kurt Schwitters and Hannah Höch, was

centered in Berlin, where it tended to be more politically oriented than Dada groups

elsewhere.[45]

They made important contributions to the development of collage as a medium for

political commentary- Schwitters later developed his Merzbau, a forerunner of installation art.[45]

Dix and Grosz were also associated with the Berlin Dada group. Max Ernst led a Dada group in

Cologne, where he also practiced collage, but with a greater interest in Gothic fantasy than in

overt political content- this hastened his transition into surrealism, of which he became the

leading German practitioner.[46]

The Swiss-born Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and others

experimented with cubism.

The New Objectivity, or Neue Sachlichkeit (new matter-of-factness), was an art movement

which arose in Germany during the 1920s as an outgrowth of, and in opposition to,

expressionism. It is thus post-expressionist and applied to works of visual art as well as

literature, music, and architecture. It describes the stripped-down, simplified building style of the

Bauhaus and the Weissenhof Settlement, the urban planning and public housing projects of

Bruno Taut and Ernst May, and the industrialization of the household typified by the Frankfurt

kitchen. Grosz and Dix were leading figures, forming the "Verist" side of the movement with

Beckmann and Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz (in his early work), Elfriede

Lohse-Wächtler, and Karl Hubbuch. The other tendency is sometimes called Magic Realism, and

included Anton Räderscheidt, Georg Schrimpf, Alexander Kanoldt, and Carl Grossberg. Unlike

some of the other groupings, the Neue Sachlichkeit was never a formal group, and its artists were

associated with other groups; the term was invented by a sympathetic curator, and "Magic

Realism" by an art critic.[47]

Plakatstil, "poster style" in German, was an early style of poster design that began in the early

20th century, using bold, straight fonts with very simple designs, in contrast to Art Nouveau

posters. Lucian Bernhard was a leading figure.

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Art during the Third Reich

The Nazi regime banned modern art, which they condemned as degenerate art (from the German:

entartete Kunst). According to Nazi ideology, modern art deviated from the prescribed norm of

classical beauty. While the 1920s to 1940s are considered the heyday of modern art movements,

there were conflicting nationalistic movements that resented abstract art, and Germany was no

exception. Avant-garde German artists were now branded both enemies of the state and a threat

to the German nation. Many went into exile, with relatively few returning after World War II.

Dix was one who remained, being conscripted into the Volkssturm Home Guard militia;

Pechstein kept his head down in rural Pomerania. Nolde also stayed, creating his "unpainted

pictures" in secret after being forbidden to paint. Beckmann, Ernst, Grosz, Feininger and others

went to America, Klee to Switzerland, where he died. Kirchner committed suicide.

In July 1937, the Nazis mounted a polemical exhibition entitled Entartete Kunst (Degenerate

Art), in Munich; it subsequently travelled to eleven other cities in Germany and Austria. The

show was intended as an official condemnation of modern art, and included over 650 paintings,

sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of thirty two German museums.

Expressionism, which had its origins in Germany, had the largest proportion of paintings

represented. Simultaneously, and with much pageantry, the Nazis presented the Grosse deutsche

Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition) at the palatial Haus der deutschen Kunst (House

of German Art). This exhibition displayed the work of officially approved artists such as Arno

Breker and Adolf Wissel. At the end of four months Entartete Kunst had attracted over two

million visitors, nearly three and a half times the number that visited the nearby Grosse deutsche

Kunstausstellung.[48]

Video: Degenerate Art - 1993, The Nazis vs. Expressionism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QE4Ld1mkoM

Post WWII art

Joseph Beuys, wearing his ubiquitous fedora, delivers a lecture on his theory of social sculpture, 1978

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Post-war art trends in Germany can broadly be divided into Neo-expressionism and

Conceptualism.

