Destroying human habitat and taking human lives, disasters, be they natural, man-made, or a combination, threaten large populations, even entire nations and societies. They also disrupt the existing order and cause discontinuity in our sense of self and our perceptions of the world. To restore order, not only must human beings be rescued and affected areas rebuilt, but the reality of the catastrophe must also be transformed into narrative. The essays in this collection examine representations of disaster in literature, film, and mass media in German and international contexts, exploring the nexus between disruption and recovery through narrative from the eighteenth century to the present. Topics include the Lisbon earthquake, the Paris Commune, the Hamburg and Dresden fire-bombings in the Second World War, nuclear disasters in Alexander Kluge's films, the filmic aesthetics of catastrophe, Yoko Tawada's lectures on the Fukushima disaster and Christa Wolf's novel Störfall in light of that same disaster, Joseph Haslinger and the tsunami of 2004, traditions regarding avalanche disaster in the Tyrol, and the problems and implications of defining disaster. Contributors: Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Yasemin Dayioglu-Yücel, Janine Hartman, Jan Hinrichsen, Claudia Jerzak, Lars Koch, Franz Mauelshagen, Tanja Nusser, Torsten Pflugmacher, Christoph Weber. Katharina Gerstenberger is Professor and Chair of the Department of Languages and Literature at the University of Utah. Tanja Nusser is DAAD Visiting Associate Professor of German at the University of Cincinnati.

Catastrophe or Catharsis? Lays bare the reasons why the Soviet economic reform has plunged into crisis. In precise, vivid prose, Menshikov describes the exhaustion of the ‘command system’ in the pre-perestroika era. His book exposes the bureaucratic irresponsibility which, for example, allowed industrial ministries to strip enterprises of their re-investment funds, ensuring that the simple maintenance of production would in time become impossible. Analysing Soviet economic policy during the perestroika years, Menshikov again paints a picture of adventurism and incompetence. We learn of ‘black holes’ in the state budget, and of how finance ministry officials concealed huge deficits by annexing the savings bank deposits of the population. Menshikov’s analysis of the perestroika period is built around a powerfully argued thesis: the Soviet state bureaucracy, he sets out to show, has increasingly fused with the ‘shadow economy’ to form a new mechanism of fraud, theft and economic disruption. Can total catastrophe be avoided, and can a process of purgation and recovery—that is catharsis—now ensue? Menshikov advances a detailed program for getting economic reform back on track while avoiding a further collapse of living standards. Here are specific proposals for curbing inflation, reducing budget deficits and ending the sway of the ‘shadow economy’. These tasks can still be accomplished, the author argues, without sacrificing the interests of the mass of the Soviet population.

This work examines the way the clown has been used as a serious character by important playwrights and directors in twentieth-century theater. Experiments with Clown by Jean Cocteau, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Giorgio Strehler, Dario Fo, and Roberto Begnini are examined.