Memory Matters: Generational Responses to Germany's Nazi Past in Recent Women's Literature (Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies)

Memory Matters juxtaposes in tripartite structure texts by a child of German bystanders (Wolf), an Austrian-Jewish child-survivor (KlГѓВјger), a daughter of Jewish ГѓВ©migrГѓВ©s (Honigmann), a daughter of an officer involved in the German resistance (Bruhns), a granddaughter of a baptized Polish Jew (Maron), and a granddaughter of German refuges from East Prussia (DГѓВјckers). Placed outside of the distorting victim-perpetrator, Jewish-German, man-woman, and war-postwar binary, it becomes visible that the texts neither complete nor contradict each other, but respond to one another by means of inspiration, reverberation, refraction, incongruity, and ambiguity. Focusing on genealogies of women, the book delineates a different cultural memory than the counting of (male-inflected) generations and a male-dominated Holocaust and postwar literature canon. It examines intergenerational conflicts and the negotiation of memories against the backdrop of a complicated mother-daughter relationship that follows unpredictable patterns and provokes both discord and empathy. Schaumanns approach questions the assumption that German-gentile and German-Jewish postwar experiences are necessarily diametrically opposed (i.e. respond to a negative symbiosis) and uncovers intersections and continuities in addition to conflicts. Discusses literary texts by six German-language female writers of different generations who delineate their search for memories of the Nazi past in order to reconstruct a family history - either their own or of their parents and grandparents. Two of the writers, Ruth Klüger and Barbara Honigmann, are Jews; one, Monika Maron, is "partly Jewish" - she had a Polish-Jewish grandfather, and three are non-Jews: Christa Wolf, Wibke Bruhns, and Tanja Dückers. The earlier generation, who experienced the war, is represented by Klüger and Wolf. For them, the issue is the trauma of the past: for Wolf, it is the trauma of the defeat of the Germans in the war with all of its ramifications, as well as her being a misled admirer of Hitler. For Klüger, the trauma involved the experience of the Holocaust, in particular her internment in the concentration camp. All these writers also examine the meaning of the aftermath of the Nazi era for their generation, the ways in which memory is mediated, distorted, or repressed. The memory of the Holocaust is an especially important aspect of the past for Klüger, who in "weiter leben" writes about her Holocaust experience; for Maron, who in "Pawels Briefe" pieces together the biography of her Jewish grandfather who perished in a Polish ghetto in 1942; and for Dückers, whose grandparents acquiesced in the Nazi anti-Jewish policies. These texts by female narrators reject the notion of a demarcation line between the victims' discourse and the discourse of bystanders, or of female "partners of the perpetrators". (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism)

Memory Matters juxtaposes in tripartite structure texts by a child of German bystanders (Wolf), an Austrian-Jewish child-survivor (Klüger), a daughter of Jewish émigrés (Honigmann), a daughter of an officer involved in the German resistance (Bruhns), a granddaughter of a baptized Polish Jew (Maron), and a granddaughter of German refuges from East Prussia (Dückers). Placed outside of the distorting victim-perpetrator, Jewish-German, man-woman, and war-postwar binary, it becomes visible that the texts neither complete nor contradict each other, but respond to one another by means of inspiration, reverberation, refraction, incongruity, and ambiguity. Focusing on genealogies of women, the book delineates a different cultural memory than the counting of (male-inflected) generations and a male-dominated Holocaust and postwar literature canon. It examines intergenerational conflicts and the negotiation of memories against the backdrop of a complicated mother-daughter relationship that follows unpredictable patterns and provokes both discord and empathy. Schaumann’s approach questions the assumption that German-gentile and German-Jewish postwar experiences are necessarily diametrically opposed (i.e. respond to a “negative symbiosis”) and uncovers intersections and continuities in addition to conflicts.

Pt. 1. Remembering Childhood In Nazi Germany. -- War Children And Child Survivors -- Memories And Mourning: Christa Wolf's Patterns Of Childhood -- Trauma And Testimony: Ruth Klüger's Weiter Leben -- Pt. 2. Postmemory And The Reconstruction Of The Past. -- The Children Of Survivors And Bystanders -- Barbara Honigmann's Belated Appropriation Of Her Jewish Heritage: From Roman Von Einem Kinde (novel By A Child) To Ein Kapitel Ans Meinem Leben (a Chapter Of My Life) -- Wibke Bruhns's Father-portrait: My Father's Country: The Story Of A German Family -- Pt. 3. In Search Of Grandparents. -- The Grandchildren Of Nazi Victims, Perpetrators, Collaborators, And Bystanders -- Images And Imagination: Monika Maron's Pavel's Letters -- Tanja Dücker's Sensual Historiography: Himmelskörper (celestial Bodies) -- Epilogue. Caroline Schaumann. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [323]-345). Frontmatter Table of Contents Introduction War Children and Child Survivors Memories and Mourning: Christa Wolf ’s Patterns of Childhood Trauma and Testimony: Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben The Children of Survivors and Bystanders Barbara Honigmann’s Belated Appropriation of her Jewish Heritage: From Roman von einem Kinde (Novel by a Child) to Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben (A Chapter of My Life) Wibke Bruhns’s Father-Portrait: My Father’s Country: The Story of a German Family The Grandchildren of Nazi Victims, Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Bystanders Images and Imagination: Monika Maron’s Pavel’s Letters Tanja Dückers’s “Sensual Historiography:” Himmelskörper (Celestial Bodies) Backmatter Memory Matters juxtaposes in tripartite structure a close analysis of two texts that comprise memories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, two that consider memories of the narrators’ parents, and two concerned with the narrators’ grandparents’ past. Biographical note: Caroline Schaumann, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA