Warwick Workshop for Interdisciplinary German Studies

Funded with the generous support of Warwick's Humanities Research Centre.

This is an interdisciplinary workshop series dedicated to all areas of German cultural studies. Meeting two to three times during term in the German Studies Section, or online, the workshop hosts presentations (usually) on a Wednesday afternoon by senior national and international scholars, Warwick colleagues and doctoral students. Presentations can be delivered both as finished conference-style papers, or more informally as work-in-progress. Please contact the workshop convenor, thomas dot crew at warwick dot ac dot uk, if you wish to offer or attend a presentation.

WWIGS 2025-26

Please note: days and times vary, please see below

Term 1

• Wednesday 19th November 5:00-6:30pm, FAB4.74 

Thomas Crew (Warwick)

The Gestalt of the Worker: The New Man in Ernst Jünger's Weimar Photobooks

Between 1928 and 1933, Ernst Jünger edited or otherwise contributed to no fewer than seven photo anthologies. Some of these feature his own photography, others introductory essays and commentary. Each of them, however, relates to what George F. Kennan called the “great seminal catastrophe” of the First World War. For Jünger, the conflict represented a symbolic watershed between two historical eras – not the cause but the most emphatic expression of a radically new order: “Im Mittelpunkt der Auseinandersetzung”, he suggests in 1932, “steht nicht etwa die Verschiedenartigkeit der Nationen, sondern die Verschiedenartigkeit zweier Zeitalter, von denen ein werdendes ein untergehendes verschlingt.”

The central concern of the anthologies – as well as the related essays Die totale Mobilmachung (1930), Der Arbeiter (1932) and Über den Schmerz (1934) – is the development of a fundamentally new kind of humanity, what Jünger called the “worker”. Not to be confused with the proletariate, Jünger’s worker is a universal figure that makes a mockery of conventional social distinctions, whether of class, race, or gender. The worker ultimately represents a triumphant, if nihilistic, successor to the nineteenth-century bourgeois, whose defining characteristic is not the open individuality of Robinson Crusoe but the disciplined uniformity of the Unknown Soldier. Jünger’s new man is an eminently standardized, objectified, and replacable figure, whose body, bearing, and face reflect the harsh imperatives of the new machine age.

• Thursday 4th December, 6:00-9:30pm, FAB Cinema

Ian Roberts (Warwick) as part of the Weimar 100 Project

Die freudlose Gasse (G. W. Pabst, 1925), Modernity and Misery

As part of the ongoing Weimar 100 project based within German Studies at the University of Warwick, Ian Roberts presents an introductory lecture on Pabst's seminal study of social inequality, exploring the socio-economic conditions which prevailed in the middle years of Weimar Germany (and Austria) and considering the extent to which Die freudlose Gasse offers a 'realistic' depiction of social deprivation or seeks to shape political discourse in the so-called 'Golden Years' of Weimar.

The talk is followed by a screening of the film in the cinema of the Faculty of Arts Building, with a reception.

• Wednesday 10 December, 5:00-6:30pm, German studio space, (FAB 4th floor)

"GeFo im Studio"