Ghosts have made an unexpected reappearance in German literature since 1989. Catherine Smale reads this as symptomatic of writers' attempts to renegotiate their personal and collective identity in the wake of German reunification. Focusing on two major authors from the former GDR, Christa Wolf and Irina Liebmann, Smale examines the ways in which their work adopts notions of haunting in its creative engagement with the double legacy of Socialism and National Socialism. The ghost has long been regarded as a vehicle for making manifest taboo or unauthorized memories. However, Smale goes further, demonstrating how the human subject is destabilized by the return of the phantom and is itself rendered insecure and spectral. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical reference, from the psychoanalytic concept of intergenerational phantoms to Derridean hauntology, Smale's study highlights the particular challenge which Wolf and Liebmann pose to the familiar understanding of how German writers have confronted their country's troublesome past.Catherine Smale is Lecturer in German at King's College London.

Ghosts have made an unexpected reappearance in German literature since 1989. Catherine Smale reads this as symptomatic of writers' attempts to renegotiate their personal and collective identity in the wake of German reunification. Focusing on two major authors from the former GDR, Christa Wolf and Irina Liebmann, Smale examines the ways in which their work adopts notions of haunting in its creative engagement with the double legacy of Socialism and National Socialism. The ghost has long been regarded as a vehicle for making manifest taboo or unauthorized memories. However, Smale goes further, demonstrating how the human subject is destabilized by the return of the phantom and is itself rendered insecure and spectral.

New essays on the evolution of cultural memory of the former German Democratic Republic since 1989-90 and its importance for Germany's continuing unification process. Twenty years on from the dramatic events that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the GDR, the subjective dimension of German unification is still far from complete. The nature of the East German state remains a matter of cultural as well as political debate. This volume of new research focuses on competing memories of the GDR and the ways they have evolved in the mass media, literature, and film since 1989-90. Taking as its point ofdeparture the impact of iconic visual images of the fall of the Wall on our understanding of the historical GDR, the volume first considers the decade of cultural conflict that followed unification and then the emergence of a morecomplex and diverse "textual memory" of the GDR since the Berlin Republic was established in 1999. It highlights competing generational perspectives on the GDR era and the unexpected "afterlife" of the GDR in recent publications.The volume as a whole shows the vitality of eastern German culture two decades after the demise of the GDR and the centrality of these memory debates to the success of Germany's unification process. Contributors: Daniel Argeles, Stephen Brockmann, Arne De Winde, Wolfgang Emmerich, Andrea Geier, Hilde Hoffmann, Astrid Koehler, Karen Leeder, Andrew Plowman, Gillian Pye, Benjamin Robinson, Catherine Smale, Rosemary Stott, Dennis Tate, Frederik VanDam, Nadezda Zemanikova. Renate Rechtien is Lecturer in German Studies, and Dennis Tate is Emeritus Professor of German Studies, both at the University of Bath, UK.