People have been memorializing the Holocaust since before it even ended, taking forms such as that of statues, plaques, entire museums, and numerous others. Many have criticized these ways of remembering the Holocaust, but at the same time plenty others see the good that comes f…
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The purpose of this thesis is to explore the use of symbols and imagery originating from the traditions of Jewish Mysticism in Gustav Meyrink's most noted work Der Golem, as they relate to the overall theme of identity. Philosophic and religious traditions of early Gnostic teach…
Since the Sixties, mass migration has changed the appearance of West Germany, giving cause for reflection about attitudes toward foreigners as well as what it means to be German. Foreign workers, or guest workers, and their families have been central to this demographic change. …
The spear, cross and crown were not only symbols of the Holy Roman Empire's authority, but also symbols of glorification and the millennial rule of Christ. Medieval German literature has many references to the instruments of the Passion. They had specific meaning and importance.…
The mystical encounter is the paradoxical fusion of the immanent with the transcendent, of the human person with the divine. For the Christian mystic, the path toward this paradoxical union is made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, the hypostatic union of a divine and huma…
This dissertation presents readings across a series of disparate texts in which circumcision—as initiating Jewish rite or descendant metaphor—functions as an interpretive key. The mark of circumcision has served as the rhetorical ground upon which much negative stereotyping—espe…
From the Hebrew Bible and Greek philosophy until today, patriarchal Western literary traditions represent women not as they really are, but as male imagination wants or fears them to be. The imagined feminine, in both its forms—positive/idealised and negative/demonised—is anothe…
Heir to the French and German minnesong literary tradition, the early thirteenth century Bavarian/Austrian court poet known as Ni thart turned its precepts upside down by assigning noble roles to peasants, thereby calling into question the entire power structure of feudal societ…
This thesis investigates cross-dressing as a historical practice and as a literary motif German texts around 1800. It is interested in how cross-dressing allowed real women and their fictional counterparts a wider sphere of action, and how the figure of the transvestite affected…
In this work, I examine citizenship beyond its narrow legal dimensions through the eyes, bodies and voices of non-Christians, former contract workers (in East and West Germany), African immigrants and “Black” Germans, to consider the ways in which citizenship becomes constitutiv…
My thesis explores the problematics of Romantic representation from the perspective of the German notions of Vorstellung (inner vision, transcendent interpretation) and Darstellung (visual and/or verbal representation). I develop the paradigm of complementarity that underlies th…
In Huchel's poetry, the following three points are important: the composed unity in each book of poems (cyclic structure), the particular “sign” (Zeichen), and images of ethnic minorities. These points have been fragmentarily mentioned by Huchel himself and researchers. However,…
Solomon Maimon is known for two extraordinary accomplishments within the German and Jewish Enlightenment movements of the 1790s. He was, arguably, the first philosophical critic to truly engage the central problems of Immanuel Kant's great epistemological project in the Critique…
This dissertation explores how humor is employed by minority authors of 21st-century German literature and how that humor contributes to redrawing perceived centers and margins in contemporary Germany. I investigate humor as a community-building tool that establishes points of i…
The cultural prestige of the United States received a significant boost thanks to the achievements of its artists and intellectuals after World War II. But in 1966, revelations in the New York Times, Ramparts, and elsewhere cast a doubtful light on these accomplishments: Had the…
Wim Wenders creates films that make a virtue of cinema`s encounter with reality, insisting that cinema`s referential quality imbues it with a unique relationship to our encounter with the world over and against other art forms. This idea frequently serves as a point of departure…
The East German Stasi stood among the most effective secret police forces in modern history, creating a surveillance apparatus that invaded all levels of society and affected many thousands of people, from ordinary citizens to the highest levels of the West German government. Ar…
In his 2015 production Faust I+II , Robert Wilson fuses elements of Postdramatic theater with German classicism. In the post-Brechtian world of theater, Wilson is able to bring together elements of absolute theater, the grand operas of the nineteenth century, and the tradition o…
This study examines Luise Rinser's travel reports and diaries on the Soviet Union, North Korea, Iran, and Indonesia, writings that have to date only received marginal attention. While Rinser's novels have earned her the reputation of a self-absorbed, subjective fiction writer, w…