Edinburgh German Yearbook 15: Tracing German Visions of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century 9781640141193, 1640141197

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Edinburgh German Yearbook 15

Edinburgh German Yearbook General Editor: Frauke Matthes

Vol. 1: Cultural Exchange in German Literature Vol. 2: Masculinities in German Culture Vol. 3: Contested Legacies: Constructions of Cultural Heritage in the GDR Vol. 4: Disability in German Literature, Film, and Theater Vol. 5: Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity Vol. 6: Sadness and Melancholy in German Literature and Culture Vol. 7: Ethical Approaches in Contemporary German-Language Literature and Culture Vol. 8: New Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on the German Language, National Socialism, and the Shoah Vol. 9: Archive and Memory in German Literature and Visual Culture Vol. 10: Queering German Culture Vol. 11: Love, Eros, and Desire in Contemporary German-Language Literature and Culture Vol. 12: Repopulating the Eighteenth Century: Second-Tier Writing in the German Enlightenment Vol. 13: Music in German Politics / Politics in German Music Vol. 14: Politics and Culture in Germany and Austria Today Vol. 15: Tracing German Visions of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century

Tracing German Visions of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century Edinburgh German Yearbook Volume 15

Edited by Jenny Watson, Michel Mallet, and Hanna Schumacher

Copyright © 2022 by the Editors and Contributors All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2022 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISSN: 1937-0857 ISBN-13: 9781640141193 (hardcover) ISBN-13: 9781800103221 (ePDF) Edinburgh German Yearbook appears annually. Please send orders and inquiries to Boydell & Brewer at the above address. Edinburgh German Yearbook does not accept unsolicited submissions. For editorial correspondence, please contact either the General Editor, Dr. Frauke Matthes, or the editor(s) of individual volumes, by post at: Edinburgh German Yearbook German Section Division of European Languages and Cultures 59 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 3JX United Kingdom or by email at: [email protected] The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: Anhalter Bahnhof, Berlin, 2015. Photo by Carlos Delgado, Wikimedia Commons.

Contents Between Estrangement and Entanglement: An Introduction to German Visions of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth (and Twenty-First) Century Jenny Watson Colonizing a Central European City: Transnational Perspectives on Kronstadt/Brașov/Brassó in the First Half of the Twentieth Century Enikő Dácz Exile as a Literary-Political Mission: Leo Katz’s Antifascist Bukovina Novel Totenjäger (1944) Olha Flachs Brunnenland: The Image of the Bukovina in Paul Celan Paul Peters “Auch bei uns im fernen Transsilvanien”: The Transylvanian Saxons and the Long Shadow of the Third Reich in the Work of Bettina Schuller Raluca Cernahoschi

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Through an Orientalist Lens: Colonial Renderings of Poland in German Cinema after 1989 Jakub Kazecki

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The Nazi Ghost and the Sinti Woman in Kerstin Hensel’s Bell Vedere (1982) Ernest Schonfield

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The Haunted Landscape of Babi Yar: Memory, Language, and the Exploration of Holocaust Spaces in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014) 176 Deirdre Byrnes

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“dann hüpfe ich auch, komisch und ungeschickt, wie eine Nadel auf einer abgespielten Platte . . .”: Translational Ethics and Affects in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014) Daniel Harvey

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Expanding the Nationalgeschichte: Multidirectional European Memory in Nino Haratischwili and Saša Stanišić 224 Amy Leech Reading Photographic Images and Identifying Mnemonic Threads of the Post-Memorial Project in Sie kam aus Mariupol (2017) by Natascha Wodin Shivani Chauhan

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Navid Kermani’s Entlang den Gräben (2018) and Its Readers: Remapping Europe’s East Karolina Watroba

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Notes on the Contributors

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Über Krakau bist du gekommen, am Anhalter Bahnhof floß deinen Blicken ein Rauch zu, der war schon von morgen . . . —Paul Celan, La Contrescarpe

Between Estrangement and Entanglement: An Introduction to German Visions of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth (and Twenty-First) Century Jenny Watson, University of Edinburgh

G

erman collective and cultural identity is unthinkable without “the East.” From the nascent nationalist discourses of the eighteenth century to the anti-communist paranoia of the Cold War, Germany has projected its fears of annihilation and dreams of cultural ascendancy onto the lands of Eastern Europe. Although Germany is frequently discussed in terms of lateness—the late formation of a German nation-state, the late emergence of a coherent German national identity— the vision of Eastern Europe as the “Other” of the German-speaking lands is long-standing and remarkably consistent. Conceptions of the “East” as a homogenized and alien imaginary space emerge in medieval poetry and crusader discourse of the Holy Roman Empire, and reappear across the centuries in new permutations.1 Eastern Europeans were demonized as inherently violent and ungodly in the context of the religious wars of the Reformation, conflict between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, fears around the Polish national revival of the nineteenth century, and the anticommunist hysteria of the early twentieth century, while tropes of vastness, hostility, and alterity associated with the Eastern European landscape

1 Alexander John Sager discusses the representation of Huns and Slavs in vernacular medieval texts including the Nibelungenlied (c.1200) and Biterolf und Dietleib (c.1230–1240), arguing that these present a homogenous idea of Eastern Europe as the land of the Slavs and erase intraregional differences. Alexander John Sager, “Van Ôstrit Allenthalbin: Images of Eastern Europe in Medieval German and Hungarian Literary Culture, 1050–1300” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2000), 12–13. Other scholars discuss the direct transfer of rhetoric denigrating Muslims in the Middle East to the context of the crusades to Christianize the Baltic. Marian Dygo, “Crusade and Colonization: Yet Another Response,” Quaestiones medii aevi novi 6 (2001): 319–25; John Eldevik, “Saints, Pagans, and the Wonders of the East: The Medieval Imaginary and its Manuscript Contexts,” Traditio 71 (2016): 254–56.

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persist largely unchanged from the travel literature of the Enlightenment to the Eastern Front novels of the 1950s. Likewise, the vaunting of Eastern Europe as a space offering opportunities for profit, adventure, and self-realization, which reached its apotheosis in the literature of the nineteenth century, has not vanished in the German sphere, even if concrete expansionism is tainted by its association with National Socialism. As several contributions to this volume highlight, Germany continues to look eastward for revitalization when it comes to the arts and culture, not to mention labor and trade. The increased attention to Eastern European experiences of the Second World War seen in Anglophone and German-language historiography in recent years is mirrored in publishing trends that suggest that Germany is currently also in the process of turning East when it comes to its memory culture. With the success of Germany’s denazification under fresh interrogation, the “rediscovery” of less remembered dimensions of Holocaust history sees Eastern Europe once again coded as unknown yet fertile terrain for exploring German collective identity.2 The enduring significance of “the East” to the self-fashioning of the German people from the High Middle Ages to the twentieth century is especially interesting because of the relative intimacy between Germanspeaking and non-German-speaking people across Central and Eastern Europe throughout the same period. German discourse on neighboring Eastern European countries is unusual among other variants of white supremacism, European colonialism, and racial capitalism in that it concerns an “Other” who—sometimes literally—lived next door and whose culture was extremely similar. The tension between intimate cultural exchange and xenophobic rejection emerges time and again in the examples discussed by our contributors, with many of the markers of belonging and alterity that arise in German representations of “the East” attached more closely to the minutiae of domestic life, work, and behavior than differences generally viewed as significant, such as religion, race, or wider culture. This means that as well as being a “red thread” that illuminates the contours of German identity in its development during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the rejection of the ostensibly less civilized, essentially un-German, yet immediately proximate eastern neighbor has the potential to inform our understanding of the gatekeeping of identity in contemporary German society. Rather than only reflecting contemporary views on in- and out-group characteristics, these narratives 2 On the persistence of a rhetoric of novelty and the “Eastern turn” in the literature of memory, see Jenny Watson, “Skirting the Abyss: Eastern European Space and the Limits of German Holocaust Memory,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History (Forthcoming, 2022).



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on the essentially “un-German” behavior of immigrants and minorities often appear as continuations of historical moral panics. The xenophobic hand-wringing around subjects such as ritual slaughter, noisy neighbors, and child-rearing practices in the era of the AfD find their literal counterparts in nineteenth-century antisemitism and anxiety around immigrants, while the focus on neighborly behavior (quiet, cleanliness, tidiness) as a moral good reflects the discourse of so-called polnische Wirtschaft (Polish economy/management), the chaotic, undisciplined and unhygienic foil to the well-ordered, pure, and hierarchical German family home.3 Fears of a “Slavic flood” of immigration destroying the quintessential character of the German lands in the era of Bismarck are recycled in the 2010s discourse of the “Flüchtingsflut” (refugee flood) or even “FlüchtlingsTsunami” (refugee tsunami).4 These historical precedents may offer insights into the more insidious, salonfähige (socially acceptable) elements of today’s pernicious anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Asian violence in the German context. The likewise centuries-old German discourses on Eastern Europe highlight elements of a common grammar of alterity that appear to be fundamental to German identitarian politics. The majority of the contributions in this volume focus, as does German public discourse, on the German relationship with Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, predominantly on the history and legacy of the Second World War. The cataclysmic violence wrought on Eastern European countries by the Nazi regime, as well as the eliminatory politics of indigenous far-right nationalist movements, defines how the space is conceived in the present, not least because of the “rediscovery” since the mid-1990s of the history of genocide and the magnitude of 3 A prime example of the enduring function of these “battle lines” of home, personal hygiene, and child-rearing practices in the exclusion of internal “Others” is the discourse around Germany’s Roma and Sinti minority. See, e.g., GildaNancy Horvath, “UKA-Bericht: 800 Seiten über Antiziganismus in Deutschland,” Deutsche Welle, July 13, 2021, https://www.dw.com/de/uka-bericht-800-seiten%C3%BCber-antiziganismus-in-deutschland/a-58166481; Markus Roth, “Antiziganistische Darstellungen im RBB. Eine Analyse der Sendungen RBB-Reporter: ‘Der große Klau’ und des Klartext-Beitrags ‘Misstrauen und Angst im Kiez’,” Bericht Zentralrat deutscher Roma und Sinti, July 1, 2016, https://zentralrat. sintiundroma.de/antiziganistische-darstellungen-im-rbb/. 4 Examples taken from Elisabeth Wehling, Politisches Framing: wie eine Nation sich ihr Denken einredet—und daraus Politik macht (Cologne: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2016), page not available. On the use of water metaphors in the context of immigration since the 1850s, see Charlotte Taylor, “Metaphors of Migration Over Time,” Discourse & Society 32, no. 4 (2021): 463–81; for a discussion of water metaphors in the German press amid the refugee crisis of 2015, see Bo Petersson and Lena Kainz, “Migration in the Media: Metaphors in Swedish and German News Coverage,” Nordeuropa-Forum 19 (2017): 38–65.

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suffering under Nazi occupation. Interventions that challenge the dominant German memory culture surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust—which continues to focus on forced labor and murder within concentration camps, rather than the more dispersed mass shooting actions, and on mourning and absence rather than the realities of perpetrator violence—arouse enormous interest and controversy despite the many similar “revelatory” moments that have preceded them. Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Stalin and Hitler, which has sold over 35,000 copies in Germany since 2009, is only the most prominent example of a new wave of historical and fictional works to thematize and reexamine the Holocaust with a focus on local interethnic relations and genocide beyond the concentration camp setting.5 As historians and scholars of memory criticize the lacunae of German postwar memory and its focus on Western trajectories and experiences, writers and filmmakers—many of whom have familial connections to the East of Europe—are reintroducing more marginalized histories to the public. While the reconciliation of memory cultures from either side of the former Iron Curtain does not seem to be an immediate prospect, the increasingly international nature of historical and artistic enquiries into the period of the Second World War is challenging and complicating German narratives about the past. In other words, the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) that has been so important to ideas of a cosmopolitan and progressive post-Wende nation is entering another phase of renegotiation thanks in part to an “Eastern turn” in cultural memory and historical discourse.6 5 Of similar significance in terms of historiography is the work of Father Patrick Desbois and the organization Yahad in Unum, which focuses on gathering the testimony of bystanders to Holocaust-era mass shootings, while Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones, 2009) has had so profound an influence on German discourse since the publication of the translation (Die Wohlgesinnten, 2008) that scholar Eva Mona Altmann has written of a “Littell-Effekt.” Eva Mona Altmann, Das Unsagbare verschweigen: Holocaust-Literatur aus Täterperspektive; Eine interdisziplinäre Textanalyse (Bielefeld: transcript, 2021), 144. 6 Generational and demographic change in general are, of course, fundamental to the ongoing discussion on the German relationship with the Nazi past and to challenging the complacency of memory culture. Although the focus here is on writers and filmmakers with biographic connections to the East of Europe, the work of minority artists and authors with family histories of migration from outside Europe are also fundamentally important. For more on the critique of self-congratulatory ideas of Germany as a “successful” memory culture, see Max Czollek, Desintegriert euch! (Munich: Carl Hanser, 2019); Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Confronting Race and the Memory of Evil (London: Penguin, 2019); Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2021).



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Strange Lands and the “Civilizing” Mission The historical importance of the imagined “East” to German processes of nation-building has been addressed in numerous excellent works of literary and political scholarship. Larry Woolf’s Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment (1994) examines intercultural contact and conceptions of Eastern Europe in the travel writing of Western European diplomats, philosophers, and writers visiting the region and traces its importance to ideas of Western civilization.7 Woolf discusses the process by which Eastern Europe took on the role of the “barbarous” “Other” previously played by Northern Europe in the thought of classical antiquity and became a testing ground for Western European nations’ identities. When Baron Munchausen journeyed to Russia in Rudolf Erich Raspe’s Travels and Surprising Adventures of 1785, Wolff writes, “Eastern Europe was a realm of fantastic adventures with savage beasts, whose wildness [the Baron] triumphantly tamed in a parable of conquest and civilization.”8 The Baron’s prowess in taming a wild Russian horse encapsulates the civilizing ability of the West, while his whipping of a wolf recalls the beating of serfs, the “hallmark of Russian slave society” in the Western imagination.9 Despotism and the oppression of the homogenized peasantry feature prominently in historical discourses on Eastern European politics and rulers, with figures such as Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, and Attila the Hun evoked in the later representation of politicians such as Stalin, and the trope of the downtrodden nineteenth-century serf recycled in the disenfranchised “huddled masses” of the communist regimes.10 Prosperity, egalitarianism, and stability are the preserve of the West when it comes to these tropes. German thinkers intent on proving that their society (and Western Europe more generally) was the paragon of rationality and the heir to classical civilization also drew inspiration from the aforementioned crusading history of the Holy Roman Empire. Crusading orders from the German-speaking lands declared war on the pagan tribes of the Baltic coast in the twelfth century, often recycling the tropes associated with the demonization of Muslims in order to drum up support from nobles.11 The crusading movement, which continued into the fifteenth century, also had a massive influence on majority populations’ treatment of religious 7 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 8 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 101. 9 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 102–3. 10 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 82–83. 11 Eldevik, “Saints, Pagans, and the Wonders of the East,” 254–56.

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minorities in the German lands themselves, where antisemitism and anti-Jewish legislation became a form of “holy war turned inward” and expulsion decrees, as well as spontaneous gentile violence against Jews, led to the mass migration of Jewish communities to Eastern Europe.12 The Order of Teutonic Knights, one of the crusading orders most associated with efforts to “Christianize” the pagan tribes of the Baltic, founded numerous towns and cities across Eastern Europe and published chronicles of their activities that became popular reading material in the early modern period, particularly in Prussia.13 By the nineteenth century this history had been repackaged as proof of the innate colonizing prowess of the German people and a specifically German “civilizing mission” that predated overseas colonialism by rival nations. While Herder mourned the ancient Slavs as noble savages and victims of German oppression in his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1800), comparing them to the colonized people of Peru, Heinrich von Treitschke’s article “Das deutsche Ordensland Preußen” (Prussia, the Land of the German Order) of 1862 set the tone for a triumphalist historiography of German crusading as a form of proto-imperialism.14 Activist historians of the Prussian School, such as Treitschke (1834– 1896), Johann Gustav Droysen (1808–1884), and Heinrich von Sybel (1817–1895) sought out evidence of German achievements as civilizers in order to bolster the case for unification and present an idealized vision of future German ascendancy.15 Facets of everyday life such as dress, building, and furniture design, agricultural practice, folksong, manufacturing, and domestic organization were mined for evidence of innovation on the part of German minorities in the East and presented as evidence both of German influence on neighboring cultures and their inherent superiority 12 Alex Novikoff, “The Middle Ages,” in Antisemitism: A History, edited by Albert S. Lindemann and Richard S. Levy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 70. 13 Paul W. Knoll, “The Most Unique Crusader State: The Teutonic Order in the Development of the Political Culture of Northeastern Europe during the Middle Ages,” in The Germans and the East, edited by Charles W. Ingrao and Franz A. J. Szabo (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008), 37–39; Karin Friedrich, The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 80. 14 Johann Gottfried Herder, “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,” in Herders Werke, vol. 4, edited by Regine Otto (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1982), 385–86, cited in Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 311–12; Heinrich von Treitschke, “Das deutsche Ordensland Preußen,” Preußische Jahrbücher 10 (1862): 95–151. 15 Robert Southard, Droysen and the Prussian School of History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 2–3.



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over them.16 Agricultural practice became a particular focus, with the more intensive farming practices of German minorities in some regions presented as evidence of efficiency and better custodianship of the land: This space belonged back in German hands, it was argued, because it had only been brought into the era of human progress and development due to past German colonial intervention. Allowing Poles to control this land, it followed, was not only an injustice to the Germans who had invested their colonial labor in the civilizing of this space, but was also an injustice to the agricultural and architectural products they left behind, which would certainly only fall into decay and misuse under Slavic control.17

Historians cited the era of Ostsiedlung (Eastern colonization) and subsequent settlement (see below) as evidence of a “timeless and elemental” urge to civilize the East with culture and development, the phrase Drang nach Osten (Drive to the East) became a watchword for this claim from the 1860s.18 Many of the scholars involved were proponents of pan-Germanism, arguing for the amalgamation of all German-speaking areas into a single großdeutsche Nation (greater German nation) and for a homogeneous ethno-state.19 They lent their support to organizations like the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), which was dissatisfied with the 1871 unification, promoted colonization, and sought to bolster German consciousness around the world, particularly in the North and South American diasporas.20 16 Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastward: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (London: Pan Macmillan, 2002), 25. 17 Kristin Kopp, “Gray Zones. On the Inclusion of ‘Poland’ in the Study of German Colonialism,” German Colonialism and National Identity, edited by Michael Perraudin and Jürgen Zimmerer (London: Taylor and Francis, 2010), 40. For a discussion of the role of cults of agrarianism in ethno-nationalism and territorial expansion, see Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 18 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, Nation and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 25. 19 Sylvia Jaworska, “Anti-Slavic Imagery in German Radical Nationalist Discourse at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Prelude to Nazi Ideology?,” Patterns of Prejudice 5 (2011): 442. 20 “Alldeutscher Verband,” entry in The Oxford Companion to German Literature, 3rd edition, edited by Henry Garland and Mary Garland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Online (2005): Oxford Reference, https:// www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198158967.001.0001/ acref-9780198158967-e-126; Stefan Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora:

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As Kristin Kopp discusses in her 2012 monograph Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as a Colonial Space, both the idea of a German “civilizing mission” and the associated assumption that Germans has a prior claim to the lands of Eastern Europe by dint of having fostered its economic and cultural development captured the imagination of artists as well as scholars during the nineteenth century.21 Building on the work of Susanne Zantop, who analyzed German ideological investment in the European colonial project prior to the formation of the German Empire,22 Kopp explores how Eastern Europe—particularly Poland—took on the function of a colonial frontier in the German imaginary during the nineteenth century. This notion of “the East” as a space that could be and had been formed by German intervention led the German public to embrace a proprietorial attitude towards the region. Although the German states prior to unification had little formalized political involvement in European colonialism, their rulers, and the German-speaking public at large, were deeply invested in the project of overseas colonialism. Representations of Eastern Europe borrowed from and contributed to the “overarching European idiom” of colonialism.23 As Kopp reveals in her analysis of his novel Soll und Haben (1855, Debit and Credit, 1857), bestselling author Gustav Freytag depicts Poles as colonized subjects in the mold of negative contemporary depictions of Native Americans: they are childlike, lazy, and prone to anger, and are racialized as European “natives” with brown skin and dark hair.24 In fact, biological theories of race of the late nineteenth century saw the increased racialization of Poles, who were discussed in terms of dark skin color, and the categorization of Polish Jews as “white Negroes,” a hybrid racial group entirely separate from non-Jewish whites yet capable of contaminating them with (imaginary) diseases and weakening them through interbreeding.25 Novels like Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest (1895), which Kopp also discusses, engaged with the exoticism of Eastern Europeans more abstractly, using landscapes and domestic drama to depict the dangers The “Greater German Empire,” 1871–1914 (New York: Routledge, 2014); Jaworska, “Anti-Slavic Imagery,” 442. 21 Kristin Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). 22 Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1997). 23 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 35. 24 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 37–39. 25 Birgit Haehnel, “‘The Black Jew’: An Afterimage of German Colonialism,” in German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and Modern Memory, edited by Volker Langbehn (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010), 246.



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of the East and presenting Poles as civilized but inherently immoral and unreliable. The half-Polish Major Crampas is an impulsive seducer whose reckless moral behavior is mirrored in the swampy, unstable landscape of coastal Pomerania.26 As Kopp discusses, representations of Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century increasingly came to rely on tropes associated with the frontier, mirroring ideas about the “Wild West” in the North American context.27 Ideas of boundlessness, uniformity, and hostility dominated the Germans’ imaginary landscape of the East, which focused on topographies of endless steppe, vast forests, and impenetrable swamps as well as rich farmland ripe for exploitation.28 The “Wild East” emerged as a testing ground for masculinity and adventure, a space in which colonial self-realization and obliteration were equally likely. This tendency to depict Eastern Europe as an alien and hostile landscape in the mode of the American frontier remained remarkably dominant despite the long history of German settlement in the region and even after the close encounters of Germans and Eastern Europeans on the Eastern Front in the First and Second World Wars. Time and again, real proximity did not preclude imaginary and discursive estrangement.

German Migration to Eastern Europe Although mobility is a consistent feature of European history, a simplified account of the migration of German-speakers to the East of Europe can speak of four main periods of settlement.29 The first of these was the gradual eastward expansion of German populations between 750 and 1000 due to the stabilization and rise to dominance of the Holy Roman Empire, including the acquisition by nobles of territory along the Elbe and Havel valleys to what is now more or less Germany’s Eastern border.30 A wave of more intensive expansion began around 1200, which 26 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 118–19. 27 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 7. 28 On boundlessness see Izabela Surynt, Das “ferne”, “unheimliche” Land: Gustav Freytags Polen (Dresden: Thelem bei w.e.b., 2004), 280. 29 Winfried Irgang, “Mittelalterlicher Landesausbau/Ostsiedlung,” OnlineLexikon zur Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa, 2012, https://ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/begriffe/mittelalterlicher-landesausbauostsiedlung). The term “Deutschen” (Germans) often included what we would today call Dutch and Danish speakers, as well as people from modern-day Luxemburg, Belgium, and Alsace. The application of terms like “Schwaben” (Swabians) and “Sachsen” (Saxons) to German minorities should also not be taken literally and are used as catch-all names for German-speakers who mostly originated in the western border regions of contemporary Germany, i.e., not Swabia or Saxony. 30 Jan M. Piskorski, “Medieval Colonization in East Central Europe,” in The Germans and the East, edited by Ingrao and Szabo, 28.

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saw farmers from what is now southern and western Germany make use of routes established by existing trade networks of Osterlinge (German merchants) to migrate eastwards.31 The impetus for their resettlement was economic and political: a lack of available land and a period of poor harvests had increased pressure on food supplies and restrictive land laws limited the scope for personal enrichment among commoners.32 As the concentration of German farmers and traders grew, German communities became an integral part of societies across present-day Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and parts of Russia, often but not always as privileged farmers, merchants, and artisans. This period of settlement continued until the Black Death of the 1340s–1350s, when the severe reduction in population increased the demand for labor in the core German lands.33 For German Jews, however, the plague only heightened the existing climate of antisemitism that had already been causing them to seek safer homes in Eastern Europe. Casimir III of Poland reaffirmed the kingdom’s legal protections for Jews in 1334, leading to increased Jewish migration from Western Europe. In what is now Poland, significant settlement by German-speakers around the mouth of the Vistula River and in the area around the Oder River in northern Pomerania began in the 1100s and accelerated during the Mongol Invasions of the 1240s–1280s, when peasant farmers from Germany migrated to lands that had been depopulated by war. Germans were also invited to settle the southwestern region of Silesia, where miners, farmers, and artisans were in particular demand. By the 1300s, the majority of the Silesian population was German-speaking, making it the second major center of German settlement in Poland after the Baltic Coast. Polish rulers adopted the German model of granting city rights and a number of towns and cities with large German populations, such as Gdańsk, Szczecin, Elbląg, Wrocław, and Kraków (known in German as Danzig, Stettin, Elbing, Breslau, and Krakau, respectively) flourished. Other German minorities in the Baltic, including the Deutsch-Balten (Baltic Germans) of modern-day Estonia and Latvia and the German minority in Lithuania, followed a similar trajectory. Although the social upheaval of the Black Death slowed this initial flow of eastward migration among non-Jewish Germans in the mid-1300s, migration continued on a smaller scale as a result of trade and labor requirements. In many towns and cities, German-speaking traders and artisans formed a nascent middle class, benefitting from their exemption from indigenous systems 31 Piskorski, “Medieval Colonization in East Central Europe,” 28; Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 27. 32 Piskorski, “Medieval Colonization in East Central Europe,” 29–30. 33 Irgang, “Mittelalterlicher Landesausbau/Ostsiedlung.”



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of vassalage and connections to other cities. Germans formed a small but influential minority of the urban population in cities including St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Kaunas until the twentieth century. In what is now Romania, the Siebenbürger Sachsen (Transylvanian Saxons) migrated from the lower Rhineland region to the Western foothills of the Carpathian Mountains from around the year 1150. In this instance it was the threat of invasion by Slavs that prompted the Hungarian kings to invite settlers in the hopes of better defending their territory.34 The Transylvanian Saxons, who were granted official privileges by the Hungarian kings in the 1220s, participated in defensive wars against incursions by the Mongols (1230s–1240s) and Ottoman Empire (1500s–1700s).35 The region’s famous fortress towns, including Sibiu, Cluj-Napoca, Brașov, Sighișoara, Sebeș, Orăștie, and Bistrița (known in German as Hermannstadt, Klausenburg, Kronstadt, Schässburg, Mühlbach, Broos, and Bistritz, respectively) are widely believed to have given the region and minority their German name (“Siebenbürgen” meaning “seven fortresses”). The third major phase of migration from the majority Germanspeaking lands to Eastern Europe took place after the Reformation, largely in response to invitations from rulers hoping to increase their tax revenue from farming and cement their control over border regions. The Habsburg and Russian Empires in particular recruited numerous settlers from areas such as the Rhineland in an effort to make territory in southeastern Europe more productive and consolidate their administrative control over the population. Religious persecution was a major impetus for migration for Christians of various denominations in this era, and many of the initiatives to recruit new settlers did so along religious lines.36 The Habsburgs sought to recruit Catholics, while other rulers appealed to persecuted minorities, including Mennonites and Huguenots, by offering them legal protections.37 The religious wars of the seventeenth century saw Protestant minorities from the western German states, Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands answer invitations to settle in regions across modern-day Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, for example. The aforementioned Saxon minority in Transylvania was joined by an estimated 350,000 German-speakers in the period 1720–87 thanks to the efforts

34 Karl A. Roider and Robert Forrest, “German Colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Germans and the East, edited by Ingrao and Szabo, 95. 35 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 26, 31. 36 Roider and Forrest, “German Colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century,” 94–101. 37 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 40.

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of the Habsburg Empire to reinforce its eastern borders, with a similar number of Romanian and Hungarian settlers also moving to the region.38 This period of recruitment likewise led to significant demographic shifts in the Danube basin of modern-day Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Croatia, where a small existing population of German-speakers was supplemented by tens of thousands of predominantly German Catholic farmers, later known as the Banat Swabians, starting in the 1720s. The Habsburg Empire encouraged settlers to take on land captured from the Ottoman Empire around the regional hub Timişoara and improve it through drainage and deforestation schemes.39 In the 1740s and 1760s, the Russian Empire likewise offered invitations and tax cuts to Germans willing to repopulate the Volga region in hopes that this would prompt economic recovery in areas affected by the war with the Ottomans. Subsequent waves of Wolgadeutschen (Volga Germans) followed the partitions of Poland (1772–75) and the Napoleonic Wars, as poor farmers emigrated eastwards not only from the German states (particularly Prussia) but from the Polish lands that now belonged to Russia.40 The establishment of the so-called Pale of Settlement for Jews in the Russian Empire (1791) also came out of this drive to invigorate underdeveloped areas while homogenizing the core Russian lands. German and Jewish settlements were founded in the Black Sea region along the Bug, Dnieper, and Dnester valleys throughout the period 1790–1840, although many of the colonists went on the emigrate to the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century as tsarist policy became more hostile.41 While transatlantic migration dominates the memory of German movement in the nineteenth century, the continued pull of Eastern Europe on Germans seeking new opportunities after 1815 has been given significantly less scholarly attention.42 This fourth wave of migration, which was made up of religious minorities from the states including West Prussia, 38 Roider and Forrest, “German Colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century,” 98. 39 Roider and Forrest, “German Colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century,” 90–92. 40 Eric C. Steinhart, The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 21. 41 Tony Kushner, “Volga Germans in the Late Nineteenth Century: From Refugees to Foreign Paupers,” in The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present, 101–2. 42 As Sebastian Conrad notes, these millions of emigrants to the USA and elsewhere were an important element of the imagined German nation prior to unification, with the term “Emigrant” giving way to the more proprietary “Auslandsdeutsche” (overseas German) by the mid-nineteenth century. Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History, translated by Sean O’Hagen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 18.



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Württemberg, and Brandenburg, as well as those fleeing war and social upheaval, saw the swift growth of the German population in Russia, which reached 1.8 million by the 1897 census.43 The question of how much these German-speaking minorities scattered throughout Eastern Europe identified with other Germans or felt connected to the majority-German states is complex, and often colored by the efforts of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, academics, and politicians to create a coherent narrative of pan-German solidarity. The aforementioned efforts by scholars of Auslandsdeutschtum (overseas Germandom) to prove continuous settlement or take credit for the development of a region originated with minority-German scholars in those regions themselves. In eastern Prussia, for example, seventeenth-century amateur historians gathered folk tales from German-speaking peasants in the Vistula Delta and used them as a basis for school textbooks, political speeches, and public celebrations, building a mythology around the German presence in the region.44 The nationalistic discourse of “Drang nach Osten” likewise found an enthusiastic audience among some members of German minorities in Eastern Europe, who were keen to style themselves as cultural emissaries. The 1913 novel Der große Schwabenzug (The Great Swabian Trek) by Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn is an example of how these ideas found popular expression in regional Germanlanguage literature. The novel, which gives an account of the settlement of the Romanian-Serbian border region known as Banat by Germans in the eighteenth century, was instrumental in cementing the foundation myth of Banat Swabians as settlers and creators of the area. Although the narrative of the region as a tabula rasa transformed through German intervention is an oversimplification of the gradual development of the multiethnic region, which did not really flourish until the nineteenth century, the settler identity of the Banat Swabians has remained a central theme in their cultural memory.45 Investment in a pan-German identity often took second place to these kinds of myths and to local allegiances and rivalries, with Germanspeaking minorities defining themselves in opposition both to each other 43 Kushner, “Volga Germans in the Late Nineteenth Century,” 101–2; Steinhart, The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine, 22. 44 Friedrich, The Other Prussia, 10. 45 For a more nuanced history of German settlement in Banat, see Roider and Forrest, “German Colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century,” 90–94. Iulia-Karin Patrut discusses the disparity between Ottoman public records demonstrating flourishing trade in seventeenth-century Timişoara with the narratives found in Banat-Swabian “Siedlererzählungen” (settler tales) of the early twentieth century. Iulia-Karin Patrut, Schwarze Schwester—Teufelsjunge: Ethnizität und Geschlecht bei Paul Celan und Herta Müller (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006), 106, 111.

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and to the majority-German culture of the German Empire and Austria. Out-groups were viewed variously as too “Western” or not “Western” enough, with the ideals of “Germanness” as the pinnacle of civilization connoting both “modern” and “traditional” depending on context. Similar to Maria Todorova’s explanation of “Eastern” as a hierarchical category among Eastern European nations, these “German–un-­German,” “civilized–un-­ civilized,” “Western–non-Western” oppositions were extremely important among groups that might have been seen as homogenous or at least equally “Other” from a Western perspective.46 Markers of identity and “Westernness” were largely disconnected from geographical position, while some groups, such as the Black Sea Germans, were largely disconnected from pan-German discourses thanks to their location and lack of access to formal education.47 It would be the rise of ethno-nationalism and the events of the First World War that finally led to greater investment in pan-German solidarity.

From the Colonial Counter-Invasion to the Invasion of Eastern Europe In the early decades of the twentieth century, German discourses on Eastern Europe focused—as they do today—on the threat posed by mass migration. The mass migration from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe to the Americas due to poverty and famine saw over five million Durchwanderer (migrants in transit) pass through the sea ports of Hamburg and Bremerhaven, while approximately 3.5 million Germans emigrated to the United States alone in the period 1860–1900.48 However, as much as this upheaval may have increased the sense of a world in flux, public and political discourse centered on anxieties about an “invasion” of the empire and most often focused on the approximately

46 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, updated edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 57–60. Todorova draws on the work on the concept of “nesting Orientalisms” in her explanation. See Milica Bakić-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (1995): 917–31. 47 Steinhart, The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine, 25. 48 Sebastian Conrad, “Internal Colonialism in Germany: Culture Wars, Germanification of the Soil, and the Global Market Imaginary,” in German Colonialism in a Global Age, edited by Geoff Eley and Bradley Naranch (New York: Duke University Press, 2020), 257; United States Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2008 (Washington, DC: US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, 2009), 6, https://www.dhs. gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_yb_2009.pdf.



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eighty thousand Jewish refugees who made the German Empire their home in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.49 These so-called “Ostjuden”50 (Eastern Jews), mostly refugees from increasing antisemitic violence in the Russian Empire from the 1880s, became the focus of a racialized discourse of invasion and the target of prejudice from those who saw them as a threat to German civilization on cultural, political, and biological grounds.51 Jewish immigrants’ “association . . . with political radicalism, with poverty, with the trafficking of women in the ‘white slave trade,’ with a lack of hygiene, and with the spread of diseases—as in the case of the cholera epidemic in the early 1890s— . . . contributed to a mechanism in which anti-Semitic stereotypes were connected to the fear of the East and ‘Asian’ influences.”52 In the case of immigrants from Eastern Europe, this discourse of invasion also resembles a wider pattern of paranoia common to colonizing nations, namely the fear of revenge and of becoming the colonized subject.53 In the case of British fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Patrick Brantlinger talks about a tendency for “the outward movement of imperial adventure [to be] reversed,” citing Bram Stoker’s character of Count Dracula as an expression of fears of counterinvasion by the exotic “Other.”54 In the case of the German Empire and Eastern Europe, this boundary anxiety was particularly fraught because there was no clear delineation from “the East”; the frontier was within and without.55 As biological perspectives on race became more popular and the discovery of bacteria changed the popular conception of illness, the conceptual front line between Germany and its Eastern “Other” continued its move inward. The nation itself began to be conceived of not just in terms of general health versus sickness—as had been the case since antiquity— but more concretely as a body fighting internal contaminants.56 The need 49 Conrad, “Internal Colonialism in Germany,” 257. 50 Although there is some controversy regarding its use, the term “Ostjude” has become more common in historiography since the 1980s. See Mariusz Kałczewiak, “When the ‘Ostjuden’ Returned: Linguistic Continuities in GermanLanguage Writing about Eastern European Jews,” Naharaim, September 8, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1515/naharaim-2020-0015. 51 Haehnel, “The Black Jew,” 246. 52 Conrad, “Internal Colonialism in Germany,” 257. 53 John Rieder, “Science Fiction, Colonialism, and the Plot of Invasion,” Extrapolation 46, no. 3 (2005): 377. 54 Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 233. 55 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 4. 56 Susan Sontag, “Illness as Metaphor” in Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Picador, 1988), 98.

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to defend the Volkskörper (body of the Volk) became a justification not only for anti-immigration policies and discrimination against minorities but a founding principal for eugenicists and eventually the National Socialist regime.57 The fact that this discourse reached its apotheosis in the racial state of the Third Reich and was used to justify the murder of millions of people has not led to the rejection of metaphors characterizing the German nation as a body vulnerable to infection, however. The contemporary discourse on terrorism in the mainstream media provides numerous examples of Islamist terrorists (and even Nazis themselves) being described in terms of an internal illness (cancer, tumor, plague) of which Germany must be cured.58 In German political discourse of the period 1900–1914, this anxiety about geographical and biological invasion was accompanied by the application of Social Darwinist logic to the discussion on colonies and geopolitical competition. Although the German Empire had obtained overseas colonies in Togo, Cameroon, Namibia (German South-West Africa), and in Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi (then collectively known as German East Africa), the belief that Germany needed—and indeed had a right to—further territory in order to realize its potential and raise the standard of living for its citizens remained widespread. The theory of Lebensraum (living space), popularized by geographer Friedrich Ratzel, held that any state (defined ethnically) was entitled to land sufficient for its population to thrive if it had the economic capability to exploit that land to maximum effect, with strong Kulturvolke (civilized peoples) taking natural precedence over weaker ones.59 The acquisition of territories in China, New Guinea, and Samoa around 1900 was welcomed as a further step in Germany’s rise to dominance over other imperial powers and the triumph of German civilization over ethnic rivals. While the First World War ultimately led to the loss of the German Empire’s overseas colonies, it also provided opportunities to promote this narrative of Germany as a civilizing Kulturnation (nation of culture) in Eastern Europe. In an area covering large parts of modern-day Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, an ad-hoc administrative unit known as Ober Ost (Eastern High Command, after the army administration in the region) became a testing ground for colonial models of governance and the extraction of raw materials. Forced labor, the confiscation of livestock 57 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 104. Jaworska, “Anti-Slavic Imagery,” 445. 58 Alexander Spencer, “Bild Dir Deine Meinung. Die metaphorische Konstruktion des Terrorismus in den Medien,” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 18, no. 1(2011): 66–67; Anna Andreeva, “Die gefährlichen Fremden: oder was verraten Metaphern über den ethnischen Diskurs?,” metaphorik.de 20 (2011): 30–31. 59 Hans Dietrich Schultz, “Albrecht Penck: Vorbereiter und Wegbereiter der NS-Lebensraumpolitik?,” E&G Quaternary Science Journal 66 (2018): 118.



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and timber, and the introduction of harsh rationing for local populations meant that the already war-stricken region was catastrophically impoverished under occupation even as German propaganda touted the “development” of the region through education and hygiene campaigns.60 As Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius explains in War Land on the Eastern Front, encounters with the landscape and people of Eastern Europe had a tremendous impact on the millions of German soldiers during the First World War and long-reaching consequences for the shared vision of the region back home in Germany. When faced with the vast distances and relatively sparsely populated landscape of the front, soldiers experienced the realization of colonizer anxieties about obliteration: Again and again, the occupying soldier felt that he was losing himself in the open, empty spaces of the East. The breadth of sky, the earth’s flatness and expanse grew oppressive. The further east armies moved in 1915 and in the later great advances of 1918, the more this landscape revealed itself in its openness, the plains in their endlessness. All this left the occupier as a tiny figure struggling to explain his presence.61

Confronted with massive stretches of (to their eyes) uncultivated land, soldiers and administrators on the Eastern Front began to ponder how it could be shaped under German guidance.62 The war-torn state of many occupied areas confirmed the old stereotype of “polnische Wirtschaft,” the perceived tendency of Eastern Europeans to live in disarray, while poverty and epidemics among the local population (worsened by war) were taken as proof of existing prejudices about their inherent inferiority. Liulevicius quotes Silesian-born sociologist and veteran Norbert Elias, who “recalled that, as a student in 1914 he knew nothing about Russia except that it was ‘barbarous’ and far away,” a degree of ignorance that was typical of the average member of the German public.63 The occupation also impacted soldiers’ perspectives on Jews and re­inforced popular notions of Eastern Europe as a Jewish space. Bringing with them the Feindbild (hate image/bogeyman) of the so-called “Eastern” or “Ghetto Jew” popularized in pre-war anti-immigrant propaganda, many soldiers allowed their wartime experiences to confirm their prejudices. The upheaval of war had worsened conditions for the already marginalized and economically vulnerable Jewish minority of the occupied territories, meaning that there were high levels of poverty and illness. 60 Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 47–49. 61 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 26. 62 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 30. 63 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 25.

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As Steven Aschheim describes in his monograph Brothers and Strangers, stereotypes of Jews as dirty or “backward” provided an easy rationalization for this situation even among those who were sympathetic.64 These experiences, shared with family and friends back home, “lent credibility and resonance to the malicious anti-Semitic propaganda against the Ostjuden that appeared in the immediate postwar years” and had knockon effects for the German-Jewish community who were smeared as an essentially alien element by connection.65 While Ober Ost became a testing ground for German identity and would be remembered during the Weimar Republic as proof of concept for German colonization of the East, what it actually demonstrated was the efficiency of the army in asset-stripping an occupied region. The oldgrowth forests of the Baltic became a major resource both for war materials and private profit, with the army using forced labor to cut down huge numbers of trees.66 Hundreds of thousands of farm animals were requisitioned along with “raw materials,” a definition that occasionally stretched to include church candlesticks, organ pipes, and menorahs from Jewish homes; the army took over large mills, dairies, and estates to ensure that all agricultural products passed through German hands.67 The vast income the administration enjoyed from stolen property and forced labor—estimated at 338,606,000 marks—was supplemented by profits from imported goods sold to the occupied population, on which the army could impose its own monopoly.68 Trumpeted as proof of German ability to rationalize and make productive new land, the achievements of the Ober Ost administration whetted the public appetite for territorial expansion within Europe and created new mythology around the German soldier as a civilizer in the era of agricultural science. The image of the Eastern Front as a space of adventure and order derived from chaos stood in marked contrast to the punishing experience of the Western Front, where modern warfare had led to mass destruction. After the defeat of 1918, soldiers and civilians alike were slow to accept the loss of the occupied territories and the provinces of the German Empire ceded to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania in postwar treaties. In the former Ober Ost, the illegal paramilitary organizations known as Freikorps (free corps) fought on against their new rulers on the pretext of defending German minorities and combatting Bolshevism, while 64 Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 143–45. 65 Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers, 150. 66 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 73. 67 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 68, 66, 72. 68 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 65.



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in Germany itself the academic discipline of “Ostforschung” emerged as a more focused and virulently nationalist variant of the historical and geographic enquiry into Auslandsdeutschtum and how it was affected by the post-First World War redrawing of borders.69 Nationalists and panGermanists framed the establishment of Eastern European nation-states after the war as an existential threat to German minorities in the region and promoted an essentialist vision of German identity that found eager reception in populist politics, especially in regions that were bridling against rival nationalist movements and the imposition of measures to promote national languages.70 The rise of National Socialism was accompanied by redoubled efforts by ideologues and “Ostforscher” to promote pan-German identity and foster connections with the German minorities, even while labeling them as inferior to Germans from the Germanspeaking states.71 “Freeing” German minorities also became part of the wider rhetoric of anti-communism that motivated many Germans to support the war. If the post-1918 political settlement and the rise of communism provided the immediate justification for war in 1939, then fantasies of colonial mastery, paranoia about external and internal “invasion,” and the “mindscape”72 of the East popularized during the First World War all provided a ready grammar of alterity with which to promote it to the public. The Nazi regime made an effort to present the contemporary project of eastward expansion in the context of the history of German settlement and promote the image of Germans as settlers. The language associated with the crusades of the Teutonic Knights was redeployed in the youth training programs of the regime; the Ordensburgen (Order Fortresses) became the term for a type of cadet training center and graduates were sent for a graduation ceremony at the actual Teutonic Order castle of Marienburg.73 The history of German settlement was also deployed as a model in propaganda, with the mythologized figure of the Wehrbauer (warrior-farmer) defending Christendom modernized to fit the racial conflict of Nazi ideology.74 The demonization of the peoples 69 Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastward, 20–21. 70 Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastward, 22. 71 For a detailed account of the institutions and personalities involved in Ostforschung during the rise of Nazism and the Third Reich, see Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastward. 72 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 154. 73 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 180. 74 Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca, “Life in Space, Space in Life: Nazi Topographies, Geographical Imaginations, and Lebensraum,” Holocaust Studies 22, nos. 2–3 (2016): 163; Gerhard Hirschfeld, “Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe,” in Germany and the European East in the 20th Century, edited by Eduard Mühle (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 68.

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of the East, particularly Russians, relied on older stereotypes of Unkultur (anti-­culture) and barbarity, and Nazi schemes for the newly conquered territories, such as the notorious Generalplan Ost, projected mass deportations, starvation, and a future of menial labor and subjugation for the non-German populations.75 Throughout the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, fantasies of “the East” as a hostile space were at the forefront of the minds of many soldiers who served on the Eastern Front, including those from German minorities or who hailed from borderlands like the Silesian Elias. Postwar representations of soldier experiences, such as Heinrich Böll’s early oeuvre, contain extensive descriptions of the darkness, vastness, dirt, and horror of “the East” that expose the influence of popular tropes on the expectations of servicemen. In Böll’s first novel, Kreuz ohne Liebe (Cross Without Love/Charity), written in 1946 but unpublished until 2002, the narrator observes of Poland: “Dunkel und arm und drohend liegen die dürftigen Hütten am Wege . . . Finster und unheimlich ist es hier . . . Die Fremde, diese bösartige Fremde lauert hinter jeder Ecke” (the pitiable huts along the road lie there dark and poor and threatening . . . it’s dark and eerie here . . . This foreignness, this malign foreignness, lurks behind every corner).76 Also present in the postwar novels is a sense of the East as a space for German self-realization, particularly through settling and farming reminiscent of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writing. Some soldiers coveted the rich soil in countries such as Ukraine and fantasized about starting over at the frontiers of the new empire, although actual volunteers for settlement programs were scarce.77 Many more soldiers saw themselves as working to liberate Eastern Europe from backwardness and protect the legacy of German settlement from the Soviets; re-consecrating churches used as grain stores, cinemas, and community centers under communism became a popular idea. David A. Harrisville’s recent work on soldiers’ letters reveals how those serving on the Eastern Front used the notion of a civilizing mission to explain the war to their families, including the atrocities they witnessed.78 In contrast to the First World War and the Oberland Ost program of improvements, the Nazi civilizing mission did not include non-Germans, who were viewed only as interim labor in the service of Germanization.79

75 Hirschfeld, “Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe,” 74–75. 76 Heinrich Böll, Kreuz ohne Liebe (Munich: dtv, 2006), 288. 77 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 196. 78 David A. Harrisville, The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021). 79 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 197.



