Dislocation and the need for radical reorientation are central experiences in 20th-century German history. Much of German culture has also consisted of reflections on and responses to the historical caesurae of 1933, 1945 and 1989-90, and the massive political, social and economic changes that accompanied them. In the first instance, dislocation and reorientation are to be understood in the physical sense, i.e. the loss of their homes in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia by Jewish and Communist e migre s after 1933, by Germans in Eastern Europe after 1945, and by disaffected individuals leaving the GDR for the West between 1949 and 1989. But they are also ideological, social and cultural experiences. This volume seeks to explore the parallels and differences between the impact on these groups of their sense of loss and their struggle to establish new identities after major upheavals. What their diverse experiences have in common is the sense of social and intellectual dislocation, even amongst those whose physical location did not change for long periods of time. Drawing on the ideas of various social and cultural theorists, and adopting a variety of approaches, our contributors examine how not only dislocation but also reorientation has been articulated, both in political discourse and across the cultural spectrum from fiction to life writing, from poetry to film.

Combines an overview of academic approaches to "life writing" with case studies from crucial periods of twentieth-century German history. Life writing, a genre classification increasingly accepted among scholars of literature and other disciplines, encompasses not just autobiography and biography, but also memoirs, diaries, letters, and interviews. Whether produced as events unfolded or long after the event, all forms of life writing are attempts by individuals to make sense of their experiences. In many such texts, the authors reassess their lives against the background of a broader public debate about the past. This book of essays examines German life writing after major turning points in twentieth-century German history: the First World War, the Nazi era, the postwar division of Germany, and the collapse of socialism and German unification. The volume is distinctive because it combines an overview of academic approaches to the study of life writing with a set of German-language case studies. In this respect it goes further than existingstudies, which often present life-writing material without indicating how it might fit into our broader understanding of a particular culture or historical period. Contributors: Rebecca Braun, Magnus Brechtken, Holger Brohm, Birgit Dahlke, Pauline Eyre, Mary Fulbrook, Ute Hirsekorn, Sara Jones, J. J. Long, Anne Peiter, Joanne Sayner, Dennis Tate, Roger Woods. Birgit Dahlke is Professor of German Literature at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany; Dennis Tate is Emeritus Professor of German Studies at the University of Bath, UK; Roger Woods is Professor of German and a Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, UK.

First treatment of a conspicuously East German feature in today's German literature, that of autobiographical writing -- and rewriting. A striking feature of today's German literature is the survival of an East German subculture characterized by its authors' self-reflexive concern with their own lives, not only in texts labeled as autobiography but also those in the more ambiguous territory of what Christa Wolf has called "subjective authenticity." Dennis Tate provides the first detailed account of this phenomenon: its origins in the 1930s' exile debates, its evolution during the GDR's lifespan, and its manifestations in the work of five East German authors still widely read today: Brigitte Reimann, Franz Fühmann, Stefan Heym, Günter de Bruyn, and Christa Wolf. Tate shows how the preoccupation with self arose fromthe unusually turbulent circumstances in which this generation has lived. Having succumbed early to the temptation to simplify their life stories for misguided educational purposes, these authors have repeatedly reconstructed their personal and political identities as their perspectives on the past have shifted. Tate shows the importance of viewing their autobiographical writing as a multilayered historical process, exposing problems with canonical accounts of East German literature and enabling texts published under GDR censorship to be properly appreciated for the first time. Dennis Tate is Professor of German Studies at the University of Bath, UK.