College essays help:  Die Akzente German journal

admin @ December 18, 2007

College essays help:  Die Akzente: Zeitschrift für Literatur (Accent: journal for literature) is one of Germany’s most important post-World War II literary journals, both enabling the recovery of literary movements and works brutally suppressed by the National Socialists, and encouraging avant-garde poetry and drama. Founded in 1954 by Walter Höllerer and Hans Bender, with the original subtitle Zeitschrift für Dichtung (Journal for poetry), the journal continues to appear in bimonthly issues, and has a circulation of about 4500. DA has presented works by nearly every major postwar German writer, from fiction by Günter Grass and Gabriele Wohmann to essays concerning aesthetics and politics by Theodor W. Adorno and Martin Heidegger. It has also been an important source of literature and criticism from other European countries and North America. Recent issues of the periodical have included works by Thomas Bernhard, Tankred Dorst, and Günter Kunert.
College essays help:Essays in DA have often provided the theoretical basis for reclaiming German Modernist literature and for encouraging postwar artistic and cultural movements. Essays in the first years of DA discuss dadaism and surrealism, expressionists such as the poet Georg Heym, and Bertolt Brecht’s epic theater, helping to reestablish the importance of these movements and authors. Indeed, Höllerer has remarked that the recovery of these works, and of German literary tradition in general, was a primary motivation for establishing the journal. the first issue of DA ( February 1954) included works from the literary estates of the philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin and the Jewish poet Gertrud Kolmar, both of whom had been killed by the Nazis.

College essays help:the same issue included three essays concerning Robert Musil’s influential Modernist novel, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften ( 1930-43; the Man Without Qualities). Other essays of this period concerning the radio play and the form of the novel, such as Adorno’s "Form und Gehalt des zeitgenössischen Romans" (August 1954; Form and content of the contemporary novel), suggest the importance of DA for the development of postwar German literary aesthetics. DA was also an important source of works and criticism by members of Gruppe 47 (Group 47), a union of writers who demanded discussion of the Nazi period and its implications for postwar German culture.

College essays help:Similarly innovative works by the novelist Uwe Johnson and the documentary dramatist Peter Weiss have often appeared in the periodical.Most characteristic of DA, however, has been its focus on poetry. Höllerer, who is himself a poet and playwright, encouraged other writers of experimental and avant-garde poetry and is largely responsible for the journal’s early emphasis on the lyric. Bender, too, has contributed many essays on poetry to DA and other periodicals, and has edited several anthologies of poems. Poems have appeared by such central figures as Helmut Heissenböttel and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and poetry continues to play an important role in the journal.

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