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When it came to the treatment of occupied civilians, the characterization of Eastern spaces as alien, hostile, and uncivilized fostered unrestrained violence. The fact that this space was conceptually as well as physically distant from the German home front aided the regime in carrying out its genocide of Jews and other minorities without significant objections from its supporters. While violence on the home front, most notably the November Pogrom of 1938 and the euthanasia program, had proven unpopular with the German public, violence in the Eastern theater of war was naturalized.80 Soldiers and their commanding officers routinely characterized extreme violence, including mass executions of women and children, as an inevitable feature of war in the East, blaming it on Soviet tactics such as guerilla warfare and the innate brutality of opponents who were lower in the Nazi racial hierarchy. Slave labor was also accepted as a natural feature of the occupation as the war progressed, whether in the case of POWs forced to help provide logistical support to frontline troops, or in the case of civilians, usually women, conscripted or unceremoniously deported to work in factories, on farms, and in homes in the West. By 1944 an estimated 5–7 million so-called Ostarbeiter (Eastern Workers) were providing labor in Germany.81 As German fortunes turned in early 1943, the forbidding vision of the East as barbaric and hostile took on fresh urgency. The threat of counter-invasion, this time not by immigrants but by an army hell-bent on revenge, became a primary motivation for continuing to fight for and believe in the Nazi victory. As such, the idealized image of the East as the locus of German racial ascendancy remained remarkably durable even as it became clear that victory was no longer likely.82 The specter of the Red Army, often conceptualized as a barbarian horde rather than a modern army, and of a “flood” of invaders approaching the German border heightened the fear of defeat. The frontier was once again moving inward.

Separate Spheres, Selective Memory The immediate aftermath of Germany’s defeat in 1945 was dominated by mass migration, shortages, and disruption. The final defense of Germany in the closing months of the war (January–May 1945) saw the deaths of between 1.2 and 1.5 million German servicemen, almost as many as in the entire previous year.83 Around 150,000 German civilians were killed 80 Frank Bajohr and Dieter Pohl, Der Holocaust als offenes Geheimnis: Die Deutschen, die NS-Führung und die Alliierten (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006), 37. 81 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 201. 82 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 201. 83 Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2000), 336, 174.

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in Allied bombing during the same period, out of a total of approximately 350,000 during the course of the war.84 These mass casualties, food shortages, and poor living conditions for many in the German cities were accompanied by looting and widespread sexual violence on the part of the occupying armies, with as many as 2 million women in Germany raped by soldiers, particularly from the Red Army.85 The population of Germany was also in a state of extreme flux thanks to waves of wartime and postwar migration by minority German communities. During the war, the Heim ins Reich (home to the empire) program had brought an estimated 900,000 Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) “back” to Germany, while millions of minority Germans fled to Germany from across Eastern Europe during the period 1944–45.86 After the war’s end, ethnic cleansing in the former German areas of Poland and Czechoslovakia brought the total of German refugees to 12 million, or around 50% of the German population of Eastern Europe.87 Beyond the central preoccupations of rebuilding, obtaining basic supplies, mourning lost or missing relatives, including the millions of soldiers missing in action or presumed captured, and recovering from the trauma of war and occupation, little sympathy remained for the victims of the Nazi regime. Displaced persons (DPs), many of them Jewish survivors or former Ostarbeiter, were viewed with suspicion, and protests often erupted when DPs were housed in German neighborhoods. Even the aforementioned members of German minority communities in the East, of whom an estimated 600,000 had died en route, were often met with hostility from their former co-members of the “Volksgemeinschaft.”88 The process of denazification was also met with little enthusiasm by the German public, even when it came to punishing those involved in genocide. When courts handed down long sentences to middle-ranking Nazis, crowds gathered outside to object to their punishments as an extension of the Allies’ punitive stance with regard to the German public. Victims were blamed for the suffering of Germans under occupation, and compulsory denazification programs, which included the screening of footage from concentration camps, were met with outrage. In this 84 Olaf Groehler, Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1990), 446–49, 460; Jörg Arnold, The Allied Air War and Urban Memory: The Legacy of Strategic Bombing in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 3. 85 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 208. 86 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 190. 87 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 209–10. 88 Ingo Haar, “Die Deutschen ‘Vertreibungsverluste’—Zur Entstehung der ‘Dokumentation der Vertreibung,’” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch 35 (2007): 251–72. Andreas Kossert, Kalte Heimat: Die Geschichte der Deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (Munich: Siedler, 2008).



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maelstrom of German mourning and resentment, the imagined East once again emerged as a staging place for constructions of German identity. The Eastern Front became a key setting for thinking about what the war had cost Germany and the failure of the Nazi regime to fulfill its promises to its citizens. While fairly few fictional depictions of the Eastern Front had emerged in the wake of the First World War, representations of the Eastern Front proliferated in literature and film from 1945 into the 1960s and 1970s.89 Pulp-fiction front novels tended to focus on the experiences of the sensible and relatable German Landser (squaddie), suffering with his comrades at the mercy of inept senior officers. More influential texts by authors including Heinrich Böll, Hans Werner Richter, and Hans Hellmut Kirsch—themselves veterans of the Eastern Front—maintained a similar distinction between the powerless and generally amiable Eastern Front fighter and the nefarious Nazi leadership, particularly of the SS. In terms of the representation of “the East” and its people, their work bears a striking resemblance to the responses of First World War soldiers discussed above. The East was conceived as an abyss into which German soldiers disappeared, an imaginary landscape of vastness, hostile terrain, and punishing weather that was anathema to survival. Local people are often portrayed sympathetically, but dirtiness, disarray, and backwardness are the main features of Eastern European society even in those cases, and the authors tend to present homogenous visions of non-German groups. Despite being interested in the fate of the Jewish people, the efforts by authors such as Böll and Richter to engage with the recent past of the Holocaust in the 1950s was also impeded by their antisemitic prejudice.90 Even novels that deal extensively with the persecution of Jews, such as Böll’s Wo warst du Adam? (1951, Adam, Where Art Thou? 1955) or Richter’s Sie fielen aus Gottes Hand (1951, They Fell from God’s Hands, 1956) reproduce tropes of the “Ostjude” by presenting sometimes cartoonish Jewish characters such as the second-hand clothes dealer to whom the German character Greck in the former novel sells his uniform trousers: “[in] eine[r] muffige[n] Bude, in der Flicklappen herumlagen, angefange Anzüge, Steifleinen aufgenäht, und eine widerwärtig große Gurkensalat, in der ertrinkende Fliegen herumschwammen” (in one stuffy shack, piled high with rags, half-finished suits with buckram stitched onto them, and a disgustingly huge cucumber salad, with drowning flies floating around in it).91 Neither the approximately 100 concentration camp survivor 89 Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 247–48. 90 Schlant, The Language of Silence, 29. 91 Heinrich Böll, Der Zug war pünktlich [1949] (Munich: dtv, 1987), 48–49. Nineteenth-century nationalist historian and antisemitic Heinrich von Treitschke’s image of “strebsamer hosenverkaufender Jünglinge” (“hustling, pants-peddling

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accounts published in the German language by refugees in other countries during the war nor the 350 works of testimony published by Jewish survivors in Germany between 1945 and 1949 achieved a significant readership among non-Jewish Germans.92 The political situation after 1945 did little to incentivize writers to engage in a more nuanced way with the people or regions of the East. The demonization of communism in the new Federal Republic (West Germany) contributed to a discourse of alterity that centered on political difference but relied on older preconceptions. As Liulevicius describes, the pre-war professors of “Ostforschung” remained in post and largely unchanged in their opinions, although they now substituted German nationalist ideology for a rhetoric of Western civilization.93 Images of the communist East as grey, featureless, and oppressed proliferated in the West during the Cold War, offering a repertoire of images of despotism, downtrodden masses, and homogeneity that were variations on the estranging imagery of nineteenth-century orientalism and stereotypes of the Slavic peasant.94 In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), an initially intensive rejection—at least in public—of the ideological inheritance of the Third Reich did not prevent the regime’s later embrace of Prussia as an example of German progress, efficiency, and cultural influence framed as a precursor to state socialism.95 The suppression of free discussions of events such as the mass rapes perpetrated by the Red Army or the ethnic cleansing that drove many Germans into exile also meant that antipathy towards Russia was stifled rather than dismantled. Many of these refugees, who were referred to euphemistically as Umsiedler (relocators) in the GDR in order to avoid casting aspersions, eventually chose to move to the FRG.96 While the refugees, often known by the emotive term Heimatvertriebene (exiles from the homeland), became key symbols in the postwar discourse of German victimhood, this did not translate into youths”) in the context of Jewish immigration from Poland became a slogan for antisemites in Germany after it appeared in his infamous tract Ein Wort über unser Judenthum (A Word about Our Jews) in 1880. This pamphlet also popularized the phrase “die Juden sind unser Unglück” (the Jews are our misfortune). See documents and discussion on German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1799. 92 Markus Roth and Sascha Feuchert, “Einleitung,” in Holocaust, Zeugnis, Literatur: 20 Werke wieder gelesen, edited by Markus Roth and Sascha Feuchert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2018), 10–11. 93 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 215–16. 94 Krisztina Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 1–2. 95 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 226. 96 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 218.



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sympathetic treatment for the 25% of the population of West Germany who hailed from beyond the Eastern border established in 1945.97 The political and cultural organization of refugees likewise failed to represent many who were more interested in addressing the root causes of their predicament than in celebrating their homeland and commemorating their suffering.98 However, despite the stubbornness of certain prejudices, authors and filmmakers made important interventions into the dominant German discourse on Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1989. In addition to the enthusiastic reception of literature translated from Russian, Polish, and other Eastern European languages, many of the great works of postwar German-language literature were produced by authors with family ties to the region. In the immediate postwar decades, figures such as Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965), Siegfried Lenz (1926–2014), Günter Grass (1927–2015), and Christa Wolf (1929–2011), who had been born in what is now Poland, found widespread reception on both sides of the Wall. Each of these authors wrote nuanced and self-critical depictions of German life in their respective childhood homes of Tilsit (Sovetsk) and Lyck (Ełk) in former East Prussia, Danzig (Gdańsk), and Landsberg an der Warthe (Gorzów Wielkopolski) in former East Brandenberg. Novels like Grass’s magic-realist picaresque Die Blechtrommel (1959, The Tin Drum, 1961), which satirizes the superficiality of postwar German contrition and the involvement of German minorities in National Socialism, and Wolf’s autobiographical coming-of-age novel Kindheitsmuster (1976, Patterns of Childhood, 1984), which recounts the flight of a family from the eastern provinces, complicated the narrative of suffering that surrounded the “Umsiedler” or “Heimatvertriebene” and confronted the seductive power of Nazism without self-pity. Foregrounding the multicultural nature of pre-Second World War society in Germany’s eastern provinces also allowed a greater appreciation of non-German perspectives and a nostalgia for ethnic plurality as found in Lenz’s short stories set in Masuria, as well as Bobrowski’s vision of the mythical “Sarmatia” of antiquity as a lost realm of tolerance and harmony wrecked by German chauvinism.99 97 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 215. 98 Rafał Żytyniec, “Heimat in der polnischen und deutschen Literatur nach 1945—ein Topos, zwei Erinnerungskulturen,” in Literatur, Grenzen, Erinnerungsräume: Erkundungen des deutsch-polnisch-baltischen Ostseeraums als einer Literaturlandschaft, edited by Bernd Neumann, Dietmar Albrecht, and Andrzej Talarczyk (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004), 237–39. 99 Sabine Egger, Stefan Hadjuk, and Britta C. Jung, “Introduction,” in Sarmatien—Germania Slavica—Mitteleuropa: Vom Grenzland im Osten über Johannes Bobrowskis Utopie zur Ästhetik des Grenzraums, ed. Sabine Egger, Stefan Hadjuk, and Britta C. Jung. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 25–40.

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This greater receptiveness to nuanced depictions of Eastern Europe and self-critical reflections on German history in the region coincided with the beginnings of German memory culture as we know it in the twentieth century. The German appetite for information about the Holocaust had grown with the trials of camp guards and Einsatzgruppen members during the 1960s, and Hollywood depictions of Jewish suffering—particularly the US television serial Holocaust, which screened to millions of West German households on consecutive evenings in 1978100—contributed to a cathartic confrontation with familial history. The Väterliteratur (father literature) of the early 1980s became a genre that typified the memory culture of the time, focusing as it did on German feelings of loss, mourning, and familial strife to the exclusion of Jewish experiences.101 Since the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, the reception of survivor literature in Germany has increased.

From Post-Wende to Post-Migration If, as Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius argues, the German relationship with the East becomes particularly important to German identity at “crucial junctures” of history, then the collapse of communism and the process of German Reunification are the events that most recently re-invigorated discourses on Eastern Europe in the German space. Today the “anachronistic space” of colonialism—the idea of countries as backwards or “behind” the modern time of the West—continues to resonate in the conception of communist and post-communist countries, including the GDR. In the case of postwar denazification and right-wing extremism, the “neue Bundesländer” (new states, i.e., those that were formerly in the GDR) are frequently characterized as Germany’s problem child, hampered by the perceived failure of the German communist regime to confront the role of “ordinary Germans” in the Third Reich. Post-1989 violence in the former GDR against asylum seekers was therefore portrayed as the actions of a society finally free to express its latent xenophobia, rather than a phenomenon that exposed the ills of both East and West German society. Similarly, the more significant support for Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the former East is often allowed to overshadow the popularity of those same movements in the West.102 100 Jürgen Wilke, “Die Fernsehserie ‘Holocaust’ als Medienereignis,” Historical Social Research 30, no.4 (2005): 9–17. 101 Ernestine Schlant, The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust (New York: Routledge, 1999). 102 In the German state elections of September 2021, the AfD won over 20% of the vote in Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt and 16.7% in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, all of which were formerly part of the GDR.



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Concerns about the “re-integration” of the German Democratic Republic into the Western world played out in implicit and explicit ways during the 1990s, with what Andreas Huyssen describes as a triangulation effect often meaning that aggression towards the “Other” in the inter-German relationship was often discharged in hatred towards and attacks on immigrants.103 Stereotypes of the downtrodden, eternally disgruntled, yet ultimately passive “Jammer-Ossi” (whinging Easterner) and the paternalistic, condescending “Besser-Wessi” (a play on “Besserwisser”—know it all) capture the spirit of an era in which West Germany seemed to set the tone for Reunification.104 The establishment of the Berlin Republic was also accompanied by significant changes to Germany’s demographic makeup thanks to the lifting of many restrictions on travel between Eastern and Western Europe. Throughout the communist era, around 2 million people with family connections to Germany had emigrated to East and West Germany, mostly from Poland and Romania in the 1980s.105 In most cases, these minority Germans were allowed to leave as a result of semi-formalized agreements which involved the FRG paying for their exit visa in foreign currency.106 These Aussiedler (expats), so-called despite usually having been resident in an Eastern European country for generations, were granted citizenship on the basis that they or their ancestors had been citizens of the However, the party also achieved 10.2% of the vote in Bavaria, 13.1% in Hesse, and 9.7% in Baden-Württemberg, and crossed the minimum threshold of 5% to enter the state parliaments of all sixteen German states. Mathias Brandt, “So stark ist die AfD in den Ländern,” Statista, September 27, 2021, https://de.statista. com/infografik/5926/afd-in-den-landtagen/. 103 Andreas Huyssen, “Nation, Race, and Immigration: German Identities After Unification,” in Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York: Routledge, 1994), 80–82. 104 Liulevicius notes the resonances of historical discourses on “the East” in the language around unification and the “new” German Bundesländer. In a speech of July 1990, Chancellor Helmut Kohl referred to the “blühende Landschaften” (blooming landscapes) that could be created in the East with Western intervention, a vision of potential reminiscent of Herder’s writings on the Baltic region, Liulevicius argues. Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 229–30. 105 Barbara Dietz, “Aussiedler in Germany: From Smooth Adaptation to Tough Integration,” in Paths of Integration: Migrants in Western Europe (1880– 2004), edited by Leo Lucassen, David Feldman, and Jochen Oltmer (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 118. 106 Denis Deletant, Romania under Communist Rule (Iaşi: Centre for Romanian Studies, 1999), 119. Ceauşescu is reported to have joked that the Germans and Jews were Romania’s best export after crude oil. See: Boris Kalnoky, “Ceau­ sescus Reichtum hatte einen Namen: Raffgie,” Die Welt, February 16, 1996, http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article652883/Ceausescus-Reichtum-hatteeinen-Namen-Raffgier.html.

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pre-Second World War German Empire (1937 border) or could prove that they were ethnically German, including by speaking the language, and had declared their ethnicity in their country of origin.107 Between 1989 and 2019, over 2.5 million more Germans from Eastern Europe settled in the country, mostly from Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. Those who arrived after 1992 are known as Spätaussiedler (late expats) and small numbers still arrive each year (7,052 in 2021).108 The arrival of large numbers of minority Germans and other migrants from Eastern Europe to reunified Germany has been enormously enriching to German cultural production and contributed to re-examinations of the German relationship with the East. Writing in 2008, Brigid Haines identified a marked “Eastern Turn” in German-language literature in which writers from Eastern Europe, both those who spoke German as a first language and those who did not, were producing texts that seemed to excite and resonate with the reading public. The impact of such writing, which continues to be fundamental to the discourse on Eastern Europe in Germany, is the subject of several of the contributions to this volume. The beginnings of this “Eastern turn” are visible in the late 1980s and the rise to fame of authors including Libuše Moníková (1945–1998), who left the Czech Republic for West Germany in 1971, and Herta Müller (b. 1953), who left Romania in 1987 to settle in West Berlin. Themes such as alienation, exile, and historical trauma resulting from a totalitarian regime are addressed in their works, which often deal with the traumatic experience of life behind the Iron Curtain. The appetite for works addressing the oppressive nature of life under communism contributed to these writers being overlooked as commentators on German culture. The same was not the case for Russian-Jewish DJ and essayist Wladimir Kaminer (b. 1967), who made his name in the Berlin music scene after arriving there in the early 1990s. Kaminer has enjoyed enormous success with his autobiographical essay collections on modern life, including Russendisko (2000, Russian Disco, 2002), which shares a name with his popular club night. Kaminer combines reflections on growing up in the Soviet Union with humorous observations of contemporary Berlin and wider German society, writing about multiculturalism in columns for a number of leading papers. Russian author Eleonora Hummel (b. 1970) is another Aussiedler from Russia to have achieved fame in the German 107 For a detailed account of the changing legislation governing “Spätaussiedler,” caps on entries and the imposition of language tests, see Dietz, “Aussiedler in Germany,” 119–22. 108 Bundesverwaltungsamt Report, “Spätaussiedler und ihre Angehörigen: Monatsstatistik Dezember 2021,” January 14, 2022, 4, https://www.bva.bund. de/DE/Services/Buerger/Migration-Integration/Spaetaussiedler/Statistik/ Monatsstatistik/2a_Monatsstatistik.html;jsessionid=DA2BF56B711863367237F 87C7669AF4D.intranet352?nn=45502.



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literary scene. Her 2005 novel Die Fische von Berlin (The Fish of Berlin) considers the experience of the outsider from the perspective of a Russian girl growing up in Germany. Although her grandmother spoke German— and was deported to Kazakhstan by the Soviet government during the Second World War along with numerous German minority members— Hummel grew up with Russian as her first language just as Kaminer did, learning German only when her family moved to the GDR in 1982. Writers from the former Republic of Yugoslavia, such as Marica Bodrožić (b. 1973) and Saša Stanišić (b. 1978), make up another important grouping. Bodrožić moved from the Dalmatian Coast to Germany as a child in 1983, while Stanišić arrived in 1992 as a refugee from the growing interethnic conflict in Bosnia. Both write about issues of identity, memory, and loss of homeland. In Bodrožić’s 2012 novel Kirschholz und alte Gefühle (Cherry Wood and Old Feelings), the female narrator from the former Yugoslavia reflects on histories of violence as she navigates the urban landscape of Paris, while Stanišić’s novel Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (2006, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, 2008) follows a young refugee as he navigates life in Germany and keeps the memory of life in Bosnia alive through the tall tales he likes to tell. Georgian-German author Nino Haratischwili (b. 1983) was similarly brought to Germany by the chaos that followed the collapse of state socialism, completing two years of schooling in Germany in the early 1990s before returning and staying for good in 2003 when she started university.109 Her epic historical novel about twentieth-century Georgia, Das achte Leben (Für Brilka) (2014, The Eighth Life (For Brilka), 2020) captures the impact of world events on individuals and centers the country often conceived of as on the edge of the Russian world. Authors like Müller, Bodrožić, and Haratischwili epitomize a tendency evident across the literature of the “Eastern Turn” to offer transnational perspectives on the history of the twentieth century and complicate the discourse of Vergangenheitsbewältigung that has been so central to German culture and self-identity since the 1960s. Where German memory culture since 1989 has remained focused on a national paradigm and the meaning of the Nazi past for Germans, literary works that prioritize “Randperspektiven” (outsider/marginal perspectives) turn this monologue into a dialogue with other national and international trajectories. 109 Mirko Schwanitz, “Erst schreibe ich über Folter, dann spiele ich mit meinem Kind,” Tagblatt, October 7, 2019, https://www.tagblatt.ch/kultur/ buch-buehne-kunst/nino-haratischwili-erst-schreibe-ich-uber-folter-dannspiele-ich-mit-meinem-kind-ld.1318599; Maya Jaggi, “The Eighth Life (For Brilka) by Nino Haratischwili, Review,” The Guardian, December 4, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/04/the-eighth-life-for-brilkaby-nino-haratischivili-review.

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Assigned more authority on the topic of National Socialism than TurkishGerman authors engaged in similar transnational memory projects—such as Zafer Şenocak, whose Gefährliche Verwandtschaft (1998, Perilous Kinship, 2011) explores the resonances and material connections between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide—authors with connections to Eastern Europe have found large audiences on the basis of their fresh historical perspective. Katja Petrowskaja’s autobiographical novel Vielleicht Esther (2014, Maybe Esther, 2018) is the most prominent among a wave of post-2010 fiction and non-fiction texts dealing with family histories and the complex multicultural landscape of pre-war and wartime Eastern Europe. Hanna Sukare’s novel Staubzunge (Dust Tongue, 2015) looks at the wartime experience of a Polish-German family who would later become expellees, focusing on their indifference to the suffering of family members who chose not to claim German identity when Poland was occupied. The fact that they live close enough to Chelmno extermination camp to witness the genocide unfold underscores this indifference and casts their later victim status in a different light. Markus Berges’s novel Die Köchin von Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan’s Chef, 2016) likewise deals with the issue of implication and characters who move between victim, perpetrator, and bystander roles.110 The experiences of Florentinius, a young Black Sea German man who grows up in the countryside near Odessa in the 1930s and reaches maturity during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine are juxtaposed with those of his granddaughter Jasmin, who visits the region from Germany whilst working on a concert tour. The detailed representation of mass shootings, the contact between Volga Germans and the SS, and the redistribution of stolen Jewish property to local German communities suggests a desire to fill a gap in popular representations of the Eastern Front and is indicative of a meticulous research process on the part of Berges, who himself has family ties to the region. Some scenes appear directly inspired by testimony collected in Father Patrick Desbois’s The Holocaust by Bullets (2011) and on stories recounted in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands (2009), which have both also been highly influential on other writers, such as Austrian essayist Martin Pollack, who writes extensively on extra-concentrationary violence in Central Europe, and Munich novelist Bernd Ohm, whose crime novel Wolfstadt (Wolf City, 2019) is narrated by a former member of an SS Einsatzgruppe.111 German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani has likewise 110 For the need for alternatives to these categories in discussions of the Holocaust, see Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019). 111 While scholars such as Sue Vice and Max Silverman have, following Jean Cayrol, used the term “extra-concentrationary” to refer to the world of normal relations that exists in opposition to the camp, I am using it here to designate the



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made use of Desbois’s and Snyder’s work in his travelogue Entlang den Gräben: Eine Reise durch das östliche Europa bis Isfahan (2018, Along the Trenches: A Journey Through Eastern Europe to Isfahan, 2019).112 Like Pollack and Kermani, who explored what they regard as overlooked dimensions of the Nazi past by connecting Germany to Eastern Europe, writers including Natascha Wodin have produced works focusing on the history of Eastern Europeans in Germany during the Third Reich. In her autobiographical novel Sie kam aus Mariupol (She Came from Mariupol, 2017), Wodin explores the legacy of German occupation and the fate of the 5–7 million Ostarbeiter recruited or kidnapped from their homes to work on the German home front.113 Thirty years on from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the freeing up of academic dialogue and archival access between Eastern and Western Europe, “rediscovering” the social history of Nazi occupation and genocide in the East has become a recipe for publishing success for scholars and authors alike.

Crucial Junctures The German imaginary relationship with Eastern Europe is one of continuity and change, defined by a history of entanglement interspersed with defining moments of connection and rupture. The essays in this volume focus on lives and works of art shaped by these moments and informed by the repertoire of images and stories that make up “the East” in the German-speaking world even as they seek to complicate them. Liulevicius argues that this imaginary relationship comes into fresh focus when it is troubled, that is, at “crucial junctures” in the world of geopolitics, and the essays here focus predominantly on the ongoing impact of two of these junctures: the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe during the Second World War, and the collapse of state socialism in 1989.114 dimensions of Nazi genocide that took place beyond the concentration camp setting, including mass shootings, summary executions, civilian-led massacres, and killing in extermination facilities. 112 An intriguing question, but beyond the scope of this introduction, is why foreign works such as the aforementioned US series Holocaust (1978), French author Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (2006), the American Snyder’s Bloodlands (2009), and Frenchman Desbois’s The Holocaust by Bullets (2013) seem to have such immediate and sustained effect on the German literature of memory. 113 3.2 million Ostarbeiter are estimated to have been taken from Soviet territory alone. Alena Kozlova, Nikolai Mikhailov, Irina Ostrovskaya, and Irina Scherbakova, eds., OST: Letters, Memoirs and Stories from Ostarbeiter in Nazi Germany, translated by Georgia Thomson (London: Granta, 2021), 3. 114 Writing this introduction on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, the next “crucial juncture” of the European story sadly also appears to be presenting itself, bringing with it not only the tremendous suffering of civilians in Ukraine

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Essays by Raluca Cernahoschi, Paul Peters, and Olha Flachs focus on the deleterious effects of Nazi occupation on the lives of German and Jewish inhabitants of modern-day Romania and Ukraine. While Cernahoschi explores the effects of Nazi ideology on German minorities in Transylvania through the work of Transylvanian Saxon author and immigrant to Germany Bettina Schuller, Peters and Flachs discuss the work of Jewish authors Paul Celan and Leo Katz from the Bukovina region. The central importance of the Bukovina landscape to the work of Celan, the best-known author of post-Holocaust poetry in the Germanspeaking world, and to his literary remembrance of his mother, who died in a labor camp in Transnistria, has been underappreciated. The work of the largely forgotten author Katz is, in contrast, still being rediscovered. His novel Totenjäger (Death Hunters), published during his exile in Mexico in 1944, observes the rising antisemitism of 1930s Romania and the immediate impact on Romanian Jews of the arrival of German forces to the country in 1940. Neither author made their home in Bukovina after the war, settling in Paris and Vienna respectively. Exile, migration, and transit are dominant themes across all of the essays in this volume, which feature works about journeys and authors with family histories of migration. The theme of encounter and the persistence of colonial perspectives on Eastern European space come to the fore in the contributions by Enikő Dácz and Jakub Kazecki, who explore the use of these tropes in works on the Romanian city of Braşov and contemporary Poland respectively. Dácz draws on a range of texts written by German authors from Romania to explore how the myth of settlement persisted in representations of Transylvania throughout the twentieth century, while Kazecki examines representations of Poland as a land of opportunity and intercultural encounter in the era of EU expansion. Shivani Chauhan, Daniel Harvey, Deirdre Byrnes, and Karolina Watroba each focus on works concerning journeys in their essays too, although in this case the journeys concerned are also metaphorical journeys into the Nazi past. Chauhan, Harvey, and Byrnes discuss autobiographical novels by Natascha Wodin and Katja Petrowskaja, in which first-person narrators go in search of their family history by traveling to Poland and Ukraine. Chauhan discusses Wodin’s use of photographic images of her mother and her mother’s grave to anchor her and her family’s experiences of forced labor in the multilayered history of twentiethcentury totalitarianism, while Byrnes demonstrates how Petrowskaja consciously highlights the lacunae of the historical record and the insurmountable limits of knowledge in the face of the massacre at Babi Jar. Harvey expands this discussion of self-conscious creation and the but a renewed amplification of hostility between NATO and Russia that will have far-reaching consequences for the whole region.



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highlighting of the constructed nature of texts and memory through his analysis of Petrowskaja’s linguistic journey in Vielleicht Esther, which foregrounds the narrator’s differing knowledge of Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and German. The subject of Watroba’s essay, Navid Kermani’s travel writing on Eastern Europe, similarly explores conceptual limits in its discussion of Germany’s ignorance of its eastern neighbors and its partial understanding of the Nazi past. Resituating Eastern Europe as a space between his two “homes” of Cologne and Isfahan, Kermani endeavors to challenge these conceptual limits and reassess his own relationship with Germany’s history and memory culture. Memory is also the focus in the essays by Ernest Schonfield and Amy Leech, which discuss works by Kerstin Hensel and Saša Stanišić and Nino Haratischwili, respectively. While Hensel’s un-staged play Bell Vedere (1982) focuses on the genocide of the Roma and Sinti and the transmission of fascist ideology to the younger generation in the GDR, complicating the view of GDR literary culture as one in which the Nazi past was a marginal topic, Stanišić’s Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert and Haratischwili’s Das achte Leben have each been influential in terms of introducing transnational perspectives on twentieth-century history. National memory in Germany is being expanded by memories that “travel” into the German public sphere as a result of migration and literary interventions by authors with family histories of migration, Leech argues. The complexity the authors and filmmakers discussed in this volume bring to the image of Eastern Europe indicates the potential of art to challenge age-old prejudices and reflect the reality of a complex, diverse world. However, contained within these works is also an awareness of the persistence of essentializing ideologies that infringe upon freedom and threaten human life. Xenophobia continues to dominate the political mainstream, and discourses of conquest, cultural and racial supremacy, and colonial counter-invasion are relevant in the year 2022 in ways sadly reminiscent of the historical discourses outlined above, even as they manifest differently. While German dominance within the EU and its self-fashioning as an arbiter of effective memory culture with regard to the Holocaust are the most obvious examples of the continued myth of Germany as a civilizing force from an international perspective, such discourses arise with surprising frequency in a number of national debates and marginal discursive spaces. Most prominent at the present moment is the ongoing discussion of the need for a German Leitkultur (leading culture) proposed by Minister for the Interior Thomas de Maizière in his ten theses on German culture published in the newspaper Bild am Sonntag in 2017.115 These 115 Thomas de Maizière, “‘Wir sind nicht Burka’: Innenminister will deutsche Leitkultur,” Die Zeit, April 30, 2017, https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/

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principles, ostensibly based in secular humanism but largely targeted at the Muslim community and at erasing visible difference, have given rise to a fraught debate on the nature of “Germanness” and the assimilation of immigrants. The other side of this coin is the scaremongering that has accompanied the arrival of approximately one million refugees who arrived during the 2015 refugee crisis and the demonization of asylum seekers traversing Eastern Europe to reach Germany. Similarly, the arrival in Germany of Roma from newer EU member-states including Romania, Macedonia, and Slovakia has sharpened pre-existing anti-Ziganism centering on stereotypes of criminality, poor hygiene, and un-neighborly behavior redolent both of the nineteenth-century discourse of “polnische Wirtschaft” and the panic surrounding Eastern European Jewish immigration in the early twentieth century. In a recent survey, German interviewees placed Sinti and Roma at the top of a list of “least desirable neighbors,” with asylum seekers in the second position.116 The definition of alterity is once again one of ascribed personal habits, differences in family life, and norms of acceptable behavior (Maizière names the handshake as a defining feature of German culture). Narratives derived from the German relationship with “the East” thus enable us to reflect in productive ways on the construction of German identity today, even as apparently new discussions emerge.

2017-04/thomas-demaiziere-innenminister-leitkultur/komplettansicht. 116 Rainer Link, “Sinti und Roma in Deutschland: Zwischen Integration und Abschiebung,” Deutschlandfunk September 16, 2018, https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/sinti-und-roma-in-deutschland-zwischen-integration-und-100.html.

Colonizing a Central European City: Transnational Perspectives on Brașov/ Kronstadt/Brassó in the First Half of the Twentieth Century Enikő Dácz, IKGS Munich

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is a case study of literary imaginaries of Brașov/Kronstadt/Brassó, a city that can be considered an exception in Transylvania in the first decades of the twentieth century due to the unusually even demographic split of its citizens. The population of the city was almost equally made up of German, Hungarian, and Romanian inhabitants, unlike other multicultural cities of the region that had dominant Hungarian or (rarely) German populations.1 Thus, the literary constructions of Brașov in the first half of the twentieth century mirror trilingual imperial and postimperial discourses and allow for the comparison of divergent spatial narratives. Brașov was, next to Sibiu/ Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben, the second most important Saxon city in the region, and its imaginary is haunted by German nationalist and colonial thought. It appears in German-language novels of the first half of the twentieth century as a colonized space in the spirit of “intercontinental” German colonialism,2 but the failed Magyarization measures implemented before the First World War when Brașov was part of the Kingdom of Hungary and the “Romanian conquest” of the city after 1918, when it became part of Greater Romania, were also subject to literary reflection. The following essay adopts an often required but seldom applied transnational approach to the analysis of the city’s literary imaginaries and he following investigation

1 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of Transylvanian towns were dominated by Hungarians. In 1900, 29 % of the population in Brașov was Saxon, 38.5 % Hungarian, and 30.7 % Romanian. See Magyar Statisztikai Közlemények: A Magyar Korona országainak 1900; évi népszámlálása I [Hungarian Statistical Review: Census of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown 1900 I] (Budapest, 1902), 383. 2 See for instance Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Die Kultur und ihre Narrative (Vienna and New York: Springer, 2007), 254.

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focuses on colonialist discourses.3 It aims to compare different modes of representation as well as the change of narratives over time. My point of departure here is that literature not only mirrors spatial and political discourses, but also shapes them, particularly when the texts concerned are received by a wide public.4 The texts I have chosen to focus on have each been received by a broad public, whether at the time of publication or afterwards, and exemplify some of the tropes related to space, identity, and colonialist ideology that have accumulated around Brașov.5 The chronological overview and the transnational perspective adopted in this chapter allow me to reach some general conclusions on the development of colonialist discourses in the case of the city, which I will outline in the final section of the chapter. Heinrich Zillich’s novel Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten (Between Borders and Times, 1936) illustrates some of the key ways in which spatial imaginaries of Brașov have been instrumentalized for ideological purposes, but also reveals the limits of such ideological depictions. My discussion of Zillich’s novel will be followed by an analysis of two Romanian-language novels written at almost the same time as Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten: Pericle Martinescu’s Adolescenții de la Brașov (The Youths of Brașov) published in 1936, and Mihail Sebastian’s Accidentul (The Accident, 2011) published in 1940. Martinescu’s novel was one of the best known of its genre, and its author was a well-known journalist in interwar Romania, while Sebastian’s work initially sank into oblivion because of the author’s Jewish background but was later rediscovered

3 See, in this respect, Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer, “General Introduction,” in History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Marcel CornisPope et al., vol. 1 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins, 2004), 1–18; Linda Hutcheon, “Rethinking the National Model,” in Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory, edited by Linda Hutcheon and J. Mario Valdés (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3–49. This essay is partly based on Enikő Dácz, “Inszenierungen eines ‘kolonisierten Raumes’—Zwischen nationaler Eigenart und Konvergenzen,” in Literarische Rauminszenierungen in Zentraleuropa: Kronstadt/Brașov/Brassó in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by Enikő Dácz and Réka Jakabházi (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2020), 219–53. 4 See Jan Rupp, “Erinnerungsräume in der Erzählliteratur,” in Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur, edited by Wolfgang Hallet and Birgit Neumann (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 182; Jörg Dünne et al., ed, Raumtheorie: Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006), 181–94. 5 For other genres and a comprehensive analysis of spatial discourses of Brașov in literature, see: Literarische Rauminszenierungen in Zentraleuropa, edited by Dácz and Jakabházi.



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and translated into German (in 2002).6 Published in 1940, Accidentul is only partially set in the mountains surrounding Brașov, but the city itself becomes an important symbolic space in the novel. Three later novels that picture Brașov in the first half of the twentieth century through the distance of time are Alexandru Ion (Al. I.) Ștefănescu’s Aventură la Brașov (An Adventure in Brașov), Ruth Eder’s Die Glocken von Kronstadt (The Bells of Brașov), and Lilla Szépréti’s Család-regény (Family Novel). Ștefănescu published his novel in 1980 and described the city, like Martinescu, from the perspective of a high-schooler coming from the Regat (south of the Carpathians).7 The last two works from the 1990s are family novels in which the city is a central scene of action.8 The divergent and retrospective perspectives of these novels show the long-term impact of colonialist narratives on the imaginaries of the city.

“The Diversity of the East as a Divine Blessing”:9 Heinrich Zillich’s Proto-Colonial Brașov Heinrich Zillich’s Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten subsumes, on the one hand, central topoi of the literary imaginary of Brașov, and became, on the other hand, a reference point for German literature outside the confines of the Third Reich, the so-called “auslanddeutsche Literatur.” It is a political novel conceived to meet the approval of National Socialist literary critics, and it was one of the ten parchment books handed over to Hitler on his birthday in 1937. The same year, Zillich received the Literary Award of Berlin, the Literary Award of the German People (Volksdeutscher Schrifttumspreis) of the City of Stuttgart, the literary award of the German Foreign Institute (Deutsches Ausland-Institut), and the Book Prize of the Wilhelm-Raabe-Society. In 1937, he received the honorary title “Dr. phil. h. c.” of the Faculty for Philosophy of the University of Göttingen, partly in recognition of his book’s success. The novel was often compared to Hans Grimm’s Volk ohne Raum (People 6 The text was slightly adapted for the second edition. Pericle Martinescu, Adolescenții de la Brașov (Brașov: Callisto, 1991). Mihail Sebastian, Accidentul (București: Editura pentru Literatură, 1940); Mihail Sebastian, Der Unfall: Roman, translated by Georg Aescht (Munich: Ullstein, 2002); Mihail Sebastian, The Accident, translated by Stephen Henighan (Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2011). 7 Regat denotes the Old Romanian Kingdom, made up by Wallachia and Moldavia. 8 Ruth Eder, Die Glocken von Kronstadt (Munich: Blanvalet, 1991); Lilla Szépréti, Család-regény (Marosvásárhely: Mentor K., 1996). 9 Heinrich Zillich, Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten (Munich: Langen/Müller, 1936), 644. Subsequent references to this novel will be noted in brackets with the abbreviation ZGZ. The two editions of Eder’s novel testify to its popularity.

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without Space), well known for supplying one of the most important slogans of National Socialist propaganda. Advanced orders of Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten to bookshops in the Third Reich were enormous,10 and the first edition ran to 120,000 copies. An abridged special edition for schools (“Schulausgabe”) followed in 1937. The great success of the book was further mirrored by the numerous reviews that appeared in publications ranging from popular magazines like Nation und Staat (Nation and State) to local newspapers in Sibiu, Magdeburg, Berlin, and Gdańsk, and the release of a radio play Die Zinnenschlacht (The Battle on the Tâmpa), based on a fragment from the novel, which was published in 1937 in the Roland Blätter in Berlin. Other authors from Transylvania, such as Erwin Neustädter,11 complained about the dominance of what they viewed as Zillich’s distorted literary vision of the region.12 The first and only dissertation on Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten was written in 1951.13 A Norwegian translation was published in 1942 in Oslo.14 Zillich defined Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten as a political novel.15 He conceived it with the explicit purpose of propagating the idea of German supremacy in the East in concordance with the expectations of the National Socialist literary policy formulated by leading intellectuals such as Heinz Kindermann:16 Die Siebenbürger Sachsen sind ein Musterbeispiel der Anpassungs­ fähigkeit des deutschen Volkscharakters an den neuen Daseinskampf 10 Correspondence between Zillich and his wife, Maria Zillich, from September 1936. The unsigned letters are part of the Zillich Fund, which is currently being catalogued, in the Archives of the Institute for German Culture and History in Southeastern Europe at the LMU Munich (IKGS). 11 Neustädter was living in Brașov and profited—just as other Saxon writers—from the NS-policy regarding Germans outside the confines of the Third Reich. In 1941 he became the head of the Schrifttumskammer der Deutschen Volksgruppe (Chamber of Literature of the German Ethnic Group) in Romania. 12 Letter in the German Literary Archive (DLA) Marbach. Fund: A. Vesper 76.2442/1–3, 76.2442/1 Erwin Neustädter an Will Vesper am 30. November 1936. 13 For an uncritical, ideological approach see Erwin Katschinski, “Die Form in der Erzählkunst bei Heinrich Zillich,” PhD diss., University of Marburg, 1951). 14 Katschinski, “Die Form in der Erzählkunst,” 171. 15 Heinrich Zillich, “Über mich selbst,” in Heinrich Zillich: Freundesgabe des Arbeitskreises für deutsche Dichtung zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, edited by Walter Jantzen (Göttingen: Arbeitskreis für deutsche Dichtung, 1958), 22. 16 He was one of the most prominent Nazi ideologists in literary circles and Professor for German literature in Vienna. For more information, see: https:// www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz080_00559_1.html, 14.05.2021.



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unter völlig veränderten Lebensbedingungen und zugleich für die notwendig damit verbundene Zähigkeit in der strengen Bewahrung des von daheim mitgebrachten volkstümlichen Kulturgutes.17 [The Transylvanian Saxons are a shining example of the German ethnic character’s ability to adapt itself to the new struggle for survival under completely altered living conditions and, at the same time, of the necessarily associated tenacity in steadfastly preserving the authentic, ethnic cultural heritage brought with them from the homeland.18]

Accordingly, the space in which the main character of Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten, a Saxon boy, lives, is a deeply nationalized multiethnic one, where the Saxons appear as prototypes of German colonizers. Brașov and its surroundings, the so-called Țara Bârsei/Burzenland/Barcaság, the main place of action, are fictionalized as an interface between the Hungarian and the German territories of Transylvania, in which Romanian peasants initially appear as marginalized subjects poised to start exercising their own agency.19 National diversity goes hand in hand with the Saxon supremacy that marks the book from its first pages and advances thereafter to a leitmotif of the novel.20 The protagonist sets out at the start of the novel sensing that Germanness is inscribed in people, animals, and material goods and that these beings and objects are superior to others just because of the dividing line between “us” and “them.” After a while, this intuition transforms into firm belief: Die Kirche wanderte nicht. Seit siebenhundert Jahren wahrte sie ihren Platz. . . . ‘Das ist eine von unseren Kirchen!’ Der Junge blickte ernst. Was klar und groß gefügt war—er spürte es unbewußt—ist deutsch; das gilt für Menschen, Pferde, Wagen, Kirchen, Häuser, Tische, Truhen, Pflüge und Ochsen. (ZGZ, 45) [The church never moved. For seven hundred years it has been holding its position. . . . “That’s one of our churches!” The boy looked 17 Heinz Kindermann, ed., Rufe über Grenzen: Antlitz und Lebensraum der Grenz- und Auslanddeutschen in ihrer Dichtung (Berlin: Junge Generation, 1938), 428. 18 Unless otherwise specified, all subsequent translations have been provided by the author or editorial team. 19 See also Enikő Dácz, “Das literarische Burzenland—‘Zwischenraum’ oder ideologische Topographie? Betrachtungen zu Heinrich Zillichs ‘Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten,’” in Räumliche Semantisierungen: Raumkonstruktionen in den deutschsprachigen Literaturen aus Zentral- und Südosteuropa im 20.–21. Jahrhundert, edited by Enikő Dácz (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2018), 39–54. 20 For a detailed analysis of the theme of Saxon supremacy, see above.

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serious. Every element of the scene in all its grandeur—he had sensed it unwittingly—was German; that applied to people, horses, carts, churches, houses, tables, trunks, plows, and oxen.]

The church the quote refers to is the famous Black Church, a symbol of the local Saxon community that stands for German supremacy, presence, and prosperity in the Transylvanian space and is as such a key element of the Saxon colonialist discourse reproduced by Zillich.21 According to this narrative, Saxons shaped the landscape of Țara Bârsei, and other ethnic groups had only a marginal role, if any. The father of the protagonist embraces this colonial sensibility and describes the German colonists as fighters who endured more losses than others: Ich weiß nicht, was die Budapester Kultur hier im Burzenland geschaffen hat, dachte Rheindt; die Stadt steht durch uns seit siebenhundert Jahren. Bis vor drei Jahrzehnten waren wir selbständige Regenten. Straßen, Dörfer, Kirchen, Recht—alles ist von uns. Von den Rumänen die Dorfviertel, wo sie wohnen, die obere Vorstadt in Kronstadt, Schweiß und Mühe auf den Ackern neben unserem Schweiß. . . . Unser ewiger Jammer, daß wir uns nicht so vermehren wie die Rumänen. Die sind unbeschwerter! Wir mussten immer geben und geben. Den Ungarn Städte gründen, für das Land kämpfen. Wir konnten nicht fliehen, wir mußten kämpfen. . . . Lutz, zu klein, um zu begreifen, hatte Vaters Worte aufgenommen wie Urlaute des Landes. (ZGZ, 47–48) [I do not know what the Budapest culture has created here in the Burzenland, thought Rheindt; the city has stood for seven hundred years thanks to us. Until three centuries ago we were independent regents. Streets, villages, churches, laws—all of it is ours. And the village quarter where the Romanians live is theirs, the upper part of Kronstadt’s outskirts, sweat and labor on the fields right next to our sweat. . . . It is to our eternal misfortune that we don’t multiply like the Romanians. They are less embattled! We always have to give and give. Found cities for the Hungarians, fight for the land. We couldn’t flee, we had to fight. . . . Lutz, too small to understand, had absorbed his father’s words like the primordial music of the land.]

