Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 131 BOOK REVIEWS Reluctant Skeptic: Siegfried Kracauer and the Crises of Weimar Culture by Harry T. Craver, Berghahn Books, 2017. 284 pp. $130.00 Peter Thompson University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign In recent years, debates over the nature of political theology have gained a new resonance in America’s intellectual landscape. In his 2017 book The Once and Future Liberal, the historian Mark Lilla has expressed concerns over the possibility of an increasingly powerful political theology on the left. He writes, “At times our more privileged campuses can seem stuck in the world of archaic religion”1. When reading the New York Times op-ed section where Lilla first voiced his worries over dogmatic political attitudes, one can also find a myriad of pieces comparing the current American political climate to that of the Weimar Republic. Often overwrought and under-evidenced, these articles nevertheless reveal a current sense of shared political anxieties. Harry T. Craver’s new book Reluctant Skeptic: Siegfried Kracauer and the Crises of Weimar Culture (part of the SPEKTRUM series from the German Studies Association) places Weimar-era debates over political theology back into a carefully constructed historical context. Serving primarily as an intellectual biography of Siegfried Kracauer’s early works, the book creates a vivid and wide-ranging account of Weimar intellectuals in their encounter with both the concept of modernity and the loss of traditional religion. Craver terms this encounter one of “secularization” (5). By this, he does mean the wholesale destruction of religious belief, but rather the slow and nonlinear adjustment of religious language to modern contexts—the process of “worlding” religious concepts or translating them for the modern disposition. Craver provides two justifications for the use of Siegfried Kracauer (1889–1966) as an aperture for these debates. First, Kraucauer’s work from before the late 1920s was directly concerned with the disenchantment of the modern world, which he saw as a direct product of modernity’s increasing detachment from religion. Second, Kracauer wrote from what he called an “extraterritorial” position in Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 132 society (9). Due to Kracauer’s unusual physical appearance, indeterminate sexuality, and Jewishness, he positioned himself as an outsider in all spheres of life (10). Craver is quick to point out that while Kracauer’s self-perception gave him unique insight into intellectual debates and allowed him to traverse assumed political divides, he was not a pariah. Kracauer was uneasy with his role as a Weimar intellectual, but he remained well-connected to intellectual spheres throughout the 1920s (this is what allows Craver’s book to touch on so many Weimar-era thinkers). Siegfried Kracauer is most known today for his post-World War II film criticism and his loose association with the Frankfurt School. However, Craver’s first chapter brings us back to Kracauer’s formative years in Wilhelminian Germany. In what Craver reveals as the surprisingly intellectually active city of Frankfurt, Kracauer was raised in a fairly secular Jewish household (36–41). In his early years, he was attracted to works of Lebensphilosophie that distinguished between life-affirming culture and the corrupting influence of civilization (44). This inspired a pessimistic view of modernity that chastised thinkers who applied scientific rationality for the solution to existential problems (44). For Kracauer, the only possible answers to these problems lay in religiosity, even though he himself resisted identifying with any religious group (47). Craver argues that Kracauer’s opposition to all large metaphysical systems stemmed from his sympathetic reading of Georg Simmel. Kracauer agreed with Simmel’s insistence on a measured worm’s-eye view of society, but parted ways in his valuation of so-called low culture (50). Kracauer viewed society in an unresolvable conflict with the individual in which society provided acceptable forms of expression for individual feeling. He saw the increasing secularization of modernity as a curtailment of the expression of inner spirituality, resulting in a destructive and deformed society (53). One of the book’s strengths is showing the ways in which Kracauer’s idiosyncratic thought cut across traditionally-understood political positions, revealing the complexity of the Wilhelminian and Weimar intellectual worlds. While Kracauer (usually labeled as a leftist) could not be described as descending into irrationalism, he supported critiques of modern rationality and science with references to the importance of religious tradition (56). The book’s second chapter is concerned with the intellectual reaction to World War I and the revival of religious symbolism. Craver navigates Kracauer’s reception of works from Max Scheler, Ernst Bloch, Max Brod, and Oswald Spengler. Pulling from the phenomenologist Scheler, Kracauer was convinced by a philosophy concerned with material reality. While he engaged a form of materialism from the left, he rejected the messianism of Bloch’s Marxism (71, 76). Between the Scylla and Charybdis of Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 133 idealism and materialism, Kracauer sought “a median course for his critical project—a position that lay somewhere between the discourse of utopian imagination and historical relativism, between the messianic and the materialist, between the late imperial cultural criticism and the radical impulses of the first years of the republic” (92). While Craver succeeds in arguing that Kracauer’s theoretical concerns were largely geared towards problems of religion, he admits that most of Kracauer’s early papers were lost during his escape from Germany in 1933 (39). Thus, there is a level of conjecture in the formative influences on Kracauer’s religious concerns, and the book relies heavily on correspondence from the papers of associated intellectuals and Kracauer’s published writings. The third and fourth chapters see Kracauer in his position as the leading film and literature editor at the Frankfurter Zeitung. There, Kracauer attempted to find his third way of cultural criticism in his unpublished 1925 book The Detective Novel. In hardboiled detective stories, Kracauer saw a Kierkegaardian allegory for the ways in which spiritual truths could be found in the modern cityscape. Existing in the gap between the rational and irrational, the aesthetic and ethical, the detective revealed “divine meaning” in a tainted world (113). This represented Kracauer’s belief that the sacred must first pass through the profane in order to find new meaning in the modern world. Craver then examines Kracauer’s reception of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish intellectual attempts to produce a new religiosity in the 1920s. Craver writes, “For Kracauer, a secularized theology was a…means of trying to prevent the lapse into ideology and myth. To his mind, religious institutions had failed to confront the problem, and the new religions were more of a danger than a solution” (197). Thus, Kracauer was left without a spiritual home, a flâneur in the modern city of existential contradictions. Craver concludes by revealing the ways in which Kracauer’s later cultural criticism served as his method of engaging with the problems of modernity. Craver describes Kracauer’s intellectual position as “hesitant openness” (210) and gestures to his concern for the creation of a new concept that mediated the collective and the individual. Rejecting both the dangerously secularized religious cult and vulgar Soviet Marxism, Kracauer remained loyal only to his own dialectical method (222). Through a specific form of secular hermeneutics, low culture could reveal moments of religiosity in the negative (247, 253). By the early 1930s, Kracauer saw the value of this project in relation to his average white-collar newspaper reader, believing that the perceived existential angst of modernity had enormous political consequences. Thus, while Craver has primarily shown “how these rival discourses [on religion and political theology] functioned within a specific intellectual milieu and how they related to a particular idea of criticism’s Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 134 potential,” he also gestures to Nazism as a possible consequence of grotesque attempts to religiously reenchant modernity (236). Craver’s writing is dense but lucid, carefully unpacking the intellectual concepts of each thinker. While the content of this book speaks to major themes in the history of the Weimar Republic, it will not be of great interest to non-specialists. This is intellectual history in its most hermetic form, only referencing historical events in their relationship to the development and spread of ideas. Following the renewed optimism in the field of intellectual history, Craver has provided a text that gives clarity and depth to historicized ideas. This is most valuable when placed alongside supplementary cultural and social histories2. However, there is also irony in creating an intellectual history of a man like Kracauer who did not wish to be considered an intellectual and continually stressed the importance of contextualizing ideas in the material world. Nevertheless, Craver’s book adds much to our understanding of 1920s German religious thought, Siegfried Kracauer’s oeuvre, and the wider Weimar intellectual world. While the book deftly hints at further trajectories for its themes and questions, concerns over the nature of political theology have undoubtedly arisen again today (24–25). Mann–Männer–Männlichkeiten. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge aus den Masculinity Studies by Susanne Hochreiter and Silvia Stoller, Praesens Verlag, 2018. 178 pp. 28.70€ Antonia Villinger Universität zu Köln „Im US-Präsidentschaftswahlkampf 2016 repräsentiert der umstrittene Kandidat der Republikanischen Partei Donald Trump, inzwischen Präsident der USA, eine durchsetzungsfähige, rücksichtslose, weiße Männlichkeit, die gerade durch rüpelhafte Ignoranz punkten konnte“ (S.10), konstatieren Susanne Hochreiter und Silvia Stoller in der Einführung ihres 2018 herausgegebenen Bands Mann–Männer–Männlichkeiten. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge aus den Masculinity Studies. Mit Blick auf den aktuellen tagespolitischen Diskurs präsentiert der Sammelband entsprechend fächerübergreifende Beiträge zur Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 135 gesellschaftlichen Repräsentation von Männlichkeiten. Beginnend im 19. bis hin ins 21. Jahrhundert arbeiten die acht Beiträger und Beiträgerinnen Männlichkeitsbilder aus sozialanthropologischer (Herta Nöbauer), literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlicher (Barbara Hindinger, Volker Woltersdorff, Susanne Hochreiter), soziologischer (Paul Scheibelhofer, Sylka Scholz), philosophischer (Silvia Stoller) und anthropologischer (Ulrike Prattes) Perspektive überzeugend auf. Die gesellschaftliche Relevanz des Themenschwerpunkts wird in der Einleitung präzise an aktuellen politisch-gesellschaftlichen Ereignissen und den darin mitverhandelten Konzepten von Männlichkeit dargelegt. Angeführt werden von den Herausgeberinnen neben Donald Trump als Muster von hegemonialer Männlichkeit (vgl. S. 10) auch die Verbindung von Gewalt und Männlichkeit (vgl. S. 11f.), insbesondere bei antifeministischen Väterrechts- und Männerbewegungen (vgl. S. 14), sowie der rechtspopulistische Entwurf einer kämpferischen, heterosexuellen Männlichkeit (vgl. S. 19). Diese Szenarien geben schließlich die Rahmung für die akademische und intellektuelle Auseinandersetzung mit gesellschaftlich konstruierten Männlichkeitsbildern. Für die vorliegende Rezension werden im Folgenden exemplarisch vier der acht Beiträge mit Fokus auf die illustrierten Männlichkeitsentwürfe betrachtet. Das Männlichkeitsbild im 19. Jahrhundert erforscht Barbara Hindinger in ihrem literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Aufsatz Männliche Frust- und Leiderfahrungen. Überlegungen zur männlichen Rolle in der Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert. Sie stellt ihren Untersuchungen die These voran, dass die „durch Rollendruck entstehende Frustrations- und Leiderfahrungen literarischer Männer des 19. Jahrhunderts“ (S. 47) in den von ihr ausgewählten literarischen Texten transparent gemacht werden. Entsprechend seien „Männerfiguren nicht immer nur als Privilegieninhaber und Täter, sondern auch als unglückliche Opfer gesellschaftlicher Rollenvorstellungen“ (Ebd.) zu sehen. Anschaulich arbeitet die Verf. diese Beobachtung an zentralen Textstellen in Friedrich Hebbels Dramentexten Genoveva (1841) und Maria Magdalena (1843), der Erzählung Effi Briest (1896) von Theodor Fontane sowie Gerhard Hauptmanns Michael Kramer (1900) heraus. Alle vier Texte zusammenführend konstatiert Hindinger schließlich im Fazit, dass „das Leiden an der männlichen Geschlechterrolle“ (S. 59) über das Jahrhundert hinweg zunehme. So werden die Protagonisten in den Dramen Hebbels von der „männliche[n] Ehrbegrifflichkeit […] unter Druck [ge]setzt“ (ebd.). Demgegenüber stünden die männlichen Figuren aus Effi Briest und Michael Kramer, welche exemplarisch die zweite Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts darstellen. An diesen wird laut Verf. deutlich, dass „das soziokulturelle Männlichkeitsideal in der ganzen Spannbreite seiner Funktions- und Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 136 Eigenschaftszuschreibung […] die Männer zu unglücklich Leidenden macht“ (59f.). Susanne Hochreiter widmet sich in ihrem Beitrag den von der österreichischen Frauenrechtlerin, feministischen Schriftstellerin und Kulturphilosophin Rosa Mayreder (1858–1938) entworfenen Geschlechterbildern in den Schriften Von der Männlichkeit (1905) sowie Krise der Väterlichkeit, welche in der 1923 publizierten Schrift Geschlecht und Kultur enthalten ist. Überzeugend aufgearbeitet wird von der Verf. das in den Essays formulierte „Missverhältnis zwischen strikten Geschlechternormen und modernen Lebensbedingungen“ (S. 135): Mayreder verweise auf die kulturelle Konstruktion von Geschlecht (vgl. S. 133) und fordere zudem eine „Veränderung der sozialen Stellung der Frauen [...], die entscheidend für den Wandel von Geschlechterordnung und Familien“ (S. 141) seien. Diese „Kritik am Patriarchat und an autoritären Familienstrukturen“ (ebd.) betrachtet Hochreiter im zweiten Teil des Aufsatzes mit Blick auf den zeitgenössischen öffentlichen Diskurs in Österreich. Sie markiert Mayreder „als eine der ersten feministischen Denker_innen“ (S. 145), in deren Schriften bereits „nach der Funktion einer spezifischen Geschlechterordnung“ (ebd.) gefragt wird. Im Interview mit dem Sozialwissenschaftler und Geschlechterforscher Paul Scheibelhofer wird die Verknüpfung von Männlichkeit und Gewalt (vgl. S. 64) anhand von soziologischen Studien zu männerbündischen Strukturen präzise erläutert. Scheibelhofer vertritt die These, dass Männerbünde das „‚Rückgrat‘ patriarchalischer Geschlechterverhältnisse darstellen“ (S. 65) und in „unterschiedlichen Spielarten die Gesellschaft durchziehen und an verschiedensten Orten“ (Ebd.) wie Schulhöfen, Sportvereinen, Gefängnissen, Universitäten und in der Politik zu finden sind. Diese Zusammenschlüsse produzieren gesellschaftliche Ein- und Ausschlussmechanismen, welche sowohl auf der Verschaltung von Macht und Ressourcen als auch von Nähe und Intimität basieren. Menschen, die nicht dem Muster von hegemonialer Männlichkeit – hier bezieht sich Scheibelhofer auf die wichtige Studie Masculinities von Raewyn W. Connell – entsprechen, haben keinen Zugang zu den Bünden und somit auch nicht zur Macht. Um diese Form von „männliche[r] Herrschaft zu überwinden“ (S.75), braucht es, nach Scheibelhofer, von Männern „den Mut […] sich von männerbündischen Strukturen zu emanzipieren“ (Ebd.). Auch der Beitrag Postsoziale Männlichkeiten. Kontinuitäten und Brüche in ostdeutschen Männlichkeitskonstrukten von Sylka Scholz situiert sich an der Schnittstelle von Masculinity Studies und Sozialwissenschaft. Die Studie arbeitet überzeugend heraus, „dass das in der Männlichkeitsforschung dominierende Konzept der hegemonialen Männlichkeit auch für die Analyse (post-)sozialistischer Gesellschaften ertragreich genutzt werden kann“ (S. 113). Hierfür setzt die Verf. mediale Inszenierungen Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 137 von Männlichkeit in der ehemaligen DDR (Polizeiruf 110, Abbildungen in Illustrierten sowie der Film Good Bye, Lenin) mit Ergebnissen aus der biografischen Forschung produktiv in Bezug (vgl. S. 114). Zunächst skizziert Scholz präzise die gesellschaftliche Transformation nach „dem politischen Zusammenbruch des Sozialismus Ende der 1980er-Jahre“ (S. 117): Sie attestiert eine „weitgehende Übernahme westdeutscher kultureller Muster und Diskurse in Ostdeutschland“ (S. 119), die sich besonders auf das Geschlechterbild auswirkten. Für die Frau, die unter der SED-Regierung fast vollständig in den Arbeitsmarkt integriert war, verschlechterten sich nach der Wiedervereinigung die Erwerbschancen. Zudem etablierte sich ein ungleiches soziales Machtverhältnis zwischen Männern aus Ost- und Westdeutschland (vgl. S. 118f.), das beispielsweise auch in der Medienlandschaft unreflektiert inszeniert wurde. Als Beispiel führt die Verf. die erste Gemeinschafsproduktion der beiden TV-Serien Polizeiruf 110 und Tatort im Jahr 1990 an. In der Produktion stehen „die filmischen Männlichkeitskonstruktionen […] nicht gleichwertig nebeneinander“ (S. 121). Der westdeutsche Tatortkommissar Schimanski werde als positives Gegenbild zu seinem ostdeutschen Kollegen Fuchs – der trinke und sich prügele (vgl. ebd.) – inszeniert. Einen weiteren inhaltlichen Schwerpunkt setzt Scholz auf die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion von sozialistischen Heldenkonzepten, die ein politisches Arbeiterideal verkörpern sollen. Der im Jahr 2003 erstmals in den Kinos ausgestrahlte Film Good Bye, Lenin nehme beispielsweise Rekurs auf dieses Konzept. Wenn der Kosmonautenheld Sigmund Jähn die Rahmenhandlung des Films konstituiere, avanciere dieser gleichzeitig zu einem „postsozialistischen Helden“ (S. 126). Konstruiert werde damit „eine politische Männlichkeit“ (S.126), die wiederrum Technik und Abenteuer in der männlichen Sphäre verankere. Die Zusammenstellung der einzelnen Beiträge erweist sich als eine grundlegende Materialsammlung für die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit den Masculinity Studies. Die Fülle der Interpretationen ermöglicht darüber hinaus einen guten zeitlichen sowie interdisziplinären Überblick zur Männlichkeitsforschung. Gerade der Rekurs auf aktuelle politisch-soziale Themen verdeutlicht die gesellschaftliche Wichtigkeit des Themas – auch noch in der heutigen Zeit. Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 138 Mad Mädchen: Feminism and Generational Conflict in Recent German Literature and Film by Margaret McCarthy, Berghahn Books, 2017. 