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»Ein vollendet ausgeführtes Romangemälde.« Literarische Welt Wie jedes Jahr verbringt die Familie Dalandt den Sommer in der Provence. Die Hitze macht träge, in der Zypresse zirpen Zikaden, und jeden Morgen läuft die Hausherrin im Nachthemd durch den Garten zum Pförtnerhaus, wo der Verwalter sie erwartet. Ihr Mann ist durch eine eigene verhängnisvolle Beziehung abgelenkt. Da entzündet sich ein Ehestreit an ›Taube und Wildente‹, einem Stillleben aus dem 19. Jahrhundert. Was hat es mit dem zinnoberroten Punkt in seinem Zentrum auf sich, macht der es nicht zu einem modernen Meisterwerk? Aber die Frau will es verkaufen, die Spannung zwischen beiden wächst. Martin Mosebach, der menschliche Schwächen schildert wie kein zweiter, malt mit Wörtern. Ein flammender Roman über Kunst, Liebe und Verrat. Über den Abgrund in einer Ehe und einen Fehltritt mit Folgen, über Schönheit, Verdammnis und Verlust – virtuos und fesselnd erzählt von einem der bedeutendsten deutschsprachigen Schriftsteller der Gegenwart. »Ein unerhörtes Stück Literatur über Liebe, Kunst und Verrat samt glorioser Pointe.« Tobias Haberl, Süddeutsche Zeitung »Provence, ein altes Landhaus, das uralte Drama des Menschlichen, ein stilistischer Lesegenuss von hohem Rang.« Iris Radisch. Die Zeit

Don't just see the sights—get to know the people. Germany powerhouse of Europe and pillar of the Eurozone feels reassuringly familiar. However, despite superficial appearances, this is a country that operates very differently from the USA and Britain. German history is more than a thousand years old and the relatively new German nation-state encompasses an astonishing variety of cultural and regional differences. German society is also in a state of flux, as people respond to immigration and a tough economic climate, and traditional attitudes such as formality and rigid protocol are softening as German business globalizes.Culture Smart! Germany sets out to show you how to be a good and sensitive guest. With chapters on core values and attitudes, and a practical business briefing, it is a valuable introduction to the German way of life. It tells you what treatment to expect, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to build rapport and credibility with this culturally rich and inventive people at the heart of Europe.Have a richer and more meaningful experience abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on history, values, attitudes, and traditions will help you to better understand your hosts, while tips on etiquette and communicating will help you to navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

Eine'Legende'war er, weil er mit dem Renommee seines'Friedensvereins'vor 1918 nach 1920 die Interessen der deutschen Minderheit in Dänemark mit großem Eifer vertrat: Grenzrevision und kulturelle Autonomie.'Umstritten', weil er mit seinem Interesse an nordischer Kultur und Geschichte utopische Pläne einer skandinavischen Einheit in Anlehnung an ein dominantes Deutschland verfolgte, die ebenso wie sein deutsch-völkisches rassistisches Weltbild, das er letztlich als den'wahren'Nationalsozialismus begriff, keinen Widerhall im demokratischen Norden fanden. Auch nach 1945 blieb er umstritten: Er äußerte Missfallen am loyalen Kurs der deutschen Minderheit in Nordschleswig und übte harsche Kritik an der dänischen Rechtsabrechnung. Peter Hopp liefert mit diesem Buch eine lange überfällige grundlegende politisch-historische Biographie eines bedeutenden Grenzlandkämpfers der deutschen Minderheit in Nordschleswig. Das Buch bildet daher einen gewichtigen Beitrag im Jubiläumsjahr des'Grenzstreits'des Jahres vor und nach 1920.

Der Band offenbart Carl Eduard Knoblauchs Wahrnehmungen der USA zu Zeiten des Amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs und der Reconstruction-Ära. Knoblauch (Berlin 1837-New York 1886) emigrierte 1863 nach New York, um in das dortige Handelshaus seines Onkels einzusteigen. Anfangs voller Sehnsucht nach der Familie in Deutschland kommentierte der Börsenmakler und Sohn des berühmten Berliner Architekten Eduard Knoblauch in 61 deutsch- und englischsprachigen Briefen und Briefjournalen an Geschwister und Freunde sein Umfeld und das Zeitgeschehen auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks. Er thematisierte komplexe Finanztransaktionen ebenso wie die Bühnenauftritte leichtbekleideter Tänzerinnen. Er fungierte als kompetenter Gastrokritiker und Musikliebhaber. Er berichtete mit journalistischem Talent über Kriegsverläufe und politische Grabenkämpfe im Kongress in Washington/DC, wobei er heftig über die Neigung der regierungsfreundlichen Presse zu fake news lamentierte. Er bewies Feingespür für US-amerikanische Marotten oder kritisierte das emanzipierte Verhalten mancher US-Amerikanerin, das ihm, dem im biedermeierlichen Berlin sozialisierten Bildungsbürger missfiel. Das Fragment eines Briefes an seine künftige Verlobte, Angehörige seines preußischen Freundeskreises, beendet die Kompilation seiner Briefkopien, für deren Verfertigung Knoblauch teure, aufwendig in England produzierte Kopierbücher benutzte.

