The many catastrophes of German history have often been described as tragic. Consequently, German literature, music, philosophy, painting, and even architecture are rich in tragic connotations. Yet exactly what -tragedy- and -the tragic- may mean requires clarification. The poet creates a certain artful shape and trajectory for raw experience by -putting it into words-; but does putting such experience into words (or paintings or music or any other form) betray suffering by turning it into mere art? Or is it art that first turns mere suffering into tragic experience by revealing and...

The twenty-first century has seen a renewed surge of cultural and critical interest in the works of the Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), who was among the most-read and -acclaimed authors worldwide in the 1920s and 1930s but after 1945 fell into critical disfavor and relative obscurity. The resurgence in interest in Zweig and his works is attested to by, among other things, new English translations and editions of his works; a Brazilian motion picture and a best-selling French novel about his final days; and a renewed debate surrounding the literary quality of his work in the...

In Germany the decade beginning in the mid-1990s brought an unprecedented "confusion of the spheres" of literature and popular music. Popular musicians "crossed over" into the literary field, editors and writers called for contemporary German literature to become more like popular music, writers attempted to borrow structural aspects from music or paid new attention to popular music at the thematic level. Others sought to raise their profiles by means of performance models taken from the popular music field. This book sets out to make sense of this situation. It argues for more inclusive and...

Social-injustice dilemmas such as poverty, unemployment, and racism are subjects of continuing debate in European societies and in Germany in particular, as solutions are difficult and progress often comes slowly. Such discussions are not limited to opposing newspaper editorials, position papers, or legislative forums, however; creative works expound on these topics as well, but their contributions to the debate are often marginalized. This collection of new essays explores how contemporary German-language literary, dramatic, filmic, musical, and street artists are grappling with...

What is the status of women's writing in German today, in an era when feminism has thoroughly problematized binary conceptions of sex and gender? Drawing on gender and queer theory, including the work of Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault, the essays in this volume rethink conventional ways of conceptualizing female authorship and re-examine the formal, aesthetic, and thematic terms in which "women's literature" has been conceived. With an eye to the literary and feminist legacy of authors such as Christa Wolf and Ingeborg Bachmann, contributors treat the works of many of...

Classical music in the German Democratic Republic is commonly viewed as having functioned as an ideological support or cultural legitimization for the state, in the form of the so-called "bourgeois humanist inheritance." The large numbers of professional orchestras in the GDR were touted as a proof of the country's culture. Classical music could be seen as the polar opposite of Americanizing pop culture and also of musical modernism, which was decried as formalist. Nevertheless, there were still musical modernists in the GDR, and classical music traditions were not only a prop of the...

Nietzsche looms over modern literature and thought; according to Gottfried Benn, -everything my generation discussed, thought through innerly; one could say: suffered; or one could even say: took to the point of exhaustion -- all of it had already been said . . . by Nietzsche; all the rest was just exegesis.- Nietzsche's influence on intellectual life today is arguably as great; witness the various societies, journals, and websites and the steady stream of papers, collections, and monographs. This Companion offers new essays from the best Nietzsche scholars, emphasizing the interrelatedness...

Franz Kafka's literary career began in the first decade of the twentieth century and produced some of the most fascinating and influential works in all of modern European literature. Now, a hundred years later, the concerns of a new century call for a look at the challenges facing Kafka scholarship in the decades ahead: What more can we hope to learn about the context in which Kafka wrote? How does understanding that context affect how we read his stories? What are the consequences of new critical editions that offer unprecedented access to Kafka's works in manuscript form? How does our view...

In 1848 Richard Wagner began what would become the largest stage work of his career, the Ring of the Nibelung. In preparation for the task he composed an overview of the Nibelung myth designed to lead to a drama; he then composed the verse -libretto- Siegfried's Death. Although he abandoned the idea of a single opera on Siegfried in favor of the huge project that developed out of it in the succeeding years -- the Ring cycle -- he did consider the two early documents important enough to include them in his collected works. The present volume seeks to inform the English-speaking reader in three...

In the last decade, cuts have been made to foreign-language programs in the United States across all levels of education, German programs among them. Despite this, enrollments in German programs have increased modestly. The importance of Germany and its language on the world stage is undeniable: it has demonstrated its strength as a major world economic power, and Germany continues to invest heavily throughout the world. Inspired by the leadership of Helene Zimmer-Loew, longtime Executive Director of the American Association of Teachers of German, the contributors to this volume examine the...