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This volume reflects the scholarly interests and achievements of
Alexander Stephan in whose honor it was conceived. The book
presents essays by leading international scholars on the contours
of politics and culture in German-American relations as well as
broader traditions of cultural mediation. Topics range from current
concerns about public policy and cultural diplomacy,
Americanization and anti-Americanism to historical considerations
of Central European artists and writers who as public intellectuals
had significant impact on the politics of culture after World War
Two and earlier.
Once celebrated as the author of the bestselling antifascist novel
"The Seventh Cross," Anna Seghers was largely forgotten within
Anglo-American letters during the Cold War era. The release of
archival materials since 1990 has made possible Helen Fehervary's
critical reassessment of Seghers's life and work, one that
challenges formerly held assumptions about the Cold War.
Fehervary presents a fascinating portrait of Seghers, a German
Jewish writer whose inherently political prose is imbued with
traditions of fairy tale, biblical legend, and myth. Seeking to
uncover the intellectual and artistic sources of this "mythic
world," Fehervary situates Seghers's legacy within the larger
context of Central European intellectual history. This is no
journey into the obscure, for the people with whom Anna Seghers
shared her artistic and intellectual life were truly extraordinary.
Seghers was a member of the Budapest Sunday Circle (along with
Georg Lukacs, Karl Mannheim, and her husband, Laszlo Radvanyi); a
lifelong friend of Bertolt Brecht; and a mentor to Heiner Muller
and Christa Wolf. She also had close ties to Walter Benjamin in
exile.
In order to do justice to the complexities inherent in Seghers's
life and to the multilayered texture of her work--neither of which
can be reduced to a definitive chronological or teleological
schema--Fehervary eschews the more familiar conventions of
biography and instead presents a series of thematically conceived
chapters. Fehervary's prodigious research relies on the over nine
thousand volumes in Seghers's library; on interviews with
contemporaries, family, and friends; and on heretofore unknown
Hungarian texts and manuscripts.
This engaging andaccessible book raises large questions--about
German history, modernism, Central and East European Jewry,
Stalinism, the Holocaust--that go far beyond the life and work of
an individual writer, questions so crucial to the twentieth century
that they continue to preoccupy writers and readers today.
Helen Fehervary teaches German literature at The Ohio State
University.
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