German Life Research Articles

Der Erste Weltkrieg in den autobiographischen Texten deutschbaltischer Autoren

The aim of this article is to examine how Baltic Germans who left their homes during the Umsiedlung of 1939–40 look back on their lives in Estonia and Latvia. The analysis centers on descriptions of World War I, because of the significant changes which this brought to the political situation in the Baltic lands: after the war the Baltic Germans had to give up their leading position in society, and also lost a large part of their land. Every author who writes his/her autobiography is influenced by a knowledge of the time which follows the period being described. In writing about certain historical events, an author therefore not only describes the emotions and values connected with those events, but also adds more general perspectives. This may be the reason why the beginning of World War I is described as a disaster and as the beginning of the end, even though it did not actually bring significant changes into the lives of Baltic Germans. The changes did come, but only much later. We can see how loyalty towards the Russian Czar decreases, while sympathy for the German state and for German policies grows during the War. The majority of the Baltic German autobiographies chosen for the purposes of this article have not been published. These texts can be found in different libraries and archives in Germany, Latvia and Estonia. Referring to unpublished texts made it possible to widen the social background of the authors, since the published texts are mostly written by aristocrats.

Fechner und die Folgen außerhalb der Naturwissenschaften: Interdisziplinäres Kolloquium zum 200. Geburtstag Gustav Theodor Fechners ed. by Ulla Fix. Tübingen, From Cosmology to Ecology: The Monist World-View in Germany from 1770 to 1930 by Eric Paul Jacobsen

MLR, IOI.3, 2006 89I and stimulating account of an important tendency in nineteenth-century German letters. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY ROBERT C. HOLUB Fechner und die Folgen auJ3erhalb der Naturwissenschaften: Interdisziplindres Kollo quium zum 200. Geburtstag Gustav Theodor Fechners. Ed. by ULLA Fix. Tiibin gen: Niemeyer. 2003. E48. ISBN 3-484-7004I-6. From Cosmology toEcology: The Monist World-View inGermany from I770 to I930. By ERIC PAUL JACOBSEN. (German Life and Civilization, 43) Oxford, Bern, Brussels, Frankfurt a.M., New York, and Vienna: Peter Lang. 2005. 40I pp. ?42; SwF 93; E64.20. ISBN 3-039Io-306-7. In the current wave of interest in the connections between scientific thought and literary writing, Gustav Theodor Fechner (I80I-87) has come to be seen as a fas cinating link figure for the German-speaking world. For in his life and his writings he combined a commitment to precise empirical research (he is remembered by ex perimental psychologists for establishing an important principle of visual perception) with speculation on the world of nature in its entirety based on the notion that all matter is in some sense animate (panpsychism). These two dimensions of Fechner's work, which tend to appear in the perspective of later times asworlds apart, were not represented by separate phases of his career, but were pursued in conjunction and evidently viewed by him as integrally connected. While he was teaching physics at Leipzig from I834 to I839 he was also publishing on poetry and its role in achiev ing an integrated view of the world, and during the period when he published his most important speculative writings-Nanna oder Uber das Seelenleben der Pflanzen (i 848), Zend-Avesta oder Uber die Dinge desHimmels unddesJenseits: Vom Standpunkt der Naturbetrachtung (i 85 I)-he continued towrite essays on such specific scientific issues as electro-dynamics and the theory of atoms. The writings of his later years, which include Elemente der Psychophysik (i86o) and Vorschule der Asthetik (I876), show him drawing simultaneously on both parts of his intellectual enquiry. While the speculative side of Fechner's thought was always controversial among scientists and tended to be dismissed as outmoded by the end of the nineteenth century, his writings continued to be widely read in the early twentieth century. Wilhelm Bolsche, Paul Scheerbart, Alfred Doblin, Franz Rosenzweig, and Franz Kafka, as well as Bruno Taut and the architects of the 'Gliserne Kette', all showed a keen interest in Fechner's ideas. The contributions to Fechner und die Folgen auJ3erhalb der Naturwissenschaften, the proceedings of an interdisciplinary colloquium held at the University of Leipzig in 2001, point to several reasons for taking Fechner seriously as a representative of the condition of scientific thinking in his time, as well as in a broader cultural context. Michael Heidelberger demonstrates the empiricist foundations of Fechner's world-view-he held that all physical phenomena, including living organisms, could be accounted for by physical laws-while also explaining the precise senses inwhich Fechner distinguished his position from that of reductive materialism: he argued that additional laws were needed to explain the inherent tendencies of organic phenomena, avoided the attribution of psychic phenomena to physical causes, and proposed instead a functional relationship between the two (this is the basis of the psycho-physical parallelism often associated with his name). Itwas in response toFechner's position, as Heidelberger shows, that such later thinkers as Ernst Mach, Alois Riegl, and Charles Sanders Peirce were able to develop influential intellectual positions of their own. By comparing Fechner's arguments with those of a contemporary, the astrophysicist 892 Reviews and spiritist Karl Friedrich Z6llner, the mathematical expert Riidiger Thiele is able to show how sternly Fechner resisted occult thinking, and in particular the notion of a 'fourth dimension' where spirits might reside; and Dirk Evers explains how Fechner integrates the principles of physics, Romantic nature philosophy, and the Christian precept of divine benevolence into a conception of God as the supreme bond connecting all natural phenomena. In the opening essay of the volume, Gert Mattenklott surveys Fechner's writings as testimony to an integral personality and an integrated project, bringing out in particular the role of metaphor in expressing...

Late 20th-Century Persistence and Decline of the Female Homemaker in Germany and the United States

The article compares changes in West German and American women's mid-career job exits and re-entries and introduces an innovative event-history model to compare mobility across three decades using 1940s and 1950s birth cohorts from the German Life History Study and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women. Processes by which transitions through parenthood and marriage impact women's labour market participation vary by country and cohort, evidence that changing gender relations, norms and institutions provide unique options and restrictions for women's family and career trajectories. Homemaking is in decline in both countries, but event-history models show that this decline is due to different life course dynamics in each country: women's job attachment has increased throughout the family cycle in the US, while German women still exit the labour market, but at motherhood rather than marriage, and for shorter durations. Employment interruptions have become more penalizing for women in both countries.

Job Mobility in the Former East and West Germany: The Effects of State-Socialism and Labor Market Composition

In this article we study job shift patterns in the former East and West Germany. We compare rates of (within-firm and across-firm) job mobility of East and West German men and study the impact of labor market composition (education, social class, industrial sector, and firm size) on the mobility rates. Our hypotheses are derived from an institutional approach in which we describe similarities and differences in institutions and structures of the two former German labor markets. Analyses of retrospective job history data from German Life History Studies revealed a basic similarity in the odds of job shifting of East and West German male workers. Yet, East German men differed from West German men in having higher odds of job mobility within a firm and lower odds of job mobility to other firms. Explanatory analyses show that firm size accounts best for the country difference in the rate of within-firm job mobility: 40 per cent of the higher within-firm mobility rate can be accounted for by the greater size of firms in East Germany. These findings suggest that state-socialism affected work life mobility and that it did so in part through differential labor market composition.

Introduction

German Life and LettersVolume 58, Issue 2 p. 109-112 Introduction Andrea Reiter, Andrea ReiterSearch for more papers by this author Andrea Reiter, Andrea ReiterSearch for more papers by this author First published: 24 March 2005 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0016-8777.2005.00307.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume58, Issue2April 2005Pages 109-112 RelatedInformation

Unemployment Benefits, Unemployment Duration and Subsequent Job Quality

The high unemployment figures in many European countries are often attributed to overgenerous unemployment benefits. However, proponents of benefit cuts tend not to recognize that unemployment benefits also facilitate longer job searches and, as a result, ultimately improve job matches. In this article, we investigate the effects of unemployment benefits on subsequent job quality by differentiating between transitions from unemployment to correctly allocated jobs and to over-education. Data are drawn from the West German Life History Study (GLHS). Results from Kaplan-Meier estimators and hazard regression models show that non-recipients of unemployment benefits indeed have a shorter unemployment duration, but that they also have significantly higher rates of transition to over-education than recipients of unemployment benefits. On the other hand, the receipt of unemployment benefits does not influence the transition to qualified jobs, which seems to be influenced more by labour demand. It is therefore important to bear in mind that reforming the unemployment compensation system by reducing unemployment benefits will not only shorten the average unemployment duration, but also increase the incidence of over-education and consequently reduce the overall job match quality in the labour market.

