Germany has long defined itself in opposition to its eastern neighbors: its ideas around cultural prestige and its expressions of xenophobia seem inevitably to return to an imagined eastern "Other." Central to the consideration of such projections is the legacy of the Second World War, the subject of fresh debate since 1989: after four decades of political antagonism and cultural disjuncture, the events of the war on the Eastern Front have been rediscovered by Western audiences and have come to occupy complex, shifting positions in the memory culture of the postsocialist states. However, German ignorance of Eastern European experiences of war and genocide, enduring stereotypes, and prescriptive ideas about remembrance have been major stumbling blocks to the emergence of a transnational memory culture considered just by all parties.
Despite mass immigration to Germany from the east and intensive contact between German speakers and its cultures, German-language cultural production continues largely to represent Eastern Europe as unknown, wild, and inaccessible. By contrast, the writers and filmmakers under discussion in the present volume have worked with and against such tropes to put forward alternative perspectives. Like their works, the contributions to this volume place the conflicts and prejudices of the twentieth century into a wider historical perspective, exposing and questioning the nature of Germany's relationship with its imagined East.
Contributors: Enikő Dácz, Olha Flachs, Paul Peters, Raluca Cernahoschi, Jakub Kazecki, Ernest Schonfield, Deirdre Byrnes, Daniel Harvey, Amy Leech, Shivani Chauhan, Karolina Watroba.
- ISBN10 1640141197
- ISBN13 9781640141193
- Publish Date 20 September 2022
- Publish Status Forthcoming
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Imprint Camden House Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 296
- Language English