The article assesses the impact of digital technologies on our understanding of film history. While the “New Film History” has revitalized the study of the cinema’s “origins,” it has not yet proven itself equally successful in analyzing the subsequent turn-of-the-century multi-media conjuncture. Faced with this challenge, the essay makes a case for a new historiographical model, “Media Archaeology,” in order to overcome the opposition between “old” and “new” media, destabilized in today’s media practice. The field of audio-visual experience needs to be re-mapped, clarifying what is meant by embodiment, interface, narrative, diegesis, and providing new impulses also for the study of non-entertainment uses of the audio-visual dispositif.

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The New Film History as Media Archaeology

This dissertation examines the frequent, yet overlooked, occurrence of depictions of financial activity and speculation in the cinema of the Weimar Republic. The few existing treatments of economic themes in Weimar Cinema have focused on the signature crisis events of the period: the hyperinflation of 1921-23 and the onset of the Weltwirtschaftskrise in 1929. I reveal a broader engagement with financial themes and speculative activity, evidenced in canonical as well as little known films of the time. This project contributes to the historical understanding of the everyday fabric of Weimar culture, and argues that the importance of the emergence of a post-WWI German homo-economicus is central to our understanding of this period. The Weimar Republic, and the city of Berlin itself, function as a locus classicus in discourses on European modernity, and the scholarship on the key sites of modernity is well established. Within this discourse however, surprisingly little attention has been paid to spaces of finance such as the Borse (stock exchange). This project aims to evaluate how these spaces were represented to a rapidly expanding, film-going demographic that appeared after WWI: the bank clerks, tellers, insurance workers and brokers, amongst the “white collar workers” identified by Siegfried Kracauer. I argue that popular filmic depictions of financial activity gave form to the otherwise invisible forces of financial exchange. I draw on the work of German speaking economists of the late 19th century, who were the first to articulate the contours of an image of the “world economy.” I claim that the activity of the market was itself a labour of representation that, in the words of Friedrich Engels, reproduced an image of the world as “an inverted reflection.” For non-specialist viewers of these films, fictional accounts of financial activity provided an image of the interconnected global economy, and distilled its complexity into key tropes and stereotypes that also appeared in the Weimar illustrated press. Thus, this project aims to establish the importance of fictional representations to the creation of the worldview of the modern market through the discussion of key films from the period.

An Inverted Reflection: Representations of Finance and Speculation in Weimar Cinema

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Cinema non facit saltus: Early German film and the cinematic psyche

German unification caused a seismic shock within Berlin and this has been reflected in the studies on the city which have been released over the last two decades. In particular, Berlin has become synonymous with chaotic urban renewal, with academic discourse casting the city as a location in transition. Yet, as society moves on from the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the Wall, contemporary Berlin bears little resemblance to this image of a work-in-progress city. Therefore, my aim in this thesis is to transcend recent academic debates and explore the ‘new’ city which has begun to emerge. To achieve this, I investigate the relationship which exists between Berlin and cinema. Indeed, throughout my analysis I offer an original discussion of Berlin’s contemporary cinematic image by focussing on the manner in which branding is being used to promote the city’s transformed urban space and societal structures. I start by demonstrating how the activities and marketing efforts of the city’s film professionals avoid the stereotypes of the past to promote a wholly-positive image of Berlin as a hedonistic and well-equipped global media city. This view then informs my subsequent analysis of contemporary Berlin-set films. Significantly, although these films also show Berlin to be a pleasure-seeking hub for young creatives, they project a more critical vision of the city. Above all, these films highlight the problematic dark-side which many of the city’s inhabitants have discovered to be part of Berlin’s new found global media city status. As a result, my in-depth discussion of the city’s cinematic brand demonstrates that, whilst Berlin may no longer be cast as a location in flux on screen, the city’s transformation into a creative hotspot for international pleasure-seekers has created a complex and challenging reality for many of Berlin’s inhabitants.

Beyond the Baustelle : redefining Berlin's contemporary cinematic brand as that of a global media city

This dissertation entitled, «Rewriting and dialogue with tradition in the works of Irmtraud Morgner : from Schahrazade to Mnèmosunè», tries to understand how and why, in her works, East German writer Irmtraud Morgner turns to strategies of rewriting as a mean of establishing a dialogue with tradition. The analysis examines various cases of rewriting found in Hochzeit in Konstantinopel, Gauklerlegende, Leben und Abenteuer and Amanda, the narrative shifts thus introduced and the way in which narratives interlock with one another. It makes it possible to identify a narrative structure which organizes the work of rewriting into three distinct moments : first, that of a storyteller using the idiom of romanticism, second, that of a narrator whose critical discourse represents the Enlightenment heritage, and third, that of an author who intervenes to underline the limits of critical thought imposed by the narrator. This structure of rewriting in three stages is shown to organize the work of narrative experimentation in all the texts under study. It applies in each case to a different narrative material inherited from various traditions : the fairy tale, minstrel stories, the courtly novel, as well as modern narratives such as History, Science and Memory. The third rewriting, which Morgner assigns to the figure of the author is the most significant since it characterizes the nature of this « Tat », of this «work» of rewriting which Morgner is attempting to define for herself and her women narrators as that, which would open the possibility of maintaining a living relationship with History, Memory and Tradition. By reframing the question of the nature of the relation to tradition within the larger context of an interrogation on the question of Representation, Morgner manages to rethink the question of the relation to tradition in terms other than those established by the Erbedebatte or by Marxist and feminist theories of re-appropriation of tradition. Thus her fictional works contribute to the reflection on contemporary literature, on the evolution of the novel and on the heritage of the tradition of storytelling in modernity. Her work shares a questioning about contemporary literature which go far beyond the narrower frame through which East German literary production has usually been defined. This suggests the need for a reevaluation of Morgner’s works within German literature.