270 pp. $120.00 Krista Bailie University of British Columbia In her first monograph, Mad Mädchen, Margaret McCarthy tackles the history and challenges of second- and third-wave feminisms in Germany through the lens of contemporary film, literature and media. The book begins with McCarthy’s personal remembrance of a discussion about the events of the Cologne attacks on New Year’s Eve 2015 – a fitting beginning for a text which bookends its discussion in relation to the media and its effects on feminist discourse – notably from within the feminist movements themselves. Referencing their televised debate in 2001, McCarthy uses Alice Schwarzer and Verona Feldbusch to represent the overarching themes of second and third-wave feminism. In doing so, she also asks them to epitomize her central metaphor which runs throughout the text, that of the mother-daughter relationship which has soured as the daughter seeks to disentangle herself from her mother’s stodgy and insular approaches. Through this relationship, women of the younger generation become the ‘Mad Mädchen’ who respond to earlier generations with anger and public rejections of their principles, specifically their blind spots in relation to ‘white privilege’ and other forms of difference. The first chapter opens with a description of Alice Schwarzer’s FrauenMediaTurm, located in Cologne, and the role that it has played in housing the production of second-wave thought through Schwarzer’s publication, EMMA. McCarthy offers a comprehensive history of the last fifty years of feminism in Germany, setting a strong foundation to understand the importance of the centrality of Schwarzer’s voice to the movement, the relationship of Schwarzer to American contemporaries such as Gloria Steinem and the circumstances that created a space for the generation that followed to rebel against their ‘mothers’. In particular, she points to Schwarzer’s preoccupation with ‘sameness’ which had the effect of creating an ‘exclusionary impulse’ amongst feminists. As McCarthy explains, in an effort to reject this framing, younger generations instead moved towards a more neoliberal ethos centered on self- determination and individuation which manifested in girl culture, overt sexual expression or ‘feminine’ Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 139 explorations in the form of self-fashioning. She notes how these explorations, commonly framed as public attacks on the tenants of second-wave feminism, could be instead considered as expressions of agency and an engagement with a playful performativity. Though she is careful to isolate the poignancy in a German context of these moments and the differences between German and American feminisms, such as the unique role motherhood plays in Germany to this day, the history offered is very much a Western history – a point that is never explicitly addressed. Because of this, the text suffers a lack of clarity around whose feminism is being discussed, instead applying the second- and third-wave feminisms over the entire country in a way that assumes the East was experiencing the same discourses as the West. Throughout the text, McCarthy deftly straddles the complexities of ‘I’ vs ‘We’ and the efficacy of both second- and third-wave programs, noting that this division seems to be at the heart of the debates. McCarthy challenges the teleological implications of the waves of feminism, questioning whether the third- wave is indeed more socially progressive as it too suffers from blind spots, namely the inability of many feminists to see or effectively deal with their position as ‘Alphamädchen’. She draws on many examples where contemporary feminists have failed to acknowledge their ‘whiteness’, have attempted to fix their racial blindness in bumbling, offensive ways or have refused to give up any of their privilege to assist disadvantaged women. It is in this debate that McCarthy seems to consider the younger generations to be somewhat misguided, noting the progress the second-wave initiatives made, despite their blind spots, and the problems of ‘neoliberal individualism’, notably that it cannot represent a collective and thus can only ever be about personal experiences. Drawing largely on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity alongside psychoanalytic philosophers such as Julia Kristeva, McCarthy explains the history of third-wave feminism from the perspective of the experiences and interior workings of the individual in an attempt to get inside the internal logic of the movement – a task which she asserts is best attempted through the use of contemporary film and literature. McCarthy acknowledges that application of mother-daughter tropes can flatten otherwise complex relationships and thus, offers a series of investigations into creative media from recent years which, through close reading, can nuance an otherwise simplistic distinction. The second and third chapters consider a series of literary works including Zöe Jenny’s The Pollen Room (1999), Alexa Hennig von Lange’s Relax (1999), Elke Nater’s Lies (1999) and Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands (2008) and Wrecked (2011) which, though part of the pop canon, offer a window into the current Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 140 feminist climate in Germany. As she herself notes, due to mixed reception, metaphors can be lacking and especially in these chapters, her choice to broadly apply the mother-daughter frame does at times feel as though the metaphor has been stretched to its limit. In particular, there is a decidedly psychoanalytic analysis of aspects of sexuality in these works as products of maternal desire that could have been more meaningfully explored. Despite the claim that pop culture outputs can complicate the mother-daughter binary and engage in self-referentiality in terms of its position relative to feminism, McCarthy notes that pop can actually confuse its messages, on the one hand they can create a mimetic act that can build bridges but on the other reduce feminism to a vapid investigation into individual expressions of femininity. The fourth chapter continues this project through the films The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) and Eight Miles High (2007). As both films directly relate to the historical moments, specifically the ’68 movement and the RAF, according to McCarthy they create a space for empathy through a contextual understanding of the struggles of earlier generations and the ‘impossibilities’ of their moment as a way to explain the limits to progress at that time. Schwarzer figures prominently in these investigations, considering these retrospective approaches in relation to the debates that were happening in the moment in both mainstream and feminist media. Ultimately, McCarthy concludes that the project of feminist advancement is largely ineffective in these films, considering them to be too straightforward to offer something new to the movements and overarching power structures. It is not until the fifth chapter that McCarthy begins to give examples of films that not only speak to female experience, but also contain within them a critique of feminism that suggests alternate possibilities. Christian Petzold’s The State I Am In (2000) and Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven (2007) are for McCarthy, alternatives to conventional cinematic portrayals of female experience. These films, she argues, offer a critical detachment from historical events, an opportunity to consider difference and the circumstances of women in rich and complex ways. Speaking directly to her central aim to consider the similarities in difference, these films complicate generational debates by considering cross-cultural female experiences and thus, creating more room for inclusivity and nuanced readings by viewers. With only a nod in the conclusion to the possibilities of a non-essentialized gender, my strongest criticism of the text is that McCarthy relies on normative gender roles for her argument. This is a shame in that it closes down the kind of possibilities she seeks to open through an exploration of difference. This criticism aside, the text not only frames current feminist debates effectively in relation to products of culture in Germany, but also offers relatively concrete suggestions for complicating the mother-daughter Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 141 oppositional binary. She points to the reader, asking them to consider their own positionality with a reminder that for feminism to advance and all women to benefit, there must be a sharing of power – some women will need to claim power and others forsake it. As a project which not only contextualizes a complex debate but offers new possibilities for a cohesive movement, Mad Mädchen is essential reading for scholars of German feminism and its histories. Turkish Guest Workers in Germany: Hidden Lives and Contested Borders 1960s to 1980s by Jennifer A. Miller, University of Toronto Press, 2018. 