21 Peter Motzan, “Dingsymbol kollektiver Identität. Die Schwarze Kirche als ‘Gegenstand’ der siebenbürgisch-deutschen Literatur (1919–1944),” in 50 Jahre Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk – Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter 1951–2001 (Munich: Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 2001), 55–64.



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The political lesson for the young “blond German” protagonist (ZGZ, 19), the son of a wealthy Saxon family whose father is the director of a sugar factory near Brașov and whose mother is an intellectual from the city, could not be clearer or more clearly aligned to the National Socialist discourses of the 1930s and 1940s. He grows up with the narrative of the warrior-colonists and the opposition between the supreme “we” and the “others,” a local variation on similar themes in other fascist literatures, reminding us of Uwe-Karsten Ketelson’s warning that fascist literature does not denote a style but “a literary attitude towards the trends of modern history.”22 The father of the protagonist stands for this attitude more than any other character in the novel. As the director of the sugar factory, which brings prosperity to the surrounding villages, he mediates between Budapest, Brașov, and the peasants, on the one hand, while on the other, he is a symbolic figure who believes in and propagates the idea of Saxon supremacy and fulfills the mission of the colonizers. He serves as example for his son and takes care of his education in the spirit of the German colonizers. The space in which the characters find themselves is not only a topic of conversation or colonialist fantasy in the novel; the protagonist and his friends also physically explore it during a longer excursion: “Schon von weitem erkannten sie, wer die Gemeinde besiedelte; die meisten boten zwei Völkern Heimstatt; über alle Verschiedenheit atmete die Einheit Siebenbürgens, der Frieden des Beieinanderseins.” (They could already tell from a distance who had settled the parish; most of them were home to two peoples; beyond all difference, the unity of Transylvania reigned, the piece of co-existence. ZGZ, 241) This topoi of fraternity, peaceful coexistence, and unity in diversity evokes the discourses of the Transylvanisten (Transylvanists), a movement in which Zillich was also engaged shortly after World War I.23 However, it also fulfils the NS-expectation that German literature from the East will depict the diversity, reflected in the above quote from Kindermann. The summer excursion of the friends is an opportunity to activate myths like that of the Teutonic Order, who were regarded as the first German colonists of the region.24 Thus, while 22 Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen, Völkisch-nationale und nationalsozialistische Literatur in Deutschland 1890–1945 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976), 69. 23 See Zsolt K. Lengyel, Auf der Suche nach dem Kompromiss: Ursprünge und Gestalten des frühen Transsilvanismus 1918–1928 (Munich: Ungarisches Institut, 1993). For a historical analysis of political discourses in Transylvania after World War I see Florian Kührer-Wielach, Siebenbürgen ohne Siebenbürger? Zentralstaatliche Integration und politischer Regionalismus nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014). 24 For a general introduction and overview on the topic see Generalprobe Burzenland: Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens in Siebenbürgen und im Banat, edited by Konrad Gündisch (Cologne: Böhlau, 2013).

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the boys are discovering Țara Bârsei from the mountains above and identifying the fortifications, the very symbols of German presence, they map the space by recalling the myth of the Teutonic Order as the very first “German colonists” in Transylvania. (ZGZ, 238)25 The whole excursion is staged as an exploration of space, which includes getting acquainted with the people who shape the space. However, the friendly religious leaders they encounter from different religions and nationalities present an image of Transylvanian hospitality that applies to all the regions inhabitants in general and contradicts the national patterns propagated elsewhere in the novel. In the same way, the ideology loses its efficacy when Hungarian children attend German schools or vice versa, so that national schemes crumble at such points. Zillich’s propagandistic intentions are undermined in his representations of individuals and interpersonal encounters, which do not match up with the spatial imaginary of the colonizing mission he creates elsewhere in accordance with Nazi visions. At this point, the novel maps its fictional space onto Saxon political discourses during the monarchy: Brașov and Țara Bârsei are regarded as part of a Transylvanian entity belonging to Hungary, perceived as a mixture of peoples. Special attention is further paid to the Banat and thus to the Swabians,26 who in the novel are undergoing a political awakening. Topoi such as the Hungarian puszta, the Banat grain fields, or the Mureș valley make up the “Hungarian” landscape, while the borders between the Hungarian and Saxon areas of Transylvania are portrayed as being more natural and less fortified.27 Țara Bârsei and Transylvania are furthermore imagined—as already seen—as part of a greater German space in Europe. This is the space the protagonist imagines during his first night in Brașov: Lutz begriff den riesigen Raum nicht, den ihn Vater einmal auf der Karte mit dem Finger hatte nachzeichnen lassen; er hatte bloß gefragt, ob da und dort die Deutschen auch Knechte sein müßten, und erleichtert gehört, daß sie es immer seltener sind, je mehr sich der Finger der Heimat näherte. Er hatte die beiden Wald- und Gebirgsarme, dazwischen das Schicksalsland Böhmen liegt und die platte Ebene Ungarn, auf der Karte abgetastet. Wo sich die Hände der Arme ineinander verschlingen, faustet sich Siebenbürgen empor, und wo sie am weitesten vorstoßen, Europa am schärfsten in die Oststeppen hineinpflügen, ragt als Wächter der Pässe im Knick der

25 On the overall topic of “German Eastern Colonization” see, among others, Kristin Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). 26 The German minority in the Southwest of Romania. 27 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 268.



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Karpathen Kronstadt. Und dies verstand Lutz. Die Berge liefen hier zu wie ein Schiff. (ZGZ, 110) [Lutz could not comprehend the enormous space that his father had once traced out on the map with his finger; he had simply asked whether the Germans there also had to be servants and been relieved to hear how it became less and less common, the closer the finger came to the Heimat. He had run his finger along both of the forested mountain ranges, between which the land of destiny, Bohemia, lay, and along the flat plain of Hungary. Where those arms consume each other, Transylvania forces its way to the top, and where they stretch out the furthest, ploughing Europe into the Eastern steppes with the most force, Kronstadt towers in the sweep of the Carpathians as guardian of the passes. And Lutz understood this. The mountains rolled towards this place like a ship.]

In the city, the boy feels like a sailor on a mountain ship that is heading West, which although geographically distant is nearer than the neighboring Romanian landscape: “Seit Jahrhunderten lag Wien und selbst der Rhein näher als die Ebene hinter den Bergen” (For centuries Vienna and even the Rhine had been closer than the plateau beyond the mountains, ZGZ, 151). Brașov is staged here as the last bastion of Western civilization in the tradition of the antemurale christianitatis,28 for which the Black Church also stands. As a heterotopic vessel, the city merges several spaces like Vienna, the Rhine, and Transylvania.29 The ship Brașov further has the function of making another space accessible for exploration. The protagonist and his friends discover during an excursion the space beyond the Carpathians: Romania. The boys who take part in the trip represent Transylvania “soweit es von Belang” (the parts that matter, anyway, ZGZ, 154), that is Germans, Hungarians, and Romanians are present, but Jews and Roma missing. After the boys look back at Țara Bârsei from above, a conversation about inhabitants ensues, which is in fact a confrontation of divergent national political discourses and ends sententiously: “Wir müssen uns verstehen lernen” (We need to learn to understand each other, ZGZ, 157).

28 Paul Srodecki, “Antemurale Christianitatis,” in Religiöse Erinnerungsorte in Ostmitteleuropa: Konstitution und Konkurrenz im nationen- und epochenübergreifenden Zugriff, edited by Joachim Bahlcke, Stefan Rohdewald, and Thomas Wünsch (Berlin: Akademie, 2013), 804–22. 29 Michel Foucault, “Von anderen Räumen,” in Raumtheorie, edited by Jörg Dünne, Stephan Günzel, Herrmann Doetsch, and Roger Lüdeke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006), 320.

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The oppositional description of space is again used as a strategy. The first Romanian village is chaotic, disorganized, and poor, yet it sparkles with vitality and the “Eastern spirit”: Dazwischen gingen Frauen in herrlich gestrickten Trachten; man spürte, der Verfall war auf Hof und Zaun beschränkt, hatte das innere Leben nicht berührt. Oder fügten sich hier Form und Formlosigkeit zueinander, beide Ausdruck eines Lebensgefühls, das dem deutschen schwer verständlich war? Die Geister des Ostens wirkten hier. (ZGZ, 162) [Women in exquisitely embroidered traditional dress wandered through the village; one sensed that the degradation was limited to farm and field, that it had not touched the internal life. Or did form and formlessness fit together here, both expressions of a feel for life that it was difficult for Germans to understand? The spirits of the East were at work here.]

During the journey to the exoticized neighboring Romania, the novel constructs the chaotic external sphere that every semiosphere needs:30 the Transylvanian world is presented as a closed system that differs significantly from what is beyond the border. In the Prahova valley next to Transylvania, the Saxon Schlack acts like a colonist so that the area seems just like home in contrast to Bucharest, which is presented as Russian and oriental. Therefore, in line with Juri Lotman, the border is an integral part of the semiosphere,31 but at the same time divides the East and the West,32 separating two worlds. This separation leads to the Transylvanians’ lack of comprehension of the world “behind the mountains” during the 1907 Romanian peasant uprising. (ZGZ, 77–78) The Saxon and Romanian peasant from Transylvania cannot understand the chaos beyond the border and fears the rebellious events. In the narrative of the novel, the Saxons represent the West, itself associated with order and discipline, and Germans in general function as a similar driving, ordering force in Romania as a whole. Shortly beyond the border in Sinaia, the narrator notes of the Germanborn Romanian king: “Der weiße Hohenzoller dort oben hatte den Staat 30 Juri Lotman, “On the Semiosphere,” Sign Systems Studies 33, no. 1 (2005): 212. For more on the space concept of this paper see Enikő Dácz, “Raum als Stoff und Mittel,” in Literarische Rauminszenierungen in Zentraleuropa, edited by Dácz and Jakabházi 23–33. 31 Lotman, “On the Semiosphere,” 212. 32 For a similar dichotomical approach to borders see Eva Geulen and Stephan Kraft, “Vorwort,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 129 (2010), Special Issue: “Grenzen im Raum – Grenzen in der Literatur,” edited by Eva Geulen and Stephan Kraft: 1–6.



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Rumänien geschaffen” (The white Hollenzollern up there created the state of Romania, ZGZ, 163). With the disappearance of the border, the spatial experience necessarily changes. From this point of view, the First World War and its immediate consequences in Brașov, which the novel also depicts from the perspective of the protagonist, brings with it a new perception of space. When the Romanian administration first takes over Brașov in 1916, chaos dominates. While Brașov waits for the Romanian troops to march in after the First World War, the tower of the town hall shines palely, with only the Romanian flag flying from its tower. The protagonist and his friends— only the Romanian is already on the other side of the mountains—feel obliged to hoist the Hungarian and Saxon flags, too (ZGZ, 559–60). In the following period, when the Romanian state takes control and the old spatial imaginary dissolves, the friends rent a tower in the city fortification and use as a symbolic retreat. Their spatial withdrawal is only a temporary isolation but it allows them to reflect on the dissolved Transylvanian unity staged previously. Beyond the spatial imaginary and in concordance with its political character, the novel confronts divergent national discourses on space. The teacher Meier, who functions as an ideological mouthpiece, asserts in an argument with the Hungarian nationalist Mr. Kárkony: “Unser Lebenssinn liegt darin, daß wir diesem Land dienen” (Our life’s purpose is serving this country, ZGZ, 201). A critical questioning of this sentence, which is part of a political discourse, by any of the figures is not forthcoming. Instead, the novel underlines the belief that only the Germans have the right to lead Transylvania and that Austria’s purpose was “diesen Raum, allen Völkern gerecht, zu übergreifen” (to rule over this land in a way fair to all peoples, ZGZ, 205). Despite the lost war, interpreted as a struggle for Transylvania, the novel concludes in the belief of spatial continuity: “Dies Land blieb, der Acker lag schwarz und wohlvertraut, das Leben der Heimat und der Völker blieb” (This land remained, the field lay black and comfortingly familiar, the life of the Heimat and its peoples remained, ZGZ, 643). In Zillich’s Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten, the spatial staging illustrates the role assigned to the Saxons in the cultural system of the Nazi era. Since the political novel retrospectively projects this role onto an age in which the Habsburg form of nationalism flourished,33 that is, in which cooperation functioned alongside competing political discourses in everyday life, the ideological schemes crumble where the private space of the individual characters comes into focus. Space serves to demarcate what is considered familiar and foreign. The oppositional narrative strategy of the 33 See Ernest Gellner, Nationalismus und Moderne, translated by Meino Büning (Hamburg: Rotbuch, 1995), 146.

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novel in describing a Transylvanian semiosphere goes hand in hand with national categorization and bipolar structures (East versus West, Occident versus Orient), leaving no room for an in-between space in the sense of postcolonial studies to emerge.

Romanian Heidelberg and Touristic Stronghold Pericle Martinescu’s Adolescenții de la Brașov, originally published in the same year as Zillich’s novel, starts chronologically where Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten ends, and it imagines the city in the interwar years from the perspective of a schoolboy from the Regat who is in his last year at Șaguna High School.34 Brașov lies “in the very center of the country like a symbol of national convergences, [and it is] considered a Romanian Heidelberg thanks to its picturesque location and school tradition.”35 The arrival of students from the Regat is part of the “evolving national osmosis process” (AB, 7), which is also shown symbolically in the house of a Saxon widow, called simply “unsere liebe Mutter” (our beloved mother) by the students living there during their high school education. Just like Brașov, the Saxon house is a melting pot where Hungarian, Romanian, and German pupils live together in harmony and compete with each other, for instance in a highly symbolic foot race around the city center. Although the text emphasizes that the pupils differ only in their accent when speaking “the language of the official majority, that is Romanian” (AB, 10), the description of the characters corresponds closely to national clichés, as well as those concerning their respective ethnicities. The Hungarians are portrayed as quiet but always ready for a fight, the Saxons are disciplined, and the Romanians are always in a good mood (AB, 10). The ethnic diversity of Brașov is, however, dominated by the new “Romanian majority,” as the city is exclusively depicted from the perspective of the newcomers, who sometimes behave like conquerors. The protagonist and his friends feel like cavaliers in a medieval town. The romantically transfigured cityscape is defined by places such as the Korso or the “Süßes Loch” (Sweet Hole), a Saxon pub where the boys like to make big plans for their own future and their literary magazine. The atmosphere is “as romantic as it can be,” a setting reminiscent of old Saxon and Bavarian pubs where poets and artists meet (AB, 72), so that the young people with literary ambitions take 34 The best-known Romanian high school in Brașov, named after the famous orthodox bishop and political figure Andrei Șaguna, who advocated for the interests of Romanians in Transylvania during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The financial support of the school even became an interstate political issue as the Hungarian part objected to the aid from Romania. 35 Martinescu, Adolescenții de la Brașov, 8. Subsequent references to this work will appear in parentheses with the abbreviation AB).



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a particular liking to these gatherings. The staged Germanness of the city gives an exotic flair to the adventures of the boys who were socialized in a Romanian milieu. The Hungarian inhabitants of Brașov are mainly represented by girls who are courted and thought of as fun, but the boys only fall in love with Romanian girls. The students of the Șaguna High School also interact with their Saxon colleagues from the Honterus School during tutoring sessions in Romanian. However, the Saxon and Hungarian figures remain on the fringes of the novel. There is no real shared space of the nationalities, and the “intruders” from the Regat are both envied by the locals for their light-heartedness and looked down on for not obeying the rules (AB, 8). The prestige of the Șagunists is emphasized repeatedly, but the city space remains marked by Saxon architecture and traditions, and even German expressions are often adopted, either spoken in German or directly translated into Romanian (e.g., AB, 150−55). The Saxon-Romanian harmony in the novel remains schematic and hardly goes beyond oppositional descriptions, there is no common space in which interactions could go beyond the type necessitated by school and everyday transactions. Even in the case of the pupils living in the house of the Saxon widow, national dividing lines remain active. The novel stages a multiethnic city whose Saxon character is not questioned, and which is very appealing to the Romanian students, but it is not a space of diversity with actors of equal status. In contrast to their parents, who were pupils before the national unification of 1918, for the new generation at Șaguna High School in the interwar period the national debates no longer seem of importance (AB, 99). Brașov is pictured as a romantic place ideal for love stories and the idealistic plans of young men who are fascinated by the medieval city but will eventually leave it. Despite its charm, it remains a transit place for the protagonist, who eventually realizes the insignificance of the city in the universe despite its central role in his becoming an adult (AB, 198). In his interwar novel, Accidentul, Mihail Sebastian also stages Brașov as a transit place, although of another kind. In this case, the surroundings of the city, where “so many roads met” (TA, 240),36 is a central place of the plot: a tourist retreat where the individual can find him or herself. For the two protagonists of the novel, who live in Bucharest, Brașov and Țara Bârsei are partly an “exotic” other world inhabited by strange and distant Saxons, who are portrayed as an isolated group. In this sense the Saxon semiosphere of the city remains a puzzling foreign world to the newcomers. Even in the mountains, ethnic boundaries emerge in the description of the cottages of the Romanian Touring Club and the Saxon 36 Sebastian, The Accident, 240. Subsequent references to this novel will appear in parentheses with the abbreviation TA.

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Transylvanian Carpathian Association (Siebenbürgischer Karpatenverein). The Saxon cottage-keeper initially seems “rough, perhaps because of the accent with which he spoke, in correct Romanian, giving a short stress to the first syllable” (TA, 132). From above, that is to say from the mountain perspective, Brașov itself seems to be a world sunk in fog with insensitive inhabitants: “They all sat on their benches, intent, stoney-still, without a tremor, without brightness, possibly deaf, possibly absent, possibly dead, while the music of the Christmas Oratory flowed past without touching or awakening them” (TA, 193). Despite its purportedly central location in the new Romanian state, the former border town of the AustroHungarian Empire is thus merely staged as a beautiful holiday resort where Saxon culture can be enjoyed more by outsiders than by Saxons. All the while, the Black Church is simply a tourist attraction, which has lost its symbolic role in the new context. Just as in Martinescu’s novel, the locals are marginalized in a city that is dominated by “the human tide that had rolled down from the cabins in the surrounding mountains” (TA, 240). The Hungarians only appear in the form of the newspaper Brassói Lapok (Brașov Papers), which is lying on a table and which carries a headline announcing the Second World War that questions the possibility of a new beginning through the war that is in the offing. There is no colonialist spirit associated with the Saxons in Martinescu’s and Sebastian’s stagings of Brașov. The city and its surroundings are mere settings with an exotic flair, reminiscent of inverted orientalism, where the Romanian visitors remain foreigners in the middle of Greater Romania. The strangeness of this other world in Accidentul is also highlighted by the Wagnerian topoi used to describe the Saxon host in the mountains and the atmosphere reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (1924, The Magic Mountain, 1927).37 The mountain cottage where the protagonists find refuge advances to a heterotopic place in contrast to the closed world of the Saxon city itself.38 The lyrical explorations of the landscape heal the protagonist who has become “ill” in the atmosphere of the capital. This healing process “is compatible with much nationalist thinking of the inter-war years [in Romania], in which the nation’s natural attributes promise an ‘authentic essence’ that acts as an antidote to the ills of a corrupt or decadent civilization.”39 From this perspective, it is relevant that the protagonist is cured by the love of a Romanian woman, while the Saxon host remains on the mountain and cannot escape his illness. 37 The dog of the host is called Faffner and his friend is called Hagen. 38 See Raluca Cernahoschi, “Die Berghütte als Heterotopie. Gesellschaftliche Neuordnung in Mihail Sebastians Der Unfall,” in Literarische Rauminszenierungen in Zentraleuropa, edited by Dácz and Jakabházi, 273–86. 39 Stephen Henighan, “Translator’s Afterwords,” in Sebastien, The Accident, 254.



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Peripheral Perspectives: Brașov as a Space for Self-Realization Brașov in the first half of the twentieth century is staged retrospectively in Ștefănescu’s Aventură la Brașov, published in 1980. This novel also uses the perspective of a fifteen-year-old protagonist from Bucharest who attends the Dr. Ioan Meșotă High School in the Transylvanian city. Ștefănescu introduces the transit motif at the very outset of the story, as the boy arrives at the train station of Brașov.40 The city itself is once again a place of transit in the personal development of an adolescent in a way similar to that in Martinescu’s novel. At first, Brașov appears as a strange Saxon city, as in Sebastian’s description. However, it is also a foreign refuge to which one can flee the poverty of the capital. This social aspect is spatialized: the family of the protagonist belongs to the working class living on the outskirts of the city. The surrounding nature enchants the big-city boy, who feels like an explorer at the North Pole in the wintry landscape and is fascinated by its “cosmic beauty” (ALB, 50). Thus, the perspective is repeatedly that of an outsider who is aware that the Transylvanians look down on the people from the Regat (“regații”). In contrast to Martinescu’s fictional world where despite similar tendencies the nonchalance, good humor, and cheerful nature of those from the Regat stay in the foreground and qualify them as unserious, gossipy, cunning, and “too clever” (“ocoși,” derived from the Hungarian “okos”; ALB, 20), the protagonist quickly feels the animosity and realizes that his Hungarian and German schoolmates are perceived as traitors in their own minority societies because they attend a Romanian school: Here in Brașov the national differences are great, not like in Bucharest. . . . While here in Brașov, which was also called Kronstadt and Brasso, the Saxons and even the Hungarians were on an equal footing with the Romanians and each of the three nationalities (but were the Saxons a nation? Then, why didn’t they call themselves Germans?), whether admitted or not, had a claim to precedence. Very quickly Mitu learned that the Hungarians called the Romanians “büdos olah,” i.e. “stinky Wallachians,” the Romanians called the Hungarians “axes,” “Hungarian axe” . . ., the Saxons simply said Gypsies . . . and the Romanians in return “Saxon crow”. . . . (ALB, 48)

The newcomer also notices the Jewish and Romani inhabitants of the city but realizes that they do not “count” in comparison to the others (ALB, 40 Alexandru Ion Ștefănescu, Aventură la Brașov (Bucharest: Albatros, 1980), 4. Subsequent page references are provided in the body of the text with the abbreviation ALB.

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48). At first, he is surprised by the relevance of the “minority languages” but then learns German. At the same time, he reflects on the balance of power, and his diagnosis of the situation goes far beyond simple categorizations. He reflects on how the “Romanian element” has become dominant since unification, that is, how it has “colonized” the space, which triggered resistance from the others, intensifying mutual antipathy (ALB, 49). At the same time, the constant comparison with Bucharest leads him to the conclusion that being Romanian in the capital is not a quality but a natural state, while being Romanian in Brașov becomes something special, as the we-discourse of the Romanians automatically excludes the other ethnicities: “Here there were members of the majority and the minority, and each of these classifications prescribed a certain behavior for you” (ALB, 233). With all its peculiarities, compared to Bucharest, Brașov has a “mysterious” aura, the phrase “misterios Kronstadt” (ALB, 41) expresses linguistically the amalgam which the protagonist perceives in his new surroundings. The inversed orientalism at play here makes the city intimidating, and the boy feels as if he were representing the Regat and as if he were “in exile” (ALB, 46). Brașov is further staged as a flourishing modern industrial city with numerous new factories that dominate the landscape alongside the old Saxon buildings (ALB, 26, 58). Ștefănescu is the only novelist reflecting the housing shortage of the interwar period and the social misery in the outskirts of Brașov, which should also be seen in the light of the ideological, that is socialist, engagement of the author.41 The novel illustrates how the acceleration of industrialization—as Georg Simmel described it—leads to a certain nervousness, especially in the marginalized social classes.42 Brașov appears in Ștefănescu’s account as an integrative space. Different offers of identification are reflected in the conversations with schoolmates that revolve around political topics: flourishing anti-Semitism, Adolf Hitler’s or Nicolae Iorga’s politics (ALB, 32, 108), the spread of National Socialism among the Saxons, the legionary and leftist movement among the Romanians, or the conflict between Cuzists and Iron Guardists (e.g., ALB, 91). In conversations on conflicting political discourses in a postimperial space (e.g., ALB, 146‒48, 223‒28), the protagonist accuses his colleague and friend from Brașov of xenophobia and chauvinism. The constructed multiethnic space is marked by national hegemonic aspirations, yet despite the emphatically Romanian perspective, no national supremacy is asserted. 41 These topics are described in other genres such as memoires. 42 Moritz Csáky, Das Gedächtnis der Städte: Kulturelle Verflechtungen; Wien und die urbanen Milieus in Zentraleuropa (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2010), 26.



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Ruth Eder’s novel Die Glocken von Kronstadt, which is in its third edition, focuses on the first half of the twentieth century and takes up in a certain sense a watered-down version of the Saxon narratives outlined in Zwischen Grenzen und Zeiten, despite being first published 1991. From the very first page it is explicitly in dialogue with traditional Saxon discourses: Alles war so, wie es immer gewesen war. Nichts deutete in diesem südostlichen Winkel Europas darauf hin, daß es draußen in der Welt brodelte, daß das Habsburger Reich, zu dessen Kronländern Siebenbürgen seit langer Zeit zählte, seinem Untergang entgegenging. Die Zeitenwende des Ersten Weltkriegs stand bevor.43 [Everything was as it always had been. Nothing in this southeastern corner of Europe indicated that the rest of the world was in turmoil, that the Habsburg Empire, to whose crown lands Transylvania had belonged for a long time, was about to meet its doom. That turning point in history, the First World War, was about to begin.]

The most important setting of the plot is Brașov, but figures of the novel also visit or live temporarily in Orăștie, Sibiu, Austria, Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg. The novel develops no ideological concept of space when describing Brașov or Țara Bârsei, but neither does it take a critical approach to traditional narratives. The region’s Habsburg past, the multicultural milieu, and the coexistence of ethnic groups are topoi that Eder deals with, without, however, finding an innovative perspective. Instead, she generalizes in a traditional manner when describing the cityscape and takes up the colonist narrative: Malvine erkannte an diesen Häusern plötzlich das Wesen ihres alten Kolonistenvolkes: gedeckt und solide, biedere Farben, erbsengrün, rostbraun, braunbeige, die Häusermauern nach außen abweisend und schmucklos. (GK, 22) [Malvine suddenly saw in these houses the mark of her venerable pioneer people; sober and solid, simple colors, pea-green, rust-brown, brown-beige, the house walls unadorned, repelling the outside world.]

The perception of Brașov as peripheral space goes hand in hand with a certain provincialism seen also in Martinescu, Sebastian, and Ștefănescu from the opposite angle. The provincialism Eder depicts contrasts with 43 Eder, Die Glocken von Kronstadt, 7‒8. Subsequent page references will be given in parentheses using the abbreviation GK.

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the cosmopolitanism of Vienna and Berlin in a strikingly similar way to that present in Lilla Szépréti’s Család-regény, published five years later. The small Saxon society, in which “everyone knew everyone else or was even distantly related,” seeks to shield itself (GK, 51) and is jeopardized by the new spatial order after the First World War. The Romanian peasants who celebrate Greater Romania and demand the expropriation of a Saxon family are perceived as threatening. However, a Romanian shepherd who marches with the peasants in front of the Saxon upper-class estate “vermochte keinen Hass zu spüren. Er wollte nur, was ihm zustand” (does not sense any hatred. He only wanted what was rightfully his, GK, 79–80). Eder handles the change of power after the war pragmatically: Was tat das schon. Man hatte in dieser abgelegenen kleinen Welt schon Mongolen, Tataren- und Türkenstürme, MagyarenHerrschaft sowie den Habsburger Absolutismus überdauert. Die Husarenoffiziere trugen jetzt rumänische Uniformen, die zwar weniger operettenhaft, dafür aber zweckmäßig und verwegen aussahen. (GK, 63) [What effect did it have. This remote little world had already endured attacks from Mongols, Tartars and Turks, Hungarian rule and Habsburg absolutism. The Hussar officers wore Romanian uniform now and they looked practical and rakish enough, even if not quite so fit for an operetta.]

The imagined geographical space shapes the inhabitants to such an extent that the Kronstädter (inhabitant of Brașov) is declared a type of personality. However, Kronstädter denotes exclusively the Saxon city dweller who avoids big words and is pragmatic (GK, 53). The Kronstädter is likened to the local bread: “rauhe Schale, weiches Herz. Seit Jahrhunderten wird dieses Krustenbrot nach demselben Rezept gebacken . . . und wir Kronstädter auch” (Rough on the outside, soft on the inside. For centuries, this crusty bread has been baked according to the same recipe . . . and so have we Kronstadters, GK, 90). This “we” excludes the others and is strongly reminiscent of the Saxon idiosyncrasy emphasized by Zillich, but also depicted by Sebastian or Ștefănescu. One of the protagonists, a painter who has returned from Austria, struggles to adapt to Brașov’s provincialism, and reacts enviously to Heinrich Zillich’s success in the Third Reich. The fact that he does not consider the ideological price of this success at all is an example of novels striking lack of critical reflection when it comes to history (GK, 157, 232). Eder imagines Brașov as the space of personal destinies of women who act primarily as mothers. Thus, the novel focuses on multicultural everyday life from a pragmatic point of view, in which Romanians, Hungarians,



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Jews, and Saxons depend on each other. The historical events and the “shift” of Brașov from the periphery to the center are dealt with on an individual level, so that national schemes lose their importance to the personal space of the figures. On other occasions, an ironical subtone helps counteract the pathos: “Jetzt waren seine braven Sachsen längst gute rumänische Staatsbürger geworden, genauso wie sie zuvor loyale Untertanen der Habsburger gewesen waren” (His good, honest Saxons had long been good Romanian citizens, just as they had always been loyal Habsburg subjects before that, GK, 160). Lilla Szépréti’s family novel, which in many ways resembles Eder’s Die Glocken von Kronstadt and was also published in the 1990s, is the only Hungarian novel about Brașov in the first half of the twentieth century and focuses on the genealogical research of the first-person narrator. Her search, which begins in Cluj-Napoca/Klausenburg/Kolozsvár, leads to the peripheries of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Brașov is the most important setting, but Bistrița/Bistritz/Beszterce, Levoča/ Leutschau/Lőcse, or Kežmarok/Käsmark/Késmárk are also stations of her journey into the past. The family chronicle begins with the story of the grandfather, a Zipser,44 who, after studying in Budapest, moves to the Transylvanian periphery of the monarchy to help found a Hungarian school in Brașov. Soon after his arrival, his Hungarian-German selfimage clashes with the Saxon identity discourses of the local elite. Brașov is imagined as a Lotmanian contact zone,45 while Budapest remains the central point of reference. From the Hungarian perspective, represented by the director of the newly founded high school, Brașov is to be conquered in a colonialist manner. Brașov’s cityscape consists of asymmetrical cultural spaces, with the center clearly and exclusively Saxon and the population otherwise spatially separated based on ethnic criteria. At times of ideological struggle, the dividing lines even separate the extended mixed family at the heart of the novel: the Saxon (step-)great-grandfather of the first-person narrator, a pharmacist, is questioned by his son-in-law for his friendly attitude towards the inhabitants of the Romanian quarter. At such points, political discourses are referred to, but in contrast to Ștefănescu, they are not further reflected on. After the Romanian takeover of Brașov in 1916, the family of the former school headmaster moves to Cluj-Napoca. This first change of location marks the beginning of a new spatial-political order, while the 44 The Zipser Saxons lived in the Carpathian region of the Austro-­Hungarian Empire, today Slovakia, respectively Northwest Maramureș/Maramuresch/Máramaros in Romania. 45 See also Marie Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 2008).

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change of power after the First World War coincides with the death of the director’s daughter and the move back to Brașov. The city’s new state affiliation is first mirrored by Romanian shop signs and the increased number of Romanian newspapers, which is followed by the move into the wife’s Saxon parental home. The former director loses his colonialist spirit and finds himself in a new minority existence, both in the family and in society. While Brașov moves to the center of the new state, he himself becomes marginalized. Only his son, who works as an engineer in the flourishing Schiel factory, benefits from the rapid industrial development of the city. The members of the widespread family define themselves by the geographical space they have chosen to live in: the aunt’s last will is to be buried in Levoča, and the uncle of the narrator, who calls himself a Hungarian, lives in Budapest. Symbolically, the novel begins and ends with the burial of the last Saxon in the family in Brașov. This rondo-like structure and the coffin that crushes those of the ancestors stand for the final demise of Saxon culture, which shrinks in the public space of the city just like the old coffins. The change of ethnicity is one of the basic themes of the family saga and shapes the space of Brașov. Different types of identity are portrayed,46 whereby fluid identities—as in the case of the first-person narrator—dominate: the awareness of Saxon roots goes hand in hand with the identity shaped by the Hungarian mother tongue. Fluid identities are also created by the fact that the generation of the first-person narrator intensifies hybridization processes by marrying Romanians, Hungarians, and Jews. Thus, Brașov is revealed as a contact zone where “the structures dominating the interior space are fluid and changeable.”47

“Mysterious Kronstadt” (ALB, 41): A Palimpsest for Diverse Narratives of Colonization The literary spatialization of cultural hierarchies in the interwar period and its ideological instrumentalization is best illustrated by Zillich’s novel. His colonialist discourse is linked to binary spatial structures that result in paradigmatic East-West oppositions. In the case of Zillich, the spatial staging 46 Identity is seen, with Richard Jenkins, as a process, during which meaning is negotiated in the field of tension between the old and the new—i.e., conventions and innovations. Richard Jenkins, Social Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 4. 47 Albert Koschorke, “Zur Funktionsweise kultureller Peripherien,” in Explosion und Peripherie: Jurij Lotmans Semiotik der kulturellen Dynamik revisited, edited by Susi K. Frank, Cornelia Ruhe, and Alexander Schmitz (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012), 31.



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of national diversity goes hand in hand with the emphasis on national specifics, which culminates in the assertion of Saxon supremacy. This line of thinking is also present in the works of several other Saxon authors, like Adolf Meschendörfer or Erwin Neustädter, who had a great impact on the imaginaries of Brașov and not only mirrored, but also influenced Saxon supremacy narratives.48 By contrast, in Martinescu and Sebastian’s Romanian novels from the same time, Brașov is a place of refuge with romantic or even exotic flair, in the sense of a reversed orientalism. It is Saxon in its history but in the center of Greater Romania. In Martinescu’s novel, Brașov becomes a homeland for everyone, but Romanian dominance is unequivocal. In the case of Sebastian, the question of nationality resonates only in the background. The political and spatial discourses of the first half of the twentieth century are depicted from a distant perspective by Ștefănescu, who reflects on the Romanians as new colonizers. In Martinescu and Ștefănescu’s work, there are moments of hybridity, at least selectively, although Ștefănescu reflects the Romanian “colonization” of the interwar period. A pluricultural Brașov appears in the later novels of Lilla Szépréti or Ruth Eder, although these texts reproduce an abundance of simplifications and Eder especially adopts traditional literary topoi such as those of Saxon colonization without any critical reflection. The perspective on the failed Hungarian colonization is closely connected with reflection on the Saxon past. In all the selected representative novels, the city functions as a projection of cultural imaginaries and its spatial representation “says less about what is represented . . . than about inner mechanisms of the cultural system within which the respective representation is to be located.”49 Thus, they do not so much mirror Brașov at a given time as they allow a transnational chronological overview on divergent colonizing discourses when taken together. The heterogeneous cultural construct inscribed in the literary memory of the city during the monarchy remains, in the light of the present essay, a constant, even if national or ethnic categories gain and lose weight depending on the perspective.

48 They both lived in Brașov and published novels connected to the city like Büffelbrunnen (Munich: Langen/Müller, 1935) or Der Jüngling im Panzer (Stuttgart: Hohenstaufen, 1938). See for more, Dácz, “Inszenierungen eines ‘kolonisierten Raumes’ – Zwischen nationaler Eigenart und Konvergenzen.” 49 Jürgen Joachimsthaler, “Text und Raum,” KulturPoetik 5 (2005): 244.

Exile as a Literary-Political Mission: Leo Katz’s Antifascist Bukovina Novel Totenjäger (1944) Olha Flachs

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Leo Katz’s (1892–1954)1 name and his novel Totenjäger (1944, Death Hunters)2 are barely known at all in Germanspeaking culture or academic Germanistik. This is unjust, because Katz is one of the most important German-language authors of Jewish descent from Bukovina, a German-speaking literary landscape in Eastern Europe that emerged in the Habsburg period and endured through the process of Romanianization after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian oth

1 The most important source of biographical information on Leo Katz is given by his son Friedrich Katz in his “Nachwort” to Leo Katz, Totenjäger, Texte aus der Bukowina 23 (Aachen: Rimbaud, 2005), 383–84. See Konstantin Kaiser, “Katz, Leo,” in Metzler Lexikon der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, edited by Andreas B. Kilcher, 2nd edition (Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 2012), 269–70. See also Sabrina Becker, “Katz, Leo,” in Killy Literaturlexikon: Autoren und Werke des deutschsprachigen Kulturraums, vol. 6, edited by Wilhelm Kühlmann (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2009), 321–22. Biographical and bibliographical overviews are given by these two sources. On Katz’s politics, see Benedikt Moerl, “Leo Katz—sein Leben, sein Einsatz für seine Überzeugungen und sein Volk,” Ziehharmonika: Literatur—Widerstand—Exil 13, no. 2 (1996): 24–27. See also David Mayer, “Leo Katz (1892–1954): viele Welten in einer Welt,” in Globale Lebensläufe: Menschen als Akteure im weltgeschichtlichen Geschehen, edited by Bern Hausberger (Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2006), 233–57, which focuses on Katz’s biography. 2 See Konstantin Kaiser, “Vorwort,” in Katz, Totenjäger, 5–10 and the nearidentical article by Konstantin Kaiser, “Leo Katz’ Roman Totenjäger,” in Zwischenwelt 11 Konstantin Kaiser: Ohnmacht und Empörung; Schriften 1982–2006, edited by Primus-Heinz Kucher, Karl Müller, and Peter Roessler (Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag, 2008), 137–43. For a well-informed piece that, however, does not pay closer attention to the circumstances under which Katz’s works came about nor to analysis of the texts themselves, see Horst Fassel, “Die Einsamkeit des Leo Katz oder Die Standhaftigkeit eines Wunschdenkens,” in Die Bukowina: Studien zur einer versunkenen Literaturlandschaft, edited by Dietmar Goltschnigg and Anton Schwob (Tübingen: Francke, 1991), 199–215.

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monarchy, yet eventually foundered during the Second World War. Although Katz left Bukovina at the age of twenty-two, he repeatedly made literary returns to his native land3—as in the case of his first novel Totenjäger. As is so often the case with exile authors, this work is hard to understand without an awareness of Katz’s eventful biography and his political convictions, as well as historical developments in Eastern Europe. Above all else, it is important to bear in mind that Totenjäger is not intended to be an autonomous aesthetic work, but is a Zeitroman (novel of the times) that reacts to, comments upon, and offers an interpretation of historical reality. In that regard, this novel is highly characteristic of the German-speaking exile community in Mexico of which Katz was part: here, the antifascist, communist, and pro-Soviet worldview of the German-speaking émigrés comes out to the full.

Leo Katz’s Life and Work Leo Katz came from a Hassidic family from Siret, a small town in Bukovina with a predominantly Jewish population. Until the end of the First World War, Siret belonged to the k. u. k. (i.e., kaiserlich und königlich) Habsburg monarchy and sat on the Romanian border; and from 1919, the town was in Romania. Both Katz’s religious background and growing up in a multiethnic Bukovina milieu loyal to the Habsburg regime took on vital significance in his private and literary life. As a result of his orthodox upbringing, Katz always held on to the daily devotional readings from the Tanakh and devoted himself to the history of Judaism even beyond his studies in Vienna, where he wrote his dissertation on the impact of the Black Death on the situation of the Jews in Germany;4 but this form of socialization also gave a particular color to his literary works, for example, in updating episodes from Jewish history and the Tanakh. Not least, Katz thanked his origins for his mastery of Yiddish as a second mother tongue, alongside German. It is worth mentioning here that Czernowitz, the capital city of Habsburg Bukovina (now Chernivtsi), is regarded as the cradle of Yiddish culture: it is here that a famous language conference took place

3 Kaiser, “Vorwort,” 9. Katz planned a cycle of novels set in Siret that he never completed. Alongside Totenjäger, they include the novel Brennende Dörfer (Burning Villages, written in 1938/39, published in English translation with the title Seedtime in 1947 by the New York publishing house Alfred A. Knopf), the unpublished autobiographical novel Cäsar, and fragmentary narrative texts about David Bach, the richest man in Siret. 4 F. Katz, “Nachwort,” 383–84.

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in 1908, at which the use of Yiddish as the national language of the Jews was both proposed and debated.5 With a lifelong political leaning to the left, Katz wrote for a variety of communist newspapers published in German and Yiddish, first of all for Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) in Vienna and the organs of the Soviet Union, such as the Moscow-based illustrated magazine Ogoniok (Spark).6 During a short stay with his sister in New York (1920/22), Katz submitted articles to the Jewish communist newspaper Morgn Freyheyt (Morning Freedom). In 1930, Katz moved to Berlin with his equally communistminded wife Bronja and his son Friedrich upon invitation from the German Communist Party (KPD) to work as the features editor for their party paper, Die Rote Fahne. Here, he maintained regular contact with German-speaking left-wing intellectuals, including the philosopher Ernst Bloch, the publisher and commentator Wieland Herzfelde, and the journalist and writer Egon Erwin Kisch. Once the National Socialists had seized power, as both a Jew and a communist his life was in danger, so he fled to Paris. In France, he renewed his connections with communist circles, wrote for the Yiddish newspaper Naye Prese (New Press), and actively promoted gunrunning for the Spanish Republic. After being expelled from the country as a result of these activities, Katz made his way to the USA. When his American visa ran out, he was granted asylum in Mexico, where he lived as an exile from 1940 to 1949.7 In the 1930s, Mexico, alongside Chile, was the only country in Latin America that had veered politically not toward the right, but toward the left as it had developed, above all through its sympathy with Spanish republicans, its protest against the Austrian Anschluss (1938), and through

5 Marion Aptroot and Roland Gruschka, Jiddisch: Geschichte und Kultur einer Weltsprache (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2010), 124–28. 6 See Fassel, “Die Einsamkeit des Leo Katz,” 200. 7 F. Katz, “Nachwort,” 400. After the war, Katz dreamt of a new life in Israel, not least because both of his sisters, who had survived the Holocaust in Romania, had settled there. Only a few months later, the move to the Promised Land turned out to be “in jeder Hinsicht enttäuschend” (disappointing in every respect). In 1949 he moved back to Vienna and worked for the communist newspaper Österreichische Volksstimme (Austrian People’s Voice). In this period, he was incredibly productive as an author of literature. By the time of his sudden death in 1954, he had written two children’s books, Tamar (1952) and Die Grenzbuben (The Border Boys, 1951), as well as the historical novels Die Welt des Columbus (The World of Columbus, 1954) and Der Schmied von Galiläa (The Smith of Galilee, 1955). His monographs on the history of religion, Christentum wird Staatsreligion (Christianity becomes State Religion), Kirche, Moschee und Synagoge (Church, Mosque, and Synagogue), and a book for young people about Thomas Münzer were, unfortunately, unable to find a publisher.

