What Remains: Responses to the Legacy of Christa Wolf

by Gerald Fetz (Editor), Patricia Herminghouse (Editor)

Overview

Arguably the most important—and influential—German woman writer of the last century, Christa Wolf was long heralded as "die gesamtdeutsche Autorin," an author for all of Germany; but, after 1989 in unified Germany, Wolf found herself suddenly embroiled in controversies that challenged her integrity and consigned her to an ideologically suspect identity as "DDR Schriftstellerin” (GDR writer) or “Staatsdichterin” (state poet). What Remains: Responses to the Legacy of Christa Wolf asks the question of what truly remains of her legacy in the annals of contemporary German culture and history. Unlike most of what appeared in the wake of Wolf’s death, however, the contributions to this international volume seek neither to monumentalize her nor to dismantle her stature, but to employ a range of methodologies—comparative, intertextual, psychoanalytic, historical, transcultural—to offer sensitive assessments of Wolf’s major literary texts, as well as of her lesser known work in genres such as film and essay.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800734968
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	06/10/2022
Series:	Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association , #24
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Gerald Fetz is Dean and Professor Emeritus, University of Montana. He has published books and articles on several German-Language writers, including Martin Walser, Thomas Bernhard, Lilian Faschinger, Franz Innerhofer, Franz Kakfa, W.G. Sebald, as well as on German historical drama and literature of the Wende. He currently serves on the Board of the German Studies Association and is the chief editor at the University of Montana Press.

Patricia Herminghouse is Fuchs Professor emerita of German Studies, University of Rochester. She has written widely on German Literature since the nineteenth century, including the social contexts of women’s writing, GDR literature, and German émigré culture in nineteenth century America. Her Publications include Gender and Germanness: Cultural Productions of Nation (co-ed.) and German Literature in a New Century: Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations (co-ed.).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction
Gerald Fetz and Patricia Herminghouse

Part I: Patterns of Memory: The Trauma of the Forgotten

Chapter 1. “Faraway So Close”: Transcultural Memory as Christa Wolf ’s “Last Word”
Silke von der Emde

Chapter 2. Who’s Afraid of Christa Wolf or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud: Memory and Its Discontents
Martina Kolb

Chapter 3. Fetishism or Working Through? Concerning the Role of Dr. Freud in City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
David Bathrick

Part II: Christa Wolf as a Writer of Time and Her Times

Chapter 4. The Notion of Heimat in Christa Wolf ’s Patterns of Childhood
Marijke Mulder

Chapter 5. Writing the Self: Literary Vergegenwärtigung in Christa Wolf ’s Patterns of Childhood and City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
Mark Lauer

Chapter 6. The Heterochronic Narrative of Christa Wolf
Heike Polster

Chapter 7. Subjective Authenticity as Realism: Christa Wolf and Georg Lukács
Robert Blankenship

Part III: Christa Wolf in the Public Sphere

Chapter 8. To Be Recognized Again: Memory, Amnesia, and Sincerity in Christa Wolf
Christine Kanz

Chapter 9. “Was bleibt aber, stiften die Dichter”: Christa Wolf ’s Contested Role as Spokesperson for Generations of Readers and Women Writers
Janine Ludwig

Chapter 10. “This Is No Longer My World”: The Multiple Alienations of Christa Wolf
Daniela Colombo

Part IV: Illness, Anxiety, and Trauma

Chapter 11. “To Follow the Trail of Pain”: Coming to Terms with the Past in Christa Wolf ’s In the Flesh
Deborah Janson

Chapter 12. Deliberating the “ängstliche Margarete”: Coping with Anxiety in Christa Wolf ’s City of Angels or, the Overcoat of
Dr. Freud
Ivett Rita Guntersdorfer

Chapter 13. Coming Full Circle: Trauma, Empathy, and Writing in “Change of Perspective” (“Blickwechsel,” 1970) and “August” (2011)
Friederike Eigler

Part V: Christa Wolf and the Visual Arts

Chapter 14. A Woman’s Voice on Screen: Christa Wolf and the Cinema
Barton Byg

Chapter 15. Women at the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown: The Berlin Wall and the Collapse of Female Consciousness in
Divided Heaven and Good Bye, Lenin!
Susanne Rinner

Chapter 16. The Impact of Christa Wolf ’s Cassandra on Women Artists in East Germany
April A. Eisman

Index