Book contents
- Frontmatter
- POLITICS: Détente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968-1990
- SECURITY: German-American Security Relations, 1968-1990
- ECONOMICS: Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict: Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968-1990
- CULTURE: Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict
- 1 American Cultural Policy Toward Germany
- 2 The Third Pillar of Foreign Policy: West German Cultural Policy in the United States
- 3 The Study of Germany in the United States
- 4 American Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1990
- 5 In the Shadow of the Federal Republic: Cultural Relations Between the GDR and the United States
- 6 American Literature in Germany
- 7 The American Reception of Contemporary German Literature
- 8 The Americanization of the German Language
- 9 Between Blight and Blessing: The Influence of American Popular Culture on the Federal Republic
- 10 Popular Music in Germany: Experimentation and Emancipation from Anglo-American Models
- 11 Hollywood in Germany
- 12 New German Cinema as National Cinema
- 13 Transatlantic Reflections: German and American Television
- 14 Performance Theater in the Age of Post-Drama
- 15 Beyond Painting and Sculpture: German-American Exchange in the Visual Arts
- 16 The Rediscovery of the City and Postmodern Architecture
- 17 Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective
- 18 Confrontations with the Holocaust in the Era of the Cold War: German and American Perspectives
- SOCIETY: German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968-1990
- 1 “1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences
- OUTLOOK: America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War
- Index
6 - American Literature in Germany
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- POLITICS: Détente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968-1990
- SECURITY: German-American Security Relations, 1968-1990
- ECONOMICS: Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict: Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968-1990
- CULTURE: Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict
- 1 American Cultural Policy Toward Germany
- 2 The Third Pillar of Foreign Policy: West German Cultural Policy in the United States
- 3 The Study of Germany in the United States
- 4 American Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1990
- 5 In the Shadow of the Federal Republic: Cultural Relations Between the GDR and the United States
- 6 American Literature in Germany
- 7 The American Reception of Contemporary German Literature
- 8 The Americanization of the German Language
- 9 Between Blight and Blessing: The Influence of American Popular Culture on the Federal Republic
- 10 Popular Music in Germany: Experimentation and Emancipation from Anglo-American Models
- 11 Hollywood in Germany
- 12 New German Cinema as National Cinema
- 13 Transatlantic Reflections: German and American Television
- 14 Performance Theater in the Age of Post-Drama
- 15 Beyond Painting and Sculpture: German-American Exchange in the Visual Arts
- 16 The Rediscovery of the City and Postmodern Architecture
- 17 Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective
- 18 Confrontations with the Holocaust in the Era of the Cold War: German and American Perspectives
- SOCIETY: German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968-1990
- 1 “1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences
- OUTLOOK: America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War
- Index
Summary
Translated by Sally E. Robertson
Just as Rainer Maria Gerhardt (1927-54) became fascinated by American poetry in the late 1940s, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (1940-75) fell under the spell of American culture and literature twenty years later. In 1969, the anthologies Brinkmann edited on his own and in collaboration with Ralf-Rainer Rygulla served as a clarion call for a generation eager to depart from the conventions of the Adenauer era. The contents of the two volumes reflected this, particularly the composition of Acid. Prose texts by Charles Bukowski were juxtaposed with essays by recognized scholars, such as Leslie Fiedler and Marshall McLuhan, and interviews with pop idols, such as Frank Zappa and Andy Warhol; poetry by everyone from Ted Berrigan to Michael McClure was interspersed with comics and photos that often focused on sex and violence. The intention, wrote the editors, was to create an “overall climate” to convey “the big picture of a coherent sensitivity,” a picture comprised of “both the trivial and high culture . . . for which such terms as pop or subculture [were] inadequate.” In retrospect, Acid's politics anticipated the new complexity of the times; aesthetically it anticipated the Internet era, in which the boundaries between serious and popular culture seem to have disappeared. Characteristically, the editors began their book with a quotation from Rimbaud fan Jim Morrison of the American rock group The Doors, thus emphasizing that they sought to question traditional ideas of culture and propagate new heroes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990A Handbook, pp. 312 - 318Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004