abstract: In the time of Nazi Germany the systematic targeting of Jews for persecution and extermination was rampant. Although this was a dark time for the Jewish people in Europe, they did not simply stand idly by and let this happen to them. The Jewish people found a way to make a mockery of the situation that they wee in, as well as a way to poke fun at the people who persecuted them. The Jews used dark humor to mock the situations that they found themselves in. The interesting point here, though, is that they did not use all the aspects of dark humor that exist. The Jews used situational humor, critical humor, and gallows humor-humor about death-according to the incongruity theory of humor, to make a mockery of the plight that they were in. They did not use all of the different aspects of dark humor, but only the parts that would merge with their need to mock their situation, in order to be able to deal with the reality of what was happening in their lives. For the analysis in this thesis, I researched various collections of Jewish humor in Nazi Germany. I analyzed the jokes in relation to the different humor theories, and gave my conclusion on why these jokes were effective. Based on the evidence, I have come to several conclusions. The Jews that made these jokes only used the aspects of dark humor that would fit in with the atmosphere that they were trying to create. They would not use sexual jokes of any kind because of this. They used jokes that could be used as a shield, to comfort not only themselves but also their compatriots given their situation. The use of humor was a coping measure and a sign of defiance, that helped some of the victims of the Holocaust survive the attempted extermination of the Jews. Given the opportunity, I would widen my focus on this topic to include collective memory, as well, however the scope of such a project would be more fitting for a doctoral paper. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. German 2011

abstract: At the beginning of the 20th century, the introduction of the motion picture as a medium changed the way people disseminate information between each other and to the masses. The magnitude of this change was supplemented and amplified first by, the addition of sound, then color, and finally (possibly most importantly) the invention of the technology to send and receive motion picture signals along with their corresponding sound tracks. This would eventually all be combined in the production of the first television sets. Some of the most stunning illustrations of the power brought about by this medium can be observed in the way that Germany was able to utilize film during (and before) World War II. The idea of using cinema as a propaganda tool led to the creation of UFA during WWI (1914-1918). Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' fascination with film and its propaganda potential led to the development of many successful public communication techniques and numerous tactics used to influence the people's thoughts and actions. This thesis provides background information pertaining to the outbreak of World War II including the German propaganda machine, and examines the role that motion pictures played in the distribution of anti-Polish messages before and during the early stages of the war. It focuses specifically on the film Feuertaufe as an example illustrating six major tenants of Nazi film propaganda namely: oversimplification, appeal to emotions, harnessing the power of the visual image, intentional blurring of lines between entertainment and facts, repetition, and the use of graphics combined with music. Next, this essay explores how each of the abovementioned characteristics were used by the Poles and the British in their pro-Polish film This is Poland in order to sway public opinion and spread messages aligned with their political views respectively. This thesis concludes by stressing the importance of being aware of these techniques so that one may be able to separate fact from hype, and by looking at the possible utilization of the six tenants in the years to come as smart mobile-devices usher in yet another metamorphosis of the art of information distribution. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. German 2014

Goethe had a complex and evolving relationship with the nobility, for reasons which can in part be inferred from his biography. This thesis, however, is primarily concerned with examination of relevant texts, and is largely confined to the years before the journey to Italy in 1786. The first three chapters cover the period before his arrival in Weimar. This is followed by an account of the relevant works from the first Weimar decade (1775-1786), with some biographical detail. The main weight has fallen on Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung, a text which is still sometimes undervalued, and has a rather limited bibliography. It is naturally a more direct reflection of his social attitudes than the three major plays associated with the decade, which however have been given separate, more cursory treatments in the three final chapters. General themes include the emergence of Goethe from immature, or at least inherited, stereotypes of the nobility, first towards an attempted alliance between it and the ‘Genie’ of the Sturm und Drang, and then to a more detailed critique made possible by personal experience. The final phase (final, that is, within the limited time frame) was the formation and development of an internal ideal of nobility with an increasingly tenuous relationship with social and political reality. Goethe’s picture of nobility as performance and presentation of self is considered, and its links, for the non-noble author, with theatre and theatrical role performance. Other recurring themes include court manners and their value, both inherently and as an analogue of the heightening which for Goethe was essential to art, court life as a paradigm of social life in general, and the related subject of flight from society.