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joining the war against the Axis powers (1942).8 A direct consequence of Mexico’s left-wing political stance was its decidedly political approach to granting asylum, giving refuge to all people persecuted for their leftleaning politics (Spanish republicans and their supporters, communists, and socialists).9 All refugees were allowed to freely go about their business in Mexico, both professionally as well as politically.10 Moreover, the Mexican government supported antifascist exile organizations and their media organs.11 In these extremely favorable conditions, as early as the beginning of 1941 Germans and German-speaking communists established a German faction in Mexico, in which, along with the Austrian commentator Bruno Frei, the Czech author Otto Katz (alias André Simone), and the German journalist Rudolf Feistmann, Leo Katz was in the initial inner circle.12 In April 1942, Katz resigned from the leadership of the KPD in Mexico to devote himself to his literary activities.13 Among the many achievements of the Mexican exiles were, above all, founding the antifascist Bewegung Freies Deutschland complete with its newspaper Freies Deutschland/Alemania Libre (Free Germany, 1941–1945),14 the 8 Wolfgang Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademie-­ Verlag, 1974), vol. 1: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des antifaschistischen Exils (1941–1946), 23. “So war Mexiko neben der Sowjetunion der einzige Staat, der die Annexion Österreichs niemals anerkannte und der sich offiziell an die Seite der spanischen Republik stellte. . . . Nach dem Ende des national-revolutionären Krieges des spanischen Volkes im Jahre 1939 wurde Mexiko der Sitz der republikanischen Exilregierung, die von der mexikanischen Seite als einzige legale Regierung Spaniens anerkannt wurde. . . . Zehntausende antifaschistischer Spanier fanden in Mexiko Asyl” (Besides the Soviet Union, Mexico was the only nation state never to recognize the Annexation of Austria and to officially side with the Spanish Republicans. . . . After the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Mexico became the seat for the Republican government in exile, which was the only Spanish government Mexico acknowledged. . . . Tens of thousands of antifascist Spaniards were granted asylum in Mexico). All translations of quotations within this chapter are provided by the editors. 9 On this, see Christine Zehl Romero, Anna Seghers: Eine Biographie 1900– 1947 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2000), 393–94. 10 Romero, Anna Seghers, 394. 11 Romero, Anna Seghers, 394. 12 Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 1, 47. 13 Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 1, 73. 14 Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 1, 73. See also Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 2, which contains the essential readings on this topic. See also Hans-Albert Walter, “Freies Deutschland/Neues Deutschland,” in his Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1950, vol. 4: Exilpresse (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1978), 184–305. Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, 68. This last source points to the close cooperation between the BFD and other antifascist exile organizations, such as Acción Republicana Austriaca de México, Asociación

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German-speaking cultural club, Heinrich Heine-Klub, with the distinguished German author Anna Seghers as its president, and the antifascist publishing wing of Bewegung Freies Deutschland, El Libro Libre (1942). All of these organizations were communist and pro-Soviet; but above all else, they were antifascist and mostly tied together by having the same members. Katz was active in these institutions and organs until they dissolved themselves. He wrote a total of fourteen articles about historical and current political problems in Eastern Europe for Freies Deutschland. He regularly gave talks in the Heinrich Heine-Klub, including one on “Die Bücherverbrennung im alten Alexandrien und im gegenwärtigen Rumänien” (Book Burning in Ancient Alexandria and Present-Day Romania) marking the eleventh anniversary of the book burning in Germany15 and another on the “Der Begriff ‘Auserwähltes Volk’” (The Concept of the Chosen People);16 he also gave an address at the public “Anklage gegen die Massenmörder der Juden” (Charges Against the Mass Murderers of Jews, 1943)17 organized by the Heinrich HeineKlub. He also spoke on “Den Wesen, den Charakter und die Politik des Nazifaschismus” (The Nature, Character, and Politics of Nazi Fascism) Checoslovaco-Mexicana, Unión Democrática Polaco-Mexicana Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Hungria Libre de México, Asociación Yugoslavia Libre, Francia Libre, Alianza International Giuseppe Garibaldi, and others. 15 See Freies Deutschland 3, no. 7 (1944): 31. 16 See Freies Deutschland 2, no. 11 (1943): 30: “Den Begriff ‘Auserwähltes Volk’ und seine Bedeutung in der Geschichte zu klären, ist ein verdienstvolles Tun in unserer Zeit der Rassenüberheblichkeit und Rassenunterdrückung. Der Historiker Dr. Leo Katz verstand es im Heinrich Heine-Klub in México, einen kenntnisreichen Querschnitt durch die Geschichte der Juden, Griechen und Römer zu geben—und dann zu zeigen, wie der deutsche Imperialismus die so zur Eroberungs- und Unterdrückungspolitik gegen andere Völker missbrauchte Selbsterklärung zum ‘auserwählten Volk’ zur Propaganda der ‘Herrenrasse’ gesteigert hat. Die angeregte zahlreiche Hörerschaft überschüttete den Vortragenden mit Fragen und gab ihm Gelegenheit, viel Unbekanntes aus der Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes zur Erhaltung seiner These darzulegen” (Clarifying the term “chosen people” and its meaning throughout history is a useful undertaking in our era of racial hubris and racial oppression. At the Heinrich Heine Club in Mexico, the historian Dr. Leo Katz was able to offer an informative overview of the history of Jews, Greeks, and Romans—and then to show how German imperialism has amplified the self-identification “the chosen people,” often misused in the service of conquest and oppression, to create the propaganda of the “master race.” The large and excitable audience showered the presenter with questions, giving him the opportunity to present many unknown events of Jewish history in defense of his thesis). 17 Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 2, 188. Further speakers were the Mexican Member of Parliament Lic. Alejandro Carillo and the Reichstag member Erich Jungmann.

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at the Mexican Workers’ University, Universidad Obrera (1942)18 as well as on “Die Entstehung des Ghettos” (The Origins of the Ghetto) for the Jewish antifascist organization Menorah (1944).19 Along with Egon Erwin Kisch, Anna Seghers, Ludwig Renn, Otto Katz/André Simone, and Bodo Uhse, Katz was a member of the literary advisory committee of the exile publishing house El Libro Libre.20 The Mexican organization Bewegung Freies Deutschland legitimized itself through its claim to represent an “other,” non-fascist Germany in the emigrant community by advocating the utterly controversial proposition, “Hitler ist nicht Deutschland” (Hitler Isn’t Germany).21 Faced with news about the extermination of the Jews in Europe, Katz came increasingly into conflict with the leader of the German KPD in Mexico, Paul Merker, because he could not share the view that the majority of Germans were against Hitler.22 As a consequence of this disagreement, Katz left the Mexican KPD in 1943 and, with Bruno Frei, founded the Austrian communist group with its newspaper Austria Libre.23 Among his further activities he could count being editor-in-chief of the Yiddish-language newspaper Freie Welt (Free World).24 Despite quarreling with Merker, Katz remained connected to Mexican emigrant society. Just as before, he wrote for Freies Deutschland, 18 Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 1, 67. 19 See Freies Deutschland 3, no. 3 (1944): 28: “Dr. Katz gab einen äußerst interessanten Querschnitt durch die jüdische Geschichte, von der Tempelzerstörung und jüdischen Siedlungen am Mittelmeer bis zur Emanzipation nach der französischen Revolution. Die zahlreichen Zuhörer zollten dem Vortragenden sehr herzlichen Beifall” (Dr. Katz gave a fascinating overview of Jewish history, from the destruction of the temple and Jewish settlement in the Mediterranean to emancipation in the wake of the French Revolution. The large audience gave the presenter their enthusiastic applause). 20 See Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 1, 73. 21 For a thorough treatment, see Walter, “Freies Deutschland/Neues Deutschland,” 200–220. Walter ventures the very plausible opinion that the real Germany has only little in common with the Germany put forward by Bewegung Freies Deutschland (Walter, “Freies Deutschland/Neues Deutschland,” 219). Walter’s position is supported by observations (e.g., “Hitler wahrhaftig der Sprecher so ziemlich aller Deutschen ist” [Hitler truly is the spokesman for pretty much all Germans]) from Victor Klemperer, the German Jewish scholar who remained in Germany and was persecuted by the Nazis. Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten: Tagebücher 1933–1941, edited by Walter Nowojski in collaboration with Hadwig Klemperer (Berlin: Aufbau, 2015), 312. 22 F. Katz, “Nachwort,” 396. According to information presented by Friedrich Katz, Leo Katz allegedly accused Paul Merker in this context of German nationalism. 23 F. Katz, “Nachwort,” 396. 24 F. Katz, “Nachwort,” 397.

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where an excerpt from his first novel Totenjäger was printed prior to its publication in January 1944 with the publisher El Libro Libre, and which ran short advertisements marking the publication as well as translations from the novel. This is how we learn that Katz initially gave his first work the title Auferstehung (Resurrection)25 and that Totenjäger was translated into Spanish as Cazadores de muerte (Hunters of Death) and published in 1945 by the Argentinian publishing house Editorial Futuro in Buenos Aires.26 Another literary notification alludes to the novel being printed in Yiddish in the New York-based newspaper Morgn Freyheyt as well as plans for a Yiddish book edition of Totenjäger with the publisher El Libro Libre.27 Following its publication Totenjäger caused a sensation on the émigré scene. Some well-meaning reviews in Alemania Libre and Austria Libre by fellow writers such as Ludwig Renn and Else Volk still survive28 that emphasize the realism of Totenjäger and declare Katz to be “ein . . .

25 Freies Deutschland 2, no. 6 (1943): 15. “Von rumaenischer Siguranza, Gestapo, Bojaren, Juden und Partisanen handelt Leo Katz᾿s [sic!] neues Buch ‘Auferstehung’, das in der Bukowina spielt—in einem Gebiet, das seit einem Vierteljahrhundert fuenfmal den Besitzer gewechselt hat” (The Romanian Siguranța, the Gestapo, boyars, Jews, and partisans are the subject of Leo Katz’s new book “Resurrection,” which is set in the Bukovina—a region that has changed hands five times in the last quarter of a century). The excerpt printed prior to publication is titled Johannes der Täufer, a reference to the figure of Jossel Schames, the old janitor in the synagogue who is believed to be holy. 26 Freies Deutschland 4, no. 12 (1945): 62. 27 Freies Deutschland 3, no. 8 (1944): 29. This publication never came about. 28 Ludwig Renn, “Nazis, Juden und Partisanen am Fluss Sereth,” Freies Deutschland 3, no, 2 (1944): 29. “Es sind wirkliche Menschen, die das Buch bevölkern. Während wir lesen und das fremde Geschehen unser eigenes wird, entsteht ein Bild unserer Zeit, nicht nur der scheußlichen, auch der mutigen, neuen. Mit diesem Buch erhebt sich Leo Katz, der uns bisher als Romanschriftsteller unbekannt war, zu einem großen Erzähler” (These are really people like out of a storybook. As we read and the far-away events become our own, an image of our time unfolds that is not just about its horror but also its bravery and novelty. This book elevates Leo Katz, who was hitherto unknown to us as a novellist, to the status of a great storyteller). Else Volk in Austria Libre 2, no. 4 (1944): 4, writes: “. . . man liest es einmal und öfters und ist ergriffen, erschüttert, begeistert und muss oft über den feinen Humor lächeln, den der gütige, verstehende Autor sich bewahrt hat. Wir haben wirkliche Menschen vor uns. Sie sind selbstverständlich im Guten wie im Bösen” (One reads it once and then more times and is gripped, shaken, inspired, and often forced to smile at the refined humor that the kindhearted, understanding author has managed to keep hold of. The characters before us are people. They are natural in their goodness as well as in their evil).

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große[r] Erzähler” (a great storyteller). Ernst Bloch similarly praised the novel, writing: Vor kurzem kam Dein Buch an. Glückwunsch und Respekt. Ich las es in einem Zug, dem einen und einheitlichen Zug gemäß, der durch die Menschen und handlungsreiche Komposition hindurchgeht und sie zusammenhält. . . . Höchst spannend die Handlung. Höchst spannend der Schauplatz. Stark der Stoff des Anfangs und der Mitte. . . . Der ansteigende Judenmord. Stark begeisternd und folgenreich der Stoff des Endes.29 [Your book arrived not long ago. Congratulations and respect. I read it in one go, as befits the single, uninterrupted flow, which weaves through the people and eventful storyline, keeping it all together. . . . The action, incredibly exciting, the setting, incredibly exciting. The subject matter of the beginning and middle was very strong—the intensifying murder of the Jews. The subject matter of the end was inspiring and full of implications.]

Totenjäger is a prime example of Mexican, left-leaning antifascist literature. This text reflects the political as well as the programmatic literary position of the communist émigrés in Mexico. For a start, Katz has conceived of Totenjäger as an explosive, political Zeitroman—the first edition bore the extended title Aus der Chronik von Sereth (From the Chronicle of Siret)30—with which he was able to respond to current developments in the war in his native country. In poetological terms, Katz adheres to the programmatic demands that communist intellectuals made of authors, not to be silent (Anna Seghers, Volk und Schriftsteller31) and to take an active stance on the war (Bodo Uhse, Der Schriftsteller und der Krieg32). The writer as “das empörte Gewissen des Volkes” (the outraged 29 Katz, Totenjäger, 397. Ernst Bloch to Leo Katz, April 21, 1944. Subsequent references to Totenjäger will be appear in the main body of text with page numbers given in parentheses. 30 Freies Deutschland 3, no. 6 (1944): 31. 31 Freies Deutschland 1, no. 12 (1942): 16–18. 32 Freies Deutschland 2, no. 3 (1943): 27. “Denn es ist ja keineswegs so, dass Buch und Krieg nichts miteinander zu tun haben. . . . Dieser Krieg ist eine Prüfung der Seele und des Leibes, eine Prüfung des ganzen Menschen, eine Prüfung der gesamten Menschheit. Selbstverständlich, dass kein Schriftsteller sich diesem gewaltigen gesellschaftlichen Vorgang voll tiefster Bedeutung für Gegenwart und Zukunft entziehen kann. Er kann einfach nicht abseitsstehen, weil es kein Abseits mehr gibt. Er muss Stellung nehmen. . . . In jeder Zeile, in jedem Wort, das wir erfüllt von unserer großen Verantwortung schreiben, muss mitschwingen, worum es in diesem Kriege geht” (Because it is by no means the case that the book and the war have nothing to do with one another. . . . This war is a test of body and

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conscience of the people) and spiritual guide at the same time, who helps “das Wesen des Krieges zu verstehen” (to understand the nature of war) and “den Feind zu erkennen” (to recognize the enemy) were the topoi in use among the authors of the Bewegung Freies Deutschland.33 The majority of publications both in Freies Deutschland and by the publisher El Libro Libre can be described as politicizing, engaged literature imbued not only with the pathos of responsibility, mission, and enlightenment but also with the moral arsenal of the spirit of resistance. Katz sought to fulfil this moral mission in Totenjäger—not least through lending his Zeitroman a utopian turn, giving every last drop of antifascist courage to the resistance.

The Plot of Totenjäger The novel is set in the town of Siret between 1932 and 1942. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Siret became a border town; only the eponymous river separated fascist Romania from North Bukovina, which had been occupied by the Russians since 1940. Remaining close to the actual, historical events, the omniscient narrator depicts Romania’s development into a fascist, ultra-nationalist, anti­semitic collaborator of Nazi Germany. The Jewish population in particular suffers at the hands of these political changes: the Jews are increasingly soul, a test of the entire person, and a test of the entire human race. It is only natural that no writer can turn away from this overwhelming social process that is full of the deepest meaning for the present and the future. He simply cannot stand on the sidelines, because there are no sidelines anymore. He has to take a position. . . . Every line, every word we write, filled with our great responsibility, has to carry with it the stakes of this war). 33 Ilja Ehrenburg, “Pflichten des Schriftstellers,” Freies Deutschland 3, no. 6 (1944): 27. “Wir Schriftsteller bilden—nach einem schon halbvergessenen Worte—das Gewissen des Volkes. Wirkliche Kunst ist eine große Tat, die Erfüllung einer Mission, Dienst an der Wahrheit, der Schönheit, am Volk. Dem Schriftsteller wurde viel gegeben, aber es wird auch viel von ihm verlangt. Er ist nicht nur für jedes seiner Worte verantwortlich, auch für sein Schweigen wird er zur Verantwortung gezogen. . . . Wir kämpfen für die Wahrheit, für die Gerechtigkeit, für den Sieg der Anständigkeit. Davon spricht das Gewissen des Volkes, davon sprechen die Schriftsteller. Das ist ihre Pflicht, darin besteht ihr Verdienst” (We writers represent—an already half-forgotten term—the conscience of the people. True art is a great deed, the fulfillment of a mission, a service to the truth, to beauty, to the people. The writer is given a great deal, but a great deal is asked of him too. He is not only held responsible for each of his words, he is also asked to answer for his silence. . . . We are fighting for the truth, for justice, for the victory of decency. That is what the conscience of the people speaks of, this is what writers speak about. That is their duty, therein lies their service). Ehrenburg was a Soviet employee of Freies Deutschland.

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deprived of their rights and their property34—here, Katz places political and economic Romanianization on the same level as National Socialist Arianization—until they are eventually murdered on the eve of the Soviet Union’s offensive. The only survivors are those who dare to flee to the Russian side. There they join with the partisan movement. The only Jew left is the old synagogue janitor Jossel Schames, whom the Romanian German myrmidons allow to live for economic reasons: he is reputed to be a mystic and a cabalist and, according to local rumors, allegedly knows how to make gold. The Red Army has to clear North Bukovina, but in the swamps of Poieni a strong antifascist and proSoviet underground movement takes shape from all people in the region who have been “direkt vom Krieg und den Brutalitäten der Nazis und der rumänischen Behörden betroffen” (directly affected by the war and the brutalities of the Nazis and the Romanian authorities, 251), and is predominantly composed of Ukrainian peasants and the surviving Jews. The leader of the partisans is a Jewish left-wing intellectual called Chaim Lander, who, because of his illegal revolutionary activities in Chisinau, is being hunted down by Romanian and German Gestapo forces. Chaim’s mission consists of establishing “ein wichtiges Zentrum” (an important center) of the resistance movement in Siret because the town offers “die beste Verbindungsmöglichkeit in das gesamte Moldau-Gebiet” (the best infrastructure of the whole Moldova region, 156). What follows is a series of acts of sabotage, in which the bridge over the Siret River and the local distillery are blown up. The partisans deal their heaviest blow, however, at Siret’s brewery, which brews beer for the front: the beer is found to contain a mixture of axle grease, castor oil, and dead mice and rats that has caused nausea and dysentery among the German Romanian troops. Discontentment does not just grow among the peasants. The more presence the German military forces and the German independent authorities gain in Romania, the more problematic relations between both sides become. The Romanians are openly insulted as “Zigeuner” (the equivalent of the pejorative term “gypsies”) and “Ochsenköpfe” (ox-heads, i.e., idiots, 53)—a national insult that plays on the ox’s head emblem of

34 Mariana Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina: Die Durchsetzung des nationalsozialistischen Anspruchs Grossrumäniens 1918–1944 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001) is essential reading on this topic. Page 341 lists the antisemitic laws that came into force on August 8, 1940: the right of blood, according to which anyone with one Jewish grandparent is defined as a Jew, the prohibition of marriage between Jews and ethnic Romanians, and the removal of Jews from military service. The antisemitic excesses and limitations (statelessness and unemployment) became particularly intense after 1937 under the then minister president Oktavian Goga (1881–1938), until Jews were openly and systematically persecuted by Antonescu from 1940 onwards.

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Romania—and are treated as representatives of a “minderwertigen Rasse” (inferior race, 185). It is the cession of northern Transylvania to Germany’s ally Hungary (1940) while under German rule in particular that breeds discontent among the Romanians. Siret becomes the meeting point of Transylvanian refugees, “eines verbitterten antiungarischen und damit auch antideutschen Elements” (of an embittered anti-Hungarian and therefore also anti-German element, 185). Some of them join the Romanian ultranationalist, but officially proscribed, Iron Guard, which strives to solve the Transylvanian question in Romania’s favor: “Wenn es Adolf Hitler ernst um das Bündnis mit uns zu tun ist, dann muss Eiserne Garde sofort wieder als legal erklärt werden, dann müssen ihre verhafteten Mitglieder in Freiheit gesetzt werden, dann sollen die Magyaren aus Transsilvanien heraus” (If Adolf Hitler is serious about his alliance with us then the Iron Guard must immediately be declared legal, their imprisoned members freed and the Magyars should be expelled from Transylvania, 259). The leader of the Bukovina branch of the Iron Guard in Katz’s novel is a certain Major Morarescu, infamous for his antisemitic and anti-communist terrorist attacks. Morarescu decides to attack the partisans in the swamps with a unit of fifty men. By sheer coincidence none other than the disguised partisan leader Chaim Lander offers his services as a guide through this barely navigable region, and leads the entire unit to its death in the swamps. The partisans exploit this series of events to their advantage in order to stoke conflict between the Germans and the Romanians and to deflect attention away from themselves: they spread word that Morarescu has eradicated the partisans in the swamps down to every last man and that he has declared a feud with the Germans, looking to avenge himself and the Romanians for the loss of Transylvania and for German supremacy in their country. The partisans found a Romanian patriotic association, “Decebalus” (the last Dacian king, symbol of the Romanian people’s rebellion against subjugation by a foreign power), in Morarescu’s name and call on the people to resist: “Geht in die Wälder und Schluchten, schließt euch dort den Patrioten an und kämpft gegen den deutschen Unterdrücker, gegen Antonescu und seine Mithelfer” (Go into the woods and ravines, join forces with the patriots there and fight against the German oppressor, against Antonescu and his accomplices, 321). Following a raft of acts of sabotage, SS forces start out on a wild goose chase for the already deceased Morarescu and his men—hence the title of the novel, Totenjäger. The partisans contrive an ingenious bluff by organizing peace talks between the Germans and Morarescu. But this is a trap, and at the meeting the entire leadership of the SS and the Gestapo in Bukovina are killed, along with a large military unit. With the words, “Einem Toten habt ihr nachgejagt und auf Lebende seid ihr gestoßen!

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Auf Lebende, die nie untergehen!” (You went looking for a dead man and found a living one! To the living, who will never be defeated!”), the partisans leave “die brennende und rauchende Stadt” Siret (the burning and smoking city of Siret, 378). End of the novel.

Antifascist Resistance The idea of antifascist resistance gained central importance in the Mexican organization, Bewegung Freies Deutschland. The newspaper Freies Deutschland contains numerous short reports about the successful partisan movements in the eastern European war zones. Notably, however, all of these dispatches concern themselves with the achievements of the Jewish heroes in the struggle against Hitler’s army as well as a considerable recognition of the military capabilities and great bravery of the Soviet regime: “Mehr als 5000 Juden sind von der Sowjetregierung für ihre hervorragende Leistungen ausgezeichnet” (More than 5,000 Jews are recognized by the Soviet government for their outstanding achievements).35 Or: “Fünfzig jüdische kommandierende Generäle zählt die Rote Armee . . .. Hunderttausende Juden kämpfen außerdem in den Reihen der Guerrillas” (The Red Army counts among its number fifty Jewish commanding generals . . .. Hundreds of thousands more Jews are fighting in the ranks of the guerillas besides).36 Furthermore, in 1944 alone three novels appeared with the publisher El Libro Libre, all with the theme of resistance:37 alongside Katz’s Totenjäger, we find Revolte der Heiligen (The Saints’ Revolt) by Ernst Sommer, which is dedicated to the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto, and Vor einem neuen Tag (Before a New Day) by F. C. Weiskopf, which depicts partisan fighting in the agricultural regions of Slovakia. While working on Totenjäger, Katz’s attention was already largely focused on the antifascist underground movements in Eastern Europe, such as the Yugoslavian guerrilla fighters in the Balkans under the leadership of Draja Michailowitsch38 and the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, which Katz regarded as being enormously significant, not just in the history of the Jewish people:

35 Freies Deutschland 2, no. 7 (1943): 39. 36 Freies Deutschland 3, no. 4 (1944): 35. 37 Manès Sperber, Die Verlorene Bucht (Munich: Europa Verlag, 1953). In this context, Verlorene Bucht, a novel dealing with the antifascist underground movement in Yugoslavia and Eastern Galicia, deserves to be mentioned. 38 Leo Katz, “Michailowitsch und seine Kämpfer,” Freies Deutschland 1, no. 10 (1942): 11.

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Das Warschauer Ghetto ist nicht mehr. Die Taten seiner Söhne reihen sich ruhmreich an die Verteidigung von Jerusalem im Jahre 70, von Bether unter Bar-Kochbar im Jahre 132, von Neapel, Seite an Seite mit den Ostgoten gegen den Byzantiner Belizarius. Die ruhmreichen Taten der Wahrschauer Judenheit sind ein Flammenzeichen für die unterdrückten Völker Europas, ein Weckruf an die Millionen Menschen, die vor Schrecken apathisch geworden sind. Der Widerstand des Wahrschauer Ghettos wird ein unvergängliches Ruhmesblatt bleiben im Kampfe für Freiheit, für das, was dem Leben Sinn und Wert verleiht.39 [The Warsaw Ghetto is no more. The deeds of its sons stand proudly alongside the defense of Jerusalem in the year 70, of Betar under Bar Kokhba in the year 132, of Naples, side by side with the Ostrogoths against the Byzantine Belisarius. The glorious deeds of the Warsaw Jews are a beacon for the oppressed peoples of Europe, a call to arms for the millions of people who have become apathetic in the face of terror. The resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto will remain an indelible, glorious chapter in the struggle for freedom, for that which gives life meaning and value.]

Right at the start of Totenjäger, we hear about the “zunehmenden Warenmangel” (growing shortages), the “Verelendung der gesamten Bevölkerung” (impoverishment of the entire population), the “verzweifelten Lage der Juden” (desperate situation of the Jews), and the “Unzufriedenheit der Bauern” (discontent among the farmers) in Siret and the surrounding region (21). Ukrainian, Romanian, and Jewish agents of the antifascist underground see the organization of a local resistance as of the utmost importance: “Hier bei uns gleicht alles einem Pulverfass. Wenn wir die Lösung zum offenen Widerstand ausgeben, steht bald alles in Flammen. Geben wir sie aber nicht aus, dann fürchte ich, dass die Ereignisse über uns hinweggehen” (Here where we are everything is like a powder keg. The moment we give the signal for open resistance, everything will go up in flames. If, however, we don’t give it, then I fear that events will overtake us, 21). Katz seeks to show that alongside a fascist Romania an “other” Romania still exists, just as an “other,” indeed a “free” Germany exists quite apart from Hitler’s Germany. In the novel, the Romanian ultra-nationalists of the Iron Guard have been stoking up hatred against the Jews, but the inhabitants of Siret remark, “dass es heute nur einen Feind gibt, den sie nicht einmal zu Gesicht bekommen, den Deutschen oder, wie sie ihn nennen, den Preußen” (that there is only one enemy today that they have never even seen, the German, or, as they 39 Leo Katz, “Der Aufstand des Ghettos,” Freies Deutschland 2, no. 8 (1943): 15.

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call him, the Prussian, 21). When the German SS and Gestapo arrive in the town, resistance proves to be inevitable. Siret’s Jews also ask themselves: “Aber sollen wir elend und kampflos zugrunde gehen, ohne den Versuch zu machen, alle oder ein Teil von uns zu retten? Das wäre gegen unsere Tradition” (But shall we perish miserably and without fighting, without making an attempt to rescue all or some part of us? That would be against our tradition, 75). As he had already done in his article on the subject, here Katz draws a parallel with the famous Jewish uprising against the Romans under Bar Kokhba as a prototype for the resilient Jew; and he emphasizes its symbolic significance for the continued existence of the Jewish people: Wir sind besiegt worden, und doch war der Freiheitskampf nicht vergebens geführt. Eingedenk dieser heldenhaften Kämpfer haben die Juden zwei Jahrtausende lang den Mut und die Kraft gefunden, allen Verfolgungen zu trotzen, die Jahrtausende zu überleben. Wir wären unserer Vergangenheit nicht würdig, wenn wir heute nicht versuchen würden, das Letzte für unsere Rettung zu unternehmen. Nein, wir sind kein Schlachtvieh, das tatenlos des Kommenden harrt. (76–77)40

40 See Hannah Arendt, Wir Juden: Schriften 1932 bis 1966, edited by Marie Louise Knott and Ursula Ludz (Munich: Piper, 2019), 171, 173. The concept of a Jewish resistance later reaches its culmination in the philosophical work of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), who called on the Jews to actively defend themselves and even create a national army: “Zu den Menschenrechten der Juden gehört unabdingbar das Recht, als Jude zu leben und, wenn es sein muss, zu sterben. Ein Mensch kann sich nur als das wehren, als was er angegriffen wird. Ein Jude kann seine Menschenwürde nur bewahren, wenn er als Jude Mensch sein kann. . . . Ein Volk, dem man nicht erlaubt, sich seiner Feinde zu wehren, ist kein Volk, sondern ein lebendiger Leichnam. . . . Wir wollen keine Versprechungen, dass auch unsere Leiden ‘gerächt’ werden würden, sondern wir wollen kämpfen; wir wollen keine Barmherzigkeit, sondern Gerechtigkeit. . . . Freiheit aber ist keine Prämie für ausgestandene Leiden, und Gerechtigkeit empfängt man nicht wie Brosamen von Tische der Reichen” (One of the inalienable human rights of Jews is the right to live and, if need be, die as a Jew. A human being can defend himself only as the person he is attacked as. A Jew can preserve his human dignity only if he can become human as a Jew. . . . A people whom others will not allow to defend itself against its enemies is not a people but a living corpse. . . . We do not want promises that our sufferings will be “avenged,” we want to fight; we do not want mercy, but justice. . . . Freedom is not a reward for sufferings endured and one does not accept justice as if it were crumbs from the table of the rich). Translation from Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 261–63.

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[We have been beaten and still the struggle for freedom was not fought for nothing. It is in memory of these heroic fighters that the Jews have found the courage and the strength to endure for two millennia in the face of all persecution and to survive for those millennia. We would not be worthy of our past if we did not try do the utmost for our survival. No, we are not cattle that passively await what is coming.]

An important aspect of Totenjäger’s exegesis is the integration of Jewish resistance into a universal antifascist movement that unifies all nations. The Jews of Siret defend themselves as Jews and, as human beings, simultaneously join the supranational partisan war in which the representatives of many peoples pursue one common, humanist purpose: the suppression of fascism.

The Influence of Soviet Discourses The idea of a successful antifascist resistance and the decidedly pro-Soviet leaning of the novel are explained by Katz’s communist convictions and his period in exile in Moscow. Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union gave the communist émigrés in Mexico decisive momentum for a wide-ranging political and media campaign. As early as June 22, 1941, Leo Katz turned to the Politbüro of the Mexican Communist Party with the question “inwieweit die deutsche Parteigruppe aktiv an der Sowjetpropaganda teilnehmen könnte” (to what extent could the German party group actively participate in Soviet propaganda), and offering to bring together a collective, “das Artikel und Informationen gegen Nazismus und für die Sowjetunion schreiben und in der mexikanischen Presse veröffentlichen könnte” (that could write articles and informational pieces against Nazism and in favor of the Soviet Union, and publish them in the Mexican press).41 The German element in the party was successful in winning over the German Jewish émigrés for the Soviet propaganda effort by making them understand that “an der sowjetisch-deutschen Front nicht nur das Schicksal der Sowjetunion, sondern ihr eigenes Schicksal entschieden wird” (not only the fate of the Soviet Union but also their own fate was being decided on the GermanSoviet front, 49).42 The glorification of the Soviet Union43 and the cult of 41 Kießling, Alemania libre in Mexiko, vol. 1, 47. 42 A committee was formed from the amongst the German Jewish émigrés that sent money, clothing, shoes, and cigarettes to the Soviet Union in support of the Red Army. 43 On both the reality and the romanticizations of the Soviet Union, see Hans-Albert Walter, Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1950, vol. 1: Die Vorgeschichte des Exils und seine erste Phase (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2017), especially 77–133.

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Stalin were amongst the most important issues for the Bewegung Freies Deutschland in Mexico and its press arm, Freies Deutschland. In this war, the Red Army was regarded as the defenders of human and cultural values. And each victory on the part of the Red Army was joined by celebration of “die Gestalt des großen Meisters der Sowjetunion, Josef Stalin”44 (the figure of the great master of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin) in Leo Katz’s words. Stalin’s speeches and daily orders were quoted and discussed far more than might be otherwise expected in the commentaries, leaders, and short notes in Freies Deutschland.45 In this context, Katz sought to highlight the role of Jews in the Soviet Union in both his journalistic articles and in his novel Totenjäger. He tried to prove that the “endgueltig[e]” (final, decisive) elimination of antisemitism resulting from the Russian Revolution in 1917 was “eine allgemein anerkannte Tatsache” (a generally acknowledged fact) and “ein leuchtendes Beispiel dafuer, wie ein Jahrtausende altes Problem durch die Oktoberrevolution aus der Welt geschaffen wurde” (a shining example of how a thousand-year-old problem had been removed from the world by the October Revolution).46 It is also interesting that Katz recognized antisemitism’s roots in religion, but, above all, not its roots in race theory and regarded this phenomenon as “ein soziales Ablenkungsmittel, dessen sich stets herrschende Schicht bedient hat, wenn ihre Herrschaft in Gefahr geriet” (a means of distracting society, which serves the ruling class whenever their rule is endangered).47 According to Katz, National Socialist antisemitism would “den Boden reif machen fuer die Unterwerfung unter den deutschen Imperialismus” (fertilize the soil for the overthrow of German imperialism).48 In this regard, the struggle against fascism became understood at the same time as a struggle against antisemitism: Es ist klar, mit dem Verschwinden des Nazismus, mit dem Verschwinden all der Ursachen, die zum Nazismus gefuehrt haben, wird der Antisemitismus in Deutschland und im uebrigen Europa ebenso verschwinden, wie mit dem Untergang des Zarenreiches

44 Leo Katz, “Der Mythos vom Stiefel und das Wunder der Wirchlichkeit,” Freies Deutschland 2, no. 1 (1942): 24. 45 Walter, Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1950, vol. 1, 223. 46 Leo Katz, “Die Juden in der Sowjetunion,” Freies Deutschland 2, no. 12 (1943): 17–18. 47 Leo Katz, “Antisemitismus als Barometer,” Freies Deutschland 2, no. 3 (1942): 13–14. “Die Juden mussten geopfert werden, damit entwurzelte Kleinbürger und Arbeitslose nicht erkennen, dass Krupp und Thyssen die wirklich Schuldigen an ihrer Not und an ihrem Elend sind.” 48 Katz, “Antisemitismus als Barometer,” 14.

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in Russland Pogrome und Antisemitismus ihr endgueltiges Ende gefunden haben.49 [It is clear that the disappearance of Nazism and the disappearance of all the root issues that have led to Nazism will likewise mean the disappearance of antisemitism in Germany and the rest of Europe, just like the collapse of the Tsarist Empire spelled the final end of pogroms and antisemitism.]

In Totenjäger the Jews on their way to Russian-occupied North Bukovina are full of hope as they hit the road: “Dort, ich kann euch die Versicherung geben, wird man uns aufnehmen, uns Arbeits- und Lebensmöglichkeit geben. Denn dort sind die Juden ebenso wie Nichtjuden—Menschen!” (There, I can assure you all, we will be welcomed and given the opportunity to live and work. Because there Jews and non-Jews alike are human beings!, 76). These are the words of the non-religious, pro-Soviet Jewish blacksmith Chaskel Wagner, who is the first to join the partisans. Even if we make a narratological distinction between the author and the narrator, in this instance we see a particular alignment of Chaskel Wagner’s worldview with that of Katz himself. Even the native peasants flee “der deutschen und rumänischen Plage” (the German and Romanian plague, 225). Under the Soviet regime, “schien es den Bauern unbegreiflich, dass sie als Menschen überhaupt zählten” and “zu entscheiden hatten” (it seemed incomprehensible to the farmers that they counted as people at all and had a say, 251). In addition, quite in the style of socialist realism, Katz emphasizes the economic and educational advantages: Unter der Sowjetherrschaft waren im Dorfe eine ganze Reihe von Einrichtungen entstanden, von denen die Bauern bis dahin kaum etwas gehört hatten. Ein fahrendes Kino war in Dorf erschienen. Es waren Kurse für Lesen und Schreiben für Erwachsene eingerichtet worden. In der Volksschule hatte man eine Bibliothek eingerichtet. Auch eine Beratungsstelle für landwirtschaftliche Fragen war im Dorfe geschaffen worden. Die Bauern hatten sich zu einer Kooperative zusammengeschlossen und die Kooperative war gerade daran gewesen, einen Traktor und mehrere landwirtschaftliche Maschinen anzuschaffen, als der Krieg kam. (202) [Under the Soviet regime a whole series of initiatives had sprung up in the village, things which the farmers had scarcely heard of until then. Courses in reading and writing had been set up for adults. They had set up a library at the community school. Even an advice 49 Katz, “Antisemitismus als Barometer,” 14.

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center for agricultural matters had been created in the village. The farmers had banded together to form a cooperative and the cooperative had been in the process of obtaining a tractor and several pieces of farm machinery when the war hit.]

When the German Romanian forces re-take North Bukovina, bloody revenge is exacted on the native population in the region, but especially on the Jews, who are blamed for both sympathizing and collaborating with the Red Army. Now that the peasants have experienced some form of recovery under the protection of the Soviet Union, they secretly continue to see themselves as Soviet citizens and hope that the Russians soon return. Right until his death in 1954, Katz felt close ties with the Soviet state. Toward the end of his life, he became increasingly disgusted by Stalin’s political repressions. He reacted to with utter indignation to the Slánský trial (1952), a trial directed against the so-called “trotzkistisch-titoistischzionistische Verschwörung” (Trotskyist-Titoist-Zionist conspiracy) by the Jewish leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and as a result of which, amongst others, his fellow writer in Mexican exile, Otto Katz (alias André Simone), was sentenced to death.50 Yet he was spared knowledge of revelations of the worst of Stalin’s crimes. Historically speaking, the political and social euphoria described in Katz’s novel are out of the question, particularly as the Soviet authorities working against the “feindlich-gesinnte” (negatively disposed/hostile) civil population took especially radical action against the Jews.51 Many Jews were politically persecuted as opponents of communism. Among them were the Jewish social democrats of the Arbeiterbund, Zionist groups, and representatives from the bourgeois block.52 A large number of Jews were declared “Volksfeinden” (enemies of the people) and stripped of their property for being capitalists. They were arrested and deported to camps in Siberia and central Asia in cattle transports, 4,000 Jews from Chernivtsi alone and around 6,000 from other parts of North Bukovina.53 50 Moerl, “Leo Katz,” 26. 51 See also: David Cesarani, Endlösung: Das Schicksal der Juden 1933–1948 (Berlin: Ullstein, 2016), especially 442–46. 52 Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina, 364. 53 Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina, 365. See also: Alfred Gong, ‘Typographie,” in Die verlorene Harfe: Eine Anthologie deutschsprachiger Lyrik aus der Bukowina, translated by Petro Rychlo (Chernivtsi: Vyd. Zoloti Lytavry, 2008), 436–38. The German Jewish poet from Bukovina, Alfred Gong (1920–1981), whose family were transported to a Gulag, describes the year of Russian occupation in his poem Topographie: “. . . / So ging das halbwegs geruhsam bis 1940. / Da kamen die Sowjets friedlich zu Tank / Und befreiten die

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Katz was probably insufficiently informed about the infamous year of Russian occupation in North Bukovina in 1940/41. As Siret’s chronicler, he strove to capture reality in his fiction as faithfully as possible—this can be seen, for instance, in the correspondence between his historical articles in Freies Deutschland and the events in his novel.54 When the publisher El Libro Libre organized a tribute to Leo Katz on March 24, 1944 to mark the publication of Totenjäger, Katz explained, “dass jetzt die Rote Armee mit ihrem bewundernswerten Vormarsch durch die Eroberung von Sereth zu seinem Roman die geschichtliche Fortsetzung schreibe” (that the Red Army with its astonishing progress was now writing the historic sequel to his novel with the capture of Seret).55 The novel therefore contributes to a long list of narrative texts about the Holocaust that whitewash the role of the Soviet Union, reaching its climax with Jurek Becker’s Jakob der Lügner (1969, Jacob the Liar, 1990), a novel that focuses on the much longed-for arrival of the Red Army in the Polish Ghetto. Presumably, the Mexican émigrés were only informed about domestic circumstances in the Soviet Union from one side, or only those facts that had already been filtered by the Soviet censor and presented the rest of the world with an image of the Soviet Union as a harmonious state made it through. In his political journalism, Katz repeatedly refers nördliche Bukowina. / Die Rumänen zogen ohne Schamade / Ordentlich ab in kleinere Grenzen. / Die Volksdeutschen zog es reichheimwärts. / Die Juden, bodenständiger, blieben. / (Die Hälfte verreckte in Novosibirsk, / später die andere in Antonescus Kazets.) / Die Steppe zog ein und affichierte ihre Kultura. / Die Gräber blieben unangetastet / Bis auf weiterem Ukas” (So it continued halfway unhurried until 1940. / Then the Soviets came peacefully by tank / And freed northern Bukovina. / The Romanians withdrew into smaller borders / Orderly and without fanfare. / The ethnic Germans drifted Reich-wards bound. / The Jews, more down to earth, remained. / [Half of them perished in Novosibirsk, / the other half later in Antonescu’s KZ’s.] / The steppe swept in and fixed their Kultura. / The graves remained untouched. / Future decrees notwithstanding). 54 Leo Katz, “Handel not Voelker und Laender,” Freies Deutschland 1, no. 5 (1942): 13. See also: Leo Katz, “Demokratie auf dem Balkan,” Freies Deutschland 4, no. 6 (1945): 24. Especially in these articles, Katz portrays the political development of Romania to a fascist and antisemitic state and the role of the rightwing extremist party, the Iron Guard, in this process as it is set out in Totenjäger. 55 “Ehrung fuer Leo Katz und Bodo Uhse,” Freies Deutschland 3, no. 6 (1944): 31. Together with Katz, Bodo Uhse was also honored for his novel Leutnant Bertram. Uhse spoke about the “Verpflichtung des deutschen antifaschistischen Schriftstellers, in diesem Kriege beizutragen zur Vernichtung des moerderischen Nazismus” (the duty of the German antifascist author to contribute in this war to the destruction of the murderous Nazi ideology). The proceeds of this event were donated to a fund supporting the publication of German-speaking anti-Nazi literature.

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to “Tatsachen” (facts) or “allgemein anerkannten Tatsachen” (generally acknowledged facts)56 that enticed him with all too genuinely believed but fanciful perspectives. This is the case, for example, when he claims, “dass es den Nazis im besetzten Gebiet der Sowjetunion trotzt aller Versprechungen und Verlockungen nicht gelungen ist, die einheimische Bevölkerung zu judenfeindlichen Akten zu gewinnen” (that the Nazis, despite all promises and enticements, have not managed to induce the native population in the occupied area of the Soviet Union to commit antisemitic acts).57 Recent historical research on the Holocaust has, however, proved that in Bukovina in particular and in neighboring Galicia, the majority of Ukrainians participated in the persecution of the Jews.58 Here one could refer to the almost paradigmatic case of mass antisemitism among the Ukrainian radical right-wing Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which collaborated with Hitler’s Germany and which had countless members in Bukovina and played a cataclysmic role in the Jewish Holocaust in Eastern Europe. This problem is also addressed by German-speaking authors of Jewish origin from Eastern Galicia, most significantly by Soma Morgenstern (1890–1976) in his novel Die Blutsäule: Zeichen und Wunder am Sereth (The Pillar of Blood: Omens and Miracles at Sereth)59 56 Katz especially uses such language in his article, “Juden in der Sowjetunion,” 8. 57 Katz, “Juden in der Sowjetunion,” 8. 58 Cesarani, Endlösung. See also: Hedwig Baum, Varianten des Terrors: Ein Vergleich zwischen der deutschen und rumänischen Besatzverwaltung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944 (Berlin: Metropol, 2011); and Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina, 266–75. 59 Soma Morgenstern, Die Blutsäule: Zeichen und Wunder am Sereth, edited and with an afterword by Ingolf Schulte (Lüneburg: zu Klampen, 1997), 27, 92, 102. “‘Wie die allgemeine Vertilgung der Juden begonnen hat’, erzählte der jüngste Zöllner, ‘da lebte ich noch in meinem Dorf. Die Bauern sagten: “Unsere Juden sind gute Menschen, wir wollen unseren Juden nichts zuleide tun.” Dasselbe sagten die Bauern in Janówka, die in Hajworony, die in Denysów von ihren Juden. Da trieben die Deutschen alle Juden aus den Dörfern in die Stadt. Hier waren alle Juden, die von Denysów, die von Hajworony, die von Janówka, vermischt. Und die Bauern, die von Janówka, die von Denysów, die von Hajvorony, folgten den Juden auf dem Fuß in die Stadt, und hier waren auch sie vermischt. Und die vermischten Bauern halfen den Deutschen in der Stadt, die vermischten Juden zu vertilgten.’” (When the general destruction of the Jews began, the youngest Zöllner said, “I still lived in my village. The Farmers said ‘Our Jews are good people, we don’t want to harm our Jews.’ The farmers in Janówka in Hajworony, and in Denysów said the same about their Jews. Then the Germans drove all of the Jews out of the villages and into the town. Here all the Jews, from Denysów, from Hajworony, from Janówka, were mixed together. And the farmers, the ones from Janówka, the ones from Denysów, the ones from Hajvorony,

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and by Manès Sperber (1905–1984) in Verlorene Bucht (1955, Journey Without End, 1961), the third part of his trilogy of novels, Wie eine Träne im Ozean (1955, Like A Tear in the Ocean, 1961).60 Not entirely uninteresting in this context is the fact that, in Totenjäger, the extermination of the Jews in Transnistria—i.e., the region between the Dniester and the southern part of the Bug that became the deportation zone for Jews from Romania, Bukovina, Bessarabia between the summer

followed the Jews into the city on foot, and here they were all mixed together too. And the mixed-together farmers helped the Germans in the city to exterminate the mixed-together Jews”). “An dem Tage ihres [deutschen] so schnellen Sieges taten sie uns fast nichts zuleide. Sei es, dass diese Soldaten keine Mörder waren, sei es, dass sie—den eilends sich zurückziehenden Roten keine Atempause zu gönnen gewillt—keine Zeit hatten, uns zu morden: die Bluttaten dieses und der folgenden Tage begingen unsere Mitbürger, unsere Nachbarn” (On the day of their very sudden victory the Germans did almost no harm. It may be that these soldiers were not murders, it may be that they did not have time—not wanting to allow the withdrawing Reds a moment to catch their breath—to murder us: the bloody deeds of that day and the days that followed were committed by our fellow citizens, our neighbors). “Von den Fenstern feuerten die von der SS ausgerüsteten Bauern aus Büchsen und Pistolen in den überfüllten Betraum. Sie schossen blindwütig” (From the windows, the farmers who had been armed by the SS shot into the packed bedroom with rifles and pistols. They shot in a blind rage). See also: Kaiser, “Vorwort,” 5–10. In his foreword, Kaiser assumes that Katz’s and Morgenstern’s novels are set in the same town. See especially page 6: “Soma Morgenstern dürfte einige Anregung aus Katz’ Roman geschöpft haben, doch die Stadt Sereth und ihre Umgebung überhaupt nicht gekannt haben” (Soma Morgenstern may have drawn some inspiration from Katz’s novel but did not know the city of Siret or its surroundings at all). The novels do indeed have a number of central motifs in common (murder of the Jews, glorification of the Soviet Union), but they take place in different locations. The eponymous river Siret is certainly responsible for this confusion. The Siret of Katz’s novel is a tributary of the lower Danube in Bukovina, while the events of Morgenstern’s novel take place on the Siret, the tributary of the Dniester in his native region of Eastern Galicia. 60 Manès Sperber, Wie eine Träne im Ozean (Vienna and Zürich: Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991), 916. “Nein, die Ukrainer werden sie [die aufständischen Juden] wie Schafe auf die Lichtung zutreiben, ihnen befehlen, im Schnee niederzuknien, mit ihnen einigen Spaß haben, fünf bis zehn an Ort und Stelle umbringen, der Rest wird auf den Knien bis zum nächsten Dorf rutschen, damit die Bauern ein Vergnügen haben und nebenbei in der Gewissheit bestärkt werden, dass ein deutscher Befehl in jedem Fall ausgeführt wird” (No, the Ukrainians would drive them [the Jews offering resistance] like sheep into the clearing, order them to kneel down in the snow, have a bit of fun with them, murder between five and ten of them right there on the spot, and drag the rest to the next village so that the farmers were entertained and left in no doubt that German orders, at least, would be carried out).

