The course focuses on German culture, thought, and history from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. This was a period of major upheavals in German society, which found distinctive expression in culture and which generated radical experiments both in politics and the arts.

The paper is divided into two sections: (a) literature and film, and (b) thought, history and society. In the exam at least one question must be taken from each section, so in order to be fully prepared, you are advised to cover five topics (three from one section, and two from the other).

Section A ranges over major writers of the period, starting with Wedekind, whose shocking play on emergent sexuality in a repressive world is contrasted with Schnitzler's comedy on the falsity of sexual relationships throughout Viennese society. Modernism, that major attack on writing, reading, and our way of seeing the world, is represented by Kafka's startling tale of individual transformation and by Hesse's exploration of the modern intellectual in society. The film of the inter-war period is explored through three works that focus on life in the big city. The question of guilt arising from the crimes of National Socialism are central in Grass's Die Blechtrommel, one of the most important novels since 1945. They also feature in Schlink's Der Vorleser, in which the problem of 'coming to terms with the past' (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) is seen to be especially difficult for Germans long after the War. Finally, two of Christa Wolf's stories illuminate the difficulties of being a woman in modern society (the first a gentle exploration of female subjugation in the GDR, and the second a radical feminist critique of literature and society), as does the disturbing, negative, and occasionally shocking fiction of Elfriede Jelinek.

In Section B we examine some of the major historical and intellectual themes of the period. Questions of national identity and its relation to the state posed themselves with traumatic regularity: in 1890 with the accession of the impetuous Emperor Wilhelm II, in the Weimar Republic after 1918 and the Third Reich after in 1933, and again after 1945 with the emergence of two German states. Extracts from Nietzsche demonstrate his extraordinary radical influence on twentieth-century views of society and art. Essays by Jürgen Habermas illustrate the ways in which more recent German thinkers tried to construct a vision of a new society after the defeat of the Third Reich. The development of German history and thought in the twentieth century was shaped above all by the experience of the two World Wars and we examine the impact of these two upheavals on German society. The development of the role of German women from the late nineteenth century reflects trends in other European countries but the upheavals that characterised German history gave women a special significance in German society. Furthermore each of the successive German states defined the role (and the rights) of women in markedly different ways.

There will be twenty lectures in all, concentrated in the Michaelmas and Lent Terms. Two lectures will devoted to each topic; those on Section A will alternate with those on Section B. Supervisions are fortnightly. Attendance at lectures is obviously essential for topics on which you wish to answer in the exam. However, attendance at all lectures is encouraged, since it will help you to understand the period as a whole - this applies particularly to the lectures for Section B.

Examination

• H. Watanabe-O'Kelly (ed.), The Cambridge History of German Literature (1997)
• M. Humble & R. Furness, Introduction to German Literature 1871-1990 (1997)
• M. Fulbrook, History of Germany 1918-2000 (Oxford, 2002)
• M. Fulbrook (ed.), Twentieth-Century Germany (London, 2001)

1. Dramas of sexuality

• Wedekind, Frühlings Erwachen
• Schnitzler, Reigen

Background reading:

• E. Boa, The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion
• M. Swales, Arthur Schnitzler. A Critical Study

2. The fiction of Modernism

• Kafka, Die Verwandlung (eds. P. Hutchinson and M. Minden). [From October 2012 this will change to Der Proceß]
• Hesse, Der Steppenwolf

Background reading:

• J. Hibberd, Franz Kafka. 'Die Verwandlung' . [From October 2012 this will change to Ritchie Robertson, 'Reading the Clues: Franz Kafka, Der Proceß', in D. Midgley (ed.), The German Novel in the Twentieth Century: Beyond Realism (1993)]
• D. Richards, Exploring the Divided Self: Hermann Hesse's 'Steppenwolf' and its Critics

3. Weimar film

• Lang, Metropolis
• Ruttmann, Berlin - Die Sinfonie der Großstadt
• May, Asphalt

Background reading:

• M. Minden and H. Bachmann, Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'
• Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After

4. The Burden of the past

• Grass, Die Blechtrommel
• Schlink, Der Vorleser (ed. S. Taberner)

Background reading:

• N. Thomas, Grass. 'Die Blechtrommel'
• Juliane Köster, Bernhard Schlink. 'Der Vorleser'

5. Women writing about women

• Wolf, 'Dienstag, der 27. September' (available in Gesammelte Erzählungen as well as in Die Frau in der DDR, ed. C. Weedon); Kassandra
• Jelinek, Die Liebhaberinnen

Background reading:

• A. Kuhn, Christa Wolf's Utopian Vision
• Brigid Haines, 'Beyond Patriarchy: Marxism, Feminism, and Elfriede Jelinek's Die Liebhaberinnen', in Modern Language Review, 92/3 (July 1997), pp 643-55

Two mutually exclusive questions will be set on each topic in Section B of this paper.

6. Transformations of the German National Idea, 1871 to the present

• Mary Fulbrook, A Concise history of Germany (Cambridge, 1990)
• John Breuilly, 'The national idea in modern German history' in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (London, 1997), pp.556-84
• Stefan Berger, Inventing the Nation: Germany (2004)

7. Theories of Urban Culture

• Georg Simmel, 'Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben' in Das Individuum und die Freiheit, Fischer Tb. 1993
• Siegfried Kracauer, 'Das Ornament der Masse' in Das Ornament der Masse, Fischer Tb. 1977
• Walter Benjamin, 'Paris, die Hauptstadt des XIX. Jahrhunderts', in Illuminationen, Suhrkamp 1955

8. War and society (1914-18; 1939-45)

• Charles S. Maier, 'German war, German peace' in Mary Fulbrook (ed), German History since 1800 (1997), pp.539-555
• Richard Bessel, Germany after the First World War (1993)
• Herman Glaser, Deutsche Kultur 1945-2000 (1997)

9. Visions of a new society after 1945

• Jürgen Habermas, 'Die Moderne - ein unvollendetes Projekt', and 'Volkssouveränität als Verfahren. Ein normativer Begriff der Öffentlichkeit' in Die Moderne - ein unvollendetes Projekt (Reclam, Leipzig, 1992), pp.159-212

Background reading:

• Stephen K. White, 'Introduction', and Mark E. Warren, 'The Self in Discursive Democracy' in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas (1995), pp.3-16, and 167-200
• Robert C. Holub, Jürgen Habermas. Critic in the Public Sphere, Routledge 1991, chapter 6

10. Women, Politics and Society c. 1890-2000

• Ute Frevert, 'Gender in German history' in Mary Fulbrook (ed), German History since 1800 (1997), pp.512-538
• Ute Frevert, Women in German history: from bourgeois emancipation to sexual liberation (1988)

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