Especially notable neo-expressionists include or included Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Jörg

Immendorff, A. R. Penck, Markus Lüpertz, and Rainer Fetting. Other notable artists who work

with traditional media or figurative imagery include Martin Kippenberger, Gerhard Richter,

Sigmar Polke, and Neo Rauch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer today:

http://hyperallergic.com/71315/flowers-of-retrenchment-anselm-kiefers-alternate-history/

Anselm Kiefer at 65:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miYRiGf899s

Kiefer on art and various topics:

http://hyperallergic.com/11870/anselm-kiefer-92y/

Video: Anselm Kiefer discusses his work:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLtgYg2iA0A&list=PL35B22D8F09B8A5E9

Interview with Anselm Kiefer:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-SKMour6bw&list=PL35B22D8F09B8A5E9

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkUQdiC-oMY (Anselm Kiefer, German)

The Painter Jörg Immendorff:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEGw3R72ogg

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Leading German conceptual artists include or included Bernd and Hilla Becher, Hanne

Darboven, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Hans Haacke, and Charlotte Posenenske.[49]

The Performance artist, sculptor, and theorist Joseph Beuys was perhaps the most influential

German artist of the late 20th century.[50]

His main contribution to theory was the expansion of

the Gesamtkunstwerk to include the whole of society, as expressed by his famous expression

"Everyone is an artist". This expanded concept of art, known as social sculpture, defines

everything that contributes creatively to society as artistic in nature. The form this took in his

oeuvre varied from richly metaphoric, almost shamanistic performances based on his personal

mythology (How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, I Like America and America Likes Me) to

more direct and utilitarian expressions, such as 7000 Oaks and his activities in the Green party.

Famous for their happenings are HA Schult and Wolf Vostell. Wolf Vostell is also known for his

early installations with television. His first installations with television the Cycle Black Room

from 1958 was shown in Wuppertal at the Galerie Parnass in 1963 and his installation 6 TV Dé-

coll/age was shown at the Smolin Gallery [51]

in New York also in 1963.[52]

[53]

HA Schult, Trash People, shown in Cologne

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbAMooM685E

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HA_Schult

The art group Gruppe SPUR included: Lothar Fischer (1933–2004), Heimrad Prem (1934–1978),

Hans-Peter Zimmer (1936–1992) and Helmut Sturm (1932). The SPUR-artists met first at the

Academy of Fine Arts, Munich and, before falling out with them, were associated with the

Situationist International. Other groups include the Junge Wilde of the late 1970s to early 1980s.

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documenta (sic) is a major exhibition of contemporary art held in Kassel every five years (2007,

2012...), Art Cologne is an annual art fair, again mostly for contemporary art, and Transmediale

is an annual festival for art and digital culture, held in Berlin.

Other contemporary German artists include Jonathan Meese, Daniel Richter, Albert Oehlen,

Markus Oehlen, Rosemarie Trockel, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Blinky Palermo, Hans-

Jürgen Schlieker, Günther Uecker, Aris Kalaizis, Katharina Fritsch, Fritz Schwegler and Thomas

Schütte.

German Cinema:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_film

German Expressionism in film:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJR9dRgJe3k

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The Berlin Wintergarten theatre was the site of the first cinema ever, with a short movie presented by

the Skladanowsky brothers on 1 November 1895

Video: The Legacy of German Expressionism

Interview with Marlene Dietrich: 1971:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdYHZ4ALrSY

Der Blaue Engel (the Blue Angel): one of the most famous German films of the 1930s,

starring Marlene Dietrich:

Video (entire film) with English subtitles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXGMQWdXdyU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cinema Der blaue Engel (1930) by the Austrian director

Josef von Sternberg was Germany's first talkie (shot simultaneously in German and English) and

made an international star of Marlene Dietrich.