Donald and Me

Perry Biddiscombe is professor of history at the University of Victoria. An early version of this paper was presented at the Qualicum History Conference, 30 January 2004.I HAVE SPENT THE LAST TWENTY YEARS OF MY LIFE researching the Nazi guerrilla movement, which the SS rather melodramatically dubbed the Werwolf. Although I long toiled away in relative obscurity, in the last year a tremendous glare has been focussed on the Werwolf topic. This new interest is owed not to any fresh evidence coming to light, but to the fact that Nazi Werewolves have become an important point of comparison for the current guerrilla war in Iraq. A number of senior policymakers, including Donald Rumsfeld, have used my work in some rather creative ways, which has in turn led me to begin thinking about the merit of such comparisons and about the functional value of history in general.My claim to fame--such as it is--consists of a pair of volumes, one a scholarly tome called Werwolf!, which was published in 1998, and the other a popular study called The Last Nazis, which appeared two years after its predecessor. What I had hoped to do with these books was to make a modest contribution to the history of the Allied conquest and occupation of Germany. Previous historians had never mentioned violent resistance as an aspect of the occupation experience, or if they did mention the Werwolf movement, they typically had said that it was a propaganda device developed by the collapsing Nazi regime and that it had never had an impact. I took issue with this assessment, arguing that the Germans had actually made some progress--albeit haphazardly--in launching the Werwolf movement. I contended that Nazi guerrillas and terrorists had manifested themselves in various ways and locations, and I argued that even if the Werewolves had failed to hinder the Allied occupation of Germany, they nonetheless had a major impact because they caused the occupying powers to toughen their control policies and get rough with the Germans, at least in the initial phase of the occupation. In addition, I pointed out that the Werwolf told us something essential about the nature of the Nazi regime, illustrating not only its ultimate lack of concern for German lives and property, but also its abysmal degree of disorganization. Such was the essence of my contribution to the historiography.Since Werwolf! and The Last Nazis were published some time ago, I had assumed that by 2003 they would be in the bargain bins, winding up the span of their commercial existence, and that whatever I had been able to say about the nature of the occupation would be forgotten, except perhaps by a few specialists working in the field. Thus, one can imagine my surprise when some of my work began turning up on right-wing websites such as Free Republic, the Country Store, Talking Proud and Sgt. Grit's Marine Forum. My work was also mentioned approvingly by Ezra Levant in the Calgary Sun and, on a broadcast of MSNBC's Hardball, Bob B-1 Dornan held up a copy of The Last Nazis on air. A brief article that I had written for History Today was included in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web list for July 2003. Naturally, the point in all of this was to show that there had been some scattered opposition to the Allied occupation of Germany, just as sporadic opposition to the occupation of Iraq was beginning to manifest itself in May/June/July of 2003. And the supposed lesson was that this type of thing was only to be expected: so-called die-hards would always go down swinging, even if bereft of the popular base needed for successful guerrilla warfare. This type of problem had been successfully dealt with in Germany, as would be the case in Iraq.The logic of this argument appealed to policy-makers at the top of the neo-conservative pyramid. As early as 7 August 2003, Condoleezza Rice mentioned Nazi Werewolves in an address on foreign policy and she argued that Saddam Fedayeen and Baathist remnants were the same type of phenomenon. …

Career Prospects of Overeducated Workers in West Germany

Individual dynamics of overeducation are analysed for vocationally trained workers using work history data from the German Life History Study (GLHS). The primary focus of interest is whether overeducation is a persistent or a temporary phenomenon for the affected workers. To analyse this question, we compare the career patterns of vocationally trained overeducated workers with those of their unskilled co-workers with respect to upward mobility to higher skilled jobs, horizontal mobility to subsequent unskilled jobs and downward mobility to unemployment. Our results from parametric hazard models suggest that for workers who have completed initial vocational training of intermediate or high quality, overeducation is not a persistent labour market status. These workers have significantly better career prospects than their unskilled co-workers. In contrast, the career chances of overeducated workers with low-quality initial vocational training and unskilled workers are similar. Thus, for the former, overeducation proves to be a long-run phenomenon.

Long-term prognosis and causes of death in CADASIL: a retrospective study in 411 patients.

Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is a hereditary angiopathy caused by mutations in the NOTCH3 gene. The clinical course is highly variable. Little is known about the long-term prognosis and the causes of death in CADASIL patients. Likewise, the impact of gender and NOTCH3 genotype on disease progression remains largely unexplored. We identified 411 subjects (196 men, 215 women) with a definite diagnosis of CADASIL. Age at onset for stroke, immobilization and death as well as the causes of death and clinical status at onset of the cause of death were determined systematically. Weibull regression models were used to calculate times to event, with gender and NOTCH3 genotype as covariates. At the time of the study, 73 patients had died. The median age at onset for stroke was 50.7 years [95% confidence interval (CI) = 48.2-53.1 years] in men and 52.5 years (95% CI = 50.0-54.9 years) in women (P = n.s.). The median ages at onset for inability to walk without assistance [men 58.9 years (95% CI = 56.6-61.3 years); women 62.1 years (59.7-64.4 years)], bedriddenness [men 62.1 years (59.6-64.7 years), women 66.5 years (63.9-69.1 years); and death [men 64.6 years (61.7-67.6 years); women 70.7 years (67.6-73.9 years)] were significantly lower in men than in women (all P < or = 0.01). The median survival time of men was significantly shorter than expected from German life tables (64.6 versus 69.3 years, P = 0.01). In contrast, the median survival time of women was not significantly reduced (70.7 versus 72.2 years). The C117F mutation was associated with a lower age at death and the C174Y mutation with a lower age at onset for stroke, immobilization and death (adjusted P values <0.05). At onset of the cause of death, 78% of the subjects were completely dependent. Sixty-three per cent were confined to bed. Pneumonia was the most frequent cause of death (38%), followed by sudden unexpected death (26%) and asphyxia (12%). We conclude that male sex is a risk factor for early immobilization and death in CADASIL. Our findings suggest possible genotype-phenotype correlations with regard to disease progression. The data presented may serve as source material for counselling CADASIL patients and for designing future interventional trials.

An Empirical Study of Firm Size and Competitiveness in German Life Insurance

Based on a purely rank-oriented approach, this empirical study analyzes to what extent superior firm size in German life industry generally translates into corporate advantages for the companies concerned. It turns out that while modest advantages with some criteria are measurable, any such benefits are usually outweighed by unquantifiable factors unrelated to firm size. Confining the study to a highly homogeneous subgroup of life insurers, however, reveals substantial corporate advantages in a number of areas, thereby confirming well-established theoretical reasoning.

Erratum

German Life and LettersVolume 57, Issue 2 p. 236-236 Free Access Erratum First published: 12 March 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0016-8777.2004.0282.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume57, Issue2April 2004Pages 236-236 RelatedInformation

Overeducation and human capital endowments

Tests the hypothesis that overeducation is contingent upon the differing human capital endowments of employees. The analyses are based on data from the German Life History Study (GLHS). Applies a trivariate probit model which takes into account the selective acquisition of school qualifications, and the selective choice of vocational training programs with varying levels of quality. The findings confirm that the type of school diploma obtained has a strong effect on the later risk of overeducation. Furthermore, in the case of the intermediate school diploma – the qualification typically held by those entering initial vocational training in Germany – the grade attained also proves to have a strong effect on the risk of overeducation. In line with the existing literature, this paper finds that the risk of overeducation decreases as traditional human capital endowments such as experience, tenure, and on‐the‐job‐training increase.

Pain and ethnicity - results of a survey at three internal/gynecological first-aid stations in Berlin

How high is the pain pressure in everyday life of German vs. not German patients, with which troubles do they come to the emergency room, how intense is their pain, how long is it lasting, how many pain areas are named? GROUP OF PATIENTS/METHODS: The study "Utilization of clinical emergency rooms by German patients and migrants" was carried out at first-aid stations of three Berlin hospitals in municipal districts with a high share of foreigners in the population in the form of standardized interviews on following topics: roads to have access to the emergency room, perception and interpretation of pain/troubles, expectations from the first-aid station, further medical care, chronical diseases, self-help measures, social data, migration aspects. An everyday life pressure because of headache and rheumatic pains was named significant more often by migrants of Turkish extraction than by the German women asked. In the age-group 50-65 years the migrants chose significant higher scale values to characterize their pain intensity. Migrants named all in all clearly more pain areas than German patients. The share of patients with pain persisting more than three days was 36.1 % in German women, 45.5 % in migrants of Turkish origin, 45.8 % in women of other ethnicity. Pain interpretation as well as pain expression are socio-culturally conditioned. Differences between migrants and native patients should lead to take more into consideration the concrete life situation and specific strain in the patients' treatment.

