Where The World Ended By Daphne Berdahl: Summary

East Germany, its demise relayed through the mass media of recent history, has in popular consciousness been posited as negative, a corrupt bulwark of the last dying days of Communism in Eastern Europe, barren and silent. The other Germany to its West, its citizens free, was striding confidently ahead into the millennium. Recent cinema has sought to examine re-unification, the Wolfgang Becker film Goodbye Lenin! (2003) a recent example of such an investigation into the past through cinema. In this essay I will look at the film and the narrative techniques it uses, probing whether it portrays the East German nation as positive or

East Germany is a mysterious environment, created by the yearning to camouflage into the greyness of ones surroundings. Intense control limits a human’s capacity to think, without ownership over your thoughts - determining a future and making sense of a tainted and oppressive environment can become paralysing. Therefore, throughout East Germany a truth did not exist as fear had given people the inability to formulate opinions to their full extent. Everyone had an idea as to what had occurred as their minds continued to play the scenarios on repeat - if a recognisable lifestyle disappears it is possible that you will recreate the only life you knew due to the sense of uncertainty present towards existence in an unfamiliar environment. An

Funder uses statistics sparingly, usually in great effect to impress the reader and add shock value to her research. She uses this omniscient voice as a means to convey the realities of the GDR and how oppressive it was. With facts and research contributing as background material in Stasiland , Funder chooses to demonstrate concerned involvement with the people which she interviews by making personal reflections as she investigates, thus adding a framework of rationality to her findings. Through Funder’s subjective descriptions of the ‘newly unified Germany’ , Anna herself becomes her own character ‘having Adventures in Stasiland’. As a foreigner, Anna depicts the former East Germany as a place which ‘made people feel small’ , though her insightful descriptions of the physical remnants of the communist government, additionally Anna gives personal descriptions of the former GDR’s citizens. This first person narration by Anna enables the reader to imagine the effects of the GDR’s rule, but also evokes an emotional response through Anna’s telling of the horrific stories of former East Germany’s people. These ‘portraits’ which Anna aims to uncover are told in her subjective voice, connecting the victims of the regime with the reader, and the narrator, to uncover the consequences of a ‘lost’

The ideas of borders, boundaries and border crossings are increasingly employed in a metaphorical sense that does not always refer to the physical border. These borders are progressively used to represent social and cultural boundaries. A cultural border indicates that a more powerful side constructs it’s own cultural knowledge and has added political power and privileges. When understanding the concept of borders, it is important to understand that borders are being referred to in a literal sense and in a figurative sense. The term literal can be referred to as taking words in their most basic sense without adding exaggeration or metaphorical meaning. The term figurative can be described to as departing from the literal use of words and adding metaphorical meaning. Figurative notions of borders within race have been a primary concern for the novels Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington and Remembering Babylon by David Malouf. This essay will discuss and analyze the concept of figurative borders and what these borders represent. Lastly, this essay will explore in detail the concept of figurative borders within the two novels. Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence and Remembering Babylon have numerous

Lohengrin, who goes by Grini, is taken to the hospital after being shot by Luxembourger soldiers when attempting to steal coal from a train. Due to the lack of resources in post-war Germany, orphans and others turn to stealing as a way to make money. He was sent to the hospital with his “lower part of his body bathed in blood, his cotton shorts mere shreds, [which] had coagulated with blood into a revolting pulp” (115). In and out of consciousness, he tells the nurse and nun at the hospital that his legal guardian is his older brother, which means Grini must also make money to support his family. Böll uses Grini’s background to show the different demographics of occupied German zones. Crimes like this frequently occurred in East Germany and it shows how difficult it was to live there. Prior to Grini dying in the hospital, the narrator mentions that it was important for Grini to “be home at seven-thirty to give them something to eat” (119). This shows how family was a principle coping strategy in order to survive the terrible conditions of post-war Germany. With no stable government, not only were families important to survive, they motivated Germans to establish a work ethic that did not exist for over six

Due to the MacDonogh’s massive collection of information and sources, at points the book’s organization is loose and appears disjointed. Sometimes the author loses track of his argument and descends into gruesome detail after detail trying to emphasize the true scale of brutality and violence leveled against the Germans. MacDonogh admits that the subject is so vast that he had to use a “broad brush”, but this broad approach causes him to focus on certain sections, those that he deems more important, significantly more than others.

