The "German Illusion"
The

Author: Olivier Morel

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-12-14

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13:

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Examines Jewish-German “tropes” in Hélène Cixous's oeuvre and life and their impact on her work as a feminist, poet, and playwright. Hélène Cixous is a poet, philosopher, and activist known worldwide for her manifesto on Écriture feminine (feminine writing) and for her influential literary texts, plays, and essays. While the themes were rarely present in her earlier writings, Germany and Jewish-German family figures and topics have significantly informed most of Cixous's late works. Born in Algeria in June 1937, she grew up with a mother who had escaped Germany after the rise of Nazism and a grandmother who fled the racial laws of the Third Reich in 1938. In her writing, Cixous refines the primitive scene of a “German” upbringing in French-occupied colonial, antisemitic Algeria. Scholar and filmmaker Olivier Morel delves into the signs and influences that “Germany,” “German,” and “Osnabrück” have exerted over Cixous's work. Featuring an exclusive interview with Hélène Cixous and stills from their travel together to Osnabrück in Morel's 2018 documentary, Ever, Rêve, Hélène Cixous, Morel's The “German Illusion” examines the unique literary meditation on the Holocaust sustained throughout her later texts. Morel helps us to understand an uncannily original oeuvre that embodies the complexities of modernity's genocidal history in a new way.

The Europe Illusion
The Europe Illusion

Author: Stuart Sweeney

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2019-04-01

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1789140935

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In The Europe Illusion, Stuart Sweeney considers Britain’s relationships with France and Prussia-Germany since the map of Europe was redrawn at Westphalia in 1648. A timely and far-sighted study, it argues that integration in Europe has evolved through diplomatic, economic, and cultural links cemented among these three states. Indeed, as wars became more destructive and economic expectations were elevated these states struggled to survive alone. Yet it has been rare for all three to be friends at the same time. Instead, apparent setbacks like Brexit can be seen as reflective of a more pragmatic Europe, where integration proceeds within variable geometry.

Grand Illusion
Grand Illusion

Author: Karen Fiss

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0226252019

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Franco-German cultural exchange reached its height at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, where the Third Reich worked to promote an illusion of friendship between the two countries. Through the prism of this decisive event, Grand Illusion examines the overlooked relationships among Nazi elites and French intellectuals. Their interaction, Karen Fiss argues, profoundly influenced cultural production and normalized aspects of fascist ideology in 1930s France, laying the groundwork for the country’s eventual collaboration with its German occupiers. Tracing related developments across fine arts, film, architecture, and mass pageantry, Fiss illuminates the role of National Socialist propaganda in the French decision to ignore Hitler’s war preparations and pursue an untenable policy of appeasement. France’s receptiveness toward Nazi culture, Fiss contends, was rooted in its troubled identity and deep-seated insecurities. With their government in crisis, French intellectuals from both the left and the right demanded a new national culture that could rival those of the totalitarian states. By examining how this cultural exchange shifted toward political collaboration, Grand Illusion casts new light on the power of art to influence history.

Ministry of Illusion
Ministry of Illusion

Author: Eric Rentschler

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1996-10

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9780674576407

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Overview of Nazi cinema

Illusion in Cultural Practice
Illusion in Cultural Practice

Author: Katharina Rein

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-25

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 100048114X

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This volume explores illusionism as a much larger phenomenon than optical illusion, magic shows, or special effects, as a vital part of how we perceive, process, and shape the world in which we live. Considering different cultural practices characterized by illusionism, this book suggests a new approach to illusion via media theory. Each of the chapters analyses a specific kind of illusionistic practice and the concept of illusionism it entails in a given context, including philosophy, perception and cognitive theory, performance magic, occultism, optics, physiology, early cinema, cartomancy, spiritualism, architecture, shamanic rituals, and theoretical physics, to show the diversity of shapes that illusionism and illusions can take. The book provides detailed analyses of illusions within performance and ritual magic, philosophy, art history and psychology as well as a first approach to the study of illusions outside of these established fields. It aims to find ways of identifying and analysing a wider range of illusions in the humanities. This multidisciplinary and comprehensive volume will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in media and culture, theatre and performance, philosophy, sociology, politics and religion. This publication was supported by the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. IKKM Books Volume 47 An overview of the whole series can be found at www.ikkm-weimar.de/schriften Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003188278-8/vanishing-lady-railway-illusions-movement-1-katharina-rein?context=ubx&refId=fe124e6e-8290-43e9-9d48-753bad162c50 Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003188278-13/talking-rocks-illusory-sounds-projections-otherworld-julia-shpinitskaya-riitta-rainio?context=ubx&refId=3aa829a8-8c0b-4103-870a-6fe5a4393e71

