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Overview
When the Berlin Wall came down and the two Germanies were reunited, culture was held up to be one of the keys to national unity. Ironically, however, it is the realm of culture that most clearly demonstrates the continued divisions between east and west. Taking culture as broadly defined, this book examines state memorialization, literature, television, film, and the internet, to map out the problematic path of German national identity as it struggles to deal with the legacy of division. Drawing on postcolonial theory, the author argues that the east has been defined as the west's "exotic other" and shows how this stereotype has been vigorously challenged. Cooke also discusses the growing phenomenon of nostalgia for East Germany, as evident in the recent international hit film Good Bye, Lenin!
Synopsis
Cooke (German studies, U. of Leeds, UK) traces cultural representations in Germany of the former communist German Democratic Republic in the years following its collapse. He first discusses the political ramifications of state-led attempts to come to terms with the GDR as represented by the Enquete Commission and literary representation of the GDR's State Security Service (the Stasi) that challenged the view put forth in forums such as the Enquete Commission. He then turns his attention to films such as 2003's Good Bye, Lenin, the "Ostalgie" (combining the "nostalgia" and the German word for "east") craze manifested in subsequent television shows, and representations of the GDR on the World Wide Web. Distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR