Melancholy has become a central theme of German literature since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The rapidly changing sociopolitical circumstances of the post-1989 period and the continued burden of the Nazi past have directly contributed to this upsurge in melancholy themes. This book traces the complex discourse of melancholy in contemporary literature in the work of Monika Maron, Christoph Hein, Arno Geiger and Alois Hotschnig. Focusing on key concepts of melancholy - time, transience, historical dislocation and posthistoire - the author's readings reveal the close connection between the body and melancholy from ageing to our gendered relationships with history. This study also emphasizes the relevance of melancholy for current theoretical issues in German Studies, including Heimat discourse, genealogy and transgenerational memory, and postmemory.

Competing representations of the former East German state in the German cultural memory. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the consequences of the country's divided past continue to be debated. The legacy of the German Democratic Republic occupies a major role in German popular culture, with audiences flocking to films claiming to depict the East German state "as it was." Politicians from both left and right make use of its legacy to support their parties' approach to unification, while former citizens of the GDR are still working through their own memories of the regime and adjusting to unification. Since 1989, competing representations of the East German state have emerged, some underlining its repressive nature, others lamenting the loss of asense of community. The twentieth anniversary of the Wende is an occasion to reflect upon both the history of the GDR and the ways in which it has been remembered, and the present volume presents new research on the theme from a variety of perspectives, with sections on film and literature, museums and memorials, and historiography and politics. Contributors: Thomas Ahbe, Pertti Ahonen, Silke Arnold-de Simine, Stefan Berger, Laura Bradley, Mary Fulbrook, Nick Hodgin, Anna O'Driscoll, Stuart Parkes, Caroline Pearce, Gunter Schlusche, Peter Thompson, Andreas Wagner. Nick Hodgin is a Cultural Historian working at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Caroline Pearce is Lecturer in German and Interpreting, also at the University of Sheffield.