Sound Matters: Essays on the Acoustics of German Culture (Monographs in German History)

The sounds of music and the German language have played a significant role in the developing symbolism of the German nation. In light of the historical division of Germany into many disparate political entities and regional groups, German artists and intellectuals of the 19 th and early 20 th centuries ­conceived of musical and linguistic dispositions as the nation's most palpable common ground. According to this view, the peculiar sounds of German music and of the German language provided a direct conduit to national identity, to the deepest recesses of the German soul. So strong is this legacy of sound is still prevalent in modern German culture that philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in a recent essay, did not even hesitate to describe post-wall Germany as an "acoustical body." This volume gathers the work of scholars from the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom to explore the role of sound in modern and postmodern German cultural production. Working across established disciplines and methodological divides, the essays of Sound Matters investigate the ways in which texts, artists, and performers in all kinds of media have utilized sonic materials in order to enforce or complicate dominant notions of German cultural and national identity. About the Authors: Nora M. Alter is Associate Professor of German, Film and Media Studies at the University of Florida. Lutz Koepnick is Associate Professor of German, Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction: Sound Matters • Nora M. Alter and Lutz Koepnick 10 Part I: Sound Nation? 40 1. Hegemony through Harmony: German Identity, Music, and Enlightenment around 1800 • Nicholas Vazsonyi 42 2. Mahler contra Wagner: The Third Symphony and the Political Legacy of Romanticism • Carl Niekerk 58 3. Conducting Music, Conducting War: Nazi Germany as an Acoustic Experience • Frank Trommler 74 Part II: Dissonant Visions 86 4. The Politics and Sounds of Everyday Life in Kuhle Wampe • Nora M. Alter 88 5. Sound Money: Aural Strategies in Rolf Thiele’s The Girl Rosemarie • Hester Baer 100 6. The Castrato’s Voices: Word and Flesh in Fassbinder’s In a Year of Thirteen Moons • Brigitte Peucker 113 Part III: Sounds of Silence 124 7. Benjamin’s Silence • Lutz Koepnick 126 8. Deafening Sound and Troubling Silence in Volker Schlöndorff’s Die Blechtrommel • Elizabeth C. Hamilton 139 9. Silence Is Golden? The Short Fiction of Pieke Biermann • Christopher Jones 151 Part IV: Translating Sound 162 10. Broadcasting Wagner: Transmission, Dissemination, Translation • Thomas F. Cohen 164 11. Sounds Familiar? Nina Simone’s Performances of Brecht/Weill Songs • Russell A. Berman 180 12. Roll Over Beethoven! Chuck Berry! Mick Jagger! 1960s Rock, the Myth of Progress, and the Burden of National Identity in West Germany • Richard Langston 192 13. The Music That Lola Ran To • Caryl Flinn 206 Part V: Memory, Music, and the Postmodern 224 14. “Heiner Müller vertonen”: Heiner Goebbels and the Music of Postmodern Memory • David Barnett 226 15. The Technological Subject: Music, Media, and Memory in Stockhausen’s Hymnen • Larson Powell 237 Notes on Contributors 251 Index 254 Working across established disciplines & methodological divides, these essays investigate the ways in which texts, artists, & performers in all kinds of media have utilized sound materials in order to enforce or complicate dominant notions of German cultural & national identity