Narratives of trauma : discourses of German wartime suffering in national and international perspective / edited by Helmut Schmitz and Annette Seidel-Arpacı.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Schmitz, Helmut.

Seidel-Arpacı, Annette.

Series:

German monitor ; no. 73.

German monitor ; no. 73

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

World War, 1939-1945--Germany.

World War, 1939-1945.

Collective memory--Germany.

Collective memory.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

History--Psychological aspects.

History.

National characteristics, German.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (223 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Over the last decade German culture has been engaged in a re-examination of the traumatic events of the Second World War and their post-war legacy in the public and private sphere. This shift in German memory culture from a focus on responsibility for the Holocaust to a focus on wartime suffering has attracted a lot of critical attention over the past decade, in both Cultural and Literary Studies and History. This volume brings together British, German, Dutch and American scholars from the fields of Cultural Studies, History and Sociology to address the national and international significance of discourses of ‘German wartime suffering’ in post-war and contemporary Germany. The focus of this interdisciplinary volume is both on the historical roots of the ‘Germans as victims’ narratives and the forms of their continuing existence in contemporary public memory and culture. The first three sections of this volume explore the conditions of German victim discourses in a variety of media and public arenas from historiography, sociology, literature and film to monuments, civil defence bunkers and local public memory. The final section sets the contemporary re-articulation of German wartime suffering in an international context with respect to its reception and its reflection in both Western and Eastern Europe and Israel.

Contents:

Preliminary material / Editors Narratives of Trauma

Introduction / Helmut Schmitz and Annette Seidel-Arpacı

‘Killing Us in a Slow Way Instead of Doing it with Gas’: The German Catholic Discourse of ‘Suffering’, 1946-59 / Suzanne Brown-Fleming

Imperialist Air War. East German academic Research and Memory Politics reflected in the Work of Olaf Groehler / Bas von Benda-Beckmann

Hitler’s Legacy in Concrete and Steel: Memory and Civil Defence Bunkers in West Germany, 1950-65 / Nicholas J. Steneck

Expressions of Memory in Pforzheim, a City hit by Air War / Christian Groh

‘Den Toten der ostdeutschen Heimat’: Local Expellee Monuments and the Construction of Post-war Narratives / Jeffrey Luppes

Das Trauma der deutschen Kriegskinder zwischen nationaler und europäischer Erinnerung: Kritische Anmerkungen zum gegenwärtigen Wandel der Erinnerungskultur / Michael Heinlein

Double Visions: Queer Femininity and Holocaust Film / Cathy S. Gelbin

Foundational Traumas: On a Figure of Thought in Recent German Literature on Wartime Suffering / Helmut Schmitz

German Victimhood Discourse in Comparative Perspective / Bill Niven

Holland and the German Point of View: On the Dutch Reactions to German Victimhood / Krijn Thijs

The Miracle Workers: ‘German Suffering’, Israeli Masculinity, and the Feminised/Queered Nation as Redemptive in Eytan Fox’s Walk On Water / Annette Seidel-Arpacı

List of Contributors / Editors Narratives of Trauma

Index / Editors Narratives of Trauma.

Notes:

"The chapters in this volume originate in a conference held at Leeds University in summer 2008"--Page 11.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-16214-8

9786613162144

90-420-3320-7

OCLC:

742607111

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789042033207 DOI