German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

Since unification in 1990, Germany has seen a boom in the confrontation with memory, evident in a sharp increase in novels, films, autobiographies, and other forms of public discourse that engage with the long-term effects of National Socialism across generations. Taking issue with the concept of "Vergangenheitsbewältigung," or coming to terms with the Nazi past, which after 1945 guided nearly all debate on the topic, the contributors to this volume view contemporary German culture through the more dynamic concept of "memory contests," which sees all forms of memory, public or private, as ongoing processes of negotiating identity in the present. Touching on gender, generations, memory and postmemory, trauma theory, ethnicity, historiography, and family narrative, the contributions offer a comprehensive picture of current German memory debates, in so doing shedding light on the struggle to construct a Germanidentity mindful of but not wholly defined by the horrors of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Contributors: Peter Fritzsche, Anne Fuchs, Elizabeth Boa, Stefan Willer, Chloe E. M. Paver, Matthias Fiedler, J. J. Long, Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Cathy S. Gelbin, Jennifer E. Michaels, Mary Cosgrove, Andrew Plowman, Roger Woods. Anne Fuchs is Professor of modern German literature and Georg Grote is Lecturer in German history, both at University College Dublin. Mary Cosgrove is Lecturer in German at the University of Edinburgh.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Germany's Memory Contests and the Management of the Past - Anne Fuchs and Mary Cosgrove What Exactly Is Vergangenheitsbewältigung? Narrative and Its Insufficiency in Postwar Germany - Peter Fritzsche The Tinderbox of Memory: Generation and Masculinity in Väterliteratur by Cristoph Meckel, Uwe Timm, Dagmar Leupold, and Ulla HahnDagmar Leupold, and Ulla Hahn - Anne Fuchs Telling It How It Wasn't: Familial Allegories of Wish-Fulfillment in Postunification Germany - Elizabeth Boa Being Translated: Exile, Childhood, and Multilingualism in G.-A. Goldschmidt and W. G. Sebald - Stefan Willer "Ein Stück langweiliger als die Wehrmachtsausstellung, aber dafür repräsentativer": The Exhibition Fotofeldpost as Riposte to the "Wehrmacht Exhibition"Exhibition" - Chloe Paver German Crossroads: Visions of the Past in German Cinema after Reunification - Matthias Fiedler Monika Maron's Pawels Briefe: Photography, Narrative, and the Claims of Postmemory - Jonathan Long Imagined Identities: Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors in Literature - Dagmar C. G. Lorenz Of Stories and Histories: Golem Figures in Post-1989 German and Austrian Culture - Cathy Gelbin Multi-Ethnicity and Cultural Identity: Afro-German Women Writers' Struggle for Identity in Post-Unification GermanyGermany - Jennifer E. Michaels The Anxiety of German Influence: Affiliation, Rejection, and Jewish Identity in W. G. Sebald's Work - Mary Cosgrove Between "Restauration" and "Nierentisch": The 1950s in Ludwig Harig, F. C. Delius, and Thomas Hettche - Andrew Plowman On Forgetting and Remembering: The New Right since German Unification - Roger Woods

About the Author :
Mary Cosgrove is Professor in German at Trinity College Dublin. Her research and teaching foci include Holocaust memory and representation in literature and culture; German Jewish writing; the cultural history and theory of melancholia and boredom in European letters; and literary and narrative economics. Key publications include Born under Auschwitz: Melancholy Traditions in Postwar German Literature (Camden House, 2014); German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990 (Camden House, 2006; paperback 2010). Andrew Plowman is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Liverpool. Mary Cosgrove is Professor in German at Trinity College Dublin. Her research and teaching foci include Holocaust memory and representation in literature and culture; German Jewish writing; the cultural history and theory of melancholia and boredom in European letters; and literary and narrative economics. Key publications include Born under Auschwitz: Melancholy Traditions in Postwar German Literature (Camden House, 2014); German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990 (Camden House, 2006; paperback 2010).

Review :
Winner of the 2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award The studies collected in this volume succeed in substantiating the overarching claim of a pluralization of memorialization and in illuminating its facets. This volume presents a timely and comprehensive summary of the current interest ... in post-unification discourses of memory in relation to Germany's various 'pasts', above all the Nazi past.... This volume makes a significant contribution to the field of cultural memory and to the study of contemporary responses to Germany's multifaceted past. The strength of this book lies in the fact that the issue of German memory is an important current topic in Germanistik and German Studies and will likely continue to flourish as more primary sources on this topic are published in Germany and Austria. Of particular interest are essays on underresearched topics: post-Shoah Jewish writing, Afro-German writers in postunification Germany, and strategies of the New Right in Germany. ...A splendid volume. The book contains many thought-provoking and balanced essays as well as a very helpful critical apparatus for postgraduates working on self-reflective German literature and/or film of the 20th century.