Preface

PREFACE In our postscript to the last volume of the WIG Yearbook, we discussed the importance of keeping our journal open to a wide range of feminist approaches and theoretical orientations, in order to meet the needs of WIG members at various kinds of institutions and at different stages in their thinking about feminist criticism and teaching. The articles in the present volume represent a mix of theoretical and practical criticism, and reflect elements of WIG members' diverse interests and energies. Of the five regular contributions, three deal with works by contemporary writers. Dagmar Lorenz's article on Die Galhianerin discusses Austrian/ German anti-Semitism as an unacknowledged factor in the problematic power relations between Brigitte Schwaiger and her documentary subject Eva Deutsch. Her paper raises important theoretical questions that we hope will stimulate much further thought and debate. Sabine Wilke's article sheds new light on Christa Wolfs evolving model of subjectivity in Kassandra. Elaine Martin introduces a largely neglected author, Eva Zeller, whose autobiographical novels bear comparison with those of Christa Wolf, Ingeborg Drewitz, and other women who have written autobiographically about the Third Reich. In an approach to the canon, Tineke Ritmeester provides a corrective reading of Rilke criticism and suggests alternative ways of understanding the poet's relationship to his mother, Sophie Rilke-Entz. Finally, Rick McCormick's article provides useful information for teaching women's films: he reviews the tensions between feminist film theory and feminist filmmaking, and suggests how to approach them productively in the classroom. Because of the rapid and intense changes taking place in both Germanys, and especially in the GDR, we felt it was important to include a contribution by a GDR scholar. Sociologist Hildegard Nickel of Humboldt University is only one of many GDR researchers who are now beginning to formulate feminist analyses of women's situation in the GDR and to articulate their goals for women's studies. We discuss some likely implications of die Wende for feminist Germanists in our contribution concluding the volume. With this volume of the WIG Yearbook, Helen Cafferty ends her term as coeditor. At this writing, she has left for a semester's research leave in Berlin viii Women in German Yearbook 6 and Greifswald. We welcome the new coeditor, Sara Friedrichsmeyer of the University of Cincinnati. Helen Cafferty Jeanette Clausen September 1990 ...