Crime Scene Germany

Crime scenes–Tatorte in German–are locations of past events, reconstructed and (re)staged. The class will provide an idiosyncratic overview of depictions of Germany as a site of Tatorte, in literary texts and beyond. In constellations of texts from Droste-Hülshoff to Rainald Goetz as well as in films and photography, we will discuss what it means to encounter (narrated) history in a place where you “can pick up any given stone anywhere and can be certain that something happened at that very place in those dark times...”(Michaela Melián)