Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Explodes the conventional wisdom that there was a taboo on the topic of flight and expulsion in East Germany.
It is by now almost a cliché that the flight and expulsion of Germans from east-central Europe at the end of the Second World War was a taboo topic in the German Democratic Republic. According to this claim, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) suppressed reference to flight and expulsion so as not to upset its socialist neighbors. This book shows that such a view does not hold up to serious scrutiny. While the topic may not have been addressed in the realm ofpolitics or official commemoration, it was picked up again and again in literature, particularly fiction. Representations of flight and expulsion were by no means restricted, as some have asserted, to Christa Wolf's novel Kindheitsmuster: Niven's study documents around one hundred novels and short stories published in the GDR that address flight or expulsion. He argues that in the 1950s and early 1960s GDR fiction included many refugee figures. Thepredominant emphasis was on their integration under socialism rather than their experience of flight and loss of home; nevertheless, flight and to a lesser degree expulsion were depicted, as was their impact on individuals. They continued to be portrayed in the late GDR and in post-unification east Germany. Flight and expulsion were subject to a developing literary discourse in the GDR, a discourse that this book explores.
Bill Niven is Professor in Contemporary German History at Nottingham Trent University.
It is by now almost a cliché that the flight and expulsion of Germans from east-central Europe at the end of the Second World War was a taboo topic in the German Democratic Republic. According to this claim, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) suppressed reference to flight and expulsion so as not to upset its socialist neighbors. This book shows that such a view does not hold up to serious scrutiny. While the topic may not have been addressed in the realm ofpolitics or official commemoration, it was picked up again and again in literature, particularly fiction. Representations of flight and expulsion were by no means restricted, as some have asserted, to Christa Wolf's novel Kindheitsmuster: Niven's study documents around one hundred novels and short stories published in the GDR that address flight or expulsion. He argues that in the 1950s and early 1960s GDR fiction included many refugee figures. Thepredominant emphasis was on their integration under socialism rather than their experience of flight and loss of home; nevertheless, flight and to a lesser degree expulsion were depicted, as was their impact on individuals. They continued to be portrayed in the late GDR and in post-unification east Germany. Flight and expulsion were subject to a developing literary discourse in the GDR, a discourse that this book explores.
Bill Niven is Professor in Contemporary German History at Nottingham Trent University.
Price: $120.00
Pages: 228
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Camden House
Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture
Publication Date:
01 July 2014
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781571135353
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German, Literature: history and criticism, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, PERFORMING ARTS / Television / History & Criticism, Film history, theory or criticism
Niven's study is outstanding in several aspects. First, he does what the title of the book advertises in a way that is highly documented yet never longwinded . . . . The astonished reader comes to the fascinating realization that German flight and expulsion were in no way taboo themes in GDR literature; indeed, that on the contrary a great number of works dealt with these difficult topics in the most diverse ways. [Niven is] even able in the end to reconstruct the origin of the taboo claim . . . . In a word, Niven's is a work of fundamental importance that no future scholar will be able to ignore, and beyond that it suggests numerous directions for future scholarship . . . . The immense amount of work that clearly went into this study does not prevent it from being highly readable.
Introduction
Evidence and Interpretation: Flight and Expulsion in GDR Prose Works
GDR Reconstruction Literature of the 1950s and Early 1960s and the Figure of the Refugee
From Novels Set in the Nazi Period to Novels of Revisiting
The Skeptical Muse: Reassessing Integration
Flight and Expulsion in East German Prose Works after Unification
Bibliography
Index
Evidence and Interpretation: Flight and Expulsion in GDR Prose Works
GDR Reconstruction Literature of the 1950s and Early 1960s and the Figure of the Refugee
From Novels Set in the Nazi Period to Novels of Revisiting
The Skeptical Muse: Reassessing Integration
Flight and Expulsion in East German Prose Works after Unification
Bibliography
Index