This dissertation looks at the spatial strategies which people enact in their daily lives and which, in turn, become part of the sociocultural and historical context of their existence. It examines this nexus, which conjoins human behavior with the physical world, in the context of an urban built environment located in Europe during a period of intense social and political change early in the twentieth century. Specifically, the dissertation focuses on life in one part of Berlin—Moabit—during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), drawing on historical data and life histories I gathered from people who lived there during that period. The chapters which make up the first part of this study explore historical documents and studies to establish that Moabit was home to a heterogenous urban population and to sketch out the social profile of this population. The assertion that Moabit was socially heterogeneous is in direct opposition to popular and scholarly stereotypes of the area as a working-class district. The contradiction between this stereotype and how people talk about Moabit in their life stories gives rise to questions about how places gain reputations and how we think and talk about places. The second part of the dissertation is ethnographic and plumbs personal narratives to show how different place-related practices contributed to an urban heterogeneity that was sociohistorically specific to the Weimar period. It opens with a look at what we can learn from the different ways in which people talk about the place named Moabit in their life histories. Ensuing chapters reveal that people's construction and practice of place were intimately involved with their sense of social identity, both integral components of and contributors to a system of social relations which set the working and middle classes in opposition. Further, spatial strategies varied within both these groups as well, most clearly along gender and political fines and in ways indicative of attitudes towards social change and modernity. Finally, the life histories allow us to trace how such practices of differentiating urban place developed through the socialization of children and youth. In conclusion, this work returns to an examination of the importance of place as a cultural construct in Weimar Berlin, by looking at the value placed on being sedentary. I argue that the ideal of sedentarism was a cultural response to the contemporary economic and social stresses experienced by Berliners, but was rooted in politically-loaded practices of the modern era in Europe as well. During the Weimar Republic this cultural construct provided a vehicle for place-making practices which concurrently addressed people's material and social needs.

The following examination of Cordelia Edvardson's Burned Child Seeks the Fire: A Memoir, Ruth Klüger's Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, and Elizabeth Trahan's Walking with Ghosts: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Vienna explores how three German-speaking, Jewish women remember their childhoods by creating a new lens through which the Holocaust can be viewed. The authors compel their readers to accompany them on their journeys into the past and to witness particular events by using language to zoom in and focus on childhood experiences—like a camera bringing an image closer through a telephoto lens. Their narratives remain translucent in that the reader is always aware of the authors' contemporary, critical perspective. Edvardson's, Klüger's, and Trahan's writings are similar in how they transmit memory; they break from the traditional, nineteenth-century form of autobiography by constantly interrupting the chronological framework of their narratives to oscillate between past and present as memories occur to them. This process of interweaving memory into narrative challenges readers to re-view in a new way the making of testimony about events with which they (the readers) may already be familiar. By using James Young's Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation as a theoretical foundation, I approach these narratives as a viewer with the intention of documenting the transmission of memory rather than merely examining the events that the authors recalled. These texts offer us access to an extraordinary perspective in Holocaust literature—an uninhibited view of daily life through the eyes of three young girls who came of age during the National Socialist era and who were persecuted for being Jewish.

This dissertation, the first book-length investigation of the works of Julia Franck, investigates representations of the mother-daughter relationship in Franck’s five major texts: Der neue Koch (1997), Liebediener (1999), Bauchlandung: Geschichten zum Anfassen (2000), Lagerfeuer (2003), and Die Mittagsfrau (2007). Specifically, it examines the roles of “daughter” and “mother” as social constructs, which are open to resignification and reinvestigation. In the introduction, I outline the trajectory of Franck’s career, focusing particularly on her relationship with feminist scholarship and her persona as a representative of feminism in the German media. In chapter 1, I begin with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and look for examples of performative identity in Franck’s works of fiction. I further destabilize identity in chapter 2 by demonstrating how identity is contingent on space, drawing on Marc Augé’s theory of “places” and “non-places.” In chapter 3, I demonstrate how psychoanalysis, as the primary theoretical lens through which the mother-daughter relationship has been viewed, conflicts with destabilized gender binaries, as laid out in chapter 1. Consequently, I argue, the psychoanalytic models of attachment and identity are not relevant to an investigation of the mothers and daughters in Franck’s works. I explain my theory of “maternal drag” in chapter 4. I argue that the mother figures in Franck’s novels exhibit a performative maternal identity, specifically one that so conflicts with expectations of the maternal that it calls into question those very expectations. Finally, in the conclusion, I consider the wider implications of my theory, particularly in light of the media discussions in Germany surrounding feminism, motherhood, and the decline in birth-rate.