Réécriture et dialogue avec la tradition dans l’œuvre de Irmtraud Morgner : de Schahrazade à Mnèmosunè

Why has Emine Sevgi Ozdamar's novel, Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei / hat zwei Tiiren / aus einer kam ich rein aus der anderen ging ich raus, continued to intrigue so many academics and the broader reading public since its publication in 1992?1 Out of the considerable body of literary writing in German by migrant women, Karawanserei has indeed emerged as outstanding in many respects. This novel, written in German by a Turkishborn woman who began learning the language only as a young adult, has been approached from myriad perspectives ranging from those who laud it as a colorful, oral-style narrative bringing new imagery into German-language literature to those who use it as an example of migrant, feminist, hybrid and/or minor literature. However, Karawanserei's special literary quality with regard to the working together of form and content has not previously been submitted to systematic examination. Aesthetic analysis in a cultural context offers fresh measures of, and insights into, Karawanserei's caliber and complexity, allowing the text to be read with different critical criteria, and consequently, in a new light. The artistic merit of the novel reflects positively not only on migrant literature but also on contemporary literature generally. My essay explores both the specific issues of Ozdamar's aesthetic accomplishments in Karawanserei and the broader issue of the role of literary analysis in German Studies. What constitutes Ozdamar's artistic achievement in Karawanserei? A theoretical key to the idea that conceptually and aesthetically unifies the novel is provided by Theodor Adorno's imperative that the critic must ask the right questions about the aesthetic structure of a work of art in order to gain access to its truth content (Wahrheitsgehalt).2 Also pertinent to my interpretation is Adorno's reminder that an artwork "needs to be deciphered, and that deciphering is the task of criticism" (Hohendahl 238). To date, the question of whether or not the novel has a conceptual center, a truth content, has not been posed. Yet, approaching Karawanserei through close reading and structural analysis reveals the pervasive thread of a truth content that unites Ozdamar's novel and transforms it into a literary work of art. Karawanserei's amalgamating force is the author's figuration of freedom (Freiheit). Ozdamar illuminates the idea of freedom with originality while imbuing it with multiple implications-social, economic, political, sexual-within a Turkish context. Because Karawanserei has remained aesthetically undeciphered, the significance of freedom has been overlooked. The word Freiheit itself is used only sparingly in Ozdamar's novel, but the ideal of freedom pervades the development of the narrator-protagonist and the portrayal of the family, community, and nation in which she grows up. Karawanserei's truth content of freedom functions pivotally both in the novel's structure and its content. My essay explains how the author's ideas about freedom locate and embody the truth content that is the foundation ofKarawanserei's aesthetic and conceptual harmony Giving literary form to freedom and its absence grounds the choice of memories that diegetically drive Karawanserei. The novel conveys not sentimentalized reminiscences, but rather recollections molded by the author's deeper thematic structuring principle, her novel's truth content. Ozdamar's memories are filtered through time, maturity, and most importantly, through her underlying artistic concept. In Karawanserei she aestheticizes the quotidian. As a novelist, Ozdamar transforms her Turkish childhood and youth, realizing in her art the proposition that freedom can unlock "life's riddle" (a motif that will subsequently be treated in detail). What is unique about the concept of freedom portrayed in Karawanserei? The answer to this question further demonstrates what gives aesthetic form to Ozdamar's novel. By virtue of its artistic form, Karawanserei manifests itself as more than a tool (Werkzeug) in the service of content- and language-oriented analyses. …

Transnational Asthetik des turkischen Alltags: Emine Sevgi Ozdamar's Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei

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A Second Life. German Cinema's First Decades

Literatur von deutschschreibenden Autorinnen islamischer Herkunft

Kontroversen, alte und neue. Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Gottingen 1985@@@Forum 9: Frauensprache-Frauenliteratur?@@@Forum 10: Fur und Wider einer Psychoanalyse literarischer Werke

Sheila Johnson

Papers

Transnational Asthetik des turkischen Alltags: Emine Sevgi Ozdamar's Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei

A Second Life. German Cinema's First Decades

Literatur von deutschschreibenden Autorinnen islamischer Herkunft

Kontroversen, alte und neue. Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Gottingen 1985@@@Forum 9: Frauensprache-Frauenliteratur?@@@Forum 10: Fur und Wider einer Psychoanalyse literarischer Werke

Sinnsuche und Trauerarbeit. Funktionen von Schreiben in Irmtraud Morgners Werk