The events of 1989 and German unification were seismic historical moments. Although 1989 appeared to signify a healing of the war-torn history of the twentieth century, unification posed the question of German cultural identity afresh. Politicians, historians, writers, filmmakers, architects, and the wider public engaged in "memory contests" over such questions as the legitimacy of alternative biographies, West German hegemony, and the normalization of German history. This dynamic, contested, and still ongoing transformation of German cultural identity is the topic of this volume of new...

Examining the role of memory in the transition from totalitarian to democratic systems, this book makes an important contribution to memory studies. It explores memory as a medium of and impediment to change, looking at memory's biological, cultural, narrative and socio-psychological dimensions.

Since unification, German culture has experienced a boom in discourses on generation, family and place. Linda Shortt reads this as symptomatic of a wider quest for belonging that mobilizes attachment to counter the effects of post-modern deterritorialization and globalization. Investigating twenty-first century narratives of belonging by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein, Angelika Overath, Florian Illies, Juli Zeh, Stephan Wackwitz, Uwe Timm and Peter Schneider, Shortt examines how the desire to belong is repeatedly unsettled by disturbances of lineage and tradition. In this way, she combines an...