Frauke Matthes reports on the ‘Politics of Contemporary German Culture’ conference, held at the University of St Andrews on 26-27 April 2019.

The conference was organised by Dr Dora Osborne (St Andrews), Dr Frauke Matthes (Edinburgh), and Dr Katya Krylova (Aberdeen). The conference focused on the issue of how the contemporary cultural landscape in Germany and Austria is being shaped by current political concerns and to consider, through dialogue between academics and practitioners, how this affects German Studies as a discipline and a practice.

Ahead of the official opening of the conference on Friday 26 April, delegates had the opportunity to attend an informal screening, on Thursday 25 April, of Ruth Beckermann’s award-winning film The Waldheim Waltz (2018), organised by Kirsten Mericka, OeAD Lektorin at St Andrews, and introduced by Katya Krylova.  The film’s original formal treatment of the international scandal sparked in the late 1980s by former UN Secretary General and later Austrian president Kurt Waldheim’s deception about his Nazi past resonated with a conference concerned with the interrelationship of politics and cultural production.

(Photo 1, left) From left to right: Katya Krylova, Dora Osborne, Frauke Matthes (conference organisers). Photo © Ben Schofield.

(Photo 2, middle) Stephanie Gleißner and Dora Osborne

(Photo 3, right) Roundtable on ‘The Politics of the Cultural Market’. From left to right: Ann-Christine Simke, Katie Hawthorne, Charlotte Ryland and Lizzie Stewart

The four themed ‘classic’ panels of the conference, commencing on Friday 26 April, focused on political or politicized aspects of contemporary life that have become increasingly significant for German and Austrian culture today: The Politics of Europe, The Politics of Language, The Politics of Memory, and The Politics of Nationalism.

The first panel, on ‘The Politics of Europe’, included a presentation by Áine McMurtry (KCL) on British writer Sharon Otoo’s short story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin (2016), winner of the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for Literature, exploring how the story can be viewed as a fabulation for Germany. Teresa Ludden (Newcastle) offered an analysis of Austrian philosopher Isolde Charim’s thinking on pluralised identities and societies in her book Ich und die Anderen (2018). Benedict Schofield (KCL) concluded the panel by examining authorship, politics, and the cocreation of European futures in the work of Robert Menasse and Stephen Spender.

A panel on ‘The Politics of Language’ included a presentation by Linda Shortt (Warwick) on cultural responses to the Migrant Crisis. It was followed by an exploration by Myrto Aspioti (Oxford) on Saša Stanišić’s Vor dem Fest (2014), as a case study for ‘undoing “identity politics”’. Allyson Fiddler (Lancaster) concluded the panel with a paper examining contemporary political responses by Elfriede Jelinek and Marlene Streeruwitz, interventions which extend far beyond their native Austria, with these notable authors turning their attention, for instance, to contemporary US politics.

The following day, a panel on memory explored its significance in contemporary German culture from various angles: while Mary Cosgove (TCD) looked closely into the role of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the politics of the relatively newly established right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Maria Roca Lizarazu (Birmingham) explored ‘literary memory’ as ‘subjunctive, “sideshadowing” memory of the Holocaust’ in Robert Menasse’s prize-winning novel Die Hauptstadt (2017). Anna Saunders (Bangor) approached ‘memory’ from the perspective of memorial activism as ‘a new Gedenkkultur between nationalism and internationalism’, and Evelyn Preuss (Yale) closed the panel with a reading of Andreas Dresen’s latest film Gundermann (2018) in the context of orientalism.

Nationalism was at the centre of the fourth panel, which, due to a late cancellation, only focussed on cultural developments in Austria. In his paper, Joseph Moser (West Chester University) took the election of Kurt Waldheim as president of Austria as a ‘turning point’ in Austrian literature and film and explored his continuing impact on recent writing and filmmaking, especially in the context of Austria’s current political climate, considering also Beckermann’s The Waldheim Waltz (screened as part of the pre-conference programme) in his analysis. Regine Klimpfinger and Elisabeth Königshofer (Reading) gave us some insights into Burschenschaft Hysteria, an all-female fraternity in Austria that inverts traditional ideals of fraternities, in the context of the 2018/19 ÖVP-FPÖ Austrian coalition government, especially through its social media presence.

The keynote speaker Stephanie Gleißner (Philipps Universität, Marburg) reflected in her paper on ‘autofiction’ and issues revolving around ‘authenticity’ in contemporary German-language writing. As a writer of fiction herself, Stephanie shared some thought-provoking ideas with her audience which tied in with many of the questions we addressed during the conference, such as the role of the author and/on the literary market, the role of literature, and the cultural capital that influences what we read and how we read it. The conference closed with a roundtable discussion on ‘The Politics of the Cultural Market’ during which colleagues from the Goethe Institut (Ann-Christine Simke), New Books in German (Charlotte Ryland), and arts journalism (Katie Hawthorne, who is also a PhD candidate at Edinburgh) shared their experiences and provided insights into their respective areas of work. The conversation largely focussed on the market forces that also shape academic engagement with culture.

A special issue of the Edinburgh German Yearbook (published by Camden House), which will include chapters arising from selected papers originally presented at the conference, is forthcoming.

Tweets and further photos from the conference can be viewed here: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1122255510085017600

The conference was made possible thanks to the generous support of the AHRC Open World Research Initiative “Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community”, the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews, the Moray Endowment Fund of the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Aberdeen.

Cover image: St Andrews Cathedral