Das kunstseidene Mädchen by Irmgard Keun

She and her family, including her brother Gerd, born in 1910, lived in the city until 1913, when they moved to Cologne. Date Deposited 2010-5 Identifiers: URI or URL Copyright and License Information Copyright 2010 Karin A.Irmgard Keun was born in Berlin (Charlottenburg) to Eduard and Elsa Charlotte Keun on February 6, 1905. To cope with the past, she does in fact acknowledge its importance in Germany’s current definition of itself by incorporating it into the themes of Das kunstseidene Mädchen. While Keun does not issue a verdict on how

During the course of the novel, however, she also encounters individuals who nostalgically long for the Wilhelmine Empire, a world apart from the rapidly modernizing Weimar Republic. Ignoring her lack of education and working-class origins, Doris’s primary goal is directed at the future as she aspires to become a Glanz, a shining brilliance. The protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel, Doris, for example, records her present in a diary that also functions as a means of reconciling generational differences with her parents. My thesis seeks to answer the question of how New Objectivity negotiates the past by examining examples of historical and personal memory within Keun’s novel and analyzing the different ways in which characters relate to their past.

The past rarely arises as a topic of interest in New Objectivity literature, in contrast to the period after World War II when the past and memory were important topics in German literature, such as Holocaust studies. A reaction to the illusions that lured Germany into World War I, New Objectivity focused primarily on the present, a problem for a country that needed to reconcile the effects of a destructive war. During this time, Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) was one of the dominant literary and artistic movements, encouraging rational, unsentimental reporting of the facts, free of ornamentation or embellishments. Degree Level Thesis Keyword(s)Ībstract Irmgard Keun’s 1932 novel Das kunstseidene Mädchen (The Artificial Silk Girl) exposes many of the social and cultural issues existing in the Weimar Republic, such as unemployment, the metropolis and mass culture, modernity, and the Neue Frau (New Woman). Date of Publication Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis) Yildiz, Yasemin Department of Study Germanic Languages & Lit Discipline German Degree Granting Institution University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Degree Name M.A. Title Negotiating the past in Weimar culture: Neue Sachlichkeit and Irmgard Keun's Das kunstseidene Mädchen Author(s) Maxey, Karin A.

Das kunstseidene Mädchen by Irmgard Keun