New German Cinema:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cinema

1960–1980 New German Cinema

Further information: New German Cinema

As a reaction to the artistic and economic stagnation of German cinema, a group of young film-

makers issued the Oberhausen Manifesto on February 28, 1962. This call to arms, which

included Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Peter Schamoni and Franz Josef Spieker among its

signatories, provocatively declared "Der alte Film ist tot. Wir glauben an den neuen" ("The old

cinema is dead. We believe in the new cinema"). Other up-and-coming filmmakers allied

themselves to this Oberhausen group, among them Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker

Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Jean-Marie Straub, Wim Wenders, Werner Schroeter and Hans-

Jürgen Syberberg in their rejection of the existing German film industry and their determination

to build a new industry founded on artistic excellence rather than commercial dictates. Most of

these directors organized themselves in, or partially co-operated with, the film production and

distribution company Filmverlag der Autoren established in 1971, which throughout the 1970s

brought forth a number of critically and internationally acclaimed films (see below).

Despite the foundation of the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (Young German Film

Committee) in 1965, set up under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to support

new German films financially, the directors of this New German Cinema, who rejected co-

operation with the existing film industry, were consequently often dependent on money from

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television. Young filmmakers had the opportunity to test their mettle in such programmes as the

stand-alone drama and documentary series Das kleine Fernsehspiel (The Little TV Play) or the

television films of the crime series Tatort. However, the broadcasters sought TV premieres for

the films which they had supported financially, with theatrical showings only occurring later. As

a consequence, such films tended to be unsuccessful at the box office.

This situation changed after 1974 when the Film-Fernseh-Abkommen (Film and Television

Accord) was agreed between the Federal Republic's main broadcasters, ARD and ZDF, and the

German Federal Film Board (a government body created in 1968 to support film-making in

Germany).[24]

This accord, which has been repeatedly extended up to the present day, provides

for the television companies to make available an annual sum to support the production of films

which are suitable for both theatrical distribution and television presentation. (The amount of

money provided by the public broadcasters has varied between 4.5 and 12.94 million euros per

year). Under the terms of the accord, films produced using these funds can only be screened on

television 24 months after their theatrical release. They may appear on video or DVD no sooner

than six months after cinema release. As a result of the funds provided by the Film-Fernseh-

Abkommen, German films, particularly those of the New German Cinema, gained a much greater

opportunity to enjoy box-office success before they played on television (Blaney 1992:204).

Despite the difficulty in finding a large domestic audience, the films of these directors also began

gaining critical acclaim and their foreign audiences grew throughout the 1970s.[25]

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuxobmWUJi0

Director Volker Schlöndorff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Schl%C3%B6ndorff

He won an Oscar as well as the Palme d'or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival for The Tin Drum

(1979), the film version of the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass.[1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHGla_N7LDE

Spying in East Germany: from the film “The Others”:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9J4v_El90U&list=PL3275EE8CDDBA2651

1990–2013 Federal Republic of Germany:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cinema

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A modern cinema in Dortmund

John Rabe (2009), directed by Florian Gallenberger, filming on location in Shanghai harbour.

Today's biggest producers include Bavaria Film, Constantin Film, Studio Hamburg, and UFA.

Recent film releases such as Run Lola Run by Tom Tykwer, Good Bye Lenin! by Wolfgang

Becker, Head-On by Fatih Akin, and Downfall by Oliver Hirschbiegel have arguably managed to

recapture the provocative and innovative nature of 1970s New German cinema. A number of

modern German films such as Downfall, Sophie Scholl – The Final Days, The Lives of Others,

and The Counterfeiters address the nature of totalitarianism in 20th-century Germany.

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Nina Hoss

In: “Barbara” by director Christian Petzold

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_%282012_film%29

Trailer: Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxmgAhDKoQY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Hoss

Video: Trailer for Nija Hoss in “Yella”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7iZUwm7tVQ

Video: Interview with Nina Hoss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7t-7OXVEic

Other notable directors working in German currently include Sönke Wortmann, Caroline Link

(winner of an Academy Award), Romuald Karmakar, Harun Farocki, Hans-Christian Schmid,

Andreas Dresen, Dennis Gansel, Ulrich Köhler and Ulrich Seidl, as well as comedy directors

Michael Herbig and Sven Unterwaldt.

