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 reflexive novel Kaltenburg (2008) as an encoded representation of the past in which historical trauma is foregrounded through the animal world (bird ’ s eye) and becomes a new type of memory fiction. This scholarly, thought-provoking study with its transdisciplinary and differenciated approaches to the discussion of German cultural identity seeks to inspire and create an academic knowledge transfer. The volume participates not only in an ongoing exchange between fields and intellectuals, but also reveals important aspects and questions on contemporary German identity and is therefore of great interest to everyone engaged in the scholarship of German Studies. University of Montana Hiltrud Arens C ARL N IEKERK : Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010. 322 pp. $ 75. With this study, Carl Niekerk intends to provide a «companion to Mahler ’ s music that helps its audiences understand its literary and cultural roots» (1). However, what Niekerk offers his audience is much greater than his modest description might suggest. Reading Mahler investigates an impressive portion of Mahler ’ s oeuvre and offers a sophisticated portrait of the composer as a critical reader of German culture: music, philosophy, literature, and art. The book illustrates how these traditions shaped the themes, structures, and textual heart of Mahler ’ s compositions, but also how Mahler ’ s compositional choices identify him as a conscious participant in the cultural traditions with which he engaged. Mahler ’ s works shared in a discourse that connected Jewishness, the Enlightenment, and modernity, in an effort to reinvent the German cultural tradition. Niekerk maintains that one must take the composer ’ s texts seriously to comprehend Mahler ’ s aesthetic project - not merely the texts set to music, but also the elaborate notes Mahler provided as a means to guide his audience ’ s reception. Although Mahler often retracted these attempts to situate and clarify his compositions, his «programmatic/ anti-programmatic» attitude signaled a desire to detach his art from any overarching philosophical or musicological principles (5). Niekerk thus posits Mahler as a decidedly modern artist, conscious of the multiple (and sometimes self-contradictory) interpretations his works and their textual components could evoke. Studying Mahler as a reader proves to be an especially fruitful strategy, given his documented interests in German literature and philosophy, as well as the pivotal position texts occupy in his music. While «cultural» readings of Mahler are nothing new, musicologists have typically employed this approach as support, rather than as the basis of their analyses. For students of literature and philosophy, the texts Mahler used in his works should also be of particular interest, since they broach political, aesthetic, and metaphysical concerns. Specifically through texts, Niekerk argues, Mahler ’ s works could enter into a dialogue with German cultural traditions and pursue 343 Besprechungen/ Reviews a polemical and emancipatory agenda, critical of cultural norms and skeptical of ideological claims. Niekerk ’ s first chapter focuses on the relationship between Mahler ’ s First Symphony and Jean Paul ’ s novel, Titan. Mahler ’ s interest in Jean Paul led him to develop «an against-the-grain rereading of German literary history» (33). Jean Paul ’ s ironic, playful Anti-Bildungsroman inspired the thematic development and compositional structure of the First Symphony. While the First Symphony does not explicitly critique the Bildungsroman, Mahler ’ s composition opposes the genre ’ s typical optimism, closed structure, and uniform style. Through programmatic statements accompanying the symphony, Mahler encouraged his audience to participate in constructing the symphony ’ s narrative and to confront the ambiguity of its message (52). The second chapter presents a compelling analysis of Mahler ’ s song cycle, «Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen,» and his settings of Volkslieder from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. These compositions appropriate Romantic literary tradition and draw on its notion of Volk, yet they do not conform to Romanticism ’ s naïve idealization of the past. Mahler ’ s readings of the Volkslied tradition ultimately reveal a culture in crisis, rather than a stable national foundation through culture. Through the songs ’ immanent reflection on art, Mahler addresses the role of art in the construction of cultural memory and calls a normative understanding of German national culture into question. Niekerk argues in the third chapter that Nietzsche ’ s conceptions of the world and of art ’ s function inform the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies. Mahler ’ s friend, Siegfried Lipiner, contributed to the composer ’ s growing interest in Nietzsche when he wrote a distinctly Nietzschean essay on the renewal of religious ideas. Lipiner had hoped to attract the attention