Re-examines German cinema's representation of the Germans as victims
during the Second World War and its aftermath.
The recent "discovery" of German wartime suffering has had a
particularly profound impact in German visual culture. Films from
Margarethe von Trotta's Rosenstrasse (2003) to Oliver Hirschbiegel's
Oscar-nominated Downfall (2004) and the two-part television mini-series
Dresden (2006) have shown how ordinary Germans suffered during and after
the war. Such films have been presented by critics as treating a topic
that had been taboo for German filmmakers. However, the representation
of wartime suffering has a long tradition on the German screen. For
decades, filmmakers have recontextualized images of Germans as victims
to engage shifting social and ideological discourses. By focusing on
this process, the present volume explores how the changing
representation of Germans as victims has shaped the ways in which both
of the postwar German states and the now-unified nation have attempted
to facethe trauma of the past and to construct a contemporary place for
themselves in the world.
Contributors: Seán Allan, Tim Bergfelder, Daniela Berghahn, Erica
Carter, David Clarke, John E. Davidson, Sabine Hake, JenniferKapczynski,
Manuel Köppen, Rachel Palfreyman, Brad Prager, Johannes von Moltke.
Paul Cooke is Professor of German Cultural Studies at the University of
Leeds and Marc Silberman is Professor of German at the University of
Wisconsin.
