Sean Allan

'Seit der wende hat der mann nur pech gehabt. Jetzt soll er auch noch jude sein' : theatricality, memory and identity in Dani Levy's Alles auf Zucker! (2004)

While Dani Levys Alles auf Zucker! is a comedy about Jews and “Jewishness” in an increasingly cosmopolitan world, in its exploration of Otherness the film also addresses more general questions of identity within the multicultural milieu of post-unification Germany. Levys technique of quoting stereotypes only to debunk them can be seen as part of an attack on all discursive systems that seek to prevent change by “fixing” identity in terms of a series of “eternal” essences. In place of the latter Levys film offers a new anti-essentialist notion of identity based on a concept of “performativity”. Seen in this light Alles auf Zucker! is part of a wave of recent German films in which to be “Other” is no longer to be cast in the role of the victim, but rather to adopt a position from which the contradictions and absurdities of the dominant structures of society might be exposed.

'Der Herr aber, dessen Leib du begehrst, vergab seinem feind.' The problem of revenge in Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas

In Michael Kohlhaas, Kohlhaas is shown to operate primarily, but not exclusively, from a desire to see that justice is done. By including the theme of revenge, Kleist offers his reader a psychologically realistic account of human behaviour. None the less, Kohlhaass moral achievement consists in overcoming his natural desire for vengeance: when he swallows the paper at the end of the story, it is not his intention to take revenge on the Elector of Saxony, but rather to exploit the theatricality of the occasion to demonstrate that honesty and integrity are superior to revenge and self-interest

Heinrich von Kleist: The Dramas and Stories

Die Familie Schroffenstein Robert Guiskard Der zerbrochne Krug Amphitryon Penthesilea Das Kaethchen von Heilbronn Die Hermannsschlacht Prinz Friedrich von Homburg Das Erdbeben in Chili / Die Verlobung in St Domingo Die Marquise von O... / Der Findling Der Zweikampf / Michael Kohlhass Die Heilige Caecilie / Das Bettelweib von Locarno Ueber das Marionettentheater.