After the Wall
GDR-related research and teaching activities of Network members
Below members have provided information on their current research projects and teaching activities which relate to the GDR and its representation.
Dr Peter Barker
Research
Peter Barker is a Research Fellow in the Department of German Studies at the University of Reading. Recent book publications include: Slavs in Germany: The Sorbian Minority and the German State since 1945, Edwin Mellen Press 2000; as co-editor, Views from Abroad. Die DDR aus britischer Perspektive, Bertelsmann Verlag 2007.
Current research interests:
- Church policy in the GDR and ethnic identity. I aim to compare the policy and practice of the Protestant and Catholic Churches and assess the impact on the demographic development of the Sorbian minority in Saxony and Brandenburg.
- British foreign policy and German unification. The Foreign Office is about to publish the papers relating to British policy towards German unification in 1989/90 in an attempt to show that the FCO pursued a more positive policy towards Germany than Mrs Thatcher, especially in the 2+4 negotiations. I intend to evaluate how far the FCO, in particular the Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, was successful in counteracting the overtly anti-German stance of the Prime Minister.
- The autobiographical writings of Jurij Brezan. Brezan rewrote his autobiography three times, in 1989, 1998 and 1999. I am exploring the different emphases and perspectives in Brezan’s three versions of his literary and political activities.
Prof. Dr Birgit Dahlke
Research
Aktuelle Projekte:
1) Es besteht ein Verlagsvertrag für eine hundertseitige Biographie über den Dichter Wolfgang Hilbig in der von Alexander Kozenina und Franziska Schlösser herausgegebenen Reihe METEORE-Autorenporträts des Wehrhahn-Verlags Hannover. Die Erstellung der Endfassung erfolgt nach Freigabe des noch in Bearbeitung befindlichen Hilbig-Nachlasses in der Berliner Akademie der Künste zum September 2009.
2) Lehrangebote zur Geschichte von Literatur in und aus der DDR stellen ein mehrfach beklagtes Desiderat an Schulen und Universitäten dar. In dem für 2010 geplanten Buch (Arbeitstitel „In den Sand gesetzt? Was interessiert heute an DDR-Literatur?“) biete ich – wie bereits in mehreren Vorlesungszyklen – einen Beschreibungsansatz, der sich auf die Komplexität und Spezifik der literarischen Kommunikation und der Literaturverhältnisse in einer „durchherrschten Gesellschaft“ konzentriert. In „Widerspruchsgeschichten“ wird auf sozialgeschichtliche, diskursanalytische und gendertheoretische Methoden zurückgegriffen, um zu zeigen, in welche Auseinandersetzungen einzelne Texte, Medien, Autor_innen und literarische Gruppierungen in der vierzigjährigen Geschichte der DDR gerieten und welche ästhetischen Folgen die Kämpfe um Deutungsmuster wie Emanzipation, Widerstand, Jugend, Realismus, Wandlung, Entfremdung, Erbe oder Generation hatten. Die literaturgeschichtliche Inventur fragt nach Modellen von Literatur in der Geschichte, nach in Metaphern, Rhetoriken und Narrativen gespeichertem historischem Wissen und deren aktuellem Potential.
3) Seit Ende 2008 leite ich eine studentische Arbeitsgruppe im Rahmen einer vom Berliner Senat geförderten und im November 2009 im Berliner Prenzlauer-Berg-Museum stattfindenden Ausstellung zur Geschichte der unabhängigen Ost-Berliner Literatur- und Kulturszene 1979-1989. Das Projekt ist mit meiner aktuellen Lehrveranstaltung im SoSE 2009 und mit der Betreuung mehrerer studentischer Abschlussarbeiten verbunden. Zwischenergebnisse werden u.a. unter www.literaturfunk.de vorgestellt.
4) An der aktuellen Ausstellung zur Alltagsgeschichte der DDR „Sag, was war die DDR“ für Kinder ab 5 Jahre im Kindermuseum des FEZ Berlin (An der Wuhlheide 197, 12459 Berlin) war ich konzeptionell beratend beteiligt. Die Ausstellung läuft seit dem 21.4.2009 und ist noch bis zum 20.12.2009 zu sehen.
