The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968

Published by Princeton University Press 2001

The Miracle Years

A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968

Edited by: Hanna Schissler

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691222554

Overview
Contents

About this book

Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society.

In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s.

In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.

Author / Editor information

Hanna Schissler teaches modern German history at the University of Hannover and is as enior reserach fellow at the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig. She is the author of National Identity and Perceptions of the Past and other books.

Reviews

"Schissler is to be commended for assembling an overall excellent collection of essays that would otherwise have been located in scattered publications not easily accessible to a wider public. These fine offerings, demonstrating the latest in postwar research, are highly recommended."---Marion Deshmukh, History

"The essays engage in novel ways with popular culture, memory, gender, race, and the emergence of consumer society to provide a rich account of a society that did not simply repress its past, but selectively and fitfully reworked it."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
INTRODUCTION Writing About 1950s West Germany Hanna Schissler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART ONE The Weight of the Past, New Beginnings, and the Construction of National Memory
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
CHAPTER ONE The Hour of the Woman MEMORIES OF GERMANY'S "CRISIS YEARS' AND WEST GERMAN NATIONAL IDENTITY Elizabeth Heineman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
CHAPTER TWO Survivors of Totalitarianism RETURNING POWS AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINE CITIZENSHIP IN WEST GERMANY, 1945-1955 Frank Biess Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
CHAPTER THREE Remembering the War in a Nation of Victims WEST GERMAN PASTS IN THE 1950s Robert G. Moeller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
CHAPTER FOUR Mission to Happiness THE COHORT OF 1949 AND THE MAKING OF EAST AND WEST GERMANS Dorothee Wierling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
PART TWO Stigma: "Others" in the Shaping of West Germany
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
CHAPTER FIVE An Uneasy Existence JEWISH SURVIVORS IN GERMANY AFTER Juliane Wetzel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
CHAPTER SIX Heimat in Turmoil AFRICAN-AMERICAN GIs IN 1950s WEST GERMANY Maria Höhn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
CHAPTER SEVEN Of German Mothers and "Negermischlingskinder" RACE, SEX, AND THE POSTWAR NATION Heide Fehrenbach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
CHAPTER EIGHT Guest Workers and Policy on Guest Workers in the Federal Republic FROM THE BEGINNING OF RECRUITMENT IN 1955 UNTIL ITS HALT IN 1973 Ulrich Herbert and Karin Hunn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
CHAPTER NINE The Ever-Present Other COMMUNISM IN THE MAKING OF WEST GERMANY Eric D. Weitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
PART THREE The Presence of the Absent
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
CHAPTER TEN "Normalization" in the West TRACES OF MEMORY LEADING BACK INTO THE 1950s Lutz Niethammer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
CHAPTER ELEVEN Film in the 1950s PASSING IMAGES OF GUILT AND RESPONSIBILITY Frank Stern Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266
CHAPTER TWELVE Memory and Commerce, Gender and Restoration WOLFGANG STAUDTE'S ROSES FOR THE STATE PROSECUTOR (1959) AND WEST GERMAN FILM IN THE 1950s Richard McCormick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Creating a Cocoon of Public Acquiescence THE AUTHOR-READER RELATIONSHIP IN POSTWAR GERMAN LITERATURE Frank Trommler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301
PART FOUR The Emergence of Civil Society, Modernity's Claims and Limits
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Recasting Bourgeois Germany Volker R. Berghahn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	326
CHAPTER FIFTEEN From Starvation to Excess? TRENDS IN THE CONSUMER SOCIETY FROM THE 1940s TO THE 1970s Arnold Sywottek Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 'Normalization" as Project SOME THOUGHTS ON GENDER RELATIONS IN WEST GERMANY DURING THE 1950S Hanna Schissler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	359
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Cold War Angst THE CASE OF WEST-GERMAN OPPOSITION TO REARMAMENT AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS Michael Geyer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	376
PART FIVE The Ambiguity of American Influences, Popular Culture and the Breaking of "High Culture's" Hegemony
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	409
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A New, "Western" Hero? RECONSTRUCTING GERMAN MASCULINITY IN THE 1950s Uta G. Power Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	412
CHAPTER NINETEEN Establishing Cultural Democracy YOUTH, "AMERICANIZATION," AND THE IRRESISTIBLE RISE OF POPULAR CULTURE Kaspar Maase Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	428
CHAPTER TWENTY The "Miracle" of the Political-Culture Shift DEMOCRATIZATION BETWEEN AMERICANIZATION AND CONSERVATIVE REINTEGRATION Diethelm Prowe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	451
EPILOGUE Rebels in Search of a Cause Hanna Schissler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	459
SELECTED READINGS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	469
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	479
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	487