Divided subjects, invisible borders : re-unified Germany after 1989 / Ben Gook.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gook, Ben, author.

Contributor:

Class of 1891 Department of Arts Fund.

Series:

Place, memory, affect

Place, Memory, Affect

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History.

Social aspects.

Germany--History--Unification, 1990--Influence.

Germany.

Germany--History--Unification, 1990--Social aspects.

Germany--Social conditions--1990-.

Social conditions.

Collective memory--Germany.

Collective memory.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

viii, 318 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield International, [2015]

Summary:

Why do those born in eastern Germany today still identify with aspects of the GDR? What do Germany's memorials, films, nostalgias, memory debates and national commemorations tell us about the lives of Germans today? 2015 marks the 25th anniversary of German re-unification. Yet Germany remains divided; the unified Germany of the official representations hides its informal division, a screen that can be detected in fraught debates and divided German lives since 1989. 'Divided Subjects, Invisible Borders' returns to the Nazi period and Cold War to argue that fantasies about whom the "real Germans" are have persisted down the decades to today, while official approaches to re-unification echoed and addressed those of post-war justice. Through examples from museums, film, commemoration, visual art, literature and political debate, it reveals how eastern Germany is represented, remembered and experienced in ways shaped by dominant ideas from the west.

Contents:

Introduction: just another country in Europe?

Part I. Another new beginning

End of story: Nachträglichkeit and the German past

The German ideology: identity, fantasy, affect

Part II. The past that outlived itself: nostalgia and ambivalence

Really-existing nostalgia: transitions, fetishes and objects

Disintegration and ambivalence: Berlin and Leipzig

Part III. The lives of Ossis on film

The lives of others: imitations of life

Good bye Lenin!: too soon, too late

Material: something is left over

Part IV. Remembering, commemorating

In the gallery: aesthetics and memory contests

In the street: commemoration and interpassivity

Conclusion: another new ending.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1891 Department of Arts Fund.

ISBN:

1783482427

9781783482412

1783482419

9781783482429

OCLC:

917366171

Publisher Number:

99964698990