Nugent, Frank S. “ The Screen. Masquerade in Vienna with Paula Wessely Opens at the Fifty-Fifth Street Playhouse. ” New York Times, 26 Jan. 1937. 19 Mar. 2013. <http: / / movies.nytimes.com/ movie/ review? res=9905E5D7143AE23ABC4E51DFB7668 38C629EDE>. Opernring [Thank you, Madame]. Dir. Carmine Gallone. Gloria-Film, 1936. “ Opernring. ” Der gute Film 1 Sept. 1936: 12. Premiere. Dir. Geza von Bolvary. Gloria-Film, 1937. “ Premiere. ” Der gute Film Folge 199/ 1937: 9 — 10. “ Premiere. ” Neue Freie Presse 9 Feb. 1937: 9. Sonnenstrahl [Ray of Sun]. Dir. Paul Fejos. Tobis-Sascha, 1933. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Der gute Film 22 Dec. 1933: 5 — 6. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Neue Freie Presse 17 Dec. 1933: 23. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Neues Wiener Journal 17 Dec. 1933: 35. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Neues Wiener Tageblatt 17 Dec. 1933: 17. Sunrise. Dir. F. W. Murnau. Fox Film Corporation, 1927. Wenn du jung bist gehört dir die Welt [When you are Young, the World Belongs to You] Dir. Richard Oswald. Haas-Film, 1934. Zauber der Boheme [The Charm of the Boheme]. Dir. Geza von Bolvary. Intergloria, 1937. Zuckmayer, Carl. Geheimreport. Ed. Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002. 340 Robert Dassanowsky Besprechungen/ Reviews A NNE F UCHS , K ATHLEEN J AMES -C HAKRABORTY and L INDA S HORTT (Eds.): Debating German Cultural Identity since 1989. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. 256 pp. $ 80. This collection of stimulating essays edited by Anne Fuchs, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, and Linda Shortt examines anew the question of German cultural identity posed by unification in 1989/ 90. In the introduction, the editors outline their main ideas in light of public debate and explain their attempt to resist a homogenized interpretation of German cultural identity by choosing a wide range of disciplines, topics, and analyses. The contributions, including those by the editors, come from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, and the United States and are written by Peter Fritzsche, Pertti Ahonen, Jennifer A. Jordan, Andrew J. Webber, Deniz Göktürk, Jürgen Paul, Elizabeth Boa, Anja K. Johannsen, and Aleida Assmann. They represent the plurality of responses by discussing the challenges of the Berlin Wall still traceable on the physical fabric of the country and complement the conversation on the process of German unification. As distinct from the discourse on normalization which the editors problematize, they argue that German identity remains fractured along shifting boundaries of geographic, ethnic, and political significance. Recent public debates on monuments and architectural landand cityscapes, the legacy of the GDR, the continuing issue of immigration, and the presence of Islam in contemporary Germany bring to light the complexity of creating a new sense of a shared and transformed nationhood, crucial for an understanding of a changing German identity. Another focal point is the question how the country still struggles with distinctive and competing narratives and memory discourses in the East and the West. The editors make a case for a «multi-vocal history that investigates life in the GDR from an ethnographically attuned perspective» (9) in the discussion on Ostalgia to challenge any monolithic perception of the GDR. This book also illuminates new aspects of Westalgia as a variety of historical nostalgia that pertains to art and literature reflecting the rupture of 1989/ 90 for West Germans. Despite the multiplicity of interpretations, the editors have structured the anthology in three thematically overarching, coherent, and complementary sections. The first section called «Historical and Sociological Reflections: 1989 and the Rehabilitation of German History» consists of three essays in which German historical consciousness is investigated. The first essay explores how 1989 anchored and revised modern chronological imagination, and how it changed and rehabilitated competing models of historical explanation of earlier periods and also created new localized stories and perspectives. The second contribution focuses on the Mauerschützen trials of the 1990s in the Berlin area. Despite their contested, politicized, and divisive qualities the trials had a positive political effect for the transition into a unified country, since they not only exposed rifts along the East and West boundaries but also revealed compromises and humane decisions made by the judicial system. The third essay in this section examines food and regionalism as a site of collective memory in post-1989 Germany. Regional identity and aspects of agricultural life, food production, and gastronomy are perceived as closely connected to national identity in the way that the larger identity is fueled by the regional one, not in opposition to it. Daily foods in Germany are heterogeneous and mostly regionally produced. These products are deeply linked to the importance of biodiversity and identifications of particular landscapes, and notions of regional and national identity. In the second section of the book, «Architecture and Filmic Mediations: Germany in Transit and the Urban Condition,» four essays focus on alternative geographic, nostalgic recreational, and multicultural topographic identities in post-unification Germany. The first essay analyzes the topographic turn in cultural criticism and how this is linked to forms of urban topography. Post-unification movies, such as Gespenster (2005) by Christian Petzold set in Berlin, take up the ambivalence in which urban topography is key to that condition. Questions of uncertainty of memory and identity, and of exploitation and displacement come to the fore through the spectral vision of abandoned, barely recognizable, and transitional spaces in the center of the capital through which the protagonists move. The next essay in this section examines debates on migration and public memory which are produced in the social sciences, literature, and the arts. The author argues for a transnational perspective on the fall of the Wall and a transnational articulation of identity that reflects the multicultural reality of contemporary Germany. She focuses on Turkish cinema (Schwarzfahrer [1993]) and the exhibition Projekt Migration (2005) which stages the archive of migration as an art project, mainly projecting documents and art work on a variety of screens and monitors at multiple venues in highly mediated and localized forms. In the third essay, Berlin and its restructured and rebuilt architectural center is the focus of analysis from which it becomes clear that the architectural construction is central to the new national identity of the Berlin Republic by which it transformed modernism into an instrument of memory. The fourth contribution speaks about the complex rebirth and architectural transformation of Dresden following unification and its incredible importance for the citizens of the city as well for the country ’ s history. The third section of the book, «Retrospective Reimaginings: The Death and Afterlife of East and West Germany in Contemporary Literature,» draws attention to the function of literature as a cultural archive that recreates alternative visions for the past, present, and future. In the first essay, the East German sense of «Heimat» is observed through the lenses of contemporary East German writers, such as Christa Wolf, Jens Sparschuh, Ingo Schulze, and Ante Ravic Strubel. The next essay explores West German writers and their revisioning of West Germany before unification, especially in Jochen Schimmang ’ s Das Beste, was wir hatten (2009). It becomes evident that Westalgia and Ostalgia are connected phenomena and both are linked to the instability and pressures inherent in globalization. The third contribution discusses Monika Maron ’ s and Angela Krauss ’ s particular poetological responses to fractured German history and the process of unification. The poet Durs Grünbein and Dresden ’ s specific cultural and historical topography in his different poetry publications are analyzed in the following essay. The last contribution interprets Marcel Beyer ’ s highly 342 Besprechungen/ Reviews