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Investigates German religious drama since the 1970s, asking the question whether it develops religious themes or only exploits religious motifs, and exploring how it reflects the changing place of religion and spirituality in theworld.

Masculinist and feminist worldviews in post-1945 German literature, and the possibility of a dynamic reconceptualization of human subjectivity.

First comprehensive study in English of Germany's most prominent female author.

Written against a background of the Thirty Years' War and firstpublished in 1669, this renowned picaresque classic recounts withwonderful biting satire the vagabond adventures of a not-so-simplesimpleton during one of Europe's fiercest, yet ultimately most futilewars. Simplicius is an earthy character; he humiliates the mighty, confounds the gods, ridicules the pretentious. The translationuses the authoritative first edition for its text, and though it hasbeen slightly abbreviated, no essential passages have been sacrificed.This unexpurgated translation reflects the linguistic turmoil andrichness of German in the 17th century; it is ideal as the centrepiecefor courses in German literature in translation and courses in theEuropean Baroque.

A new translation of Rilke's great work with close readings of each of the ten elegies elucidating how their poetic attributes constitute their meaning.Rilke continues to be the most read and discussed German poet of the modern period. The Duino Elegies, together with the Sonnets to Orpheus, remain his greatest achievement. The themes of the ten elegies - and the conceptual world unique to Rilke from which they emerge - can best be understood through their poetic form: their imagery and neologistic formations, their angular syntax, their abrupt changes of tone and linguistic register, their use of multiple personae and speaking voices, and the often-ironic self-presentation of the author. Commentators, however, have often treated these features as mere formal devices that we can somehow see through to get to what really matters, that is, to what Rilke has to say about the human condition or the meaning of life, to his philosophy or worldview. On the contrary, they are constitutive of meaning in the elegies, and understanding them is crucial to our experience of reading Rilke's work. The purpose of this book is to make such features visible and to explain them to the reader as clearly as possible. This is the first full-length book in English devoted to the elegies in over thirty years. It offers an entirely new translation of each elegy, paired with the original German text, and a close reading of each.

Demonstrates, contrary to conventional wisdom, that European modernism developed not only in the great metropolitan centers, but also in provincial cities such as Jena.The conventional wisdom is that the cultural sea change that was European modernism arose in urban centers like Berlin, Paris, Munich, and Vienna. Meike G. Werner's book, now in English translation, is a study of modernism in the provinces. Taking the small provincial city of Jena as a paradigmatic case, it re-creates the very different social and intellectual framework in which modernist experimentation occurred beyond the metropolitan centers. Invented traditions, social and spatial "liminality," and new ideas of social and aesthetic transformation combined in Jena to create a unique moment of cultural innovation.In the years leading up to the First World War, the Jena publisher Eugen Diederichs envisioned and guided the development of this alternative modernism. Taken up by young writers including Diederichs's wife Helene Voigt-Diederichs, numerous intellectual outsiders from across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and members of the Free Student movement and of Jena's Sera Circle, this "other" modernism was above all a youth movement, full of energy and bold optimism. Figures such as Rudolf Carnap, Wilhelm Flitner, Hans Freyer, Karl Korsch, and Elisabeth Busse-Wilson emerged from this Jena paradigm. Werner pieces together the story of Jena's modernism in its full richness, complexity, and inner contradictions.

A collection of new essays bringing into view the push and pull of the national and the international in the German-language cultural field of the period.

Shows that while the GDR is generally seen as - and mostly was - an oppressive and unfree country, from late 1989 until autumn 1990 it was the "freest country in the world": the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained.Stephen Brockmann's new book explores the year 1989/1990 in East Germany, arguing that while the GDR is generally seen as - and was for most of its forty years - an oppressive and unfree country, from autumn 1989 until the autumn of 1990 it was the "freest country in the world," since the dictatorship had disappeared while the welfare system remained. That such freedom existed in the last months of the GDR and was a result of the actions of East Germans themselves has been obscured, Brockman shows, by the now-standard description of the collapse of the GDR and the reunification of Germany as a triumph of Western democracy and capitalism.Brockmann first addresses the culture of 1989/1990 by looking at various media from that final year, particularly film documentaries. He emphasizes punk culture and the growth of neo-Nazism and the Antifa movement - factors often ignored in accounts of the period. He then analyzes three later semiautobiographical novels about the period. He devotes chapters to dramatic films dealing with German reunification made relatively soon after the event and to more recent film and television depictions of the period, respectively. The final chapter looks at monuments and memorials of the 1989/1990 period, and a conclusion considers the implications of the book's findings for the present day.

Explores sonic events and auditory experiences in German-speaking contexts from the Middle Ages to the digital age, opening up new understandings.

Explores the significance of postwar German representations of violence in other places and times.

Shows that the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) forms a philosophy of dialogue and communication that is crucially relevant to contemporary debates in the Humanities.