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134 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
Who was the author of Fräulein Else and when was it published?
Arthur Schnitzler - 1924
Who was a correspondent of Schnitzler's?
Sigmund Freud. He claimed that Schnitzler knew intuitively what Freud had to discover through research.
What is notable about the publication date of Fräulein Else?
It was published after WWI, but the text fails to evoke a post-war setting.
What was Schnitzler's other profession and why is it important to the story of Fräulein Else?
He was a trained physician and therefore knowledgeable about the barbiturate (Veronal) Else takes at the end. Her dose is right between a lethal and non-lethal dose - Schnitzler deliberately leaves the ending open.
What religion did Schnitzler belong to?
Schnitzler was a Jew, but very few of his characters are clearly depicted as Jewish. (Dorsday and Else?)
What movie is Fräulein Else analogous to?
An Indecent Proposal
Which Freudian drive does Else embody?
Eros and Thanatos - death as a form of sexual release (Liebestod)
What is the Freudian meaning behind Else's dream at the end?
She is flying, which Freud interprets as a wish for sexual release.
Why is Rainer Maria Rilke such an important figure in modern poetry?
He provides a transition from traditional 19th century poetry to modernism.
Rilke is a modern poet but still includes traditional elements in his poetry. Name a few.
1. rhyme (although often mid-line)
2. traditional forms - sonnets, etc
3. classical allusions
Who was an almost exact contemporary of Rilke (1875-1926)?
Thomas Mann. Both were early bloomers in the literary world, and both were greatly influenced by the fin de siecle's atmosphere of adolescence.
When was the period of Modernism?
1890-1930
What did Modernism stand for?
It lacked a fundamental credo like Naturalism and as a term is almost only useful for its dates.

BUT arguably Modernism was concerned with rupture as opposed to continuity.
What warrants Modernism its own category in the first place?
Modernist authors had an explicit interest in "making it new," but this categorization is no longer effective.

Modernism can also be viewed as the last attempt to create a coherent picture of the world through master narratives.
What is sometimes viewed as a sub-movement of Modernism?
Expressionism
Where did the term Modernism come from?
the visual arts
What sort of poem is Rilke especially famous for? Name two examples.
Das Dinggedicht - he sees something special in an everyday object.

Das Karussell (1907)
Archaischer Torso Apollos (1908)
Why is the head of Apollo's torso unerhört?
It's missing and exists only as a marvel, but the statue speaks to us in the absence of a speaking apparatus. The absence of the head puts the reader in touch with something he lacks.
To which Greek mythological figure does the "Leier" in Rilke's IX. Sonett (1922) allude?
The lyre of Orpheus.

Orpheus was a musician who went to the underworld to rescue his beloved, Eurydice.
What world event contributed to Rilke's depression later in life? Why?
World War I

Rilke was aware that the war was changing his entire way of life, which had revolved around the world of the aristocracy.
What is Rilke's VI. Elegie usually called?
The Hero Elegy
What is surprising about the opening image in the hero elegy? Why does Rilke choose this image?
It starts with a fig tree - FEIGE..

It was believed that the fig tree skipped the blossom phase and went straight to the fruit, just as a hero does not require a developmental phase.
To what does "der Gott in den Schwan" in the hero elegy refer?
The Greek myth of Leda and the swan.

Zeus appeared to Leda - a hot chick - as a swan and impregnated her. As a result, it is sometimes said that she gave birth to eggs, which hatched into two sets of twins: Klytemnestra and Helen, Castor and Pollux.
What was strange about Rilke's childhood?
His parents had wanted a girl, so they named him René and dressed him like a girl until he was six.
What is even better than being a hero, according to Rilke?
Being a child reading about heroes.
What was Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) most famous for?
His opera libretti and a fictional Renaissance letter to Lord Francis Bacon (published in a newspaper in 1902) in which a fictional character complains that language has become meaningless.
What themes does Hofmannthal's poem "Die Beiden" explore?
the problem of communication

the paradox of individual perfection
Which of the turn-of-the-century poets we have read had the longest life?
Gottfried Benn (1886-1956)
Who attempted to make poetry out of unpoetic subjects?
Gottfried Benn, although he was not the first to do so.
What were Benn's thoughts on Expressionism?
He thought it would become the hallmark of German culture in the 20th century and would be taken up by the Nazis. It wasn't.
What was Benn's profession?
Physician. As an army physician in WWI, he was assigned to a brothel and specialized in venereal disease.

