War and trauma are fundamental human experiences and central to German history, especially in the twentieth century. Since the First World War, which some Germans celebrated as the chance to annihilate the old culture to make space for a new one, German art has been implicated in war. War and trauma cause extreme conditions that can be negative and destructive, including deprivation or dislocation, and emotional and psychological stress. Paradoxically, war and trauma can also lead to positive outcomes, such as deepening interpersonal relationships, intellectual insights, and new, unforeseen opportunities.

CONTENTS: Barbara McCloskey: Introduction: What Can Art Do? - Robert C. Kunath: World War I, German Art, and Cultural Trauma: The Birth of the «Degenerate Art». Exhibition from the «Spirit of 1914» - Deborah Ascher Barnstone: Max Liebermann's Kriegszeit Lithographs: Pro-war or Anti-war? - Nina Lübbren: Women, War, and Naked Men: German Women Sculptors and the Male Nude, 1915-1925 - James A. van Dyke: Dix Petrified - Katrin Dettmer: «All of a sudden, there was this split»: Heiner Müller's Poetics of Trauma - Justin Court: Heimrad Bäcker: Photography at the Limits of Understanding the Holocaust and its Violence - David Kenosian: Aftershocks: (Missing) Holocaust Photographs and Writing the Past in Uwe Johnson's Jahrestage and W. G. Sebald's «Max Ferber» - Annette Vowinckel: Horst Faas, Thomas Billhardt, and the Visual Vietnam War in the Two Germanys - Andrea Gyorody: This Sum of Catastrophes: Excavating the History of Joseph Beuys's 7000 Oaks - Svea Braeunert: Deferring Perspective in Times of Urgency: Louise Lawler Looks at Gerhard Richter's Painting of the Air War.