This dissertation is a book-length investigation of race representation in three different East German feature film genres produced by the Deutsche Film Aktiensgesellschaft (DEFA): the western (Indianerfilm), the musical, and the science-fiction film. The primary films examined include Osceola (1971), Meine Frau macht Musik (1958), Revue um Mitternacht (1962) and Der schweigende Stern (1960). I specifically articulate how each genre structures a temporality around race politics that tells us more about unique East German conceptions of whiteness, non-whites' role in society and "progress" than it tells us about the objectives of international and interracial solidarity espoused by the state. In the introduction, I discuss the relevant foundations of this study, including the various discourses one must mobilize to explain East German racism and to frame DEFA cinema from a contemporary perspective. In Chapter I, I posit some theories of race and genre that show their historical linkages with regard to film. Chapter II is a historical overview of interactions between East Germany, DEFA cinema and the Global South. Chapter III focuses on the way the western film Osceola views 1830s American racism within a 1970s Marxist-Leninist paradigm that elides opportunities for its Cuban co-production partner or the anti-racist history of the Seminoles to speak. Chapter IV looks at the phenomenon of the musical in East Germany in terms of its production of East German whiteness, as theorized by film theorist Richard Dyer. Chapter V describes science-fiction film Der schweigende Stern in terms of its accomplishment as the first multiracial space crew seen on television or film and the problematic race hierarchies that nevertheless underpin the final product. The conclusion deals with the very notion of "progress," especially with regard to racial equality, and looks at recent German cinema as a site where the discussion initiated by this dissertation might continue.

Since antiquity western texts have employed representations of consumption to articulate questions of desire and power. Images of eating and drinking serve not only to structure texts but also to question and subvert institutional practices, traditional dichotomies of value, and discourse itself. The primacy of desire is illustrated by a conflation with power that results in a textuality marked by excess. Its two poles are represented by cannibalism and a total refusal to eat; both are forms of absolute desire. Texts dealing with consumption are varied. Theoretical discourse such as Rumohr's Geist der Kochkunst or Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du gout disrupts traditional notions of genre by equating consumption with discourse. Polysemy and a state of constant metamorphosis are common characteristics of literary texts that concentrate on consumption. Although no unbroken development can be affirmed, earlier works such as Petronius's Satyricon or the Bible emphasize a transcendental aim, while modern ones such as Ror Wolf's Fortsetzung des Berichts stress indeterminacy and the overwhelming presence of death.

The trickster is a well-known and thoroughly studied mythological figure. Therefore, this thesis will not seek to further define the trickster figure, but rather take the trickster figure of Norse mythology, Loki, and uncover his unique qualities which can then be translated into abstract features used in what I call, the "Loki model." The Loki model provides a means of interpretation through which one can analyze a text or other work. In the case of this thesis, I will analyze three German texts and one American film to demonstrate the Loki model. The abstractions of the Loki model include: chaos, abstemiousness, cunning, and destruction. These qualities are ways of abolishing an order or breaking the status quo to undermine systems and create new worlds. The structures that are reshaped through chaos and language destruction are those of human nature and society. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2016. / April 8, 2016. / Loki, Model, Semantics, The Dark Knight, Trickster, Wagner / Includes bibliographical references. / Alina Dana Weber, Professor Directing Thesis; Birgit Maier-Katkin, Committee Member; Christian Weber, Committee Member.

