Matthias Uecker

The Face of the Weimar Republic. Photography, Physiognomy, and Propaganda in Weimar Germany

The Weimar years were characterized by an immense rise in photographic publications, accompanied by a discourse that ascribed authenticity and reliability to the medium and saw it as superior to language. The article analyzes photographic books by August Sander, Ernst Jünger, and Kurt Tucholsky focusing on the communication strategies in which photographic images were embedded. It shows that the photographic series, its combination with text, and its reliance on physiognomic knowledge created an arrangement in which the visible details of individual images were displaced or functionalized in favour of a pre-existing ideological knowledge which images were merely capable of illustrating.

A Fatal German Marriage: The National Subtext of Fassbinder’s Die Ehe Der Maria Braun

The article explores the connections between the development of Maria Brauns marriage and the political and economic conditions which made the economic miracle of the nineteen-fifties possible. Whereas Fassbinder scholarship has tended to seek parallels only between the character of Maria Braun and general developments in German society, it is argued here that both her marriage and her love affairs need to be included in such an interpretation. The analysis of non-realistic, theatrical or non-diegetic elements in the films style discovers a subtext which revolves around symbols of national identity and sovereignty and which is directly linked to the development of Maria Brauns marriage. Within this framework, the symbolic function of Maria Brauns lovers and of her husband are re-examined.

Missverständnisse, Rollenspiele, Double Binds: Kommunikation und Bewusstsein im Werk Birgit Vanderbekes

Abweichend von der dominierenden Strategie der Literaturkritik, die das Werk Birgit Vanderbekes in erster Linie auf seine soziologische Reprasentativitat fur Entwicklungen der deutschen Gesellschaft seit den funfziger Jahren untersucht hat, konzentriert dieser Aufsatz sich auf die Kommunikationsverhaltnisse in den Erzahlungen Birgit Vanderbekes. Gezeigt wird, das sowohl der spezifische Stil der Erzahlungen als auch ihr thematischer Zusammenhang auf dem Interesse der Autorin an paradoxen Kommunikationsverhaltnissen und den Problemen ihrer literarischen Darstellung basieren. Als Fluchtpunkt der literarischen Entwicklung Vanderbekes erscheint schlieslich der selbstreferentielle Charakter ihrer Texte, die in zunehmenden Mase die eigene lierarische Konstruktion thematisieren.

Experimental Fiction or Classical Story-Telling? Alexander Kluge’s Multi-Media Authorship

Alexander Kluge has created a huge oeuvre concerned with history and story-telling. His books combine short narrative forms into large constructions in which the different parts all complement each other and create a seemingly never-ending series of connections which endeavour to create a portrayal of the world—past, present, and future—both as it is and as humans imagine and wish it to be. Kluge’s story-telling challenges the established distinctions between genres and media as well as the distinction between fact and fiction. It also challenges established modes of publication and reception. While the organisation of Kluge’s books can be described as experimental, they make use of long-established forms of story-telling. This article will investigate the relationship between classical forms and experimental challenges in Kluge’s work. (MU)