Description: Investigates the field of German life writing, from Rahel Levin Varnhagen around 1800 to Carmen Sylva a century later, from Döblin, Becher, women's WWII diaries, German-Jewish memoirs, and East German women's interview literatureto the autofiction of Lena Gorelik.
Brief description: KATJA HERGES is a physician and holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Davis.
Review Quotes: The contributions to Contested Selves demonstrate most impressively that there is a strong nexus between life writing and politics. Neither politics nor life writing nor the nexus between the two will vanish any time soon; it is to be hoped that books such as Contested Selves will continue to shed light on them.--MONATSHEFTE