The main interest of this thesis lies in the analysis of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), as it is represented in movies. The times before and after the Cold War period in Germany have often been discussed in both literature as well as movies. However, most academic essays which focus on how this time is remembered by current societies are analyzing literature rather than movies. Most analyses of film neglect the exploration of cultural memory, even though there are a variety of different film genres that deal with this topic. This paper will fill this gap in film research by showing that movies set in the GDR can help to convey a cultural memory just as much as literature. The diversity of movies set in the GDR is great: many movies tell sad and serious stories about families under government surveillance, or of people who were killed by trying to escape to West-Germany. This thesis however, focuses on films with humorous aspects. Although most film reviewers criticise comedies about the GDR as being purely nostalgic, this thesis shows that the humour used in specific movies is able to collect a memory and therefore, can be seen as a vehicle of cultural memory. The movies Sonnenallee directed by Leander Haußmann and Good Bye Lenin! directed by Wolfgang Becker are analyzed in this paper because they are comparable insofar that they both show the GDR from a youthful point of view from different time periods. Sonnenallee takes place in the 70ies and therefore, 20 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Good Bye Lenin?, in contrast, covers both the time before and after the fall of the wall. Another reason for selecting these movies is the fact that they are criticized for only portraying the clichés and stereotypes of East-German-figures, which should be reproved. The first part of the thesis explains the theory and main arguments of Aleida and Jan Assmann’s concept of cultural memory. In order to reconstruct their train of thought, it is necessary to summarize the work of their predecessors Maurice Halbwachs, Aby Warburg, and Pierre Nora. The second part moves on to discuss the term ‘Erinnerungs-film’, coined by Astrid Erll, whose main research interest lies in understanding the dif-ferent kinds of memories occurring in movies. The following chapter focuses on the use of comedy in the selected films, as it is important to understand how humorous scenes are created in those movies. The main part of the thesis is the analysis of Sonnenallee and Good Bye Lenin! found in chapter five. Two different types of approaches are chosen: first, a comparison between Haußmann’s movie Sonnenallee and Thomas Brussig’s book Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, and then a picture-sound-analysis of selected scenes from Becker’s movie Good bye Lenin!. The comparison shows the advantages that the movie has over the book in terms of displaying humour as a means to convey cultural memory. The inter-pretation part of the thesis shows how funny scenes can be critically interpreted and found to be useful in creating cultural memory rather than putting them down as purely nostalgic.

We often encounter mental illness in our daily lives. People who are diagnosed with a mental disorder are marked as different and thereby stigmatized and confined to spacial isolation. This thesis analyzes the function of mental illness by examining the protagonist of Irena Vrkljan's Buch über Dora. I argue that in Buch über Dora stigmatization and isolation of otherness becomes visible in how the book's protagonist is excluded from certain spaces. My main question is which role is ascribed to Dora by society. Othering – and therefore excluding – mentally ill persons such as Dora is necessary to establish the order of society. Another important issue are the similarities between Dora and other female characters in the novel.The symptoms of the pressure to succumb to societal norms are shared by the first person narrator, among others. It is my aim to show that and how all woman can easily be pushed into Dora's role. This leads to the central question or my thesis: Are we not all a bit like Dora? To date, Irena Vrkljan's works have been largely neglected by the germanic academic community. Germanistik has not yet found a way to accommodate her bilingual and bicultural oeuvre. The first part of my thesis addresses this issue. The second part develops a constructivist theoretical framework for my analysis of space. First, I draw on the work of Michel Foucault "Of Other Spaces", "Discipline And Punish", and "Madness And Cilvilization", in which he describes space as a construct that reproduces societal norms. Second, Sigmund Freud's "Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" helps to grasp how mental illness is pathologized. While Foucault focuses on the function of norms, Freud analyses the consequences of aberrant behaviour for women. The third part focuses on the fragmentary structure of the novel and continues with an detailed analysis of heterotopias such as the cemetery, Dora's room, the market and the untended park. By identifying with Dora, Buch über Dora questions the norms and shows her otherness as something that we all share. She may be stigmatized as mentally ill but she is by no means fundamentally different to other women.

