Stephen Parker, Matthew Philpotts
Sinn und Form: The Anatomy of a Literary Journal (Berlin/ NY: De Gruyter,
2009)
07/2009. viii, 396 pages.
Hardcover. RRP € 99.95 [D] / *US$ 109.95
ISBN 978-3-11-021785-8
eBook. RRP € 112.00 [D] / *US$ 109.95
ISBN 978-3-11-021786-5
(Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies 6)
Language of publication: English
This study of the legendary Berlin literary and cultural journal Sinn und Form
(since 1949) has a twofold significance. Based on extensive archival research
and a detailed reading of the journal’s published face, it is a comprehensive
history of Sinn und Form, whose founding editor was Peter Huchel and whose
authors include Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Pablo Neruda, Romain Rolland,
Peter Weiss, Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller and Durs Grünbein. As such, it offers a
fascinating perspective on the cultural history of the GDR and post-unification
Germany. The study is also a first typological analysis of the anatomy of such
a journal, organised in seven analytical categories: founding conception;
cultural-political context; institutional infrastructure; role of editors; network
of contributors; textual and compositional
dimension; readership and reception.
Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture, the authors set out to
explain how the journal acquired and maintained its influence over the last 60
years. In turn, this conceptualisation of the journal as an agent in the cultural
field opens the way for systematic research into literary and cultural journals
from a comparative perspective, synthesising sociological and literary
approaches.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Establishing the Legend: The Accumulation of Symbolic Capital
(1948–1955)
The Literary Field and the Field of Power; Institutional Infrastructure: Adoption
by the Academy of Arts; Editorship: The Making of a Myth; Contributors:
Accumulating Capital in the West; Composition: The Thick Literary Journal;
Readership and Reception: Trojan Horse or Bridge across the Divide?
Chapter 2 Dynamic Mediation: The Literary Field and the Field of Power
A New Beginning? Re-establishing an All-German Identity; The Force of
Heteronomy: The Cultural Journal as Party Journal; No Taboos? Expanding the
Space of Possibles
Chapter 3 Institutional Investment: Capital Exchanges in the Academy of Arts
Investing through the Academy; In the Institutional Triangle
Chapter 4 Double Agent? The Editor-in-Chief as Symbolic Banker
The Habitus of the Editor-in-Chief; Selection for the Succession; Editorial
Practice: Strategy, Struggle and the Formula for Success
Chapter 5 Contributors: The Social Capital of the Sinn und Form Salon
Icons; New Talent; ‘Problematic’ Writers; The Nucleus: Regular Contributors
Chapter 6 The Compositional Premium: The Journal as Fractal Text
Huchel: Poetic Forms; Girnus: Serial Forms; Schulz: Breadth of Form;
Kleinschmidt: Forms of Self-Similarity
Chapter 7 The Circle of Belief: Readership and Reception
The View from the West; Reading in a Socialist Public Sphere: The Plenzdorf
Debate; Conquering the Feuilleton Field 1990–1993
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