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.
Retail Organization and Political Capital: Fallada’s Kleiner Mann – was nun? and Brecht’s Dreigroschenroman
Extract
Abstract
Die Romane Kleiner Mann – was nun? und Dreigroschenroman erlauben Rückschlüsse auf die Wahrnehmung der Verbindung zwischen Kommerz und Politik in den letzten Jahren der Weimarer Republik. Beide Romane heben die Figur des ‘kleinen Mannes’ hervor, der im Mittelpunkt der populistischen Propaganda stand und beide Romane nehmen auf die Debatte um das Warenhaus Bezug. Während Hans Fallada die Situation der Angestellten behandelt, geht es Bertolt Brecht vor allem um den Mittelstand; beide Autoren greifen das Thema der Rationalisierung der Arbeitsprozesse kritisch auf. Obwohl Fallada wie Brecht die Überzeugung zum Ausdruck bringen, dass Kommerz und Integrität sich gegenseitig ausschließen, thematisiert er die Bedeutung der persönlichen Würde. Brecht wiederum insistiert auf der engen Verbindung, die politische und öknomische Interessen unweigerlich eingehen.
Introduction
Bertolt Brecht and Hans Fallada are two of the most prominent writers of the Weimar Republic, achieving widespread and enduring popular success with the musical Die Dreigroschenoper (1928) and the novel Kleiner Mann – was nun? (1932) respectively. In 1930, Brecht was involved in the film version of Die Dreigroschenoper, but he fell out with the film company, losing a court case against them. This experience led him to produce a revised version of Die Dreigroschenoper in 1931 in which Macheath announces his intention to become a banker. In this version, the characters are more distanced from their own behaviour.1 Three years later, in exile, Brecht produced a novel in which Macheath becomes a businessman and...
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