Germany has recently experienced an influx of independent and underground films (mostly

pertaining to the horror genre). Directors in this popular circle include Andreas Schnaas, Olaf

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Ittenbach, Jorg Buttgereit, Timo Rose and Daryush Shokof with some highly original works

beginning with his Seven Servants.

The new decade has also seen a resurgence of the German film industry, with bigger-budget

films and good returns at the German box office.

German production companies have been quite commonly involved in expensive French and

Italian productions from Spaghetti Westerns to French comic book adaptations. In recent years,

German production interests have also become very involved with American television and film

production to help offset the costs of such productions, as evidenced by the company credits in

certain films and TV shows.

Germany have a long cooperation with the Swedish film industry, which started as early as

during the 1960s. German film industry has primarily been economically involved in Swedish

films, but does not put itself in the artistic product. However, some German actors have had

small parts in Swedish films and some Swedish actors have had small parts in German films. The

co-operation became stronger during the end of the 1990s.

German Film Academy

The Deutsche Filmakademie was founded in 2003 in Berlin and aims to provide native

filmmakers a forum for discussion and a way to promote the reputation of German cinema

through publications, presentations, discussions and regular promotion of the subject in the

schools.

NEW: One of the most famous German films with great international success:

Volker Schlöndorrff’s “The Tin Drum” and Wolfgang Peterson”s “Das Boot”

Info for “The Tin Drum:”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tin_Drum_%28film%29

The Tin Drum (German: Die Blechtrommel) is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same

name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff. Stylistically, it is a

surrealistic black comedy.

The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival[2]

and the Academy Award for

Best Foreign Language Film at the 52nd Academy Awards.[3]

Info for “Das Boot:”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot_%28film%29

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Produced with a budget of 32 million DM (about $18.5 million), the film was released on September 17, 1981, and was later released in 1997 in a director's cut version supervised by Petersen. It grossed over $80 million ($205 million in 2013 prices) worldwide between its theatrical releases and received critical acclaim. Its high production cost ranks it among the most expensive films in the history of German cinema.

Video: Das Boot (film): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iMWb8nEOG4

German Literature:

Beyond the Classics: What German Literature interests Foreigners:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB5wCZkd2YM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herta_M%C3%BCller

Herta Müller (born 17 August 1953) is a German-Romanian novelist, poet, essayist and

recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Nițchidorf, Timiș County in Romania,

her native language is German. Since the early 1990s she has been internationally established,

and her works have been translated into more than twenty languages.[1][2]

Video: Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 documentary, Herta Müller

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25DPgHKVpuU

Video: Herta Müller about herself and her writing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlgMZVZeU1I

History of German Literature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_literature

German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes

literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent

works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard

German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by

dialects (e.g. Alemannic).

An early flowering of German literature is the Middle High German period of the High Middle

Ages. Modern literature in German begins with the authors of the Enlightenment (such as

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Herder) and reaches its classical form at the turn of the 18th century with Weimar Classicism

(Goethe and Schiller).

Sturm und Drang

Main article: Sturm und Drang

Sturm und Drang (the conventional translation is "Storm and Stress"; a more literal translation,

however, might be storm and urge, storm and longing, or storm and impulse) is the name of a

movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early

1780s in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free

expression in response to the confines of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and

associated aesthetic movements. The philosopher Johann Georg Hamann is considered to be the

ideologue of Sturm und Drang, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a notable proponent of the

movement, though he and Friedrich Schiller ended their period of association with it, initiating

what would become Weimar Classicism.

19th century

German Classicism

Main article: Weimar Classicism

Weimar Classicism (German “Weimarer Klassik” and “Weimarer Klassizismus”) is a cultural

and literary movement of Europe, and its central ideas were originally propounded by Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller during the period 1788–

1832.

Romanticism

German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding

in its early years with the movement known as German Classicism or Weimar Classicism, which

it opposed. In contrast to the seriousness of English Romanticism, the German variety is notable

for valuing humor and wit as well as beauty. The early German romantics tried to create a new

synthesis of art, philosophy, and science, looking to the Middle Ages as a simpler, more

integrated period. As time went on, however, they became increasingly aware of the tenuousness

of the unity they were seeking. Later German Romanticism emphasized the tension between the

everyday world and the seemingly irrational and supernatural projections of creative genius.

