Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau 2007. 303 pages, numerous black-and-white images, soft cover Series: Literatur – Kultur – Geschlecht, Studien zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte [Literature – Culture – Gender, Studies on Literature and Cultural History], short series, Volume 23 ISBN: 978-3-412-22506-3
Information about the book
The Holocaust is one of the most traumatic events emphatically evoked, satirically broken down or ironically broken in literature, film and fine arts. The second and third generations, who grew up and were socialized with the reports about the Second Word War and the Holocaust from the first generation, take up the traditional »icons of destruction« (Cornelia Brink) in order to use them to create their own spaces in the present. Taboos are broken intentionally to critically focus the view of the »blurriness« of the memories. After 1989, as part of the establishment of the new, unified German culture of remembrance, an intensified battle took place surrounding images in which fictitious afterimages compete with the documents of contemporary witnesses.
With this in mind, the book deals with literary, cinematic and artistic productions in the past few years. The spectrum spans from authors like Marcel Beyer, Günter Grass, Ulla Hahn, Elfriede Jelinek, Arno Geiger, Uwe Timm and Cécile Wajsbrot to controversial cinema and television films like »Downfall« (2004), »Speer and Him« (2005), »Sobibor« (2001) and »Land of Destruction« (2004) through to contemporary artistic works from Maurizio Cattelan, Rebecca Horn, David Levinthal and Gerhard Richter.
Reviews
- Jan Süselbeck: »There’s never been so much Hitler« – Inge Stephans and Alexandra Tacke’s collection NachBilder des Holocaust expands on newer forms of cinematic and literary remembrance. In: literaturkritik.de, September 2007.
- Barbara Kosta: Review of NachBilder des Holocaust, published by I. Stephan and A. Tacke. In: Zeitschrift für Germanistik [Journal for German Studies], No. 1, 2009.
- Manfred Richter in: Artheon-Mitteilungen [Artheon Notices], No. 26, April 2008.
- Anonymous in: Krieg und Literatur [War and Literature], Jahrbuch [Yearbook] 2007.
- Sonja Czekaj In: MEDIENwissenschaft [Media SCIENCES], No. 3, 2008.
- Andrew Gaskievicz: Critiquing the Aesthetics of Memory In: H-Net-Online 2009 or at: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23722, 24.2. 2009.