New essays on the influence of politics on 20c. German culture, not only during the Nazi and Cold War eras but in periods when the effects are less obvious. The cultural history of 20th-century Germany, more perhaps than that of any other European country, was decisively influenced by political forces and developments. This volume of essays focuses on the relationship between German politics and culture, which is most obvious in the case of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, where the one-party control of all areas of life was extended to the arts; these were expected to conform to the idealsof the day. But the relationship between politics and the arts has not always been one purely of coercion, censorship, collusion, and opportunism. Many writers greeted the First World War with quite voluntary enthusiasm; others conjured up the National Socialist revolution in intense Expressionist images long before 1933. The GDR was heralded by writers returning from Nazi exile as the anti-fascist answer to the Third Reich. And in West Germany, politicsdid not dictate artistic norms, nor was it greeted with any great enthusiasm among intellectuals, but writers did tend to ally themselves with particular parties. To an extent, the pre-1990 literary establishment in the Federal Republic was dominated by a left-liberal consensus that German division was the just punishment for Auschwitz. United Germany began its existence with a fierce literary debate in 1990-92, with leading literary critics arguing that East and West German literature had basically shored up the political order in the two countries. Now a new literature was required, one that was free of ideology, intensely subjective and experimental in its aesthetic. In 1998, the author Martin Walser called for an end to the author's role as "conscience of the nation" and for the right to subjective experience. This is the first book to examine this crucial relationship between politics and culture in Germany. William Niven and James Jordan are readers in German at the University of Nottingham Trent.

Hermann-Peter Piwitt belongs to the generation of West German writers the beginning of whose careers coincided with the student movement of 1968. His career is of particular interest from the perspective of a Europe in which a left-wing alternative to the politics of the centre, has disappeared. Through a series of academic articles in English and German, this volume charts his career, from early left-wing commitment, through portraits of life in the Federal Republic of the 1970s and 1980s, to an assessment of his literary and political stance following unification. The volume also includes a previously unpublished essay by Piwitt himself, and an interview with the author held during his period as writer-in-residence at the University of Wales, Swansea.

This monograph is the first academic assessment of the German novelist, poet, and scholar Hans-Ulrich Treichel. This study of his work includes a biographical essay, an interview with the author, a previously unpublished essay from Treichel, and academic essays about a number of his individual works. Hans-Ulrich Treichel is the author of "Die Verlorene, or "Lost and "Tristanakkord, or "The Tristan Chord.

Uwe Timm belongs to the generation of writers whose early careers were shaped by personal experience of the student movement in the Federal Republic of the late 1960s. Heiser Sommer, Timm's first novel, deals directly with such individual experience of the protests and with a sense of disillusionment which followed. The author's subsequent novels have, among many other topics, focused on the issues of colonialism and the environment, while his shorter prose works give literary expression to his personal 'Asthetik des Alltags'. Uwe Timm follows the pattern of earlier volumes in the Contemporary German Writers series. It opens with a previously unpublished prose piece by Timm, followed by an interview that the author gave during his visit to the Centre for Contemporary German Literature at University Wales Swansea. Subsequent critical essays focus on the main areas of Timm's work, including the student novels (Heiser Sommer and Kerbels Flucht), anthropological elements in Timm's work, and an assessment of his shorter prose work in the light of the essays on literary technique contained in Erzahlen und kein Ende. The volume concludes with a full bibliography of primary and secondary material.

Uwe Timm is one of the most prominent, prolific and influential writers in contemporary German literature. His work addresses the dominant cultural themes in contemporary Germany, including memory, biography and Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. Books in the "CGW" series originate in visits and lecturers to the Department of German at the University of Wales Swansea by prolific and critically acclaimed German writers. Uwe Timm's first visit to the Centre for Contemporary German Literature in Swansea produced one of the strongest volumes in the "Contemporary German Writers" series, and members of staff in the department have continued fruitful collaboration with the author in a number of areas. Timm continues to enjoy a considerable popular and critical reputation in Germany. Since the first CGW volume appeared, Timm has published a series of critically acclaimed works which justify a new volume, building on the success of the first. The first volume ends with Johannisnacht (1996); the second looks at his work since then and includes: a piece of previously unpublished writing by Timm; an overview, in German, of his career since 1996; an interview with Timm about his career since 1996; separate critical essays on the following: Nicht morgen, nicht gestern (1999, which includes a story set in Swansea); Rot (2001); Am Beispiel meines Bruders (2003); Der Freund und der Fremde (2005); The volume concludes with an updated bibliography.