After 1945

The atomic bomb and the Cold War, but also the German currency reform and that country‘s first soccer Wold Championship (called the »Miracle of Bern«); these are the hallmarks of an era in which the past seemed unspeakable and the future threatening. In his latest book, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht describes how the feeling of living in a time with no way in or out, with swaying directions, and little protection, was central to the post-war experience. He calls this feeling latency.

In this panorama of the post-war period we encounter not only Beckett, Sartre, Heidegger, Camus, and many others still talking to present-day culture, but also a child born 1948 in a German city laid waste. Gumbrecht offers a form of writing that places his personal memory in dialogue with world history. He discovers why that era has haunted our lives until today. After 1945 is a genealogy of the present that explains, with a sharp historical focus, how we have become what we are.

»This book is willfully ›disheveled,‹ for lack of a better word. That is, it insists on and performs – successfully, I believe – a purposeful entanglement between autobiography and literature.« Françoise Meltzer, Critical Inquiry

»This is no ordinary book. ... Recommended. All levels of students through faculty« R. C. Conard, Choice

»Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is a true international figure – a Bavarian Romance scholar with an American career that extends to literary theory, cultural history, and history of ideas. ... His ambitious new book on mood, philosophy of history, and contemporary analysis is an interesting and peculiar example of what the humanities can also create.« Frederik Stjernfelt, Weekendavisen

»Quirky, superbly composed, and nuanced. ... A totally original meditation on how our sense of time has changed over the last two-thirds of a century.« Harold Bloom, Yale University

»This is a fascinating and important book – important because of the way it connects a certain postwar mood with literary and personal examples. I am familiar with a good deal of Gumbrecht's previous work, and as far as I know, this is the first time he has directly addressed the situation of Germany after the Second World War in such a way. The courage, and intellectual honesty, it has taken to write After 1945 are impressive indeed.« Françoise Meltzer, University of Chicago