And he used Catholic imagery to describe disease!
What is the conflict in Benn's "Verlorenes Ich?"
the conflict between science and religion - mythological explanations of the world don't work anymore
What was Georg Trakl's profession?
He worked as pharmacist during WWI.
How did Georg Trakl (1887-1914) die?
Suicide. He overdosed on cocaine.
How does Trackl's "Ein Winterabend" differ from his later poem "De profundis?"
"Ein Winterabend" suggests comfort from religious imagery, but in "De profundis," this comfort is gone. God is not absent - he is just silent.
Who wrote "Die Seefahrer?"
Georg Heym
How did Georg Heym (1887-1912) die?
Ice-skating.
What classical topos is present in "Die Seefahrer?"
Plato's / Horace's Ship of State
Why is 1912 arguably the most important year for German literature?
Mann published Tod in Venedig and Kafka began writing Die Verwandlung. Both texts are among the most widely-read in German literature.
What text did Mann take a vacation from in 1911?
Felix Krull, a story about a master crook that explored the idea of writing as an act of criminality
What work did Thomas Mann win the Nobel Prize for in 1929?
Buddenbrooks
What did Thomas Mann have in common with his character Aschenbach?
Mann contributed his success as a writer to paternal discipline and maternal artistic flair (so did Goethe). Mann also went on vacation to Venice (but with his family) and was fascinated by the son of a Polish family.
Who do the red-headed figures in Tod in Venedig represent?
Hermes, Charon, and Dionysus
What path does the cholera follow in Tod in Venedig?
The same path from India to Greece that Dionysus was supposed to have followed.
Why didn't Tod in Venedig raise much controversy when it was published in 1912?
Mann made it very clear that he was writing about an impermissible passion.
What is the classical purpose of a journey to the underworld?
to gain wisdom
What Platonic work does Aschenbach rewrite in his head?
Phaedrus - Socrates and a young boy discuss discourses on love. In Aschenbach's version, they also discuss the inherent danger of being an artist - like walking along the canyon's edge.
How does Mann visually represent Tadizio's association with a sick artistic world?
his bad teeth
Tod in Venedig is structured like what Euripidean tragedy?
The Bacchae - Aschenbach is Apollonian but is overcome by the desire to take part in Dionysian rites
What did Kafka say about the teenage daughter of the Goethe house custodian?
Why would she be interested in me? I belong in a zoo.
Who was Felice Bauer?
A woman Kafka become inexplicably obsessed with around the time he wrote Das Urteil and Die Verwandlung.
What is Kafka's story "Das Urteil" about?
A son becomes engaged and wants to tell his friend in Russia, but his father objects to the engagement and sentences the son to drowning. The son goes and drowns himself - tells his parents that he loves them.
What was Kafka's relationship with his family like?
His father was a Jew but only attended religious services on high holidays and insisted that High German be spoken in his house. Kafka lived with his parents for years in a room that they needed to walk through - he always felt like an impediment.
Samsa is an anagram for...
Kafka
Why was Kafka unhappy with his work on Die Verwandlung?
He wanted to write it in two sessions like he had Das Urteil. He was interested in Freud's theory of the unconscious and believed that good art minimizes the affects of consciousness on writing.
What is "die Verwandlung" that takes place in the text?
Internal - Gregor becomes less selfish.

As Gregor's fortunes decline, those of his family rise (his sister blooms sexually) - chiastic structure.
Who was the real-life inspiration for the "Ungeziefer?"
a friend of Kafka's - a Yiddish-speaking actor
How does the third person erlebte Rede contribute to the end of Die Verwandlung?
There is no obvious seam in the story when the protagonist dies.
What is Marx's notion of Entfremdung?
The alienation of labor - in a capitalist industrial system, a worker becomes alienated from the product he produces, has no personal stake in it. --> work becomes meaningless, money becomes valuable
How can Marx's notion of Unterbau und Überbau be summed up in Brechtian terms?
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.

