Austerlitz im Wartesaal

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Gunther Pakendorf
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Main Character ◽  
The West ◽  
Railway Stations ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
In Transit

Abstract The condition of exile and homelessness is one of the recurrent features of W.G. Sebald’s work. This can be seen paradigmatically in the lives narrated in Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants). Sebald portrays the history of the West repeatedly as a gradual and relentless decline through various catastrophes towards ultimate destruction. A persuasive metaphor for this perceived human condition of uprootedness and instability is the situation of people in transit in waiting rooms in airports and railway stations. This is best exemplified by the eponymous main character in Sebald’s last novel, Austerlitz, a work in which stations and waiting rooms in Brussels, London, Paris, Prague and other cities are a recurring locus. They are linked symbolically through a network of inter- and intratextual references and associations to Sebald’s major thematic concerns: the Holocaust, the destruction of the natural world and, ultimately, the end of all time.

scholarly journals ‘And I still see their faces…’: Wilhelm von Blandowski’s photographs from the collection of Museum in Gliwice

2009 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Leszek Jodliński
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Personal Interest ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Early Photography ◽  
Insight Into

Wilhelm von Blandowski (1822-1878) was born in Gleiwitz, Prussia (now Gliwice, Upper Silesia, Poland). From 1862 through 1868, Wilhelm von Blandowski may have taken up to 10, 000 photographs. Though only a portion of his photographic accomplishment has been preserved, the existing photographs provide an insight into their content and character, as well as providing us with the better understanding of the work of their author. The main emphasis in the paper will be on Blandowski’s photographs presently in the collections of Museum in Gliwice. It will focus on his portraits with reference to some of the formal experiments Blandowski carried out, such as photomontage and narrative photography. Attention will be also drawn to his creation of documentary-like and realistic photographs. Both the commercial nature of the photographic business run by Blandowski, as well as his personal interest in picturing the human condition, had a strong influence on his photography. He put the person at the center of his interest. This was reflected in Blandowski’s attempts to capture the natural world of the Prussian borderlands in the 1860s. Blandowski depicted a place inhabited by Germans, Jews and Poles ‘the promised land’ of early industrialization. Witnesses of these days, the known and anonymous characters look at us from the hundreds of prints taken by Blandowski. Among them one can see wealthy industrialists, priests and doctors, workers and peasants, children and women, the rich and the poor, persons of different professions, nationalities and confessions. The article concludes with a discussion of the influences that Blandowski has had on his contemporaries and also of his place in the history of early photography in Poland.

The Pink Triangle

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-162
Author(s):  
Craig Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Gay Men ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
The West ◽  
German State ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nazi Persecution

This chapter is about how the memory of persecution decisively shaped 1970s homosexual politics. First, the chapter explores the ‘rediscovery’ of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, explaining how the model of the Holocaust was sometimes appropriated as part of this process. The chapter then shows how memory of this persecution, combined with the experience of contemporary discrimination, produced a profound alienation on the part of left-wing gay men from the West German state. Following an analysis of how the pink triangle became a transnational symbol, this chapter evaluates discourses of victimhood in gay liberation. Though the pink triangle was reclaimed from its origins as a badge of shame in the concentration camps, it never became an unequivocal symbol of pride. Finally, the chapter explores how, in the late 1970s, activists of all stripes, the commercial gay press, and the first openly gay parliamentary candidates coalesced around making the history of past persecution a central plank in their efforts to insert themselves into the West German mainstream.

scholarly journals The Holocaust in Lithuania: The Key Characteristics of Its History, and the Key Issues in Historiography and Cultural Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-279
Author(s):  
Stanislovas Stasiulis
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
The West ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Considerable Impact

