Representation Of East German Identity In Frank Beyer S Spur Der Steine

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 2.0, University of Southampton (School of Humanities), course: Language, Discourse and Identity, language: English, abstract: Frank Beyer's Spur der Steine (Trace of Stones) is a controversial 1966 film production released in East Germany that had long been anticipated by Party officials, film artists and the general public. Not only was it the most expensive DEFA- production of the day, but its story had caused debate within the studio in the months leading up to its short-lived release. Beyer's work presents multiple perspectives on a construction site crisis and thereby openly questions the possibility of "communion between individual destiny and collective destiny predicated by socialism's utopian goals."

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 2.0, University of Southampton (School of Humanities), course: Language, Discourse and Identity, language: English, abstract: Frank Beyer’s Spur der Steine (Trace of Stones) is a controversial 1966 film production released in East Germany that had long been anticipated by Party officials, film artists and the general public. Not only was it the most expensive DEFA- production of the day, but its story had caused debate within the studio in the months leading up to its short-lived release. Beyer’s work presents multiple perspectives on a construction site crisis and thereby openly questions the possibility of “communion between individual destiny and collective destiny predicated by socialism’s utopian goals.”

Were movies in the East Bloc propaganda or carefully veiled dissent? In the first major study in English of East German film, Joshua Feinstein argues that the answer to this question is decidedly complex. Drawing on newly opened archives as well as interviews with East German directors, actors, and state officials, Feinstein traces how the cinematic depiction of East Germany changed in response to national political developments and transnational cultural trends such as the spread of television and rock 'n' roll. Celluloid images fed a larger sense of East German identity, an identity that persists today, more than a decade after German reunification. But even as they attempted to satisfy calls for "authentic" images of the German Democratic Republic that would legitimize socialist rule, filmmakers challenged the regime's self-understanding. Beginning in the late 1960s, East German films dwelled increasingly on everyday life itself, no longer seeing it merely as a stage in the development toward communism. By presenting an image of a static rather than an evolving society, filmmakers helped transform East German identity from one based on a commitment to socialist progress to one that accepted the GDR as it was.

The state-sponsored Deutsche Film Anstalt (DEFA) was responsible for film production in the former GDR from 1946 until 1992. This volume traces the development of DEFA and East German cinema.

Daniela Berghahn demonstrates that East German cinema occupies an ambivalent position between German national cinema on the one hand and East European and Soviet cinema on the other. The book includes a wide-ranging exploration of post-unification cinemafrom East Germany.

Theses on any subject submitted by the academic libraries in the UK and Ireland.

The first scholarly collection in English or German to fully address the treatment of gender and sexuality in the productions of DEFA across genres and in social, political, and cultural context.

Scientific Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - History, Hong Kong Baptist Universitiy, language: English, abstract: The paper was addressed to an East-Asian audience conscious of national 'unification' demands in their own region, familiar with life in an authoritarian system, and aware of criticism of 'Western' political freedoms. Against this backdrop, it interprets the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in summer/fall 1989 within the framework of Karl Popper's and Ralf Dahrendorf's 'closed society' paradigm. It concludes that the East German system imploded because of pervasive popular disillusion in light of growing contradictions between official rhetoric and actual economic failure. It was not in the interest of the East German population to reform the existing structures but to pursue a quick path towards reunification with the West. Reunification demands were thus not primarily based on patriotic (or nationalist) discourse but on rational political choice.