Zwischen 1969 und 1973 entstand im Zentrum Ost-Berlins ein einzigartiger Hochhauskiez. In die markanten Neubauten auf der Fischerinsel zogen neben kinderreichen Familien vor allem Künstler, Wissenschaftler, Funktionäre und Diplomaten ein – DDR-Alltag traf hier auf Prominenz und Extravaganz. Auch die Familie von Andreas Ulrich lebte eine Zeitlang auf der Fischerinsel. Fünf Jahrzehnte später begibt sich der Journalist auf die Suche nach seinen einstigen Mitschülern, um herauszufinden, was aus ihnen geworden ist. Die Recherchen führen ihn weit über Berlin hinaus und offenbaren bewegende und außergewöhnliche Lebensgeschichten.

Forging Germans explores the German nationalization and eventual National Socialist radicalization of ethnic Germans in the Batschka and the Western Banat, two multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderland territories currently in northern Serbia. Deploying a comparative approach, Caroline Mezger investigates the experiences of ethnic German children and youth in interwar Yugoslavia and under Hungarian and German occupation during World War II, as local and Third Reich cultural, religious, political, and military organizations wrestled over young people's national (self-) identification and loyalty. Ethnic German children and youth targeted by these nationalization endeavors moved beyond being the objects of nationalist activism to become agents of nationalization themselves, as they actively negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the'Germanness'ascribed to them. Interweaving original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and diverse historical press sources, Forging Germans provides incisive insight into the experiences and memories of one of Europe's most contested wartime demographics, probing the relationship between larger historical circumstances and individual agency and subjectivity.

How do groups of people fashion shared identities in the modern world? Following two communities of German-speaking Mennonites, one composed of voluntary migrants and the other of refugees, across four continents between 1870 and 1945, this transnational study explores how religious migrants engaged with the phenomenon of nationalism. John P. R. Eicher demonstrates how migrant groups harnessed the global spread of nationalism to secure practical objectives and create local mythologies. In doing so, he also reveals how governments and aid organizations used diasporic groups for their own purposes - and portraying such nomads as enemies or heroes in national and religious mythologies. By underscoring the importance of local and religious counter-stories that run in parallel to nationalist narratives, Exiled Among Nations helps us understand acts of resistance, flight, and diaspora in the modern world.

Inspired by Alistair Cooke's masterpiece “Letter from America” (1934-2004) that depicted the transformation of British culture in the United States of America, Ndi-Shang's text redefines ‘America', focusing on the melting pot engendered by African, indigenous, European and Asian cultures in Latin America through the case of Peru, the erstwhile epicentre of Spanish empire in Latin America. It is a reflection on the triangular relationship between Africa, Europe and America against the backdrop of slavery and (neo-)colonialism which continue to define intimate experiences, daily interactions, personal trajectories and human relations in a ‘globalized world'. Ndi-Shang probes into the legacies of racial inequalities but also the possibilities of a new ethic of encounter amongst human beings/cultures. The text is based on an intricate interweaving of the humorous with the tragic, the personal with the global, the historical with the current and the real with the creative.

Across half a century, from the division of Germany through the end of the Cold War, a cohort of thirty women from the small German town of Schönebeck in what used to be the GDR circulated among themselves a remarkable collective archive of their lives: a Rundbrief, or bulletin, containing hundreds of letters and photographs. This book draws on that unprecedented resource, complemented by a set of interviews, to paint a rich portrait of “ordinary” life in postwar Germany. It shows how these women—whether reflecting on their experiences as Nazi-era schoolchildren or witnessing reunification—were united by their complex interactions with official power and their commitment to sustaining a shared German identity as they made the most of their everyday lives in both the GDR and the Federal Republic.

Der vorliegende Band des Schwabenspiegels fasst zwei Ereignisse des Vereins Schwäbisches Literaturschloss Edelstetten zusammen: Den literarischen Salon an Christi Himmelfahrt 2018, der in diesem Jahr Räuber und Wilderer zum Thema hatte. Und andererseits herausragende Texte zum Thema „wilde Literatur“, die am 30. September 2018 beim Schwäbischen Poetry-Slam in Rap-Battles und Slams, vorzugsweise in schwäbischer Mundart, vorgetragen wurden.

Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts setzten regelrechte Auswanderungswellen aus Deutschland ein, deren Ziel Nordamerika war. Ganze Dörfer, Großfamilien und Vereine verließen aus Armut, wegen Hungersnöten, aufgrund politischer oder religiöser Verfolgung ihre Heimat. Viele der Neuankömmlinge identifizierten sich in den ersten Jahrzehnten noch stark mit der deutschen Kultur, behielten die deutsche Sprache bei und siedelten sich in eigenen Stadtteilen an, etwa »Little Germany« in New York; andere wiederum fühlten sich bald der Kultur der Vereinigten Staaten zugehörig. Dieses Buch zeichnet die faszinierende Geschichte der 5,5 Millionen deutschen Migranten und die Spuren des deutsch-amerikanischen Lebens in den USA nach, die der Prozess der Akkulturation bis heute hinterlassen hat.

Immer mehr Menschen wollen nach Deutschland. Sie sehen ein weltoffenes Land und eine'Willkommenskultur'. Doch kann das gut gehen? Wie kann unsere Zukunft gesichert werden und zugleich Deutschland Deutschland bleiben? Drei prominente Autoren, die als Bürgerrechtler ihr Leben lang mutig für Freiheit und gegen eine Diktatur gekämpft haben, haben sich in zehn Thesen damit auseinandergesetzt. Sie sprechen aus, was Millionen denken und was trotzdem nicht genau genug gehört werden will. Sie haben erlebt, was Grenzen und was Freiheit bedeuten und wie schnell Staaten zerbrechen können. Ihr Buch ist eine Absage an Multikulti-Naivität und Political Correctness und stellt entscheidende Fragen: Auffanglager für alle Flüchtlinge? Welche Grenzen ziehen und welche schließen? Wann sind unsere Kapazitäten erschöpft? Die Thesen antworten darauf mit unbequemen Wahrheiten und ohne Angst vor Widerspruch. Die drei tun das, was sie ihr Leben lang getan haben: Sie stehen auf für die Bürgerrechte und dafür, dass dieses Deutschland eine Zukunft hat. Mutig, streitbar und mit dem klaren Blick für die Zustände in diesem Land.

Between the 1933 Nazi seizure of power and their 1941 prohibition on all Jewish emigration, around 90,000 German Jews moved to the United States. Using the texts and images from a personal archive, this Palgrave Pivot explores how these refugees made sense of that experience. For many German Jews, theirs was not just a story of flight and exile; it was also one chapter in a longer history of global movement, experienced less as an estrangement from Germanness, than a reiteration of the mobility central to it. Private photography allowed these families to position themselves in a context of fluctuating notions of Germaness, and resist the prescribed disentanglement of their Jewish and German identities. In opening a unique window onto refugees'own sense of self as they moved across different geographical, political, and national environments, this book will appeal to readers interested in Jewish life and migration, visual culture, and the histories of National Socialism and the Holocaust.

A new pocket edition of this Conradian tale of maddening desire, from the master of the novellaOn a sweltering ocean-liner travelling from India to Europe a passenger tells his story: the tale of a doctor in the Dutch East Indies torn between his duty and the pull of his emotions; a tale of power and desire, pride and shame and a headlong flight into folly.This is one the most intense and incisive of the novellas which brought Stefan Zweig to worldwide fame.

Die Deutschen – das stolze Volk der Dichter und Denker? Lässt man die Dichter und Denker selbst zu Wort kommen, so zeigt sich, dass es mit dem Nationalstolz nicht weit her ist: „Wir Deutschen sind von gestern“ – so lautet Goethes schonungsloses Urteil über sein Volk, und auch andere sparen nicht mit Kritik, wenn es um die deutsche Identität geht: „thatenarm und gedankenvoll“ heißt es bei Hölderlin, „willkürlich verdummt“ befand Nietzsche. Im vorliegenden Buch sind viele deutsche Geistesgrößen vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart versammelt: Von Walther von der Vogelweide über Luther, Kant, Schiller bis hin zu Heidegger, Brecht und Walser. Ihnen allen gemein ist der skeptische Blick auf das eigene Land. Das Ergebnis ist ernüchternd, geradezu vernichtend: die Deutschen – ein grobes Volk ohne Nationalcharakter, ein Land von Kulturadepten, voll „strohdummer Bürger“, wie Adenauer enttäuscht bemerkte. Souverän und kenntnisreich kommentiert Johannes Fried die ausgewählten Texte, bettet sie ins jeweilige Zeitgeschehen ein – und wartet dabei mit überraschenden Erkenntnissen auf.