The Germany Illusion
The Germany Illusion

Author: Marcel Fratzscher

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0190676574

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Europe is in a period of transition and there is great uncertainty about its direction. No country plays a greater role in influencing Europe's future path than Germany, which is either seen as overbearing or indecisive in its imposition of policies-and sometimes is seen as both at once. In The Germany Illusion, Marcel Fratzscher provides a distinctive corrective to common misunderstandings of Germany's domestic political economy and how it affects its European and global roles. Fratzscher's trenchant analysis sheds light on the true state of Germany's economy, which is neither as rosy as optimists believe nor as hidebound as pessimists fear. He covers the breadth of the German economy, from its deceptive employment miracle, the sources and underlying problems of its export strengths, its large investment gap, and not least the differences between east and west that continue since reunification. Understanding the domestic scene in Germany is crucial to understanding its relationships with other European countries, the European Union, and the United States. Fratzscher traces the sources and implications of the differences and conflict between Germany and its neighbors on European policymaking generally and in particular during the European economic and financial crisis, the Brexit debate, the refugee crisis, the rising populism and protectionism in the United States and in Europe, and over fundamental reforms of European institutions. The Germany Illusion is a balanced and nuanced examination of pressing and complex issues that enhances our understanding of German policies-the strengths and weaknesses, the possibilities and the limits. It also proposes a realistic path for Germany to re-engage with its European neighbors and with the United States, and to help re-build Europe's future.

Virtual Art
Virtual Art

Author: Oliver Grau

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004-09-17

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 9780262572231

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An overview of the art historical antecedents to virtual reality and the impact of virtual reality on contemporary conceptions of art. Although many people view virtual reality as a totally new phenomenon, it has its foundations in an unrecognized history of immersive images. Indeed, the search for illusionary visual space can be traced back to antiquity. In this book, Oliver Grau shows how virtual art fits into the art history of illusion and immersion. He describes the metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the image and relates those concepts to interactive art, interface design, agents, telepresence, and image evolution. Grau retells art history as media history, helping us to understand the phenomenon of virtual reality beyond the hype. Grau shows how each epoch used the technical means available to produce maximum illusion. He discusses frescoes such as those in the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii and the gardens of the Villa Livia near Primaporta, Renaissance and Baroque illusion spaces, and panoramas, which were the most developed form of illusion achieved through traditional methods of painting and the mass image medium before film. Through a detailed analysis of perhaps the most important German panorama, Anton von Werner's 1883 The Battle of Sedan, Grau shows how immersion produced emotional responses. He traces immersive cinema through Cinerama, Sensorama, Expanded Cinema, 3-D, Omnimax and IMAX, and the head mounted display with its military origins. He also examines those characteristics of virtual reality that distinguish it from earlier forms of illusionary art. His analysis draws on the work of contemporary artists and groups ART+COM, Maurice Benayoun, Charlotte Davies, Monika Fleischmann, Ken Goldberg, Agnes Hegedues, Eduardo Kac, Knowbotic Research, Laurent Mignonneau, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Daniela Plewe, Paul Sermon, Jeffrey Shaw, Karl Sims, Christa Sommerer, and Wolfgang Strauss. Grau offers not just a history of illusionary space but also a theoretical framework for analyzing its phenomenologies, functions, and strategies throughout history and into the future.

The Illusion of Peace
The Illusion of Peace

Author: Sally Marks

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 135031742X

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Sally Marks provides a compelling analysis of European diplomacy between the First World War and Hitler's advent. She explores in clear and lively prose the reasons why successive efforts failed to create a lasting peace in the interwar era. Building on the theories of the first edition - many of which have become widely accepted since its publication in 1976 - Marks reassesses Europe's leaders of the period, and the policies of the powers between 1918 and 1933, and beyond. Strongly interpretative and archivally based, The Illusion of Peace examines the emotional, ethnic, and economic factors responsible for international instability, as well as the distortion of the balance of power, the abnormal position of the Soviet Union, the weakness of France and the uncertainty of her relationship with Britain, and the inadequacy of the League of Nations. In so doing, the study clarifies the complex topics of reparations and war debts and challenges traditional assumptions, concluding that widespread western devotion to disarmament and dedication to peace were two of several reasons why democratic statesmen could not respond decisively to Hitler's threat. In this new edition Marks also argues that the Allied failure to bring defeat home to the German people in 1918-19 generated a resentment which contributed to interwar instability and Hitler's rise. This highly successful study has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the latest scholarship. Now in its second edition, it remains the essential introduction to the tense political and diplomatic situation in Europe during the interwar years.

The Illusion of Separateness
The Illusion of Separateness

Author: Simon Van Booy

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-06-11

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 0062112260

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“The uncanny beauty of Van Booy’s prose, and his ability to knife straight to the depths of a character’s heart, fill a reader with wonder.” — San Francisco Chronicle Award-winning author Simon Van Booy tells a harrowing and enchanting story of how one man’s act of mercy during World War II changed the lives of strangers, and how they each discover the astonishing truth of their connection. The characters in Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness discover at their darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were never alone, that every human being is a link in a chain we cannot see. This gripping novel—inspired by true events—tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, a veil is lifted to reveal the vital parts they have played in one another's lives, and the illusion of their separateness.

German Film After Germany
German Film After Germany

Author: Randall Halle

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2008-06-25

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0252033299

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A focused examination of German film's transformation from a national to transnational industry