Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 10/07

German Politics and Society

Vol. 22, No. 1, Issue 70 (Spring 2004)

Articles

• Agenda 2010: Redefining German Social Democracy

  Pamela Camerra-Rowe, Political Science, Kenyon College

  In the case of the Schröder government, the SPD's ability to undertake further reforms will be limited by the institutional and political features of the German system. The chancellor has a relatively small window of opportunity in which to undertake reforms. As the election of 2006 approaches, he is likely to try to shore up his labor union and blue-collar support to ensure their support. Even this year, Schröder faces numerous state and regional elections, which are likely to be seen as referenda on the reforms that have already taken effect. Moreover, Schröder has said he does not wish to undermine collective bargaining or the social welfare system; hence structural reforms are likely to stay within certain parameters. Finally, the opposition, which currently holds a majority in the Bundesrat, is likely to oppose further structural reforms that affect its constituents. Schröder recognizes these limits: "When you examine what we are trying to achieve, then it is a path, that under the political and power conditions in this society, I hold for optimal."86 While it may not be the optimal solution for solving Germany's economic problems, Agenda 2010 marks a fundamental change for the SPD and possibly the most that Schröder can hope to achieve politically.

• Situating a German Self in Democratic Community: Greek Tragedy and German Identity in Christa Wolf's Mythic Works

  Robert Pirro, Political Science, Georgia Southern University

  In foregoing this opportunity of political leadership, Wolf lost the chance to bring her vision of an East German self fit for a truly democratic community directly to bear on postcommunist German politics. In her return to Greek tragic myth as literary form and subject after unification, we may nevertheless see a continuing aspiration to exert an influence upon the German "national spirit" akin to the influence of the Greek tragedians (as imagined by Werner Jaeger among many others) upon the political culture of their day.48 Of course, the political effect one might expect from the publication of a new adaptation of the Medea myth in today's mass-media saturated world is negligible, especially when one compares it to the political effect an ancient tragedy, publicly staged as the central part of a civic festival venerating Dionysus, might have had upon the inhabitants of a polis. (Even compared with Kassandra, which was a bestseller in the two Germanies and continues to be reissued in German and foreign-language editions, Medea: Stimmen has not drawn a large readership and has had little cultural resonance.49) The effort of Christa Wolf to return to Greek tragic myth as a source of reflection and creative inspiration is nevertheless noteworthy.

• The New Paradigms of German Film Studies

  Barbara Mennel, German and Slavic Studies, and Film and Video Program University of Florida, Gainesville

  Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk, eds., The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002)

  Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)

  German Film Studies has undergone significant paradigm shifts that have resulted in such outstanding books as The German Cinema Book, edited by Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk, and Lutz Köpnick's The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood. Both books are self-confidently situated in thematically, theoretically, structurally, and institutionally innovative accounts of the history of German film or parts thereof. The paradigm shifts do not represent a rhetoric of fashionable newness employed against old paradigms but in-depth and sophisticated analytical work. The paradigm shifts result from a confluence of five recent important theoretical impulses, laid out in the books' respective introductions: (1) an attention to formerly ignored periods and their "bad objects," such as Nazi cinema, the Heimat film, as well as DEFA film; (2) an emphasis on continuities between different periods and geopolitical contexts, such as between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, and between Nazi film and Hollywood; (3) influences from transnational film studies that reconfigure the conception of national cinema; (4) both The German Cinema Book and Koepnick reconsider popular cinema as relevant site of investigation, which The German Cinema Book expresses with its emphasis on comedies and stars; (5) the two volumes take up impulses from media studies that expand the singular focus on film as object of study to include such topics as early exhibition practices, in the case of The German Cinema Book and on music, in the case of Koepnick. The approach to German film studies that had dominated the field up to date emphasized Autorenk-ino as distinct from Hollywood cinema, with a limited emphasis on the periods of the Weimar Republic and New German Cinema.