1971 erklärte der Internationale Gerichtshof das Südafrika übertragene Mandat über Namibia für völkerrechtswidrig. Das war der Kairos, den die beiden lutherischen Kirchen in Namibia wahrnahmen und in einem'offenen Brief'an den Premierminister von Südafrika die Menschenrechte einklagten und ein freies Namibia forderten. Dieser Brief wirkte wie ein Fanal in der Gemeinschaft der Lutherischen Kirchen weltweit. Wie es dazu kam und wie der'Offene Brief'entstand, schildert hier der letzte lebende Zeitzeuge. Ein zweiter Schwerpunkt des Buches schildert den Weg des Theologen Theo Sundermeier, der zum Lehren nach Namibia kam und zum Lernenden wurde. Mission beginnt nicht mit lehren oder predigen, sondern mit hören und nochmals hören und der Aufgabe, den anderen zu verstehen. Kernbegriffe von Sundermeiers universitären Lehrtätigkeit in Deutschland wurden hier geformt u.a.'Hermeneutik des Fremden','Konvivenz','primäre und sekundäre Religion'.

Transform yourself from a typical tourist into a connoisseur of German culture!Do you want to travel to Deutschland without feeling like a Dummkopf! To blend in when visiting Berlin? To feel like you belong in Bavaria? When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do makes it simple to navigate the narrow streets of an Alpine village unnoticed or to go to a movie in Munich without turning heads. With this crash course in German customs and heritage, you'll avoid embarrassing blunders and enrich your travel experience.Packed with 120 articles, this handy collection of cultural dos and don'ts covers a broad range of topics, including food, art, pop culture, politics, business, entertainment, home life, history, and education. In these pages you'll find authoritative answers to questions such as:●At a restaurant, should I find my own table or wait to be seated?●What is a suitable topic for small talk with a stranger?●What is the fastest train service in Germany?●How many varieties of sausage are there?●What is the unofficial division between north and south Germany called?●How do Germans usually pay for online purchases?●What is the main emergency number to call in Germany?With light-hearted quizzes, links to cool websites, this new edition of When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do has been fully updated to provide insights into all aspects of contemporary German culture, and will delight everyone from students and tourists to armchair travelers and trivia buffs.

This book argues for the importance of popular music in negotiations of national identity, and Germanness in particular. By discussing diverse musical genres and commercially and critically successful songs at the heights of their cultural relevance throughout seventy years of post-war German history, Soundtracking Germany describes how popular music can function as a language for “writing” national narratives. Running chronologically, all chapters historically contextualize and critically discuss the cultural relevance of the respective genre before moving into a close reading of one particularly relevant and appellative case study that reveals specific interrelations between popular music and constructions of Germanness. Close readings of these sonic national narratives in different moments of national transformations reveal changes in the narrative rhetoric as this book explores how Germanness is performatively constructed, challenged, and reaffirmed throughout the course of seventy years.

A new pocket edition of this Conradian tale of maddening desire, from the master of the novella On a sweltering ocean-liner travelling from India to Europe a passenger tells his story - the tale of a doctor in the Dutch East Indies torn between his duty and the pull of his emotions; a tale of power and maddening desire, of pride, shame and a headlong flight into folly. Amok is one of the most intense and incisive of the tales that brought Stefan Zweig to worldwide fame. Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Between the wars, Zweig was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath and New York - a period during which he produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, Beware of Pity, and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. He eventually settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.

Personality Development across the Lifespan examines the development of personality characteristics from childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood, and old age. It provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives, methods, and empirical findings of personality and developmental psychology, also detailing insights on how individuals differ from each other, how they change during life, and how these changes relate to biological and environmental factors, including major life events, social relationships, and health. The book begins with chapters on personality development in different life phases before moving on to theoretical perspectives, the development of specific personality characteristics, and personality development in relation to different contexts, like close others, health, and culture. Final sections cover methods in research on the topic and the future directions of research in personality development. - Introduces and reviews the most important personality characteristics - Examines personality in relation to different contexts and how it is related to important life outcomes - Discusses patterns and sources of personality development

“When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics but none at all from the public. Nazism was finished in the bunker in Berlin and its death warrant signed on the bench at Nuremberg.” That's Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He's right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we've seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we've seen in the past year. They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer's book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune. A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.

Since the Euro crisis began, Germany has emerged as Europe's dominant power. During the last three years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been compared with Bismarck and even Hitler in the European media. And yet few can deny that Germany today is very different from the stereotype of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. After nearly seventy years of struggling with the Nazi past, Germans think that they more than anyone have learned its lessons. Above all, what the new Germany thinks it stands for is peace. Germany is unique in this combination of economic assertiveness and military abstinence. So what does it mean to have a'German Europe'in the twenty-first century? In The Paradox of German Power, Hans Kundnani explains how Germany got to where it is now and where it might go in future. He explores German national identity and foreign policy through a series of tensions in German thinking and action: between continuity and change, between'normality'and'abnormality,'between economics and politics, and between Europe and the world.

