After the Berlin Wall - by K Gerstenberger & J Braziel (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Twenty years after its fall, the wall that divided Berlin and Germany presents a conceptual paradox: on one hand, Germans have sought to erase it completely; on the other, it haunts the imagination in complex and often surprising ways. Similarly, Cold War divisions resonate in the global image of the "New Germany." Several overlapping themes run through the essays: the exportation of German post-wall debates into other cultural contexts and representations of the Wall within non-German settings; the emergence of visual, literary, and psychological imagery derived from the Berlin Wall well beyond its existence; the importance of space, geographical, political, as well as imagined, in the aftermath of the Wall; and the continued artistic as well as socio-historical engagement with East Germany as a state that no longer exists but whose memory reverberates in sometimes unexpected ways not only today but as a projection into the future. "--

Book Synopsis

Twenty years after its fall, the wall that divided Berlin and Germany presents a conceptual paradox: on one hand, Germans have sought to erase it completely; on the other, it haunts the imagination in complex and often surprising ways

Review Quotes

"This cosmopolitan and interdisciplinary volume explores the resonance of 1989 in films, novels, architecture, and city planning, as well as in domestic and international politics. Braziel and Gerstenberger have collected an impressive set of original, stimulating, and sometimes provocative essays that trace the enduring significance of the fall of the wall, both in Germany and beyond. This is an important contribution to the growing literature on the end of the Cold War." - James J. Sheehan, Stanford University

"The strength of this book is how it looks beyond the borders of Germany to examine the aftermath of 1989 in a transnational context, reading the Berlin Wall itself as 'truly a global phenomenon well beyond its fall.' Scholars of contemporary German will find compelling reading in chapters that make global connections to Japan, Israel, the Soviet Union, and China . . . Recommended." - CHOICE

About the Author

KATHARINA GERSTENBERGER Professor and Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA.
JANA EVANS BRAZIEL Faculty Chair of The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati, USA.