The Image And Influence Of America In German Poetry Since 1945

Examines the image of the US in German poetry and the reception and influence of American poetry in Germany since 1945. This book focuses on the image of the US in German poetry and the reception of American poetry in Germany since 1945. Gregory Divers examines poems by major figures in 20th-century German literature - Benn, Brecht, Bachmann, Jandl, and Grass, among others - and by other poets who shaped America's postwar image in Germany. Divers traces America's postwar status in Germany from the prisoner-of-war poems of Günter Eich to the pop poetry of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and Peter Handke. Continuing, he finds that although the 1960s protest poems of Erich Fried and others reflect the tarnishing of America's image due to Vietnam, 1970s travel poems by Brinkmann, Kunert, and Kunze confirm the resiliency of that image. Finally, Divers looks at poems by Hartung, Delius, and Kling to illustrate the new heights reached by America's image within German literary circles during the 1980s, and the status of America in Germany after reunification. In charting these developments in postwar German poetry, Divers also shows how American influences are crucial to its understanding, not only surveying postwar German reception of Whitman, Eliot, Pound, and William Carlos Williams, but also examining the influence of such figures as Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, and Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. Gregory Divers is Assistant Professor of German at Saint Louis University.

In the 1960s and 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), or West Germany, newspaper readers and television viewers were appalled by terrible images of fires burning half a world away. The Vietnam War was a decisive catalyst for the era’s wider protest movements and gave rise to an ardent anti-war discourse. This discourse privileged writing in many forms. Within it, poetry and poetic writing were key; and because coverage of the conflict in Vietnam often focused on spectacular, destructive conflagrations ignited by hi-tech machines of war, their dominant trope was fire. Hundreds of poems and related writings about Vietnam circulated in the FRG, yet they are almost entirely forgotten today. Poetic Writing and the Vietnam War in West Germany uncovers and explores some of this rich production in order to present a new history of engaged poetic writing in the FRG in the 1960s and 1970s, and to draw out distinctive characteristics of wider protest culture. In doing so, it makes the case for attending to marginal, non-canonical or neglected literary and cultural forms, and for critical thinking about why they might, over time, have been obscured. This book offers, too, a case study for reflection on the representation of war, on ways in which German oppositional culture could imagine its others, and the ways in which other voices could speak to it in turn, and on the relationship of poetry to the historical world.

The ongoing discussions about globalization, American hegemony and September 11 and its aftermath have moved the debate about the export of American culture and cultural anti-Americanism to center stage of world politics. At such a time, it is crucial to understand the process of culture transfer and its effects on local societies and their attitudes toward the United States. This volume presents Germany as a case study of the impact of American culture throughout a period characterized by a totalitarian system, two unusually destructive wars, massive ethnic cleansing, and economic disaster. Drawing on examples from history, culture studies, film, radio, and the arts, the authors explore the political and cultural parameters of Americanization and anti-Americanism, as reflected in the reception and rejection of American popular culture and, more generally, in European-American relations in the "American Century."

Using Germany as a case study of the impact of American culture throughout a period characterized by a totalitarian system, two destructive wars, ethnic cleansing, and economic disaster, this book explores the political and cultural parameters of Americanization and anti-Americanism.

In the fading evening light of August 4, 1914, Great Britain’s H.M.S. Telconia set off on a mission to sever the five transatlantic cables linking Germany and the United States. Thus Britain launched its first attack of World War I and simultaneously commenced what became the war’s most decisive battle: the battle for American public opinion. In this revealing study, Chad Fulwider analyzes the efforts undertaken by German organizations, including the German Foreign Ministry, to keep the United States out of the war. Utilizing archival records, newspapers, and “official” propaganda, the book also assesses the cultural impact of Germany’s political mission within the United States and comments upon the perception of American life in Europe during the early twentieth century.

This book examines the synthesis of globalizing influences that precipitated the anti-authoritarian revolts in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.

Over the past decade and a half, Germany has experienced a period of political and cultural turbulence which many have attributed to the combined challenges of unification and globalisation. In response to growing exposure to global markets, politics and migration debates about identity have increasingly been renationalised. At the same time, there has been a notable reappraisal in Germany (and in German Studies) of the regional and global as spaces for the construction of identity. This volume sets out to explore these complex and at times contradictory trends, focusing in particular on developments in Germany since the 1970s, although chapters treating earlier periods are also included. The volume brings together British, Irish, German, Canadian and American scholars working in the field, and resulted from a conference organised by Women in German Studies at the University of Bath. The first section is primarily concerned with the specifically German concept of locality known as Heimat and its changing relationship with the global. Included are explorations of the writings of Kafka, Bachmann, Johnson, Sell, Wolf, Brinkmann and Jelinek amongst others as well as films by Schlöndorff and Steyerl. The second section focuses on the impact of the global on institutions and rituals such as commemoration, memorialisation, and architecture, which have traditionally been influential in shaping national self-images. Overall, this volume concludes that the nature of the relationship to the local has fundamentally changed under the impact of globalisation.

Erstmals liegt mit Schaltstelle eine umfassende Studie zur zeitgenössischen deutschsprachigen Lyrik auf der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert vor. In einem breiten Spektrum an Beiträgen international renommierter Experten aus Deutschland, Großbritannien, den USA, Kanada, Italien und den Niederlanden präsentiert diese Untersuchung ausführliche Analysen zu bekannten Größen (wie Volker Braun, Ulrike Draesner, Durs Grünbein, Ernst Jandl, Barbara Köhler, Friederike Mayröcker, Brigitte Oleschinski und Raoul Schrott), eingehende Betrachtungen zur Lyrik des Körpers, zur Verwendung von Klischee-Bildern, zum Topos der Kindheit oder zur ‘neuen Schlichtheit’, sowie Beiträge zur jüngsten Generation von Dichterinnen und Dichtern, die im neuen Jahrhundert ihren Einstand gegeben haben. Untersuchungen zu individuellen Gedichtsammlungen ergänzen sich mit Abhandlungen, die Dialoge über die Jahrhundertgrenzen hinweg aufzeigen oder den Einfluß von Schlüsselfiguren wie Paul Celan und Gottfried Benn nachweisen. Zudem enthält der Band ein Interview mit Heinz Czechowski und neue Gedichte von acht führenden deutschsprachigen Lyrikerinnen und Lyrikern. Zu oft wird in Diskussionen zur Literatur in der Berliner Republik die Lyrik marginalisiert: dieser Band zeigt, daß sie im Gegenteil eine unerläßliche Rolle zu spielen hat. Für Wissenschaftler und Studierende der Germanistik, wie überhaupt für alle, die an den Entwicklungen auf dem Gebiet der modernen Lyrik interessiert sind, sollte diese Veröffentlichung zur Pflichtlektüre erhoben werden. Schaltstelle presents a pioneering examination of contemporary German poetry at the turn of the twenty-first century. Internationally recognised experts from Germany, UK, USA, Canada, Italy and the Netherlands offer a first assessment of the paths that German poetry has taken into the new millennium. Alongside in-depth analyses of established names are broader surveys of poetry of the body, the use of cliché, theories of metaphor, the topos of childhood, the ‘new simplicity’, and contributions dedicated to the youngest generation of poets making their debut in the new century. The volume also contains an interview with Heinz Czechowski, a substantial Bibliography and new poems by eight leading poets. Poetry is too often marginalised in discussions about literature in the Berlin Republic: this volume demonstrates that it has a vital role to play at their heart.