The Management of Damaged Identity: Guilt and Shame in Postwar German Culture
GERMAN 156
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Course Information
Description
This course will explore different ways in which postwar German writers and film makers reckoned with the disastrous legacy of the Third Reich. We will probe a variety of perspectives employed to deal with a shame-ridden past as well as the numerous difficulties encountered in confronting the experiences of National Socialism, Hitler, and the Holocaust. Our discussions will consider seminal examples from a half-century's profusion of retrospective readings, works that renegotiate national identity and, in some cases, endeavor to "reinvent" Germany. The course will include representative films as well as texts by Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt, Alexander and Margarethe Mitscherlich, T. W. Adorno, Alexander Kluge, and W. G Sebald.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
