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This volume offers a cultural, aesthetic, and critical reappraisal of German ´rubble films´ produced in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and constructs their meaning in a historical context.

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Introduction: Looking Again at the Rubble; W.Rasch ´When Everything Falls to Pieces´- Rubble in German Films Before the Rubble Films; E.Schütz Rubble Without a Cause: The Air War in Postwar Film; W.Wilms A Time for Ruins; D.Barnouw Rubble Film as Archive of Trauma and Grief: Wolfgang Lamprecht´s Somewhere in Berlin; A.Pinkert The Stones Begin to Speak: The Laboring Subject in Early DEFA Documentaries; B.Prager What´s New? Allegorical Representations of Renewal in DEFA´s Youth Films, 1946-1949; M.Silberman In the Ruins of Berlin: A Foreign Affair; G.Gemünden Rubble Noir; J.Fay When Liebe was Just a Five-Letter Word: Wolfgang Liebeneiner´s Love 47; R.G.Moeller ´Kampf dem Kampf´: Aesthetic Experimentation and Social Satire in The Ballad of Berlin; C.Bregerb Planes, Trains, and the Occasional Car: The Rubble Film as De-Mobilization Film; J.Fisher The Sound of Ruins; L.Koepnick

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"This book´s topics include not only the despair that induced the ´rubble´ sensibility but also the bombing that caused it, life in the ruins, East German ´rubble films´ and American imports, and particular examples of the genre. Each of the dozen contributors provides useful documentation . . . recommended." - Choice

"An important and insightful volume." - Recent Trends in German Film Studies, Monatshefte

"In providing this new look, Wilms and Rasch have produced a very helpful complement to other recent work on the German ´Rubble Films´... The standard of contributions in this volume is consistently high." - Paul Cooke, University of Leeds

"Not only valuable for those students of film and those fascinated by the esoteric details of forgotten German cinema, but also for those interested in memory culture and the different ways in which the past, particularly traumatic events, can be addressed, reacted against, denied, nurtured, celebrated, and ultimately accepted." - Focus on German Studies

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WILFRIED WILMS is Associate Professor of German Studies, University of Denver, USA.
WILLIAM RASCH is Professor of German Studies, Indiana University, USA.

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