Humor, Saire, and Identity

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ISBN: 9783110195996 | 3110195992
Cover: Hardcover
Copyright: 9/30/2007

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This is the first book in English to explore the Eastern German literary trend of the 1990s employing humor and satire to come to terms with socialism's failure and a difficult unification process. The ten novels in this survey include works by Brussig, Schulze, and Hensel. These popular, contemporary texts help define Germany today from a specific, East German perspective. Grounded in politics and history, the texts are analyzed for their literary aesthetics, cultural critiques, and socio-political insights. Several original author interviews are appended as primary sources.

Acknowledgements	p. v
Introduction: Humor and Satire as Responses to the Wende	p. 1
A Typology of Satirical Genres in Eastern German Texts	p. 9
Defining Humor and Satire	p. 13
The Question of Utopia in Eastern German Satire	p. 17
Irony, Parody, the Grotesque, and the Absurd	p. 21
The Comic Survivor: Self-Irony and Defensiveness in the Post-Wende Transition	p. 25
Thomas Rosenlocher's Die Wiederentdeckung des Gehens beim Wandern	p. 27
The Hapless Wanderer as East German Anachronism	p. 31
The Mock Harz Pilgrimage as the Quest for a New Identity	p. 34
Guilt by Association: Western Stereotypes and Eastern Defensive Metaphors	p. 37
Irrational Fears and Fantastical Threats: A Dream Interpretation	p. 41
The Transitional Identity: Ostalgie and Alienation	p. 43
Bernd Schirmer's Schlehweins Giraffe	p. 46
The Giraffe as an Allegory for Eastern Germans	p. 47
Fooling Around: Schirmer's Comical Narrator	p. 50
Western and Eastern German (Stereo)typical Characters	p. 54
Self-Reflexive Satire: Coming to Terms with Past and Present through Writing	p. 55
Jens Sparschuh's Der Zimmerspringbrunnen	p. 58
Hinrich Lobek's Exaggerated Optimism as Epic Humor	p. 59
Lobek's Symptomatic Speechlessness	p. 62
Test the West: How Lobek Learns the Salesman's Trade	p. 63
The Rise and Fall of a Salesman	p. 67
Conclusions: Transition and Liberation	p. 69
The Picaresque as a Means to Reckon with the GDR	p. 72
The Picaresque Genre and its Applicability to Postwall Texts	p. 76
Thomas Brussig's Helden wie wir	p. 79
The Hyperbolic Confession as Critique of Official Accounts of the Fall of the Wall and Media Representations of the Stasi	p. 84
The Family as Source of Pathology and Metonymn for the GDR	p. 88
Subverting Socialist Ideals with the Perverse Body	p. 92
Deflating Stasi Manipulation and Abuse of Language	p. 99
Bashing Christa Wolf: Brussig's Attacks on GDR Intellectuals, Women, and Ostalgie	p. 105
Matthias Biskupek's Der Quotensachse	p. 111
A Typically Saxon Opportunist	p. 113
The Politically Correct Gangster	p. 118
East-West Stereotypes: Mario Zwintzscher Takes on the West	p. 121
Die fruher vormals ehemalige Ex-DDR: Linguistic Playfulness	p. 123
Episodic Narration and (Auto)biography as Factual Distortion	p. 124
Reinhard Ulbrich's Spur der Broiler	p. 126
Bildungsroman or Picaresque Novel?	p. 129
(A)typical Characters and the Socialist Collective Mentality	p. 133
Exposing Absurd Socialist Language with Childhood Naivete	p. 136
The Ideology of Consumer Culture	p. 137
Conclusions: Why the Picaresque in Post-Wende Narratives?	p. 143
Regional Identities and Family Feuds under the Microscope of Ironic Realism	p. 149
Erich Loest's Katerfruhstuck	p. 153
Opposites Don't Always Attract: Western Self vs. Eastern Other	p. 158
Regional Mentalities and Dialects as Sources of Satire	p. 164
Bruderkrieg: Aesthetic Ideals vs. Hard Realities in West and East	p. 167
Guns, Violence, and Bodily Functions: Less Funny Uses for the Grotesque and Scatology	p. 171
A Hangover Breakfast to Follow the Euphoria	p. 174
Ingo Schulze's Simple Storys	p. 175
The Local Meets the Global in "Provincial" Eastern Germany	p. 180
Biographical Ruptures: Tragicomic Eastern German Stories	p. 184
Egoism, Mortality, and the Environment	p. 187
Self-Parody and Crime Story Hyperbole in the "Wild East"	p. 191
Conclusions: Binaries and (Un)successful Identities	p. 193
Grotesque Configurations of Body, Language, and Narrative as Expressions of Trauma and Refractory Identities	p. 196
Defining the Grotesque	p. 200
The Grotesque in Postwar West and East German Literature	p. 204
Volker Braun's Der Wendehals	p. 208
Reincarnating Hinze and Kunze?: The Origins of Braun's Satire	p. 212
Schaber's Grotesque and Absurd Traumatized Body	p. 223
Braun's Rhetorically Complex, Cabaret-Like Language	p. 229
From Utopia to "Experience": Gerhard Schulze and Jon Elster	p. 235
Moving Beyond Satirical Critiques: Seven Short Stories	p. 239
Kerstin Hensel's Gipshut	p. 244
Grotesque Bodies: A "Neuer Mensch" and a Socialist Heroine	p. 246
Hensel's Ironic and Grotesque Language	p. 252
Grotesque Narratives Part 1: The Picaresque Antagonist	p. 258
Grotesque Narratives Part 2: Fairy Tales and the Fantastic	p. 265
Grotesque Narratives Part 3: The Quest-Romance Novel	p. 273
The Multigenre Technique: Gipshut vs. Auditorium panopticum vs. Thomas Brussig vs. GDR Feminist Writers	p. 276
Conclusions: Pessimism, Utopia, and the Individual	p. 280
Conclusion: Building an Eastern German Identity by Sustaining and Subverting Past and Present German Society	p. 286
The New Character of Eastern German Humor and Satire	p. 290
Satirical Stereotypes and Unruly Identities	p. 295
The Quandary of Utopia	p. 300
The Paradox of Identity-Building Through Humor and Satire	p. 304
Positioning Eastern Humor in a Wider German Context	p. 307
Appendices	p. 311
Interview with Bernd Schirmer	p. 313
Interview with Matthias Biskupek	p. 325
Interview with Thomas Rosenlocher	p. 341
Interview with Jens Sparschuh	p. 369
Interview with Reinhard Ulbrich	p. 384
Works Consulted	p. 409
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Humor, Saire, and Identity

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