My thesis investigates the relationship between literary modernism and modernist theology, discussing the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Józef Wittlin in the context of the theological debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I aim to establish parallels between contemporary theologians’ and religious thinkers’ attempts to rethink Christianity’s place in modernity and the poetic explorations of similar issues in the works of Rilke, Eliot, and Wittlin. The first chapter of my thesis discusses the debates surrounding the so-called ‘Modernist crisis’ in the Roman Catholic Church, in which two different visions of Catholicism – the neo-scholastic orthodoxy and the progressive Modernism – came into conflict. In the following years, similar disputes took place in the Church of England and the American Presbyterian Church. Thinkers associated with the ‘Modernist’ understanding of Christianity considered it necessary to develop a new apologetic that would be capable of responding to contemporary philosophy and recent developments in psychology and science. They drew attention to the value of personal experience and individual conscience, began reclaiming the mystical traditions of the past, and became increasingly interested in the psychology of religious experience. In the three literary chapters of my thesis, I argue that the reconceptualisation of the relationship between the religious experience of contemporary Christians and the inherited doctrinal tradition – central to Modernist theologians’ attempts to reconcile Christianity with the critical project of modernity – is also at the heart of the poetic projects of Rilke, Eliot, and Wittlin. I argue that Rilke’s engagement with Orthodox iconography, Eliot’s investment in the search for the meaning of mystical experience and its relation to Christian dogma, and Wittlin’s reinterpretation of traditional hagiography are all attempts at reinterpreting medieval Christian traditions and reconceptualising their place in modernity. Their parallel poetic explorations of the relationship between Christianity and modernity, I argue, demonstrate the existence of a complex network of interactions and exchanges between theological and cultural modernisms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

No description available.

Alfred Döblin’s famous 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz has often been discussed in terms of the appropriation of film poetics by the medium of literature and is said to abound with examples of literary montage. In most post-war discussions of literary montage in Berlin Alexanderplatz, however, the device is regularly understood as an umbrella term for anything of stylistic interest. Deploying 1920s and 1930s literary and film criticism I demonstrate that this regularly leads to anachronisms and terminological over-inflation. I thus offer a historically informed definition of literary montage in precise narratological, stylistic and experiential categories. Montage rests on the identification of intradiegetically unmotivated ready-mades and the perceived experiential similarities between the novel, Soviet montage films, and Dadaist photomontage. The lack of motivation affords the experience of disruption which, I demonstrate, has within the Benjaminian “modernity thesis” too often been extrapolated to characterize all film editing. My analysis shows that contemporary critics regularly discriminated between different types of editing on at least three experiential axes – tempo and dynamism, confusion, and disruption. My proposed definition of literary montage thus also allows me to analyse the novel in terms of the key narratological novelties that literary montage introduces: the global proliferation of heterodiegetic zero-level narrators accompanied with the local elimination of zerolevel narrators altogether. In other words, Döblin accomplishes in literary fiction what holds for film fiction in general – the absence of a narrator held to be fictionally in control of the whole of the text. Conversely, through the use of intertitles and the particular type of voice-over interjections, Fassbinder’s adaptation endeavours to emulate the reciprocal commonplace of literary fiction – the narrator’s continuous presence. Paired with Fassbinder’s film, Jutzi’s adaptation demonstrates how visual and sound film montage both differ from literary montage. Whereas literary montage hinges on disruptive stylistic shifts, film montage rests on disruptive spatio-temporal dislocation.

The literary image of the dangerously powerful woman indicates conflict around women's roles in the cultural milieu that gave rise to the text. This interaction between social reality and literary text is most apparent in a culture's legends. Legends may be briefly defined as narratives describing the unordinary to which the audience and/or the teller ascribe the status of reality or at least, plausibility. Underlying the analysis of society-text interaction are two assumptions: (1) the tales regarded by a community as true must at least overtly support the dominant values of that community, and (2) recurring legends point out central concerns of that community. Drawing from Chinese zhiguai (XXXl) collected in the third to sixth centuries and from Sagen compilations made by nineteenth century German folklorists, I argue for the similar function of these texts in the cultural contexts that produced them. There is no question of mutual influence between these two disparate cultural and historical settings. Instead I argue that, cross-culturally, legends featuring female demons and women with supernatural powers indicate conflict around women's roles in family and society. Furthermore, in a given cultural context, the particular characteristics of the supernatural woman in legend provide a mirror for the specific hardships faced and the compensating strategies exercised by women in that cultural system.

