Mary Cosgrove is Professor in German at Trinity College Dublin. Her research and teaching foci include Holocaust memory and representation in literature and culture; German Jewish writing; the cultural history and theory of melancholia and boredom in European letters; and literaryand narrative economics. Key publications include Born under Auschwitz: Melancholy Traditions in Postwar German Literature (Camden House,2014); German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990 (Camden House, 2006; paperback 2010). Mary Cosgrove is Professor in German at Trinity College Dublin. Her research and teaching foci include Holocaust memory and representation in literature and culture; German Jewish writing; the cultural history and theory of melancholia and boredom in European letters; and literaryand narrative economics. Key publications include Born under Auschwitz: Melancholy Traditions in Postwar German Literature (Camden House,2014); German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990 (Camden House, 2006; paperback 2010). Richard Millington is Senior Lecturer in German at Victoria University of Wellington (Aotearoa New Zealand). He is the author of Snow from Broken Eyes: Cocaine in the Lives and Works of Three Expressionist Poets (2012).

• Introduction: Sadness and Melancholy in German-Language Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present: An Overview - Mary CosgroveTears That Make the Heart Shine? "Godly Sadness" in Pietism - Peter DamrauProduktive Negativität: Traurigkeit als Möglichkeitssinn um 1800 - Johannes KaminskiDie Schwester Lenaus? Betty Paoli und der Weltschmerz - Karin S Wozonig"Immer wieder kehrst du, Melancholie": Plotting Georg Trakl's Poetic Sadness - Richard MillingtonDie Lust am Unendlichen: Melancholie und Ironie bei Robert Walser - Per Brandt and Jens HobusMelancholy Echo and the Case of Serenus Zeitblom - Steve JoyMelancholy in Wilhelm Genazino's Novels and Its Construction as Other - Svenja FrankThe Past is Another Country and the Country Is Another Past: Sadness in East German Texts by Jakob Hein and Julia Schoch - Franziska Meyer

This rich collection makes a strong case for the continuing relevance of literature as a space that allows us to project and explore emotional states, but also as a source of Identifizierungsangebote for our own (sad?) lives. Readers of a less than sanguine disposition may want to approach it with caution, and remain mindful of Goethe's exhortation: 'Gedenke zu leben!