Im Schatten der Geschichte: Neuere amerikanische Essayistik zu Deutschland und den Deutschen

doi:10.1515/zaa.2005.53.1.71

Abstract

The present paper is a contribution to imagological studies on the image of Germany and the Germans in current American discourses. It starts with a view on how this image is negotiated in contemporary American fiction, taking Walter Abish’s How German Is It (1980) as a major example. In a further step, this analysis will be contextualized with the findings of recent research which has borne out that the image of contemporary Germany in current American discourses, apart from being influenced by a set of long-lived clichés and stereotypes, is still heavily shaped by Germany’s Nazi past. The study will then focus on the image of Germany projected in various feature articles of the New Yorker, a magazine famous for its critical approach and its high intellectual standing. The analysis covers material from roughly a decade before and after reunification (1981-2003). A chapter will be devoted to the contributions of Jane Kramer, the magazine’s long-standing German and European correspondent, who can be regarded as one of the most knowledgeable foreign observers of Germany today. The analysis will show that, in spite of their comparatively high level of sophistication, the discourse on Germany and the Germans in these articles is informed by a hermeneutics of suspicion that produces and perpetuates a somewhat static and less complex picture of contemporary Germany than one would wish for

Im Schatten der Geschichte: Neuere amerikanische Essayistik zu Deutschland und den Deutschen

Abstract

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