Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Keith Bullivant, Geoffrey Giles, and Walter Pape -- Introduction: Germany and Eastern Europe / Keith Bullivant and Geoffrey Giles -- Germans and Poles, 1871-1945 / Volker R. Berghahn -- When Germans and Poles Lived Together: From the History of German-Polish Relations / Richard Blanke -- Eastern Europe and the Notion of the “Frontier” in Germany to 1945 / Alan E. Steinweis -- The ‘Volksdeutschen’ of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust: Constructed Ethnicity, Real Genocide / Doris L. Bergen -- Anticommunism and (West) German Identity: An Analysis of Metaphors and Concepts of History in the F.A.Z., 1949-1952 / Martin Andree and Daniel Fulda -- “Branntweintrinkende Wilde” Beyond Civilization and Outside History: The Depiction of the Poles in Gustav Freytag’s “Soll und Haben” / Jürgen Lieskounig -- The De-Germanization of the Budapest Stage / Alice Freifeld -- Vita Nuova: Moscow and the German Writers / Walter Pape -- Landscape of Memories: Eastern European Rooms in the Poetry and Prose of Johannes Bobrowski / Anna Campanile -- Berlin: “Stepmother Among Russian Cities” / Karl Schlögel -- “Malevolent Partnership or Blatant Opportunism?” Croat-German Relations, 1919-1941 / Patricia Kollander -- Imagining Eastern Europe in East German Literature / Thomas C. Fox -- The Contemporary Czech View of Germany and the Germans / Uwe Koreik and Jiří Stromšík -- In the Trap / Herta Müller -- Subjectivity (Un)Bound: Libuše Moníková and Herta Müller / Brigid Haines -- The Image of Germany in Contemporary Bulgarian Literature / Rumjana Kiefer -- Notes on Contributors / Keith Bullivant, Geoffrey Giles, and Walter Pape -- Index of Names / Keith Bullivant, Geoffrey Giles, and Walter Pape.

The opening up, and subsequent tearing down, of the Berlin Wall in 1989 effectively ended a historically unique period for Europe that had drastically changed its face over a period of fifty years and redefined, in all sorts of ways, what was meant by East and West. For Germany in particular this radical change meant much more than unification of the divided country, although initially this process seemed to consume all of the country's energies and emotions. While the period of the Cold War saw the emergence of a Federal Republic distinctly Western in orientation, the coming down of the Iron Curtain meant that Germany's relationship with its traditional neighbours to the East and the South-East, which had been essentially frozen or redefined in different ways for the two German states by the Cold War, had to be rediscovered. This volume, which brings together scholars in German Studies from the United States, Germany and other European countries, examines the history of the relationship between Germany and Eastern Europe and the opportunities presented by the changes of the 1990's, drawing particular attention to the interaction between the willingness of German and its Eastern neighbours to work for political and economic inte-gration, on the one hand, and the cultural and social problems that stem from old prejudices and unresolved disputes left over from the Second World War, on the other.

English

Description based on print version record.