Bøger af Jay Julian Rosellini

This collection of essays and lectures (four in English, and eight in German) reflects the author's interest in German and Austrian literary and political developments since the end of the Second World War. It also demonstrates how an 'outsider' can gain intimate knowledge of a 'foreign' culture. After 1945, many--but not all--exiled writers returned. Their colleagues who had chosen not to leave had to adjust to both denazification and the Cold War, and a new generation sought to reshape the cultural identity of countries that were initially unwilling to come to terms with the immediate past. The figures whose works and public statements are analyzed here include Wolf Biermann, F.C. Delius, Tankred Dorst, Gundi Ellert, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Norbert Gstrein, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek, Felix Mitterer, Peter Schneider, Botho Strauß, Christa Wolf, and Friedrich Wolf.

Austria, a small country that was once part of a great empire, rarely makes an appearance in the US media. In the past few decades, only Kurt Waldheim (1918-2007), the former Secretary General of the UN accused of war crimes, Jörg Haider (1950-2008), the populist politician associated with the rise of the far right, and Elfriede Jelinek (1946-), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004, have been deemed worthy of more than fleeting attention. The Haider-Jelinek confrontation was one of the significant manifestations of the search for national identity in postwar Austria. The culture wars that have raged in the country since the 1980s revolve around a fundamental question: Should the country's role in the Third Reich be dismissed as an anomaly, or was it an expression of innate characteristics that still lie beneath the surface of the seemingly idyllic Alpine Republic?

Contemporary Germany is a modern industrial democracy admired throughout the world. Many Germans believe that they live in the ''best Germany'' that has ever existed. Yet there are dissenting voices: individuals and groups that reject cosmopolitanism, globalisation and multiculturalism, and yearn for the more homogeneous country of earlier times. They are part of a global movement, often characterised as populist, that values tradition over innovation or constant change. In Germany, such people are routinely portrayed as reactionary or even neo- fascist. The present study seeks to provide a portrait of these individuals and their organisations. Very little has been written in English about the cultural figures who play a role in this movement. When the political side is discussed--whether in its manifestation as a party (the Alternative for Germany) or a citizens'' group (Pegida)--the cultural dimension is usually ignored. Jay Julian Rosellini places the so-called New Right in the context of currents in German culture and history that differ from those in other countries. With Germany the dominant country in the European Union, economically and politically, this volume offers an essential view of its current conditions, future prospects and political particularities.