The main interest of this thesis lies in the analysis of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), as it is represented in movies. The times before and after the Cold War period in Germany have often been discussed in both literature as well as movies. However, most academic essays which focus on how this time is remembered by current societies are analyzing literature rather than movies. Most analyses of film neglect the exploration of cultural memory, even though there are a variety of different film genres that deal with this topic. This paper will fill this gap in film research by showing that movies set in the GDR can help to convey a cultural memory just as much as literature. The diversity of movies set in the GDR is great: many movies tell sad and serious stories about families under government surveillance, or of people who were killed by trying to escape to West-Germany. This thesis however, focuses on films with humorous aspects. Although most film reviewers criticise comedies about the GDR as being purely nostalgic, this thesis shows that the humour used in specific movies is able to collect a memory and therefore, can be seen as a vehicle of cultural memory. The movies Sonnenallee directed by Leander Haußmann and Good Bye Lenin! directed by Wolfgang Becker are analyzed in this paper because they are comparable insofar that they both show the GDR from a youthful point of view from different time periods. Sonnenallee takes place in the 70ies and therefore, 20 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Good Bye Lenin?, in contrast, covers both the time before and after the fall of the wall. Another reason for selecting these movies is the fact that they are criticized for only portraying the clichés and stereotypes of East-German-figures, which should be reproved. The first part of the thesis explains the theory and main arguments of Aleida and Jan Assmann’s concept of cultural memory. In order to reconstruct their train of thought, it is necessary to summarize the work of their predecessors Maurice Halbwachs, Aby Warburg, and Pierre Nora. The second part moves on to discuss the term ‘Erinnerungs-film’, coined by Astrid Erll, whose main research interest lies in understanding the dif-ferent kinds of memories occurring in movies. The following chapter focuses on the use of comedy in the selected films, as it is important to understand how humorous scenes are created in those movies. The main part of the thesis is the analysis of Sonnenallee and Good Bye Lenin! found in chapter five. Two different types of approaches are chosen: first, a comparison between Haußmann’s movie Sonnenallee and Thomas Brussig’s book Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, and then a picture-sound-analysis of selected scenes from Becker’s movie Good bye Lenin!. The comparison shows the advantages that the movie has over the book in terms of displaying humour as a means to convey cultural memory. The inter-pretation part of the thesis shows how funny scenes can be critically interpreted and found to be useful in creating cultural memory rather than putting them down as purely nostalgic.

We often encounter mental illness in our daily lives. People who are diagnosed with a mental disorder are marked as different and thereby stigmatized and confined to spacial isolation. This thesis analyzes the function of mental illness by examining the protagonist of Irena Vrkljan's Buch über Dora. I argue that in Buch über Dora stigmatization and isolation of otherness becomes visible in how the book's protagonist is excluded from certain spaces. My main question is which role is ascribed to Dora by society. Othering – and therefore excluding – mentally ill persons such as Dora is necessary to establish the order of society. Another important issue are the similarities between Dora and other female characters in the novel.The symptoms of the pressure to succumb to societal norms are shared by the first person narrator, among others. It is my aim to show that and how all woman can easily be pushed into Dora's role. This leads to the central question or my thesis: Are we not all a bit like Dora? To date, Irena Vrkljan's works have been largely neglected by the germanic academic community. Germanistik has not yet found a way to accommodate her bilingual and bicultural oeuvre. The first part of my thesis addresses this issue. The second part develops a constructivist theoretical framework for my analysis of space. First, I draw on the work of Michel Foucault "Of Other Spaces", "Discipline And Punish", and "Madness And Cilvilization", in which he describes space as a construct that reproduces societal norms. Second, Sigmund Freud's "Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" helps to grasp how mental illness is pathologized. While Foucault focuses on the function of norms, Freud analyses the consequences of aberrant behaviour for women. The third part focuses on the fragmentary structure of the novel and continues with an detailed analysis of heterotopias such as the cemetery, Dora's room, the market and the untended park. By identifying with Dora, Buch über Dora questions the norms and shows her otherness as something that we all share. She may be stigmatized as mentally ill but she is by no means fundamentally different to other women.

