Schedule

The module will run in the Spring Term. Time/weekday tbc.

 

Reading List (subject to availabilty)

Week 1: Adorno and Culture after Auschwitz/ Paul Celan, poems (copies provided)

Weeks 2 and 3: Günter Grass, Die Blechtrommel (1959, dtv), A.&M. Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (excerpts, copies provided)

Week 4: Hanns-Josef Ortheil: Hecke (1983, Luchterhand)

Week 5: Ulla Berkéwicz, Engel sind schwarz und weiß (1992, Suhrkamp)

Week 6: Reading Week

Week 7: Marcel Beyer, Flughunde, (1995, Suhrkamp)

Week 8: Bernhard Schlink, Der Vorleser (1995, Diogenes)

Week 9: Oliver Hirschbiegel, Der Untergang (Film, 2004)

Week 10: Robert Schindel, Gebürtig (1995, Suhrkamp)

Secondary Literature:

There is a large amount of material on Grass, a good number of pieces on Schlink, relatively little on Beyer, Berkéwicz, Ortheil and Schindel. The library is well provided with all the necessary background literature and you can find a bibliography for all works on German Studies module bibliography database.

• A good place to start on Grass is the Tin Drum parts of John Reddick, The Danzig Trilogy of Günter Grass, NY/London, 1975,

• A good general introduction to the problems of writing about National Socialism is Klaus Briegleb: “Vergangenheit in der Gegenwart” in: Klaus Briegleb/Sigrid Weigel (eds.) Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1968, München 1992 (= Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, Bd. 12)

• The first ‘Gesamtüberblick’ on German literature and NS is: Ernestine Schlant, The Language of Silence, West German Literature and the Holocaust, NY/Ld., 1999.

• A useful introduction to the questions of German identity and National Socialism is Charles Maier: The Unmasterable Past. History, Holocaust and German National Identity, Cambridge/Mass., 1988

• Most of the texts are discussed in Helmut Schmitz, On Their Own Terms. The Legacy of National Socialism in Post-1990 German Fiction, Birmingham, 2004
• Sabine Hake's Screen Nazis, Madison/WI, 2012 is the best place to start on Hirschbiegel.

HS, May 2019