3 results
3 - Nationalism and Colonialism: The Early German Reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign
- Edited by Mary Boyle, University of Oxford
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- Book:
- International Medievalisms
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 09 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 14 February 2023, pp 47-58
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Summary
On 31 March 1814, when Emperor Alexander I entered Paris side by side with King Frederick William III, Russia had reached the pinnacle of an un¬precedented rise within European great power politics. Following its first successful foray into European military conflict during the Seven Years War (1756–1763), the tsardom had consistently increased its political and military clout to eventually secure a seat among the power brokers that would shape the continent's future at the Congress of Vienna (1815). As the historian David Saunders argues, at this time ‘the Russians’ authority was so great that they could have imposed their blueprint for the post-war world on their allies’. This led to an equally unprecedent¬ed demand for knowledge about an empire that, in the European imagination, still emanated some of the mystique that had so aptly lent itself to Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia (1785). As a result, an emerging market for Russian literature in translation served the interests of a read¬ing public keen on identifying the characteristics of this nation on the rise. It is in this spirit that the first German history of Russian literature offered itself as a unique opportunity ‘uns mit dem Ausdrucke des innern Lebens eines Volkes bekannt zu machen, das durch seine politische Bedeutung die Aufmerksamkeit Europas auf sich zieht’ [to enlighten us as to the expressions of the internal life of a people whose political significance has caught European attention]. Literature, the author Hein¬rich König believed, would ultimately disclose the benign essence of a nation on which Germans had thus far turned their backs.
Thanks to the enthusiasm for medieval literature that is characteristic of the Romantic period, the discovery of a Russian medieval epic, The Tale of Igor's Cam¬paign, caused a great stir in educated circles. The first modern edition was published in 1800, and within a year, the eminent German historian August Ludwig Schlözer had already reviewed this ‘ehrwürdige Russische Antiquität’ [venerable Russian antiquity] for the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, at the time one of the leading academic journals in the German-speaking world.
15 - Fatih Akin’s Head On: Challenging Mythologies ofGerman Social Work in Gegen die Wand (2004)
- Edited by Elisabeth Krimmer, University of California, Davis, Patricia Anne Simpson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
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- Book:
- German #MeToo
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 October 2022
- Print publication:
- 19 July 2022, pp 346-361
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FATIH AKIN's FILM Gegen dieWand (2004, Against the Wall; Head On, 2004) follows theexistential crisis and eventual stabilization of twosecond-generation Turkish Germans living in Hamburg.The female protagonist, Sibel Guner (Sibel Kekilli),who is around twenty years old when the film begins,drives the action. Having survived an attemptedsuicide to escape the confines of her patriarchalfamily, she proposes a marriage of convenience withCahit Tomruk (Birol Unel), who is almost twentyyears older and also suicidal. After a period inwhich Sibel lives out her sexual fantasies with aseries of lovers, she gradually develops a deepaffection for Cahit. When a fatal, jealousy-inducedaltercation leaves him in prison, Sibel relocates toIstanbul, where she enters the world of substanceabuse. The ensuing downward spiral ends in a gloomybar where, during an alcohol- and drug-inducedblackout, she is raped by her dealer. The sequenceis not pornographic, but the camera does not sparethe audience. We see Sibel from the side, from aboutfour or five meters away, lying prostrate on thefloor. Her assailant clumsily removes her trousersand rearranges her torso to enable his violentassault. The camera remains mercilessly staticthroughout the action; only a few cuts reduce ourexposure to this agony. When he is done, theattacker coldly sends his victim into the Istanbulnight, where her tragedy continues. On a darkstreet, she passes a group of men who startcatcalling her. Sibel retaliates by insulting theirmanhood and physically assaulting the ringleader.Three times the men attack her, egged on by Sibel'sunabating invectives, until one of them pulls aknife and stabs her. Taken aback by his own actions,the man retreats and calls out, “Is that what youwanted? Is it?,” before the group flees the scene,apparently leaving its victim for dead. The sequenceconcludes with Sibel being discovered by theheadlights of a cab. The film resumes after fiveyears, when she reemerges on the screen as amiddleclass mother in a committed relationship.
Martin Luther in Nineteenth-Century Music, Literature, and Politics
- Edited by Siobhán Donovan, Maria Euchner
- General editor Frauke Matthes
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- Book:
- Edinburgh German Yearbook 13
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 January 2022, pp 19-34
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FOUR MONTHS AFTER the Proclamation of the German Empire, in the presence of the newly crowned emperor, Richard Wagner took to the stage at the court opera in Berlin to conduct the Kaisermarsch (WWV 104) that he had composed to glorify the accession of Wilhelm I to the throne. “Ausgerechnet Richard Wagner,” the musicologist Sabine Giesbrecht notes, “der in dem ‘Kartätschenprinzen’ von 1848 nicht gerade das Ideal eines Monarchen sah, verfaßt in einer sich überschlagenden Sprache einen Kaisermarsch mit angefügtem Volksgesang, in den alle einstimmen sollen: ‘Heil! Heil dem Kaiser! König Wilhelm!’” (Richard Wagner of all people, who did not exactly consider the “gunhappy prince” of 1848 an ideal monarch, this Richard Wagner pens an effusive imperial march with its final popular chorus, expecting all to join in: “Hail! Hail the Emperor! King Wilhelm!”; example 1). It seems a far cry indeed from the Wagner of 1849 who, from the bell tower of the Kreuzkirche, had provided the insurgents of the May uprising in Dresden with intelligence on the movement of government troops. On the surface, it seems that two decades later the composer had abandoned the ideals of the March Revolutions—the struggle for political participation and national unification—in exchange for imperial pipe dreams and royal favor.
The music of the Kaisermarsch, however, reveals Richard Wagner's ongoing commitment to the political agenda of the influential German middle classes. The integration of a male-voice choir is a case in point, as men's singing associations had become a bulwark of the national-liberal movement over the course of the nineteenth century. The imitation of sacred musical traditions in the Kaisermarsch is equally telling: this practice had also evolved into a popular expression of nationalist sentiment. Above all, however, it is the prominent citation of the Lutheran chorale “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (A Mighty Fortress is Our God; example 2) that aligned the Kaisermarsch with the political goals of the March Revolutions.
The reference to Luther is certainly a nod to the Protestant tradition of the House of Hohenzollern, but this connection had lost much of its appeal during the Enlightenment. It was the emerging national-liberal movement, rather than the Prussian monarchy, that resurrected and laid claim to the Lutheran heritage in this era of the burgeoning middle classes.
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