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Bridges, Elizabeth. "Schiller Reading Comics: The Aesthetics of Nostalgia and the Wende-Narrative in Contemporary Graphic Novels." Colloquia Germanica 48.(2015): 343–56. 
Added by: joachim (15/05/2018, 17:10)   Last edited by: joachim (03/05/2023, 16:06)
Resource type: Journal Article
Language: en: English
Peer reviewed
BibTeX citation key: Bridges2015
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Categories: General
Keywords: "Kinderland", "Treibsand", Germany, History comics, Illness, Kahane. Kitty, Lahl. Alexander, Mawil, Mönch. Max, Schiller. Friedrich, Witzel. Marcus
Creators: Bridges
Collection: Colloquia Germanica
Views: 16/754
Attachments   URLs   https://www.jstor.org/stable/26431162
Abstract
Utilizing Schiller’s early medical writings that propose a cure for nostalgia, which was conceptualized as an illness in his time, this article explores the ways in which nostalgia – both in the modern aesthetic sense and in its original medical sense – can be used as a lens through which to examine history. Schiller’s cure involved a “rehearsal of return” to the ill patient’s place of origin. Comics, likewise, serve as a site for Schiller’s rehearsal of return, in this case to contentious points in the past. By analyzing two 2014 graphic novels dealing with the time surrounding the end of the GDR, Kinderland (Mawil) and Treibsand (Max Mönch, Alexander Lahl, and Kitty Kahane), this article posits a visual historiography of nostalgia-as-illness. This type of historical vision is especially productive in the autobiographical mode, where authors frequently use the medium of comics to carve out spaces for subjectivity against a backdrop of seemingly implacable historical forces. This article uncovers what it is specifically about the medium of comics, particularly in a German context, that makes the genre so suitable for precisely this sort of historical introspection.
Added by: joachim  
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