Neustadt

Affect and Architecture in Brigitte Reimann's East German Novel Franziska Linkerhand

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9856712
AutoresHunter Bivens (0000-0003-2756-209X, autor de correspondencia)
Año2008
Volumen83
Número2
Páginas139-166
Fecha de publicación2008-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Germanic Review Literature Culture Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0016-8890 • E-ISSN: 1930-6962
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3200/gerr.83.2.139-166
OpenAlexW2320464146
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas8

The author reads Brigitte Reimann's novel Franziska Linkerhand as an exploration of the complex relationship between urban planning and affect in 1960s East Germany (GDR). East German architecture sought to ameliorate the prewar proletarian milieu. Yet, as Reimann's novel demonstrates, East German urban policy erases the positive aspects of this milieu, for example, vernacular history and sociability, along with the negative ones of deprivation and subalternity, causing the binding function of the city to collapse in Reimann's fictional Neustadt. The GDR's urban planning created a contradiction between the anonymous and provisional character of urban space and a suspended longing for Heimat, which Reimann describes in terms of a struggle between utopian desire and boredom. The sense of provisionality Reimann locates in Neustadt is paralleled in the novel's structure, as the indeterminacy of the past fragments the present of the narrative

Aesthetics · Affect (linguistics · Archaeology · Art · Boredom · Contradiction · Epistemology · German · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · Architecture · Communication · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology