"A Golden Goal: Sönke Wortmanns's Das Wunder von Bern and Reconstructing German Identity". Part of the German Studies Colloquium Series.
Please join us for this colloquium presentation by Dr. Rebeccah (Bess) Dawson (University of Kentucky). On Zoom.
For questions, please contact Peter Ecke (eckep@arizona.edu).
Abstract:
For many, Wortmann’s Das Wunder von Bern has become an iconic, albeit fictionalized, rending of postwar German life. Indeed, scholars have viewed it as the epitome of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which Germans desperately sought in the decades following the Second World War. Other critics discount the merit of Wortmann’s film, concluding that it does not truly represent the period in that it presents a so-called re-written account of life after the Nazi Regime. However, Das Wunder von Bern does attempt to reconcile with the past by positing a family’s struggle to re-acclimate to daily life in the chaos of the post-war period. While the film does culminate with the infamous and perhaps idealized “happy end,” the tumultuous journey the characters undergo illuminates the struggle the German people faced following the fall of fascism. By investigating the three main male characters in the film, Matthias Lubanski, his father Richard and his ersatz father Helmut Rahn, in light of their intertwining relationships, it becomes clear that it is the influence of soccer that allows for each to begin to heal, and, in turn, begin the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, with which the German people have struggled since 1945.
Bio:
Rebeccah (Bess) Dawson is an Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Kentucky in the USA. After completing her graduate work at UNC-Chapel Hill, she taught at Louisiana State University and Georgetown College before landing in Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures in Kentucky. At UK, she directs the Global Studies Certificate, acts as editor for the academic journal Colloquia Germanica, and leads the Kentucky Institute for International Program’s summer abroad program in Munich. Her research focuses primarily on sport in literature and culture of 20th century Germany, and she has presented on a variety of topics (including football, boxing, and running) in German literature, cinema, and mass media at conferences both in the US and abroad. Most recently, she co-edited and contributed to a collected volume entitled Football Nation: The Playing Fields of German Culture, History, and Society with Berghahn Books.