Art and religion are not independent of an economic system, and history is fundamentally socioeconomic.
When did Kafka publish Die Verwandlung?
1915
When did Walter Benjamin first publish Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit
1935
What art forms are changing the way art works, according to Benjamin?
photography and film - they create a situation without an original copy
What does art lose in the age of mechanical reproduction? How does Benjamin think this loss will affect the art world?
Artistic objects lose their "Aura" and Ausstellungswert.

Art will become politicized, and ideas will become aesthetized instead of objects.

Reproduction makes more art available to the proletariat but risks creating a new aristocracy out of the people who control the mechanical equipment that makes the art.
When was Bertolt Brecht perhaps most popular?
the 1960s - his effect on theater and film has been incalculable ever since
How is Brecht received today?
There is a sense that he has not aged as well as Kafka and Mann - "thanks for the lessons, dude."
Explain "epic theater."
Aristotle had drawn a distinction between epic and theater, but Brecht argued that theater must be epic in order to be successful. Theater should not create an emotional bond between the characters and the audience - this type of theater belongs to a static world with set economical conditions and reconciles the audience to the way the world is. Brecht believed that theater should prevent empathy in order to make the audience think - provoke change.
What is "Verfremdungseffekt?" How does Brecht accomplish it?
The audience's alienation from the characters and events of a play - forces the audience to think about societal problems --> didactic theater

Accomplished by violating the three unities of theater (wrongly attributed to Aristotle), song, unrealistic scenery, unrealistic line delivery.
Why was Brecht unhappy with the reception of some of his plays, especially Mutter Courage?
People liked them too much! (The songs were catchy.)

Audiences tended to sympathize with Mutter Courage, whose world was so terrible that her talent for survival become admirable.
Mutter Courage is structured on the untenability of virtue. Which virtues do Mutter Courage's three children represent? What historical figures do they correspond to?
Eilaff = brave (tapfer) = Caesar

Schweizerkas = honest (redlich) = Socrates

Katrin = selfless (selbstlos) = St. Martin
How did Brecht lose his progressive street cred?
In 1953, workers in East Germany rebelled in the Potsdamerplatz Revolt and protested in the streets, but Brecht did not join in solidarity with the strikers. (Brecht also earned 10x what his workers did.)

Grass later wrote a play about Brecht as a Brechtian character. (Die Plebejalprobendenaufstand)
Who or what was Gruppe 47?
A group of German prisoners-of-war undergoing de-Nazification in a Rhode Island camp. They wanted to start a periodical (Der Ruf) but were not encouraged by the Americans, who feared they had commie sympathies. They held their first meeting in 1947. Grass joined the group in 1955.
What shocking secret did Günter Grass reveal about himself in 2006?
For years, Grass claimed that he had been an anti-aircraft assistant in WWII, when in fact he had been a member of the Waffen-SS 10th Panzer Division.
When was Die Blechtrommel published?
1959 - but it was enough of a classic by 1963 that it was a part of the curriculum of Harvard's German department
When was Katz und Maus published?
1961
When did Günter Grass win the Nobel Prize?
1999
Why was there an effort to ban Katz und Maus shortly after its publication?
Ostensibly, critics wanted to ban the novella on grounds of immorality and indecency, but they were really concerned over its political content - a protagonist whose participation in the war is enthusiastic.
Who is the first person narrator of Die Blechtrommel?
Oskar Matzerath - either a dwarf or a perpetual little boy who claims that he can break glass with his voice and that he understood language in the womb. He can have an uncanny effect on people with his drum.
Who is the narrator of Katz und Maus? Whom does he occasionally address in the second person?
Pilenz, the narrator, speaks of the main character, Mahlke, either in the second or third person.
What does the title Katz und Maus refer to?
The novella's opening scene in which someone throws a cat at Mahlke's oversized Adam's apple, but Grass is also interested in the cat and mouse game between people and the events of history. The reader can't be sure that he's caught the story.
What is the importance of diving and surfacing (Auftauchen) in Katz und Maus?
It represents the problem of what it means to come to terms with and master the facts. Diving is both a way to discover the truth and to escape perception. Katz und Maus questions what it means to get below the surface - are you getting closer to the truth or evading it? Is it ever possible to confront your own experiences and figure out what really happened, even if you were there? How accurate are your own memories?
Grass was the first to write what sort of literature (which has since become almost cliche)?
Vergangenheitsbewältigung
What does Grass have in common with Mahlke?
Both were enthusiastic participants in the war, and Mahlke's disappearance is an opaque acknowledgment that Mahlke is still a part of Grass, just below the surface.
Why does Grass go so far out of his way to be gross (ex. group masturbation scene, bird droppings)? Why does he use sex to make people uncomfortable?
Grass shows that it is possible to write about the ugly things no one wants to address without writing about concentration camps. (Displacement)