Heinrich Heine in particular criticized the tendency of the early romantics to look to the

medieval past for a model of unity in art and society.

G.W.F. Hegel E.T.A. Hoffmann Friedrich Hölderlin Heinrich von Kleist

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Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) Friedrich Schlegel August Wilhelm Schlegel Friedrich Schleiermacher Ludwig Tieck Ludwig Uhland Joseph von Eichendorff Theodor Storm

Biedermeier and Vormärz

Biedermeier refers to work in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design in

the period between the years 1815 (Vienna Congress), the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and

1848, the year of the European revolutions and contrasts with the Romantic era which preceded

it. Typical Biedermeier poets are Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Adelbert von Chamisso, Eduard

Mörike, and Wilhelm Müller, the last three named having well-known musical settings by

Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Franz Schubert respectively.

Young Germany (Junges Deutschland) was a loose group of Vormärz writers which existed

from about 1830 to 1850. It was essentially a youth movement (similar to those that had swept

France and Ireland and originated in Italy). Its main proponents were Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich

Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg; Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne and Georg

Büchner were also considered part of the movement. The wider circle included Willibald Alexis,

Adolf Glassbrenner and Gustav Kühne.

Realism and Naturalism

Poetic Realism (1848–1890): Theodor Fontane, Gustav Freitag, Gottfried Keller, Wilhelm

Raabe, Adalbert Stifter, Theodor Storm

Naturalism (1880–1900): Gerhart Hauptmann

20th century

1900 to 1933

Fin de siècle (c. 1900) Weimar literature (1919-1933) Symbolism Expressionism (1910–1920) Dada (1914–1924) New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)

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Nazi Germany

National Socialist literature: see Blut und Boden, Nazi propaganda

Under the Nazi regime, some authors went into exile (Exilliteratur) and others submitted to

censorship ("internal emigration", Innere Emigration)

Inner Emigration: Gottfried Benn, Werner Bergengruen, Hans Blüher, Hans Heinrich Ehrler, Hans Fallada, Werner Finck, Gertrud Fussenegger, Ricarda Huch, Ernst Jünger, Erich Kästner, Volker Lachmann, Oskar Loerke, Erika Mitterer, Walter von Molo, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Richard Riemerschmid, Reinhold Schneider, Frank Thiess, Carl von Ossietzky, Ernst Wiechert

in exile: Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Broch, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Bruno Frank, A. M. Frey, Anna Gmeyner, Oskar Maria Graf, Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Hermann Kesten, Annette Kolb, Siegfried Kracauer, Emil Ludwig, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann, Balder Olden, Rudolf Olden, Robert Neumann, Erich Maria Remarque, Ludwig Renn, Alice Rühle-Gerstel, Otto Rühle, Alice Schwarz-Gardos, Anna Seghers, B. Traven, Bodo Uhse, Franz Werfel, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Zweig.

Book burning remembered:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hDvDSarXo

History:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning

1945 to 1989

Post-war literature of West Germany (1945–1967): Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Group 47; Holocaust literature (Paul Celan, Edgar Hilsenrath)

GDR Literature in East Germany: Johannes R. Becher, Wolf Biermann, Bertolt Brecht, Sarah Kirsch, Günter Kunert, Reiner Kunze, Heiner Müller, Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf

Further information: Heinrich Mann Prize

Postwar literature of Switzerland and Austria: Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Max Frisch, Elfriede Jelinek

Postmodern literature: Oswald Wiener, Christian Kracht, Hans Wollschläger, Christoph Ransmayr, Marlene Streeruwitz, Rainald Goetz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_German_Novels_of_the_Twentieth_Century

1. Robert Musil: The Man Without Qualities

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2. Franz Kafka: The Trial 3. Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain 4. Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz 5. Günter Grass: The Tin Drum 6. Uwe Johnson: Anniversaries. From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl 7. Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks 8. Joseph Roth: Radetzky March 9. Franz Kafka: The Castle 10. Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus

21st century

German being a relatively small language in comparison to English, much of contemporary

poetry in the German language is published in literary magazines. DAS GEDICHT, for instance,

has featured German poetry from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Luxemburg for the last

twenty years. Since 2013, it also has an English-language version.

