GE 331: German Memories of WWII - Materials
Primary Texts:
Week 1: Introduction from Bill Niven, Germans as Victims. Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2006, pp. 1-25 (downloadable at https://clas.warwick.ac.uk/Extracts/Index/GE331)
Week 2: W.G.Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur, Frankfurt/M., Fischer, 1999, Volker Hage, ‘Die Sebald-Debatte’ in: Volker Hage, Zeugen der Zerstörung. Die Literaten und der Luftkrieg, Frankfurt/M., Fischer, 2003, pp. 113-31.
Week 3: Roland Suso Richter, Dresden (Film)
Week 4: Dieter Forte, Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen, Frankfurt/M., Fischer, 1998
Week 5: Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang, Munich, dtv, 2002
Week 6: READING WEEK
Week 7: Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Der Verlorene, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1998
Week 8: Uwe Timm, Am Beispiel meines Bruders, Munich, dtv, 2005
Week 9: Sönke Wortmann, Das Wunder von Bern (Film)
Week 10: Dagmar Leupold, Nach den Kriegen (Munich, dtv, 2004)
Secondary Texts discussed in class:
In addition to the primary texts, in some classes we'll be looking at critical essays and related material to widen the context. Some of this material has been scanned and digitised by the library; it is downloadable from the address above which also includes further background reading on certain texts. Some others are available online, I have included links below.
Week 2: W.G.Sebald: 'Against the Irreversible. On Jean Améry' from On the Natural History of Destruction, pp. 149-71, downloadable at the address above.
Week 5: Stephan Braese, 'Bombenkrieg und literarische Gegenwart. Zu W.G.Sebald und Dieter Forte', in mittelweg 36, 1/2002, pp. 4-36. I will make a copy available to the class; it is also online at http://www.his-online.de/fileadmin/verlag/leseproben/9783936096002.pdf .
Week 7/8/9/10: Marianne Hirsch, 'Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory' in Yale Journal of Criticism, vol 14, 1 (2002), pp. 5-37. The article can be downloaded from the Yale Journal of Criticism website at: http://0-dx.doi.org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1353/yale.2001.0008
Week 10 (Timm): Sigrid Weigel, '"Generation" as Symbolic Form: On the Genealogical Discourse of Memory since 1945', in Germanic Review 77 (2002), pp. 264-77. The article can be downloaded from the Germanic Review website at: http://0-dx.doi.org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1080/00168890209597872
Secondary Literature:
Volker Hage, Zeugen der Zerstörung. Die Literaten und der Luftkrieg, Frankfurt, 2003.
Bill Niven, Germans as Victims. Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany, Basingstoke 2006.
Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik, Munich, 2006.
Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames, Cambridge/Mass, 1997.
Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove, Georg Grote (eds.) German Memory Contests, Rochester, 2006. [online here]
Helmut Schmitz (ed.) A Nation of Victims? Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 to the Present, Amsterdam, 2007.
Stuart Taberner, Karina Berger (eds.), Germans as Victims in the Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic, Rochester, 2009.