Eleonore ist Mitte Dreißig, als sie glaubt in Marokko die Liebe ihres Lebens gefunden zu haben. Der schöne Rachid begleitet sie in die Wüste und verzaubert sie mit seinem Charme. Ein halbes Jahr später heiraten die beiden und Rachid zieht zu ihr nach Deutschland. Doch in diesem kalten Land kann er nicht leben und überredet Eleonore, eine neue Existenz in Marokko aufzubauen. Sie lässt sich aus Liebe darauf ein und muss am Ende die bitterste Erfahrung ihres Lebens machen.

Az 1989 utáni időszak forrásfeltárása, a korábban is ismert források újraértelmezése a magyarországi németség 1930-as és 1940-es évekbeli történelmének végre objektív megítélését hozta. Ennek keretében került sor a hazai németek emblematikus, már-már démonízalt szervezetének, a Volksbundnak az átfogó újraértékelésére. Noha az új megközelítések révén nemcsak a szemlélet változott meg, de tudásunk is bővült, a mai napig adós maradt a kutatás azzal, hogy miként is alakultak a németség mindennapjai a kérdéses időszakban, vajon az országosan kirajzolódó képet a helyi viszonyok feltérképezése is alátámasztja-e, s egyáltalán térben és időben miként érdemes a Volksbund-jelenséget differenciálnunk. E szervezet tényleges, a mindennapokban megvalósuló tevékenysége világíthat rá ugyanis arra, hogy mennyire volt rá befolyással maga a nemzetiszocializmus, mennyire valósította meg e szervezet azt a célrendszert, amit közzé tett, s egyáltalán mekkora volt a mozgástere mindebben. Forráskiadványunk e kérdések megválaszolásához akar hozzájárulni, hazai és külföldi forrásoknak olyan válogatását kívánja közreadni, amely révén a magyarországi németség ifjúságának politikai insztrumentalizálási folyamata válik nyomon követhetővé, megelevenedik a Német Ifjúság nevű szervezet mindennapi tevékenysége, történetének főbb vonalai.

Vor 25 Jahren machten die Deutschen wieder einmal Weltgeschichte, aber zum ersten Mal taten sie es auf friedliche Weise. Am 9. November 1989 stürmten die Massen die Berliner Mauer und veränderten damit nicht nur die beiden Deutschlands, sondern die ganze Welt. »Wir sind ein Volk!«, war der Schlachtruf der Demonstranten. Damals wurde daraus Wirklichkeit. Aber wie beantworten die heute 30- bis 50-Jährigen die Frage: »Sind wir ein Volk?«

This volume looks at the Finnish-German military alliance (1941–1944) as a translation zone – a multilingual network of military, administrative and civilian encounters that was held together by linguistically versed soldiers and civilians acting as interpreters and translators. It focuses on interpreters and liaison officers of the Finnish Liaison Staff in Rovaniemi, who were assigned to the staffs of the German army units with the task of maintaining communication between the two armies and assisting German troops in their daily matters. Furthermore, attention is paid to Finnish civilians, especially women whose language skills made them candidates for a range of mediation tasks in the German units. The reconstruction of military interpreters’ and liaison officers’ tasks and mediation agency between the two military cultures is based on their war-time weekly reports, whereas the civilian interpreters’ experiences are drawn from a variety of autobiographical accounts, including interviews.

Asfa-Wossen Asserate - äthiopischer Prinz und Erforscher der menschlichen Umgangsformen - wendet sich wieder einem seiner Lieblingsthemen zu: den Deutschen. Nach seinen Erfolgsbüchern Manieren und Draußen nur Kännchen nimmt er nun die Tugenden jenes Volkes unter die Lupe, das ihm seit den siebziger Jahren zur zweiten Heimat geworden ist. Da mag das Thema Pünktlichkeit nicht weiter überraschen, aber schon die Anmut der Deutschen schien bislang nicht weiter der Rede wert. Doch Asfa-Wossen Asserate hat noch weitere deutsche Tugenden im Blick. So finden sich neben den'Klassikern'Ordnungsliebe, Pflichtbewusstsein auch Erfindergeist, Naturverbundenheit, Toleranz und noch manch andere Haltung, die man so ohne weiteres den Deutschen nicht zuschreiben würde - Humor und Zivilcourage beispielsweise. Wie es dem schriftstellerischen Temperament des Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preisträgers entspricht, beschreibt er humorvoll, gelehrt und unterhaltsam, was ihm beim Studium der Deutschen an liebenswerten und manchmal auch kuriosen Eigenschaften aufgefallen ist. Sein souveräner Überblick über Geschichte und Kulturgeschichte der Deutschen erlaubt ihm den Vergleich seiner Zeitgenossen mit den Deutschen früherer Zeiten - mit Dichtern, Königen, Philosophen und sogar mit unseren Ahnherren, den alten Germanen. Und er macht dabei anschaulich, dass Tugend und Laster manchmal nur einen Schritt weit auseinanderliegen.

