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In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, German intellectuals and writers were forced to confront perhaps the most difficult complex of problems ever faced by modern intellectuals in the western world: the complete defeat and devastation of their country, the crimes of the Hitler dictatorship, the onset of the Cold War, and ultimately the political division of the nation. To a large extent these debates took place in literature and literary discourse, and they continue to have pressing relevance for Germany today, when the country is rediscovering and exploring this previously neglected period in literature and film. Yet the period has been neglected in scholarship, and is little understood; for the first time in English, this book offers a systematic overview of the hotly contested intellectual debates of this period: the problem of German guilt, the question of the return of literary and political émigrés such as Thomas Mann, the relevance of the cultural tradition of German humanism for the postwar period, the threat of nihilism, the politicization of literature, and the status of German young people who had been indoctrinated by the Nazis. Stephen Brockmann challenges the received wisdom that the immediate postwar period in Germany was intellectually barren, characterized primarily by silence on the major issues of the day; he reveals, in addition to attempts to obfuscate those issues, a German intellectual-and literary-world characterized by an often high level of dialogue and debate. Stephen Brockmann is professor of German at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the recipient of the 2007 DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies/Humanities.

German literature --- Literature and society --- Authors, German --- History and criticism. --- History --- Political and social views. --- Germany --- Intellectual life --- Cold War. --- Debate. --- Dialogue. --- Hitler Dictatorship. --- Intellectual Debates. --- Literary Discourse. --- Literature. --- Political Division. --- Postwar Germany. --- Second World War. --- Silence.

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From the Werkbund to the Bauhaus to Braun, from furniture to automobiles to consumer appliances, twentieth-century industrial design is closely associated with Germany. In this pathbreaking study, Paul Betts brings to light the crucial role that design played in building a progressive West German industrial culture atop the charred remains of the past. The Authority of Everyday Objects details how the postwar period gave rise to a new design culture comprising a sprawling network of diverse interest groups-including the state and industry, architects and designers, consumer groups and museums, as well as publicists and women's organizations-who all identified industrial design as a vital means of economic recovery, social reform, and even moral regeneration. These cultural battles took on heightened importance precisely because the stakes were nothing less than the very shape and significance of West German domestic modernity. Betts tells the rich and far-reaching story of how and why commodity aesthetics became a focal point for fashioning a certain West German cultural identity. This book is situated at the very crossroads of German industry and aesthetics, Cold War politics and international modernism, institutional life and visual culture.

Industrial design --- Design, Industrial --- Mechanical drawing --- New products --- Design --- History. --- 20th century german culture. --- 20th century industrial design. --- architects. --- automobiles. --- bauhaus. --- braun. --- cold war politics. --- commodity aesthetics. --- consumer appliances. --- consumer groups. --- cultural identity. --- cultural studies. --- design. --- designers. --- domestic modernity. --- economic recovery. --- furniture. --- germany. --- historical. --- industrial culture. --- industry. --- institutional life. --- international modernism. --- materialism. --- modernism. --- modernity. --- moral regeneration. --- nation state. --- politics. --- postwar germany. --- social reform. --- visual culture. --- werkbund. --- west germany.