Marion F. Deshmukh

The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968: Schissler, Hanna, ed.: Princeton: Princeton University Press 498 pp., Publication Date: February 2001

ovcIcoiiic thc consequences of defeated n;itionalism. Finally, the Balkan Muslims r i r t i \ t bc acccptcd as equals to ensure peace in !lit, region. I h (;roow.s o/’ C’hungc offers the reader a coriciw summirry of the complexities of transition i n postconimunist Eastern Europe. What i t lacks is ii subaltern analysis of how the imbalance between the civic and ethnic Iiictors hiis affected the social and cultural arrangenicnts and priorities i n Eastern liurope. Still, Brown’s insights into the region’s “kcy qucstions and answcrs” will appe;iI to college students and area scholars.

The Fin-de-Siecle Culture of Adolescence.

Preoccupation with adolescence was one of the hallmarks of European culture at the turn of the century. In this absorbing book, John Neubauer examines the representation of adolescents in the literature, visual arts, psychology, and psychoanalytic theory of this period, and he considers the social institutions and youth movements that were formed to accommodate them. Neubauer argues that the depiction of adolescence in art and literature did not merely reflect its emergence as a middle-class phenomenon of industrial societies but helped to shape its social construction as well. Neubauers discussion of adolescents in literature begins with the inner lives of some adolescent protagonists (Stephen Dedalus, Tonio Kroger and Young Torless) as told by adult narrators. His focus then becomes wider, moving to the adolescent as viewed by a peer-narrator, to the adolescents cliques and gangs, and to the gardens, schools, and streets in which the narratives of adolescence are set. In the second half of the book he treats nonliterary subjects. Neubauer considers portrayals of adolescents by such artists as Munch, Kirchner, Heckel, Kokoschka, and Schiele. He discusses the narrative construction of Freuds case history of Dora and the problems of female adolescence in Horneys Adolescent Diaries, as well as questions of gender and homosexual identity in turn-of-the-century psychological theories of adolescence. The final chapters consider adolescence in school, church, the German Wandervogel, and the Boy Scouts, focusing on the literary and rhetorical means involved in institutionalizing adolescence.