Grass is also concerned with the distressing divorce between sexuality and fertility and the relationship between sex and violence.
Why is there so much attention on the Ritterkreuz in Katz und Maus?
It is an object with a long history - plenty of German dignitaries continued to wear the Ritterkreuz in public. It is worn over the Adam's apple and, through Mahlke's prominent Adam's apple, becomes associated with the idea of covering-up.
With what does Grass equate the Nazi era in Germany?
Adolescence - a time of bullying and childishness.
Why did Grass argue publicly against reunification?
He was suspicious of western triumphalism, which made it seem like capitalism had "won," and was concerned that reunification would have terrible consequences for the unstable East.
What is the idea of German Exceptionalism, and what are Grass's thoughts on it?
Grass rejects the notion that "It couldn't happen here" because he argues that Nationalsocialism and the Holocaust were made possible by lots of kids, not evildoers.
When did Christa Wolf publish Kassandra? Why is its publication date important?
1983 - Kassandra was very much a product of the 80s, which experienced a flood of feminist writing all over the West. It was also a product of the Cold War period.
What was Christa Wolf's scandal?
She had worked for the Stasi and had created three files on people.
Christa Wolf burst onto the literary scene with what work?
The story "Der geteilte Himmel" in 1963
Who did East Germany expel in 1976?
Wolf Bierman, a singer who had voluntarily moved to East Germany. Christa Wolf signed the petition to allow him to remain in the East, which caused her trouble with the East German government. She was expelled from the Schriftstellerverband.
What was Wolf's inspiration for Kassandra?
She traveled to Greece and became fascinated with the Kassandra of Aeschylus.
How is Kassandra framed?
99% of the story is told from the first-person point of view of Kassandra, but it begins and ends with a third-person narrator. It is unclear whether this third person is Kassandra or Wolf.
What parallels does Wolf draw between the past and present in Kassandra?
- the position of women in society

- the central role of war in structuring human life
Who do the Greeks and the Trojans represent in Kassandra?
The Westerners and the Easterners, respectively. Wolf sets out to represent two ideologies, two sets of cultural assumptions. The Greeks are presented as highly technological, effective cold-blooded killers - the Trojans as more intuitive.
What alterations does Wolf make to the story of the Trojan War in Homer's Iliad?
The Trojans are initially depicted as having a matriarchal, semi-Utopian society that slowly starts to come apart.

Also, in Wolf's version of the story, Helen is still in Egypt (which has a classical precedent), so the Trojans and Greeks are clearly fighting for reasons other than principle.

Most important is the change in perspective - Achilles does all the same things he does in Homer, but his actions have a very different significance for Wolf.

Also, in Wolf's version, Kassandra doesn't believe herself either.
What is the ultimate sign for Kassandra that her society is on the wane?
Her father forces her to marry - treats her as a subservient object.
What does the Trojan horse represent in Wolf's Kassandra?
The kinds of reform the East was taking on - a push towards weapons production.
Post-war literature can be divided into two categories - what are they?
Post-War Literature and Contemporary Literature
What year signals the start of contemporary literature?
1968
What change does German literature undergo in the 1980s?
A post-modern turn - history goes on the back burner, Germans consider the third world, and the politics of guilt turn into the politics of memory.
Who is Elfriede Jelinek's target audience?
the German public - Jelinek is an Austrian who HATES Austria
What are some of Jelinek's influences?
the Wiener Gruppe and its interest in language, nonsense, the avant-garde, and performance art