weimar um 1800 gilt als Musenhof par excellence: ein politisch unbedeutender, kleiner, defizitärer Hof, der mit anderen Höfen in Glanz und Pracht nicht mithalten konnte. Carl August und seiner Mutter Anna Amalia ist es dennoch gelungen, Geistesgrößen wie Goethe, Schiller, Herder und Wieland um sich zu scharen und deren Ruhm geschickt für ihr eigenes Prestige zu instrumentalisieren. Stefanie Freyer kann nachweisen, dass dies - im Gegensatz zur bisherigen Forschungsmeinung - nur wenig mit dem Hof zu tun hatte, indem sie den Hof als Personenverband betrachtet und auf zeremonielle Konformität prüft. Die Autorin hat erstmals Größe, Personal, innere Strukturen, Funktionen und Funktionsweise des Hofes empirisch untersucht und überregional in die deutsche Hoflandschaft eingeordnet. Freyer zeichnet ein scharfes Profil der sozialen Praxis des Weimarer Hofes zwischen 1790 und 1810 und entlarvt so das Bild vom Musenhof als Mythos.

This collection of new essays explores how Germany's imagined Asia informed its national fantasies at crucial historical junctures. It will influence future scholarly explorations of Asian-German cultural transfer.The first collection of essays in the new field of Asian-German Studies, Imagining Germany Imagining Asia demonstrates that Germany and Asia have always shared cultural spaces. Indeed, since the time of the German Enlightenment, Asia served as the foil for fantasies of sexuality, escape, danger, competition, and racial and spiritual purity that were central to foundational ideas of a cohesive German national culture during crucial historical junctures such as fascism or reunification. By exploring the complex and varied phenomenon of German'Orientalism,'these essays argue that the relation between an imagined Germany and an imagined Asia defies the idea of a one-way influence, instead conceiving of their cultural transfers and synergies as multidirectional and mutually perpetuating. Examining literary and non-literary texts from the eighteenth century to the present, these essays cover a wide rangeof topics and genres in disciplines including philosophy, film and visual culture, theater, literary studies, and the history of science. Ideally positioned to shape further contributions, Imagining Germany Imagining Asiawill attract a wide range of readers interested in German, Asian, colonial, postcolonial, and transnational studies. Contributors: Sai Bhatawadekar, Petra Fachinger, Veronika Fuechtner, Randall Halle, David D. Kim, Hoi-eun Kim, Kamakshi Murti, Perry Myers, Mary Rhiel, Qinna Shen, Quinn Slobodian, Chunjie Zhang Veronika Fuechtner is Associate Professor of German at Dartmouth College. Mary Rhiel is Associate Professor of German at the University of New Hampshire.

Illuminates tensions and transformations in today's Germany by examining literary, filmic, and musical treatments of the ghetto metaphor.Accounts of how Germany has changed since unification often portray the Berlin Republic as a new Germany that has left the Nazi past and Cold War division behind and entered the new millennium as a peaceful, worldly, and cautiously proud nation. Closer inspection, however, reveals tensions between such views and the realities of a country that continues to struggle with racism, provincialism, and fear of the perceived Other. Mainstream media foster such fears by describing violence in ghetto schools, failed integration, and the loss of society's core values. The city emerges as a key site not only of ethnic and political tension but of social change. Maria Stehle illuminates these tensions and transformations by following the metaphor of the ghetto in literary works from the 1990s by Feridun Zaimoglu, in German ghettocentric films from the late 1990s and the early twenty-first century, and in hip-hop and rap music of the same periods. In their representations of ghettos, authors, filmmakers, musicians, and performers redefine and challenge provincialism and nationalism and employ transcultural frameworks for their diverging political agendas. By contextualizing these discussions within social and political developments, this study illuminates the complexities that define Germany today for scholars and students across the disciplines of German, European,cultural, urban, and media studies. Maria Stehle is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Ausgehend von einer Klärung des Kulturbegriffs bietet dieses Buch eine umfassende Studie zu den historischen Entwicklungen, zentralen Institutionen und Handlungsfelder der Kulturpolitik in Deutschland.