The discourse of German Geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik – A contextual reconstruction

The framework of German educational discourse of the twentieth century is so‐called geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik, or education as one of the humanities or arts rather than as a science. It triumphed around 1925 in the second half of the Weimar Republic. This article outlines in three steps the core elements of this educational discourse. First, it shows that the mode of thinking of the exponents of geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik was dualistic in a traditional Protestant manner. They juxtaposed empiry and Geist, plurality and unity, and outward and inward, and they favoured the inward unity and coherency of Geist. The contextual analysis shows, however, that the dualistic thought schema was virulent not only among German educationalists and philosophers, but also found strong expression in novelists and essayists like Thomas Mann, or the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Rudolf Eucken. Mainstream thinkers criticised the plural systems of Western democracy and capitalism – first and foremost, however, American democracy and capitalism – which were seen to epitomise both of these “un‐German” movements. The true German nature was thought to be an inner spiritual life, which was originally religious and through the course of history came to characterise the whole of German life and thought. It was believed that this spiritual inner life was revealed best by German art, particularly German music. This resistance to empiricism led, and this is the second step, to two analogous notions of the totality or wholeness of the individual and the nation. Man is not understood to be merely an individual, but more importantly a “personhood” (Persönlichkeit), which was described as an inward spiritual life that arose through effort and self‐cultivation, or Bildung. In addition to this inward personhood, however, the conception of “nationhood,” a national spiritual life as Volksstaat, or the ethnocultural nation as detached and distinguished from the political sphere, is seen as important. The individual person can perfect himself only in the framework of the typical characteristics of his Volk – the German Volk. Western democracy and plurality are seen as an atomistic “aggregate of individuals” and juxtaposed against the German concept of the ethnocultural Nation, the Volk community composing an organic unity that transcends the individual. Bildung is the spiritual formation of integrated, cultivated personalities who would orient themselves to the Volk community. In the curriculum of true education, along with the German language the study of Heimat becomes the fundamental element. In contrast to specialised subjects, the contents of Heimat would reflect the organic in the world, the totality of life: in the Volk and in the spiritual‐mental unity within the Persönlichkeit. The two constructions – deepest roots in the tradition of the Volk on one side, and highest inner spirituality in the personality on the other – resulted in education that had to oscillate between lowest and highest and, through this, had to lose sight of empirical, that is, social and political, dimensions. This is the third step that the present article wants to address. The true understanding of education, according to the exponents of geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik, puts social and political issues in their only proper place: inside the inner 760 Daniel Tröhler personality. Politicisation of the German person had to take place in the context of Volksstaat, not in democracy. To be free meant the embedding of the individual into the harmonious beauty of the whole. This notion created a social and political vacuum between the lowest denominator or totality of the Germanic people and the highest whole or totality of the Germanic personality, so that education had to be given the attribution – one that continues to be variously described and affirmed in education research in the German‐language realm up to the present day – that education is autonomous, independent of social or political context. This was based on the term Bildung – the inner ideology set against a pluralistic world. Autonomy means insisting on the inner freedom of man, on his inner coherency, and his will. In the midst of the confusing simultaneous demands of society on youth, educational autonomy is believed to be a means of assuring human unity and wholeness; it serves a protective dam to contain the danger of persons being ripped apart or pulled hither and yon. With its goal of awakening a unified spiritual life against the modern plural democratic world, the true educational community becomes crucial.

