Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, German/History (dual)

The East German Stasi stood among the most effective secret police forces in modern history, creating a surveillance apparatus that invaded all levels of society and affected many thousands of people, from ordinary citizens to the highest levels of the West German government. Artists and writers have long been preoccupied with the Stasi and have featured the organization in their productions since even the peak of the Cold War. Cultural productions like literature and film often serve as valuable “windows” into historical societies and the minds of those who dwelled therein, shedding light on values and norms that existed at the time, as well as the conditions that surrounded the publication of said productions. This study examines the portrayal of the Stasi in literature and film, starting during the Cold War in East German literature, moving to immediately after reunification, and ending in the twenty-first century. Specifically, it studies the general “character” of the organization as portrayed by various artists, and how these portrayals developed over time. This study draws on both history and German Studies as subjects, featuring intensive literature analysis and partial analysis of surveillance files, along with reference to a broad body of secondary research. This study shows that as time has passed, the portrayal of the Stasi in various media has become more nuanced and fact focused, owing to the increased amount of available information on the organization. Initially the organization is seen as a force of nature, with emphasis placed upon its mystery and influence. As time progressed, artists rejected the power of the Stasi by portraying them as human and fallible, occasionally as comedically incompetent.

Committee: Douglas Forsyth PhD (Advisor); Kristie Foell PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature; History

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Arts and Sciences : Germanic Languages and Literature

During the past two decades, a vast body of German literature has appeared that is interested not only in the Holocaust but also in the way Germans have dealt with the legacy of National Socialism over the last sixty years. Especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the German reunification, a number of literary works have appeared that use photographs to approach this limit-event and its remembrance in German national and private discourses. At the same time, the scholarly attention given to questions of memory and its representation has also sharply increased over the last few decades. Such debates have brought forth a number of demands in order for Holocaust literature to become productive for remembrance as well as for the creation of the present and the future. The following study investigates works by Monika Maron, W. G. Sebald, and Irina Liebmann. Of particular interest is the question of how these authors have integrated photographs within their texts in order to address and overcome the problems of Holocaust representation: the generational distance, absences and silences as well as the institutionalization and instrumentalization of memory. The first chapter lays out the theoretical framework that informs the discussion of the most vital concepts treated in this study: fact and fiction, history and memory, photography and text. The subsequent three chapters investigate the respective works written by the three authors: Monika Maron's Pawels Briefe (1999), W. G. Sebald's Die Ausgewanderten (1992) and Austerlitz (2001), and Irina Liebmann's Stille Mitte von Berlin (2002). I maintain that the complex and paradoxical nature of photography, most significantly its simultaneous claim to truth and to deception, renders it a particularly fruitful means to negotiate questions of factuality and fiction as well as memory and history. It allows these authors to engage the reader in a problematization of the concept of truth as well as the constructedness of all f (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Katharina Gerstenberger (Committee Chair); Dr. Sara Friedrichsmeyer (Other); Dr. Todd Herzog (Other); Dr. Richard Schade (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2009, German

This thesis explores the memory discourse particular to Monika Maron's Stille Zeile sechs (1991), Animal triste (1996) and Pawels Briefe (1999). The thesis reveals that for Maron, memory work is not an investigation of authenticity but a process that combines documents of memory and constructed memories in order to provide a comprehensive memory text that allows an individual to re-cast the self. Maron's three texts reveal a progression in the discussion about how memories might be translated into a narrative. This thesis examines the use of form and content of autobiographical writing in all three novels, all of which assist in forming a new self. In the first chapter on Stille Zeile sechs this is discussed with reference to the purpose and effect of memoir writing in the GDR in the 1980s. In the second chapter Animal triste is presented as a text that emerges out of the need to narrate a new biography in light of traumatic memories. In the third chapter I analyze how in Pawels Briefe the process of remembering is articulated through Maron's untraditional format of autobiographical writing with emphasis on the use of photographs and letters.

Committee: Christina Guenther PhD (Advisor); Kristie Foell PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: German literature