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.

Die Dorfgeschichte im Vormarz kennzeichnet eine Ablehnung der neoklassizistischen " Kunstperiode " zugunsten der von Robert Prutz definierten " Unterhaltungsliteratur ". Das bedeutet die Hinwendung des auktorialen Erzahlers zur Erzahlgegenwart, eine oft autobiographisch ausgerichtete Ortsgebundenheit, " Oralitat " mit gelegentlicher Verwendung von Dialekt und dem durchgangigen Gebrauch " einfacher Formen ". Die Darstellung sentimentalischer Gefuhlsregungen der Dorfbewohner entspricht den demokratischen Bestrebungen der Aufklarung, sie sind Teil ihrer emanzipatorischen Selbstbestimmung. Wahrend in Fruhformen der Dorfgeschichte der Schweiz (Zschokke, Gotthelf) didaktische Aspekte im Vordergrund stehen, sind es im Vormarz, der Kernzeit der Dorfgeschichten, gesellschaftspolitische Anliegen. Nach 1848 degenerierte die Dorfgeschichte durch zunehmend reaktionaren Nationalismus zur " Heimatliteratur ". Ein erneutes Interesse an Dorfgeschichten begann in der DDR in den 1960iger Jahren und erfuhr in der BRD um 1980 eine zunachst nostalgisch gepragte Renaissance, die im Kontext oekologischer Debatten und einer Skepsis gegenuber Formen der Akzeleration an Popularitat gewann.

150 years before Sartre and the Dialectics of the Enlightenment, academically sophisticated journals had already begun their attempts to record and explain modern anti-Semitism. For the first time, this volume reconstructs many of these explanatory approaches and uncovers important previously forgotten texts. They reveal a diverse literature that constitutes a pre-history of contemporary research on anti-Semitism."

New essays on the works and themes of Hesse, one of the most perennially relevant and widely-read German authors. Today, forty years after Timothy Leary's suggestion that hippies read Hermann Hesse while "turning on," Hesse is once again receiving attention: faced with ubiquitous materialism, war, and ecological disaster, we discover that these problems have found universal expression in the works of this master storyteller. Hesse explores perennial themes, from the simple to the transcendental. Because he knows of the awkwardness of adolescence and the pressures exerted on us to conform, his books hold special appeal for young readers and are taught widely. Yet he is equally relevant for older readers, writing about the torment of a psyche in despair, or our fear of the unknown. All these experiences are explored from the perspective of the individual self, for Hesse the repository of the divine and the sole entity to which we are accountable. This volume of new essays sheds light on his major works, including Siddhartha, Der Steppenwolf, and Das Glasperlenspiel, as well as Rosshalde, Klingsors letzter Sommer, Klein und Wagner, and the poetry. Another six essays explore Hesse's interest in psychoanalysis, music, and easternphilosophy, the development of his political views, the influence of his painting on his writing, and the relationship between Hesse and Goethe. Contributors: Jefford Vahlbusch, Osman Durrani, Andreas Solbach, Ralph Freedman, Adrian Hsia, Stefan Hoeppner, Martin Swales, Frederick Lubich, Paul Bishop, Olaf Berwald, Kamakshi Murti, Marco Schickling, Volker Michels, Godela Weiss-Sussex, C. Immo Schneider, Hans-Joachim Hahn. Ingo Cornilsis Professor of German at the University of Leeds.