This article is part of the special cluster titled Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine since the 1990s, guest edited by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. The Holocaust is the darkest page of Lithuanian history: Nearly the whole Jewish community in Lithuania was destroyed, while a part of ethnic Lithuanians participated in this destruction. This article discusses three layers and periods of the Holocaust in Lithuania that have made a considerable impact on the perception of this traumatic period in Lithuanian society. The first period deals with the Lithuanian–Jewish relations during the German occupation in Lithuania (1941–1944). The second one is related to the Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania and discussions among Lithuanian émigrés in the West (1944–1990), which shaped the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania from the ideological (Soviet) and defensive (Lithuanian émigré) perspectives. The final part of this article discusses the historiography and Holocaust memory in independent Lithuania after the 1990s. Almost thirty years of independence mark not only the re-creation of some old myths and stereotypes in Lithuania, but also new groundbreaking and open discussions in society, concerning the perception of this dark page of Lithuanian history.

Strauss, Leo (1899–1973)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shadia B. Drury
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
German Jewish

Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish émigré political philosopher and historian of political thought, who wrote some fifteen books and eighty articles on the history of political thought from Socrates to Nietzsche. Strauss was no ordinary historian of ideas; he used the history of thought as a vehicle for expressing his own ideas. In his writings, he contrasted the wisdom of ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the foolhardiness of modern philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke. He thought that the loss of ancient wisdom was the reason for the ‘crisis of the West’ – an expression that was in part a reference to the barbarities of the Holocaust. He therefore sought to recover the lost wisdom. He studied the classics and was a great devotee of Plato and Aristotle. However, he developed unusual interpretations of classical texts.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The West ◽  
Material World ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Movement

A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1600. The Renaissance was a cultural movement, a time of re-awakening when classical knowledge was rediscovered, leading to an efflorescence in philosophy, art, and literature. The period fostered an emerging sense of individualism across European cultures. This sense was expressed through a fascination with materiality and the natural world, and a growing attachment to things. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds.

The Unusual Case of Leslie Lapidus: The Purposes of the Remarkably Long Joke in William Styron's Sophie's Choice

Prospects ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 543-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Katz
Keyword(s):  
Unusual Case ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Written Word

In Discussing the humor of William Styron's humor-filled novel Sophie's Choice, I am particularly interested in focusing upon the nature of the joke that fills a huge portion of the novel, the Leslie Lapidus affair. Rarely (if ever) in the history of the written word, I'd be willing to venture, has a joke of the outrageous length of this one been set down. The Leslie Lapidus affair, from start to finish, actually takes up about a full fifth of a long novel. The reader first hears of Leslie as a “hot dish” promised to Stingo, the main character and the narrator, on page 82 of the 1992 Vintage edition, but the punch line doesn't come until page 193, followed by a few pages of denouement. What a buildup! That's a startlingly long joke. The over-length of the Leslie Lapidus affair, as well as its late-in-the-novel resurrection in the briefer “coda” that is the Mary Alice Grimball encounter, should be enough to make the reader take pause. What in the world is a joke of this size doing in a novel about the Holocaust? How does it relate to the major ideas of the novel? At 100+ pages, it's practically a major theme of its own.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
E. H. Rick Jarow
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of

This chapter makes a case for the study of the Meghadūta within the study of world literature and literary visions of the environment. It discusses the sensibilities of classical Indian poetry (kāvya) and gives an overview of the history of studies of Indian poetry in the West. The next section summarizes the plot and structure of the Meghadūta, Kālidāsa’s celebrated lyric poem about the imagined journey of a cloud through the landscape of India to deliver a message from the protagonist (Yaksha) to his absent beloved. The “tantric sensibility” of the text is discussed along with the importance of the poem’s vision of the natural world.

scholarly journals Zapiski z „Miasta Umarłych”. Obóz koncentracyjny Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška w literackich narracjach tanatologicznych i dyskursie pamięci obszaru postjugosłowianskiego

2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 507-520
Author(s):  
Ewa Szperlik
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
Holocaust Narratives ◽  
The City

