Explorations in Popular Culture with Siegfried Kracauer
In the Weimar Republic, popular culture was the scene of heated controversies that tested the limits of national cohesion. Peter S. Fisher draws on Siegfried Kracauer's trenchant observations on Weimar's contradictions to let society's underdogs take center stage, pushing the headline makers into the background.
The Wilhelmine World of a Colportage Novel
Continually attacked by government officials and educators, installment or colportage novels fascinated their underprivileged readers. Melodrama and sensation were essential ingredients. The hurriedly written, rambling plots sought to electrify fantasies of women with new turn-of-the-century aspirations. They also fused raw political ideas offering populist and paternalist solutions to society's challenges and tensions. Through the study of one rare, surviving colportage novel, Peter S. Fisher offers an unusual mental and visual panorama of a nearly vanished Wilhelmine world.