Christiane Schönfeld

A 2024 CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE This book tells the story of German-language literature on film, beginning with pioneering motion picture adaptations of Faust in 1897 and early debates focused on high art as mass culture. It explores, analyzes and contextualizes the so-called 'golden age' of silent cinema in the 1920s, the impact of sound on adaptation practices, the abuse of literary heritage by Nazi filmmakers, and traces the role of German-language literature in exile and postwar films, across ideological boundaries in divided Germany, in New German Cinema, and in remakes and movies for cinema as well as television and streaming services in the 21st century. Having provided the narrative core to thousands of films since the late 19th century, many of German cinema's most influential masterpieces were inspired by canonical texts, popular plays, and even children's literature. Not being restricted to German adaptations, however, this book also traces the role of literature originally written in German in international film productions, which sheds light on the interrelation between cinema and key historical events. It outlines how processes of adaptation are shaped by global catastrophes and the emergence of nations, by materialist conditions, liberal economies and capitalist imperatives, political agendas, the mobility of individuals, and sometimes by the desire to create reflective surfaces and, perhaps, even art. Commercial cinema's adaptation practices have foregrounded economic interest, but numerous filmmakers throughout cinema history have turned to German-language literature not simply to entertain, but as a creative contribution to the public sphere, marking adaptation practice, at least potentially, as a form of active citizenship.

The History of German Literature on Film

Hermann Rasche

Festschrift für Eoin Bourke

Denkbilder--

Pól Ó Dochartaigh

Essays analyzing postwar literary, cultural, and historical representations of "good Germans" during the Second World War and the Nazi period.

Altruism and Moral Ambiguity

Representing the Good German in Literature and Culture After 1945

The essays collected in this book focus on the multi-faceted relationship between German/Austrian literature and the cinema screen. Scholars from Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Portugal, USA and Canada present critical readings of a wide range of transpositions of German-language texts to film, while also considering the impact of cinema on German literature, exploring intertextualities as well as intermedialities. The forum of discussion thus created encompasses cinematic narratives based on Goethe's Faust, Kleist's Marquise of O..., Kubrick's film version of Schnitzler's Dream Story and Caroline Link's Oscar-winning adaptation of Stefanie Zweig's novel Nowhere in Africa. The wide-ranging analyses of the complex interaction between literature and film presented here focus on literary works by Anna Seghers, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, Nicola Rhon, Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Elfriede Jelinek, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Erich Hackl, Thomas Brussig, Sven Regener, Frank Goosen and Robert Schneider, as well as on adaptations by filmmakers such as Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Max Mack, Josef von Sternberg, Max W. Kimmich, Fred Zinnemann, Paul Wegener, Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, Hansjürgen Pohland, Hendrik Handloegten, Michael Haneke, Christoph Stark, Karin Brandauer, Joseph Vilsmaier, Leander Haußmann and Doris Dörrie.

Christiane Schönfeld

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