Ingeborg Bachmann (Austrian poet)
What is post-dramatic theater?
post-Brechtian Brechtian theater - highly pessimistic that post-Brechtian politics will work in a post-modern world
What effect did the fall of the wall have on migration?
Eastern Europeans migrated to the West, resulting in flourishing xenophobia and racism (notably, skinhead violence against Turks)
What real-life event does Stecken, Stab und Stangl address?
In 1995, a booby-trapped sign reading "Gypsies go back to India" exploded and killed four Roma gypsies in Burgenland, Austria. A media storm followed. Jelinek considered it the worst thing to happen in post-war Austria.
Who is "Stab?" What are the "Stecken" and "Stangl?"
Stab is a real person, a right-wing agitator who publishes in yellow journalism in Austria. The "rod" and the "staff" refer to those in biblical Psalm 23 - "thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."
What is the public sphere?
the constitution of a society predicated on the viability of communicative exchange - Jelinek suggests that the public sphere has been co-opted by mass media fear mongerers.
What real-life people make an appearance in Stecken, Stab und Stangl?
J.H. = Jörg Haider (right-wing politician in Austria who suggested the murder victims had it coming)

"Ein anderer" = Martin Heidegger, German philosopher and ex-Nazi (claimed there was "no difference between the manufacture of food and corpses")

Paul Celan, Holocaust survivor and poet (once met Heidegger and wrote a poem about it)
Why are all of the characters in Stecken, Stab und Stangl constantly crocheting?
It is a form of Handwerk - mired in relativism, Heideggerism, right-wing populism.
Who said there can be no art after Auschwitz?
Adorno
Who influenced W.G. Sebald?
Benjamin

Also, Sebald was a Stifter scholar.
When was Die Ausgewanderten published?
1992
Who are the four men featured in the "vier lange Erzaehlungen" in Die Ausgewanderten? What do they all have in common?
Dr. Henry Selwyn
Paul Bereyter
Ambros Adelwarth
Max Aurach

All four men are (at least partly) Jewish (or friends with a Jew) and they all either kill themselves or otherwise opt out of remembering.
What's with all the nature in Die Ausgewanderten?
Nature becomes the subject, and the human becomes the object - think Kaspar Hauser ("Mich hat vom Kaukasus geträumt"). The landscape absorbs, making redemption possible.
Contemporary literature is increasingly...
...self-aware, theoretically knowledgeable, and media savvy.
How is Die Ausgewanderten NOT Post-Modern?
It is against the aesthetics of empathy and visual depictions of suffering.
What is important about the narrator of Die Ausgewanderten?
He is a German, plays a mediating role. The Jewish characters want to forget, so the German remembers for them, which raises questions about the contamination between German and Jewish stories. How can Jewish stories and voices be articulated in German literature?
Who supported Trakl?
Wittgenstein
What does the imagery in Die Seefahrer imply?
An impending catastrophe.
What woman convinced Rilke to change his first name?
Lou Andreas Salome
What is notable about the titles of Aschenbach's works in Tod in Venedig?
They were titles abandoned by Mann.
What does the dream sequence in Tod in Venedig depict?
Dionysian procession with phalluses
What was the 19th century "gaydar?"
Do you read Plato?
In Euripides' Bacchae, Penthius had to dress up as a woman in order to join the Bacchic rites. What parallel of this phenomenon occurs in Tod in Venedig?
Aschenbach becomes a painted dandy like the one he saw on a boat early in the novella. (z.B. colors his hair)
Zuegelosigkeit means...
...letting go and falling apart, like the ripe strawberries in Tod in Venedig.
Tod in Venedig is speckled with...
...lines of dactylic hexameter.
Mann's interest in the line an artist has to walk between discipline and creativity comes from a poem by...
Goethe.

Vom Vater hab ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen,
Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur
Und Lust zu fabulieren.
What does Gregor Samsa wonder while listening to his sister play the violin?
War er ein Tier das die Musik ihm so ergriff?
What did Feuerbach say?
Feuerbach said man created God in his image.
What does Benjamin have to say about nationalsocialism and communisim?
Der Nationalismus ist die Aesthizierung der Politik, und der Kommunismus ist der Politizierung der Kunst. (Spelling?)
What's up with the cave paintings?
There was no Ausstellungswert - it was all about the ritual.
Benjamin was a member of...
...linkes Aussenseitertum.