271 pp. $63.75 Meryem Deniz Stanford University One in five people in Germany now have, as it is termed, a migrant background; in other words, their parents or grandparents migrated to Germany in the latter half of the twentieth century. In the post- war era, Germany needed people from other countries, primarily from Turkey, to come as “guest-workers” (Gastarbeiter) and work in factories to manage a labor shortage during the country’s “economic miracle.” Yet these “guests” as well as their children often decide to stay in Germany instead, never to return to their home countries. Jennifer Miller’s 2018 book Turkish Guest Workers in Germany: Hidden Lives and Contested Borders, 1960s to 1980s (University of Toronto Press) shows how the personal stories of guest workers offer a new perspective for historians without which a comprehensive narrative of this particular period would be incomplete. They are groups of people with unique and hopeful experiences both before and during their journeys to the foreign place that would become their new “home.” In her introduction, Miller gives a detailed account of the journey of women and men who arrived in West Germany from Turkey during this era, five chapters in two sections, and a conclusion. She follows the guest worker experience from recruitment in Turkey through their voyage by train to Germany, their search for housing, to their attempts at being part of the social and cultural environment. Miller uses oral histories as well as official and state Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 142 documents to shed light on West German and East German policies, the practices of worker agencies, and employers. Miller argues that traditional narratives depicting migrants as a monolithic group of people provide an overly simplistic portrayal of the history of foreign workers in Germany. She aims instead to deliver “individual microhistories” (6) based on a more complex depiction, which highlights the stories of individual migrants. She benefits from transnational research conducted in Germany and Turkey and skillfully engages with political and sociological histories dating from the beginning of the guest worker program through the bilateral agreements. Weaving together interviews and archival material, Miller demonstrates that these individuals were able to find personal happiness and plan for the future despite poor conditions in the new country. More importantly, she emphasizes the fact that even though West German government programs were designed to treat non-German workers as labor rather than individuals, which resulted in exacerbation of their life conditions, Turkish workers chose to actively improve their quality of life and to resist the demeaning and humiliating treatments imposed upon them. The book’s introduction not only evinces Miller’s scholarly aims and contributions to historical, political, and sociological researches about Turkish workers in Germany, but also gives the reader an overall idea about the studies of historical and political contexts of the early Turkish presence in this country. In the first part (the first three chapters), Miller scrutinizes her subject through the framework of labor migration and conditions of settling and accommodation of workers after their arrival in Germany. The first chapter, “The Invitation,” informs the reader about the bilateral agreements between the West German and Turkish governments, the recruitment offices in Turkey, and the tedious, bureaucratic, and expensive application process which the West German government required from potential participants in the program. The applicants had to visit the recruitment offices multiple times and undergo lengthy, stressful, and humiliating examinations. As Miller shows, based on the belief in migrant workers as temporary labor who were used and dismissed as the employers requested, these processes heavily focused on extra-employment criteria such as health and literacy. Miller shows that the applicants were not solely exploited and humiliated in the process, but rather they were able to make use of the negative experiences and find “ways to negotiate the process on their own terms where possible” (39). The second chapter, “In Transit,” tells the stories of the recruited workers traveling on trains from Turkey to Germany (from Istanbul to Munich) and their first tangible interactions with Germans since the onset of the guest worker program. Miller argues that these train travels were loci of “transforming Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 143 individuals into guest workers” (58) and illustrates the workers’ first impressions of the treatment they could expect in West Germany. She depicts the incredibly inhumane conditions of these “special trains” (Sonderzüge) evoking images reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s wartime “transportation” of forcibly displaced individuals by cattle cars to concentration and death camps. Miller does not fail to emphasize the anxieties on the part of West German authorities about the country’s “Second World War and Holocaust tainted” (69) international image while continuing to subject the workers to poor and inhumane travel and accommodation conditions. In the chapter three, “Finding Homes,” Miller focuses on the housing arrangements and addresses the failings of informal interactions between Turkish migrants and the Germans, who managed their housing. She explains how employers first provided workers with inadequate housing and then landlords discriminated against them. Turkish guest workers were not only accommodated in unclean, overcrowded, and expensive dormitories, barracks and makeshift structures, but were also subject to invasive surveillance and supervision from dorm managers and staff who monitored sanitation and order and sabotaged the workers’ attempts to build communities. Moreover, Miller reveals the state’s hidden intentions and employers’ complicity in worsening the workers’ living conditions in order to encourage their eventual return to Turkey. More importantly, she convincingly illustrates these new settlements as spatial locations where the marginalization or “ghettoization” (104) of Turkish guest workers was established and thus fueled “their need for escapism in their private lives” (79). In order to endure the highly regulated and controlled aspects of both their work and private lives and exert “their own sense of self-determination” (97), they chose to explore night life, read diligently from sundown to sunup, drive on the autobahn or cross the borders and enter East Germany. In the second part of the book (in the fourth and fifth chapters), Miller concentrates on further issues regarding the discrimination of Turkish workers in Germany and continues to remind readers how they were often kept on the margins, frequently excluded from West German society and politics long after arrival. The West German government and majority communities failed to develop solidarity with the workers, which precipitated either escapism or labor activism on the part of the workers. Miller’s fourth chapter, “Contested Borders,” brings a significantly innovative approach to the studies of Turkish guest workers since she takes readers out of West Berlin and over the border into East Germany to explore workers’ roles “in divided Berlin” as “lovers, border crossers, and transgressors” (108). Even though she concentrates on the experiences of – out of hundred-thousands of female and Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 144 male workers – a very small segment of only male workers, who looked for love and adventure with East German women, Miller could connect her findings and analyses to her main argument formulated in the introduction and throughout the previous chapters. She sheds lights on this particular form of escapism and protest by Turkish male workers both on the Stasi’s documentation of Turkish citizens in East Germany and several personal accounts of workers. Miller writes that the difficulties, discrimination, and xenophobia the workers faced in West Germany paved the way for their “political, cultural, bodily, and linguistic” (109) border crossing to the East side to realize their dreams and plans. This chapter skillfully and intriguingly contributes to Miller’s central goal of presenting a more complex portrayal of Turkish guest workers, who appear here neither as solely exploited labor nor as discriminated individuals, but instead as individuals crossing political, economic, and culturally constructed borders, looking for “exploration, adventure, and perhaps a feeling of greater social freedom” (124). Guest workers play the role of transnational actors in the Cold War era in various senses: the Stasi regarded them both as threats for their intention to marry East German women, enabling their exit from the GDR, and as informants with “an ability to infiltrate a hard-to-police space” (123). The liminal status of these men is remarkable since they were seen as uncivilized “Easterners” by many West Germans and also the representatives of Western lifestyle and consumer culture by East Berliners. In the final chapter, “Imperfect Solidarities,” Miller underlines the problems the laborers experienced in West Germany due to economic and social changes in Europe, ubiquitous racism, and labor activism in the 1960s and 1970s and shows how the workers defied the trope of the “naïve, passive migrant” who was unwittingly exploited in the new country. Miller particularly emphasizes the role of female foreign workers in resisting and protesting capitalist exploitation, workplace inequality, and poor housing conditions and promoting solidarity between foreign workers and West German workers. She demonstrates that the roots of the wage disparity between the workers with immigration backgrounds and German workers lies in the discriminative treatment of West German labor unions, which promoted the idea of “light wage categories” (146). Turkish workers responded to these policies of trade unions and stepped forward to defend their rights as workers who worked in the same positions and deserved equal treatment. Miller convincingly presents the features of the labor movement in West Germany and argues that the activism both benefited all workers, regardless of background, at the factories where the strikes took place, and also challenged the imposed category of “guest worker,” switching the emphasis from “guest” to “worker”. Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 145 Miller’s book both encapsulates the longer economic, historical, and political history of Turkish- German immigrants and examines different perspectives of workers as individuals with unique and hopeful stories that surpass the data and traditional narratives that depict them solely as exploited workers and marginalized communities in Germany. She successfully demonstrates that Turkish workers actively attempted to determine their own live stories in this new country and to improve the working conditions in general. Her book reveals her extensive consultation with archived interviews and traditional narratives. However, she herself conducted few oral history interviews; still, they offered her many materials and opportunities to elaborate her main argument. She also used several literary works written by Turkish- German writers such Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Yade Kara to provide a deeper insight into the lives, dreams, plans, and achievements of foreign workers. Miller incorporated the fictional elements of literature into her historical, sociological and anthropological account of Turkish workers in Germany. Yet, her book would also have benefitted from a more thorough engagement with the oral history and memory studies, as well as the non-European scholarship on guest worker programs and literary and cinematic/theatrical works. In short, Miller’s book comprises five thoroughly-researched, well-presented and interesting chapters and provides scholars of twentieth-century German history and literature with a useful and necessary resource. Miller’s historicization in the introduction combined with her detailed narrative in the subsequent chapters provide a detailed and a comprehensible study. The book’s fluent narration, smooth structure, and vivid images such as drawings from instructional manuals and photographs are especially apt for lively classroom discussions. The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism By Lars Rensmann, Philosophy and Race Series. Albany: SUNY Press, 2017. 600 pp. $95.00 Benjamin R. Nestor Marquette University Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 146 Lars Rensmann builds on his previous work, Kritische Theorie über den Antisemitismus: Studien zu Struktur, Erklärungspotential und Aktualität (1998), investigating the intersection of Critical Theory and antisemitism studies with his recent publication, The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism. Given the centrality of the analysis of antisemitism within the works of prominent Critical Theorists, it may surprise readers that few academic works have attempted to unpack the intellectual, social and political implications of Critical Theory’s engagement with the historic problem of antisemitism. Rensmann’s work successfully addresses this historiographical gap and contributes more broadly to essential works on the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer circle, and German émigré intellectuals in the United States, including Martin Jay’s The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research 1923-1950 (1973), Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s Intellektuellendämmerung: Zur Lage der Frankfurter Intelligenz in den zwanziger Jahren (1984), and more recent publications such as Eva Maria Ziege’s Antisemitismus und Gesellschaftstheorie: Die Frankfurter Schule im amerikanischen Exil (2009) and Stuart Jeffries’ Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (2016). The first chapter of The Politics of Unreason serves as an introduction and outlines the major arguments of the book. As Rensmann observes, reflections on the Shoah were integral to developments in Critical Theory and these ideas need greater contextualization, given that the “theoretical reflection is itself shaped by historical political events and conditions of the time: most importantly the caesura of the Nazi persecution and extermination of the European Jews, and the civilization breakdown it signified” (5). Rensmann also contends that Critical Theorists’ analyses of authoritarianism cannot be disentangled from their understanding of antisemitism since both regressive ideologies were thought to rely on “projective stereotypical thinking” (7). Finally, The Politics of Unreason sets out several correctives to previous scholarship on the Frankfurt School, in particular regarding how they relied on empirical rather than theoretical frameworks, the extent to which Frankfurt ideas had a broader societal impact, and whether Critical Theory’s ideas are outmoded in contemporary scholarship. Insofar as the final point is concerned, Rensmann attempts to illuminate that for the theorists involved, “the specific critique of antisemitism [was] linked to a universalistic critique of political and social domination in all its forms,”(10) thereby indicating the continued relevance of works by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and the other intellectuals associated with the Frankfurt School. Rensmann persuasively argues his points over eight comprehensible and meticulously researched chapters. Chapters two and three explore how Frankfurt School intellectuals employed Sigmund Freud’s Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 147 psychoanalytic thinking to uncover the relationship between modernity, authoritarianism, and antisemitism. As Rensmann aptly summarizes, “modern antisemitism is first and foremost to be understood as a historically sedimented ideology,” that “corresponds to both the authoritarian personality as a characteristic product of modern societal forms of socialization and subjugation, and to the increasingly ubiquitous late modern form of consciousness” (135). In this way, Rensmann understands Freudian subjectivity as central to how Critical Theorists entangled authoritarianism with modern antisemitism. Chapter four continues this line of thought by further expanding on Critical Theory’s understanding of anti-Jewish stereotypes, the psychological and sociological functions of antisemitism in the modern world, and the extent to which Critical Theorists understood antisemitism as a totalizing ideology unique from other forms of stigmatization and subjection. Chapter five outlines how the Shoah compelled Critical Theorists to consider the origins of objectification and subjugation beyond Weberian and Marxist frameworks, and how both were expressed through historical instances of irrational violence. Rather than understanding antisemitism as a “diversionary strategy” employed by elites, Critical Theorists came to believe that “the irrationality of modern society helps enable antisemitism as an irrational, destructive, and self-destructive end in itself” (271). To further elaborate the point in what is perhaps the most persuasive section of the text, chapter six critically analyzes Adorno and Horkheimer’s “Elements of Antisemitism,” the final essay in the groundbreaking Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). It is in this essay that Critical Theorists best articulated the complex societal origins of antisemitism and its function in modern society. According to Rensmann, it also provided one of the most theoretically sophisticated assessments of antisemitism to the present. Chapters seven and eight, though rich in detail with valuable insights, seem somewhat disjointed from the rest of the text. Chapter seven explores how Critical Theorists grounded their ideas in specific political structures that they conceived of as perpetuating and enabling antisemitism. Chapter eight turns toward Critical Theorists’ interest in postwar “secondary antisemitism,” which they viewed as symptomatic of widespread guilt in complicit perpetrator societies, through studies such as the Group Experiment published in 1955, which investigated “everyday discourses and awareness of the Nazi past among various strata of postwar German society beyond mere public opinion surveys” (362). This chapter elucidates how the Frankfurt School took social memory, the complicated legacies of the Shoah, and the difficulties of ‘processing of guilt’ in postwar societies beginning in the 1950s (387) seriously. Finally, chapter nine makes a convincing case for the continued relevance of Critical Theory, even without addressing contemporary Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 148 political and social developments in Europe or the United States. The Politics of Unreason makes a superb contribution to scholarship on the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, and theoretical works on the study of antisemitism. Some scholars may take issue with Rensmann’s tendency to condense the works of numerous theorists into a singular cohort of ideas that thereby diminishes various theoretical differences amongst the intellectuals discussed. Further, parts of chapter seven may have been integrated into other parts of the text, since to some extent the chapter reads as an independent essay outside of the superbly written narrative sequence that the rest of the text follows. These slight critiques notwithstanding, The Politics of Unreason is certain to invigorate discussion amongst specialists and will serve as a valuable introduction for newcomers to the topic. Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance By Daniel P. Reynolds, New York University Press, 2018. 