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of 1941 and fall 1944 and was a focal point of the Holocaust61—goes without mention. Of course, as a work of fiction, the novel is not obliged to provide an accurate depiction of reality. But for a politically engaged writer like Leo Katz who set out to chronicle the Second World War in Bukovina, it would have been unlikely to have ignored what was taking place in Transnistria. It might be assumed that Katz had not heard about these events. Even Freies Deutschland, which always reacted immediately to current political developments in Europe, lacked any notification about the crimes in Transnistria.62 Herein lies the difference between Totenjäger and other German-language Holocaust novels about Bukovina, such as Nacht (1964, Night, 1966) and Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr (Jossel Wassermann’s Return, 1993), both by Edgar Hilsenrath,63 or the extensive narrative (e.g., Tzili, 1981 and Tzili, 1983) and autobiographical works (e.g., Geschichte eines Lebens, 1999, The Story of A Life, A Memoir, 2003) by Aharon Appelfeld:64 Katz did not write his novel through drawing on his own experiences, looking back at what he personally lived through, but from a spatial distance and merely with the help of reports

61 Wolfgang Benz, “Rumänien und der Holocaust,” in Holocaust an der Peripherie: Judenpolitik und Judenmord in Rumänien und Transnistrien 1940– 1944, edited by Brigitte Mihok and Wolfgang Benz (Berlin: Metropol, 2009), 11–30. 62 One of the earliest literary witnesses of the Jewish Holocaust in Bukovina is the poem cycle Raststatt des Todes: Verse von Trotz und Zuversicht (1942–1945) by the German Jewish author Alfred Kittner (1906–1991). Among others, two further distinguished authors from Bukovina were deported to Transnistria: Alfred Gong and Immanuel Weißglas (1920–1979). Both left behind them stirring poems about their experiences in the camps. The eighty-year-old German Jewish poet Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger died in Transnistria from typhus. 63 On Edgar Hilsenrath (1926–2018), see the following biographical and bibliographical overview: Ralf Georg Czapla, “Edgar Hilsenrath,” in Killy Literaturlexikon: Autoren und Werke des deutschsprachigen Kulturraumes, edited by Wilhelm Kühlmann, 2nd edition, vol. 5 (Berlin and New York: WBG, 2009), 435. Hilsenrath, born in Leipzig, spent his childhood living with his Hassidic grandparents in Siret. In 1938 he fled from the National Socialists to Siret and was interred in the Mohyliw-Podilskyj Ghetto in Transnistria from 1941 to 1944. He captures the personal suffering he experienced in these years in his novel Nacht. In his novel Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr Hilsenrath describes the extermination of the Bukovina Jews and their shtetl culture. 64 Hannah Liron, “Aharon Appelfeld—ein Deuter des Holocaust,” in Jüdische Intellektuelle im 20. Jahrhundert: Literatur- und kulturgeschichtliche Studien, edited by Ariane Huml and Monika Rappenecker (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003), 181–90. Born near Chernivtsi, Appelfeld survived the Czernovitz Ghetto and the camps of Transnistria as a child. In 1946, Appelfeld fled to Palestine as a refugee. He lived in Israel and wrote in Hebrew.

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on Bukovina that were available to him at the time the events of the war themselves took place. According to current historical research, as a “Chronik von Sereth” (chronicle of Siret), Totenjäger offers a limited perspective on the actual historical course of events in Bukovina. Katz did indeed follow the news from his homeland with great avidity, but he was not correctly or even at all informed about everything that took place. His novel should therefore not be read as a fictionally embellished historical testimony, but more as an expression of the zeitgeist among the Mexican exile community and its political and ideological pipe dreams. This can be seen clearly in Totenjäger’s utopian perspective: the actual war was not yet over, but in the novel the antifascist resistance has already won.

Critique of Nazi Propaganda What the novel picks out exactly, however, is the rhetoric of National Socialism.65 Katz finds a remarkable way to defamiliarize the central topoi of National Socialist propaganda using irony and the literary grotesque. While irony reverses the sense of what is said with the intention of criticizing it, the grotesque irritates our perception during reading by mixing horror (danger, despair) with the comic (absurdity, jokes). The grotesque scenes in the novel have an often tragicomic effect, as the fractured comic accentuates the tragic aspects. This ironic process is deployed in exemplary fashion in the scene in which the corrupt and infamously antisemitic sub-prefect of Siret cynically offers his protection to the now completely vulnerable Jewish inhabitants: “Noch niemals bedurften die Juden in einem solchen Ausmaße eines kräftigen Schutzes wie im gegenwärtigen Augenblick. Dabei ist es mir zum Bewusstsein gekommen, dass der Erzengel Michael ja ursprünglich eine jüdische Schöpfung ist, das heißt, gewissermaßen ein jüdischer Schutzengel. Und ich versichere Ihnen, meine Herren, dass ich als Begründer des Erzengel Michael hierzulande—ich bin wegen meiner Eigenschaft als höchster politischer Beamter dieses Bezirkes in ihm nicht mehr aktiv tätig—der Schutzengel der Juden sein will. Ich bin von nun an Euer Erzengel Michael.” (17) [“The Jews had never before been in such dire need of a strong defense as in that moment. At the same time it was brought home to 65 Victor Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1947). This is still the definitive work on the language of National Socialism. From the final authorized edition, edited and with a commentary by Elke Fröhlich (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2020).

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me that the Archangel Michael is a Jewish creation, that is to say, to a certain extent a Jewish guardian angel. And I ensure you, gentlemen, that I as the founder of the Archangel Michael in this country—due to my role as the most senior political official of this region I am no longer active in the organization—want to be the guardian angel of the Jews. From now on I am your Archangel Michael.”]

Barbarescu’s speech here is ironically heightened in two regards. First of all, Katz dares a level of rhetorical boldness when he connects the ultranationalist, fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael—historically founded in 1927 by Corneliu Codreanus (1899–1938) and known as the Iron Guard from 1930 to 194166—with the Jewish religious tradition. Quite to the contrary, this party, deeply entrenched in Romanian Orthodox belief, saw itself as explicitly antisemitic. Therefore, secondly, the seeming protection offered means nothing more for the Jews than renewed repression. The German army’s invasion67 of Romania is justified in the novel as the Germans’ return to their autochthonous regions, their so-called “uralte deutsche Heimat” (ancient German homeland, 46): “Hier waren germanische Stämme vor Jahrtausenden. Hier war eine Stätte deutscher Kultur vor Jahrzehnten, und Sereth muss es wieder werden” (German tribes were here thousands of years ago. This was a seat of German culture decades ago and Siret needs to become that again, 46). Against this backdrop, the National Socialists’ argument is to be read as thoroughly ironic, as Romanians identify themselves first and foremost with the Dacians (fifth century BC until 87 AD), and not with the Vandals, the Germanic tribe who settled while moving through the region much later (in the fifth century). There are significant limitations put on German culture in Siret too: the town never belonged within the German Empire, which the Nazis want to rebuild here; as a part of the former k. u. k. Crownland Bukovina, Siret belonged within the German-speaking cultural sphere of 66 For further literature on the Iron Guard’s putsch, see Sebastian Balta, Rumänien und die Großmächte in der Ära Antonescu (1940–1944) (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005). This parliamentary party was renowned for its antisemitic, antidemocratic, and anti-communist terrorism and was repeatedly prohibited. In 1940, the Iron Guard, along with the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu (1882– 1946) were successful in proclaiming the National Legionary State. As early as 1941, the Iron Guard attempted a putsch to topple Antonescu, unleashing a wave of pogroms that could only be suppressed with the assistance of a large army presence. In Totenjäger, the Iron Guard’s revolt serves as a historical template for the section on Morarescut. 67 When Antonescu’s Romania allied itself with the Axis powers, the first military units arrived in the country on October 10, 1940. In the December, a long-term economic agreement was approved between Germany and Romania. Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina, 373.

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the Habsburg monarchy. That German-language culture thrived in the region was a result of the tolerant, multicultural, political project of the Habsburgs—one, importantly, not built upon Germanization—in which the Jews, as the principal bearers of the German language in Bukovina, had a large part to play. National Socialist propaganda, however, seeks to turn Siret into the “Stätte arisch-deutscher Kultur” (seat of AryanGerman culture) using the means of targeted Germanization and open persecution of the Jews. In order to ironically highlight the polar opposition between the liberal spirit of the Habsburgs and that of German fascism, Katz introduces the figure of Justfan, an old-fashioned Austrian and former k. u. k. postal worker. Justfan is entrusted by the German SS leadership in Bukovina with being Chairman of the “Volksgemeinschaft”68 for German expatriates, which he perceives as more of a burden than an honor. Indeed, he finds the conduct of the Germans in the region extremely disconcerting. Justfan’s role consists of wrongly reading connections: “Das sind doch Verhältnisse, die ein Mensch mit einem einfachen Verstand nicht mehr begreifen kann. . . . Früher, wenn einer sich fremdes Gut angeeignet hat, hat man es genannt Diebstahl, Raub oder Plünderung. Heute sagt man Arisierung” (But those are the relations that a person of simple understanding cannot grasp anymore. . . . Before when someone took someone else’s property, one called it theft or plunder. Today one says aryanization, 94). Being of an entirely Habsburgian mindset, Justfan and his wife rack their brains over their having four generations of “arisch-deutsche-germanisch-reinrassige Herkunft” (aryanGerman-Germanic-pure-blooded heritage, 30) behind them, as they can only understand the concept of race in the context of their pets, and not people.69 Katz’s lovingly crafted figure of Justfan assumes the function in the novel of an innocent fool and provides comic moments for reflection, so that fascist rhetoric can be exhibited and critically scrutinized. A particularly comic scene in the novel is that in which Justfan reacts to the introduction of the Star of David in Bukovina with a naïve and simultaneously grotesque wish: 68 According to historical research, in response to the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and North Bukovina in September 1940, almost all ethnic Germans in Bukovina were relocated to the Empire (predominantly to Wartheland and Upper Silesia). Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina, 368. 69 Victor Klemper is similarly stunned by the race laws, where he comments: “Man ist artfremd oder Jude bei 25 Prozent jüdischen Blutes, wenn ein Teil der Großeltern Jude war. Wie im Spanien des 15. Jahrhunderts, aber damals ging es um Glauben. Heute ist es Zoologie + Geschäft” (One is a different species, or a Jew, when one has 25 percent Jewish blood, when one of one’s grandparents was a Jew. Like in Spain in the fifteenth century but back then it was about belief. Now it is zoology + business). Victor Klemper, Tagebücher 1933–1941 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), 18.

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“Frau, mir scheint die Wiederkehr der alten Zeit steht doch nahe bevor. Da kommen vielleicht auch bald die Banner wieder und die kaiserlich-königliche Musikkapelle.70 Heute haben nämlich alle Juden den Befehl erhalten, gelbe Binden auf ihren Röcken um den Bauch zu tragen.” “Und was hat das mit der Musik zu tun?” “Mit der Musik noch nichts. Aber unsere hochselige kaiserlich-königliche Monarchie hatte doch die schwarz-gelbe Fahne. Es ist nur eine Schande, dass bisher allein die Juden diese altangestammten Farben tragen.” (57) [“My lady, it seems to me that the return of the old days is in the offing after all. Maybe the banners will be back soon too, and the imperial marching band. Because today all the Jews have been given an order to wear yellow bands around the waists of their smocks.” “And what has that got to do with music?” “Nothing to do with music yet. But didn’t our sainted imperial monarchy—may it rest in peace—have a black and yellow flag? It’s just a shame that it’s only the Jews wearing the trusty old colors so far.”]

Through the character of Justfan, Katz evokes the liberal era of the now defunct multicultural Austro-Hungarian Empire in which he himself grew up and which provides a foil to the nationalism of the invading “Preußen” (Prussians). In this sense, the Justfan passages belong to the literary phenomenon of the Habsburg Myth,71 which can be found in the works of a number of German-language authors from Bukovina.72 Not least, the Habsburg Myth comes into play through the character of the old Greek Orthodox priest Glurzanksi: he represents the confessional freedom of the former k. u. k. period and advocates for the Jews in the spirit of not only Christian values, but of Habsburgian religious tolerance: “Die Juden sind Gottesvolk wie wir alle” (The Jews are God’s people like we all are, 113). The novel challenges the cornerstone of National Socialist ideology, the so-called “Kampf für eine neue Ordnung und gegen die bolschewistische Barbarei” (struggle for a new order and against bolshevist barbarism, 70 On the symbolism of the k. u. k. marching band for the Habsburg monarchy, see Joseph Roth, Radetzkymarsch (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1932). 71 An essential work on the phenomenon of th Habsburg Myth is Claudio Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos in der modernen österreichischen Literatur (Vienna: Zsolnay, 2000). 72 The best encapsulations of the Habsburg Myth can be found in: Gregor Drozdowski, Damals in Czernowitz und rundum: Erinnerungen eines Altösterreichers (Klagenfurt: Verlag der Kleinen Zeitung Kärnten, 1984); Gregor von Rezzori, Ein Hermelin in Tschernopol: Ein maghrebinischer Roman (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1958); and Edgar Hilsenrath, Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr (Munich: Piper, 1993).

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239). The leading protagonists of this struggle in Siret are the representatives of the German Gestapo, Hans Kruhle and Franz Zimmerle, as well as the SS officer and economic expert Otto von Raubnitz. Alongside them is the Romanian sub-prefect, Carol Barbarescu. In his depictions of these characters, Katz seeks to unmask them through their speech and their actions as the representatives of a barbaric system: “Heute, im Zeitalter Adolf Hitlers, drehen wir täglich Tausenden den Hals um, ohne dass ein Hahn danach kräht. Und das ist richtig so. Nur so kann ein zur Weltherrschaft berufenes Volk sein Ziel erreichen” (Today, in the age of Adolf Hitler, we are twisting thousands of necks every day without a single cockerel crying out afterwards. And rightly so. This is the only way a people called to world domination can reach its destination, 87). He achieves this further through giving them telling names as well (Barbarescu, von Raubnitz)73 as well as bestowing upon them uncanny external appearances74 and back stories replete with crime.75 73 See Leo Katz, “Johannes der Täufer,” Freies Deutschland 2, no. 6 (1943): 15. In an earlier version of the novel still entitled Auferstehung, the character of Franz Zimmerle was called Georg Schurkel. 74 Katz, Totenjäger, 204: “Aber das Gesicht dieses Deutschen [Franz Zimmerle] hatte etwas Unheimliches und flößte ihnen Grauen ein. Die blauen Augen waren tief eingefallen. Das Gesicht war langgezogen, die schmalen Lippen waren böse, die spitze Nase wirkte wie ein Dolch und die schwarze Uniform—die Bauern standen unter dem Eindruck dessen, was sie von Jossel Schames gehört hatten und glaubten, den leibhaftigen Teufel vor sich zu haben” (But the face of this German [Franz Zimmerle] had something eery about it and dread flooded through him. The blue ears were so deep set. The face was long, the narrow lips were evil, the thin nose was dagger-like and the black uniform—the farmers were deeply shaken by it, and by what they had heart about Jossel Schames, and believed that they had the devil incarnate before them). 75 Katz, Totenjäger: Carol Barbarescu “. . . gründete damals, es war Ende 1925, die vaterländische Organisation ‘Erzengel Michael’. . . . Die Organisation wurde von den Behörden begünstigt, reichlich finanziert. Er organisierte Pogrome und behauptete . . ., dass er mit eigenen Händen 63 Juden aus fahrenden Zügen hinausgeworfen hatte. Als man auf die Einladung des Münchner Büros der Nationalsozialistischen Partei Deutschlands im Jahre 1931 zehn nationale Kämpfer aus Rumänien in die dortige Schule für Rassenforschung und jüdisches wesen entsandte, war er einer der zehn. Anfang Dezember 1932 kehrte er mit einem Diplom, unterzeichnet vom Theoretiker der Nazipartei Alfred Rosenberg, als Rassen- und Judenspezialist nach Rumänien zurück” (founded the nationalist organization the Order of the Archangel Michael back then in 1925. . . The Organization was tolerated and richly financed by the authorities. He organised pograms and claimed . . ., to have thrown 63 Jews from moving trains with his own hands. When ten national fighters from Romania were sent to the Munich school for racial research and Jewish studies at the invitation of the office of the NSDAP in Munich in 1931, he was one of the ten. At the beginning of December

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Since “auch hier zu Lande Marxismus und Juda ihr Haupt erheben” (even in this country, Marxism and Judah are raising their ugly heads, 29), a large program of propaganda has to be undertaken in Siret. Through this, German Romanian fascists hope use antisemitic clichés, myths, and conspiracy theories to convince the local population of the dangers of “jüdischen Bolschewismus” (Judeo-Bolshevism) and the “aufgezwungenen Krieg” (forced war) in order to style themselves as the defenders of Western culture and to reinterpret this war of aggression as a defensive measure.76 Katz poses this theory in his novel as a crude paradox, using Justfan to ask: why is it claimed “dass die Juden zum Krieg hetzen” (94; the Jews are inciting the war), when in fact in Siret the German Romanian 1932, he returned to Romania with a diploma signed by the Nazi party’s theorist Alfred Rosenberg, as a “Specialist in Race and Jews,” 11). “Franz [Vertreter der Gestapo in Sereth] machte Karriere in der Partei und galt als einer der besten Schläger. Unter der Republik wurde er dreimal von Staatsanwaltschaft steckbrieflich verfolgt, weil er auf seinem Rekordblatt acht Marxisten und zwei landesverräterische Katholiken hatte—wie er sie nannte. . . . Erst nach Kriegsausbruch wurde er in die SS aufgenommen und kam dann nach Polen. . . . Ein Zufall wollte es, dass er in derselben Stadt in Polen seinem Jugendfreund Hans Kruhle [ebenfalls ein Vertreter der Gestapo in Sereth] begegnete. . . . Gemeinsam setzten sie im polnischen Städtchen den Willen des Führers durch. Sie brachten in kurzer Zeit gemeinsam Hunderte Juden und Polen um” (Franz [the Gestapo representative in Siret] moved up within the party and was known as one of the best fighters. Under the Republic he became a wanted man three times because he had eight Marxists and two traitorous Catholics (as he called them) on his record. . . . It was only after war broke out that he was recruited into the SS and ended up in Poland. As fate would have hit, he ran into his childhood friend Hans Kruhle [likewise a Gestapo officer in Siret] in the same Polish town. Together they enforced the will of the Führer in this little Polish town. They killed hundreds of Jews and Poles together in a matter of days, 86). “Er [Hans Kruhle] war zu jeder Grausamkeit bereit, wenn er im Auftrag handelte. . . . In den Konzentrationslagern und in der SS war er unbarmherzig im Schlagen der wehrlosen Gefangenen. In Polen verrichtete er Grausamkeiten, im Bewusstsein, im Auftrage und im Geiste des Führers zu handeln” (He [Hans Kruhle] was capable of any depth of depravity when he was under orders. . . . In the KZs and in the SS he was merciless when it came to beating the defenseless captives. In Poland he committed atrocities in the knowledge that he was acting according to the orders and in the spirit of the Führer, 329). 76 For discussion of the question of who was responsible for the war, see Jürgen Förster, “Das Unternehmen Barbarossa als Eroberungs- und Vernichtungskrieg,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, edited by Das militärgeschichtliche Forschungsamt, vol. 4: Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion (Stuttgart: DVA Dt. Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), 413–47; and Wolfram Wette, “Der 22. Juni 1941 und die NS-Propaganda,” in 22. Juni 1941: Der Überfall auf die Sowjetunion, edited by Hans Schafranek and Robert Streibel (Vienna: Picus, 1991), 75–85. See Klemperer, LTI, 194–205 on the National Socialist rhetoric in this context.

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army is awaiting the Führer’s order to attack any moment. As an artistic prelude to the invasion of the Soviet Union—the novel deals with the conquest of North Bukovina, which is beyond the Siret River—the Germans put on a “symbolisch-historisch zukunftweisendes” (symbolihistoric future-facing) pageantry display on New Year’s Eve 1940/41, entitled “Germania bannt den Fluch der Welt” (Germania banishes the curse of the world, 61). It opens with the suppression of the Vandals by the Jews and ends with Hitler’s revenge, whereby real Jewish people are shot on the stage. The tragedy of this scene and most others is disrupted by a pointedly funny, light-hearted narrative style. In all, Katz makes use of the wideranging arsenal of Unterhaltungsliteratur (entertainment literature) in Totenjäger: he peppers the plot with tragic love, personal revenge, power struggles, and suspense that carries right to the end, making the novel a very enjoyable read. It is not for nothing that Totenjäger and his second novel set in Siret, Brennende Dörfer,77 gained Katz favorable comparisons with Nicolai Gogol and Scholem Aleykhem.78 Among the Mexican exiles, Katz was now regarded as a “kauziger Erzähler ostjüdischer Kleinstadtgeschichten.”79 In conclusion, if we were to try to categorize Totenjäger in literary historical terms, we would see that the novel represents an exception among antifascist texts. Here, we find a historical justification for a belligerent, self-assured Jewishness connected with sympathy for the Soviet Union and communist ideology—a position that, in 1944, was certainly rare outside of the community of communist exiles in Mexico.80 Even within the German-language literature from Bukovina, Totenjäger represents something of a rarity. In writing a Zeitroman with a happy ending, Katz distinguishes himself from most German-speaking authors from Bukovina, who fix their gaze on a lost landscape in the past that they see as having been threatened by the period of Romanianization after 1919 and having all but disappeared with the coming of the Holocaust. —Translated by Michael Wood

77 Brennende Dörfer considers the peasants’ uprising in Romania (1907) and its impact on the border town of Siret. Both novels share some themes, as they are set in Bukovina and deal with the memory of the Habsburg monarchy and relations between Jews and other ethnic groups in the region. 78 F. Katz, “Nachwort,” 400. 79 F. Katz, “Nachwort,” 396. 80 I thank Prof. Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer for this insight.

Brunnenland: The Image of the Bukovina in Paul Celan Paul Peters, McGill University

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of Paul Celan (1920–1970), as the perhaps preeminent poet of the Shoah and its aftermath, is traditionally defined in terms of two highly contrastive extremes: on the one hand, at the level of the microcosmic, the most personal and intimate, Celan’s poetry centers on the figure of his murdered mother, who often serves as the posthumous muse, the missing “Thou” of dialogue, and a kind of Kabbalistic Shekhina, or feminine spiritual guide of his poetic utterance. This utterance is of course at the same time being fundamentally driven, in the dimension of the macrocosmic, by that engulfing cataclysm of universal history, the Holocaust.1 However, there is at the same time an intermediary link between these two poles that until quite recently was he poetic world

1 A still very serviceable introduction to the world of Paul Celan remains Jerry Glenn, Paul Celan (New York: Twayne, 1973); Wolfgang Emmerich’s Paul Celan (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1998), covers more ground and is similarly helpful and reliable; to these we may add the recent biography of the longstanding Celan scholar Theo Buck, Paul Celan (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 2020). Two further important approaches to the intersections of work and biography are Amy Colin, Paul Celan: Holograms of Darkness (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991) and John Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). Although Celan has found many worthwhile and insightful commentators, perhaps the most profound and sustained inquiries into his work as poetic text are Peter Szondi, Celan-Studien (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972); Marlies Janz, Vom Engagement der absoluten Poesie (Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1976); Albrecht Schöne, Dichtung als verborgene Theologie: Versuch einer Exegese von Paul Celans “Einem, der vor der Tür stand” (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2000); and the studies of the late Stéphane Mosès, Approches de Paul Celan (Lagrasse: Verdier 2015); also worthy of mention is the fact that the engagement with Celan runs like a thread through the work of the noted literary and cultural critic George Steiner, including in his last book, The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celan (New York: New Directions, 2011), and is perhaps most succinctly expressed in his article “North of the Future” (The New Yorker, August 28, 1989). Finally, an indispensable resource and starting point for Celan research, covering multiple aspects of his life and work, is the Celan

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often neglected or overlooked in discussions of the poet: and that is the lost world of the Bukovina, the at once largely Germanophone and at the same time largely Jewish enclave at the easternmost tip of what had once been the Austro-Hungarian empire; a territory subsequently annexed by Romania after World War I, falling to the former Soviet Union after 1945, and now forming a portion of present-day western Ukraine, while having lost its Jewish and otherwise ethnically mixed population in the disasters and dislocations that accompanied and followed the Second World War. It is here, however, in this unique and endangered cultural space, that Celan was born at the beginning of what we must now regard as the interregnum between two world conflagrations, and which, in the light of later historical catastrophe, so fatefully bequeathed him, as the perhaps greatest poet of remembrance of the Shoah, his German mother tongue. Celan thus lost both his parents to the Holocaust as he did his Bukovinian Heimat; this German term seems all the more appropriate as the world and homeland that the poet lost was indeed itself, and rather paradoxically, a German-speaking one. In 1945, Celan forever turned his back on it as a space that had been for him and its erstwhile Jewish population now historically and irrevocably voided, initially by the Shoah, and afterwards by the vast uprootings of populations which occurred throughout Eastern and Central Europe in the aftermath of the war. But this specific role of Heimatverlust and topographical displacement was itself largely lost in the initial reception of the poet, as was the fact that Celan, in coming to Vienna from Romania in 1947, before his subsequent move one year later to his lifelong domicile of Paris, was in fact at the time part of a vast movement of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, many of them Jewish, passing through Vienna to move on to Palestine, and the shortly to be founded state of Israel, or to the Americas in a mass migratory movement in some ways reminiscent of the mass migrations and dislocations of the present day.2 It will therefore be the task of the present paper to situate the role of the lost world of the Bukovina in Celan’s poetic cosmos, as a kind of intermediary link between the microcosmic world of most intimate and personal loss, and the macrocosmic and engulfing event of the Shoah. Indeed, the status of the Bukovina as a kind of missing medial link between the micro- and macrocosmic, the intimate personal trauma of Celan and that universal historic trauma of which it was a part, reminds us of an original dimension of meaning of the word “cosmos” itself, one which has since almost been forgotten. For Kosmos was for the Greeks an Handbuch, edited by Markus May, Peter Goßens, and Jürgen Lehmann (Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 2008). 2 See on this Peter Goßens and Marcus G. Patka, Displaced: Paul Celan in Wien (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001).



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ordering not simply in the heavens and the firmament, nor at the converse level of the tiny and most intimate, but in the intermediary realm of the surrounding environments of the natural, human, political, and social as well, so that the very notion of the “cosmic” should therefore always also properly include the natural, social, and cultural Lebenswelt, or life-world, from which one issues; and in which embeddening context one can then order all the events of one’s own life, including mortality, loss, and bereavement, into a kind of overarching, assured, meaningful, and comprehensible succession, a fabric of the whole, which thus assures human and cultural continuity over time, also in the face of the death of loved ones or of the passing of the generations.3 For indeed, the recovery and restitution of this original dimension of the meaning of the word is perhaps decisive for the proper understanding of Celan’s work, and this not simply for the motifs of the Bukovina, which are latently and explicitly present within it, but in order to grasp one of the fundamental and constitutive impulses of his poetry itself. That is to say, with the loss of the life-world, the natural, human, and social cosmos that once surrounded him, for Celan all such self-evident coordinates of symbolic ordering and suprapersonal embeddedness are also lost, and poetry must now speak, rather than within and to the context and the presence of such ordering, within and to the context of its loss. Thus, Heimatverlust is also Kosmosverlust: for Heimat and Kosmos are in this dimension indeed synonymous. Furthermore, there is a marked resemblance here between the perpetually exiled Celan—–for whom no return was possible—–with that which the noted American social historian Orlando Patterson has since called, with reference to the experience of slavery, “denatalization” and “social death”: namely the loss of the possibility of assured symbolic, social, and cultural embeddedness in one’s own surrounding life-world and community, and the effacement of the place and sense of origin which the trauma of such uprooting and displacement brings.4 For we may say that all of Celan’s poetry is marked by such displacement, by, to borrow Patterson’s terms, the phenomena of denatalization and social death: so that, indeed, he will in their aftermath then fundamentally situate his poetry upon that very axis of displacement itself. 3 On the original meaning of the Greek word see Der Kleine Pauly, article “Kosmos,” https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/der-neue-pauly/kosmos. See also the adumbration of the Greek understanding of the term by William K. Freiert, “Orpheus: A Fugue on the Polis,” in Myth and the Polis, edited by Dorothy C. Pozzi and John M. Wickersham (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 33, 38. 4 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1982), 5.

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In terms of that displacement, let us now take as our starting point the characteristically at once elliptical and direct reference Celan makes to his lost homeland, at a decisive juncture of his own writerly career: in the brief but highly concentrated speech he made in his first official address to a German audience, his acceptance speech of the first major literary honor he was to be awarded, the Bremen literary prize, in 1958. Here he states, right at the outset of his elocution:5 Denken und Danken sind in unserer Sprache Worte ein und desselben Urspungs. Wer ihrem Sinn folgt, begibt sich in den Bedeutungsbereich von “gedenken,” “eingedenk sein,” “Andenken,” “Andacht.” Erlauben Sie mir, Ihnen von hier aus zu danken. Die Landschaft, aus der ich—auf welchen Umwegen! aber gibt das denn: Umwege?—, die Landschaft, aus der ich zu Ihnen komme, dürfte den meisten von Ihnen unbekannt sein. Es ist die Landschaft, in der ein nicht unbeträchtlicher Teil jener chassisdischen Geschichten zu Hause war, die Martin Buber uns allen auf deutsch wiedererzählt hat. Es war, wenn ich diese topographische Skizze noch um einiges ergänzen darf, das mir, von sehr weit her, jetzt vor Augen tritt—, es war eine Gegend, wo Menschen und Bücher lebten. Dort, in dieser nun der Geschichtslosigkeit angeheimgefallenen ehehmaligen Provinz der Habsburgermonarchie, kaum zum erstenmal der Name Rudolf Alexander Schröders auf mich zu: beim Lesen von Rudolf Brochards “Ode mit dem Granatapfel.” Und dort gewann Bremen auch so Umriß für mich: in Gestalt der Veröffentlichungen der Bremer Presse. (GW III, 185)

Elocution as circumlocution: Celan’s discourse at this initial ceremony, which marks the first official recognition of his work by the German literary world—and which takes place on German soil—proves to be as highly charged and heavily laden beneath its surface, just as it remains of a complete and unfailing decorum upon that surface. For it clads the deep and 5 Paul Celan, Gesammelte Werke, edited by Beda Allemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993). References to this edition are henceforth placed in brackets in the main text under the sigil GW with volume and page number. At this point, I would also like to signal three other Celan editions that I have consulted for the present paper: the two text-critical editions Paul Celan, Werke, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe, edited by Beda Alleman, Stefan Reichert, and Rolf Bücher (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990–2017), henceforth HKA; and Paul Celan, Tübinger Ausgabe, edited by Jürgen Wertheimer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), henceforth TCA, which both give, the first in a more exhaustive, the second in more user-friendly form, the genesis and extant variants of each poem; and finally Paul Celan, Die Gedichte: Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe in einem Band, edited by Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), with an invaluable and informative commentary by the editor.



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unnamable reproach it makes, and must make, to its German audience, in references that are at once as initially oblique as they are ultimately quite readily identifiable, and, for a later readership at least, easy enough to decipher. Yet, despite or because of this, the use of the “we,” of the “us,” and the “our” in an inclusive first-person plural, in referencing the world of German speakers and the language that he shares with them, is as pointed and polemical on the one hand as it is emphatic, generous, and inclusive on the other. It is therefore not without interest in the present context to retrace the fundamental movement of Celan’s discourse at this decisive juncture, and to situate the role of the Bukovina within it. Celan begins with a reflection upon the very German words he is using, and with the etymology of the German words “Denken,” “Danken,” “Andenken.” In 1958 in West Germany, then still at a high point of the Wirtschaftswunder and of the postwar suppression of all the unwelcome memories and traumas of recent past, Celan situates his speech as coming from remembrance: his “thanks” to his German audience, his Danken als Gedenken, is thus, to say the least, double-edged. And yet despite this guarded tone and double entendre, his speech is also at the same time genuinely personal, revealing and confessional. He speaks of his origins, and thus—without actually naming it—of the Landschaft, the landscape or countryside from which he issued; and from point of origin, after the “detours” which he also evokes, yet similarly leaves unnamed, and which even repeatedly serve to disrupt, in the manner of a caesura, his own discourse—he then comes to his audience; and he simultaneously evokes this site of origin as a Kulturlandschaft, as a cultural landscape, as the homeland of the Chassidic stories retold in German by the great German-Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber; and finally as a place where—past tense—people and books once “lived.” He then goes on to discreetly describe this unnamed homeland as a place now definitively lost to history, as an erstwhile province of the vanished Habsburg monarchy. Thus drawing a “meridian,” as he would later call it, namely an imaginary topographical connecting line between two places, he links the Bukovina, as his place of origin, and Bremen, as his place of arrival and the site of this particular and highly significative ceremony; he then evokes the German-Jewish poets Rudolf Alexander Schröder and Rudolf Borchardt, once closely associated with Stefan George and his circle, and the Bremer Press, which published their poetry.6 6 In a classic example of Celanean intertextuality—and Celanean allusion— the poem of Borchardt’s, “Ode mit dem Granatapfel,” which he here seemingly so casually references, is in point of fact a powerful and sustained poem of mourning, which would have, in a post-Shoahitic context, taken on a new and highly personal significance for the later poet. I may point out that in his later major poetological utterance, his 1960 “Meridian” speech upon acceptance of the

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In other words: Celan remains here as unreconciled as he is conciliatory. He summons up, with all fitting circumspection and reserve, two lost worlds—culminating in the lost world of the more general and celebrated “German-Jewish symbiosis” or cultural synthesis, represented by such figures as Buber, Schröder, and Borchardt; but beginning with the specific lost world of the Bukovina as his own personal place of origin, while being itself a topography of such synthesis, where “people and books lived”: persons and books, as it happens, of German language expression, consigned to destruction and oblivion by, as it happened, other persons of German language expression. All this is included in the at once expansive and defiant “us” and “ours,” the “we” of Celan’s discourse. In it, the place of the Bukovina is absolutely central; but this place has now lost, as its history, so too its name, and if the poet still keenly senses it as his place of origin, then, it would seem, as a place of origin from which he has, however, since been immeasurably far removed, and from which he is now separated as by an unbridgeable chasm. And indeed, Celan would not be the one to fill that chasm: for with the exception of the earliest poetry, the presence of the Bukovina was to subsequently become, as we shall see, volatilized, as allusive as it was elusive in all his remaining work. It was rather his later biographer Israel Chalfen who, with his book, Celan: a Biography of his Youth, replaced the historical void that Bukovina had become for Celan with a living entity, and in a certain sense thus lifted the veil of mystery surrounding the poet’s origins.7 For whatever the flaws of Chalfen’s book, his occasional errors of fact, or his perhaps nostalgic view of life in interwar Romania that cast—much like Max Brod in his biography of Kafka in the case of Prague—an anti-Semitically charged environment in an all too rosy and golden hue, there can be no doubt of its singular merit for any understanding of Celan, and of the poet’s beginnings. The Bukovina, as a place where people and books lived, comes to life through Chalfen’s words, and lets us see the person and budding poetic voice Celan as firmly Büchner prize, the major West German literary award, Celan similarly took care to reference his place of origin, in deliberately drawing the meridian, the connecting line between that space and the work of Büchner, as embodied by the Galician writer and rediscoverer and editor of Büchner’s Woyzeck, Karl Emil Franzos. GW III, 201–2. 7 Israel Chalfen, Paul Celan: Biographie seiner Jugend (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). A good introduction to the Bukovina as a unique Germanophone Jewish cultural space is Andrea Corbia-Holsie, “Deutsch-Jüdische Symbiose in der mitteleuropäischen Provinz: Bukowina,” in Jüdische Welten in Osteuropa, edited by Annelore Engel-Braunschmid (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 219–30, or more recently by the same author, “The poetry of Paul Celan and the Bukovian Exceptionalism,” Transylvania Review 29, no. 1 (2020): 112–34.



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situated within that space: here though not as a place shrouded in mystery or perdition, but as a very specific and concrete, and indeed vibrant social, cultural, historical, and natural landscape. In this sense, Chalfen’s biography helped inaugurate an in many ways salutary new phase in Celan studies, away from the etheric and exotic atmosphere that had initially surrounded the poet’s reception (an atmosphere in part cultivated by Celan himself), and towards the historically specific and concrete.8 For to put it simply: contrary to post-1945 appearances, Celan did not issue from the void: he did not come from nowhere, he came from somewhere; and at one fell swoop, with Chalfen’s biography, this somewhere took on specific shape, palpability, and contour. This circumstance, however, is not only of compelling interest in terms of the understanding of the poet’s earliest life history and biography: it has, as we shall now seek to demonstrate, equally compelling implications for the understanding of his entire work. In the following, we shall attempt to explore two separate but related aspects of the fundamental shift in the basic perception of Celan which the heightened awareness of the role of his Bukovinian Heimat may help to effect: one being a serious and far-reaching positive reassessment of the early poetry, still largely and directly centered on his place of his origin and the immediate experience of its loss;9 and the other being how this lost world remains present, and indeed very palpably and decisively present, even in his later poetry, but now embedded within it in the form of what I would term a Heimatsplitter, or splinter or shard of Heimat—as a kind of DNA trace element, which on the one hand bespeaks the irremediable shattering of that homeland, but on the other hand also its irreductible and continuing presence.10 8 Thus, Celan himself had, while still in Romania, in altering his name from Antschel to make it not immediately recognizable as Jewish, cast a veil of mystery over his origins. In a certain sense, here as elsewhere he may have “exoticized” himself as a kind of protective layer before the reductive, if not to say labeling aspects of being “tagged” or understood as an exclusively or primarily Jewish author. Certainly, the exotic and mysterious tone is the one in which Der Spiegel presents him in its 1954 cover story on Ingeborg Bachmann and the new postwar literature. In her autobiographical novel Malina, Bachmann herself portrays the figure of Celan in highly exoticized, and indeed almost Orientalizing fashion as the mysterious “man in the black coat,” who seems to come from and then transport her fictional alter ego to another realm. 9 A good starting point for such an overdue reevaluation of the early poetry of Celan is Barbara Wiedemann, Paul Antschel–Paul Celan: Studien zum Frühwerk (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1985). 10 Handbuch, edited by May, Goßens, and Lehmann, 228–29. For some initial approaches on the topic, see Klaus Briegleb, “Paul Celans Landkarte,” in Gedächtnis und Erinnerung in der Literatur, edited by Karol Sauerland (Warsaw:

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Additionally, the radical resituating of Celan along a “meridian” leading him back to the Bukovina, may have a further very interesting effect: for there is a long established discourse, both pro and contra, and, I would suggest, both equally problematic, which views Celan as a “dealer in metaphor,” as an ultra-literary poet whose imagery derives largely from imagery, as a kind of metaphor of the metaphor, and not from experience: the poet himself, by way of contrast, always insisted on the concrete referentiality of his utterance.11 And indeed, an awareness of the Bukovina, even as a shard, splinter, or DNA trace element in his work, can serve to reinforce this statement, and place Celan’s work more firmly along an axis of referentiality; or as one might also put it, serve to reinforce the demand that we understand him in the dimension of the substratum of the real that always informs his work, however daring the metaphorical arc upon which he was to later place it. Finally—and perhaps not least Widawn, 1996), 121–30; and Theo Buck “Czernowitz als geistige Lebensform,” in Literatur und Regionalität, edited by Anselm Mayer (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997), 201–9. Further far-reaching reflections on the imaginary topography of Celan, including the as it were latent and magnetic orientation of his work to Bukovina/Ukraine, may be found in Yoshihiko Hirano, Toponym als U-topie bei Paul Celan (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2011). We may perhaps add that the mother lode of all Celanean Heimatsplitter, irrevocably linking him to his origins, is his mother tongue of German, which, as the language of those origins, he steadfastly refused to abandon, in spite of all understandable pressures and inclinations to do so. Thus, the lines of the exiled poet Brecht have a particular resonance for the poet Paul Celan in this context: “Nun ist dies alles / Und ist nicht genug / Doch sagts euch vielleicht / Ich bin noch da. / Dem gleich ich, der / den Backstein mit sich trug / der Welt zu zeigen / Wie sein Haus aussah.” German is thus itself for Celan then such a shard, a surviving remnant and potential generative cell and rebuilding block of his lost home, which he carried with him through all the years of displacement and exile. 11 The question of the rather singular dimension and status of the metaphorical in Celan is indeed a rather vexed one in Celan scholarship, not least because Celan’s own work itself puts all our standard notions and received ideas of the metaphorical so strongly into question—including the notion of the “absolute metaphor” of modernism, with which it has at times been confused. On this, see Roman Jakobson, “Der Doppelcharakter der Sprache und die Polarität zwischen Metaphorik und Metonymik” [1956], in Theorie der Metapher, edited by Anselm Haverkamp (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983), 163–74; Harald Weinrich, “Semantik der kühnen Metapher” [1963] in Theorie, edited by Haverkamp, 316–39; Gerhard Neumann, “Die ‘absolute Metapher.’ Ein Abgrenzungsversuch am Beispiel Stéphane Mallarmés und Paul Celans,” Poetica 3, 1970: 188–225; George Steiner, “Das lange Leben der Metaphorik. Ein Versuch über die ‘Shoah,’” Akzente 34, no. 3 (1987): 194–212. I have myself attempted to address this problematic in Paul Peters, “Geschwindigkeiten des Wortes: Tracing Celan’s Metaphor,” Seminar 30, no. 2 (1994): 127–36.



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significantly in the current historical situation—the sharpened awareness of Celan as a poet of displacement, of a homeland and of a lost homeland, may lead us to an understanding of him also as a poet of migration and of the diasporic, at a moment when this experience is becoming ever more generalized throughout human societies worldwide and stands to become ever more so. Let us begin with a work that is—appropriately enough—extraterritorial within Celan’s oeuvre itself. The very early poem “Nähe der Gräber,” from the earliest collection Der Sand aus den Urnen, published in Vienna in 1948, a volume that Celan himself had withdrawn from circulation (because of the many typographical errors and misprints in the book), then excluding this particular poem, along with some others—several of them also quite remarkable—from the first authorized collection of his early work, Mohn und Gedächtnis (1952): Kennt noch das Wasser des südlichen Bug, Mutter, die Welle, die Wunden dir schlug? Weiß noch das Feld mit den Mühlen inmitten, wie leise dein Herz deine Engel gelitten? Kann keine der Espen mehr, keine der Weiden, den Kummer dir nehmen, den Trost dir bereiten? Und steigt nicht der Gott mit dem knospenden Stab den Hügel hinan und den Hügel hinab? Und duldest du, Mutter, wie einst, ach, daheim den leisen, den deutschen, den schmerzlichen Reim? (GW III, 20)

We may now readily surmise Celan’s reasons for excluding this early poem from the later collection: it may well at first sight seem both rather demodé in terms of the various strictures of the rival modernisms and, at a deeper and more compelling level, radically disjunct and inappropriate, indeed misplaced and fundamentally incommensurate, in the absolute scission of its naive and seemingly affirmative, indeed almost childlike tone of innocence with the enormity of its subject matter. It initially strikes one as utterly anachronistic and out of place, almost as if Eduard Mörike, the nineteenth-century Biedermeier poet of the South German countryside idyll, had suddenly taken to writing of the death camps. For the poem still seemingly has all the cloying sweetness and ingratiating melodiousesss of the early Rilke, who was the young Celan’s primary literary model and, indeed, by all accounts, a youthful personal

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obsession.12 And thus it reveals the young Celan as in some measure that which he at this time of course still was, that is to say, both the literary novice and the in some measure still largely unsophisticated and unknowing Provinzler, still trusting in traditional poetic means to evoke his contemporary theme, when that very theme had now rendered such means obsolete.13 Nevertheless, I think we now read and hear this poem rather differently, and perhaps with a different degree of openness and sensitivity to its qualities, from how it would have been read and heard by Celan’s poetic contemporaries, and perhaps even, at the time, by Celan himself. Then, there were basically two courses open to the poet: the brass tacks plain speaking prosaic discourse of the elemental and the factual of the Kahlschlaglyrik, along the lines of the later Brecht or Günter Eich’s notorious Inventur; or the rarefied hermeticism à la Mallarmé, of which Paul Celan and his Viennese friend and lover Ingeborg Bachmann were soon to become regarded as the preeminent German-language practitioners, even if this view was based in part on a serious misreading of their work. Before the strictures of either school, before the arbiters of what were then the as it were self-styled metropolitan and comme il faut standards of literary modernity of the period, an utterance such as “Nähe der Gräber” could indeed seem hopelessly dated, out of place, and incurably provincial. However, the provinces, like the margins, too can be the center: and who is to say that the form of utterance initially and spontaneously chosen by the poet to respond to an experience, and which directly arose from that experience, should not be ultimately commensurate to it? For in fact today, where the once so unrelenting strictures of the various schools of modernism have faded and lost the force of their exclusive claims, the poem strikes this reader as appropriate in its very seeming inappropriateness and commensurate in its very incommensurateness: and the innocent and naive use of language—almost as a kind of wild Brechtian estrangement—singularly fitting for the evocation of the irremediable and irrevocable loss of all innocence and naiveté, of all Weltvertrauen, of all primal trust in language as in the world, as of all belief in their once so immediate and felicitous relation. For trauma shatters our lives, so too our erstwhile frame of understanding of our lives, and what the early poetry 12 On the salient role of Rilke in the formation of the young Celan’s sensibility see Chalfen, Celan, 65 and 69. 13 For a decade later, no one would be more keenly aware of this dilemma and this problematic than was Paul Celan. See his uncompromising later statement on the need for a German language poetry which had now definitively broken with the traditional expectations of “Wohlklang” and mellifluousness. GW III, 167.