Recent studies show that Buchner's use of biblical allusions in his literary and political writings reflect considerable knowledge of and interest in religious topics. What has been largely neglected however, is the inseparable tie between biblical themes and social implications in Buchner's works. By providing an in-depth look into Buchner's protestant religious education in Darmstadt from 1821-1831, the dissertation sheds new light on this aspect of Buchner's writings. Born into a protestant but not zealously religious middle-class family, Georg Buchner received his first formal religious education through protestant textbooks used in Religion classes in elementary school (Zarnack, Salzmann, Kohlrausch, Snell; 1821-1825). These textbooks focussed on the figure of Jesus, his compassion with and assistance to the poor and rejection of the rich (Kohlrausch's "Anleitungen"). Readings in German class supported this depiction by providing the students with readings that show the rich as predominantly exploitative and heartless monsters deserving punishment. In high school (1825-1831), Heinrich Palmer, Buchner's Religion teacher from 1827-1831, shifted the focus to a thorough knowledge of the Bible and to protestant heroism. Basing his classes on texts by Ziegenbein and Niemeyer, Palmer promulgated their views further in his weekly addresses from the pulpit. Traces of these teachings are evident in Buchner's high school writings. They also show Heinrich Palmer and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as sources from whom Buchner enjoyed borrowing. As further evidence from minutes, diary entries, and court depositions (1832 to 1837) made by Buchner's predominantly protestant friends in Strassburg, Giessen, and Darmstadt shows, Buchner seems to have adopted the teachings from his elementary and high school years by placing the social gap between the rich and the poor at the heart of his belief that a social "reformation" could only be brought about through religion and the use of the Bible. While religious topics were also read and discussed in the context of other subjects, socio-religious thought and protestant heroism were at the heart of religious instruction and echo most loudly from Buchner's high school writings, from his political pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote (1834) and from the mission statement of the Gesellschaft der Menschenrechte. In view of these findings, Buchner's plays and the novella fragment Lenz are richly deserving of analysis in future studies.

Popular novels by women during the Weimar Republic have been accused of creating a discursive climate among women that glorified motherhood and encouraged political apathy. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that, on the contrary, these novels contained important social criticism and provided advice and role models for women. I also show that critics of these novels have misunderstood the discourse of "organized motherhood," long used within the women's movement to encourage women's entry into the public sphere in the name of civic activism. After situating the texts historically and culturally, my analysis of four texts: Stud. chem. Helene Willfuer by Vicki Baum, Die mit den 1000 Kindern, by Clara Viebig, Die Madels aus der Fadengasse, by Lisbeth Burger, and Thea von Harbou's Metropolis--works all influenced by the philosophies of the bourgeois women's movement--demonstrates a concept of women's role common to authors of the Weimar Republic's older generation. Here, women have the inherent potential to redeem and reform a society damaged by war and modern civilization through their entry into the public sphere and civic activism. Works of Weimar's younger generation of authors--Gilgi-eine von uns and Das kunstseidene Madchen, by Irmgard Keun, Die Mehlreisende Frieda Geier, by Marieluise Fleisser, Kasebier erobert den Kurfurstendamm, by Gabriele Tergit, and Schicksale hinter Schreibmaschinen, by Christa Anita Bruck--were written mainly in a neusachliche style by authors who did not experience the pre-war fight for women's rights but instead came of age during the harsh economic and social realities of the Weimar Republic. These works, devoid of bourgois utopias, instead contain strategies for individual survival and bitter criticism against modern conditions for women. Then as now, the personal was political for women. A novelistic description of the hardships suffered due to an unwanted pregnancy was as surely a protest against existing legislation and social conditions for women as a political speech--and one more likely to be accessed and understood by other women. Rather than contributing to political apathy, these novels criticized political and social realities, intervening into discourses about modern women and their role within society.

This dissertation investigates Marie-Theresa Kerschbaumer's literary interest in women in historical (principally Austrian) context. It is at once artistic and political. Using some of the ideas from Hayden White's Metahistory as a springboard, I consider how Kerschbaumer conceptualizes women in a Metonymical mode, rather than, for instance, a Metaphorical one in her fiction. After this introduction, White's ideas on historical emplotment, argument and ideologicai implication shape my treatment of Kerschbaumer's major works (excluding Der Schwimmer). I show Kerschbaumer's Mechanistic argument of history in Schwestern (1982), where history is shown to be driven by economic laws. Unlike Karl Marx's more radical view, however, I see Kerschbaumer's ideological implication to be Liberal, because of the slower tempo of change that she envisions. I also discuss her Tragic Romance emplotment of history, where gender, racial, and class conflicts tragically temper an ultimately harmonious end. Der weibliche Name des Widerstands (1980) illustrates Kerschbaumer's Metonymical representation of women who resisted National Socialism. I analyze Kerschbaumer's Contextualist argument of history in Die Fremde (1992) and Ausfahrt (1994), where the various individual, unique experiences amalgamate to form the central character's history. Versuchung (1990) darkens the earlier Tragic Romance emplotment found in Schwestern to a Satire. In this autobiographical work, there is both personal and political despair. This metahistorical approach to Kerschbaumer's literary imagination concludes with an emphasis on the intersection of her art and politics, as it shines a light from the French writer, Helene Cixous, onto the material.