Konsum und Imagination- Tales of Commerce and Imagination
Das Warenhaus und die Moderne in Film und Literatur- Department Stores and Modernity in Film and Literature
Edited By Godela Weiss-Sussex and Ulrike Zitzlsperger
Until the 1930s department stores provided, in Germany as elsewhere, one of the focal points of cultural and critical engagement with modernity and consumer culture. The authors of this volume explore the diversity of the discourse on department stores in literature, the feuilleton, musicals and film. They demonstrate the scope of the discourse from cultural criticism to more progress-oriented examinations of the theme. Novels by Zola, Brecht and Fallada are discussed, as well as writings by lesser known authors. Attention is paid to the emancipatory potential of department stores as well as to the aesthetics of consumption as reflected in literature, film and other media.
„Noch nie in einem Warenhaus gewesen, Kind?“ – Literarische Interventionen in das ‚Warenhaus-Wissen‘ am Ende der Weimarer Republik
Extract
Abstract
This article explores uncanonized imaginations of the department store in the late Weimar Republic. The analysis of nine prose texts by Braune, Breitbach, Georg, Gleit, Kessel, Roth and Wolf is complemented by discussion of Schiffer’s and Spoliansky’s popular Berlin musical theatre shows. The article introduces the texts’ broader and gender politics and their (dis)continuities vis-à-vis established department store tropes and genre conventions. The analysis shows that the texts often contain irreconcilable perspectives regarding the position of women, as well class and Jews. The conclusion scrutinizes the power of a feminized discourse that establishes the spaces within which the Weimar department store can enter literature. It also shows how department store stories function as a medium to intervene in contemporary antisemitism.
Im Gegensatz zu frühen kulturkritischen Phantasmagorien haben Warenhaustexte der Weimarer Republik bisher relativ wenig Beachtung gefunden. Klaus Strohmeiers Befund, nach Zola gebe „es kaum noch nennenswerte belletristische Literatur zum Warenhaus“,1 ist schwer haltbar. Auch wenn das Warenhaus 1928 noch immer weniger als fünf Prozent des Einzelhandels ausmachte, hatte es dennoch nichts von seiner Faszination eingebüßt. Die Breite zeitgenössischer Warenhausdiskurse reichte von den antisemitischen Nazi-Pamphleten der „Kampfgemeinschaft gegen Warenhaus und Konsum“2 über die zahlreichen Imaginationen ‚kleiner‘ ← 67 | 68 → Verkäuferinnen im Film, Chanson oder in der populären Buch-Serie Süße Geschäftsmädels. 3
Viele Aufgeregtheiten sind Ende der 1920er Jahre einer scheinbar sachlicheren Perspektive auf das Warenhaus gewichen. Weitgehend verschwunden sind Auratisierungen...
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