Tagungsbericht

German Past Futures in the Twentieth Century

| vom 23.02.2017 | bis zum 25.02.2017 | German Historical Institute Washington
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Die Konferenz am German Historical Institute Washington befasste sich mit dem Verhältnis von Vergangenheitserfahrung und Zukunftserwartung im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts und brachte dabei Historiker und Literaturkritiker zusammen. Zum Einstieg wurden Theorie und Methodik von Zukunftskonzepten in der deutschsprachigen Literatur vor 1914 und in der zeitgenössischen Geschichtsforschung erörtert. Reinhart Kosellecks historische Kategorien des „Erfahrungsraumes“ und des „Erwartungshorizontes“ bildeten hier den gemeinsamen Bezugspunkt. In den folgenden Diskussionen wurden die Begriffe weiterentwickelt. Das zweite Panel der Tagung widmete sich der Weimarer Republik und dem Dritten Reich und der „Literatur der Gefahr“, die sich hier herausbildete (Kafka, Döblin). Die Schwerpunkte der beiden darauffolgenden Panels lagen auf Utopien und Dystopien in der Literatur der DDR und auf Zukunftsangst in der Bundesrepublik im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges. Anschließend wurden die Zukunftserwartungen des „akademischen Proletariats“, der Linken und innerhalb der Punk-Szene im Westdeutschland der 70-er und 80-er-Jahre untersucht. Die Konklusion der Abschlussdiskussion lag in der Notwendigkeit, Vergangenheitsreflektion und Zukunftserwartungen zusammenzudenken.

The conference, which was generously supported by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung (Cologne), dealt with the relationship between experiences of the past and anticipations of the future in Germany in the twentieth century. It aimed to adopt an interdisciplinary approach that sought to bring together historians and literary critics. On this basis, the first panel discussed broader conceptual and theoretical issues of writing the history of past futures. Literary scholar ALEXANDER HONOLD (Basel) gave the first presentation on “Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Modern Literature as Time Machine.” In his wide-ranging talk, Honold drew on Robert Musil, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka to demonstrate how futures proliferated in the literary imagination before 1914. Relying on, but also transcending Reinhart Koselleck’s seminal contributions (especially his twin notions of the “space of experiences” and “horizon of expectations”), Honold depicted futures as highly contingent entities in the work of these novelists. They also tended to either accelerate or slow down temporal perceptions. In his suggestively entitled paper “Ignorance is Bliss. The Pluralization of Modes to Generate the Future as a Challenge to Contemporary History,” historian RÜDIGER GRAF (Potsdam) analyzed how historical syntheses of contemporary history approached the problem of an open and uncertain future. Lesen Sie den vollständigen Tagungsbericht von Arnd Bauerkämper, Frank Biess und Kai Evers bei H-Soz-Kult.

Konferenzübersicht:

Welcome and Introduction

Simone Lässig (German Historical Institute) / Anne Schenderlein (German Historical Institute) / Arnd Bauerkämper (Freie Universität Berlin) / Frank Biess (University of California, San Diego) / Kai Evers (University of California, Irvine)

Panel 1: Theory and Methodology
Chair: Kai Evers (UC, Irvine)

Alexander Honold (Universität Basel): Yesterday's tomorrows. Modern Literature as a Time Machine
Rüdiger Graf (ZZF Potsdam/Universität Bochum): Ignorance Is Bliss. The Pluralization of Modes to Generate the Future as a Challenge to Contemporary History
Arnd Bauerkämper (FU Berlin): Contingency and Cultures of Security: Concepts for Investigations of Twentieth-Century German History

Panel 2: Futures of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany
Chair: Anne Schenderlein (GHI)

Kai Evers (UC, Irvine): Strategies of anticipating multiple futures in modernist literature: Next war scenarios in the works of Döblin and Kafka
Adelheid Voskuhl (University of Pennsylvania): Philosophy of technology and visions of the future (and the past) in engineers’ class struggle in the Second Industrial Revolution (1900 to 1930)
David Jünger (Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg/FU Berlin): The shattered consistency of time. Future prospects of German Jews and their emigration from Germany between 1929 and 1939

Panel 3: Socialist Futures in East Germany (1949-1990)
Chair: Richard Wetzell (GHI)

Colleen Anderson (Harvard University): The Future in East and West German Political Posters, 1949-1954
Wolfgang Bialas (IES Berlin): Science fiction struggling with East German past futures
Philipp Ebert (University of Cambridge): Imagining transitional justice in a future reunited Germany. Conceptions of how to deal with socialist injustice in West Germany, 1961-1989

Panel 4: West German Futures
Chair: Elisabeth Engel (GHI)

Pierre-Frédéric Weber (University of Szczecin): ‘Self-limitation’. The FRG's past escape from frightful futures (1949-1990)
Frank Biess (UC, San Diego): The Past as a Source of Anxiety: The 1960s as Crisis Decade
Jennifer Allen (Yale University): Reclaiming Utopia in Late-Twentieth-Century Germany

Panel 5: Social Conflicts and Cultural Milieus
Chair: Frank Biess (UC, San Diego)

Sindy Duong (FU Berlin): ‘Timeless Bugaboo of the Chicken-Hearted’ or ‘Fuel for Future Social Conflict’? Envisioning, Measuring, and Debating the ‘Academic Proletariat’ in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s
Joachim C. Häberlen (University of Warwick): The Future of the Self: Dystopias and Utopias about the Self in the Alternative Left around 1980
Jeff Hayton (Wichita State University): Paranoid Futures, Reoccurring Pasts: 1984 and 1933 in the West German Punk Imaginary

Panel 6: Utopias and the Past in 20th Century Germany
Chair: Arnd Bauerkämper (FU Berlin)

Anna Pollmann (Berlin): Remainders of apocalyptic experience. Günther Anders and the fragments of the 20th century
Terence Renaud (Yale University): Crisis Theory and Futurology in the 1940s
Elke Seefried (IfZ Munich / Universität Augsburg): Shaping the Future. A Short History of Futures Studies since 1945

Concluding Discussion

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