Introductory description

Over the course of the 1990s post-unification Germany integrates the legacy of the Holocaust in the official self-image of the Berlin Republic (for example by creating a Holocaust memorial in the nation’s capital). The re-inscription of Auschwitz into a national and collective memory opens the gates for a return of German wartime memory that appeared to have been obscured by the commemoration of Nazism’s victims. The re-emergence of the issue of German wartime suffering to the fore of German public discourse since the turn of the millennium represents the greatest shift in German memory culture since the 1980s. The (international) attention and debates triggered by, for example, W.G. Sebald’s Luftkrieg und Literatur, Günter Grass’s Im Krebsgang and Jörg Friedrich’s Der Brand testify to a change in focus away from the victims of National Socialism to the traumatic experience of the ‘perpetrator collective’ and its legacies. In this module, you will addresss the representation of German wartime experience in contemporary literature and film from several angles. Opening with a historiation of the problem of representing Germans as victims of war, you will move on to W.G. Sebald’s essay Luftkrieg und Literatur. Sebald’s thesis that German writers had failed to inscribe the experience of the air raids into post-war German literature, triggered a debate about the moral assessment of the Allied bombings of Germany and its literary representation (or lack of it). After focusing on literary and filmic representations of the bombings of Düsseldorf and Dresden, you will address the issue of family memory, transgenerational trauma and the long-term legacy of traumatic war experience in both literature and film.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Indicative Syllabus:
Primary texts:
W.G.Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur, Frankfurt, 2001.
Dieter Forte, Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen, Frankfurt, Fischer, 1995.
Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang, GöttingenSteidl, 2002, paperback Munich, dtv, 2003.
Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Der Verlorene, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1999.
Uwe Timm, Am Beispiel meines Bruders, Cologne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003.
Text: Dagmar Leupold, Nach den Kriegen, dtv, 2004.

Films:
Dresden (TV film 2005)
Das Wunder von Bern (2005)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of this module, students should be able to demonstrate a broad understanding of the key issues in German memory of the war and its representation
• By the end of this module, students should be able to critically analyse and contextualise a range of texts representing the experience of German wartime suffering and its after-effects
• By the end of this module, students should be able to analyse and deploy a range of critical approaches to representations of German wartime suffering
• By the end of this module, students should be able to demonstrate their ability to research primary sources relating to a chosen topic from the module
• By the end of this module, students should be able to contextualise set texts in terms of their relation to the social and political history of the period
• In addition, the module will provide you with the opportunity to develop further the following skills: • the ability to abstract and synthesize key information from written sources in German and English; • the ability to organize, present, and defend ideas within the framework of a structured and reasoned argument; • the ability to formulate your opinions with reference to established interpretations; • the ability to analyse critically a range of materials in German and English (primary texts, secondary sources, contextualizing historical material); • the ability to apply critical methodologies to the analysis of literary texts; the ability to conduct independent research using library and bibliographic resources and ICT skills

Indicative reading list

Primary texts:
W.G.Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur, Frankfurt, 2001.
Dieter Forte, Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen, Frankfurt, Fischer, 1995.
Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang, GöttingenSteidl, 2002, paperback Munich, dtv, 2003.
Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Der Verlorene, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1999.
Uwe Timm, Am Beispiel meines Bruders, Cologne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003.
Text: Dagmar Leupold, Nach den Kriegen, dtv, 2004.

Films:
Dresden (TV film 2005)
Das Wunder von Bern (2005)

Secondary Literature:
Volker Hage, Zeugen der Zerstörung. Die Literaten und der Luftkrieg, Frankfurt, 2003.
Bill Niven, Germans as Victims. Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany, Basingstoke 2006.
Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1941-45, Munich, 2002.
Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik, Munich, 2006.
Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames, Cambridge/Mass, 1997.
Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove, Georg Grote (eds.) German Memory Contests, Rochester, 2006.
Helmut Schmitz (ed.) A Nation of Victims? Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 to the Present, Amsterdam, 2007.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of German culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of German war memories will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.