Center For Mind, Brain, And Culture

"Widowhood, Archives, and the Musical Work of Mourning in Postwar Europe" Martha Sprigge | Musicology | University of California, Santa Barbara Presented by Dept. of Music with co-sponsorship from Dept. of Philosophy / Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture / Center for Faculty Development and ExcellenceThis presentation examines how gendered mourning practices have shaped the historiography of German art music after World War II. It focuses on widows in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany). Artistic widows in the GDR took on considerable emotional labor in the wake of their husbands’ deaths: they maintained their husbands’ gravestones, oversaw their archives, held together their artistic communities, and sustained their ideological commitments. Several were renowned artists in their own right, including Helene Weigel (actress married to dramaturg Bertolt Brecht) and Ruth Berghaus (theater director married to composer Paul Dessau). These women were sidelined in their husbands’ state funer