Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?
- “In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950
- “Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! …” History and Morality in Hochhuth's Effis Nacht
- Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics
- Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel's Liedertheater
- Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers' Responses to the Demise of the GDR
- A Worm's Eye View and a Bird's Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989
- Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: National Memory Management and the Dialectic of Normality in the “Berlin Republic”
- “Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge
- Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel's Liedertheater
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?
- “In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950
- “Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! …” History and Morality in Hochhuth's Effis Nacht
- Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics
- Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel's Liedertheater
- Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers' Responses to the Demise of the GDR
- A Worm's Eye View and a Bird's Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989
- Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: National Memory Management and the Dialectic of Normality in the “Berlin Republic”
- “Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge
- Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Mensching and Wenzel: Reassessing the Proletarian Tradition
THE POLITICAL SONG scene of the GDR in many ways illustrated the interdependence of culture and politics in that state. Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler's Kampflieder, and indeed the whole tradition of 1920s proletarian artistic protest, was viewed as cultural Erbe and promoted as such. From the birth of the GDR onwards this tradition was nurtured in the schools, the army, and later in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ)- Singegruppen. Two writers who grew up through these institutions were Steffen Mensching (born 1958) and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel (born 1955). They are generally known in the context of the alternative young poets' scene which emerged in the vicinity of Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin in the late 1970s. Not much is known, however (outside of insider circles in East Germany), about their activities in the Liedertheater group Karls Enkel. Highly popular in the Liedermacher milieu, their productions between 1977 and 1985 were deemed too risky for publication. Videos and manuscripts survive, however, in the former Lied-Zentrum of the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin. From these one recognizes a clear identification with artistic techniques developed by literary cabaret, dada, and proletarian revue and theatre of the 1920s.
A major preoccupation of Wenzel and Mensching in their poetry as in their Liedertheater productions was their reassessment of the proletarian revolutionary tradition. This had always been a subject of great sensitivity in the GDR.
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- Politics and Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany , pp. 143 - 162Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003