New German painting: painting, nostalgia & cultural identity in post-unification Germany

During the past decade one of the bestsellers in the American art market was a group of figurative-representational paintings from post-Unification Germany. Dubbed “New German Painting”, this body of work included artists with explicit East German affiliations, such as the so-called “New Leipzig School”, as well as artists who trained at academies in former West Germany. While the American art critical discourse predominantly promoted the art as a new kind of German history painting, which confronted the country’s recent past of division and reunification, the reception amongst German art critics was more negative by far. The latter did not see a serious engagement with recent German history in the new body of art, and dismissed the painting as catering to a growing post-socialist nostalgia industry. Moreover, the traditional figurative style of painting, which was adopted in particular by artists trained at academies in post-Wende East Germany, was often criticized as an aesthetically and politically reactionary artistic position. In spite of the obvious social and political connotations of the art critical discourse on the “New German Painting”, art historical scholarship has barely examined this new body of art in light of underlying interactions between the painting’s aesthetic content and the social-political context of post-Unification Germany. This is a surprising omission, considering that scholars of modern German art are traditionally deeply concerned with the interplay between aesthetic and political continuities and discontinuities. A possible explanation for this gap in the literature is that art history lacks a framework to capture the intersecting aesthetic and social-political notions that have emerged in the discourse on the painting. This thesis aims to overcome this shortcoming by examining the phenomenon “New German Painting” from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines sociological with art historical approaches. The theoretical perspective builds on innovations in the sociology of art, which complement established concerns with social structure with a sensibility for aesthetic specificity. In the empirical parts of the thesis this perspective is used to trace continuities between the new painting and its reception with earlier moments in German post-World War II art history; as well as to examine the social context and historical moment in which the painting emerged. Particular attention is paid to affinities between the discussion of the “New German Painting” and current crossdisciplinary academic literature on nostalgia in post-Wende Germany. Overall, the thesis argues that this more encompassing approach is better suited for revealing how the phenomenon “New German Painting” sits at the centre of debates about collective memory and cultural identity in post-1989 Germany, including the complex relations between the former East and West that characterise these debates

Deriving an insulin resistance syndrome score in youth with Type I Diabetes Mellitus based on clinical risk factors

Diabetes is a complicated chronic disease, and it is categorized into type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Insulin sensitivity (IS) is lower in adults and adolescents with T1D compared to normal people, and a lower IS in T1D has been showed to be associated with longer-term complications. T1D is prevalent in children. The aim of this project was derive an insulin sensitivity (IS) score in children with T1D using noninvasive clinical predictors. From a sample of 60 children undergoing a euglycaemic-hyperinsulinaemic clamp study at Children hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, a linear regression model was derived using clinical and laboratory measurements to predict insulin sensitivity. Because of the limitations of the small dataset, overfitting was an issue. We used a machine learning technique called Cross-Validation to help select predictors and to assess the performance. Data management and analysis were done using SAS 9.4. One set of models built with only clinical variables were called clinical models. The other models used both clinical and laboratory variables were called research models. Two different outcome variables measures IS, glucose disposal rate (GDR) and glucose disposal rate (GDR) divided by free insulin, were used. After selecting the best models and checking the assumptions, the best model to predict GDR contained diastolic blood pressure percentile, systolic blood pressure percentile, gender, waist circumference, and diabetes duration. When the dependent variable was GDR divided by free insulin, predictors in the best model included DBP percentile, HbA1C at the study time, waist circumference, leptin, and adiponectin/ leptin. These models had much better performance for type 1 diabetes than these models from the literature. Public Health Significance: Identifying an IS predictive model based on routinely gathered clinical measurements and laboratory value is a valuable alternative to the invasive euglycaemic-hyperinsulinaemic clamp study. The current gold standard of insulin sensitivity, euglycaemic-hyperinsulinaemic clamp, is an invasive intravenous study requiring fasting overnight hospital study. The model makes it practical to use in epidemiological and screening studies

Bernhard Heisig and the Cultural Politics of East German Art

This dissertation focuses on the (East) German artist Bernhard Heisig (b. 1925), one of the most important German artists of the twentieth century. In English-language scholarship, however, he is virtually unknown, the result of lingering Cold War-era stereotypes that presume East Germany had no art, merely political propaganda or kitsch. This study focuses, in particular, on a crucial but little understood moment in Heisig's life and work, the decade between 1961 and 1971, a time when the style and subject matter for which he is best known today first emerged in his oeuvre. The introduction provides an overview of Heisig's reception in East, West, and unified Germany that will show how Cold War-era thinking affected--and continues to affect--his reception. The second chapter focuses on his past as a teenage soldier in the Second World War and the emergence of explicit references to this past in his art in the early 1960s. A comparison of his work to that by other artists suggests that there was more to its emergence at this point in time than simply personal reflection. It also reveals how his own experiences affected his portrayal of the subject. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters focus on a number of controversies that centered on Heisig and his work in the mid and late 1960s. It was during these years that the very definition of art in East Germany was under discussion: What is Socialist Realism? Heisig was a key figure in these debates, especially as they played out in Leipzig. A close investigation of the four main controversies in which he was involved reveals an artist deeply engaged with the society in which he lived and worked. Rather than a uniformly repressive system, the East German cultural scene was one of negotiation, sometimes heated, between artists and cultural functionaries. By engaging in these debates, Heisig helped to change what art was in East Germany and developed the commitment to figuration, tradition, and allegory for which he is praised today. In the end, this dissertation will offer a deeper understanding of both the artist and art under Socialism