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of Celan gives us at its strongest and most telling moments is this very sense both of the “bursting of the vessel” and the shattering of the frame, still in simultaneity with that very shattering itself. Thus, the paradoxical disjunction of language and theme in this poem does in fact do justice to a deeper, underlying paradox: to, for one last time, compose the epitaph of belonging in the language of belonging and thus compose the epitaph for the language of belonging itself. For the naive and innocent poetic cadence of this spectral folk song without a folk, is not here being artificially prolonged, it is being definitively laid to rest along with the murdered mother of the poet; and the lyric elegiac epitaph for her is at the same time the epitaph for all naive folkloric song as for all naive folkloric rootedness and connectedness.14 This at once so painful and idyllic German rhyme will be the last, and I think one senses that presaged in the poem itself—that when we leave the poem, we shall also leave the world of idyllic German rhyme behind us—even without the knowledge of the whole subsequent course of Celan’s later work. And with, and within, this lost rhyme, the paradoxical, at once now impossible and yet still self-evident and deeply felt unity of Jewishness, and Jewish identity, with the revoked Heimat of the Bukovina is still palpable, in a poem where both belonging and the loss of belonging are indissolubly intertwined and inextricably conjoined, much as the mother who has now namelessly entered this earth is thus also now forever bound to it, in the very act and moment of her savage and final expulsion from it. Thus, this poem also bids farewell to the lost language of belonging as part of its more overarching and all-encompassing farewell; as there would indeed seem to be a deeper and spontaneous process of poetic engenderment, an underlying intuitive correspondence of the historical situation and of its medium of expression at work here, which is far beyond the poetic schools, and all the wisdom of the schools. For “Nähe der Gräber” is like the evanescent fata morgana of a Jewish Heimat in Eastern Europe, suspended over the abyss of its loss. As such, it is a poem truly sui generis, and, at the furthest remove from the imitative or derivative, a poem whose profound originality already creates—much like Celan’s later work—its own laws and terms of understanding. In the context, however, of that later work, and of the “cosmic” dimensions of Celan’s sense of displacement and loss, there is perhaps no

14 And indeed, the “German rhyme” would soon thereafter resurface under a very different aspect in Celan’s later celebrated poem from his early period, the Todesfuge: “der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau / er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau.” GW I, 42. In a certain sense, with very few exceptions, this poem will then indeed mark the abrupt end of the German rhyme in Celan.

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more characteristic a text than the following drawn from the poetry of his middle period, the Niemandsrose (1963): LES GLOBES In den verfahrenen Augen—lies da: die Sonnen-, die Herzbahnen, das sausend-schöne Umsonst Die Tode und alles aus ihnen Geborene. Die Geschlechterkette, die hier bestattet liegt und die hier noch hängt, im Äther, Abgründe säumend. Aller Gesichter Schrift, in die sich schwirrender Wortsand gebohrt—Kleinewiges, Silben. Alles, das Schwerste noch, war flügge, nichts hielt zurück. (GW I, 274)

For an author notorious for his hermeticism and difficulty, the poem is startlingly direct; and in fact offers, through the very force of its imagery, little resistance to an immediate appreciation and understanding. Micro- and macrocosm are united here in the wild and spinning, and as it were centrifugal trajectories of the celestial spheres as of the human heart and eyes: for the universes at the further reaches of both inner and the outer being have been loosed from their moorings and hurled into a primordial state of chaos by the historical catastrophe that has befallen the poet’s human collectivity. With the disappearance of his Heimat has come the loss of his decisive intermediary and grounding link of cosmos and the cosmic; and language itself has now become sand, trying to hold the last remaining writ and trace of all those lost faces fast. For all has now become volatilized, and is threatening to vanish in the void as in the ether. In other words, the experience of radical and absolute displacement itself becomes the new grounds upon which the poet stands, and he attempts to now ground himself in this displacement. The primary linguistic expression of this is the related circumstance, that almost from at the exact date of his departure from the Bukovina and his separation from his land of origin and birth, Celan’s speech becomes placed on the axis of the connotative, rather than the denotative: a language bereft of its traditional capacity to name in the sense of the spontaneous and assured designating of that which is real and present, but



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must now “name” in the sense of trying to evoke—and in even in a certain sense, to conjure—that which is lost and absent. In other words, it becomes placed almost wholly upon on the axis of metaphor, but metaphor as the language of exile from the name, and also as the constant chafing, protest, and resistance against this forced exile. “Alle Worte Flüchtlinge”—“all words are refugees”—in the illuminating phrase of Celan’s sister poetess and kindred spirit, the fellow Holocaust survivor Nelly Sachs.15 And so Celan’s metaphor as the language of perennial displacement and perpetual exile, is at the same time the attempt to recover not only the denotative and designatory power, but also the generative and creative power of the name. To accomplish this, however, it must perhaps ultimately seek to ground itself in something other than the air, and that “grave in the air” into which the previous life-world of Celan’s human community has—in the words of his most celebrated poem, the Todesfuge—now vanished (GW I, 41–42). For indeed, one may ask oneself if the attempt to ground oneself in pure displacement can ever be ultimately stable and successful, despite Celan’s apparent assurance, in a certain moment in his poetry, that it somehow might: IN DER LUFT, da bleibt deine Wurzel, da in der Luft, wo sich das Irdische ballt, erdig, Atem-und-Lehm. Groß geht der Verbannte dort oben, der Verbrannte: ein Pommer, zuhause im Maikäferlied, das mütterlich blieb, sommerlich, hellblütig, am Rand aller schroffen, winterhart-kalten Silben. (GW I, 290)

“Luftwurzel” might, at first sight, strike one as a characteristic Celanean neologism: but aerial roots do in fact exist in botany, as Celan, with a knowledge of plants and the botanical otherwise matched in German poetry only by Goethe, will have been aware: that is to say, a “root in the air” is in biology a very real, and not simply a fanciful, imaginary or “poetic” possibility, and Celan, in evoking it, is thus referencing this reality of the biological itself. Yet to this etheric and air-borne phenomenon he will here nevertheless immediately also associate and link the earthly and, indeed, the primordial state of the human—breath and clay—before Creation. For in the Jewish Bible, the human is created from 15 Nelly Sachs, Späte Gedichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), 188.

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clay, adamah, through the divine Word as through infusion of the ruach, or the divine breath, just as the human being biologically is the fusion of etheric—oxygen—and earthly elements, that is, “breath and clay,” also as living presence. Thus, both the Word of Genesis and Creation and the living human presence are here named as latent—though not actualized and manifest—potentialities in the poem. That is to say, much as the root bears within it as potentiality the later efflorescence and manifestation of the actual plant, the “root in the air” too still bears within it, both as poetic word and real-life phenomenon, such generative and regenerative possibility. This poetic word is here however cast, as the new space in which the speaker now moves as one who has been both burnt and banished (“Verbannte”/“Verbrannte”) in a polarized duality of winter and summer. For the speaker’s home now also resides in the etheric realm of song, and indeed of one song in particular, the beloved and popular German folk and children’s song, the “Maikäferlied,” whose complete text is the following: Flieg Käferchen flieg Der Vater ist im Krieg Die Mutter ist in Pommerland und Pommerland ist abgebrannt.16

A song of flight—a song too of childlike innocence and naiveté, as it a song of loss, abandonment, and desolation, of the orphaned, displaced child, and the loss of Heimat. It is this song, however, that remains nurturing, sustaining, and maternal, and now offers the speaker one last refuge: his remaining “summer” in the midst of winter, or more precisely, a warming abode of the motherly aspect of his “mother tongue,” as opposed to that forbidding, threatening, privative, and “winterly” aspect its syllables have now otherwise assumed. (The winters of the war years in Bukovina were very harsh—a coincidence of historical and meteorological temps—and so in constantly referencing those years and their events as winter Celan is once again not simply being metaphorical, but in this double sense still referencing reality.) Yet for the banished can a home really be found in the song that—albeit in the mother tongue—now sings exclusively of one’s displacement? “Rauscht der Brunnen . . .”—“the well murmurs.” The line occurs, as we shall see, in Celan’s later poetry, and again, one might be tempted to initially regard the reference as literary, to the world of myth and fairy 16 “Maykäfer-Lied,” in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, edited by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, Project Gutenberg, https://www.projekt-gutenberg. org/arnim/wh1/wh1235a.html.



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tale, when in fact the reference is once more to a real and historical facticity, albeit once since become as irreal as fairy tale itself, namely to the Bukovina and Czernowitz of Celan’s youth. For, as Chalfen reminds us, Bukovina was a “land of wells,” and they accompanied Celan everywhere in Czerrnowitz during his youth and childhood.17 Or as Chalfen writes in his description of the topography of the city: Der hochgelegene südliche Stadteil ist neuer und moderner als der untere am Stadtabhang. Man kommt an der rundtürmigen rumänischen Kathedrale und dem benachbarten schmucklosen rumänischen Oberrealgynmasium vorbei. Auf der gegenüberliegenden Straßenseite guckt zwischen Kastanien das Gebäude der ehemaligen Landesregierung hervor, das etwas von einem neoklassistischen Tempel an sich hat. Der kleine Franz-Joseph-Platz mit der Grünanlage sieht wie ein Vorgarten des großen Gebäudes aus. Die Fahrt geht dann den ausgedehnten Volksgarten entlang, ehe man die Endstation der Straßenbahn am südlichen Bahnhof erreicht. Heir wirkt alles schon sehr ländlich: Schrebergärten wechseln mit Sportplätzen ab, und dazwischen ziehn sich die Eisenbahngleise hindurch. Ein Schotterweg, von einzelnen stehenden Holzhäusern flankiert, führt in die Felder der Umgebegung hinaus: die Flurgasse, ein beliebter Wanderweg. Am Stadtrand sieht man in den offenen Höfen ländliche Ziehbrunnen.18

And indeed, the well, as a topographical marker of the city in general, was also a characteristic marker of the Jewish quarter: Weiter abwärts und gegen Osten liegt das alte jüdische Zentrum. Die alten moldauischen Städte kannten kein Judengetto, doch hatten sich die Juden dort angesiedelt, wo ein noch aus der Türkenzeit stammender Ziehbrunnen oder auch ein später angelegter arthesischer Brunnen die Wasserversorgung sicherten.19

And so these wells were not simply a feature of the more idyllic and bucolic landscape of Czernowitz, but played a role in Celan’s childhood, where, at a friend’s, the delights of such a Ziehbrunnen were a real attraction. For there, writes Chalfen, gab es . . . im großen Hof einen alten Ziehbrunnen, wo man sich mit Wassserschöpfen die Zeit vertreiben konnte. Es machte viel Spaß, das schwere Holzrad zu drehen, den hölzernen Eimer über 17 Chalfen, Celan, 35. 18 Chalfen, Celan, 20. 19 Chalfen, Celan, 23.

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den Brunnenrand zu heben, ihn aus dem brunnenhaus herasuzuholen und das Wasser in bereitgehaltenen Kübel zu gießen.20

So that we would seem justified in saying that where the motif of the well occurs in Celan, it does so in the role of what we have termed a Heimatsplitter, a talismanic shard of homeland, a kind of potentially still generative and regenerative DNA trace, that has remained for the poet in his time of banishment and exile. And indeed, Celan himself repeatedly thematizes the “Brunnen,” the well, in this sense in his poetry, and does this throughout his poetic career. The motif for example occurs in the poem “Oben, geräuschlos” in Sprachgitter (1958), which inaugurates Celan’s middle period, and where his language takes on a completely new rigor, and indeed kind of ascetic skepticism concerning that which poetic speech may yet accomplish, compared to the contrasting luxuriance and plentitude of lush sound and imagery which, even as it evoked terror and loss, had characterized the poetry of Celan’s first period. Here, the well seems to dissolve, much as human memory does, under the weight of ongoing separation as with the increasing distance and passage of time: (Erzähl von dem Brunnen, erzähl von Brunnenkranz, Brunnenrad, von Brunnenstuben – erzähl. Zähl und erzähl, die Uhr auch diese, läuft ab. Wasser: welch ein Wort. Wir verstehn dich, Leben.) (GW I, 188–89)

That is to say, the—once primally nourishing and sustaining element that was drawn from the well, that is, water, memory—has taken on the aspect of ephemerality, of relentless flowing, erosion, and dissolution. This danger was, interestingly enough, already prefigured in one of the earliest poems of Celan’s where the well features largely, the poem “So bist du denn geworden” from Mohn und Gedächtnis: So bist du denn geworden Wie ich dich nie gekannt: dein Herz schlägt allerorten in einem Brunnenland, wo kein Mund trinkt und keine Gestalt die Schatten säumt, 20 Chalfen, Celan, 54.



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wo Wasser quillt zum Scheine, und Schein wie Wasser schäumt. Du steigst in alle Brunnen, du schwebst durch jeden Schein Du hast ein Spiel ersonnen, das will vergessen sein. (GW I, 59)

Again, a poem of farewell in that still elegiac folkloric mode of the earliest Celan, where the ease of rhyme presages the end of rhyme, and the songlike strophic form signals perhaps less the continuation than the coming end of song. Indeed, the songlike, simple tone reminds us on the one hand, that in an age where people still sang, in moments of peril humans would often sing to assuage or overcome their fear, and that on the other hand, here, as in the children’s song of ravaged Pomerania, there is a kind of regression in Celan to that childlike sheltering and primal linguistic space that still predated loss and horror in order to initially register that loss and horror. It may, in this context, further be assumed that the “du,” the “thou” of interpellation in this early poem is in the first instance Celan’s mother (and we shall see just how close the association of the mother, as with his mother tongue so too with his motherland, i.e., the landscape of his birth, was for Celan); and that the poem now registers the primal shift in her state as that of his homeland. For she has been removed from the realm of the living to that of the dead, therefore she has now become as he otherwise never knew her. Yet her heart beats in the “Brunnenland,” the land of the wellsprings of being and identity, of home, of formative life experience, which now, however, has also been forever consigned to the realm of the lost, so that the loss of the mother and the loss of his homeland, his Heimat, were always to be for Celan in their conjunction and simultaneity so singularly and irrevocably linked. Yet that homeland with its wellsprings now still persists, the heart continues to beat, but in a realm of the unreal. And indeed, this primal shift from reality to irreality of the erstwhile “Brunnenland” may signal the very crisis, the new point of origin from which all of Celan’s later poetry will then ensue. For the fateful transition from the axis of denotation, of the role of language of designating the present and the real, to that of metaphor, of the evocation of the lost and absent, which we have identified as constitutive for Celan’s poetry, is now here negotiated and enacted in the second stanza, in what here may well in fact mark, as it were poetologically and programmatically, the primal shift to the metaphorical, the dramatic pivot and decisive turning point for all of Celan’s subsequent poetic utterance. The “thou” then, in the third stanza, enters the wellsprings of this transfigured land of the irreal; and this is for the poet now a “game”—and one is here reminded of the Schillerian notion of all aesthetics as belonging to

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the realm of play—to be forgotten in a double sense. Forgotten both in the sense that one wishes it had never come about; but forgotten also in the sense that—given those pressures of dissolution which we have seen at work in the later poem—it is, as memory, as the very title of Celan’s first volume of poetry suggests, now subject to all the ineluctable and eroding pressures of forgetting and forgetfulness. Given these pressures, and Celan’s skepticism in the face of these pressures, his later poem of the well and of the wellsprings, and of their highly significative murmuring, is all the more remarkable for the force of actualization that these still possess. The poem is drawn from Celan’s later middle period, the collection Die Niemandsrose: . . . RAUSCHT DER BRUNNEN Ihr gebet-. ihr lästerungs, ihr gebetsscharfen Messer meines Schweigens. Ihr meine mit mir verkrüppelnden Worte, ihr meine geraden. Und du: du, du, du mein täglich wahr- und wahrergeschundenes Später der Rosen—: Wieviel, o wieviel Welt. Wieviel Wege. Krücke du, Schwinge. Wir— Wir werden das Kinderlied singen, hörst du, das mit den Men, mit den Schen, mit den Menschen, ja das mit dem Gestrüpp und mit dem Augenpaar. Das dort bereitlag als Träne-undTräne. (GW I, 237)

I have had occasion in this essay to challenge the received notion of Celan’s poetry as invariably recondite and difficult to access, and have suggested that it can in fact often be powerfully immediate and startlingly direct in its imagery, as in its expression of thought and feeling. This



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poem, however, is indeed initially quite dauntingly dense with referentialities and self-referentialites, and to attempt to parse all of these in any detail or completeness would go well beyond the scope of the present paper, or indeed the capacities of its author. Let us nonetheless signal three aspects: the poem is, as so many of Celan’s are, fundamentally a poem of the epiphanic actualization of memory. It is at the same time a poetological reflection on the circumstances of that actualization, while also tracing out the steps, the process, by which this actualization is arrived at. As such, actualization is not ever to be taken for granted or assumed, but is invariably processual, often encounters and must overcome resistance, and indeed occurs in a context of its prevailing absence—and in a world indeed otherwise characterized by absence—almost as a state of grace. Thus, the present poem begins in prayer and blasphemy, two characteristic and complementary features of the Jewish faith and belief system—the blasphemous, as a form of intense personal and interpellative relation to the deity, also being, like prayer, a living relationship to the Jewish God of Creation and to the very wellsprings of belief. The knife that is mentioned also has, I believe, a relation to Jewish identity and ritual, as it would seem to reference the knife of circumcision: that knife which indelibly marks the covenant and the belonging of the male child to the Jewish collectivity. Thus, the poem is to be a ceremony that, for Celan, marks this belonging; it is to be marked by the knife of silence as that of speaking, and the speaking which emerges from silence.21 The word is deformed, crippled, yet upright in its crippling: for it has absorbed, and has had to absorb and indeed to assume, loss, damage, and mutilation. The “du,” the Thou then appears in a multiple succession that is as emphatically invocatory as it is, until the epiphany then sets in, initially rather desperate, almost floundering and helpless. The rose—as in the signal poem of the collection, “Psalm”—is the flower of realized community and commemoration. A separating distance of world and paths is overcome and the “crutch”—of crippling—takes wing. We thus arrive in the last two stanzas at the reunion of the membra disjecta of the shattered world, as at the unio mystica of past and present, of the living and the lost, which in Celan usually takes place under the sign of the recovered sense of presence, the epiphanic actualization of his primal Thou, the memory of his vanished mother. In a daring wordplay and word fragmentation that would become a recurring motif in the later Celan, and which corresponds, at the most elemental linguistic level, to that radical act of reconstitution which his poetry attempts, “Men,” the English word for the human, and “Schen,” 21 Thus, the image of circumcision stands at the center of Jacques Derrida’s highly idiosyncratic approach to Celan: Jacques Derrida, Schibboleth pour Paul Celan (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1986).

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the corresponding Hebrew word, are linked to reconstitute the German equivalent: “Menschen.” The thicket, “das Gestrüpp,” that is to say, the place off the beaten path, is a Celan self-reference for the entangled site, the “rough terrain” of memory, as is the joining of the “pair of eyes,” here not of one, but of two persons now conjoined in sight and in the gaze through the portals to the soul which the eyes classically represent. The shared tear then marks and culminates their communion.22 What is of primary importance in the present context, however, is that this process of epiphanic actualization has here been triggered by the “murmuring of the well,” as of the wellsprings of memory, experience, and identity; and that these wells and wellsprings are not metaphorical or literary in origin, but themselves have at their very source a real substratum and referentiality in the “Brunnenland” of the Bukovina: so that the poem grounds in the real, the reality not only of origin, but of the concrete place and site of origin, and this grounding in the real is here in fact the basis and very starting point of the whole poetic process. The talismanic Heimatsplitter or DNA trace element of the well here forms in fact the prerequisite for the regeneration and reconstitution of experience and memory, as of identity and self. For that self and identity cannot ultimately originate from a purely imaginary site, but must ultimately stem from a concrete, once lived and real space, and that space is and remains for Celan the Bukovina. Thus, Chalfen strikingly and memorably begins his biography of the youth of Celan with this loving description of the region as a natural landscape:23 Vom Raum der Waldkarpaten senken sich ostwärts steile Abhänge in weite Täler. Über ein leicht gewelltes Hügelland verläuft der Gebirgszug in die Ebene des Pruth-Flusses. Diese Gegend besitzt eine reiche Vegetation; oberhalb der Baumgrenze wächst das struppige Knieholz der Latsche, dichte Fichtenwälder bedecken die mittleren Höhen, und ausgedehnte Buchenwälder erstecken sich über die niedrigeren Regionen. Die Buche hat der Landschaft den Namen gegeben. Slawen und Rumänen nennen den Baum “buce,” die Umbenennung in “Buchenland,” die Deutsche und Österreicher versucht haben, wurde niemals heimisch. Menschliche Siedlungen sind in den höheren Regionen spärlich gesät, aber je tiefer man kommt und je mehr man sich der einizigen Großstadt der Gegend, dem hart am Pruth gelegenen Czernowitz, nähert, desto enger wird das Netz der Dörfer, Martkflecken und Kleinstädte.

22 The interested reader may find parallel motifs in other poems of Sprachgitter, such as “Stimmen,” “Sprachgitter,” the title poem of the collection, or “Ein Auge, offen.” GW I, 147–49, 167, 187. 23 Chalfen, Celan, 10.



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And it is therefore revealing that the perhaps most intense, poignant, and vivid evocation of the figure of the mother in Celan should also at the same time be an evocation of this landscape: ESPENBAUM, dein Laub blickt weiß im Dunkel Meiner Mutter Haar ward nimmer weiß. Löwenzahn, so grün ist die Ukraine, Meine blonde Mutter kam nicht heim. Regenwolke, säumst du an den Brunnen? Meine leise Mutter weint für alle. Runder Stern, du schlingst die goldne Schleife. Meiner Mutter Herz ward wund von Blei. Eichne Tür, wer hob dich aus den Angeln? Meine sanfte Mutter kann nicht kommen. (GW I, 19)

For this poem, which stands at the beginning of what Celan himself regarded as his authentic oeuvre, is truly remarkable in its perfect fusion of the image of his mother with the image of the land.24 But perhaps even more significative is the fact that the movement and setting of the poem are truly cosmic. And this not only in the sense that the poem reaches apparently ever further into the macrocosmic, celestial, and spheric realm, at the very moment where the microcosmic aspect of Celan’s most personal and intimate fate, the loss of his mother and of his homeland, also simultaneously comes ever nearer, looming ever larger even as it apparently recedes. Thus, after reaching into the realm of fatality, where, in a truly astrological dimension, the trajectories of the celestial and of the personal lifelines intersect, the poem culminates, in its final image, in the mother’s definitive absence, which seems at the same time literally to void the landscape; so that the aforementioned middle tier of cosmos, Heimat, the erstwhile natural and human life-world of the mother, now similarly vanishes, and is forever extinguished with her. For up to this point, at every step, she and her fate have been as linked to that landscape, as to its characteristic features and associations, in a form which is at once as inextricable and intimate, as it is at times dissonant and disjunctive: in the 24 We may signal two further interpretations of this poem that contributed to the formulation of the understanding of it attempted here: Werner Kraft, “Gedicht und Wirkung: Zu zwei Gedichten von Paul Celan,” Neue Deutsche Hefte 168 (1980): 740–45; Leonard Foster, “‘Espenbaum’: zu einem Gedicht von Paul Celan,” in Wissenschaft als Dialog: Studien zur Literatur und Kunst seit der Jahrhundertwende, edited by Renate von Hildebrand (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1969), 380–85.

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white color her hair will now never share with the leaves of the asp, one of the iconic trees of Eastern Europe, whose quivering two-colored leaves give it both a haunting and anthropomorphic quality; the yellowness her hair color once shared with the Ukraine’s flowering meadows, the rain cloud hovering over the wells, which we have also gotten to know as characteristic markers of the Bukovinian landscape, and here associated, for the first time in Celan, with her weeping; the shapeless violence that ripped open the oaken door; and finally the absence of the gentle and informing presence, which is here of a greater and more fateful force even than that nameless and engulfing violence itself.25 And it is, we would contend, this very presence of nature and of the mother, as of human subject and their encompassing indigenous life-world, which makes the poem so truly, and so tellingly cosmic. For indeed, few texts are so suited as this poem is to demonstrate the as it were cosmic status of Heimat and the loss of Heimat, of our immediate surrounding life-worlds of the natural, the familial, and the social. And, as we have suggested throughout this paper, it is the retrieval of that lost dimension that is urgently required if we are to understand this central aspect of Celan’s poetry, and perhaps never more tellingly than here. For Celan’s poem intuitively and emphatically returns us to this more fitting and commensurate understanding of the cosmic, in that it in its movement and scope once more encompasses and ripples through all these spheres, the intimate, the political, the natural, and celestial. Yet in so enshrining the image of his mother in this realm, and inscribing her as in an epitaph into the landscape of her homeland, from which she was to be so forcibly expelled, Celan also indicates that his own most personal and intimate loss is also cosmic: the simultaneous loss of a whole human and natural life-world and its system of redolent and embedding, nourishing, and sustaining personal significations. For as we have suggested, under conditions of political and cultural, and as it were symbolic stability, the cycle of life and death itself is ordered; and the most affecting personal loss or bereavement is still embedded in a whole system of reassuring signs and significations that tell us that life as we know it still goes on. The circumstances of the loss of his mother were for Celan however such, that with her, he also lost that cosmic ordering: and the very violence which put an end to her life thus also put an end to all life as he 25 Biographically, in June 1942 Celan had warned his parents of an impending sweep for deportations to the camps, urging them to come with him to a hiding place that he had found elsewhere in the city. Yet they refused and were rounded up. What their son discovered upon his return to their dwelling was thus the sealed door as sign of the violated threshold. That violated threshold marking the now forever absent mother is thus both poetry and fact—for here too, as so often, the Celanean image is firmly grounded in a substratum of the real. See Chalfen, Celan, 120.



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knew it, and its “cosmic” fabric was therefore now forever rent. A celebrated saying of the Babylonian Talmud states that to save one life is to save the world. But if, in a certain sense, through the Shoah the Talmud had been reversed, stood on its head, then so too the full import and meaning of this sentence: for it now seems that for Celan with this one life, a world too was lost. Which of course in his case is literally true, as the loss of the place of origin, the natural life-world from which he came, exactly coincided with the loss of his primary human bond, that of the person from whom he issued. In this poem of the aspen tree, as a marker of the Bukovina, and which was called “Die Mutter” at its first publication, the two losses are completely coeval, indeed they are so indissolubly entwined as to have become fused,26 just as in point of fact, throughout Celan’s poetry, the image of the human and that of the tree are so closely linked as to become almost equivalents of each other.27 But also highly significative is the fact that Celan, in his sense of Heimatverbundenheit or attachment to his Bukovinian homeland, is in no wise content that his mother should only have that “grave in the air” which he evokes for the Jewish victims in the Todesfuge; rather he here insists upon enshrining her within the earth and the natural and cultural life-world from which she and he had once both issued, the earth of the Bukovina: and retrospectively conducts with her that ceremony that was denied her and is one of the universal hallmarks of the human, the ritual of personal burial in that very land. The later Celan, however, summed up the as it were planetary scope of his loss, in a highly compressed poem of great force, precisely in that dimension that I have here proposed, namely as encompassing that “cosmic” loss of both the human and the natural life-worlds that had once surrounded him: FADENSONNEN über der schwarzgrauen Ödnis. Ein baumhoher Gedanke ergreift sich den Lichtton: es sind noch Lieder zu singen jenseits der Menschen. (GW II, 26)

It is perhaps at once fitting and supremely ironic that this poem of protest about the loss of natural and human life-worlds should itself—in reaching 26 Paul Celan, Mohn und Gedächtnis, TCA, 20–21; HKA 2/3, 156. 27 This is evident from three of the poems which are considered in this paper, “Espenbaum,” “Fadensonnen,” and “Du darfst.” One might also refer to the early poem “Landschaft,” where this particular equation—“Ihr hohen Pappeln – Menschen dieser Erde!”—is made explicit. GW I, 74.

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for the light—so closely mimic and assume the behavior of a living organism and still partake, or seek to partake, of the constitutive life-giving process on this planet, photosynthesis. Drawn by the remaining gleam of light, the uplifting and redemptive thought thus acts as the placeholder of the tree, which as the embodiment of life is still absent from this otherwise devastated landscape, where light also remains largely occluded, as in a kind of nuclear winter, and from which the “humans” too are missing, inasmuch as the songs yet to be sung now seemingly unfold beyond them. This dramatic and provocative utterance at the time gave rise to much controversy, as if Celan had fallen prey to a kind of l’art pour l’art misanthropy and nihilism.28 Leaving aside the question of whether the universal human phenomenon of song—as most typically and characteristically an event of practical and performative community—is to be adequately or exclusively understood in the dimension of the purely aesthetic, we may point out that the poem culminates, and thus grounds itself, in the evocation and referencing of the very “humans” whom it has purportedly abandoned, and makes us as readers too suddenly sense their absence as something particularly shocking, painful, and provoking. 28 See on this Janz, Engagement, 203. Indeed, we may point out that almost all the scholarly literature on this text tends to understand it in a rather rarefied, highly aesthetisized, and self-referentially poetological dimension, as if its reference to “song” were one exclusively to poetry, and indeed to Celan’s own poetry, rather than also to song as that suprapersonal performative phenomenon of community that predates and goes well beyond the undoubtedly significant, but here much too constricting frame of the aesthetic. For in my view, much like his model and predecessor in the realm of imaginative prose, Franz Kafka, Celan is at root not a poet of the recondite, but of the elemental, and remains a poet of the elemental even at his seemingly most recondite. In other words, this poem, as indeed the entire poetic project of Celan, needs also urgently to be understood in a rather more primordial existential, political, and anthropological dimension: namely that of the loss and possible restitution and renewal of human community in the face of annihilatory menace. Here, it should also not be forgotten that songs are not simply celebratory, nor are they exclusively the products of high culture, but that as forms of popular expression they also often served as mediums of collective protest and resistance, which songs Celan for example, in the case of the antifascist workers’ movement, or that of the partisans, held in high esteem. We have also had occasion in this paper to refer to the song-like origins of Celan’s beginnings, in initially addressing the tragic end of his own community. I therefore think his poem is best to be regarded as a utopian poem of prefiguring, the attempt to help create a space for the advent of such songs, as for such a—still to be created—human community, and indeed one here tentatively placed once more under the sign of life, and not lethality—that is to say, under the sign of the tree, and not of devastation. That is the central “thought” of the poem, which as it were as Vorschein anticipates, evokes, and prefigures, but is not yet itself—nor does it claim to be—the “tree.”



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But how are we to understand this felt and palpable absence of the tree as of the human? In the first instance, certainly, as the protest of the poem against the cosmic loss of the natural and human life-worlds from which it sprang, just as it now seeks to derive sustenance, as from the thread-suns’ occluded and attenuated light, from their trace elements. In this sense the referencing of the “human” in the poem is truly anthropological. For much as in the primal and archaic form of human social organization, the tribe, one’s own immediate collectivity and community are almost invariably termed the “humans,” so too here: where the human collectivity, no less than the firmament, serves as the encompassing and defining frame of one’s own, and thus, in a certain sense, of all existence: in this way illustrating once more the cosmic dimension of the human and the social. But this human as this cosmic frame have been lost to Celan, as has the natural one, that “tree,” in which that human frame was once in turn itself cosmically embedded. The poem is thus protest and lament about this loss, but here too politically actualized as warning against—in the Cold War and the arms race which defined the postwar period—the clear and present danger of nuclear annihilation, thus inscribing Celan’s own experience of the annihilatory in history into a cautionary and sobering admonition directed against this looming and unfathomably larger threat to all life on the planet.29 In that sense too, we must now get “beyond the human,” beyond that which humans have inflicted, and continue to inflict upon each other. It is thus very much a question of whether, in this poem, through the underlying gesture and the whole process of the speech-act which form it, the umbilical cord connecting it to the life-worlds of the natural and human is not in fact ultimately more reconstituted, than severed, showing Celan once more as most bound to that from which he seems most separated. We have said that in Celan, the lost life-worlds of nature and the human can no longer be “named” in the sense of being simply and denotatively designated as something empirically given and present, but rather that they must now be conjured, as something otherwise fundamentally lost and absent; and we have further stated that for this “speech magical” act of epiphanic actualization to take place, a Heimatsplitter, a shard of homeland, a trace element of the site and place of origin often proves an indispensable and necessary element. I would therefore like to conclude this essay with the discussion of a poem drawn from Celan’s very last

29 There is no doubt that Celan himself wanted his work so understood, as he explicitly said as much. However, how this authorial intention is to be evaluated in relation to that work has at times become controversial in Celan scholarship. Mosès has illuminatingly and to my mind conclusively summarized and resolved this controversy in his Approches, 96–99.

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period, the poem which opens the volume Atemwende (1967), where we can see all of these elements at work: DU DARFST mich getrost mit Schnee bewirten: sooft ich Schulter an Schulter mit dem Maulbeerbaum schritt durch den Sommer, Schrie sein jüngstes Blatt. (GW II, 11)

The poem, despite its highly encoded character, is not overly difficult to understand in the context of a basic familiarity with the Celanean mode and motifs of utterance.30 The text has a fundamentally dual structure: a present of winterly privation where the speaker, as in an arcane ethnological ritual of welcome, thankfully accepts the proffered snow, and a past of the plenitude of summer, of closeness to the living (shoulder to shoulder, “im Schulterschluss,” as the German expression goes, in solidarity and unity with the mulberry tree), which is, however, also a season, as of the presence and plentitude of the living, so here too of the plenitude and intensity of pain; for in the radical personification of the tree (and we have already observed the near identity of the human and the arboreal in Celan), which here not only moves much like Burnham wood in the pathetic fallacy of Shakespeare, as a sign of the disorder in the political realm, but also has its youngest leaf cry out, even as it, in a further expression of the still ongoing life process, itself yet sprouts a leaf. Important too—given the fact that the cognitive process of the reading of the poem, before it is one of discursive understanding, is above all initially a sensuous and affective one— is a movement from the cold of snow and winter to the warmth and plenitude of summer and, finally, to the immediate outcry of distress, so that before we can intellectually decipher its code, we initially register, at the level of its at it were sensuous impression, this foundational polarity: of the present as a white void of cold and winterly privation, where one is content to be offered snow (which, of course, in addition to being a marker of winter, is itself, in frozen form, a life-giving element, water, as well as fulfilling an insulating and protective function against winter’s otherwise potentially life-threatening properties), to that summer which now lies in the past of warmth and abundance, and of closeness to the living, but also to a surfeit of suffering and anguish. The 30 Helpful for my own understanding of the poem were: Rolf Bücher, “Erfahrenes Sprechen—Leseversuch an Celans Entwürfen,” in Argumentum e Silencio: International Paul Celan Symposium, edited by Amy Colin (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1987), 99–112; and Roland Reuß, “Schritte. Zu Paul Celans Gedicht ‘DU DARFST,’” in Paul Celan: “Atmewende,” edited by Gerhard Buhr and Roland Reuß (Würzburg: Königshäusen und Neumann, 1991), 13–33.



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poem as a process of the actualization of a site of memory, of recovery of a sunken realm of experience at once foundational and traumatic, thus becomes evident. The snow—itself a marker of remembrance of the, in a double sense, harsh winters of wartime Bukovina—has triggered this process, from which, despite its dangers, the speaker then draws sustenance. The principle of polarization—of the white void of the present winter to the fullness of the past summer—is thus the generative element of the poem, with the pained outcry of the leaf marking the transition between the two realms, and thus signaling the end of summer and the transition to the ensuing season of cold and privation. Central to this process, however, and thus disclosing itself to be in fact the main actor and subject, indeed the fulcrum of the poem, is the initially so enigmatic mulberry. A commentator has spoken of the abundance of leaves of this particular tree, which would here coincide with the intensity and acuteness, and thus abundance, here in the poem, of its distress.31 Historically, the mulberry came from the East and was introduced into the West (because it is essential for the production of silk), and thus for example formed part of the coat of arms of the house of von Hofmannsthal, the great Viennese poeta laureatus austriae, who was descended—as that part of the proud ancestral line which made him most uncomfortable—on his grandfather’s side from wealthy, and subsequently ennobled, Jewish silk merchants, so that the mulberry then formed part of the heraldic family crest of those of von Hofmannsthal, and thus of the Jewish presence, here at the very apogee and heart of Austrian poetic and cultural expression (it is not to be forgotten that Celan always thought of himself culturally as Austrian, and as a part of Austrian literature).32 The fruit of the mulberry is also proverbial for the indelibility of the stain of the juice that is derived from it: as such it figures in Ovid, in the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, as a sign of the indelibility of the grief of bereavement through the loss of the beloved, the redness of the fruit now becoming the posthumous symbol of the lovers’ abiding love.33 In Rabbinical lore, this very indelibility of the red stain of the mulberry was then used to illustrate the indelibility of the stain of blood upon the hands of Cain, after his fateful fratricide. Whether in the Old Testament the tree is being referred to, when the Hebraic root “Baka” is used, remains unclear, and is deemed by most later Biblical scholarship as unlikely. Thus 31 Hans Georg Gadamer, Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du? Ein Kommentar zu Paul Celans Gedichtfolge “Atemkristall” (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 16. 32 Thus, Hermann Broch, in his biography of Hofmannsthal, relates that the family crest was that of the mulberry combined with the Tables of the Law. Hermann Broch, Dichten und Erkennen, vol. 1 of Gesammelte Werke (Zürich: Rhein Verlag, 1955), 107. 33 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV, 55–166.

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the mulberry does not strictu sensu appear in the Hebrew bible and the translation in the Authorized Version of the relevant passages referencing the mulberry, in Psalms 84:6, 2 Samuel 5:23–24, and 1 Chronicles 14:14–15, would be therefore incorrect. However, the tree thus referred to is related to the verb for weeping (bakah), then subsequently associated, in Rabbinical commentary, to the mulberry “from the blood-like tears which the pressed berries pour forth,” and then also plays a central role in the battle of David with the sworn enemies of the Hebrews, the Philistines, that is to say, in a moment of historical crisis and endangerment for Judaism: “and let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees, thou shalt bestir thyself.” Similarly, in Jewish folklore there is the legend of the prophet Isaiah hiding from persecution in the trunk of a tree, which is sometimes said to have been a mulberry. Thus, all or some of these aspects, given the poet’s particular gift of highly significative referentialties and intertextualities, may have played a role in the choice of this particular tree.34 And yet perhaps the origin of the image and the reason for its so remarkable appearance in this poem lies, if one may say so, much closer to home. A glance at the textual history shows that in the very first moment of its inception, the tree was not yet there, and what was invoked was rather the menorah, with its seven candles, as the symbol of Judaism: “ich komme mit Sieben  / Blättern / vom Sieben-  / stamm.”35 And yet, immediately thereafter, Celan rewrote the poem in the form we know it, not with the more general Judaic imagery of the menorah, but—directly counterposed to the post-Shoahitic landscape of winterly privation, and at the heart of the preShoahitic landscape of the sensuous and vibrant plenitude of summer— with the mulberry tree at its very center. The question therefore arises: from whence does this image come? There is reason to believe that it comes from the real, and is meant to act as a signum of the real as a generative trace element and Heimatsplitter, as, like the asp, an iconic and emblematic tree of Celan’s Bukovinian homeland; that the association with the menorah as the universal code of Jewishness was for Celan not yet sufficient to commensurately express and symbolize his particular site of memory, origin, and identity, but that for this he needed this tree as the concrete marker of his and his mother’s place of origin, of “rootedness” in a specific place, as of subsequent uprootedness, which the tree, in its fleeting presence, absence, and 34 For the Judaic background, see s.v. “Mulberry,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, 16 vols. (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971–72), vol. 12, col. 515–16; s.v. “Mulberry,” www.biblicalcyclopedia.com,; s.v. “Mulberry,” Encyclopedia.com, https://www. encyclopedia.com/plants-and-animals/plants/plants/mulberry. 35 See the reconstruction of the genesis of the poem in Paul Celan, Atemwende, TCA, 6–7; and HKA 7.2, 59.



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uncanny movement, serves here to simultaneously embody. Czernowitz, or, as it is now known, Chernivtsi, has, since the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the independence of the Ukraine, also become a site of Western tourism, and one can even say of a kind of Celan tourism, as a more modest and downscale version of the Western tourism and Kafka tourism that so plague contemporary Prague. Those who come are often disappointed, for the remaining traces of the old Austrian and Jewish city have largely vanished and, to the extent that they still exist, are often hardly recognizable. The ruins of what once was Soviet and Eastern Bloc tristesse, and the current and perhaps even more invidious effects of the inroads of Western neoliberal economic devastation, have since replaced them—in that very Geschichtslosigkeit of which Celan once spoke: but as so often, this too may only add to the atmospheric melancholy and morbid fascination for the Celan pilgrims who venture there.36 One such was the Celan scholar and biographer Helmut Böttiger, who also came to Czernowitz/Chernivtsi to walk in the footsteps of Paul Celan. He writes: Unten mündet die Töpfergasse in die Bräuhausgasse, die zurückführt in die Wassilkogasse—ein Weg, den Paul Celan oft gegangen sein muß. Nach ein paar Schritten in der Bräuhaugasse stoßen wir auf einen weit ausladenden, üppig grün sprießenden Baum am Straßenrand, einen Maulbeerbaum.37

There it is: and perhaps the Celan philologist and aficionado Böttiger indeed found à la recherche du temps perdu that very thing he was looking for. As signum of the real, as Heimatsplitter and trace element, and telltale marker of the unforgotten “Brunnenland” of the Bukovinan site of origin, he may indeed have discovered, in walking the streets of today’s Chernivtsi—at the corner where the erstwhile Töpfergasse meets the former Bräuhausgasse—that hidden key to help unlock the “cosmos,” the world and poetry of Paul Celan.

36 A completely unnostalgic, but precisely for this reason perhaps highly affecting portrait of the contemporary city and the diverse remnants of its past is to be found in text and photograph in Otto Brusatti, Apropos Czernowitz (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999). 37 Helmut Böttiger, Orte Paul Celans (Vienna: Zsolnay Verlag, 1996), 50.

“Auch bei uns im fernen Transsilvanien”: The Transylvanian Saxons and the Long Shadow of the Third Reich in the Work of Bettina Schuller Raluca Cernahoschi, Bates College

P

2012, Bettina Schuller’s (1929–2019) memoir Führer­ kinder: Eine Jugend in Siebenbürgen1 (Führer-Children: A Childhood in Transylvania) is a relative latecomer to the public discussion of the relationship between the Third Reich and the Transylvanian Saxons, an ethnic German group settled in the historical region of Transylvania since the twelfth century, who made up a small but powerful economic and cultural elite of the interwar Kingdom of Romania and proved especially receptive to National Socialist ideology.2 Nevertheless, the memoir was perceived in the Transylvanian Saxon press as having broken a taboo for its unsparing portrayal of the interwar and war years in Kronstadt (Romanian: Brașov),3 the Saxon economic and cultural center where Schuller was born in 1929 and which shortly after became the seat of the National Socialist movement in Transylvania.4 The assessment of the “broken taboo” is a rhetorical gesture often employed by reviewers when describing the engagement of Transylvanianublished in

1 Bettina Schuller, Führerkinder: Eine Jugend in Siebenbürgen (Hermannstadt and Bonn: Schiller, 2012). 2 For a succinct overview of the history of ethnic Germans within the borders of today’s Romania, including the Transylvanian Saxons, see Cristian Cercel, “Germans in Romania: A Brief Historical Background,” in Romania and the Quest for European Identity: Philo-Germanism without Germans (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 18–35. 3 Hannelore Baier, “Die erbarmungslose Freiheit: Führerkinder—die Kronstädter Erinnerungen von Bettina Schuller,” Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Rumänien, January 19, 2013, https://adz.ro/kultur/artikel-kultur/artikel/ die-erbarmungslose-freiheit. 4 See Harald Roth, “Im geographischen Zentrum: Kronstadt in Rumänien (seit 1918),” in Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen: Eine kleine Stadtgeschichte (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2010), 204–29, especially 208–11.



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born authors with this facet of the Saxon past, but it is not an empty one: while this engagement reaches back to the 1980s and has led to a change in the scholarly discourse,5 acceptance at the popular level has lagged behind. Thus, Schuller’s memoir is an important addition to what Olivia Spiridon has termed the “Berichtigungsdiskurs” (discourse of rectification) in German-language literature from Romania, aimed at “Historisches, besonders Ereignisse des Zweiten Weltkrieges und der Nachkriegsjahre ins richtige Licht zu rücken.”6 Spiridon applies the term to fictional texts in which self-avowal, childhood and war memories, and the depiction of historical processes and social panoramas flow into each other.7 Although Spiridon does not discuss memoirs as part of this discourse, Schuller’s Führerkinder easily fits Spiridon’s definition and is aligned with the life writing8 of other Transylvanian-German writers born in the interwar years, such as Hans Bergel (b. 1925), Eginald Schlattner (b. 1933), and Dieter Schlesak (b. 1934). But Schuller’s work also departs from the perspective of these authors, who recount the identity journeys of male protagonists, and questions gendered assumptions about women’s experiences and historical agency. The daughter of a respected lawyer and a locally celebrated singer, Bettina Schuller was born into a world of upper-middle-class privilege, which was shattered, however, with the end of the Second World War and the expropriation, deportation, and social demotion of the ethnic German population in postwar Romania. Still, Schuller was able to study (psychology and education), after which she pursued at first a teaching career. Like many women seeking to be published in the postwar German literary network of the Republic of Romania, Schuller started out by writing for children, along with short essays for newspapers and journals. Her first 5 The work of historian Johann Böhm since the 1980s has been instrumental in this respect. For the documentations most salient to this article, see Johann Böhm, Die Deutschen in Rumänien und das Dritte Reich 1933–1940 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999) and Johann Böhm, Nationalsozialistische Indoktrination der Deutschen in Rumänien 1932–1944 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008). 6 Olivia Spiridon, Untersuchungen zur rumäniendeutschen Erzählliteratur der Nachkriegszeit (Oldenburg: Igel, 2002), 63. 7 Spiridon, Untersuchungen, 63. 8 With Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, I use “life writing” as a “general term for writing that takes a life, one’s own or another’s, as its subject. Such writing can be biographical, novelistic, historical, or explicitly self-referential and therefore autobiographical.” The term “memoir” applies to a subset of life writing, which is explicitly autobiographical and deals with a limited period of the author’s life. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 4.