Science-Fiction, Fantasy: Andreas Eschbach, Frank Schätzing, Wolfgang Hohlbein, Bernhard Hennen, Walter Moers

Pop Literature: Dietmar Dath, Christian Kracht, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Rainald Goetz.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/230881/German-literature/232434/The-turn-of-the-21st-

century

The turn of the 21st century

In the mid-1990s a new generation of writers emerged who finally provided the “reunification”

novels that critics had expected immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thomas Brussig’s

grotesquely comic novel Helden wie wir (1995; Heroes Like Us) was a satiric reworking of the

debate about the East German secret police. Thomas Hettche’s Nox (1995; “Night”) has a

strangely omniscient narrator in the form of a young man whose throat has been slit in a

sadomasochistic sexual act during the night the Wall came down. Nox draws a rather too obvious

equivalence between its narrator’s wound, from which he is dying, and the “wound” of the

divided Germany, which, on the face of things, is about to be healed. Nonetheless, Hettche

succeeds in transforming this central metaphor into a multilayered analysis of postunification

psychology. The cityscape of Berlin comes to stand for national and individual memory,

conserved, as it were, beneath the surface of streets and canals and the no-man’s-land of the

former border.

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In these and other novels of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the Nazi past continues to

haunt German writing. Marcel Beyer’s novel Flughunde (1995; “Flying Foxes,” Eng. trans.

Flughunde) recounts the deaths of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s children through

the eyes of two narrators: the eldest daughter, Helga, and a sound technician who had worked for

Goebbels. Long after the children’s deaths, the technician begins to recognize his own role in

their murders at the hands of their mother. Thomas Lehr’s experimental novella Frühling (2001;

“Spring”) employs drastically ruptured syntax to reproduce, in the form of a hesitating interior

monologue, the final 39 seconds of its protagonist’s life. Only toward the end of the story does

the narrator, who has just completed a suicide pact with his female lover, come to understand his

father’s guilt as a former concentration-camp doctor. This guilt, which has already caused the

narrator’s young brother to commit suicide, is revealed as the solution to a childhood scene that

the narrator has never fully understood. In contrast to German novels of the 1960s, which

attempted to “master” the Nazi past through narration, these more recent novels belong to what

has come to be called “memory culture.”

Linked with debates about the problem of memorializing the victims of Nazism in the form of

public monuments, German-language novels of the 1990s explicitly probe questions about how

memories of the Nazi period can best be represented. The Austrian writer Christoph Ransmayr’s

powerful Morbus Kitahara (1995; The Dog King) is set in a dystopian landscape that resembles

Mauthausen concentration camp and in an imagined alternative history in which Germany has

not been permitted to redevelop its industrial capabilities following World War II. W.G. Sebald’s

haunting novel Austerlitz (2001; Eng. trans. Austerlitz)—the story of a man who had been saved

from Nazi Germany and adopted by an English couple but who has been traveling in search of

the places he believes to have been way stations in his early life—has had international success

as a moving, though puzzling, exploration of memory, real and imagined.

https://sites.google.com/site/germanliterature/21st-century

Since the year 2000, German-language literature has been enriched by writers who have

distinguished themselves for their engagement with the present day and with recent history.

We can divide literary production into three genres (poetry, prose fiction, drama), although in

practice many writers work across genres:

Year in review (2012):

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1888117/Literature-Year-In-Review-

2012/308747/German?anchor=ref1164358

Best German/Austrian Literature of the 21st Century:

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http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/13141.Best_German_Austrian_Literature_of_the_21st_Centur

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