336 pp. $35.00 Catherine Greer University of Tennessee Problematic behavior associated with tourists at Holocaust memorial sites routinely makes international news headlines. The Auschwitz Memorial, in particular, has been subject to repeated vandalism and attempted theft. As a result of the disturbing trend that involved tourists balancing on train tracks for Instagram photos, in March 2019 the Memorial publicly exhorted tourists, via Twitter, to treat the site with reverence. While such occurrences reinforce unflattering stereotypes of tourists at Holocaust memorial sites, Germanist Daniel P. Reynolds conversely seeks to challenge characterizations of these visitors as “uncritical consumers.” In Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance Reynolds sets out to ascribe agency to such tourists, arguing that they seek “truth amid a sea of representations” (23). For Reynolds, the ubiquitous postcard—sold in bookstores and gift shops at these sites—serves as a metaphor for Holocaust tourism due to its literal and figurative “flip side” (1), which, in his view, also reveals the tourist’s “search for meaningful experience” (233). Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 149 Reynolds’s volume is divided into two sections: part one explores tourism to concentration camp sites and memorials through a phenomenological approach. The second part looks more broadly at “urban centers of memory”: Warsaw, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Washington, DC. In his first chapter, “Listening to Auschwitz,” Reynolds employs “witnessing” as a framework that serves as an “intersubjective, communicative mode of transferring knowledge” (35), which, he argues, challenges stereotypical notions of tourists as passive consumers. He thoughtfully considers the varying motivations behind volunteer and memory tourism (e.g., Aktion Sühnezeichen and March of the Living), and aptly draws on Gary Weissman’s concept of “fantasies of witnessing” to explore tourists’ reception of survivor testimony at these sites (60–61). Chapter 2, “Picturing the Camps,” addresses the role of photography in Holocaust tourism through the author’s visits to eight memorial sites (Auschwitz, Chełmo, Sobibór, Bełżec, Treblinka, Majdanek, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau). Photography, Reynolds argues, “plays a pivotal role in negotiating the distinction in the tourist gaze between visual pleasure and ethical practice” (75). Viewing tourists’ photos as “documents of erasure” (76), Reynolds also productively considers the use of perpetrators’ photographs at Auschwitz and Treblinka (from The Auschwitz Album and Schöne Zeiten, respectively) and how these images contribute to secondary witnessing. Rather than viewing the tourist gaze at these sites as complicit, he suggests that, through these “morally ambiguous” encounters, the “auratic is restored . . . when reproduced historical photos are encountered at the place where they originated” (100). Reynolds further argues that tourists’ photographs of photographs function as “a kind of quotation” (100) that provides valuable context for visitors to the camp memorials. Similarly, tourists’ photographs that “repeat iconic images” (e.g., the entrance gate at Auschwitz) serve as “act[s] of recontextualization” (107) that further demonstrate tourists’ agency. Reynolds skillfully weaves the book’s two sections together through a discussion of the tourist’s jarring return to a major city after visiting these largely isolated memorial locations (e.g., travel between Kraków and Auschwitz). The second half of the volume offers a general overview of the author’s visits to four major cities frequented by Holocaust tourists, and how, in the case of Warsaw, “tourism struggles, not always successfully, to present the city as a place with a coherent past” (119). Reynolds looks to Warsaw’s museums and memorials to address the competing narratives of Jewish victimhood and Polish resistance (as well as complicity). The following chapter on Berlin productively employs the concept of Normalität as a lens to analyze Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the development of Holocaust memory culture and memorial sites in Germany. In his final chapters on Jerusalem and Washington, DC, Reynolds seeks Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 150 to challenge critical, redemptive readings of Yad Vashem and the United States Memorial Museum (as well as the Americanization of the Holocaust) and advocates for “a way to make room for the redemptive tendencies of art and historical knowledge without closing off the inquiry that produces them” (198). He concludes the book with a brief discussion of the oft-derided selfies taken at memorial sites and, seeking to further establish tourists’ agency, argues that “the claiming of that space in such an individualized manner [taking a selfie] . . . is worth considering more fully as an act of defiance, perhaps against the authority of the those who would limit the scope of legitimate representations” (236). While Reynolds briefly addresses some problematic aspects of Holocaust tourism (intrusive selfie sticks, failure to obey posted rules, etc.) in several chapters, an extended consideration of tourism’s role in the commodification of Holocaust memory, the implications of ever-increasing vandalism at memorial sites, and reflections from Holocaust tourists themselves would have been welcome. Nevertheless, this volume offers an overdue contribution to the field and a foundation for future research in these areas. Reynolds’s clear, jargon-free prose, general overview of Holocaust history (geared toward non-specialists), and analyses of memorial sites make this volume accessible to readers in all disciplines who seek an introduction to Holocaust tourism. The Wounded Self: Writing Illness in Twenty-First-Century German Literature by Nina Schmidt, Camden House, 2018. 235 pp. $90.00 Courtney Rehkamp Vanderbilt University Nina Schmidt is a postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin and has been working with topics of contemporary literature as well as comics, graphic medicine, life writing and disability studies. She has recently published in the fields of disability studies, medicine and life writing. Her book The Wounded Self: Writing Illness in Twenty-First-Century German Literature was published in Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 151 2018. In her book she discusses, as the title suggests, the position of the wounded (either by physical illness, trauma or disability) individual in German language literature. She further looks at how the individual is represented in life writing genres, such as autobiographical novels and other forms of personal narratives (5). The texts that she examines are: Charlotte Roche’s Schoßgebete (2011), Kathrin Schmidt’s Du Stirbst Nicht (2009), Verena Stefan’s Fremdschläfer (2007), Christoph Schlingensief’s Tagebuch and Arbeit und Struktur (2009) by Wolfgang Herrndorf (2010–2013). Using these works, Schmidt “examine[s] how illness/disability as an aspect of identity is developed in and beyond narration, between cliche and exceptionality, both in the texts and beyond it, in the wider public realm” (Schmidt 5–6). She seeks to look at the texts through their representations of illness experience. The aspects of illness and disability in identity and their relationship with the individual, in connection with the wider world, are addressed in relation to the first-person autobiographical narrative that allows Schmidt to bring together dissimilar works (Schmidt 9). The connection between the texts is further constructed through a central question that structures the chapters, a question that seeks to answer how explicitly the connection between the author's own illness and their work is portrayed (33). The author goes on to describes her book as challenging the perspective on illness and disability both privately and publicly (40), as well as looking at how the literary/cultural field of disability studies appears in German literature. This leads to the book being of interest to both scholars of German literature and those of Disability Studies. In her introduction, she looks at the field of cultural/literary disability studies and positions herself within German discourse on the topic of disability studies. Schmidt opens her book with a quote from English author Virginia Woolf; in doing so, she references earlier writings on disability and illness and brings in the American and British roots of the field. These roots also are referenced in other texts in the German field of disability studies3. This history is a topic that she returns to at different points in her text. Her introduction provides a well-structured background with which to enter her later analysis and work with her chosen texts. In the introduction, the reader is informed as to how Schmidt uses both concepts of disability studies and how the first-person narrative works within the work itself. Due to this, the subsequent chapters connect well with the introduction. Chapter one of the text is titled “Autofiction, Disgust, and Trauma: Negotiating Vulnerable Subject Positions in Charlotte Roche’s Schoßgebete (2011).” In this section, Schmidt reads the narrative as a work of autofiction (41). In reading Schoßgebete as a work of autofiction, Schmidt is able to engage with the text as a piece discussing an event that relates back to the author’s own life as an event that happened to Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 152 the protagonist of the novel. Through the use of autofiction, themes of self, aesthetics; but also, the role of trauma in the construction of the individual, are able to emerge. Schmidt lists the objectives of this chapter as two-fold, firstly looking at how a trauma narrative might be represented as an auto fictional narrative and secondly examining at what role the aesthetics of disgust play in the public telling of the story (63). Through examining the text while addressing these objectives, Schmidt argues that Roche represents the body as uncontrollable and, due to its unruliness, it creates