Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- INTRODUCTION Writing About 1950s West Germany -- PART ONE The Weight of the Past, New Beginnings, and the Construction of National Memory -- Introduction -- CHAPTER ONE The Hour of the Woman MEMORIES OF GERMANY'S "CRISIS YEARS' AND WEST GERMAN NATIONAL IDENTITY -- CHAPTER TWO Survivors of Totalitarianism RETURNING POWS AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINE CITIZENSHIP IN WEST GERMANY, 1945-1955 -- CHAPTER THREE Remembering the War in a Nation of Victims WEST GERMAN PASTS IN THE 1950s -- CHAPTER FOUR Mission to Happiness THE COHORT OF 1949 AND THE MAKING OF EAST AND WEST GERMANS -- PART TWO Stigma: "Others" in the Shaping of West Germany -- Introduction -- CHAPTER FIVE An Uneasy Existence JEWISH SURVIVORS IN GERMANY AFTER -- CHAPTER SIX Heimat in Turmoil AFRICAN-AMERICAN GIs IN 1950s WEST GERMANY -- CHAPTER SEVEN Of German Mothers and "Negermischlingskinder" RACE, SEX, AND THE POSTWAR NATION -- CHAPTER EIGHT Guest Workers and Policy on Guest Workers in the Federal Republic FROM THE BEGINNING OF RECRUITMENT IN 1955 UNTIL ITS HALT IN 1973 -- CHAPTER NINE The Ever-Present Other COMMUNISM IN THE MAKING OF WEST GERMANY -- PART THREE The Presence of the Absent -- Introduction -- CHAPTER TEN "Normalization" in the West TRACES OF MEMORY LEADING BACK INTO THE 1950s -- CHAPTER ELEVEN Film in the 1950s PASSING IMAGES OF GUILT AND RESPONSIBILITY -- CHAPTER TWELVE Memory and Commerce, Gender and Restoration WOLFGANG STAUDTE'S ROSES FOR THE STATE PROSECUTOR (1959) AND WEST GERMAN FILM IN THE 1950s -- CHAPTER THIRTEEN Creating a Cocoon of Public Acquiescence THE AUTHOR-READER RELATIONSHIP IN POSTWAR GERMAN LITERATURE -- PART FOUR The Emergence of Civil Society, Modernity's Claims and Limits -- Introduction -- CHAPTER FOURTEEN Recasting Bourgeois Germany -- CHAPTER FIFTEEN From Starvation to Excess? TRENDS IN THE CONSUMER SOCIETY FROM THE 1940s TO THE 1970s -- CHAPTER SIXTEEN 'Normalization" as Project SOME THOUGHTS ON GENDER RELATIONS IN WEST GERMANY DURING THE 1950S -- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Cold War Angst THE CASE OF WEST-GERMAN OPPOSITION TO REARMAMENT AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS -- PART FIVE The Ambiguity of American Influences, Popular Culture and the Breaking of "High Culture's" Hegemony -- Introduction -- CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A New, "Western" Hero? RECONSTRUCTING GERMAN MASCULINITY IN THE 1950s -- CHAPTER NINETEEN Establishing Cultural Democracy YOUTH, "AMERICANIZATION," AND THE IRRESISTIBLE RISE OF POPULAR CULTURE -- CHAPTER TWENTY The "Miracle" of the Political-Culture Shift DEMOCRATIZATION BETWEEN AMERICANIZATION AND CONSERVATIVE REINTEGRATION -- EPILOGUE Rebels in Search of a Cause -- SELECTED READINGS -- BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE -- INDEX

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Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 07. Nov 2022)