Refractions of the Third Reich in German and Austrian Fiction and Film

by Chloe Paver

Overview

Six decades after the defeat of National Socialism, commemoration and mourning are ongoing, open-ended projects in Germany and Austria, and continue to generate a steady stream of literature and film about the Nazi past that, while comparatively modest in volume, is often disproportionately influential in public debates. At the same time, new museums and memorials are being established all the time in what Andreas Huyssen has called a 'memory boom', while what is remembered and how it is remembered is subject to continuous change. Scholars have to keep pace with each new development in this culture of commemoration. Rather than add to the growing body of surveys of literature and film about the Third Reich, this study instead puts scholars' critical approaches under the microscope. Chloe Paver considers how far the object of the study is not just analysed but also constructed by the scholar's approach and identifies the criteria by which academics judge the values of works that deal with the Third Reich. This book brings aspects of film, fiction, and memorial culture together in a single study that pays as much attention to images (and in the case of film to sound) as it does to text. The study of film, historical exhibitions, and sites of memory also demands consideration of social contexts and practices. A case study of memory at two of Austria's sites of terror demonstrates the methods used in the study of memorials and museums and considers the ways in which memory attaches itself to place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191532818
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	02/22/2007
Series:	Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	740 KB

About the Author

Chloe Paver is Senior Lecturer in German in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Exeter.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Introduction: Critical Approaches 1

1 Beyond Celebration Michael Verhoeven's Das schreckliche Madchen 14

2 Generation and Nation Peter Schneider's Vati Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser 29

3 Documentary and Gender Helga Schubert's Judasfrauen Helke Sander's BeFreier und Befreite Ruth Beckermann's Jenseits des Krieges 52

4 Sound Effects and Language Barriers Marcel Beyer's Flughunde Michel Tournier's Le Roi des Aulnes Volker Schlondorff's Der Unhold 86

5 Memorial Landscapes Mauthausen Ebensee Christoph Ransmayr's Morbus Kitahara 121

Conclusion 154

Further Reading and Viewing 159

Select Bibliography 165

Index 169