a site where factors such as gender, illness and death converge. Chapter two, “Looking Beyond the Self–Reflecting the Other: Starring as a Narrative Device in Kathrin Schmidt’s Du Stirbst nicht (2009)” looks at the value of the novel as an autobiographical type work with literary value and how ways of seeing are used within the novel. Like in the previous chapter, the events undergone by the novel's protagonist reflect a personal experience of the author. She further connects ways of seeing with the rebuilding and conceptualization of self. These connections are built through descriptions of how the main figure sees herself and others and how she is seen by others within the text. In the third section, “Intertextuality and the Transnational in Verena Stefan’s Fremdschläfer (2007): Writing Breast Cancer from Beyond the Border”, Schmidt explores the immigration/illness narrative as discussing not only the illness, but also broader questions of belonging, otherness and estrangement. Schmidt addresses her broader questions brought up in the book’s introduction as well as connecting Stefan’s text to other narratives addressing breast cancer. In doing this, she explores both the effects of the disease and how the disease might be understood in relation to oneself. The fourth section of the book, “Confronting Cancer Publically: Diary Writing in Extremis by Christoph Schlingensief and Wolfgang Herrndorf”, addresses the how well the diary genre works in life writing. Schmidt proposes that the diary has not been as closely looked at as a source of writing for the ill and dying as have other forms of narrative genre. She looks at the different ways in which the diary communicates authenticity and how it builds a relationship with the reader due to the personal view that it provides into the life and experiences of the diarist. This, she argues, allows the author freedom of expression and demonstrates the potential usage of the diary in the illness/disability narrative. Schmidt concludes her book in a chapter that brings the individual texts together once more, connects them with her purpose and reflects upon recent developments within the field of disability studies. Through Schmidt’s evaluation of the texts based in life writing and of how these texts have the Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 153 potential to be used in work with illness and disability studies, the reader is able to appreciate the possibility to use and read such texts through the lens of disability studies. The book is well-written and provides a lucid view into both the topic of illness and disability studies as well as life writing. The author’s inclusion of translations of the quotes that she works with allows for readers who do not work with German, but within the disability field, to access text. Through her inclusion of broader background of the field of disability and illness studies, Schmidt situates herself within the German context of disability studies and allows her to communicate her readings of the texts that “identify gaps and contortions in the dominant readings of these texts, readings that often effectively disregard the illness experience at their center or contest the narrative’s quality” (159). A Social History of Early Rock ’n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles 1956-69 by Julia Sneeringer, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 289 pp. $112.00 Katherine H. Paul University of Cincinnati Julia Sneeringer’s recent publication highlights the St. Pauli district of Hamburg and its historical and social significance as the epicenter of early Rock ‘n’ Roll music in Germany. This district, which has historically been known as a place for marginalized groups and general debauchery, was the epicenter of rock ‘n’ roll culture in Germany in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. This book digs deep into St. Pauli’s historical and social development. Sneeringer claims that the district had a role “as incubator of the Beatles and the British Invasion,” (2) and states that many have written about its importance as a hub for rock ‘n’ roll music and culture, but she claims that “even the most sophisticated do not analyze the scene with the empirical tools of the historian” (2). In the book, the author gives each aspect of this district its own chapter, including the historical background, the clubs, the musicians, the audiences and the authorities, and is exhaustive in its scope and detail of each. The chapter dedicated to the historical background of the district focuses mainly on the Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 154 entertainment history of the area and the social groups that inhabited it since 1258, when it officially belonged to Hamburg. The bulk of the chapter points out the significance of this area both as a place of entertainment as well as a place of work. Sneeringer focuses on three important influencers in the industry of popular culture and rock ‘n’ roll music: Bruno Koschmider, Peter Eckhorn, and Manfred Weissleder. The author states that these three were “the latest in a long line of experimenters in the field of popular culture” and that “they initially began offering rock ‘n’ roll as a way to stand out in a crowded marketplace” (45). The third and fourth chapters continue with a look at the musicians and the styles that made this district popular and the fans of these types of music, exploring Hamburg’s “Best scene” (69) and how “Liverpool rockers melded American sounds with those from their city’s Irish and American diasporas, then carried these to Hamburg,” (69) which she claims “became foundational sounds of the global sixties” (69). In chapter five, the author talks in detail about the authorities and their role in the development of the district, particularly how attempts to reign in the district and “discipline ‘disrespectable’ entrepreneurs” and the young people drawn to area often failed (122). Finally, Sneeringer discusses the end of the Hamburg scene, which was the result of several factors, most important of which were changes in the style of music being played and attempts to draw new and different audiences. The book closes out with an epilogue, which points to her overall methodology throughout the book and also leaves readers with several questions for further thought with regard to St. Pauli as a district, how we think about the writing and rewriting of Germany’s history, and how we preserve spaces like St. Pauli. This book brings together several different types of first-hand materials to highlight the significance of St. Pauli as a space for musicians, audiences, and many more to converge and question what life could be in post-war Germany. Sneeringer makes music the central focus of the book and uses that focus to explore the people, the place, and the district of St. Pauli, which continue to have a significant role in Hamburg today. Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 155 History After Hitler: A Transatlantic Enterprise by Phillip Stelzel, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 248 pp. $69.95 Kate Rebecca Stanton The University of Sydney After World War II, historians were faced with the challenge of figuring out how and why Germany became a murderous dictatorship under Hitler. Initially, West German historians attempted to historicize the twelve years of Nazi rule as an aberration from previous historical traditions. American historians criticized this approach, particularly if apologetic tendencies were displayed. In return, German historians were skeptical of non-German accounts of their recent past. In 1949, when commenting on historical scholarship written by German émigré in England and America, Gerard Ritter articulated, “resentment is not a fertile soil for sober and objective history”4 (402). This attitude was not limited to German émigré, but also extended to American-born historians. Despite initial incongruity between German and U.S. scholars, a strong German-American community of historians of modern Germany had been established by the time of Germany’s reunification. Exploring how and why this “fundamental transformation” occurred was Philipp Stelzel’s aim for his first book History After Hitler: A Transatlantic Enterprise (1). It must be noted this is a highly factual study. There is a large focus on German historians’ university exchanges and post-doctoral placements, when and where specific conferences were held, when academic journals were established and by whom. This study cannot be read in isolation or without a sound understanding of German historiography. This research evaluates personal involvements in the academy and each historian’s contribution to re-establishing transatlantic dialogue and organizational ties between scholars of German history. A reader unfamiliar with the general premise of post-war German historiography may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of historians’ academic careers analyzed within this fact-dense book, particularly if they do not know who the key players were or if they have not previously read any of their studies on German history. This is not a criticism of the text. Stelzel is consciously communicating a serious body of research to a reader from a similar academic background and does so well. This is, rather, a comment on how this Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 156 book is not intended for the general reader of history. Instead, it is a serious monograph of the re- establishment of the institutional and academic transatlantic dialogue between historians after the Second World War. Stelzel presents a well-researched account of how transatlantic intellectual exchange was reinstated between American and West German historians from 1945 to 1989. He uses new archival evidence, namely personal letters of historians and university documents to detail the reconstruction of U.S.