Explores sonic events and auditory experiences in German-speaking contexts from the Middle Ages to the digital age, opening up new understandings. As a sub-discipline of cultural studies, sound studies is a firmly established field of inquiry, examining how sonic events and auditory experiences unfold in culturally and historically contingent life situations. Responding to new questions in sound studies in the context of German-speaking cultures, and incorporating up-to-date methodologies, this Companion explores the significance of sound from the Middle Ages and the classical-romantic period through high-capitalist industrial modernity, the Nazi period and the Holocaust, and postwar Germany to the present digital age. The volume examines how sonic events are represented in literary fiction, radio productions, cinema, newsreels, documentaries, sound art, museum exhibitions, and other media, drawing for this inquiry on philosophy, aesthetics, literary criticism, musicology, art theory, and cultural studies. Each essay is a case study - of persons, events, and sonic, visual, or textual artifacts - situating them in wider contexts of culture, history, and politics. The volume not only revisits well-known topics from new angles, but seeks especially to explore neglected issues on the cultural periphery. It assembles original essays by leaders in the field and emerging scholars from the United States and Europe. Offering an advanced introduction to the topic, the Companion is addressed to anyone interested in how the analysis of sound phenomena opens up new understandings of German-speaking cultures.
"List of Illustrations Preface Introduction Rolf J. Goebel Part I. Sonic Practices from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century 1: Soundscapes in Medieval German Literature Albrecht Classen 2: A German Dance: Music, Mesmerism, and the Glass Armonica Lawrence Kramer 3: Healthy Throats, German Sounds: Women's Vocal Development and Expertise in German Soundscapes of the Long Nineteenth Century Josephine Hoegaerts Part II. Rediscovering the Sounds of Modernism 4: Heidegger: A Little Hint on How to Listen James M. Kopf 5: New Hearing: Soundscapes of Literary Modernism Frieder von Ammon 6: Tragic Silence and Heroic Clamor: Sound Worlds and Constructed Ethnographies in Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen (1924) Daniel Sherer Part III. Listening to the Unbearable: The Sounds of National Socialism and the Holocaust 7: Hitler's Voice: Media and Politics of Embodiment Tyler Whitney 8: ""The whole language was a scream"": The German Language During the Seizure of the Jews Sara Ann Sewell Part IV. After the Catastrophe: Sounds in Postwar Germany and Beyond 9: Revisiting the Soundscapes of Postwar West German Radio Drama Caroline A. Kita 10: Jazz and Its Effect on Politics and Modernity as Presented in German Newsreels and Documentaries of the 1960s Sigrun Lehnert 11: On the Air: Clandestine Radiophonic Protest Groups in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, 1976-77 Anna Bromley 12: Kittler's Sound Larson Powell 13: Clearing the Throat, Stumbling, and Coughing: An Anthropology of the Sonic Corpus According to Carlfriedrich Claus Holger Schulze Part V. Sounds of the Present 14: Carsten Nicolai's Art of Disturbance: Sound, Science, and Interference Lutz Koepnick 15: Echoes of the Past: Sound in the History Museum Daniel Morat 16: (Post)Digital Sounds: Acoustic Experiments in the Age of Algorithmic Processes Christiane Heibach Part Vi. Epilogue 17: The Sound of Pine Needles Falling: The Art of Max Neuhaus Yehuda Safran Select Bibliography and List of Further Reading Notes on the Contributors Index"
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Distinguished Professor of German, Emeritus, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. ALBRECHT CLASSEN is University Distinguished Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona; he received the title of Grand Knight Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Three Lions in 2017, in recognition of his outstanding service to German studies. Larson Powell is Curator's Professor of Film Studies at University of Missouri, Kansas City.
