Publisher's Synopsis
A comprehensive inventory of gender-historically significant tendencies of Expressionism is still pending; In view of the epochal diversity of these tendencies, the image of Expressionist modernism can only be updated in different directions with the help of a large number of small steps. The volume makes an important contribution to this inventory; in addition to literature, especially prose, i.a. Street scenes by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and films from the Weimar Republic taken into account. The articles deal with masculine birth fantasies, sexuality in contexts of road and money traffic, aspects of motherly behavior, crisis-like masculinity, gender symbolism, prostitute motifs and female figures that act as a means of increasing male power. The findings suggest three variants of problematizing gender positions in Expressionism To take greater account of in the future: the symbolically significant exceeding of the scope of the sexes, the contradictory coding of gender-marked meaning, and the depiction of substance loss in sexual relationships in the field of instrumental action.
