In foregrounding the epochal figures of Albrecht von Wallenstein and the Emperor Ferdinand, Alfred Döblin’s historical novel Wallenstein (1920) would seem to confound the genre’s habitual focus on average, typical figures. The catastrophic power struggle that results from the irreconcilability of the protagonists of Wallenstein is a far cry from…[Read more]

In foregrounding the epochal figures of Albrecht von Wallenstein and the Emperor Ferdinand, Alfred Döblin’s historical novel Wallenstein (1920) would seem to confound the genre’s habitual focus on average, typical figures. The catastrophic power struggle that results from the irreconcilability of the protagonists of Wallenstein is a far cry from…[Read more]

Entry on Alfred Döblin’s book, Das Ich über der Natur, in the 2016 Alfred Döblin Handbuch.

Entry on Alfred Döblin’s book, Das Ich über der Natur, in the 2016 Alfred Döblin Handbuch.

In this article I offer a reading of Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller’s novel Andymon (1982) in order to show how science fiction was able to function as critique in the German Democratic Republic. Andymon, a popular novel in a popular genre, establishes an extended analogy between spatial closure and temporal foreclosure to challenge the re…[Read more]

This article reads Albert Renger-Patzsch’s photographic theory and practice in the context of Benjamin’s and Brecht’s dismissals of his work in order to recover the paradoxical interplay between documentation and perceptual training central to debates about photography as a specifically modern medium during the 1920s. I argue that, rather than…[Read more]

This article reads Albert Renger-Patzsch’s photographic theory and practice in the context of Benjamin’s and Brecht’s dismissals of his work in order to recover the paradoxical interplay between documentation and perceptual training central to debates about photography as a specifically modern medium during the 1920s. I argue that, rather than…[Read more]

This article reads Albert Renger-Patzsch’s photographic theory and practice in the context of Benjamin’s and Brecht’s dismissals of his work in order to recover the paradoxical interplay between documentation and perceptual training central to debates about photography as a specifically modern medium during the 1920s. I argue that, rather than…[Read more]

This article reads Albert Renger-Patzsch’s photographic theory and practice in the context of Benjamin’s and Brecht’s dismissals of his work in order to recover the paradoxical interplay between documentation and perceptual training central to debates about photography as a specifically modern medium during the 1920s. I argue that, rather than…[Read more]