Berlin’s Own Rip Van Winkle: The Washington Irving Connection in Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin!

Abstract

This study examines the links between Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye, Lenin! (2003). Both works describe a matriarchal family in which a character goes through a long period of sleep that begins during one political order and ends during another. As “Rip Van Winkle” was itself originally inspired by German folklore, the connection between “Rip Van Winkle” and Good Bye, Lenin! provides evidence of how themes and motifs within important texts can flow back and forth between and among different societies, influencing one another in turn.