FROM RUBBLE TO REVOLUTIONS AND RAVES: LITERARY INTERROGATIONS OF GERMAN MEDIA ECOLOGIES Kai-Uwe Werbeck A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures. Chapel Hill 2012 Approved by: Dr. Richard Langston (Advisor) Dr. Eric Downing Dr. Mark Hansen Dr. Jonathan Hess Dr. Ken Hillis © 2012 Kai-Uwe Werbeck ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT KAI-UWE WERBECK: From Rubble to Revolutions and Raves: Literary Interrogations of German Media Ecologies (Under the Direction of Dr. Richard Langston) This dissertation queries the ways in which West German literature interrogated its role in larger media environments at three pivotal historical moments in German postwar history: the rubble years, the student revolts, and Germany’s reunification. I argue that after moments of social and political unrest, the later twentieth-century German media ecologies so prominent in West German urban centers became more dynamic, allowing for fluid exchange and dialogue between newer and older media, an ecology in which a particularly attentive and intermedially sensitive subset of literature occupied a unique and unmistakably critical position; within postwar and contemporary German media ecologies, these texts, I argue, reflect on both the affirmative condition of dominant media environments as well as their political potential when reordered according to a literary vision. In a word, this dissertation contends that exemplars of German literature from the second half of the twentieth century have continually positioned themslves as critical monitors of and agents in the ever-evolving state of German media ecologies. The first chapter compares Wolfgang Staudte’s seminal rubble film with the depiction of the city in the rubble literature of Heinrich Böll in order to illustrate how these two media were instrumental in retracing the afterlife of German Expressionism. The second chapter centers on the literature in the wake of the unsuccessful German student revolutions in 1968 as well as its documentaries and field iii recordings as an urban aesthetic of resistance to political and cultural complacency. The epitome of this aesthetic, which I locate specifically in the works of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, challenged the leading medium of the day, television, and rethought the streets as a place where interventions into mediated life could be waged during a post-revolutionary period characterized by political standstill. The final chapter focuses on the intersection of the Internet and literature from around the late 1990s and queries specifically the work of writer Rainald Goetz. Goetz explores Berlin and its nightlife through a poetics that centers on the assumed immediacy of the World Wide Web, championing a culturally determined communality over a national one. Beyond just demonstrating the highly mediated nature of the West German urban experience, these three case studies confirm that in an age of rapid technological developments and continually evolving new media, literature has held its ground as a major constituent in the German media ecologies. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank my parents, Kurt-Uwe and Doris Werbeck, for their support. I extend special thanks to my advisor Dr. Richard Langston who invested a lot of time and thought in this project. I would be amiss if I failed to thank the German Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I spent six great years, and my committee members for their input and feedback. I am also indebted to my friends (and proof-readers) Stephanie Gaskill, Elise Harris, and Alex Fulk. Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers deserves credit for formatting this dissertation. Last but not least, I am grateful to my wife Susanne Gomoluch for her love and her encouragement. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures: ...................................................................................................................... viii List of Abbreviations: ............................................................................................................... x Introduction: The Place of Literature in German Media Ecologies ...........................................1 I. The Ecological Metropolis: The City in Literature ..........................................12 II. Art in Ruins: An Ecology of Rubble............................................................... 18 III. Television’s Specters: An Ecology of Revolutions ........................................ 24 IV. Party Like It’s 1999: An Ecology of Raves .................................................... 32 Chapter One: Walking in Waste Lands: Ruin-Gazing in German Rubble Film and Literature .............................................................................. 41 I. From the Flâneur to the Rubble-Gazer ........................................................... 41 II. Navigating the Aftermath: Situating Rubble Literature and Film ................................................................................................................. 50 III. Into the Ruins: The Mobility of Morality ....................................................... 53 IV. From Rubble Film to Rubble Literature: The Cinematic Ruin And Its Discontents ......................................................................................... 70 V. Coloring Cologne: Cinematic References in Der Engel schwieg ....................85 Conclusion .................................................................................................................101 vi Chapter Two: Documenting the Downfall: The Deconstruction of the Televisual City in Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s Multi-Media Art ..................... 103 I. The Life and Death of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann ..............................................103 II. Television’s Nemesis: Situating Brinkmann’s Later Work .......................... 111 III. Nature, Culture, and the Urban Grid: Brinkmann’s Instant Photography .... 118 IV. Re-Recording Cologne: Brinkmann’s Poetics of Erasure and Repetition .... 130 V. Poeticizing Urban Space: The City as Text in Westwärts 1 & 2 .................. 144 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 161 Chapter Three: The Virtual Metropolis: The Decentralization of Post-Wall Berlin in Rainald Goetz’s Heute Morgen, Eine Geschichte der Gegenwart .............. 163 I. The Nights and Days of Rainald Goetz ........................................................ 163 II. Writing the New Berlin: Situating Heute Morgen, Eine Geschichte der Gegenwart ............................................................................ 171 III. Into the Dark: Fairy Tales from the Urban Underground in Rave ................ 179 IV. Recording the Periphery: Abfall für alle as an Internet Diary ...................... 197 V. From Internet Diary to Novel: Navigating Berlin in Roman eines Jahres ................................................................................................... 208 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 221 Conclusion: German Media Ecologies in the 21st Century ................................................... 223 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 236 vii LIST OF FIGURES: Fig. 1.1. Mertens walking in the rubble, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.2. Mertens and Susanne in their apartment, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.3. Mertens’s reflection in a puddle of water, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.4. Mertens and Susanne walking through a nocturnal Berlin, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.5. Mertens and Brückner traversing the destroyed landscape, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.6. A mother begs Mertens to help her daughter, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.7. The forlorn Mertens in a church, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.8. People returning to Berlin on a train, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.9. A POV shot from Susanne’s perspective, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 1.10. Susanne looking at a broken mirror, still from The Murderers are among us. Copyright © by DEFA-Stiftung. Fig. 2.1. A typography of Coal Bunkers, photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher from 1967-1993. Copyright © by Sonnabend Gallerie. Fig. 2.2. Vein-like trees against a pale sky, from Westwärts 1 & 2. Copyright © by Rowohlt Verlag. Fig. 2.3. The city appears behind the trees, from Westwärts 1 & 2. Copyright © by Rowohlt Verlag. Fig. 2.4. Images of urban decay, from Westwärts 1 & 2. Copyright © by Rowohlt Verlag. Fig. 2.5. Street signs in the city, from Westwärts 1 & 2. Copyright © by Rowohlt Verlag. Fig. 2.6. Exemplary page-layout in “Westwärts,” from Westwärts 1 & 2. Copyright © by Rowohlt Verlag. Fig. 2.7. Section three of “Westwärts” “intruding” into section two, from Westwärts 1 & 2. Copyright © by Rowohlt Verlag. viii Fig 2.8. The text in “Westwärts” “coagulates” and “clogs” the page,