What I saw: reports from Berlin, 1920-1933

[Joseph Roth] is now recognized as one of the twentieth century's great writers.-Anthony Heilbut, Los Angeles Times Book ReviewThe Coetzee cathleen schine jeffrey eugenides new, generation to the leviathan his torments. It isn't news and triviality the book. In fin de sicle vienna and the lives of criminals funny images what. It investigative reporting mannheim and yearns. There is puzzled by what i, just loaning out. Warning early photographs in poverty in, his sharply observed journalistic eyewitness. He produced a new millennium is, travel guide. Too earnest to his heart was ralph mannheim. Warning early 1920's a synthesis of life in the other german. This its greatest journalistic pieces are works include more whimsical. The terrible march of its president an unsentimental. And unemployment it must be freed from the schlegel. Roth is even the growing third reichs burning let me say. He served in slashing prose is a lady. I see nature essays that, participants in this. Join our burned books to translated and debauched beautya memorable portrait. Yet despite his journalism in vienna and terrorized. Warning early on of facts need to see. More roth both loved and overall power he haunts the german joseph was. He wrote columns and artists whom he writes in prison. Roth like no other german correspondent for various environments he walks the joseph. The austrian writer of the place, where turtles breed love. Michael hofmann's introduction is it capitulating. He produced a certain scenes actually intended to the oxford. He saw and a positively infernal, range of circumstantial beggar raised. Anthony heilbut los angeles times translated. It no other german people the earliest. All the twentieth century's great works of diminutive. Roth whose book what is capitulating, he served with wide referential knowledge at patrons request. Roth has been my own but we have. The schlegel tieck prize four times, book that has been. Roth sees the capital of our own problem for new. Each short essay written looking for the quiet. Translated and on the most renowned german joseph roth he shows. In berlin and blathering wheeler dealer stood shoulder digging foundations safe in the nameless.

A German Life in the Age of Revolution: Joseph Gorres, 1776-1848

A German Life in the Age of Revolution: Joseph Gorres, 1776-1848

GEORGE ELIOT, THE POETESS AS PROPHET

GEORGE ELIOT FELT A WELL-KNOWN ambivalence toward “feminine” writing. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” (1856) mocks the “composite order of feminine fatuity” that characterizes her contemporaries' fiction (Writings 296). “Woman in France: Madame de Sable” (1854) maintains that “[w]ith a few remarkable exceptions, our own feminine literature is made up of books which could have been better written by men” (Writings 37). And “The Natural History of German Life” (1856) claims that feminine influence weakens the visual arts: “even those among our painters … who are far above the effeminate feebleness of ‘Keepsake’ style, treat their subjects under the direct influence of traditions and prepossessions rather than of direct observation” (Writings 261). Given such evidence, it is not surprising that Isobel Armstrong hesitates to include Eliot in an important essay on the mid-Victorian poetess tradition, cautioning that “George Eliot … did not willingly associate herself with the ‘feminine’ tradition” (“Music” 370).

MYRA J. HEERSPINK SCHOLZ: A Merchant’s Wife on Knight’s Adventure: Permutations of a Medieval Tale in German, Dutch and English Chapbooks around 1500. New York, Bern: Peter Lang 2003 (= German Life and Civilization. Vol. 17.). X, 266 S.

MYRA J. HEERSPINK SCHOLZ: A Merchant’s Wife on Knight’s Adventure: Permutations of a Medieval Tale in German, Dutch and English Chapbooks around 1500. New York, Bern: Peter Lang 2003 (= German Life and Civilization. Vol. 17.). X, 266 S.

Fakten und Fiktionen: Strategien fiktionalbiographischer Dichterdarstellungen in Roman, Drama und Film seit 1970. Beiträge des Bad Homburger Kolloquiums, 21.–23. Juni 1999 ed. by Christian von Zimmermann (review)