Although North Americans may not recognize it, Cuba has long shaped the German imaginary. Sun, Sex, and Socialism picks up this story from the early 1960s, detailing how the newly upstart island in the U.S. backyard inspired citizens on both sides of the Berlin Wall.By the 1970s, international rapprochements and repressions on state levels were stirring citizen disenchantment, discontent, and grassroots solidarities in all three nations. The Cold War's official end generated waves of politicised nostalgia and prescriptions for the newly configured Cuba and Germany, as exemplified in films like Buena Vista Social Club. Meanwhile, from the New Left movement to today, revolutionary compatriots Ché Guevara and Tamara Bunke continued to be icons of youth resistance, even while being commodified globally.Sun, Sex, and Socialism illustrates how Germans identified with transnational communities beyond the East-West binary. Through analysis of cultural production that often countered governmental intentions for official diplomacy, Jennifer Ruth Hosek offers a broad-reaching history of the influence of the global South on the global North.

From the late eighteenth century, Germans increasingly identified the fate of their nation with that of their woodlands. A variety of groups soon mobilized the'German forest'as a national symbol, though often in ways that suited their own social, economic, and political interests. The German Forest is the first book-length history of the development and contestation of the concept of'German'woodlands.Jeffrey K. Wilson challenges the dominant interpretation that German connections to nature were based in agrarian romanticism rather than efforts at modernization. He explores a variety of conflicts over the symbol — from demands on landowners for public access to woodlands, to state attempts to integrate ethnic Slavs into German culture through forestry, and radical nationalist visions of woodlands as a model for the German'race'. Through impressive primary and archival research, Wilson demonstrates that in addition to uniting Germans, the forest as a national symbol could also serve as a vehicle for protest and strife.

Who is «German»? What defines «Germanness»? These questions about national identity have continued to confound both Germans and foreign observers in light of Germany's complex history: its changing borders between 1871 and 1989 make even a geographic definition of the nation complex, let alone allowing for a clear definition of the national character. Questions about German identity continue to play out not only in political discussions but also in visual cultural forms. This essay collection examines the multi-faceted nature of German identity through the lens of myriad forms of visual representation. The contributors explore the nature of German national identity in different historical periods from the Middle Ages to the present and consider how conceptions of that identity have been depicted across the broad spectrum of visual culture: from painting to sculpture, advertising to architecture, television and film to installation art. Because of the unusual approach, the essays address broad questions about identity formation, authenticity, and affirmation in the German context. Together, the essays in this volume demonstrate the complexities of identity construction and offer new insights into the «German Question» from the perspective of visual culture.

Seit Anderson wissen wir, dass die Nation etwas Erfundenes ist. Dennoch besitzt seit dem 19. Jahrhundert kaum ein anderes Konzept eine solche politische Zugkraft und genießt eine so unerschütterliche weltanschauliche Verankerung wie die Nation. Nicht von ungefähr war auch seit der Teilung Deutschlands in zwei Staaten die deutsche Wiedervereinigung ein in den Verfassungen festgeschriebenes Ziel: Die deutsche Nation sollte wieder unter einem Staat vereint werden. Die konträren Lebensumstände, in denen sich die beiden deutschen Staatsvölker bis 1990 entwickelten, wurden nicht berücksichtigt. Dabei fand sich in dem geteilten Deutschland eine Situation, die einzigartig war: Es bündelte sich die Aufteilung der Welt in einen kapitalistischen und einen sozialistischen Block an der Grenze zwischen BRD und DDR. Unter der Blockkonfrontation und Systemkonkurrenz bildeten sich zwei eigenständige Einheiten aus. Trotzdem wurde - von westdeutscher Seite bis zum Schluss, von ostdeutscher Seite bis 1972 - an der Idee einer zusammengehörigen Nation festgehalten. 1989, nach der Öffnung der Grenze, konnten sich Deutsche aus Ost und West real endlich wieder in die Arme fallen. Eine besondere Form des Nationalismus - der Nativismus - gab den Forderungen nach der Wiedervereinigung ihre mobilisierende Kraft. Dennoch ist fraglich, wo und wie die Grenzziehung zwischen dem, was zum eigenen Kollektiv gehört und was nicht, definiert wurde. Anja Lemke nimmt in ihrer Studie das Ereignis des Mauerfalls vom 9. auf den 10. November 1989 zum Anlass, die Konstruktion der deutschen nationalen Identität genauer unter die Lupe zu nehmen. Sie untersucht Zeitungsartikel der auflagenstärksten deutschen Tageszeitungen zu dieser Zeit, der Süddeutschen Zeitung und der Frankfurter Allgemeinen in Westdeutschland sowie der Neues Deutschland in Ostdeutschland hinsichtlich der Eigen- und Fremdbilder der beiden deutschen Lager. Sie macht dabei die Sicht des poststrukturalistischen Ansatzes von Laclau auf Identitätskonstruktionen für eine Diskursanalyse fruchtbar. In Kombination mit dem Akteurmodell ergibt sich ein Zugang zu den Texten, der zu reichhaltigen Ergebnissen führt: Es finden sich Konsumverhalten als brüchige Basis der Zusammengehörigkeit der deutschen Nation, überlegene Effizienz im Westen, das gute weil soziale Leben im Osten, eine fremdbeherrschte DDR-Bevölkerung, unmoralische SED-Funktionäre, dämonisierte Bedrohungen in Westdeutschland und der Nationalsozialismus als Mittel zur Abwertung des jeweils anderen Teil Deutschlands.

