Frederick A. Lubich

Thomas Manns Der Zauberberg Spukschloß der Großen Mutter oder Die Männerdämmerung des Abendlandes

ZusammenfassungDieser Essay interpretiert die hermetische Steigerung des Zauberberges als einen psy-chomythischen Abstieg ins sagen- und theorienumwobene “Reich der Mütter”. Dessen systematische Unterwanderung der patriarchalen Symbolordnung reflektiert einerseits die zeitgenössische Matriarchats-Mythographie (Bachofen, Hesse, Benjamin et al.) und repräsentiert andererseits bereits Modelle nachfreudscher und (post-) feministischer Theoriebildungen (Klein, Kristeva, Cixous, Paglia et al.).AbstractThis essay interprets the hermetic structure of the Magic Mountain as a psychomythic subterfuge in the legendary, that is, time- and theory-honored “realm of the (m)other”. Its systematic subversion of the symbolic order of patriarchy on the one hand reveals contemporary models of matriarchal mythography (Bachofen, Hesse, Benjamin et al.) and adumbrates on the other evolving conceptions of post-Freudian and (post-)feminist theory (Klein, Kristeva, Cixous, Paglia et al.).

Warte nicht auf bessre Zeiten! Die Autobiographie by Wolf Biermann (review)

many of the concepts investigated, such as memory discourses in Grass or the role of borders, are just too complex and too well-researched to be meaningfully addressed in one monograph. Not surprisingly the very short conclusion, barely more than a page, lists only general insights, namely that the study showed that the category of space can be “erkenntnisfördernd [ . . . ] wenn sie die Kategorien Erzählter Raum, Raum des Erzählens und Raummetaphorik trennscharf auseinanderhält” (426). I am skeptical that such sharp distinctions are, indeed, possible or even desirable and it is regrettable that the author’s knowledge of Grass’s œuvre as well as of numerous theoretical discourses were not guided and applied in a more succinct manner.

The "Goldhagen Effect": History, Memory, Nazism--Facing the German Past (review)

The fame and notoriety of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s study Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996) is based on its two fundamental contentions: first, that German history was driven by a centuries-old eliminationist anti-Semitism that eventually culminated in the Holocaust and, second, that a much larger number of ordinary Germans than hitherto assumed were actively and voluntarily involved in the systematic perpetration and execution of the Holocaust. In addition, the voluminous study provides numerous graphic details of sadistic brutalities and horrendous atrocities, thereby affecting the reader also on a very powerful emotional level. Despite intense criticism by leading Holocaust scholars in the United States, Germany, and Israel, the book became a runaway best-seller, making its young author an international celebrity. Geoff Eley’s collection of essays by well-known scholars in the field is the first systematic attempt to document and critically assess the international dimension of Goldhagen’s reception. Eley’s essay “Ordinary Germans, Nazis, and Judeocide” commences by challenging, like numerous works before him, Goldhagen’s central theme of Germany’s unique history of eliminationist anti-Semitism: “This argument failed to explain why so little legislative discrimination, let alone physical violence, occurred against Jews in Germany before 1914 (by contrast with some other countries of Europe)” (pp. 5–6). Eley further elaborates on and substantiates his criticism by referring to several strands of Holocaust scholarship in Germany and the United States, such as the historiography of the pre-1914 period, cross-cultural comparative studies, research on social engineering, and gender studies (pp. 16–17). Together, this rich body of research over the past decades has contributed substantially to our understanding of the complexities of Germany’s sociopolitical realities and ideologies in the early twentieth century. According to Eley, “Goldhagen acknowledged none of these literatures” (p. 19). To their insights one might add the personal recollections of prominent scholars such as Peter Gay, who was born and raised in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic and who writes in his recent essay “My German Question”: “[Germany] was the country, that next to the U.S. was the haven of choice for the Eastern European Jewish emigrants who were looking for a tolerant society relatively