About

Matthias Rothe is a professor affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, specializing in German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch cultural studies and comparative literature. His research encompasses modernism, aesthetics and political economy, Marxism, political theater and theater history, and DDR Kulturgeschichte. Rothe has authored a monograph titled 'Tropen des Kollektiven. Horizonte der Emanzipation im epischen Theater,' scheduled for publication in 2024, and has contributed to various edited volumes and articles exploring critical theory, social critique, and cultural history. His scholarly work engages with figures such as Foucault, Adorno, Kant, and Brecht, examining themes like critique, sovereignty, social order, and the intersection of art and politics. Rothe has organized numerous conferences and workshops, served on editorial boards, and held visiting professorships, including a DAAD Visiting Professorship at the University of Texas at Austin. His teaching spans courses on modernism, political philosophy, East German literature, and theater, reflecting his broad engagement with critical theory, aesthetics, and cultural history.

Research topics

• Art
• Visual arts
• Art history
• Internal medicine
• Materials science
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Round Heads and Pointed Heads and the End of Avant-garde

  Boydell and Brewer eBooks · 2023-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe und das Ende der Avantgarde

  2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Materials science
  PublisherDOI

• The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 48

  2023 · 1 citations

  • Art
  • Art history
  • Visual arts

  <i>The Brecht Yearbook 48</i> is the central scholarly forum for discussion of the life and work of Bertolt Brecht and of aspects of theater and literature that were of particular interest to him

  PublisherDOI

• Round Heads and Pointed Heads and the End of Avant-garde

  2023-11-14

  other1st authorCorresponding

  The play known today as Bertolt Brecht's Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe (Round Heads and Pointed Heads) began development in 1931 as an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. In Shakespeare's play, the Duke of Vienna leaves his deputy Angelo, a rigidly moral character, in charge of the city during his absence, hoping that Angelo will crack down on an increase in immorality (prostitution, extra-marital affairs) and save him from the stain of authoritarianism. Angelo's harsh public measures seem inappropriate, even more so as he himself abuses his power to extort sexual favors. The play ends with a deus ex machina re-appearance of the duke, who solves all conflicts, holds Angelo accountable and, in a parodic ending, marries off most of the protagonists. Shakespeare investigates both the standards (or measures) that apply to rulers and their subjects as well as the extent to which it is desirable that the law intervene into personal affairs.

  PublisherDOI

• Das Werk, das Kollektiv und der Tod

  2021-07-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  „(W)enn ihr das Sterben überwinden wollt, so überwindet ihr es, wenn ihr das Sterben kennt und einverstanden seid mit dem Sterben“, heißt es im Kommentar von Bertolt Brechts, Elisabeth Hauptmanns und Slatan Dudovs Das Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis von 1929. Dieses und Stücke gleicher Art, die in den darauffolgenden Jahren entstanden, sahen vor, dass die Spielenden, idealerweise Arbeiterinnen, Studenteninnen, ‚wirkliche‘ Menschen also, in der Auseinandersetzung mit den Figuren der kargen Textvorlagen das Einverständnis mit dem Sterben lernen. Das ist zum einen nur metaphorisch gedacht: Indem sie sich vom Kollektiv her denken lernen, geben sie ihre Einzelexistenzen auf, aber durchgespielt wird es an ‚tatsächlichen‘ Situationen des Sterbens. Warum gewinnt das Sterben in diesen Spielvorlagen ein solches Gewicht? Dieser Beitrag geht der Frage anhand des wohl am meisten diskutierten Lehrstücks Die Maßnahme nach. Ich werde exemplarisch an diesem Text aufzeigen, dass die Lehrstücke die Form der Sterbelehre annehmen, weil sie Kollektivität immer zugleich mobilisieren und verunmöglichen, das heißt, das Zu-lernende vorentscheiden und den Lernprozess auf Zustimmung reduzieren.

  PublisherDOI

• Gerd Dietrich. Kulturgeschichte der DDR

  2020-11-20

  other1st authorCorresponding

  This "Kulturgeschichte der DDR" (Cultural History of the GDR), Gerd Dietrich remarks in his introduction, "ist weniger ein Buch das man liest, sondern mehr ein Buch, in dem man liest ("is less a book which one reads than a book in which one reads") (XLII). This corresponds entirely to my reading experience. The book is ordered chronologically and guides its reader towards concrete appearances, at times very material phenomena, of East German culture. The three main parts, "Übergangsgesellschaft" ("Culture in a Society in Transition") (1945–57), "Bildungsgesellschaft" ("Culture in a Developing Society") (1958–76), and "Konsumgesellschaft" ("Culture in the Consumption Society") (1977–90), are divided into a great number of thematic chapters such as "Die Politische Kultur des Antifaschismus" ("The Political Culture of Antifascism") or "Zwischen Vielfalt und Ausbürgerung" ("Between Diversity and Expatriation"), which in turn lead to subchapters dealing with individual subjects (like the role of Franz Kafka in cultural debates or the success of the wall unit). I found myself diving into these detailed accounts, reading for hours from there on, especially on long bus or train rides. The book interpellates the reader into reading selectively but nevertheless continuously; this is its way of "making sense." And if you look for something specific, for better or worse, you might not find it or come across it only by accident. So, the book does not function simply as either an encyclopedia or a lexicon, although it reaches out to everyone interested in East Germany, including historians and students of history. Perhaps also because of its format, it might well become "the Dietrich," resisting what online resources might meanwhile be able to do better, namely to give immediate access to something factual (or to pure information).

  PublisherDOI

• Gerd Dietrich. Kulturgeschichte der DDR

  Boydell and Brewer eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Medicine
  • Internal medicine
  PublisherDOI

• BertoltBrecht. <i>Notizbücher 13–15, 1921–1923 (Bd. 4)</i>. Martin Kölbel und Peter Villwock, Hrsg. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2019, 576 Seiten

  Orbis Litterarum · 2020-04-26

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Gerd Dietrich. Kulturgeschichte der DDR (3 Bde.). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &amp; Ruprecht, 2018. 2429 pages.

  2020-11-20

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Returning Marx to Kant?

  Historical Materialism · 2019-02-04

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Christian Lotz’s book, The Capitalist Schema: Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction , seeks to reconcile Marx’s logic of conceptual determination with Kant’s logic of constitution. It is in this context that Lotz reconfigures Kant’s transcendental schema as money and understands money as an a priori determination that makes the world accessible and meaningful to individuals. Furthermore the book’s point of departure is Adorno’s Kant interpretation, and in foregrounding money Lotz also wishes to ‘reconnect Adorno’s Critical Theory to Marx’. The review engages with both endeavours, discusses the, so to speak, temporal impossibility of such a reconciliation project and revisits a previous attempt to bring Kant and Marx together: Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s theory of real abstraction.

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Frequent coauthors

• Markus Wessendorf

  University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

  6 shared

• Stephen Brockmann

  5 shared

• Michael Eggers

  LVR-Klinik Köln

  5 shared

• Jack Davis

  4 shared

• Kris Imbrigotta

  University of Puget Sound

  4 shared

• Bastian Ronge

  University of Wuppertal

  3 shared

• Matthew Rothe

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• Erdmut Wizisla

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• DAAD Visiting Professor, UT at Austin, January 2008 - May 20…
• Research Fellow at the Center for Literary and Cultural Rese…
• Talle Faculty Research Award (for Staging Economy--Critique…