Na de formatie van de NSDAP in de jaren '20 werden verschillende vormen van geluid (stem, ruis, stilte, populaire muziek) en mediatechnologieën (radio- en luidsprekersystemen) ingezet voor hun politieke programma. Vanuit de historisch invalshoek van het stedelijke 'soundscape' van Düsseldorf, onderzoekt de auteur de productie en receptie van deze geluiden en technologieën. Nazi Soundscapes brengt in kaart hoe het politieke bestel de stedelijke ruimte en identiteitsformatie van burgers door middel van geluid beïnvloedt. Het geeft een kritisch perspectief op zowel visuele als auditieve manieren van controle en discipline, in het bijzonder bij uitsluiting en geweld tijdens het nationaal-socialisme (1933-1945).

In this innovative study, Tyler Whitney demonstrates how a transformation and militarization of the civilian soundscape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries left indelible traces on the literature that defined the period. Both formally and thematically, the modernist aesthetics of Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Detlev von Liliencron, and Peter Altenberg drew on this blurring of martial and civilian soundscapes in traumatic and performative repetitions of war. At the same time, Richard Huelsenbeck assaulted audiences in Zurich with his “sound poems,” which combined references to World War I, colonialism, and violent encounters in urban spaces with nonsensical utterances and linguistic detritus—all accompanied by the relentless beating of a drum on the stage of the Cabaret Voltaire. Eardrums is the first book-length study to explore the relationship between acoustical modernity and German modernism, charting a literary and cultural history written in and around the eardrum. The result is not only a new way of understanding the sonic impulses behind key literary texts from the period. It also outlines an entirely new approach to the study of literature as as the interaction of text and sonic practice, voice and noise, which will be of interest to scholars across literary studies, media theory, sound studies, and the history of science.

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In recent decades, the importance of sound for remembering the past and for creating a sense of belonging has been increasingly acknowledged. We keep "sound souvenirs" such as cassette tapes and long play albums in our attics because we want to be able to recreate the music and everyday sounds we once cherished. Artists and ordinary listeners deploy the newest digital audio technologies to recycle past sounds into present tunes. Sound and memory are inextricably intertwined, not just through the commercially exploited nostalgia on oldies radio stations, but through the exchange of valued songs by means of pristine recordings and cultural practices such as collecting, archiving and listing. This book explores several types of cultural practices involving the remembrance and restoration of past sounds. At the same time, it theorizes the cultural meaning of collecting, recycling, reciting, and remembering sound and music.

This book is the first to examine the brilliant gathering of composers, conductors, and other musicians who fled Nazi Germany and arrived in the Los Angeles area. Musicologist Dorothy Lamb Crawford looks closely at the lives, creative work, and influence of sixteen performers, fourteen composers, and one opera stage director, who joined this immense migration beginning in the 1930s. Some in this group were famous when they fled Europe, others would gain recognition in the young musical culture of Los Angeles, and still others struggled to establish themselves in an environment often resistant to musical innovation. Emphasizing individual voices, Crawford presents short portraits of Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and the other musicians while also considering their influence as a group--in the film industry, in music institutions in and around Los Angeles, and as teachers who trained the next generation. The book reveals a uniquely vibrant era when Southern California became a hub of unprecedented musical talent.

'No one can deny Paul Roland is a complete master of his subject.' Colin Wilson, author of The Occult and A Criminal History of Mankind Why did the country which produced Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, Schiller, Einstein, Kant and Hegel allow itself to be led to the precipice of self-destruction by a ragged collective of criminals, misfits, sadists and petty bureaucrats? The Nazis and the Occult reveals the true nature of the Third Reich's link with arcane influences and of evil itself, as well as explaining how an illeducated, psychologically unbalanced nonentity succeeded in mesmerizing an entire nation. Forget what you have read, seen and heard. This is the real secret history of Nazi Germany and its dark Messiah - Adolf Hitler.

Drawing on a wealth of archival and literary sources, and availing themselves of a broad range of methodological approaches, the authors provide interdisciplinary reflections on the soundscapes of selected European cities in the year 1945, through representation in autobiographical texts and art, and through reception and transformation.