Full Description
This volume is dedicated to the study of artistic and historical documents that recall German left-wing terrorism in the 1970s. It is intended to contribute to a better understanding of this violent epoch in Germany's recent past and the many ways it is remembered.
The cultural memory of the RAF past is a useful device to disentangle the complex relationship between terror and the arts. This bond has become a particularly pressing matter in an era of a new, so-called global terrorism when the culture industry is obviously fascinated with terror.
Fourteen scholars of visual cultures and contemporary literature offer in-depth investigations into the artistic process of engaging with West Germany's era of political violence in the 1970s. The assessments are framed by two essays from historians: one looks back at the previously ignored anti-Semitic context of 1970s terrorism, the other offers a thought-provoking epilogue on the extension of the so-called Stammheim syndrome to the debate on the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. The contributions on cultural memory argue that any future memory of German left-wing terrorism will need to acknowledge the inseparable bond between terror and the artistic response it produces.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Gerrit-Jan BERENDSE and Ingo CORNILS: Introduction: The Long Shadow of Terrorism
Prologue
Gerd KOENEN: Armed Innocence, or 'Hitler's Children' Revisited
Depicting Dead Terrorists
Eric KLIGERMAN: Transgenerational Hauntings: Screening the Holocaust in Gerhard Richter's October 18, 1977 Paintings
Carrie COLLENBERG: Dead Holger
Sarah COLVIN: Ulrike Marie Meinhof as Woman and Terrorist: Cultural Discourses of Violence and Virtue
Literary Representations
Sabine von DIRKE: The RAF as Trauma and Pop Icon in Literature since the 1980s
Charity SCRIBNER: Engendering the Subject of Terror: Friedrich Christian Delius and Friedrich Dürrenmatt in the Mid-1980s
Ingo CORNILS: Joined at the Hip? The Representation of the German Student Movement and Left-Wing Terrorism in Recent Literature
Sven KRAMER: Christian Geissler: Critical Companion of the Left
Gerrit-Jan BERENDSE: Shakespeare's Children in Dialogue: Erich Fried and Heiner Müller
Birgit HAAS: Terrorism and Theatre in Germany
Cinematic Imageries
Julian PREECE: Reinscribing the German Autumn: Heinrich Breloer's Todesspiel and the Two Clusters of German 'Terrorist' Films
Chris HOMEWOOD: Making Invisible Memory Visible: Communicative Memory and Taboo in Andres Veiel's Black Box BRD
Annette VOWINCKEL: Skyjacking: Cultural Memory and the Movies
Gabriele MUELLER: Imagining the RAF from an East German Perspective: Carow's Vater, Mutter, Mörderkind and Dresen's Raus aus der Haut
Ewout van der KNAAP: The New Executioners' Arrival: German Left-Wing Terrorism and the Memory of the Holocaust
Epilogue
Jeremy VARON: Stammheim Forever and the Ghosts of Guantánamo: Cultural Memory and the Politics of Incarceration
Select Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Photographic Credits
Index
