'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
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2.4 Summarizing Remarks<br />
In this chapter I have discussed how on the West German cultural scene a<br />
Tendenzwende or change <strong>of</strong> direction took place from the 1960s to the 1970s. While<br />
many authors and filmmakers <strong>of</strong> the 1960s attempted to objectively document political<br />
and social realities, writers and directors <strong>of</strong> the 1970s tended to value authorial<br />
subjectivity and created works based on personal experience. In the late 1970s many<br />
artists <strong>of</strong> the post-war generation began to turn their attention towards history, while<br />
maintaining a concern for the self and its psychological development. This contributed to<br />
a wave <strong>of</strong> Generationenliteratur. Written by authors born in the 1930s and 1940s, these<br />
books dealt with the authors‟ relationships with their parents and their parents‟<br />
involvement in National Socialism. While these works <strong>of</strong>ten focused on the authors‟<br />
relationship with their fathers, some works written by women in the late 1970s and early<br />
1980s began to examine the mother-daughter relationship. At this time, female West<br />
German filmmakers began making films that combined autobiography and feminist<br />
perspectives in the larger examination <strong>of</strong> historical issues. Specifically, they explored<br />
their identities as women by telling the stories <strong>of</strong> their mothers‟ experiences during<br />
National Socialism and the post-war period.<br />
Deutschland, bleiche Mutter is an important project as it emphasizes an aspect <strong>of</strong><br />
German history that was <strong>of</strong>ten neglected: a non-Jewish German woman‟s experience <strong>of</strong><br />
the “Third Reich” and post-war period. In this film, Sanders-Brahms fuses historical and<br />
political investigation with an intensely personal exploration <strong>of</strong> the mother-daughter<br />
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