Cultural Studies of Modern Germany

The opening of the Berlin Wall uncovered a host of political, cultural, and historical concerns. The German past, which seemed frozen beneath the divisions of the Cold War, has re-emerged, eliciting both enthusiasm and apprehension. Russell A. Berman argues that, for the Germans, national unity will mean either encompassing democracy or exclusionary politics - a dilemma that is far from new in German history. Berman probes the ambiguities of German nationhood. Taking the theoretical perspective of cultural studies, he looks at literature, painting, and film from the 19th and 20th centuries, to consider how nationhood is constituted and how it can be represented, what separates it from other populations, and how the legacy of history frames the definition of identities and institutions in the present.