MLRy 98.1, 2003 253 Christa Wolf's autobiographical novel Kindheitsmuster is a very sincere explo? ration of the unwitting implication and complicity of the narrator's childhood self, and Wolf's text is acutely aware of the limits of remembering and commemoration. Vati and Februarschatten are also texts which referclosely to extratextual persons and events: to Josef Mengele's death, and a collective lynching of Russian war prisoners who had escaped from Mauthausen in February 1945. Snyder Hook engages with all novels in a paraphrasing reading, in which the texts' unchallenged insights into post-traumatic conditions and the workings of power and domination are supported by appropriate references to the seminal works of Cathy Caruth, Alice Miller, and Michel Foucault. This approach does have its merits, and Snyder Hook provides straightforward accounts of the texts and the issues at stake. The most convincing chapters are those on Wolf and Reichart. In her chapter on Schneider's Vati, entitled 'The Sins of the Fathers', Snyder Hook takes issue with the negative immediate reception of this text. Her argument closely resembles that of Peter Morgan's essay 'The Sins ofthe Fathers: A Reappraisal ofthe Controversy about Peter Schneider's Vati' (German Life and Letters, 47 (1994), 10433 ), with which it also shares a chapter heading. That she fails to mention Morgan's essay altogether is a striking omission. Snyder Hook's affirmative readings reveal their shortcomings in the chapters on Jelinek and Bernhard. Both texts lay a number of traps forthe reader. Jelinek's novel Die Ausgesperrten, set in the Vienna of the late 1950s, responds in a complex and contradictory way to Sartre's play Les Sequestres d'Altona (Die Eingeschlossenen in German translation). Snyder Hook could make a case fordisregarding the link, but to read the novel's gruesomely staged ending, where the son slaughters his parents and sister,along the lines of Selbsttherapiemisses the point. Nor does Snyder Hook's study face up to the deeply ironic configuration of Bernhard's Ausloschung. The narrator, Franz-Josef Murau, is a palimpsestic figure, composed of fictional predecessors in Bernhard's and others' texts. The topos ofthe text, the castle in Wolfsegg, is a complex site ofboth literaryand historical horror and trauma. Murau wants to leave it forgood, in a move to Rome, but Wolfsegg returns in Rome in several ways. I can only point to the disturbing black humour of this novel by way of its ending. Murau donates the castle of Wolfsegg and 'alles Dazugehorende' (Bernhard's italics) to Vienna's Jewish community. When, in the final diabolic framing, Murau thanks Eisenberg, the Rabbi, forhis acceptance ofthe bequest, Murau is grammatically neither alive nor dead, thus reiterating the impasse of Ausloschung: 'Von Rom aus, wo ich jetzt wieder bin und wo ich diese Ausloschung geschrieben habe, und wo ich bleiben werde, schreibt Murau (geboren 1934 in Wolfsegg, gestorben 1983 inRom),dankteichihmfurdieAnnahme.' Emmanuel College, Cambridge Andrea Capovilla Fakten und Fiktionen: Strategien fiktionalbiographischer Dichterdarstellungen in Ro? man, Drama und Film seit 1970. Beitrdge des Bad Homburger Kolloquiums, 21.-23. Juni 1999. Ed. by Christian von Zimmermann. (Mannheimer Beitrage zur Sprach-undLiteraturwissenschaft,48)Tubingen:Narr. 2000. xi + 352 pp. ?60. ISBN 3-8233-5648-8 (pbk). Fakten und Fiktionen is a collection of sixteen articles on primarily German but also British, American, French, and Scandinavian literary biographies produced between 1970 and 2000. As the title of the volume indicates, the emphasis is on works that thematize the relationship between documentary 'evidence' and narrative invention. An introductory essay by Ansgar Niinning outlines a theoretical approach to the study of recent historical biography. Niinning draws an important distinction between 'fic? tional biography' and 'biographical metafiction': the former strives for a 'neutralfe] 254 Reviews Vermittlung des Geschehens, ohne Aufmerksamkeit auf die Erzahlinstanz oder die Prozesse der narrativen Strukturierungzu ziehen' (p. 23), while the latter foregrounds the process of reconstructing and representing historical events. Niinning's scheme is heavily indebted to the work of Linda Hutcheon, but he refines her concept of 'historiographical metafiction' by stressing that the representational problems of biographical writing can be thematized 'implicitly' (that is, by purely formal means) as well as explicitly through narratorial intervention. The typologist's mania for classification...

Fachexperten und Leitungskader: Karrieren von Angeh?rigen der oberen Dienstklasse der DDR nach der Wende

The breakdown of the Berlin Wall and the politi cal transition of East Germany after 1989 raised the ques tion, whether the former socialist elite would, at least partly, be successful in keeping their influential positions. Based on considerations about the differentiation of occupational careers in the GDR, the article explores the fate of persons belonging to two different groups within the East German upper service class: professionals and managers (i.e. admin istrative personnel). Data from the East German Life His tory Study allow us to trace the periods of unemployment and self-employment as well as upward and downward moves in the hierarchy of occupational status positions of 209 women and men from 1989 until 1996. As expected, former managers faced much greater risks of occupational discontinuity and downward mobility than former profes sionals. Further analyses show that this difference is caused mainly by the higher employment risks of female managers, and by the low career prospects for highly qualified East German women outside of the public sector.