Paper Ge 10

This paper offers a wide range of attractive options relating to recent developments in the German-speaking world, and may be taken in either the second or the final year. You may wish to study for it in your second year and look for opportunities to explore a particular topic more fully in your Part II dissertation, or you may wish to prepare for it as one of your Part II exams and use your year abroad as an opportunity to read some of the literature in advance. You have considerable freedom to choose topics to study from the reading list, depending on your interests and which year you are in; and your supervisor, or the course co-ordinator, will be able to help you in making your choice.

The twentieth century involved Germany in several political upheavals, two World Wars, a Cold War, division, and reunification. It was also a period of peculiarly intense cultural and intellectual ferment. The options for study available in paper Ge 10 reflect the complexity of these developments. Historical topics include the Weimar Republic (that frail democracy which emerged from the First World War), National Socialism, and the divided Germany of 1945-1990. The thought topics available are psychoanalysis, radical political thought, and critical theories of art and culture. The literature of the period is similarly diverse, offering flexible opportunities to combine texts, and to link them with either history or thought.

Course guidance

Reading Lists

Section A: Literature and Culture

This list sets out the range of topics available to students in the exam, together with titles which are particularly recommended for study on each topic. Supplementary lists are available for each topic, and specific guidance on the preparation of topics will be provided by lecturers and supervisors. As you consider your options, bear in mind that there will be at least one question on the exam paper relating to each of the topics listed, and that questions typically require you to answer on TWO OR MORE texts by ONE OR MORE authors (the only authors who will have a question devoted specifically to them and be identified by name on paper Ge 10 are Brecht, Kafka, and Thomas Mann). You are free to draw on whatever appropriate material you have at your disposal in response to particular questions as set — subject to the general principle, which appears as a rubric on the exam paper, that "candidates should not draw substantially on the same material more than once". As mentioned above, please note that from Tripos 2005 onwards Section A will no longer include a poetry commentary question.

1. Modernist Fiction: Psyche and Space

• Robert Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß
• Rainer Maria Rilke, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge
• Franz Kafka, Der Proceß; stories (esp. 'Das Urteil', 'In der Strafkolonie, 'Ein Landarzt', 'Ein Hungerkünstler')
• Arthur Schnitzler, Fräulein Else; Traumnovelle
• Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg; Doktor Faustus
• Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz

Background reading:

• P. O'Neill, Acts of Narrative: textual strategies in modern German fiction (1996)
• D. Midgley (ed.), The German Novel in the Twentieth Century: Beyond Realism (1993)
• R.N.N. Robertson, Kafka: Judaism, Politics and Literature (1985)
• T.J. Reed, Thomas Mann. The Uses of Tradition (1974)
• R.N.N. Robertson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann (2002)

2. Weimar Film and Visual Culture: Fantasy and Documentary

• Wiene, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
• Murnau, Nosferatu; Der letzte Mann
• Moholy-Nagy, Dynamik der Großstadt (text)
• Ruttmann, Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt; Opus 1
• Pabst, Die Büchse der Pandora
• Siodmak, Menschen am Sonntag
• Lang, M.; Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse
• Sagan, Mädchen in Uniform

• Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar cinema and after (2000)
• Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (2001)
• Patrice Petro, Joyless Streets: Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany (1989)

3. Poetry: Forms and Functions

• S. Vietta (ed), Lyrik des Expressionismus (1985)
• Rainer Maria Rilke, Duineser Elegien
• Gottfried Benn, Poems (e.g. the selection edited by F. W. Wodtke)
• Bertolt Brecht, Bertolt Brechts Hauspostille; Svendborger Gedichte
• Paul Celan, Mohn und Gedächtnis
• Ingeborg Bachmann, Anrufung des großen Bären
• Sarah Kirsch, Zaubersprüche
• Durs Grünbein, Falten und Fallen

• D. Lamping, Moderne Lyrik. Eine Einführung (1991)
• Walter Hinck (ed.), , vol. 6: Gegenwart (1994)
• Walter Hinck (ed.), , vol. 7: Gegenwart II (1997)

4. Drama: Politics and Performance

• Bertolt Brecht, Trommeln in der Nacht; Die Maßnahme, Mutter Courage; Leben des Galilei; Der kaukasische Kreidekreis; 'Kleines Organon für das Theater'
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Die Physiker
• Peter Weiss, Die Ermittlung; Marat/Sade
• Heiner Müller, Der Auftrag; Germania Tod in Berlin
• Elfriede Jelinek, Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen: Stecken, Stab und Stangl

• F. N. Mennemeier, Modernes Deutsches Drama (1979)
• Jan Knopf, Brecht Handbuch. Theater (2001)
• P. Thomson and G. Sacks (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (1994)
• P. Kleber and C. Visser (eds), Re-Interpreting Brecht (1990)
• D. Suvin, To Brecht and Beyon (1984)
• D. Calandra, New German Dramatists (1983)
• R. Cohen, Peter Weiss in seiner Zeit (1992)
• A. Fiddler, Rewriting Reality: An Introduction to Elfriede Jelinek (1994)

5. Post-War Fiction: Memory and History

• Ilse Aichinger, Die größere Hoffnung
• Heinrich Böll, Und sagte kein einziges Wort
• Günter Grass, Katz und Maus
• Jurek Becker, Jakob der Lügner
• Stefan Heym, Der König-David-Bericht
• Uwe Johnson, Mutmaßungen über Jakob
• Thomas Bernhard, Frost
• W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz

• M. Durzak (ed.), Der deutsche Roman der Gegenwart (1973)
• G. Bartram (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel (2004)
• Eric Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory and Film in Postwar Germany (1990), chapters 1 and 2

6. Women Writers

• Irmgard Keun, Gilgi — eine von uns; Das kunstseidene Mä dchen
• Ilse Aichinger, Spiegelgeschichte
• Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina
• Christa Wolf, Nachdenken über Christa T. ; Medea
• Elfriede Jelinek, Die Klavierspielerin; Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte
• Anne Duden, Judassschaf

• Jo Catling (ed), A History of Women's Writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (2000)
• C. Weedon (ed.), Postwar German Women's Writing (1997)
• Stephanie Bird, Women Writers and National Identity (2003)
• A. Kuhn, Christa Wolf's Utopian Vision (1988)
• A. Fiddler, Rewriting Reality: An Introduction to Elfriede Jelinek (1994)

Recommended general resources

• Cambridge History of German Literature (1997), chapters 7-9
• Relevant entries in M. Konzett (ed.), Encyclopedia of German Literature (2000)
• Relevant entries in D. Wellberry, A New History of German Literature (2005)
• Ingo R. Stoehr, German Literature of the Twentieth Century: From Aestheticism to Postmodernism (2001)
• R. Burns (ed.), German Cultural Studies: An Introduction (1995)

Section B of the exam paper will contain four sets of questions, two relating to the history, and two to the thought of the period. Only ONE question may be answered from each set, and candidates may answer UP TO TWO questions from Section B as a whole.

Topics in thought

The options available within each set of questions, with recommended reading, are given below. Apart from the core texts students are not expected to have read all the texts listed below for any given topic. Supervisors will give further guidance.

Either

a) Psychoanalysis

• Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur

Recommended accompanying texts:

• S. Freud, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse; Totem und Tabu; Die Zukunft einer Illusion; (for revision purposes: Abriß der Psychoanalyse).
• C.G. Jung, Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewußten
• A. and M. Mitscherlich, 'Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern — womit zusammenhängt: eine deutsche Art zu lieben', in Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern. Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens (1967) pp. 13-85

Suggested background reading:

• R. Wollheim, Freud (CUP 1990)
• A. Storr, Freud (OUP)
• A. Storr, Jung (Fontana Modern Masters)
• S. Marcus, Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis (1984)
• E.R. Wallace, Freud and Anthropology (1983)
• E. Wright, Psychoanalytic Criticism: Theory in Practice (1984)
• J. Laplanche and J.B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (1988)

or

b) Theories of Interpretation

• Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 2. Teil, II: 'Grunzüge einer Theorie der hermeneutischen Erfahrung'

Recommended accompanying texts:

• M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §§25-38; (the essay 'Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes' (English translation available in Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. D.F. Krell, 1993)
• Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 2. Teil, I: 'Geschichtliche Vorbereitung';
3. Teil: 'Ontologische Wendung der Hermeneutik am Leitfaden der Sprache'

• Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (CUP 1981), pp. 53-100
• D. Roberts, Reconstructing Theory: Gadamer, Habermas, Luhmann (1995)
• Manfred Frank, 'What is a literary text and what does it mean to understand it?', in The Subject and the Text (CUP 1997), pp. 23-96
• The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (2002): articles by Jean Grondin (pp.36-51) and Robert J. Dostal (pp. 247-66)

Either

a) Theories of Art and Culture

• The section 'Kulturindustrie' in M. Horkheimer & T.W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung

Recommended accompanying texts:

• G. Lukács, the section 'Die Verdinglichung und das Bewusstsein des Proletariats' in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein
• S. Kracauer, the sections 'Äußere und innere Gegenstände', 'Konstruktionen', and 'Kino', in Das Ornament der Masse
• W. Benjamin, 'Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit' (erste Fassung) and 'Der Autor als Produzent', in Gesammelte Schriften (Beit/UL)
• M. Heidegger, the essay 'Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes', Die Technik und die Kehre
• T.W. Adorno, 'Engagement', in Noten zur Literatur; the section 'Zur Theorie des Kunstwerks', in Ästhetische Theorie
• The other sections of Dialektik der Aufklärung
• J. Habermas, the essay 'Die Moderne - ein unvollendetes Projekt'

Suggested background reading:

• J.M. Bernstein, 'Introduction', in T.W. Adorno, The Culture Industry. Selected essays on mass culture (1991)
• A. Huyssen, After the Great Divide. Modernism, Mass Culture and Postmodernism (1986)
• J. Habermas, 'The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno', in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1987)
• P.U. Hohendahl, Reappraisals. Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical Theory (1991)
• D. Roberts, Art and Enlightenment. Aesthetic Theory after Adorno (1991)

or

b) Contemporary Culture

Core text:

• H. Böhme, Fetischismus und Kultur. Eine andere Theorie der Moderne (2006) pp. 13-37 (Einleitung) and 285-372 (Der Warenfetischismus)

Recommended accompanying texts:

• Walter Benjamin, 'Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit'(1935-39), in Illuminationen/Gesammelte Schriften I.2; 'Kleine Geschichte der Photographie' (1931), in Angelus Novus;
OR
• Hartmut Böhme, Fetischismus und Kultur (2006), pp. 72-106 (Menschen-Dinge-Kollektive; Lebenswelt und materielle Kultur); pp. 456-483 (Kulturelle Erweiterungen und feministische Entdeckungen);
OR
• Axel Honneth, Verdinglichung (2005)