Frank Hoffmann:
Berlin Koreans and Pictured Koreans
[= Koreans and Central Europeans: Informal Contacts up to 1950, ed by Andreas Schirmer; 1]
In its first, almost book-length chapter, Berlin Koreans and Pictured Koreans provides a detailed account of Korean students, revolutionaries, and professionals in Berlin (of the Wilhelmine, Weimar, and National Socialist eras). Carefully researched and lavishly illustrated, the study provocatively exposes cultural and political connections that are often unexpected and disquieting. Two shorter essays analyze an artwork and mass-produced advertisement art to assess Germany’s take on Korea and the East and what that means for the country’s own search for identity and its stance on colonialism. The book challenges and extends established historical and art historical models regarding colonial modernity, the relationship between politics and modernism in art and dance, and the privileged status Nazism bestowed on international specialists. It makes exhaustive use of European, American, Korean, and Japanese primary and secondary materials and archival sources.