Notes from “the city of the dead”: Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška concentration camps in thanatological narratives and in the memory discourse of the post-Yugoslav areaThis paper discusses selected Holocaust narratives of the post-Yugoslav area, which were set in the history of Hitler’s Europe due to the establishment of the pro-Nazi Pavelić regime The Independent State of Croatia. They were also set in the context of the concealment policy, when both places and events related to concentration camps, Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, were ousted from collective memory by the authorities of communist Yugoslavia. Concentration camp memoirs and records — autothanatographies J. Derrida, A. Ubertowska — reflecting on the post-Yugoslav area of Tito’s epoch had been a tabooed realm of unsolicited truths S. Buryła for a few decades due to political reasons and have recently been reintroduced into official discourse of memory. They also address the questions of the end of Western civilisation, the topos of the concentration camp as the territory of the reign of death and struggle for survival. The five selected thanatological testimonies present the Holocaust and the nightmare of World War II as an essential part of reflection on the human condition H. Arendt and they also show the phenomenon of collective trauma D. LaCapra.  Bilješke iz „Grada Mrtvih”. Konclogor Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška u književnim tanatološkim naracijama i u diskursu kolektivnog pamćenja na području bivše JugoslavijePredmet razmatranja u ovom tekstu su odabrani autobiografski zapisi o Holokaustu sa područja bivše Jugoslavije, stavljene u vizuru povijesti hitlerove Europe povodom osnivanja režima Ante Pavelića kakva je bila NDH. Istodobno vrlo je važan u ovoj analizi kontekst politike prešućivanja te brisanja iz kolektivnog pamćenja mjesta i dogaᵭaja vezanih uz logore smrti: Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška koje su vlasti komunističke Jugoslavije nakon II svjestkog rata uspješno poricale. Vraćene u zadnje vrijeme javnom pamćenju sjećanja i uspomene na logor – „autotanatografije J. Derrida, A. Ubertowska – bile su nekoliko decenija prešućivane ili od javnosti skrivane u Titovoj državi te zbog političkih razloga spadale su u zonu nepoželjnih istina S. Buryła. Zabilježena vlastita sjećanja na konclogora – kasnije proskribiranih autora/svjedoka – bave se univerzalnom temom smrti, rušenja civilizacije zapadnog kruga, konclogora kao područja svevladajuće smrti, istrebljivanja i životnjske borbe za preživljavanje zatočenika. Pet odabranih logorskih testimonija prikazuje traumu II svjestkog rata D. LaCapra te govori o stanju čovječanstva u postratnom razdoblju H. Arendt.

A note on John Hawkins (1761–1841) and the Hawkins archive

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-268
Author(s):  
R. J. CLEEVELY
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Reference Lists ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

A note dealing with the history of the Hawkins Papers, including the material relating to John Hawkins (1761–1841) presented to the West Sussex Record Office in the 1960s, recently transferred to the Cornwall County Record Office, Truro, in order to be consolidated with the major part of the Hawkins archive held there. Reference lists to the correspondence of Sibthorp-Hawkins, Hawkins-Sibthorp, and Hawkins to his mother mentioned in The Flora Graeca story (Lack, 1999) are provided.

Fictive Mode, ‘Journey to the West’, and Transformation of Space: ‘Ali Mubarak’s Discourses of Modernization

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-358
Author(s):  
WEN-CHIN OUYANG
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Theoretical Principle ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The West ◽  
Arab Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Journey To The West

I begin my exploration of ‘Ali Mubarak (1823/4–1893) and the discourses on modernization ‘performed’ in his only attempt at fiction, ‘Alam al-Din (The Sign of Religion, 1882), with a quote from Guy Davenport because it elegantly sums up a key theoretical principle underpinning any discussion of cultural transformation and, more particularly, of modernization. Locating ‘Ali Mubarak and his only fictional work at the juncture of the transformation from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ in the recent history of Arab culture and of Arabic narrative, I find Davenport's pronouncement tantalizingly appropriate. He not only places the stakes of history and geography in one another, but simultaneously opens up the imagination to the combined forces of time and space that stand behind these two distinct yet related disciplines.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document