Forthcoming From NGC

Issue #156 (Nov 2025)

Special Issue: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

This special issue is dedicated to studies of films by Fassbinder, and is the first issue of New German Critique centered on Fassbinder in over thirty years (see issue no. 63, 1994). As Gerd Gemünden writes in his introduction, this new issue’s essays paint a “different and more diverse picture” of the prolific and controversial postwar German director, one that helpfully takes distance from the influence of Fassbinder’s outsized persona. Barbara Mennel explores the context of Fassbinder’s early theater work and the influence of Marieluise Fleißer in his early film Katzelmacher (1969). Lisa Haegele puts forward the very first in-depth study of Wildwechsel (1972), explaining how the turbulent history of that film’s reception intersects with its critique of patriarchal violence. Brad Prager discusses the made-for-television film Fear of Fear (1975) in light of the director’s fascination with psychoanalysis, and contextualizes the many complications that vexed the film’s critical and public receptions. The issue then turns to interpretations of several of Fassbinder’s films from the late 1970s, including In a Year with 13 Moons (1978), which Kevin Ohi reads as a response to the suicide of Fassbinder’s lover Armin Meier. Jaimey Fisher argues that critics have not sufficiently considered Fassbinder’s Despair (1978) in terms of European art cinema, particularly with reference to late-1970s transnational production trends, ones centered on Nazi-era period dramas. Fatima Naqvi considers the concept of “fascist drag,” connecting it with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Lola (1981), and Lili Marleen (1981). Heidi Schlipphacke sees in Veronika Voss (1982) Fassbinder’s self-presentation as a diva, reading the film in terms of “diva time” and “diva space.” Yannleon Chen reappraises The Third Generation (1979), Fassbinder’s “terrorist” film, showing how it highlights the complicities between terrorism and capitalism, particularly in terms of Critical Security Studies. The issue's final essay is Seth Howes’s study of Fassbinder’s epic multipart television adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980); in his reading, Fassbinder’s visual references to Holocaust cinema cast light on how the story’s fictional onscreen Germans are portrayed as though they were history’s true victims, thereby courting comparisons with Jews.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Gerd Gemünden • Introduction
Barbara Mennel • Between Formalism and Theatricality: Rereading Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher
Lisa Haegele • From Censors to Sex Cinemas: Exploiting Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Wildwechsel
Brad Prager • The Fear of Fear of Fear
Kevin Ohi • Fassbinder’s Unrequited Love: In a Year with 13 Moons
Jaimey Fisher • The Crucible of the Transnational and National: The New Wave Anti-Fascist Production Trend and Fassbinder’s Despair
Fatima Naqvi • Fassbinder’s Fascist Drag
Heidi Schlipphacke • Diva Time, Diva Space: Fassbinder and Veronika Voss
Yannleon Chen • Cynical Securities in Fassbinder’s Third Generation
Seth Howes • Fassbinder’s Jews: Screening Jewish/German History in Berlin Alexanderplatz