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German 272
Fall 1997
Dienstags, Donnerstags:
10:00 - 11:15 Uhr
CH 134 |
Silke
von der Emde
Chicago
Hall 133, x 55618
Bürostunden:
Di, Do
11:30 - 12:30
email:
vonderemde
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G 272: Mastering
the Unmasterable German Past
"What is past is not dead; it
is not even past." Christa Wolf
The vehement debate about Daniel
Goldhagen's recent book Hitler's Willing Executioners, the contradictory
reactions to the opening of Schindler's List in Germany, the heated discussions
about the planned Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the reactions to Ronald
Reagan's visit to the military cemetery of Bitburg in May 1985, the acrimonious
dispute among West German historians about the place of the Holocaust and
the Third Reich in German history--all these examples not only attest to
the lack of a national consensus about German history but also demonstrate
the extent to which Germany is still haunted by a past which cannot be
forgotten. There have been countless attempts to re-write German history
and to fit the atrocities of the Hitler period into a tolerable master
narrative. Since the mid-1970s an increasing amount of books and
articles, academic conferences, exhibitions and films have focused on the
discontinuities in German history and the lack of a national identity.
More than in any other country, it seems, politicians, journalists, historians,
and artists struggle with the history of their problematic "fatherland."
This course will examine German responses
to the experiences of the Third Reich and analyze the German "obsession"
with history. The question of representation will be one of the foci
of this class. By analyzing different attempts to talk about the
suffering of ten million victims of the Holocaust we examine how artists
tried to come to terms with Adorno's dictum that it was barbaric to produce
art after Auschwitz. We will examine how different philosophers,
historians, and psychologists, from Hannah Arendt to Theodor W. Adorno
and Margarete and Alexander Mitscherlich, have tried to explain the atrocities
of the Third Reich. We will be examining texts from a variety of
different media, from literature and documentary material, to film and
Holocaust memorials.
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