This is where it ends is a fiction novel written book Marieke Nijkamp. The compelling novel truly shows how one can still have hope and compassion for such a remorseless killer, they once knew so well and the true meaning of courage through uncommon acts of bravery and selflessness and how overcome the grifing of such horrific events The terrifying high school shooting story takes place in a Corse 54 minutes the unlucky student body stuck in the auditorium, felt though it was 54 days and that it would never be over as they have to watch they peers, friends and teachers all die in front over them. The novel is told from 4 poeples perspectives whose lives are all linked to the boy behind the mask. Throughout the book you’ll learn and examine

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation, published in 2008, gives the reader glimpses into German history from the creation of the land itself time hopping to the 1930s all the way up to the fall of the Berlin Wall told through the perspectives of people who lived it. Erpenbeck guides you through German history not by a concrete timeline but through each character’s story, giving voice to a raw and honest portrayal of what life was like during these times. The stories primarily take place in the lake house in Brandenberg, each character sharing their own memories of the house and the land. With each new character Erpenbeck exposes the reader to so many different themes, some of which are: identity, and “the mother” and how those themes are linked to national

Elizabeth Heineman argued in her article that the collective societal memory of the experiences of German women in the immediate aftermath of World War II greatly contributed to the development of West German national identity, and directly influenced their eventual status in the partitioned country.1 She suggested that in order to fully comprehend this “history of memories” it was necessary to understand the distinctions and interconnections between what she refereed to as “counter”, “popular”, and “official” memories.2 In order to support this argument, the author conducted a series of formulaic analyses on the German perception toward women in three major areas of Post-War German cultural memory; war rapes by Soviet soldiers; the experiences of women who rebuilt the nation and the economy without much assistance from men; and finally those women who fraternized with Allied soldiers. She began her formula by first exploring the “universalization” of certain aspects of what became the stereotypical female experience of Germans at the end of World War II through the immediate post-war years.3 Next, she examined the effects of the universalization of the female German experience upon the formation of the West German national identity.4 This second point was further elaborated with an analysis of the relationship between “counter-memories” of subordinate groups and the “public” or “popular” memories of the dominant culture, national identity, and culture of West Germany.5

Helen Grant has set this novel in a German town called Bad Münstereifel. Bad Münstereifel is a relatively small and normal village – where everyone one another. There is an awareness of family in the village, as Pia states, “I remember my hometown as a place with a powerful sense of community.” On the other hand, Bad Münstereifel is also known for its gossip, as is said, “small towns everywhere are rife with gossip, but in Germany they raise it to an art form.” This proves that gossip could

Theorists began to recognize capitalism as pre-industrial society developed economically and major social changes began to occur. Modernization resulted in industrialization, urbanization and bureaucratization as the workplace shifted from the home to the factory, people moved from farms into cities where jobs were more readily available and large-scale formal organizations emerged. Classical theorists’ observations addressed numerous facets of social organization and interaction that came about as a result of modernization; however this essay will focus on their ideas regarding capitalism and the capitalistic society. Over

Marx viewed the ‘commodity’ as the most elementary form of modern wealth. The essence of the commodity is the

The German Comedy: Scenes of Life After the Wall by Peter Schneider is a collection of individual lives after the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the fall, East Germans had to adapted to a whole new lifestyle where they were no longer separated from the world and their fellow Germans from the west. Many of the Germans saw the negative side of the unification as the downside of capitalist were shown in the form of mass unemployment and also shown in the last chapter where thousands of canines that used to patrol the dividing line were threaten to be sent to animal shelters or administered death. Though it is interesting and humorous of what has life become after the wall for many Germans, Peter Schneider wrote this monograph in the mind for

During the nineteenth century, this antithesis between Zivilisation and Kultur was transformed. At first, the antithesis was a social contrast, but it later became a national contrast. To put this differently, what was meant to be a conflict between two different groups became a conflict between several different societies in Europe. Mainly, this transformation occurred when the German bourgeois intellectuals gradually became the dominant class in society who acquired the ‘national consciousness’ (Fletcher, 1997; Elias, 2012). As the German bourgeoisie gained dominance, they had no need to distinguish themselves from the court nobility; therefore, they shifted their focus and began to use Kultur to distinguish Germany from France, England and

Marx’s (1987) “materialist conception of history” (p. 146) provides an outline through which he presents the intimate connection between society and the provision of material need through the ages. His theory begins with the pre-modern individual, whose existence consists only of productive actions vital to only his own survival, such as gathering food and building shelter. Marx considers this