Department of German
UW-Madison
College of Letters & Science

948: Historicizing the GDR, 3 cr. (Crosslisted as CGES 804)

Silberman, Seminar, M 4:00-6:00, Van Hise 367

Prerequisite: grad student

This seminar focuses on central controversies, texts, and authors that contribute to a historical understanding of East German culture within the larger context of twentieth-century Germany. Although the seminar is not conceived as a historical overview of cultural developments or official cultural policy (students will be encouraged to gain this chronological background through their own outside reading), the material discussed is intended to provide a sense both of the scope and sweep of historical, political, and cultural issues. The focus will be on problems and how they were negotiated in the GDR as well as how we evaluate them today: e.g., antifascism as grounding ideology and alibi, socialist realism and the project of the “der neue Mensch”, the concept of "Kulturnation" and socialist identity, generational relations and periodization, issues of canon and "Erbe", modernist and avantgarde aesthetics, commissioned literature and censorship, etc. Accompanying this historicizing introduction to East German culture, we will examine how sociological, anthropological, and gender approaches have sought to broaden the contextualization of East German culture.
Students will be expected to present orally during the second part of the semester a short report (about 20 minutes) on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor. The preparation of this “presentation” is expected to lead to the seminar project: a research paper on a well-defined topic that may treat any aspect of GDR culture and its contextualization within history, politics, and social values (e.g. literature, theater, film, music, popular culture).
The seminar will be conducted in English, but reading knowledge of German is required; written work may be presented in English or in German.

Students are encouraged to prepare for the seminar by familiarizing themselves with the following two volumes, both standard works on the topics:

• Hermann Weber, Die DDR 1945-1990, 4th rev. edition (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006) ISBN 3486579284
• Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, erw. Neuausgabe (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch, 2000) ISBN 3746680521
  

For those who prefer to read in English, consider:

• Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949-1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) [not as up-to-date as Weber] ISBN 0198207204
• Thomas C. Fox, Border Crossings: An Introduction to East German Prose (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993) [exclusively on prose works, especially those available in English translation] ISBN 0472095145

Syllabus details:
We will begin by reading excerpts from two recent sociological theories of art that challenge the Marxist positions dominating GDR culture studies: from Pierre Bourdieu’s “field theory” (The Rules of Art) and Niklas Luhmann’s “system theory” (Art as a Social System). These will be available to photocopy (or download). During the semester we will consider two films, the early Wolfgang Staudte fairy-tale film, Die Geschichte vom kleinen Muck (1953) and Rainer Simon’s Jadup und Boel (both with English subtitles). Film maker Rainer Simon will be on campus and in the seminar on Monday, Oct. 13.
We will read two plays: Heiner Müller’s Der Lohndrücker (1956, available in English translation) and Peter Hacks’s Der Frieden (1962, will be made available as a photocopy, no English translation) an adaptation of Aristophones’s classical comedy. Videos of the original Hacks production at the Deutsches Theater (in East Berlin) and of Heiner Mueller’s own retrospective staging of Der Lohndrücker at the Deutsches Theater in 1988 will be made available. We will be reading four prose texts:

• Christa Wolf, Nachdenken über Christa T (1968, available in English translation); for the seminar on Oct. 6, Prof. Patricia Herminghouse, internationally recognized scholar of GDR literature and culture, will lead the discussion on this novel.
• Irmtraud Morgner, Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974; available in English translation).
• Volker Braun, Die unvollendete Geschichte (und ihr Ende) (1975 /1996; no English translation).
• Christoph Hein, Horns Ende (1985; no English translation).
  

There will also be a selection of poetry toward the end of the semester. Two additional guests will be integrated into the seminar:

• Angela Krauss, a writer from the GDR, will be on campus Oct. 16/17, for a public reading and a special colloquium. She will read from her 1990 novella Der Dienst about her father who was a Stasi officer (no English translation);
• Greg Engle, a dissertator in Cultural Anthropology is working on (East) Berlin’s “Prenzlauer Berg” district will discuss the “aesthetic of ruins” that characterized the avant-garde art scene in the 1980s.

There is flexibility in the syllabus to integrate students’ interests such as GDR television, schooling and school curricula, art/architecture, and other topics exploring the history of a socialist culture.