Like all of Shakespeare's works, The Tempest, Shakespeare's last play, has been translated into German and Japanese on numerous occasions. This thesis concerns itself with ten landmark translations of The Tempest, exploring them from a theoretical and historical point of view. The translations surveyed are those by Christoph Martin Wieland (1762), August Wilhelm Schlegel (1798), Heinrich Voß (1818), Richard Flatter (1952), Hans Rothe (1963), Rudolf Schaller (1971), Erich Fried (1984), Tsubouchi Shôyô (1915), Toyoda Minoru (1950), and Fukuda Tsuneari (1975). In The Tempest, Shakespeare's most consistently fantastic play, the Other is represented in magical terms. The results of this thesis suggest that in the translations, which are likewise a representation of the Other, the magical aspects become heightened. My analysis draws on a multitude of recent reconceptualizations of and approaches to translation. These include André Lefevere's description of translation as rewriting, Maria Tymoczko's concept of translation as a metonymic process, Lawrence Venuti's insistence on a translation's heterogeneity, Theo Herman's focus on translation as manipulation and as institution, Itamar Even-Zohar's idea of translation as systemic innovation, and Gideon Toury's emphasis on translators' norms. Chapter one gives the methodological groundings of this study. In order to explain what accounts for the comet's tail of translations that Shakespeare's writings have occasioned in German and Japanese, an outline of the modern history of these two vibrant translation cultures is given in chapter two. Chapter three is likewise an historical account, describing the major trends in Shakespeare reception in these two cultures. Chapter four presents the story of The Tempest and aspects of its critical and staging history. Chapter five investigates the literary language of The Tempest, arguing that Shakespeare's word magic is produced by what is always already a “translated” language. Chapter six delineates the ten translators' positions and strategies, their approaches to Shakespeare, and, where applicable, their specific appraisal of The Tempest. This chapter examines, moreover, how the translational practices of the various translators contribute to the construction of a narrative of national identity in the receptor cultures. In chapters seven and eight, five passages from The Tempest and their respective translations are examined, again with an emphasis on the supernatural and fantastic aspects. In the last chapter, the results are summarized and the rewriting of Shakespearean texts is placed in a global context.

This dissertation is concerned with the depiction of the historic events of July 20, 1944, their representation and reception in West German Theater, and analyzes the plays of Karl Michel's Stauffenberg (1947), Walter Erich Schäfer's Die Verschwörung (1949), Walter Löwen's Stauffenberg. Tragödie (1949-1952), Peter Lotar's Das Bild des Menschen. Eine Geschichte unserer Zeit (1952), Wolfgang Graetz' Die Verschwörer (1965), Hans Hellmut Kirst's Aufstand der Offiziere (1966), and Günther Weisenborn's Walküre -44 (1966). The consolidation of the Third Reich and the progressive seduction of millions consequently led to the resistance of a few. The more totalitarian a state is, the larger the differences between the government and opposition, and the more determined the resistance against it. The resisters turned their value systems inside out. They deviated from everything they had previously stood for as members of the Officers' Corps and the national-conservative elite. This is unparalleled, not only in Germany, but in military history as well, and therefore deserves reverence. A few Germans took on personal responsibility for events of the time; they accepted their fate as leaders knowing that they might forsake their own lives, and those of their families. In that respect, the unsuccessful assassination attempt and the failed coup are secondary to the catalytic effect that these events had on eventual post-war German Society: the democratic state can therefore not reflect enough upon these men and women, their motivation, and contribution to the andere Deutschland. The failed coup of July 20, 1944 is the most prominent example of German resistance against the NS-Regime and at the same time a symbol for the failure of the entire German resistance. The failure however may be seen as positive, since it avoided a revival of the devastating stab-in-the-back myth, and prevented Hitler from becoming a martyr. This dissertation confronts different levels of history and methods of dealing, arranging, and manipulating a historic event in literary representations, and situates the plays in the context of the popular historic drama. The connecting factor between the classic historical drama and the documentary July-drama is the historic topic. In both, the author plays with some aspect of world history. The seven plays, whose reception indicate societal developments in early post war Germany, are discussed in a predominately socio-political and historical context as a contribution to the cultural memory of the German resistance to Hitler. The complex moral responsibility, the theological question of legalizing the murder of a tyrant, the uneasy juxtaposition of unconditional obedience and critical thinking that lead some to disobedience, others to collaboration, are topics in world history that are of interest to any generation and culture. The answers to these problems and the background of the particular playwright, affect the depiction of the conspirators, who in extremes may be seen as heroes or traitors.

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