www.fez-kindermuseum.de
Teaching
a) Poesie des Untergrunds? Zur Geschichte der inoffiziell publizierten literarischen Zeitschriften in Berlin 1979-1989 (in Verbindung mit der Berliner Ausstellung im November 2009)
b) Wolfgang Hilbig. Prosa und Lyrik
c) Flucht, Vertreibung und Bombenkrieg 1945 im literarischen Diskurs nach 1989
d) „Der Kick“. Ein Lehrstück über Gewalt in Ostdeutschland nach 1989 (Film und Buch von Andres Veiel)
e) Neueste ostdeutsche Lyrik
f) Vorlesungszyklus: Literatur und Gesellschaft: Geschichte der DDR-Literatur
g) Ostdeutsche Kindheitsprosa
h) DDR nach der DDR im Film nach 1989 zwischen Ostalgie und Abrechnung
i) Von Tätern, Opfern und Widerstand. Antifaschistische Diskurse in der DDR-Literatur
j) Heiner Müller - Gedichte aus vier Jahrzehnten
k) Vergewaltigung im deutsch-deutschen Diskurs vor und nach 1989 (Andreas-Friedrich, Anonyma, Boveri, Brandt, Djacenko, Drewitz, Eisner, Heiduczek, Hein, Strittmatter, Wolf, Höcker, Johnson, Kardorff, Knef, Milde, Müller, Pless-Damm, Plivier, Weber)
Dr Deirdre Byrnes
Research
My research is primarily concerned with GDR/post-GDR writing, in particular the work of Monika Maron, on whom I have just recently published a monograph: Rereading Monika Maron: Text, Counter-Text and Context (Peter Lang, 2011).
Teaching
I teach a final year module "Memory in Contemporary German Writing" which focuses on Stille Zeile Sechs and Pawels Briefe.
Dr Dan Hough
Research
A part of my research analyses the impact that the GDR has on the contemporary German party system. This has included two books and numerous articles/book chapters on the PDS/Left Party, as well as broader analyses of how the German party system has dealt with issues connected to the GDR legacy.
Teaching
I teach three modules related to the GDR. (i) Political Governance: Modern Germany (u/g, level 2); (ii) Political Change; Modern Germany (u/g level 3); (iii) Post-War Germany (p/g)
Ms Claire Hyland
Research
My research investigates how individual easterners born in the 1970s understand and articulate their own east Germanness. The project is framed by theories of consumption, focusing on attitudes and feelings about different types of gift-giving. Questioning members of this generation about gift-giving in various social contexts sheds light on their views of consumption in unified Germany and how they locate themselves in comparison with older generations and westerners. The methodological approach is qualitative, consisting primarily of in-depth interviews, to reveal the complexities of perceptions of east Germanness.
Dr Sara Jones
Research
Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship (2009-2012): Reconstructing the Stasi: images of secret police repression in the united Germany
The issue of state repression in the GDR, and particularly repression by the Stasi, continues to provide for controversy in the media of the Federal Republic of Germany. Government bodies emphasise the need to ‘work through’ the past, despite the desire of many to forget, and debates between historical and personal narratives are played out in the public sphere. Fundamental to these debates is the manner in which the memory of repression by the secret police is constructed and the interplay between different sites of memory in different cultural media. My project explores this interplay of memories and examines the multiple discourses which emerge when narratives of secret police repression in literature, film and documentary material are read alongside the ‘public history’ of this institution, as presented in museums, memorials and historical writing.
Teaching
Final Year option focusing on socio-political debates surrounding the legacy of the Stasi and cultural representations of the GDR secret police since 1989.
Year 2 option focusing on the literary history of the GDR and the links between culture and politics.
Dr Elaine Kelly
Research
Musical canons as a site of cultural and social-political discourse - specifically, the reception of the musical canon in the GDR, and re-evaluating GDR arts in a post-Cold War climate.
Dr Astrid Köhler
Research
In my monograph “Brückenschläge” (2007), I investigate the continuities in East German literature across the historical change marked by the year 1990. I analyse works by East German authors from the period before 1990 alongside more recent texts by the same authors, calling into question the narratives of German Unification, which aimed to discredit the writers of the former GDR. I show how the GDR’s significant authors did not need to ‘reinvent themselves’ in order to get on in the new Federal Republic, and demonstrate how the concerns that occupied them under the old regime, and the aesthetic tools they developed in dealing with these concerns, remain pertinent in the new context.
Another concern of mine which I am pursuing in collaboration with Robert Gillett is to see GDR literature in a comparative context. Under the working title of “Unidentical Twins”, we set out to re-examine works from East- and West German literature between 1945 and 1990, with a view to establishing individual and generic similarities and differences, correspondences and intertextual references between these works from both sides of the iron curtain.
I am also interested in what I perceive to be a new wave of "Elternbücher", in which (younger) East German authors are trying to re-examine their parents' lives under different political regimes, and thus to understand their socio-cultural heritage.
Teaching
Together with Robert Gillett: German Literature in East and West 1945 - 1990
Ms Nadine Nowroth
Research
I am currently a PhD student at the Germanic Department of Trinity College Dublin. My thesis concerns cases of inter-familiar spying in writers' families in the GDR, as well as related topics such as official censorship and the corresponding Stasi-files. My supervisor is Professor Moray McGowan.
Dr Anne-Marie Pailhès
Research
For research activity and publications, please see: http://www.u-paris10.fr/1509/0/fiche___annuaireksup/&RH=crmg_mbr
Teaching
For teaching activity, please see: http://lea.u-paris10.fr/spip.php?article309
Dr Debbie Pinfold
Research
I am currently working on a monograph on conceptions of childhood in the former GDR. This monograph will consider the way real children experienced this state (its education system, political organisations, media etc) and the way they were used in the GDR’s political discourse, as well as analysing literary writings (both autobiographical and fictional) about childhood in the GDR. Of particular interest in the ‘After the Wall’ context is the boom in narratives about GDR childhood since 1989/90. While such texts may initially appear to be driven by ‘mere’ Ostalgie, I will consider to what extent their focus on aspects of everyday life is in fact a response to an earlier representation of the GDR as ‘Stasiland’. I will also consider the extent to which these texts suggest an attempt to reassert individual identities and possibly even a collective east German identity. Especially when examined in the context of the discourse of Aufklärung and mündig werden which accompanied the Wende and expressed the belief that life in the GDR represented an unduly prolonged form of childhood, these texts may provide new insights into how former citizens of the GDR perceive their former state and themselves since the Wende.
Teaching
One fourth year unit on Christa Wolf
Dr Anna Saunders
Research
My current research focuses on public remembrance of the east German past through memorials and monuments, primarily located in Berlin. This involves the examination of numerous interest groups, shifting political agendas, regional tensions, the demands of the tourist industry and concepts of ‘normalisation’ in Germany. By examining the – often highly controversial – development of Berlin’s fast-changing memorial landscape, I hope to establish the extent to which a) memory of the GDR is diversifying, b) Cold War narratives continue to persist, c) regional tensions and east-west identities remain influential, d) ‘communicative’ and ‘cultural’ memories are conjoining or fragmenting. Examples of monuments I am examining include the planned ‘Freiheits- und Einheitsdenkmal’ in central Berlin; the most recent Rosa Luxemburg monument (Hans Haake, 2006), the 17 June 1953 monument (Wolfgang Rüppel, 2000), the Übergänge project (1996-1999) and the Ernst Thälmann monument (Lew Kerbel, 1986).
My previous research project on the GDR examined national and regional allegiances amongst young people in East(ern) Germany, in a study of youth and patriotism in Sachsen-Anhalt, from 1979-2002.
Teaching
1) ‘Divided Germany’ (year 2) – second half of module, cultural history of GDR
2) ‘Words and Music’ (year 2) – some lectures/seminars on Singebewegung/Wolf Biermann/East German punk
3) ‘East German and its Legacy’ (year 4) – social, political and cultural history of GDR
4) ‘Heimat: What is Germany’ (year 4) – study of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, historical consciousness and questions of identity in post-Wende Germany
5) ‘Sites of Memory in East Germany’ (MA) – politics of memory in east Germany
Dr Joanne Sayner
Research
My current research focusses on past and present evaluations of GDR antifascism and the role that memories of resistance to Nazism play within them. I am particularly interested in the ways in which autobiographical writing functions within debates about contemporary German identities and how autobiographical sources have been/can be used to challenge monolithic interpretations of GDR pasts. My current investigations of links between genre and memory involve testing constructivist theories of memory in relation to gendered memories.
Ms Katja Scholz
Research
The title of my PhD is: Exploring identity in a selection of Christoph Hein's prose works (1997-2007) and (hopefully) will be a study, combining cultural memory theories and CDA, of the extent to which the inter-relationship of constructions of 'The State' and personal identities impacts upon individual characters' ability to fulfil their potential as fully integrated members of their society. My research is funded by the IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences).
Teaching
Besides language teaching I also give a lecture and a tutorial on GDR history to first year students, and teach aspects of GDR life (through film and literature) to Graduate Diploma students (post grad teaching qualification).