of Richard Wagner, whose musings on religion and art Nietzsche rejected. In the controversy between Nietzsche and Wagner, Niekerk places Mahler squarely on Nietzsche ’ s side. However, Niekerk resists portraying Mahler as a dogmatic reader of Nietzsche ’ s philosophy. By considering Mahler ’ s texts, Nierkerk illuminates Mahler ’ s reception of Nietzsche, and shows how Nietzsche ’ s philosophy provides Mahler with the means to reread German cultural history and to suggest an alternative path for German nationalism. In the fourth chapter (the shortest, but also the most intriguing to this reader), Niekerk interprets Mahler ’ s Seventh Symphony as a rereading of Romanticism that allows the composer to reclaim the marginal, «dark side» of German cultural history. Niekerk provides a «cultural history of light/ dark imagery at the turn-of-the-century» and links it to the Romantic predilection for nocturnal pieces (136). The Dutch composer, Alphons Diepenbrock, whom Mahler knew and admired, perpetuated this nocturnal aesthetic. Mahler ’ s visits to Amsterdam and his encounters with Dutch culture inspired him to seek out «alterity within the German tradition» (148). The bestselling work of Julius Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher (1890), proves especially significant in this context: Langbehn desired a renewal of German society through art and posited Rembrandt as the model artist for that endeavor. Niekerk reads Mahler ’ s symphony as an «essay on the night» (152), a musical illustration of Rembrandt ’ s «Night Watch» that meditates on the possibility of shedding light on darkness, of finding order in chaos. 344 Besprechungen/ Reviews The fifth chapter examines Mahler as a critical reader of Goethe ’ s Faust, which occupied a central position in debates surrounding the instrumentalization of art for German nationalism. While conservatives championed Goethe as a national poet and Faust as a quintessentially German figure, cultural critics such as Heine and Nietzsche construed Goethe ’ s writing as a cosmopolitan project against nationalism; Niekerk situates Mahler ’ s reception of Goethe closer to Nietzsche ’ s and Heine ’ s readings. In the Eighth Symphony, Mahler ’ s setting of Faust II ’ s final scene adopts a «postmetaphysical» philosophy, which posits the existence of a global community, a «transcultural» tradition inclusive of difference (164, 176). The book ’ s final chapter explores Mahler ’ s Orientalism in Das Lied von der Erde, the Kindertotenlieder, and his settings of German Oriental-style poems. Placing Mahler ’ s reception of Orientalism in the context of the German cultural imagination, Niekerk illustrates how Mahler ’ s works ruminate on the construction of the Orient as «Other» by Western culture. Orientalism allows Mahler to rethink his aesthetic project and to assert a non-Western philosophy of life. In turn, the cultural otherness invoked by Mahler ’ s music and texts suggest the notion of «Weltliteratur,» in Goethe ’ s sense; Mahler ’ s compositions demonstrate that a dialogue between cultures can reveal something universally shared by even the most diverse cultural traditions. Although Nierkerk ’ s arguments are sufficiently nuanced and complex, his writing remains clear and engaging throughout: a laudable feat. The study has one minor but significant weakness: the texts appearing in Mahler ’ s works might have been printed in full to make the analysis more easily to follow (Niekerk only supplies Mahler ’ s program notes for Chapter 1). Overall, though, Reading Mahler is an exemplary work in cultural studies scholarship, a thoroughly interdisciplinary and highly accessible book that will appeal to scholars and students in many fields, as well as to Mahler enthusiasts. University of Virginia Gabriel Cooper S ABINE G RO ß (Ed.): Herausforderung Herder - Herder as Challenge. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Konferenz der Internationalen Herder-Gesellschaft, Madison 2006. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2010. 350 pp. € 38,00. Herausforderung Herder - Herder as Challenge presents a collection of nineteen essays in German and English from the 2006 conference of the Herder Society hosted by the University of Wisconsin in Madison. As the volume ’ s title indicates, the articles are not tied together by a particular theme but rather by the assumption that Herder ’ s legacy still poses an overall challenge to us that calls for further critical investment. Reviewing major critical sources of the past years, Sabine Groß introduces that challenge as a twofold one: Moving him out of the shadow of towering figures such as Kant or Goethe, scholars have put much effort into foregrounding the value and relevance of Herder ’ s fragmentary and often highly provocative style of writing. At another, more general level, such reevaluations of the complex nature of his works have demonstrated that we fail to understand the role of this perhaps most important «Querdenker der deutschen 345 Besprechungen/ Reviews