Research Catalog

Title

Bodies and ruins : imagining the bombing of Germany, 1945 to the present / David F. Crew.

Author

Crew, David F., 1946-

Publication

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 274 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

Bodies and Ruins explores changing German memories of World War II as it analyzes the construction of narratives in the postwar period including the depiction of the bombing of individual German cities. The book offers a corrective notion rising in the late 1990s notion that discussions of the Allied bombing were long overdue, because Germans who had endured the bombings had largely been condemned to silence after 1945. David Crew shows that far from being marginalized in postwar historical consciousness, the bombing war was in fact a central strand of German memory and identity. Local narratives of the bombing war, including photographic books, had already established themselves as important "vectors of memory" in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The bombing war had allowed Germans to see themselves as victims at a time when the Allied liberation of the concentration camps and the Nuremberg trials presented Germans to the world as perpetrators or at least as accomplices. The bombing war continued to serve this function even as Germans became more and more willing directly to confront the genocide of European Jews--which by the 1960s was beginning to be referred to as the Holocaust. Despite its obvious importance, historians have paid very little attention to the visual representation of the bombing war. This book follows the search for what were considered to be the "right" stories and the "right" pictures of the bombing war in local publications and picture books from 1945 to the present.

Series Statement

Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany

Uniform Title

Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany.

Subjects

• Bombing, Aerial
• Military operations, Aerial
• World War (1939-1945)
• World War, 1939-1945 > Aerial operations
• Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
• World War, 1939-1945 > Destruction and pillage > Germany > Historiography
• World War, 1939-1945 > Campaigns > Germany
• Military campaigns
• 1900-1999
• History
• Bombing, Aerial > Germany > History > 20th century
• Germany
• Destruction and pillage
• World War, 1939-1945 > Influence

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-263) and index.

Contents

Introduction -- Local stories : narratives of the bombing war, 1949-88 -- Picture work -- The meanings of ruins -- Mourning, denial, celebration : the visual work of picture books -- East Germany's bombing war : Dresden -- After the Cold War : the multimedia bombing war since the 1990s -- Conclusion.

Call Number

JFE 17-7026

ISBN

• 9780472130139
• 0472130137

LCCN

2016043290

OCLC

965761010

Author

Crew, David F., 1946- author.

Title

Bodies and ruins : imagining the bombing of Germany, 1945 to the present / David F. Crew.

Publisher

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany

Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-263) and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

JFE 17-7026