-German cooperation in the study of Germany’s past. Subsequently, he provides his reader with an organized and comprehensive history of intellectual and institutional developments between the two countries. Typically, post-war historiographical studies focus on the controversial debates that dominated the media and history journals, namely the Fischer Controversy and the Historikerstreik5. Stelzel does include a careful consideration of these debates in his analysis but he takes the lesser-trodden ground of tracing the institutional reinstatement of contemporary history in the United States and West Germany. The end result is a cohesive and original piece of archival research. Stelzel’s book is neatly organized into five chapters, which take the reader from West Germany’s historiographical challenges of the immediate post-war period across the Atlantic to America’s growing interest in German history. Chapter 1 focuses on the West German historical profession after 1945. Stelzel employed a transatlantic perspective to determine the extent to which West German historians looked across the Atlantic in an attempt to re- establish their organizational ties, which were severed during the Nazi years. The next chapter outlines the German history profession within the United States, and centers on two significant changes that occurred after 1945. First, interest in German history exponentially grew due to U.S. involvement in World War II and the Cold War. This mounting interest led to the growth of the discipline and German history faculties at U.S. universities. Secondly, Stelzel gives attention to German émigré historians working at American institutions, such as Hajo Holborn, George L. Mosse and Hans Rosenberg. He gives these historians the title of “transatlantic intermediaries,” as they helped internationalize the field within the United States (2). “Encounting America,” the third chapter, explores how West German historians engaged with their American colleagues. Stelzel explains how the older German scholars re-established contact with their pre-war American colleagues. The younger generation, those students born in the 1940s and 1950s, had a strong interest in American academia, thus they participated in student exchange programs and Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 157 nurtured their ties to American historians they met while abroad throughout their subsequent careers. Significant attention is given to historians, such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Jürgen Kocka and Volker R. Berghahn, all of whom studied abroad and were inspired by the different methodological approaches employed within American history departments. Chapter 4 is the most engaging chapter, as it examines how this scholarly dialogue between America and West Germany transformed the West German historical profession. To complete this evaluation, Stelzel focuses on the instituting of the Bielefeld School and the introduction of historische Sozialwissenschaft as a sub- discipline of historical inquiry. In this chapter, Stelzel challenges the notion that American historians were instrumental in the establishment of the Bielefeld School. Instead, he believes that American scholars were “attentive observers rather than active participants or source of inspiration” (50). Although Bielefeld historians had American colleagues, this does not equate to American historians being pivotal in the development of the School. The final chapter traces intellectual challenges the Bielefeld School faced from British neo- Marxists, Alltagshistoriker, feminist historians, and American historians. Stelzel assesses the School’s methodology and legacy alongside these challenges and the developments of the Historikerstreit6. Ultimately, Stelzel concludes his research by regarding the transatlantic dialogue between American and German historians as a success story. Sexual Treason in Germany during the First World War by Lisa M. Todd, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 227 pp. $101 Meaghann Dynes Ohio State University Lisa M. Todd holds the position of Associate Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick. She frequently engages with the topics of gender and war, particularly in the German context, in the classes that she teaches. Todd’s book Sexual Treason in Germany during the First World War focuses on the connection of conflict and sex before, during, and after wartime. She specifically examines the themes of double-standards held against men and women, eugenics and racial/ethnic superiority, and political and Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 158 societal demands. With this book, Todd attempts to show the complex relation between the beliefs held by German society and politicians of the time and the reality of the situation. She does so by bringing in primary sources from ‘moral groups’ (such as Deutsche Evangelische Frauenvereine or Bund für Mutterschutz) materials, women’s accounts at the hand of the moral police, orders given by the German military, and statistics from the era on various issues (venereal diseases and infection rate, birth rate, etc.). The eight chapters of the book loosely follow the chronology of before, during, and after. The reason Todd organizes the book in a chronological manner is due to the fact that policies being made and societal attitudes were changing before the war broke out and long after the end of the war. It also gives the reader a sense of how politics and demands from various groups compounded over the years. Thus, the book details the intersection of sex, gender, religion, politics, and war using not only primary sources, but also secondary scholarship on the topic. In many of the chapters, Todd focuses on the situations and opinions of women on the topics of sex before, during, and after the war. Many women, particularly mothers and wives of soldiers, joined groups such as the Bund für Mutterschutz (BfM). These groups championed for anti-fraternization laws to prevent German men from having relations with enemy prostitutes. Laws were also made regulating the movement of enemy women, again to prevent contact between them and German soldiers. In addition, these groups encourage so-called ‘wife-trains’ so that soldiers could satisfy their desires with their own wives and have German children. Their intentions were spurred on by religious groups calling for soldiers to act morally and by eugenics groups calling for citizens to keep German blood ‘pure’. However, as Todd points out, many of the laws spilled over into Germany and had severe consequences for German women. Many could not walk around freely without suspicion of being a prostitute or having a venereal disease. Thus, many women were followed by the state or imprisoned. Part of the reason behind German women falling under suspicion is due to the short-sightedness of the women’s groups. What groups such as the BfM did not realize or simply ignored were the actual? rates of venereal disease infection and prostitution. In Germany, the rates of both infection and prostitution were higher than that on the frontlines. Todd does show that, despite all of the groups and laws negatively effecting women, there were those trying to improve the living conditions of women. Organizations such as Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) were working towards conditions that would make prostitution safer for not only the women but also their male clientele. Within the BDF, a number of small organizations, especially the abolitionists, Focus on German Studies 25/26 Book Reviews 159 were taking a decidedly feminist approach. They sought to give men and women equal rights under the law, but also to have the same moral and social expectations of both genders. In Sexual Treason in Germany during the First World War, Todd meticulously details how intricate the connections between sex, gender, religion, eugenics, and war were around the time of the First World War. In doing so, Todd is able to lay out how these intersections impacted (positively and negatively) social, legal, and moral viewpoints of the time. Notes 1 Lilla, Mark. The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. Harper Collins, 2018, p. 91. 2 McMahon, Darrin, and Samuel Moyn. Editors. Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History. Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 6–8. 3 Dederich, Marcus. Körper, Kultur und Behinderung: Eine Einführung in die Disability Studies. Verlag: Bielefeld, 2007. pp. 23–26. 4 Ritter, Gerhard. “Review of Hans Rothfels, The German Opposition to Hitler”. Historische Zeitschrift, 169, 1940, p. 402. 5 The 1986–87 Historikerstreit was a historiographical debate that breached the confines of academia and unfolded across West German newspapers. Historians argued for or against revising the Third Reich’s position in history. They disagreed about whether Nazi atrocities were comparable to other nations’ crimes, and whether it was time to historicize Germany’s twelve years of fascism after forty years of democracy. The debate was political, public, and at times personal. Reactions bifurcated between denunciation and appraisal for historian Ernst Nolte’s attempts to relativize the Nazi past. 6 For the key contributions to the Historikerstreit, see Augstein, Rudolph et al. "Historikerstreit" Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der Nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung. Piper, 1987.