This paper considers Tykwer's 1998 film Lola rennt in relation to the mythological constructions which have been applied to Berlin in the twentieth century. While Lola rennt appears to project a distinctly contemporary picture of life in the new German capital, it in fact operates through a complex network of mythical and historical references. A key part of this network lies in the treatment of gender. I see the gender performances in the film as conditioned by hysteria, which afflicts both male and female leads. This hysterical conditioning is related in its turn to the histories and mythologies of German and international film traditions, principally Sternberg, Fassbinder, and Hitchcock. Gender in Lola rennt is understood as produced through citational practices, after the model developed by gender theorist Judith Butler, and the performance of Lola as a mythical fantasy of the new woman running the new city is accordingly shown to be a continuation of old forms of gender trouble in Butler's sense.

When one thinks of the German city film, one necessarily thinks of Berlin, the only real metropolis the country has ever known. Berlin as German capital (of one sort or another) has been the setting of any number of important films. Two modern pictures – Der Himmel über Berlin /Wings of Desire (1987) and Lola rennt/Run Lola Run (1998) – are set in two very different Berlins, one divided by a wall, the other a healed version of its former self. A close examination of each film's narrative, however, reveals that the stories are quite similar. This paper will analyse this similarity, draw attention to the function of the Berlin setting for the films' narratives, and discuss the degree to which Berlin is an essential element in the stories being told. The argument is then made that these Berlin stories fall into a larger tradition of city films (set in Berlin and elsewhere) in which the city serves as a site of emotional healing.

This article examines two post-Wende Berlin fictions, Peter Schneider's Paarungen and Uwe Timm's Johannisnacht, in order to explore what happens when two representative writers of the '68 generation are confronted with a radically changed world, one in which the ideological certainties of the pre-Wende period no longer offer interpretative frameworks for the city experience and one in which there has been a substantial, if perhaps belated shift in the perception of what literature can or should be or do. It has been claimed that it is only after 1989 that German literature finally abandoned the notion that the writer could speak with a degree of political or moral authority and hence that it is only since the Wende that it has been able to enter a truly postmodern phase. By exploring the novels' views of society and history and the relationship of literature to them, by considering whether the texts can be described as in any way self-consciously postmodern and by examining the image of Berlin they offer, this article attempts to problematize that assumption and to show that these works provide evidence of a reluctance to abandon the notion that the writer can say something authoritative about the world in which we live.

The Berlin-hype that followed reunification has not gone unnoticed in the literary world. In the late 1990s, critics increasingly identified so-called 'Berlin-Romane'. The term raises great expectations because it reminds readers of Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel dealing with urban life under modern conditions as it could be experienced at the time in several big cities all over the world. In relation to the new Berlin-Roman, despite keeping the genre-term, critics demanded something more than Berlin as mere setting, looking as well for depictions of Berlin as the site and symbol of 'something German'. Their expectations, I argue, were therefore paradoxical: it is difficult on the one hand to write a Berlin-Roman in which Berlin is a site of a urbanism as it can be found in many cities, and on the other hand becomes the symbol of an exclusively German condition (whatever that may be). So the quest for the exemplary new Berlin-Roman was bound to be frustrated. Looking at two novels from the late 1990s that were hailed as Berlin-Romane when they were published, it becomes obvious that – despite their merits – neither of them meets these paradoxical expectations, thus suggesting that the new Berlin-Roman is a paradoxical genre in itself.

Against the backdrop of the East-West stereotypes that emerged shortly after 1989, this essay analyzes three plays written during the early years of reunification, illuminating differences and similarities in form and content in Manfred Karge's Mauer-Stücke (1990), Elfriede Müller's Goldener Oktober (1990) and Rolf Hochhuth's Wessis in Weimar (1993). As immediate responses to the 'Wende', these plays demonstrate the speed with which the culture clash between East and West found its way into contemporary drama. This essay argues that the playwrights, in addressing the economic, psychological, and sociological consequences of reunification, involuntarily contributed to the formation of a set of clichés, ranging from the 'raping' of the East to the wrecked 'marriage' of the two German states and to the 'looting' of the former GDR. Although the plays discussed can be regarded as typical examples of the way in which the consequences of the 'Wende' have been depicted, they particularly have in common their use of the setting of the former 'death strip' in Berlin to emphasize the strong emotional undercurrents of the post-1989 debates.

Gut 70 Jahre nach Egon Erwin Kisch, dem legendären 'rasenden Reporter', ist in Berlin einer seiner Enkel wieder als Reporter unterwegs: Alexander Osang, geboren 1962 in Ost-Berlin, mehrfach ausgezeichnete 'Edelfeder'. Wie Kisch beschreibt auch er eine Stadt im Wandel: Das Berlin der Nach-Wende-Zeit, eine Stadt, die sich anschickt, Bundeshauptstadt zu werden, die von professionellen Marketing-Experten verkauft wird als das 'Neue Berlin'. Um die rasante Veränderung in Worte zu fassen, wählt Osang die klassische Methode der Reportage. Er beschreibt das Große anhand des Kleinen. Wie Kisch ist Osang als Augenzeuge unterwegs, die 'Exotik der Nähe' interessiert ihn. Osangs Reportagen leben von seinen unmittelbaren Beobachtungen. Um einige Reportagen aus dem 'Reich der neuen Mitte' von Alexander Osang soll es hier gehen, um das Bild, das der Reporter von der Stadt entwirft. Dabei wird sich zeigen, dass Osang von den Außenrändern der 'Neuen Mitte' berichtet. Bei ihm kommen die Menschen am Rande der rasanten Entwicklung vor, in ihren Augen spiegelt sich der Wandel der Stadt. Nicht das platte Abbild, nicht die Eins-zu-Eins-Hochglanz-Fotografie, sondern ein solches Spiegelbild der Stadt präsentiert Osang.

This article uses the insights of Michel De Certeau into the perception and experience of the urban environment as a way into examining the relationship between transport infrastructure and developments in Berlin since the opening of the Berlin Wall. It demonstrates that the huge logistical task involved in bringing together two networks that had grown apart over 40 years was only one aspect of the constant conflict between the planning of the urban environment and the experiences of those who experience that environment. To exemplify that broader conflict, the article focuses on one key aspect of Berlin's transport development: the construction of the new central rail station at the heart of the city. It contrasts the perspectives of those responsible for planning the new building, both the architects and the directors of the Deutsche Bundesbahn AG, with those who currently use such 'railway space'. This conflict sheds important light on what constitutes the 'ownership' and acceptable use of public space in, and on the shaping of the urban imagination for the twenty-first century.

In dem Kurs “Gesprächsanalyse mit Talkshows” können DaF-LernerInnen kommunikative und interkulturelle Kompetenz erwerben. Der Ansatz, der auf Immersion, d.h. auf dem “Eintauchen in eine andere Sprachwelt”, beruht, geht davon aus, dass Gesprächskompetenz durch das Verstehen und Nachahmen authentischer Vorbilder erworben werden kann. Lernende können jedoch nur dann erfolgreich in der Fremdsprache kommunizieren und agieren, wenn sie sich auch über kulturelle Differenzen im Klaren sind. Diese müssen sie zunächst erkennen, um ihr Handeln in der fremdsprachlichen Umgebung partner- und situationsgerecht zu gestalten.