Germans often claim that'we have learned the lessons of our history.'But what, precisely, are the lessons they have drawn from their Nazi-era past? What experiences from that time continue to hold significant meaning for Germans today, and how have those experiences shaped postwar German cultural identity? Though Germans have come to recognize the evils of Nazism, for them, its primary evil derived from the war it unleashed and the hardships, death, and destruction that the war wrought on the Germans themselves, and less from the losses and suffering it caused others. Recent public discussion about the Allied bombing campaign against Germany, the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe, and other German experiences during and following the Second World War have revealed what some see as an emerging tendency among Germans to perceive themselves as much the victims of wartime acts as other peoples. Through a survey of postwar literature, film, and other popular media, as well as public commemorations and other means of memorializing and discussing the past, K. Michael Prince demonstrates that the theme of German suffering has been an abiding and even overriding element of postwar German historical memory and a chief component of German cultural identity. While academics have focused their attention on Nazism, atrocity and genocide, and while Germany's official ceremonies and other acts of public memory have been similarly directed, it was the wartime sufferings of average Germans that have remained at the core of German historical consciousness, influencing their attitudes toward war in general and shaping Germany's role in world affairs.

This interdisciplinary volume addresses the consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall, from the revitalizing effect it had on Germany to the new challenges of integrating socially and politically old and new minorities, and forming a new European identity. It also considers how the fall was represented by the media.

Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships.Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include• customs, values, and traditions• historical, religious, and political background• life at home• leisure, social, and cultural life• eating and drinking• do's, don'ts, and taboos• business practices• communication, spoken and unspoken'Culture Smart has come to the rescue of hapless travellers.'Sunday Times Travel'... the perfect introduction to the weird, wonderful and downright odd quirks and customs of various countries.'Global Travel'...full of fascinating-as well as common-sense-tips to help you avoid embarrassing faux pas.'Observer'...as useful as they are entertaining.'Easyjet Magazine'...offer glimpses into the psyche of a faraway world.'New York Times

When the Nazis took power in 1933, most Germans did not foresee the oncoming storm. Many were wildly enthusiastic; some were alarmed; most were worried but trusted that things would work out. In short, they felt much as Americans have felt from time to time. Brian E. Fogarty's Fascism: Why Not Here? draws parallels between German culture of the early twentieth century and American culture today. While Fogarty postulates that it would take a confluence of events and circumstances to propel Americans into the arms of fascism, he concludes that it is not entirely unlikely. Today, less than a decade after his original warning, some of those events are beginning to unfold. As Americans become more divided, as formerly nonpartisan institutions are politicized, and as Congress becomes increasingly paralyzed, we are forced to ask: how do we respond to a political outsider's rally cries to “make America great again”? In examining the similarities and differences between Nazi Germany and America today, Fogarty finds many reasons for hope that Americans will not fall victim to such chauvinistic appeal, but he also finds plenty to worry about. He points out that contemporary Americans and Germans of the 1920s and 1930s share many similar values, ideals, fears, and beliefs. Fogarty's strong words of caution will resonate with anyone concerned about America's political future and the freedoms we too often take for granted.

Over the last two centuries and indeed up to the present day, Eastern Europe's lands and peoples have conjured up a complex mixture of fascination, anxiety, promise, and peril for Germans looking eastwards. Across the generations, a varied cast of German writers, artists, philosophers, diplomats, political leaders, generals, and Nazi racial fanatics have imagined (often in very different ways) a special German mission in the East, forging a frontier myth that paralleled the American myths of the'Wild West'and'Manifest Destiny'. Through close analysis of German views of the East from 1800 to our own times, The German Myth of the East reveals that this crucial international relationship has in fact been integral to how Germans have defined (and repeatedly redefined) themselves and their own national identity. In particular, what was ultimately at stake for Germans was their own uncertain position in Europe, between East and West. Paradoxically, the East came to be viewed as both an attractive land of unlimited potential for the future and as a place undeveloped, dangerous, wild, dirty, and uncultured. Running the gamut from the messages of international understanding announced by generations of German scholars and sympathetic writers, to the violent racial utopia envisaged by the Nazis, German imaginings of the East represent a crucial, yet unfamiliar, part of modern European history, and one that remains fundamentally important today in the context of an expanded European Union.