In this sociolinguistic study, qualitative interviews were used in examining discursive identity construction among Russian Germans. The interview group was composed of Russian German university students attending different universities in Germany. Based on the sociocultural perspective on language and identity, content analysis, turn-internal pragmatic and semantic as well as interactional approaches are used in the thesis. This thesis covers two major questions: What attitudes toward food Russian Germans construct during conversational interaction and what are the major linguistic resources and discursive strategies that these participants use to construct their cultural identities and how the attitudes towards the linguistic and social practices reflect German Russian identity and a particular Russian German space in German cities. The special situation of Russian Germans, that being the initial alienation in Russia due to their ethnic origin, followed by the attitude of local Germans towards Russian Germans after they relocated back to Germany, led to the situation where many of them feel to be in the position of ‘in-between’ (Kaiser 2006: 34). Due to the complexity of this special cultural position of Russian Germans, observations of how individuals negotiate Russian and German cultural spaces and construct their own space in everyday life provide insight to the research of cultural identity. At the same time, the creation of the Russian-German space by means of positioning also reveals the constructed identity of Russian Germans, which they create in discourse. The focus of the thesis lies on one particular practice, namely eating habits as a cultural practice. The analysis of food attitudes with the help of linguistic methods will contribute to the culture identity and the construction of a particular cultural space of Russian Germans. The interviews show how the attitudes towards food preferences and cooking habits serve as a basis for identity construction. By positioning themselves with the help of their attitudes towards eating habits, the participants create certain cultural spaces in German cities. Several domains of life such as private and public spheres, where the participants positioned themselves slightly differently from one another by drawing on different indexical meanings are covered in the interview. The work begins with the history of the Russian German migratory and studies made in relation to Russian Germans and their identity. It is followed by theoretical and methodological approaches. Content analysis, turn-internal pragmatic and semantic as well as interactional approaches are used in the thesis. The main body is devoted to the analysis of the qualitative interview data with the help of the theory and methodology described in the preceding section. In the end of the thesis the summary of the findings and the suggestions for the further research are presented.

In this sociolinguistic study, qualitative interviews were used in examining discursive identity construction among Russian Germans. The interview group was composed of Russian German university students attending different universities in Germany. Based on the sociocultural perspective on language and identity, content analysis, turn-internal pragmatic and semantic as well as interactional approaches are used in the thesis. This thesis covers two major questions: What attitudes toward food Russian Germans construct during conversational interaction and what are the major linguistic resources and discursive strategies that these participants use to construct their cultural identities and how the attitudes towards the linguistic and social practices reflect German Russian identity and a particular Russian German space in German cities. The special situation of Russian Germans, that being the initial alienation in Russia due to their ethnic origin, followed by the attitude of local Germans towards Russian Germans after they relocated back to Germany, led to the situation where many of them feel to be in the position of ‘in-between’ (Kaiser 2006: 34). Due to the complexity of this special cultural position of Russian Germans, observations of how individuals negotiate Russian and German cultural spaces and construct their own space in everyday life provide insight to the research of cultural identity. At the same time, the creation of the Russian-German space by means of positioning also reveals the constructed identity of Russian Germans, which they create in discourse. The focus of the thesis lies on one particular practice, namely eating habits as a cultural practice. The analysis of food attitudes with the help of linguistic methods will contribute to the culture identity and the construction of a particular cultural space of Russian Germans. The interviews show how the attitudes towards food preferences and cooking habits serve as a basis for identity construction. By positioning themselves with the help of their attitudes towards eating habits, the participants create certain cultural spaces in German cities. Several domains of life such as private and public spheres, where the participants positioned themselves slightly differently from one another by drawing on different indexical meanings are covered in the interview. The work begins with the history of the Russian German migratory and studies made in relation to Russian Germans and their identity. It is followed by theoretical and methodological approaches. Content analysis, turn-internal pragmatic and semantic as well as interactional approaches are used in the thesis. The main body is devoted to the analysis of the qualitative interview data with the help of the theory and methodology described in the preceding section. In the end of the thesis the summary of the findings and the suggestions for the further research are presented.

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