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CFP:

WHY WEIMAR?

Questioning the Legacy of Weimar from Goethe to 1999

The Third Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference McGill University, September 16-18, 1999

CALL FOR PAPERS

1999 will mark the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth, and Weimar will also become the Cultural Capital of Europe. The conference will afford an opportunity for critical reflection on the legacy of Weimar in its various historical manifestations: from the Classical Weimar to the Weimar of 1999. The central theme will be the uses and abuses of Weimar and Classicism in the past 200 years. Questions such as the following could be explored throughout the various manifestations of Weimar:

• What role have intellectuals, artists, and politicians played in the definition of culture from Goethe's time to Weimar 1999?
• What space have women occupied in the cultural topography of the various manifestations of Weimar?
• Does the notion of a national culture in the tradition of German Classicism leave any space for the culture of minorities?
• Is the construction of a national culture an(other) attempt to marginalize minorities?
• Are the constructs of a national culture and of multiculturalism competing models?
• Are xenophobia and racism inherent in the definition of a national culture?
• What is the cultural legacy of Weimar in literature, music, fine arts, architecture, theatre and film?

The conference will focus on the following historical periods and could include period-specific questions such as the following:

• Weimar in 1999
  Does the choice of Weimar as Cultural Capital of Europe indicate that the national cultural heritage and identity is to be seen as a counterpart to Germany's political and economic role in the new European Economic and Monetary Union? Is Weimar 1999 an attempt to resort to Goethe's Classicism at a time when the DM, a symbol of national identity, will be replaced by the Euro? Is the idyllic small Town of Weimar as Cultural Capital of Europe to be seen as a counterpart to Berlin as the political centre of the power-house called Germany? Is the definition of Germany as a cultural state (Kulturstaat) as inscribed in the 1990 Unity Treaty an attempt to unify the old and the new Bundeslaender? Can it succeed,i.e. is cultural unification achievable, is it des irable? Is Weimar 1999 a symptom of a nostalgia for a classicism believed to have existed? Is it meant to reaffirm a classical foundation for the new millenium? How does the classical heritage manifest itself in present-day culture? Does the insistence on the classical heritage prevent cultural innovations?
• Weimar in the Divided Germany (1949-1989)
  To what extent did the two Germanies between 1949 and 1989 succeed, or fail, in coming to terms with Weimar and Buchenwald in their respective attempts to define their identities by (re)constructing a cultural heritage (Kulturerbe) and by proclaiming/ propagating a cultural state or nation (Kulturstaat, Kulturnation)?
• Weimar and Buchenwald:
  Weimar in Nazi Germany Are Weimar and Buchenwald the two sides of the same coin? What are the moral and political consequences and implications of Weimar and Buchenwald? (How) did Buchenwald change the opinion of Weimar and the arts?
• Weimar Republic
  What is the legacy of the Weimar Republic in 1999: a blueprint for political failure in a unified Europe, a model for cultural innovation in the age of the revolution of the information technology?
• Classical Weimar
  Why should one celebrate, at the end of the millenium, the classical formulation of a national culture as shaped by Goethe and Schiller in the patriarchal society of Weimar? Is Classical Weimar more than the museums which enshrine its memory? To what extent have key concepts of Classicism shaped culture and national identity in the past 200 years?

Abstracts from disciplines such as Architecture, Art History, Cultural Studies, FilmStudies, German Studies, History, Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, and Women's Studies are welcome. Inter-disciplinary approaches are encouraged. The conference language will be English. A selection of revised papers will be published in the series "McGill European Studies."

300-word abstracts are to be submitted by January 31, 1999 to:

Quelle = Email <H-Soz-u-Kult>

From: jkeller@email.gc.cuny.edu
Subject: cfp Why Weimar? (McGill Univ. 16.-18.9.1999)
Date: 27.4.1998

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