250 Reviews using the GDR perspective to engage with American feminist agendas. There is one telling point about American perspectives: Martens acknowledges that, with the exception of Wolf's work, the primary texts she examines have not been translated into English (although Morgner's monumental Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz appeared in a translation by Jeanette Clausen in 2000, presumably too late to have been included here). Martens argues that Wolf's texts also come closest to the victim mentality more common in Western feminism than in its GDR counterpart, which, though Martens does not say so, raises questions about the choice of texts for translation. Some minor quibbles are that one major character's name is repeatedly misspelt, and that although the younger author Gabi Stotzer-Kachold is held up as a radical feminist and dissident, with four entries in the index, her work is never analysed and does not appear in the bibliography. Martens proceeds on the premiss that, as literature, these works make good femi? nist theory. As an introduction to GDR feminism, and its provocation to Western feminisms, this book has some value, but as an introduction to the literature itself, it offerslittle that is new or illuminating. Jesus College, Oxford Lyn Marven Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich. By Bill Niven. London and New York: Routledge. 2002. xxii + 266 pp. ?50 (pbk ?15.99). ISBN 0-415-18011-2 (pbk 0-415-26281-x). German Cidture and the Uncomfortable Past: Representations ofNational Socialism in Contemporary GermanicLiterature. Ed. by Helmut Schmitz. (Warwick Studies in the Humanities) Aldershot: Ashgate. 2001. vi + 184 pp. ?40. ISBN 0-754601 -129 (hbk). Although representations of the Third Reich in fiction and film have been an object of study for nearly fortyyears, the form taken by such representations has changed in important ways, particularly since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, making new approaches and evaluations necessary. At the same time, a new field of study, combining elements of history, sociology, psychology, and critical theory, has recently taken shape. This Er innerungsgeschichteis the study of the modes and meanings of commemoration of the Holocaust and the Third Reich in German society and culture. Two publications, a monograph and a collection of essays, significantly advance these fields of study. Bill Niven is involved in both, as the author of one and a major contributor to the other. Niven's monograph Facing the Nazi Past examines the commemorative culture of post-war German (but not Austrian) culture. The text has a solid foundation of tra? ditional narrative history, but Niven's primary aim is to deconstruct the competing historical narratives of the Third Reich that circulated, and continue to circulate, in the divided and reunited Germany. These find expression in visual, verbal, and plastic form, forinstance in rituals, memorials, and public rhetoric, in sculptures and plaques, exhibition spaces, street signs, chapels, and graveyards, in the architecture and topography of memorial sites, and in political speeches and televised debates. Niven interprets all these with great sensitivity, articulating the intended and unintended , overt and hidden meanings that shape attitudes towards the Nazi past. History is presented as something fluid, contested, multiple, and open to political instrumentalization. This is perhaps no more than one would expect from a piece of contemporary historiography, but other insights are more unexpected. Niven's analysis reveals the extent to which, beyond the primary fault-line between victims and perpetrators, post-1945 German society was fragmented into diverse groupings MLRy 98.1, 2003 251 whose conflicting interests were barely compatible. Justice either proved too clumsy an instrument with which to differentiatethese groups, or differentiated them in ways that now seem singularly unjust. Given this extensive and complex legacy of injustice within the perpetrator culture, it is all the more remarkable that the new Germany has been largely successful in integrating the National Socialist past into its national identity,a fact that Niven sees as cause for considerable optimism. Niven's willingness to interpret a range of visual, spatial, and concrete signs that together make up what James Young has termed the 'texture of memory', but for which there are no ready-made...