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collection of short prose was published in 1970 under the title Die tägliche Straße9 (The Daily Street). She also translated from the Romanian and, during her brief tenure (1969–1971) as dramaturge for the German section of the state theater in Hermannstadt (Romanian: Sibiu), wrote plays. In 1976, she emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany, where she lived until her death in 2019, and where she produced the three texts described in this essay. Schuller was one of the champions of Schlesak’s autobiographical novel Vaterlandstage und die Kunst des Verschwindens10 (Fatherland Days and the Art of Disappearing), which set a new standard for the discourse of rectification when it appeared in 1986.11 Her own contribution to the discourse at the time was the 1988 short story “Die Beutelkultur oder Das Lied der Bewegung”12 (Kit Culture or the Song of the Movement), which, however, did not enjoy a wide reception. The story was then reprinted in Schuller’s first collection to be published in West Germany, Es muß an der Freiheit liegen (It Must Be the Freedom) from 1989,13 but the focus of that volume was on the author’s own experience after her emigration to the Federal Republic, and the story did not stand out. While Schuller had mastered the short prose form that had made publishing in 1970s Romania possible,14 it is likely she encountered difficulties finding her footing in the West German publishing world, and she remained dependent on publishers mediating between a binnendeutsche and a Transylvanian German audience, such as the Klausenburg-based 9 Bettina Schuller, Die tägliche Straße: Erzählungen und Skizzen (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1970). 10 Dieter Schlesak, Vaterlandstage und die Kunst des Verschwindens (Zürich and Cologne: Benziger, 1986). Schuller positively reviewed the novel for the literary journal Neue Literatur: Dora Bettina Schuller, “Sprache als Vaterland: Zu Dieter Schlesak, Vaterlandstage und die Kunst des Verschwindens, Benzinger Verlag, 1986,” Neue Literatur 41, nos. 3–4 (1990): 130–32. 11 The importance of the works of all three of the writers mentioned above is discussed in Edith Konradt, “‘. . . auch vor dem, was war, fürchte man sich’: Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem ‘Dritten Reich’ in drei ausgewählten Romanen von Dieter Schlesak, Hans Bergel und Eginald Schlattner,” in Deutsche Literatur in Rumänien und das “Dritte Reich”: Vereinnahmung—Verstrickung—Ausgrenzung, edited by Michael Markel and Peter Motzan (Munich: IKGS, 2003), 269–97. 12 Bettina Schuller, Die Beutelkultur oder Das Lied der Bewegung (Munich: Herp, 1988). 13 The story was subsequently published as a coda to Führerkinder. All quotations from the story are taken from that edition, details of which are given above. 14 In a publishing context in which even perceived political dissent could be dangerous, short, highly codified forms, such as essayistic fragments and poetry, were easier to get past the censors than elaborate narratives, such as novels.



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(Romanian: Cluj) Schiller Verlag, the eventual publisher of Führerkinder. The Schiller Verlag also published the 2010 volume Transsylvanien: Spielplatz der Gedanken15 (Transylvania: Playground of Ideas), a collection of twenty-three short texts, both autobiographical and fictional, arranged chronologically under three headings: “Die Kindheit,” “Nachkriegszeit und Sozialismus,” and “Emigration.” The last text under “Kindheit,” the autobiographical story “Das beliebte Spiel” is in many ways a precursor to Führerkinder and speaks to the author’s continued— and evolving—engagement with the topic. Führerkinder is Schuller’s longest published narrative, covering the author’s childhood and youth between 1936 and 1944. True to Schuller’s predilection for the essayistic vignette, however, the memoir is shaped as a series of fragments held together by random association: “Die Erinnerung nimmt nicht den geraden Weg von der Vergangenheit, der Kindheit zu mir, zum Jetzt. Sie nimmt einen eigenwilligen, mir undurchschaubaren Lauf, ohne Ahnung von Raum und Zeit.”16 This narrative procedure, which Michaela Holdenried has termed “innere oder strukturelle Fragmentarität,”17 works in tandem with the “dissoziierte Chronologie”18 to effect a “Verschiebung von der zeitlichen zu räumlichen Erfahrunsgdimensionen.”19 The spatial dimension of the text, set in Schuller’s native city of Kronstadt, is thus foregrounded not only as a repository of memories but also, in the unsparing examination by the mature narrator, as a staging place for the moral and political failures of the Transylvanian Saxons during the pre-war and war years. Limited to the spaces inhabited by upper-middle-class Saxons, the town functions as a magic circle. Just as in ritual magic, this seemingly enchanted space protects the childhood and adolescence of the narrated “I,” the 7- to 15-year-old Bettina. This spatial experience stands in contrast to the war and its suffering elsewhere, and Schuller exploits this contrast to highlight the inherent inequity in closed spaces, which protect those within at the expense of those outside. Even more importantly, Schuller’s enclosure of the narrative space allows for a detailed examination of the dangers of a community exclusively focused in on itself. In Schuller’s construction, National Socialist ideology provides the Saxons’ only external frame of reference and quickly permeates the confined space to remake Saxon into völkisch German pride.20 15 Bettina Schuller, Transsylvanien: Spielplatz der Gedanken (Hermannstadt and Bonn: Schiller, 2010). 16 Schuller, Transsylvanien, 27. 17 Michaela Holdenried, Autobiographie (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000), 49. 18 Holdenried, Autobiographie, 46. 19 Holdenried, Autobiographie, 46. 20 In reality, the triumph of National Socialist ideology in Transylvania, while swift, was preceded by heated internal debates and political ruptures. For an

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Cristian Cercel has pointed out the symbolic location of Kronstadt within Transylvanian-Saxon discourse as the “last bastion of Western civilization” but also underlined the strong relationship to Germany in Saxon self-identity.21 Schuller’s texts capitalize on the importance of both the Eastern location and the Western link in the discourse surrounding the city, as she seeks to expose the dangers of an identity predicated on a civilizing mission, in which the supposed civilizational superiority of the Saxons readily adapts to the racial superiority touted by National Socialism. The insistence on Kronstadt as a closed space is fundamental to Schuller’s project. According to the narrative of Kronstadt’s so-called Kessellage (literally: basin location), the character and fate of the town’s inhabitants is directly linked to their geographical location in a hollow surrounded on three sides by mountains: the Kronstädter Saxons are sitting in a trap, which darkens their minds and dooms them to a slow but inevitable extinction.22 Schuller uses the closed space of the city to question the inevitability of the Saxons’ demise and their self-stylization as victims of history. She acknowledges the powerful lure of an ideology promising compensation for perceived social grievances, while also pointing to the Saxons’ Verführbarkeit. For Schuller, Verführbarkeit—or the propensity for being seduced— is a choice rather than an inborn trait; it is a propensity born of decisions one makes again and again. This becomes clear in the two shorter texts in which she explores the Saxons’ Nazi past. Anticipating many of the themes of Führerkinder, the autobiographical story “Das beliebte Spiel” dramatizes the narrator’s witnessing as a 12-year-old her father’s degrading implication in a spanking game called Schinkenklopfen. The narrative represents the father’s participation in the game, which becomes a metaphor for the inner workings of impersonal social systems, as a story of allurement to which the father repeatedly submits of his own volition. In Schuller’s earliest published examination of the topic of the Saxons’ relationship to Nazism, the fictional short story “Die Beutelkultur oder Das Lied der Bewegung,” a middle-aged Saxon couple now established in West Germany allow themselves to be beguiled anew by the Nazi songs of their youth with disastrous consequences in the story’s present. The two stories also pointedly draw the magic circle of the setting tighter: overview, see Konradt, “‘. . . auch vor dem, was war, fürchte man sich,’” 269–74. 21 Cristian Cercel, “Transylvanian Saxon Symbolic Geographies,” Civilisations 60, no. 2 (2012): 83–101. 22 Cercel, “Transylvanian Saxon Symbolic Geographies,” 91. For a discussion of the motif of the Kessellage in literature, see Raluca Cernahoschi, “Die Berghütte als Heterotopie: Gesellschaftliche Neuordnung in Mihail Sebastians Der Unfall,” in Literarische Rauminszenierungen in Zentraleuropa: Kronstadt/ Brașov/Brassó in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by Enikő Dácz and Réka Jakabházi (Regensburg: Pustet, 2020), 274–85.



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“Das beliebte Spiel” is located entirely in a ski lodge in the mountains, and “Die Beutelkultur” is set in a passenger car. The extreme reduction of the space highlights the reverse side of the magic circle as a trap: in “Das beliebte Spiel,” the youths gathered for the game literally surround and detain the father, while in “Die Beutelkultur” the enclosure of the passenger car provides a falsely safe space for the two travelers but also prevents them from acting at a critical moment in the world outside.

Dangerous Closure: From Magic Circle to Trap Generally considered the first novelistic treatment of Kronstadt, Adolf Meschendörfer’s Leonore: Roman eines nach Siebenbürgen Verschlagenen (Leonore: Novel of an Accidental Traveler to Transylvania) of 1907 establishes several narrative patterns about the city, including that of Kronstadt as a trap. The novel’s protagonist, the globe-trotting Dr. Svend, is on his way from Vienna to India by way of Constantinople when he decides to take a short detour through Kronstadt. Soon after his arrival, his interest in the novel’s eponymous heroine and an accident during which he twists his ankle on the uneven pavement conspire to keep him in the small town, then located at the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Like the other accidental Transylvania traveler, Jonathan Harker, of Dracula fame, Svend is lured into a trap, and although he resolves to escape again and again, it is months before he manages to break free. His own entrapment parallels that of the Transylvanian Saxons, who, as fellow ethnic Germans, excite his interest and compassion. Svend diagnoses the Saxons as being in a historic predicament, created by the “kesselähnlichen Lage der Stadt”23 and centuries of intergroup marriage. The Saxons are trapped without possibility of escape and doomed to extinction: “In diesem düstern Kessel schmiedet jedermann Fluchtpläne wie ein Gefangener. Alle Familien sind hier miteinander verwandt, das Zweikindersystem24 herrscht wie bei allen alten, absterbenden Völkern; ebenso eine selbstsüchtige Geistesrichtung, die, so wie in Frankreich, sich schon in der unendlichen Zersplitterung und endlosen Parteikämpfen äußert. Man braucht nur einen Blick in die hiesigen Blätter zu werfen und man weiß, was diesem Völkchen den Todesstoß versetzen wird.”25

23 Adolf Meschendörfer, Leonore: Roman eines nach Siebenbürgen Verschlagenen (Bucharest: Editura Tineretului, 1967), 84. 24 Reference to a pattern of two children per (married) couple, which would not have been enough to replace the existing Saxon population, leading to its decline and disappearance over time. 25 Meschendörfer, Leonore, 84.

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As Manuel Aguirre points out in his history of the horror genre, the closed space is an important organizing principle for the way in which humans narrate their most powerful fears: At the heart of the literature of terror lies one ruling symbol. It manifests itself in haunted buildings, in labyrinths and prisons, catacombs and caves; in borders and frontiers, thresholds and walls; in the terror of the shuttered room and the protection of the magic circle; in the promise and dread of the closed door; in journeys of discovery, feats of transgression and flights from retribution. The world is defined in horror literature as space, furthermore, as a closed space.26

While Meschendörfer’s narrative is not a horror story in the usual sense, the structural parallel to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which preceded Leonore by merely ten years, and the closed space of the setting suggest a similar sense of terror at the connection between protection and captivity. While the protection of the Kessellage has enabled a unique Saxon culture to flourish, the enclosure has also created the conditions (in this case, inbreeding and infighting) that spell the demise of the community. Bettina Schuller’s Führerkinder spins this narrative thread into the twenty-first century. Perhaps not coincidentally, the cover of her memoir reads like the poster of a horror film: superimposed on a conventional black-and-white drawing of Kronstadt’s market square, with its eighteenth-century city hall and surrounding townhouses, are red and black splotches and drips which hint, through their evocation of blood and ink splatters, at a more troubled space than meets the eye. The cover’s reproduction of the central square also confirms that the setting of Schuller’s narrative does not encompass all of Kronstadt but is rather confined to the city center, in which the Saxons are in the majority and which the child Bettina can cross on foot, scooter, or bike. In addition to the market square, her experiential space is limited to the upper-middle-class houses of her parents, grandparents, and friends, the schools, concert halls, and shops which her social standing open up to her, and the streets in between. The teenager Bettina ventures only a little farther afield to swim at the city limits, where she can savor her first love with a young Wehrmacht soldier in relative privacy, or for summer work in a nearby village. The Kronstadt thus circumscribed is removed from its context as one of the largest cities of the Romanian Kingdom, where the ethnic

26 Manuel Aguirre, The Closed Space: Horror Literature and Western Symbolism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 2. Emphasis in the original.



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Romanian population far exceeded the ethnic German one.27 Recollecting the stationing of Wehrmacht soldiers in the city in the early 1940s, the narrator acknowledges the narrated “I”’s exclusionary view of the city space, which abstracts the contemporaneous social and political reality: “An die Rumänen und deren Gefühle beim Anblick der fremden Soldaten in ihrem Land dachte ich nie. Kronstadt war schließlich eine deutsche Stadt, von Deutschen erbaut. Davon zeugte die Architektur, der mittelalterliche Stil, die gotische Schwarze Kirche.”28 As Enikő Dácz has noted, Schuller reproduces here a wide-spread construct of Kronstadt as an ethnic German city, in which Romanians, Hungarians, and Jews, although positively reflected, only appear as extras.29 At the same time, this narrow focus allows Schuller to more precisely dissect the means by which Nazi ideology could infiltrate and take hold among the Saxons. The narrator equates the city with its downtown, in which as much architectural style as real estate ownership give the impression of an impermeable Saxon stronghold. The reverse side of the Saxon’s social dominance and cohesiveness is the fact that, once rooted in it, National Socialist ideology takes over: “Die Häuser in der Innenstadt gehörten fast ausschließlich Sachsen. Wenn ich als Kind durch die Straßen ging, begegnete ich auf Schritt und Tritt Bekannten. Es ging von ‘Grüß Gott!’ zu ‘Grüß Gott!’, kurz ‘Skott!’, und seit Neuem ging es von ‘Heil Hitler!’ zu ‘Heil Hitler!’. Unbequemerweise hoben wir dabei den gerade vorgestreckten Arm auf dem für solche Übungen viel zu schmalen Gehsteig. Der Gruß ‘Heil Hitler!’ klang schließlich wie ‘Heila!’” (FK, 62). The quote demonstrates both the social construction of the downtown as a Saxon space and its conversion to National Socialism. As the Nazi salute replaces the traditional, religiously-inflected greeting, it, too, spins an invisible thread from person to person across the whole space. The slightly comical image of the Nazi salute becoming downgraded to a sing-song two syllables more amenable to the Saxon dialect does not 27 Between 1930 and 1941, Kronstadt’s Romanian population swelled from roughly 19,000 to almost 50,000, while the German population increased only slightly from approximately 13,000 to 16,000. The number of ethnic Germans in 1941 was comparable to that of ethnic Hungarians (approximately 15,000). Some 2,000 Jews lived in Kronstadt in 1930; the 1948 census counted only half that number. For complete population tables, see Elemér Illyés, National Minorities in Romania: Change in Transylvania (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982), 64. See also Roth, “Im geographischen Zentrum,” 208. 28 Schuller, Führerkinder, 62. Subsequent references to the story will appear as in-text citations with the abbrevation FK. 29 Enikő Dácz, “‘Ein märchenhaftes deutsches Einsprengsel im urkräftigen rumänischen Land’ oder ‘Donauraum-Mosaik’: Im Dickicht der Memoiren,” in Literarische Rauminszenierungen in Zentraleuropa, edited by Dácz and Jakabházi, 311.

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mean the loss of its potency—on the contrary, the transformation of “Heil Hitler” into “Heila” only demonstrates the ease of its domestication into the Saxon space, the eagerness with which the Saxons replace one ideology with another.30 National Socialism is depicted as already rooted among the Saxons in the autobiographical story “Das beliebte Spiel,” set in 1941, when Schuller was twelve years old, in the mountain lodge of the Siebenbürgischer Karpatenverein (Transylvanian Carpathian Association) on the Schuler massif (Romanian: Postăvarul), a popular winter sports destination south of Kronstadt. The story recounts a single evening in the lodge during what appears to be a skiing holiday enjoyed by many of the town’s inhabitants. The focus of the story is on the interaction between the father of the narrated “I” and a group of teenage boys who are leading a spanking game, called Schinkenklopfen. (The object of the game is to hit a cloaked participant’s buttocks in such a way that he or she will not recognize the hitter. A recognized hitter becomes the next spanking target.) The narrated “I” watches with horror as her father enters the game and is slapped with increasing skill and cruelty by the youngsters, without being able to recognize the slappers and free himself, but she does not intervene. The father is finally released when the gas lights suddenly go out, and the upcoming spanker relinquishes his turn. The social order of Saxon Kronstadt is represented here on a miniature scale, as befits the shrinking of the setting from city to ski cabin. Two axes of social division are immediately apparent: one between males and females, the other between generations.31 While the young men occupy the center of the lodge—the dining room—and define it as a space of increasingly violent action, the girls are relegated to the benches on the margins, from where they offer verbal support. The young men are led by the “Kanonen,”32 whose martial designation is symbolic for their boldness both on the slopes and in hitting their defenseless target. The girls’ “rudeness,” manifested in putting their feet up on the furniture, is a symptom both of youth rebellion against the bourgeois forms of their upbringing (“es gehörte zum guten Ton, auf gute Sitten zu pfeifen und etwas rüde zu sein,” BS, 58) and of their alignment with the coarse 30 For historical documentation of this phenomenon, see Cristian Cercel, “The Relationship between Religious and National Identity in the Case of Transylvanian Saxons (1933–1944),” Nationalities Papers 39, no. 2 (2011): 161–80. Cercel comments on the relationship between the two greetings with respect to Eginald Schlattner’s debut novel, Der geköpfte Hahn (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 1998). 31 The historical background of the generational division is sketched out in Roth, “Im geographischen Zentrum,” 209–11. 32 Schuller, “Spiel,” 56. Subsequent references to the story will appear as intext citations with the abbrevation BS.



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sociability of the boys. In this space, it is a badge of honor to be considered, as the narrated “I” is, a “strammer Besen,”33 even if one is not always allowed to join the young men’s games (BS, 65). The young people are explicitly identified with Nazi ideology through their Germanic names, hairstyles, and garb. By contrast, the “old folks” (die Alten) either outright reject identification with National Socialism or cling to the forms of their own bourgeois upbringing. The narrator’s mother, who refuses to wear “Hüttenschuhe,” the “germanische—beinahe uniformmäßige—Fußbekleidung” (BS, 62), does the former. The narrator’s father, whose expensive “Alpenrosenhosen” and perfectly ironed shirt are gently mocked even by his wife, does the latter. The young people occupy the center of the lodge—the dining room—where they form a multilayered—and closed—circle. The “old folks” are segregated from the youth and inhabit a space beyond the dining room, which likewise contains a subdivision—“das kleine Zimmer für bevorzugte Erwachsene” (BS, 62). The parents of the narrated “I”—a well-to-do lawyer and an internationally connected singer— belong to this minority, and the mother successfully navigates her way to this safe haven of social privilege. It is while attempting a similar crossing through the youth space that the narrator’s father is tempted and engulfed by the game. For the father, the magic circle of youthful amusement turns into a trap—explicitly labeled so by the narrator—of mental and physical abuse. Speaking from the remove of many decades, the narrator denounces the “denkwürdiger Hüttenzauber” (BS, 58), the memorable enchantment of the time spent in the ski lodge of her youth as cover for such abuse. The failure to similarly disavow National Socialist indoctrination dooms the protagonists of Schuller’s short story “Die Beutelkultur oder Das Lied der Bewegung” to perpetuating its ill effects. Preceding both Führerkinder and “Das beliebte Spiel,” “Die Beutelkultur” also represents National Socialism as rooted within the Saxon space, although the space itself has been relocated to West Germany, reflecting the Saxons’ increasing emigration from Romania in the 1970s and 80s. The story’s protagonists are an unnamed middle-aged couple—Transylvanian emigrants who live in the Federal Republic and who are traveling by road from Bavaria toward the North Sea. During the car ride, the two reconnect by remembering and singing various Nazi songs from their youth. In thrall to the music, the woman, who is sitting in the passenger seat, fails to act when she sees

33 Literally: a “strapping broom,” here a designation of a girl seen as a stalwart comrade and accepted among the boys. Both narrator and narrated “I” seem to perceive the phrase positively and to ignore its pejorative equation of women to a tool for domestic chores, as well as a symbol of witchcraft.

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another car veering toward them and to prevent the crash that kills the occupants of the other car. Although the story is set far from the Transylvanian place of origin of the couple, their identification with it is underlined from the beginning. Before setting off, the woman inquires after the placement in the trunk of the titular “Beutelkultur” (literally: kit culture) and muses about the relationships that are enmeshed in the made-up name of the toiletry bag. The reversal of the more usual word “Kulturbeutel,” which for the woman is tainted by association with the National Socialist ideal of hygiene as a means of displaying racial superiority, is a family idiom that reconciles the historical term with an awareness of its negative connotations: Mann und Frau sagten untereinander “Beutelkultur,” weil das Wort “Kulturbeutel” mit dem “Dritten Reich” in ihr schönes Heimatland im Karpatenbogen eingezogen und somit kompromittiert war. Nein, der “Kulturbeutel” war nicht stubenrein. Das Wort klang lässig, elitär, nach frisch geduschten Herrenmenschen und wie ein Pfiff auf alles Geistige. Es war nicht schwer, einen lustigen Einfall dagegen zu setzen. Wenn man sich den Inhalt recht vergegenwärtigte, schrie dieses Wort geradezu nach Ironie, nach Überlegenheit und Distanzierung.34

Known only to her and her husband, the name acts as a linchpin between them, as well as between their past in Transylvania and their present in Germany. Although the inversion of “Kulturbeutel” to “Beutelkultur” is meant as a distancing maneuver from the Nazi ideology of their youth, the narrator calls their bluff: “Aber das war wohl nicht genug des Widerstandes gewesen . . .” (BK, 125). Like the object the couple’s neologism “Beutelkultur” designates, National Socialist indoctrination proves to be portable, smuggled along with the toiletries into the car and onto the West German Autobahn. The space of the story can be divided in two. In the first, the vehicle passes geographical markers that plot its course north and west on the map of the Bundesrepublik, such as the former Nazi strongholds of Ingolstadt and Nuremberg, the cities of Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, and Frankfurt, and the gleaming lights of the Ruhrgebiet, moving also forward in time from dusk to three in the morning. Simultaneously, however, the car also transports the couple metaphorically east to Transylvania and back in time to their youth, as their thoughts turn to the past. The interior of the car becomes a portal through which the man and the woman relive their experience in the Deutsche Jugend and the era of apparent German ascendency: 34 Schuller, “Beutelkultur,” 125. Subsequent references to the story will appear as in-text citations with the abbrevation BK.



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Aber der Siegestaumel, der sie vor nahezu einem halben Jahrhundert in seinen Bann geschlagen und verblendet hatte, ein Taumel und dennoch ausweglos streng, ja zwingend disziplinert in Aufmärschen, Gesängen, Fahnen und Fackeln, bemächtigte sich ihrer Haltung, die in den schrägen Polstersitzen unversehens immer aufrechter wurde, so als hingen lange feste Zöpfe immer noch über ihren Schultern, und als wehte sein blonder Schopf immer noch im Wind. So saßen sie da, angespannt und bereit, wie in Startlöchern. . . . (BK, 130)

The car acts as a magic circle, providing a safe space in which the couple can reconnect with each other and their distant youth. Literally enclosed and physically separated from other travelers, the man and woman find themselves in a world of their own, where they need not fear reproach for indulging in nostalgia for a problematic past. This sense of safety remains unchallenged when the two leave the car during a pit stop and meet a group of similarly aged Germans, whom they claim as accomplices: “Ob diese Frauen und Männer das Lied mit den Bomben, Bomben auf Engeland ebenfalls gesungen hatten? Gewiss! . . . Welch dunkle Brüderschaft” (BK, 132). Reframing the encounter through the lens of the songs, the two find cover behind an imagined collective guilt. But the refusal to take individual responsibility finally turns the car into a vehicle for death. Unable to stop herself from singing, the woman fails to sound the warning when she notices another car drifting toward her own vehicle, despite being able to anticipate the crash. As before, the magic circle becomes a trap, with deadly consequences.

Accepting the Price: The Motif of Verführbarkeit The magic circle/trap setting has implications for the way in which Schuller conceptualizes and represents culpability when it comes to the Transylvanian Saxons’ involvement with National Socialism. Here, Schuller reaches for the motif of Verführbarkeit, which in Führerkinder is underlined through repeated references to the story of Gretchen, the young woman beguiled and betrayed by Faust in Goethe’s drama. By claiming this figure of German high classicism as a stand-in for the Saxons, Schuller postulates a direct connection between the Saxons and the Germans. In Goethe’s story, Gretchen lets herself be seduced because it makes her momentarily happy, disregarding the high price she and others pay for that happiness. The analogy to Gretchen suggests that many Transylvanian Saxons also perceive a gain from the alliance with National Socialism and make the choice to let themselves be seduced again and

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again to further their gain. As in Gretchen’s case, the seduction is accompanied, even catalyzed, by gifts. From the first pages of Führerkinder, Germany is established as a wonderland which dazzles the Saxons with outstanding Dichter und Denker, with feats of musical and athletic performance, as well as with the wonders of modern technology, such as cars, films, photography—which arrives in Kronstadt in the form of a book of Leni Riefenstahl’s groundbreaking photographs of the Olympic Games— and traffic lights. The latter, in particular, become a symbol for the supposed civilizational divide between Germany and Transylvania. While the adults glorify them as an expression of the civilizational advancement of the Third Reich, the child Bettina is skeptical: “Konnte es solche Wunder geben? Mir schien der Polizist in Kronstadt zuverlässiger, der mitten in der Wegkreuzung zwischen Klostergasse, Langgasse, Rudolfsring und ich weiß nicht mehr genau was stand und dabei mit den Armen eindrucksvoll unmissverständliche Zeichen gab” (BK, 9). While the narrated “I” still upholds here the familiar—and unmistakably old-Austrian—sense of place against encroachment from the Reich, the Kronstadt cityscape is soon transformed by flags, uniforms, signs, and, finally, Wehrmacht soldiers, and the policeman’s arm gestures directing the traffic are replaced with the politics-steering “Heil Hitler” salute. The Saxons adopt the perceived achievements of the Third Reich and Hitler himself as their own: “Auch bei uns im fernen Transsilvanien (jenseits der Wälder) herrschte Hochstimmung. Deutschland war auferstanden wie der Vogel Phönix aus der Asche, auferstanden aus der Schmach des Versailler Friedens, aus Hunger und Arbeitslosigkeit, geführt von dem einstigen Gefreiten im Ersten Weltkrieg. Durch ihn wieder geachtet, ja bewundert: durch Adolf Hitler, den Führer” (BK, 6). The geographical distance between Berlin and Kronstadt is overcome by the conjoining of the spaces in a metaphorical marriage: “Deutschland war uns so nah, wir hatten plötzlich zu unserem Vaterland Siebenbürgen ein Mutterland: Deutschland” (BK, 18). Yet the real distance between the two spaces, and the fact that the Saxons do not experience the war in the same way as the Germans, also keeps the myth of German supremacy alive. From the safety and plenitude of their magic circle, the Saxons uphold the myth of Germany’s greatness and invincibility until the end of the war: “In welchem Jahr war das? Gab es schon Lebensmittelkarten in Deutschland? Fielen bereits Bomben auf die Städte? Waren die Gaskammern schon in Betrieb? Wir in Siebenbürgen lebten noch im Schlaraffenland, mit Schlagsahne und dergleichen. Von Bomben hörten wir zwar, aber nur nebenbei. Deutschland war und blieb das ersehnte Wunderland” (BK, 22). In Führerkinder, The Saxons’ Verführbarkeit in accepting the offer to enhance their stature with Germany’s perceived achievements is signally exemplified by the narrator’s father, a well-respected lawyer, who, despite



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lack of political involvement, flies a swastika flag, owns an expensive two-volume edition of Mein Kampf, and appears in the uniform of the Volksgruppe, a fact reinforced by a full-page illustration (FK, 47).35 The father stands in contrast to his wife, who is the most notable dissenter in the text and whose difference from other Saxons is marked both through her non-German origin (her great-great-grandparents were Spanish, possibly even Jewish) and through her association with the rarified world of the arts. She is kept abreast of critical information by her sister, Emily, who lives in Berlin and later emigrates to Tehran after her husband, who is presumably a dissident, is shot by the Nazis. Belonging to Kronstadt’s elite and able to travel and receive visitors and information from abroad, both the father and the mother are given the means to form a critical opinion of National Socialism. Only the mother chooses to do so, however, and to align herself with the city’s inhabitants of other ethnicities against the Saxons. Although she is powerless to prevent her daughter from participating in National Socialist groups and activities, the mother does counteract some of the Saxons’ most exclusionary behavior by allowing her daughter to play with nonSaxon children and by patronizing Jewish stores. This helps the narrated “I” perform her own small acts of resistance, such as the refusal to consume explicitly racist texts. The father’s Verführbarkeit and the mother’s resistance reverse the gender ascriptions suggested by the narrative tradition of Goethe’s Faust. It also asserts the domestic sphere as a space of common-sense defiance to the encroachment of Nazi ideology. This assertion is sustained in another notable episode in which the Hungarian washerwoman Julischka, one of the few non-Saxon figures to be given her own narrative and illustration (FK, 87), points out the absurdity both of Hitler’s plans to take over Europe and of the father’s trust in Germany’s superiority. “Das beliebte Spiel” likewise draws an ideological split between the narrator’s mother and father as representative of two strains of Saxon response to National Socialism. Where Führerkinder gives equal space to both parents, however, in the compressed space of the story, the focus is on the father. The structural fragmentation of the memoir is replaced in “Das beliebte Spiel” by a highly elaborate framing: The story opens with the kindling of the gas lights in the prewar ski lodge and ends with their postwar substitution with electricity. At the narrative climax, the same lights unexpectedly go out, thus releasing the narrator’s father from the game. This is a classic deus ex machina moment, which is explicitly pointed out as such in the text. Moreover, the lights go out at the precise moment at which the roughly 30-year-old “Karpatenbär,” an ambiguous character who belongs neither to the world of the teenagers nor to 35 Illustrations by Helmut von Arz.

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that of the adults and whose identification with the wild nature of the Carpathians endows him with an almost mystical status,36 joins the boys in the game and prepares to hit the narrator’s father. The newcomer uses the interruption to forfeit his turn and let the father go, but it remains unclear whether the “Karpatenbär” engineered the blackout in the first place. The character’s role as a symbolic gatekeeper is, however, cemented by his claiming of the bottle of expensive liquor the narrator’s father was carrying, which all players relinquish without protest. This elaboration of the structure sets what Gabriela Holdenried has termed a “Stilpriorität” and calls attention to the “ästhetische Auto­ nomisierung” of the text.37 With its attention to structural symmetries and plot devices, such as deus ex machina, “Das beliebte Spiel” occupies an intermediary space between the autobiographical account of Führerkinder and the fictional story of “Beutelkultur.” Although clearly based on a real occurrence in Schuller’s life, it is best read as an autobiographical short story, foregrounding the eponymous game not as a one-time occurrence and personal memory but as a paradigm for a type of system. The meaningless and cruel game, animated by its own logic, carried forward by group enthusiasm and caring nothing for the wellbeing of the players, becomes a trap for those who agree to play by its rules, as the narrator’s father does. The narrator insists that the game is an expression of the ethos of a time marked by National Socialist values: “Es war ein rapides, geregeltes und begeistertes Sich-blau-und-grün-Hauen. Ein beliebtes Spiel, das den Anforderungen der Gegenwart entsprach” (BS, 66). She also draws a parallel between the game and communism, however: “Ich sah die Hilfslosigkeit in seinen Zügen, Ratlosigkeit über dieses Spiel, das er nicht mehr verstand wie später den Kommunismus nicht, dem er zum Opfer fiel” (BS, 75). Finally, she alludes to the return of Schinkenklopfen in an unspecified present at the end of the story. Together, these passages suggest that the game is a metaphor for a larger mechanism that bends the individual to a collective but impersonal will. But the game cannot function without the father’s consent to participate, to enter and remain in it, even after the beautiful “Alpenrosenhose” is torn and he is ridiculed by the boys, as well as hurt badly enough to not 36 In Saxon literature, the image of the bear as a mediator between the natural and human worlds in the Carpathian Mountains goes back to Emil Witting’s 1931 novel Frate Nicolae (Brother Nicolae). The novel’s title, using both the Romanian word for “brother” (“frate”) and a common Romanian name (Nicolae), elevates the largest European carnivore, the brown bear, to a paradigmatic position in the symbolic brotherhood between the human and non-human inhabitants of the Carpathians. Emil Witting, Frate Nicolae, der Siebenbürgische Karpathenbär: Eine Lebensgeschichte (Hermannstadt: self-published, 1931). 37 Holdenried, Autobiographie, 49.



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be able to ski the next day. The father, whom the town’s youth address by his nickname and whom the narrator describes as “jugendlich und der Jugend zugetan” (BS, 67), is actively courting the young men’s approval. The father’s imagined camaraderie with the Saxon youth is based on the assumption of shared, inherited values: “Die alten Werte zu bewahren und weiterzugeben war die Berufung der Jungen” (BS, 72). However, the lawyer severely misjudges the foundation of the young men’s solidarity, an error that handicaps him as he tries to play the game by the rules. Still, he does not leave it out of a sense of fair play: “Mein Vater, kein Spielverderber, lachte, bereit sich den Regeln zu fügen” (BS, 68). The narrator explains the father’s predicament as a fundamental mismatch between the code of an “Ehrenmann alter Schule” (BS, 75) and that of an ideology predicated not on lofty ideals but on the brutal vanquishing of a common enemy. At the same time, he can only maintain the sense of his own rightness by agreeing to play the game to the end: “Er stand treulich zu dem Spiel, das ihm ungemäß war, stand dazu wie zu dem Kriegsspiel, dem Spiel, das seit Jahresfrist ins Enorme wuchernd der flexibel ausgleichenden Wirklichkeit—zu der das Tun und Lassen der Menschen gehört—eigenmächtig Schranken und Zwänge auferlegte, in den einzig der Tod frei, ja gierig hauste, als Notwendigkeit geehrt und herausgeputzt” (BS, 72). Although she imagines the potential for a deadly end to the game, the narrated “I” shares in the father’s fatal ethos that regards death as the right outcome: “‘Sie töten ihn!’, dachte ich. Es muss so sein” (BS, 76). Like her father, she is also very conscious of her standing among her peers and does not want to endanger it by intervening. She, too, bends to the rules set by others, accepting to pay the price for her elevation as a “strammer Besen” and for the temporary admittance into the game’s magic circle. Working in part against the narrator’s explanations of a generational divide, the closed space of the game, however, also trains the lens on the sensual aspect of Verführung and highlights the homoerotic undercurrent of male camaraderie under National Socialism. The father seeks admittance to an exclusively male circle, to which women belong only to the extent that they accept a subservient role (offering, for instance, their laps as a means to immobilize and blindfold the object of the spanking) or take on male characteristics (as denoted by the adjective “stramm”). The position the father assumes, with his head “zwischen den festen Oberschenkeln und den runden Knien von Edeltraut” (BS, 67) and his own exposed buttocks, is one of both humiliation and pleasure. The young woman’s “Schoß,” which endures the blows together with the victim, becomes one locus for these twinned emotions; the salt-and-pepper “Alpenrosenhose,” which is rent open to reveal an even more intimate part of the father’s dress, is the other. Yet while Edeltraut gives a heterosexually appropriate veneer to the exchange, it is clear that the real

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partners in it are the boys, whose pleasure in their mastery reaches a climax of “Rausch” and “Verzückung” (BS, 69). Intoxication and ecstasy are also part of the lure of National Socialism in the short story “Die Beutelkultur,” although here they are derived from the power of music. As the daughter of a professional singer,38 Schuller was particularly attuned to the propaganda potential of music. As she states in Führerkinder: “. . . Musik ist gefährlich. Sie verführt. Das wusste der schlaue Goebbels, und zu jeder neuen Offensive kam ein neues Lied” (FK, 112). By pointing out the Verführung of music, Schuller highlights the fact that it is not just the content of songs that can lead astray; the act of singing itself forges community, hides the horrors of the war, and endows the participants with happy memories: “Wir sangen drei- und sogar vierstimmig. Schöne Stunden in der Zeit eines verbrecherischen Krieges. Und ich war dabei” (BS, 74). This insight is also the premise of “Die Beutelkultur,” which is appended to Führerkinder, and in which the protagonists are metaphorically welded together through the power of song: “Sie federten auf ihren Sitzen, unerschrocken, todesmutig. Welch verrückte Lust in dem auf Bruchteile einer Sekunde genauen, gemeinsamen Einsetzen, in der Gewissheit, dass Wort um Wort fehler- und lückenlos folgte. Welch unheilvolle, beflügelnde Zusammengehörigkeit. Und der enge Innenraum schwelte von hypnotischer Verbundenheit, die Mann und Frau immer mehr verstrickte—mit der Intensität eines voll erblühten Lasters verstrickte. Wie schwerflüssiges Metall schweißte es sie zu einem einzigen singenden Block” (BS, 130). In a similar manner to the protagonists of the Schinkenklopfen game, the man and woman experience the music of their youth as a powerful, sensual force, a guilty pleasure of utmost intensity, even at the remove of four decades since their belonging to the Deutsche Jugend. Yet unlike their former selves, who, like the narrated “I” in Führerkinder were not given a choice whether to participate, the two middle-aged protagonists choose to indulge in the songs of their youth and are directly responsible for the harm this indulgence causes. Although they leave the car physically unscathed, they reveal themselves as permanently tainted by their association with National Socialism. The short story portrays the couple as equal participants in the retrieval of Nazi ideology. Yet it is the woman who initiates it, and who, unable to stop singing, is responsible for not intervening to prevent the deadly crash. The story thus underlines that 38 As Schuller documents in her memoir, Kronstadt distinguished itself as a musical center in the interwar period, with a rich assortment of ensembles and a roster of internationally renowned guests. For a brief overview, see Hans-­Eckart Schlandt, “Das Kronstädter Musikleben,” in Kronstadt: Eine siebenbürgische Stadtgeschichte, edited by Harald Roth (Munich: Universitas, 1999), 228–33.



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Verführbarkeit is a propensity of either gender, the equal-opportunity destroyer of the Saxon community.

Coming Full Circle: The Germany-Transylvania Axis Examining herself as part of the interwar generation in Führerkinder, Schuller is outspoken in her criticism of her generation’s conduct. She pinpoints herself and her peers as the agents who caused the Saxons’ postwar loss of both livelihoods and authority and their eventual abandonment of the Transylvanian space: “Unser siebenbürgisches Sachsentum hat sich dann noch wesentlich schneller verläppert, schon im Laufe einer einzigen Generation. Und ich gehöre zur Generation der Verläpperer. Das will schon was heißen nach 800-jährigem Bestehen. Nicht Türken und Tataren, nein, unsere eigene Begeisterung für Hitlerdeutschland hat unserer 800-jährigen friedlichen Heimat ein Ende gesetzt” (FK, 34). In her memoir, Schuller repeatedly demands accountability from herself, even though she acknowledges that, as a child, she had few defenses against the seductions of the propaganda permeating all areas of her life, whether in school or in the Kronstadt chapter of the Deutsche Jugend, through books, music, leisure activities, or films. It is perhaps not coincidental, then, that Schuller’s published thematization of the Transylvanian Saxons’ involvement with National Socialism starts from the greatest possible remove and proceeds in reverse chronological and spatial order, from the 1980s to the 1930s, and from postmigration space to place of origin. As Schuller documents in numerous accounts in the volumes Es muß an der Freiheit liegen and Transsylvanien: Spielplatz der Gedanken, she experienced her emigration, undertaken in 1976 as the autocratic and chauvinist tendencies of socialist Romania became abundantly clear, as both a liberation and a shock. The experience also brought to the fore the relationship between Saxons and Germans, between “German” Transylvania, on the one hand, and the Third Reich and the Bundesrepublik, on the other. Published first as a standalone in 1988, “Die Beutelkultur” engages the topic of emigration as one of reverse migration: as an ideology metaphorically compressed in a peripatetic “Beutel,” National Socialism returns to Germany with the Transylvanian Saxons. The car’s path along Hitler’s Autobahn likewise mimics the movement’s spread north and west from its original stronghold in Bavaria. A heterotopic space,39 the car unites two temporal and spatial frames, its passengers living simultaneously in the present and in the past, in Germany and in Transylvania. 39 Michel Foucault, “Des Espaces Autres,” Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité 5 (1984): 46–49.

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The space of the autobiographical story “Das beliebte Spiel” is also a heterotopia but of a different kind. As a Kronstadt in nuce, it throws into relief the city’s social hierarchies and ruptures and highlights National Socialism as a state of (self-inflicted) crisis for the older generation of Saxons. The contest between old and new ideology is further explored in the more expansive memoir Führerkinder, in which German artifacts and Nazi symbols slowly remake the city space in the image of the Third Reich. As Schuller points out, the most lasting effect of this process is the displacement of the Saxons, the loss of their place of origin. While Schuller places the responsibility for this loss on the Saxons themselves, the evocation of her home town is not free of nostalgia. Schuller’s last published text is also her homecoming, evoking an impossible space between loathing and longing.

Through an Orientalist Lens: Colonial Renderings of Poland in German Cinema after 1989 Jakub Kazecki, Bates College

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n his autobiographical travel narrative,

Berlin–Moskau: Eine Reise zu Fuß (Berlin–Moscow: A Journey on Foot), the journalist Wolfgang Büscher gives an account of his 2001 hike across Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Setting off from Berlin, and after two days of walking east to Küstrin, he arrives at the Oder River and takes the first look over the German-Polish border to the other side: Drüben war Polen. Ich saß auf dem Deich und sah zu, wie Rauch aus den beiden Schloten am anderen Ufer der Oder quoll, reich und fett wie in optimistischen alten Wochenschauen, sie stieg und stieg, die schwarze Fahne, dann fuhr der Westwind hinein und schwenkte sie weit nach Osten. Ich drehte mich nach Deutschland um, wo die letzte Sonne die mürben Ziegelsteine des Tagelöhnerhauses unten am Deich noch einmal durchglühte, bevor sie verlosch. Rauch, Wind, das niedrige alte Haus an den Deich geduckt—einen Moment lang konnte ich den Winter riechen, der drüben auf mich wartete, weit, weit drüben an anderen Ufern. Ein afrikanischer Mond ging auf, eine monströse Orange über dem Oderbruch.1 [Over there was Poland. I sat on the embankment and watched the smoke drift out of the two chimneys on the other bank of the Oder, rich and fat like in the optimistic old news reels, it rose and rose, that black flag, then the west wind came in and swept it away eastwards. I turned to face Germany, where the last of the sun made the crumbling brickwork of the day laborer’s cottage further along the edge of the embankment glow before it faded away. Smoke, wind, the low, old house crouching on the embankment—for a moment I could smell the winter that lay over there waiting for me, far, far

1 Wolfgang Büscher, Berlin–Moskau: Eine Reise zu Fuß (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2003), 8.

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away on the other bank. An African moon rose, a monstrous orange over the flat, watery landscape of the Oderbruch.]

Büscher takes the elevated position of a spectator looking east to the unknown Polish side. He accentuates the panorama using dichotomies that amplify the difference between the occidental sphere he is about to leave, the Abendland, and the orientally coded terrain on the other bank of the river. While the juxtapositions of the past and the future, summer and winter, light and darkness, are projected onto the landscape, the reference to “African moon” and “other coasts” awaiting the eager traveler place the description unmistakably within postcolonial discourse. The images of the “black flag” and the last rays of sun disappearing from view have apocalyptic connotations and suggest anarchy reigning in the east. The title of Büscher’s narrative also implies that the lands between Berlin and Moscow are nothing more than a hyphen, a nameless space between the two centers of political power, as if these were the only two that matter in the history of the region, and the only two that could provide a reference for the future experiences of the traveler: one located firmly in the West, and the other as its antithesis in the East. The orientalizing discourse framing East-Central Europe as an unfamiliar terrain that possesses an exotic allure and promises risky but potentially very profitable escapades has a long history. In his study Inventing Eastern Europe (1994), Larry Wolff points out that this perspective was adopted already by influential German and French intellectuals during the Enlightenment, including Fichte, Herder, Voltaire, and Rousseau. Western eighteenth-century travelers to Eastern Europe, who published accounts of their journeys popularized later by the leading humanists of the era, were instrumental in the process of paradigmatically orientating East-Central Europe and its people in a subordinated position to the West as an immature, underdeveloped, and uncivilized Other. Wolff, implementing Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism and his concept of imagined geographies (1978),2 recognizes their value in assessing the Western discourse on East-Central Europe and emphasizes “the construction of Eastern Europe as a paradox of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion, Europe but not Europe.”3 He argues that “Eastern Europe defined Western Europe by contrast, as the Orient defined the 2 Said describes imagined geographies as specific techniques of representation that result in othering spaces and places through invoking images, codes, and conventions that reflect power relations: “This universal practice of designating in one’s mind a familiar space which is ‘ours’ and an unfamiliar space beyond ‘ours’ which is ‘theirs’ is a way of making geographical distinctions that can be entirely arbitrary.” Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1977), 54. 3 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 7.

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Occident, but was also made to mediate between Europe and the Orient. One might describe the invention of Eastern Europe as an intellectual project of demi-Orientalization.”4 Wolff notes that the processes of the “mental mapping” of East-Central Europe through “association among the lands of Eastern Europe, intellectually combining them into a coherent whole, and comparison with the lands of Western Europe,” resulted in the establishment of “the developmental division of the continent” in which East-Central Europe ultimately took a subaltern position.5 This mental mapping created the dominant narrative framework for the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, preparing the groundwork for potential civilizing mission in Poland as Germany’s “adjacent colony.”6 In a similar vein, Kristin Kopp in Germany’s Wild East (2012) draws a link between the orientalizing view of the Enlightenment and the “discursive reinvention of Poland as colonial space”7 in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kopp’s starting point is the observation that the first edition of Paul Langhans’ Deutscher Kolonial-Atlas (German Colonial Atlas) of 1893, in addition to a map of the newly acquired German Schutzgebiete (protectorates) in Africa and in the Pacific, also included a map titled “Deutsche Kolonisation im Osten, II. auf slavischem Boden” (German colonization in the East, part II, on Slavic lands). The inclusion of the map in Langhans’ overview of German protectorates, together with a number of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century German Ostmarkenromane (novels of the Eastern Marches) that depict the Polish lands under German administration as a landscape of colonial conquest, amount to a gesture of “creation of a colonial subjectivity for the wouldbe colonizer self.”8 They lay the groundwork for narrating the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and portraying the Other as an object of future (benevolent or violent) colonial intervention.9 4 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 7. 5 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 6. Similarly, the processes of discursive invention of the Balkans by the Western European imaginary have been outlined by Maria Todorova in Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) and in Dušan Bjelić and Obrad Savić’s volume, Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). 6 Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History, translated by Sorcha O’Hagan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 154–59. 7 Kristin Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 5; See also Kristin Kopp, “Gray Zones: On the Inclusion of ‘Poland’ in the Study of German Colonialism,” in German Colonialism and National Identity, edited by Michael Perraudin, Jürgen Zimmerer, and Katy Heady (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010), 33–42. 8 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 6. 9 The German colonization in the East in the nineteenth century was founded on the idea of cultural mission of the German settlements and, starting

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Wolff, Kopp, and others,10 note the persistence with which orientalist images keep saturating contemporary Western European literature and film. “East-Central Europe has indeed provided an ideal training ground for the ideas of successive generations of Western European ‘orientalists’ up until today,” as Dariusz Skórczewski observes, attributing it in part to the “pedagogic convenience” of Europe’s division after the Second World War that permitted bundling up the ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and social diversity of the area behind the Iron Curtain.11 Taking into account the historical tenacity of the Orientalist perspective, the colonial projection of the area east of the Oder River in the aforementioned narrative by Wolfgang Büscher is neither surprising nor singular among works by contemporary German writers and filmmakers, and is, in fact, indicative of a larger phenomenon. The publication of Berlin–Moskau (2003) coincided with a surge in general interest in Germany’s neighbor in the first decade of the 21st century. This interest was spurred by the synecdochical “fall of the Berlin Wall” that stood for the political and economic transformation of East-Central Europe and the gradual integration of Poland into Western European military, political, and economic structures. These processes were punctuated by the country’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1999 and the period of Poland’s formal negotiations with the European in the 1830s, on the recurring trope of polnische Wirtschaft (Polish economy) that implied social and economic backwardness of the local population. Some scholars, among them Carroll P. Kakel, also see the Holocaust as an extension of the colonial framework established in the Enlightenment and reinforced by the narratives of German colonial expansion in the East-Central Europe in the nineteenth century. See Carroll P. Kakel, III, The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide: Hitler’s “Indian Wars” in the “Wild East” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). For more discussion on the connection between the German colonialism and the Holocaust, see Conrad, German Colonialism, 159–65. In the field of memory studies, Michael Rothberg also connects the emergence of memory of the Nazi genocide of European Jews to slavery, colonialism, and decolonization, arguing that collective memories of violent events do not compete in the public discourse but rather relate to each other dialogically. According to Rothberg, memory of the Holocaust served as a vehicle through which other histories of suffering have been articulated, but, in turn, it was also influenced by these histories. See Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 10 See W. Brian Newsome, “‘Dead Lands’ or ‘New Europe’? Reconstructing Europe, Reconfiguring Eastern Europe: ‘Westerners’ and the Aftermath of the World War,” East European Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2002): 39–62; Csaba Dup­ csik, “Postcolonial Studies and the Inventing of Eastern Europe,” East Central Europe/L’Europe Du Centre Est 26, no. 1 (1999): 1–14. 11 Dariusz Skórczewski, Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Landscape (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020), 178.

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Union (EU) between 1997 and 2002. The official accession of Poland to the EU in 2004 and the eventual abolishment of passport checks at its border with other EU countries in 2007 formalized the intensifying transborder relations after 1989. Taking these changes into account, this chapter proposes to interpret the “Eastern European turn”12 in German cinema of the last twenty-five years as an opportunity to revisit the colonial paradigm in German film productions that are set in the German-Polish border area and in Poland. The overview of the films in the first part of the chapter assists in drawing a picture of landscapes still haunted by notions of “adjacent colonization” or “inner colonization”13 of the East to the present day. Seen through an orientalist lens, the female characters coming from the East are predominantly represented by the filmmakers after 1989 as submissive, voiceless, seductive, and promiscuous. Many directors also choose Germany’s eastern borderlands as the sites of their films: the borderlands emerge here as sites of hybridity, exposed to foreign trans-border influences and crossborder movements, and subjected to cultural clashes. Such portrayal is an instrument for proposing an alternative to the processes of European identity building, for decentralizing and challenging debates about German identity. One of the most fascinating aspects of this instrumentalization of the borderlands is their shifting character over time: as they become more “European” (more integrated into the European political and administrative structures), the sites of hybridity (together with their colonial associations) relocate farther east, to Poland’s eastern border. To illustrate the shift, as well as the emerging critique of the processes of Europeanization that are often charged with neo-colonial practices, the second part of the chapter will discuss two films that offer a particularly interesting treatment of colonial tropes: Schröders wunderbare Welt (Schröder’s Wonderful World, dir. Michael Schorr, 2006) and Hochzeitspolka (Wedding Polka, dir. Lars Jessen and Przemysław Nowakowski, 2010).

12 The term “Eastern European turn” was coined by Brigid Haines to capture the increased institutional and popular attention to the authors of non-­ German origins coming from the former Eastern Bloc countries and writing from a position of a subaltern that questions the idea of a homogeneous national literature. In my view, it can also be applied to the reception of the films that provide alternative constructions of German identity oriented towards East-Central Europe. See Brigid Haines, “Introduction: The Eastern European Turn in Contemporary German-Language Literature,” German Life and Letters 68, no. 2 (2015): 145–53. 13 Robert L. Nelson, “Introduction: Colonialism in Europe? The Case against Salt Water,” in Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present, edited by Robert L. Nelson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 2.

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“Almost Exotic”: Polish Women in German Film after 1989 Since 1989, German film has reflected the changes in Germany and EastCentral Europe in a twofold way. One tendency in the cinematic portrayal of Poland and Polish characters has its roots in the colonially coded, widely recognizable image of the backward country and its citizens, a characteristic of the popular reception of Poland in German commercial media (particularly in television productions and the yellow press) until the border opening. Poland appears there as a land of thieves, heavy drinkers, and sex workers, a domain of social and economic chaos summarized by the pejorative term polnische Wirtschaft.14 What is worth noting in this context is the fact that a more permeable territorial state border after 1989, as empirical studies have shown, “has not at all led to a less rigid stereotyping between the adjacent neighbors”15 and prejudices have persisted. Cliché Polish characters make an ephemeral appearance in films such as Abendland (Nightfall, dir. Fred Kelemen, 1999), Vergiss Amerika (Forget Amerika, dir. Vanessa Jopp, 2000), Was nicht passt, wird passend gemacht (If It Don’t Fit Use a Bigger Hammer, dir. Peter Thorwarth, 2002), and Befreite Zone (Liberated Zone, dir. Norbert Baumgarten, 2003).16 Poles enter German society as seasonal (and illegal) workers, car thieves or drug smugglers, prostitutes, or, in the best-case scenario, in Heirate mir! (My Polish Maiden, dir. Douglas Wolfsperger, 2001), as a sexy mail-order bride who catalyzes a series of murders of German men. Poles, and Polish women in particular, are not readily categorized as a visible minority but are still a product of colonialist discursive practices. They are perceived 14 An example of such treatment of Poland in commercial TV are degrading Polish jokes popularized by Harald Schmidt on his hit SAT 1 show, Harald Schmidt Show, until 1997. See Margot Zeslawski, “Gar nicht lustig,” Focus 35 (August 25, 1997): 229. A recurring image of “ordinary” German citizens concerned about the wave of criminality from the East is visible in the newspapers even a decade later: see Hannelore Crolly, “Keine Angst vor dem Europa ohne Grenzen,” Die Welt, December 6, 2007, http://www.welt.de/politik/article1436505/KeineAngst-vor-dem-Europa-ohne-Grenzen.html. 15 Jörg Dürrschmidt, “‘They’re Worse Off Than Us’—The Social Construction of European Space and Boundaries in the German/Polish Twin-City GubenGubin,” Identities 9, no. 2 (2002): 125. 16 The exception are productions where the Polish characters, played by Polish actors, take a more prominent role while still being associated with Germany’s criminal underworld: Engelchen (Little Angel, dir. Helke Misselwitz, 1996), Polski Crash (Polish Crash, dir. Kaspar Heidelbach, 1993), or Ostkreuz (dir. Michael Klier, 1991), one of the first post-unification films that tie the socioeconomic transformation in the former GDR with migrant criminality interpreted as a byproduct of the expansion of capitalism to the East.

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as “not drastically Other and thus are endowed with an aura of familiarity, or of Europeanness, and yet they are not fully familiar, or European, either.”17 They are an uncanny element in the story, like the destabilizing Doppelgänger of a German character. They may pose a threat to society, either by association with criminal activities or by their alluring yet threatening eroticism that has the potential to tear the social fabric. The typical narrative solution that addresses this problem is the domestication of the female character and the resulting diffusion of any danger coming from the fear that “Eastern values” can be brought to “German lands.” One prominent example of such a narrative, aimed to appeal to younger audiences, is Herz im Kopf (Heart over Head, dir. Michael Gutmann, 2001). The film tells the story of the budding attraction between a Polish au-pair from Kraków, Wanda (played by Alicja Bachleda-Curuś), and a German teenage rebel, Jakob (Tom Schilling). The story exposes the erotic appeal of the young, dark-haired, and hazel-eyed woman from the East without the subversive effect of irony, which makes the movie almost voyeuristic. The character of Jakob, who becomes involved with Wanda, is counterpointed by the figure of Dirk (Matthias Schweighöfer), who is attracted to Polish au pairs but blames the Otherness of the women as the main reason for treating them strictly as exotic sexual conquests. Dirk’s explanation for the shallowness of his relationships is uncomplicated: his affairs are short-lived and each woman is promptly replaced by another, because “she has to go back to her native land.” What draws Jakob to Wanda is not clear (the logic of the narrative suggests that he sees his relationship with Wanda as revenge on his despised former schoolteacher who is Wanda’s employer). It is up to Wanda to submit to Jakob’s wishes and accept his rebellion without reservations: in the final scene, Wanda gives up her job as cleaner and babysitter, adopting Jakob’s view of her employment as an au pair as not worthy of his future girlfriend. The gesture of accepting the male point of view has strong colonial connotations: Jakob wins over the attractive woman on the sole value of being German, without any meaningful engagement with her or learning much about her besides the occasional conversations about the duties of an au pair and jokes about stealing Polish cars. To the audience, Wanda remains a cliché, a sex bomb defused by a socially dominant German protagonist.18 17 Valentina Glajar and Domnica Radulescu make this observation generally about the images of women from East-Central Europe in Western cinema after 1989. See Valentina Glajar and Domnica Radulescu, eds., Vampirettes, Wretches, and Amazons: Western Representations of East European Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 162. 18 An additional intertextual reference pointing to that interpretation is hidden in Wanda’s name: according to a popular Polish legend from the twelfth century and spread widely after 1945 to sustain Polish-German antagonisms, Wanda was a Polish princess from Kraków who rejected the advances of a German king

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Kris Van Heuckelom, the author of Polish Migrants in European Film 1918–2017 (2019), points out that such representational practices, which he describes as “close Otherness,” are an expression of the “ambivalent status of Polish migrant characters in European filmmaking of the past hundred years.”19 Such portrayals misdirect the question of economic challenges in post-unification Germany by refocusing it on the issues of migrant labor and criminality. Interpreted in this way, Poland’s screen presence in German cinema in the 1990s and early 2000s functions as “a repository for externalized inner-German anxieties”20 and an attempt to avoid confrontation with the disparities between East and West Germany, therefore helping to imagine a national German goal of creating Western modernity versus Eastern backwardness. The colonially coded linkage between increased Polish migration and criminal activities is particularly visible in the images emerging in the first decade of the twenty-first century and may signify “anxieties of reverse diffusion regarding undue Slavic encroachment on ‘German space’ that hark back to nineteenth-century Prussia and Germany.”21

Heimat Is Elsewhere: The German-Polish Borderlands and the Baltic Sea Coast The other tendency visible in the cinematic treatments of Poland and its citizens after 1989 manifests itself in a focus on the border areas (along the rivers Oder and Western Neisse) and the Polish coast of the Baltic Sea as geographical settings for the narratives. These films, arguably the most extensively discussed in scholarship, include a group of works released around the milestone year in the history of the EU, 2004. Kristin Kopp and who chose death by drowning over marrying the stranger and giving him her beloved land. Herz im Kopf counterpoints this trope by emphasizing Wanda’s total submission to the German. 19 Kris Van Heuckelom, Polish Migrants in European Film 1918–2017 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 7. A similar observation, related to the notion of “close Otherness,” has been made by Vedrana Veličković, who says that “to be classifiable as ‘Eastern European’ makes one Other and not quite European.” Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Imagining New Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 5. 20 Kristin Kopp, “Christoph Hochhäusler’s This Very Moment: The Berlin School and the Politics of Spatial Aesthetics in the German-Polish Borderlands,” in The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and Its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, edited by Jaimey Fisher and Brad Prager (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 298. 21 Friederike Eigler, “Introduction: Moving Forward: New Perspectives on German-Polish Relations in Contemporary Europe,” German Politics & Society 31, no. 4 (2013): 2.

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calls these productions “Polish films” to single them out among a larger artistic output of the Berlin School, one of the most influential European auteur movements emerging in the mid 1990s. The films, including Klassenfahrt (School Trip, dir. Henner Winckler, 2002), Milchwald (This Very Moment, dir. Christoph Hochhäusler, 2003), and Unterwegs (En Route, dir. Jan Krüger, 2004), constitute “a small wave of German films depicting German contact with Polish spaces and characters in the contemporary period. . . . It was as if the discussions surrounding Poland’s scheduled 2004 accession to the European Union had caused a new generation of filmmakers to consider how Polish figures and Polish space might be incorporated into their creative projects.”22 Other notable films produced around the time of the EU’s expansion that depart—sometimes fundamentally—from the aesthetic and political tenets of the Berlin School are Halbe Treppe (Grill Point, dir. Andreas Dresen, 2002), Lichter (Distant Lights, dir. Hans-Christian Schmid, 2003), and Das Lächeln der Tiefseefische (Smile of the Monsterfish, dir. Till Endemann, 2005). Among these films, productions set in the border area represent a break from the representations of Poland in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They invite the viewer into a hybrid zone of possibilities as they depict the spaces as an area of new economic chances, a new frontier that offers perspectives for a rapid upgrade in socioeconomic status but may also alter or destroy the existing social structures. The paradigm of the frontier that challenges the status quo corresponds with the notion of a colonially inscribed liminal space of self-discovery for the German characters. Paul Cooke observes in Contemporary German Cinema (2012) that “in all of these films, while the presentation of eastern Europe can be more or less positively encoded, it is always ‘other’ to Germany, always a foil for existential self-reflection, offering the spectator a reworked version of Edward Said’s Orientalism . . ., less a geographical entity than a metaphorical space through which the colonial west of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in particular could prop up its sense of superiority towards the east.”23 The engagement with Polish geographical, cultural, and social spaces is limited, and it has almost always a destabilizing effect that is ingrained in the German characters’ experience of liminality. It is not surprising in this context that, for example, the predominant visual expression of the separation from the strange surroundings becomes the cinematically overexploited metaphor of looking through a glass wall. In Halbe Treppe, the character of Chris (played by Thorsten Merten) overlooks the border area from the windows of a radio tower. After work, he 22 Kopp, “Christoph Hochhäusler’s This Very Moment,” 298. 23 Paul Cooke, Contemporary German Cinema (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012), 132.

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uses Poland as an exotic yet reachable playground for his sexual escapades with Ellen (Steffi Kühnert), sheltering himself from the surroundings by creating intimate spaces in hotel rooms and in a car, only looking outside. Similarly, most characters experience Poland’s borderlands from the enclosure of a car, divided from the unknown habitat by glass (Klassenfahrt, Milchwald). The glass window creates a transparent yet solid boundary that is not meant to be crossed even when the characters are physically present in the unknown territory; it is the transgression of the barrier that brings them into trouble and sets the narrative in motion.24 Many scholars have connected these portrayals of the protagonists’ personal crises with attempts to build an alternative model of German identity as “explicitly European rather than distinctly German”25 by mediating it in relation to Germany’s neighbors. Not only the areas along the Oder-Neisse line are featured in the German films of the 2000s as locations. The beaches of the Baltic Sea and Polish coastal towns also frequently appear in filmic narratives (Unterwegs, Klassenfahrt, Das Lächeln der Tiefseefische) that address the search for alternative German identities developing in response to the social and economic changes in post-unification Germany and its relation with emerging “New Europe.”26 Alexandra Ludewig (2006) attributes the preference for coastal locations to the observation that the filmmakers often double 24 Randall Halle in his discussion of Halbe Treppe and Lichter summarizes the narrative function of the German-Polish border, which, in my view, can be also applied to Klassenfahrt and Milchwald: “the border itself does not play a significant role; rather, Poland as a country in transformation constitutes a landscape of confusion and potential tragedy. Poland houses the social Other located across the border. Poland, unlike either France or Italy represents a place of cultural opacity; its Catholicism, its language, its people prove strangers in Europe. Historically trips to Italy have benefited the German traveler, while excursions into Poland only bring loss.” Randall Halle, “Views from the German-Polish Border: The Exploration of Inter-National Space in Halbe Treppe and Lichter,” The German Quarterly 80, no. 1 (2007): 77. 25 Gabriele Mueller, “‘Welcome to Reality’: Constructions of German Identity in Lichter (Schmid, 2003) and Halbe Treppe (Dresen, 2002),” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4, no. 2 (2006): 119. See also other studies on the creation of European identity in German post-unification film: Randall Halle, The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 113–28; and Kristin Kopp, “Reconfiguring the Border of Fortress Europe in Hans-Christian Schmid’s Lichter,” The Germanic Review 82, no. 1 (2007): 31–53. 26 The term “New Europe,” used by the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in January 2003 to describe the post-Communist countries in EastCentral Europe allied with the U.S., as opposed to “old Europe” (Germany and France), has been an expression of the same sentiment that reproduces the colonially encoded division.

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down on the liminality of such spaces: Poland’s Baltic coastline functions as a geographical frontier but also as a border area which, together with the entire Pomerania province, belonged to Germany until 1945. Ludewig sees this turn to former German territories in the east and maritime landscapes in the northeast as an attempt to redefine the notions of Heimat for post-unification Germany and the expanding EU: “The protagonists take refuge in a countryside that could not be further removed from the ahistorical, mountainous, picturesque scenery and folklore seen in many traditional Heimat films. Rather they are united in their identification with new frontiers and connotations of Heimat, which brings them to landscapes outside Germany and also, in particular, to the sea. In contrast to the traditional Heimat associations of natural, romantic idylls, the sea, as depicted in many films, stands for the rough elements of nature, for the ultimate border.”27 Relocating the narratives to the coast also means envisioning an alternative to the models of German post-unification identity centered around the “reimagined and re-imaged” capital city proposed by a number of Berlin-centered post-Wende films.28 In the films that travel to the periphery, far from the official centers of power of the new “Berlin Republic,” the choice of a peripheral location signifies a rejection of advanced capitalism and commodified culture. It can also be read as a polemic with the ethos of the political and economic developments in Germany and the countries of East-Central Europe, prevailing at the turn of the century, fixated on images of new constructions and narratives of progress and success. Klassenfahrt, for example, depicts a group of high school students from Berlin who travel to the Polish border town Międzyzdroje on the Baltic Sea coast for an obligatory week-long school trip. The German teenagers are feeling displaced, not only because of their forced relocation to unfamiliar surroundings, whose linguistic and sociocultural codes they cannot decrypt. Their displacement is amplified by the sense 27 Alexandra Ludewig, “A German ‘Heimat’ Further East and in the Baltic Region? Contemporary German Film as a Provocation,” Journal of European Studies 36, no. 2 (2006): 160. See also Alexandra Ludewig, “Screening the East, Probing the Past: The Baltic Sea in Contemporary German Cinema,” German Politics and Society 22, no. 2 (2004): 27–48. 28 “Remembering and reimagining the city went hand in hand with re-imaging it.” See Brigitta B. Wagner, Berlin Replayed: Cinema and Urban Nostalgia in the Postwall Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 14. For a more extensive discussion about the films in which Berlin can be read as a metaphor for post-unification Germany, see, among others, Rob Burns, “Picturing the New Berlin: Filmic Representations of the Postunification Capital,” German Politics & Society 33, no. 1 (2015): 159–71; David Clarke, “In Search of Home: Filming Post-Unification Berlin,” in German Cinema since Unification, edited by David Clarke (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), 151–80.

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of necessity to be successful after high school graduation and entrance into adulthood, to achieve “something special,” as one of the characters, Isa (Sophie Kempe) nebulously formulates. The hitchhiking trip back to Berlin, attempted by the main character, Ronny (Steven Sperling), starts like a promising road movie but ends with an inexplicable car crash and a return to the hotel in Poland, as if the narratives of personal discovery and progressive transition into adulthood have lost their constructive power. The pier featured in the long final shot of the film brings the crisis of identity to a visual point: the pier can be seen as an absurd, incomplete bridge that does not lead anywhere and does not connect anything.

Blooming Landscapes in the East: Schröders wunderbare Welt as Critique of Neo-Colonialism Michael Schorr’s Schröders wunderbare Welt (2006) approaches the question of the processes of the emergence of the “Berlin Republic” and of European identity-building quite differently, clearly rendering them as emanations of neo-colonialism. In Schorr’s movie, set in the Dreiländereck in German Lower Silesia where the state lines of Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic meet, the project to build a tropical holiday resort finds a large American investor, who has seen “promising economic potential” in the border area with Poland and the Czech Republic.29 One of the inspirations for the film was a local news item from May 2004 that a similar project, including a golf course, a hotel with marina, and an underwater park, was planned at the Berzdorfer See, a lake located south from Görlitz/Zgorzelec. At the time of the filming in 2005, a water park named Tropical Islands Resort, located 50 kilometers from the southern boundary of Berlin, had attracted almost a million visitors since its opening in December of the year before. Both real stories are manifestations of the repurposing of defunct industrial or military areas in the former German Democratic Republic with the aim to reinvigorate the eastern regions of Germany beset by high unemployment and rural depopulation. Similarly to the fictional tropical resort Lagunenzauber in the film, which was supposed to bring tourists to a decommissioned lignite strip mine that would be flooded and turned into a local summer attraction, the real-world tropical water park near Berlin was housed in a former airship hangar in a redeveloped Soviet military air base. Schorr, however, turns the modern tales of regional success into a disaster story: Frank Schröder (Peter Schneider), a young employee of Paradise Corporation in Berlin, convinces his boss, John Gregory (Jürgen Prochnow), to invest in the new tropical resort in Tauchritz, Schröder’s 29 “Schröders wunderbare Welt—Ein Film von Michael Schorr,” http:// www.schroederswunderbarewelt.de/de/.

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hometown. The investment should also create a chance for multinational cooperation between three prominent figures in the border area: Frank Schröder’s father and Tauchritz’s mayor, Theo (Karl-Fred Müller), the Czech Milan Janáçek (Igor Bareš), and the Pole Jerzy Krukowski (Stanisław Jaskułka). Everything goes well until the investor, who has a soft spot for hunting, takes up an offer to track a pack of wolves. Wigbert Wolf (Gerhard Olschewski), Theo’s brother-in-law and a nationalist who dreams about Silesia belonging to Germany, thereupon uses this opportunity to turn the investor against the locals and torpedo the entire project. Schröders wunderbare Welt makes a clear case that such ambitious undertakings in the former GDR, or other post-Communist countries of East-Central Europe, supported by state politicians and backed by development funds from the EU, are, in fact, a product of an Orientalist mindset. The film suggests that the attempt to overcome the existing local networks (and animosities) and to follow the institutionally encouraged pattern of regional and trans-national cooperation leads to failure. It happens precisely because this pattern is deemed better for the residents of the region than anything that the local population could propose or has already developed. In the tri-point area as portrayed by Schorr, the borders are de facto abolished. In the area around Tauchritz, natural geographical divisions (like rivers or mountain ranges) are nowhere to be seen: the Cinescope camera looks over the silent valleys in an inclusive panorama or a bird’s-view shot, and the characters move freely between the three countries—and from town to town—and know each other well. Although it was shot on the actual location a few years before the Schengen Agreement that abolished passport checks between the EU member states (in December 2007), Schröders wunderbare Welt carefully omits any instance of border crossing, as if borders had never existed there. However, the borders are re-drawn for the purpose of the projected tropical paradise simply because they are needed. The division between countries needs to be first created and then overcome in a regional effort. It is a reenactment (and a mockery) of the ideological project of removing the borders between the old and new EU states and starting an international initiative. In the film, they are brought into existence only on an amateurishly designed miniature model of the region, as a mock replica of large-scale EU-supported projects, with national flags stuck in the clay for better orientation. During his business pitch to Krukowski, Frank also uses a hand-drawn map of the project featuring the same elements, with the addition of arrows pointing to the capital cities of the three states, Berlin, Warsaw, and Prague, the centers of political power that officially promote the transborder cooperation between the local communities. Both representations create a satirical comment on divisions set arbitrarily, according to the national paradigm. The model of the Lagunenzauber, the Magic Lagoon, is used once more as a cake made out exotic fruits

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and coconut, prepared for the celebration of the arrival of the politicians and the investor. This appearance of the edible model drives the director’s point home: Theo literally sticks his finger in the sweet cake that is a metaphor for the future European funds. Similarly, the language of European unification is reduced to buzzwords, as in the presentation of the future tropical paradise conducted by the driving force of the investment, Frank, to his uninspired father, mayor of Tauchritz: “Alles nachhaltig, verträglich, ökologisch, und so weiter . . . Leute ab sofort müssen in größeren Dimensionen denken: global, international, grenzüberschreitend” (Everything will have a lasting effect, it will be agreeable, ecological, and so on . . . from now on, people have to think on a larger scale: global, international, border-crossing).30 The ideological and linguistic project of removing the borders and starting an international initiative is reduced to a forced performance, staged in the joint effort of the three mayors, a necessary show played for the purposes of potential future investment in the area. The scene draws a vision of the united European region at the peripheries of Germany as an improved version of a colony, in which there is “kein Terror, keine Flutwellen” (No terror, no freak tides and tornadoes, 20:25): that is, a dream, a tropical holiday destination for Europeans, only better. The ease with which Frank convinces the American Gregory, and then the mayors, of the new project, also lies in their dreams of colonial dominance. The investor responds positively to Frank’s deliberate choice of phrases that evoke Wild West/Wild East associations in the EnglishGerman idiom: “There is a remote region in southeastern Germany where I originated. And the reason for me to present my idea is . . . also . . . it’s very remote, always cold, nothing. Some say, they have even seen . . . wolves” (12:01). “I know the . . . Bürgermeister . . . den Häuptling . . . I know the chief. I am the son” (5:22). Similarly, while building a Turkish hammam in his basement, Theo daydreams of regaining his status as powerful man in the eyes of his wife and mother-in-law (“Es gibt Inseln—da sind Männer mit Bäuchen die Könige!” [There are islands where men with beer bellies are chiefs!, 9:42]) and of being adored as a white man by young Pacific Islander women. At work in the power plant, Krukowski spends hours staring at the coral reef screensaver on his computer, which he does not know how to operate, and avoiding his overprotective wife Hanna (Stanisława Celińska). Janáçek’s ambition is to become the host of the tournament Grabstejn Open, because he associates playing golf with status and power. The tropical-paradise dream that unites them is a male fantasy.

30 Schröders wunderbare Welt, 20:21. Subsequent time codes are given in the body of the text.

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The act of reaching out to connect over the border is desired by the paradigm of European cooperation but it is displaced in time and unnecessary. The description of the new construction site by Gregory, in which the “former enemies unite to create a great project that will bring prosperity and freedom to the people of this wonderful place” (1:21:40) is a mockery of the political speeches of the Kohl era, especially of his famous “blooming landscapes” of the new German lands.31 In contrast to Helmut Kohl’s optimistic speech, however, Gregory’s imagery is outdated by over a decade and displaced in an area devastated by heavy industry. In this place, old factories stand like abandoned ruins in the landscape that changed the connotation of the phrase “blooming landscapes”: namely, as deindustrialization of the region where nature slowly takes the upper hand. The investor, a second-generation Russian-American, operates on the level of perceiving borders as frontiers separating malevolent people, an impression that is not corrected but amplified by the locals presenting him with a machine gun to face “the beast in all of us” (1:22:30) and staging the hunt. Gregory is ambiguous: he represents the blissful intervention from the top (investment) and the dangers of imposing a perspective from the position of economic or political power. His attire and the elements of military vocabulary in his language, as well as the simplified employment of the survival of the fittest principle, are incompatible with the non-invasive, live-and-let-live characters of the residents. Ultimately, Gregory is disappointed with the unwillingness of the local men to follow his lead: “Europeans! Bunch of sissies, as always.” His insulting attitude, replicating the sentiments and divisions of the Cold War era, corresponds with Nataša Kovačević’s observations about the reification of post-Communist East-Central Europe as a neo-colonial civilizing task undertaken by the European Union and North America. Kovačević captures the imbalance of power and underlying idea of inclusion/exclusion that depends on the subject’s subordination: “Impossibility of dialogue, unidirectional flow of directives and their acceptance as necessary for

31 “Durch eine gemeinsame Anstrengung wird es uns gelingen, Mecklenburg/Vorpommern und Sachsen-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Sachsen und Thüringen schon bald wieder in blühende Landschaften zu verwandeln, in denen es sich zu leben und zu arbeiten lohnt” (Through our joint efforts, we will soon succeed in turning Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia back into blooming landscapes in which it is worth living and working). “Fernsehansprache von Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl zum Inkrafttreten der Währungsunion, 1. Juli 1990,” Chronik der Mauer, https://www.chronikder-mauer.de/material/180417/fernsehansprache-von-bundeskanzler-helmutkohl-zum-inkrafttreten-der-waehrungsunion-1-juli-1990.

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emancipation from economic or cultural ‘inferiority’ typically defines a colonial or a proto-colonial relationship.”32 In addition, the film seems to counterpoint the imposed act of redrawing and then abolishing of the borders by the notion of Heimat. The viewer can hear the statement “once a Silesian, always a Silesian” on a few occasions when the statement effectively disarms any frustration and differences between Germans, Poles, and Czechs brought about by their forced cooperation. The most important element of Silesian identity as depicted by the film is the Catholic faith, and the Catholic character of the region is stressed visually in several interior shots that feature portraits of the Pope and crucifixes on the apartment walls of the main characters, who also meet in the local church to discuss the details of their agreement. In the last two centuries, the Catholic Church bore a distinctive perspective that recognized ethnic differences in the region (in which borders were redrawn many times) but, at the same time, did not recognize ethnicity as instrumental in developing a national identity. Therefore, the characters are depicted first as Silesian (with German as lingua franca) and then as representatives of national groups, while the distinctive elements are treated as marginal: the director uses them to introduce subversive humor by playing with the expectations of the viewers. Thus, the national stereotypes are reduced to innocent quirks and treated with stereotypesubverting humor (in the case of the Pole Krukowski, for instance, the film pokes gentle fun at his low technological culture and fascination with uniforms). Occasionally, the conflicts between the three national groups reappear during the hiccups in cooperation, in the form of swearing at unorganized Slavs, fascists, and Second World War aggressors. They seem absurd and belated in time, a residue of state propaganda practices until 1989 and, again, a reenactment of the colonially coded Iron Curtain division of the continent. The conflicts live mostly in the musings of the old nationalist Wolf, the son of a Waffen-SS soldier. The danger lying in the revanchist character of Wolf’s stories is disarmed by his inept actions. In a way, Wolf’s displacement in time catches up with the present day: his dream of Silesia without borders is already realized. His attachment to the former great Silesia, paradoxically, saves the day, that is, he saves Tauchritz from the investment that would inevitably change the place: his attempts to sabotage the cooperation only bring the three mayors closer, and his final trick to delay the agreement by sending John Gregory on an overnight wolf hunt gives the locals time to realize that they do not need an exotic project in order to cooperate. This realization is sealed by the common trip to the hospital to witness the birth of a new citizen of the region, Janáçek’s child. 32 Nataša Kovačević, Narrating Post/Communism: Colonial Discourse and Europe’s Borderline Civilization (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 2.

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Schröders wunderbare Welt optimistically depicts the borderlands as a site of true hybridity that should be left to (human, local) nature, untouched by neo-colonial ideological projects. The characters’ habitat, the valleys and mountains between Tauchritz, Bogatynia, and Grabstejn, is depicted as inclusive rather than exclusive: the area sucks in the incomers landing at the bus stop like a Bermuda triangle but, in exchange for the separation from the outside world and the willingness to accept the quirks of the locals, provides the visitors with personal and professional fulfillment. Frank’s neighbor in Berlin and his romantic interest, talent manager Maria (Michaela Behal), arrives here and enthusiastically explores the local music scene on the lookout for new voices. Only the intruders who are not willing to accept the status quo, such as John Gregory, are rejected: after the failed overnight hunt, he gets lost in the fog and enters a golf course guarded with a scythe by Karel, Janáçek’s employee (Jan Unger), a modern Silesian grim reaper. While Schröders wunderbare Welt proposes a view of the borderlands as devoid of natural boundaries, the notion of a natural boundary between Germany and Poland reflects the paradigm of a frontier, a product of the colonial discourse that implies the opportunity to push forward, explore the new land, and benefit, economically or socially. The risk connected with this type of border crossing is quite significant: the escapades on the other side are intrusions into the unknown beyond the German comfort zone. Several directors have pointed out in interviews that the German-Polish borderland constitutes a space that offers unique possibilities for creating a captivating story by introducing the elements of chance and social instability and therefore undermining the predictability of the story.33 In contrast, the borderland presented by Michael Schorr is a place where there is no dangerous other side. The real danger lurks in the assumption that the borders are frontiers that have to be overcome. Schorr offers viewers the idea that the Magic Lagoon, a symbol for the border-crossing projects of the European Union, is something foreign and intrusive to the character of the region, but also something that is displaced in time: a neo-colonial practice that works on the assumption that the region is open for exploration and exploitation, and that its main characteristics are emptiness and backwardness.

33 For example, Christoph Hochhäusler makes this comment about the set­ting of Milchwald: “Man hat ja erstmal so eine Offenheit, da könnte alles passieren” (You’ve got such an openness anything could happen there). Frieder Schleich, Milchwald: Interview mit dem Regisseur, Milchwald DVD Extras (Filmgalerie 451, 2004).

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Here We Go Again: Hochzeitspolka and the Cinematic Europeanization of Poland Lars Jessen and Przemysław Nowakowski’s Hochzeitspolka (2010) is a rare example of a film narrative that takes a German protagonist to the new peripheries of the European Union after its expansion in 2004. Almost completely ignored in the critical reception and scholarship on German film, Hochzeitspolka is an intriguing take on the Orientalist perspective on Poland, moving the limits of Europe to the now external border of the EU and highlighting the conditions for what Milica Bakič-Hayden calls “nesting Orientalisms,”34 the “subjectivational practice by which all ethnic groups define the ‘other’ as the ‘East’ of them; in so doing, they not only orientalize the ‘other,’ but also occidentalize themselves as the West of the ‘other.’”35 The setting of the story can be seen as a mirror image of the German-Polish borderland settings in films (such as Lichter) made just five to seven years earlier: this time, Poland’s eastern border serves as the external wall of “fortress Europe,” keeping away migrants from Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries east and southeast of Poland. The film poster promises a “eine hochprozentige Komödie aus dem wilden Osten” (High-proof comedy from the Wild East) that tells the story of Frieder Schulz (Christian Ulmen), the frontman of rock-cover band Heide Hurricane, who decides in his early thirties to abandon the group’s motto “once rock-and-roll, forever rock-and-roll” and take the opportunity of a lifetime to become the director of a new manufacturing factory in eastern Poland. Three years later, Frieder is on his way to marry Gosia (Katarzyna Maciąg), intending to settle down in the town of Trudno, at the Polish-Ukrainian border. A day before the wedding, his old buddies from Heide Hurricane, Knack (Jens Münchow), Paul (Lukas Gregorowicz), Jonas (Fabian Hinrichs), and Manni (Waldemar Kobus), together with Frieder’s old flame Ines (Alexandra Schalaudek), visit him in Poland and disrupt the wedding celebrations, showing little respect for Frieder’s self-conceived role as a well-regarded employer and member of the local community. Already at the outset, the film plays with the expectations of the viewer: it is not immediately clear in which country Frieder is supposed to pursue the new career opportunity. The opening scenes create layers of colonial tropes that subvert each other and multiply possible readings. Frieder’s father does not want his son to take the new job, wrapping his 34 Milica Bakić-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (1995): 917–31. 35 Dušan I. Bjelić, “Introduction: Blowing Up the ‘Bridge,’” in Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation, edited by Dušan I. Bjelić and Obrad Savić (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 4.

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warnings in blatant Orientalist rhetoric: “Das ist viel zu gefährlich . . . dafür willst du dein Leben riskieren? Denk darüber nach: fließendes heißes Wasser, feste Straßen, medizinische Versorgung, Sicherheit—all diese Dinge sind doch nicht selbstverständlich. Das wird noch Jahrzehnte dauern, bis sie da so weit sind. Draußen auf dem Lande haben sie doch nie mal eigene Toiletten. Da kannst du dir wer weiß was holen. . . . Im Grunde ist das ein wildes Land” (This is too dangerous, you want to risk your life? Think about it: running hot water, solid roads, health services, safety—all these things should not be taken for granted. It will take decades until they reach that over there. In the province, they don’t even have their own toilets. You can contract something there. . . . All in all, it’s a wild country, 1:30) The next shot still leaves the viewer guessing. The title “Three years later” projected against thick forest is accompanied by dramatic rhythms of African drums transitioning into polka music. Next, three border guards in full camouflage and with faces painted black machete their way at the “Polish Eastern border.” The group leader, Native American Rich (Tim Sikyea), tracks illegal immigrants. He seems to know the terrain better than the local soldiers and schools them from a position of authority: “I am here to defend your country against illegal immigrants. Those folks are out there somewhere behind those trees just waiting to immigrate. And to stop them, you got to know how they think, you got to know how they feel, you gotta be inside, in the enemy” (2:57). The introduction of a Native American character is a subversion of the motif of the Westward Expansion in North America and an ironic reversal of power relations, but it is not the invention of the film creators. The character of the tracker Rich is based on border guards belonging to the group of the Shadow Wolves, an elite all-Native American unit of the US Customs Service that patrols a section of the US/Mexico land border in southern Arizona. Members of the unit have worked together with the border police in the new EU member states since 2004, including training Polish border guard officers on how to track illegal migrants crossing Poland’s eastern border.36 Similarly to the figure of the American investor in Schröders wunderbare Welt, Rich is seen by Poles and Germans as the last instance asked to provide solutions, but can be perceived by the viewer as a reminder of the versatility and replicability of colonial practices. The story of Frieder’s wedding with Gosia is, on one hand, a story of an individual rite of passage, characterized by the three phases (separation,

36 Podlaski Oddział Straży Granicznej, “Tropiciele z Arizony szkolili funkcjonariuszy Straży Granicznej,” Podlaski Oddział Straży Granicznej, August 16, 2017, https://podlaski.strazgraniczna.pl/pod/aktualnosci/23565,Tropiciele-zArizony-szkolili-funkcjonariuszy-Strazy-Granicznej.html.

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liminality, and incorporation)37 that mark Frieder’s transition from his life in northwestern Germany to eastern Poland and from his anarchic rocker days to middle-class corporate career. On the other hand, the viewer can be inclined to interpret it as a (arguably simplistic) metaphor for the paradigmatic position of Poland in the context of its accession to the EU, a kind of rite of passage of a country going through the bureaucratic admission procedures: from the separation from Western European organizations until 1989, through the period of liminality as the almost exotic Other in the role of “candidate country” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to the mostly positively coded incorporation into the structures of the EU by the end of the decade. Various elements of the film hint toward this interpretation. One example is the blue and yellow balloons at the wedding, the colors of the EU, that adorn the room, complementing the red-white (Poland) and black-red-gold (German) themes of the two hearts of the central display. In addition, the young couple move together into a newly constructed house. Like the unfinished building in Milchwald that has been read as a metaphor for post-unification German identity construction, Gosia and Frieder’s house is just being renovated and is full of construction materials, unpacked boxes, and covered furniture. Also, fragile and unfinished as it is, the German-Polish union resembles a marriage of convenience rather than a real love story. Gosia, asked by the priest Piotr (Paweł Tucholski) to name what she loves in Frieder the most, replies that he is a “bardzo odpowiedzialnym człowiekiem” (very responsible person, 9:46), in the context of Frieder offering the factory workers a significant raise. Frieder states that he admires Gosia because she is “offensichtlich . . . natürlich sehr . . . sehr schön” (obviously very pretty, 10:18), phrasing his affection in terms of erotic conquest and the elevation of his status as a male. Jessen and Nowakowski use the canvas of rituals at the Polish wedding as an occasion for the presentation of Frieder and Gosia’s engagement and the connection between Germany and Poland as a materialistic transaction, starting from the individual display of the wedding presents at the party and concluding with the offering of one last dance with the wife-to-be that can be bought by any male guest at the wedding. Other elements in the story also speak to an interpretation that showcases the latent mercantile character of the relationship. The owner of the factory (and Jonas’ father) treats the Polish workforce instrumentally and is willing to relocate the manufacturing to Ukraine because of the lower labor costs, which would effectively cripple the local economy and destroy the community. However, the most symbolic expression of the German economic dominance and materialistic culture is the joke played on the German visitors. The night before the wedding, someone puts 37 See Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

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Jonas’ BMW on top of an empty monument pedestal with an engraved inscription to the Red Army “liberators.” In this way, the BMW, a symbol of German technological advancement and industrialization, becomes an impromptu tribute to German economic power and replaces the statue devoted to the Soviet occupier. After 1989, Poland removed hundreds of memorials erected after the Second World War thanking the USSR soldiers for freeing Poland from Nazi occupation, because they were seen as a symbol of foreign occupation. Placing the car on the pedestal is not only a prank but also alludes to the status of the Germans as new colonizers. However, the economic neo-colonialism needs to be silenced in the name of the upcoming celebration: the scene in which the families of the bride and the groom pose together in a studio for a wedding photograph against the backdrop of a bucolic landscape, while arguing about the big difference between Germany and Poland in terms of apple prices, is also a nod to a difference between official images of the amicable relations within the EU family and the tensions and unsolved conflicts simmering under the surface. The explosion of mutual accusations and verbal and physical assaults fueled by stereotypes is imminent and follows a predictable scenario. Frieder’s German buddies, looking down on the locals, provoke a series of intoxicated run-ins with them. One Polish wedding guest has not been paid for his work on the construction site of the Potsdamer Platz a decade ago and blames the German guests for it and another is ready to discuss reparations for the Second World War, while Manni, Paul, and Jonas answer with accusations of the Poles’ inability to govern themselves, invoking the Enlightenment-era trope of polnische Wirtschaft in need of a strong Western hand. The drunk Germans, eventually kicked out of the wedding hall and chased by the Poles, run for their lives toward the Ukrainian border. It is there, at the outside border of the EU, where the story of Hochzeitspolka culminates. In an ironic twist on the stereotype, the Germans steal a Polish car and drive to the very end of the road, to the border sign. The scared Germans could run over the border; there is nothing that would stop them from disappearing into the forest, yet the car swerves just before the border sign and crashes in the ditch. As Olivia Landry notes, an automobile crash in cinema is an act of destruction of a capitalist commodity and takes the viewer to the limits of movement and space. It also “becomes a means to opening up the film to something new and yet unknown—to a future.”38 Hochzeitspolka shows us a glimpse into the future as the narrative bounces off the border line and returns to Trudno to conclude in a solution to all conflicts. As all misunderstandings 38 Olivia Landry, Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema (Bloom­ington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 154.

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between the Germans and the Poles are played out to their violent extremes, the path to reconciliation has been opened. There is even a chance of a common future for Gosia and Frieder. Jessen and Nowakowski spin their tale of the Europeanization of Poland between the Itzehoe-Heide area at the German North Sea coast and the Polish-Ukrainian border, “1163 [Kilometer], laut der Navi” (1163 km away, according to the GPS, 38:09), connecting the two liminal points as if there were nothing else in the East. Washing the GermanPolish dirty laundry is limited to the territory of the new EU. As the creators of Hochzeitspolka seem to suggest, loosening up (with help from high-proof alcohol) and facing the prejudices and stereotypes may be the best way to ensure mutual respect and to “Westernize” the “Eastern Europeans.” Since 1989, there has been a paradigmatic shift in the way German films depict Germany’s neighboring country and its people. These representations span from envisioning the Polish-German borderlands and Polish-speaking areas as colonially coded spaces of expansion and potential (yet dangerous) exploitation, to showing the western boundaries of Poland as places of creative hybridity and productive marginality that influence the cultural centers of Germany and, finally, to cinematic relocation of the exotic and threatening Otherness to Poland’s eastern peripheries. Observing the trajectory of Orientalist thought in German cinema after 1989 in regard to Poland, it is not an exaggeration to assume that cinematic manifestations of “nesting Orientalisms” will still be at work in German films in the years to come, relocating their focus farther East.39 It seems, however, that looking at contemporary Poland through an orientalist lens is losing its appeal to German filmmakers and audiences in recent years, as if the process of “normalization” and “Westernization” of Poland has found, like in Hochzeitspolka, its happy ending.

39 See, among others, Erbsen auf halb 6 (Peas at 5:30, dir. Lars Büchel, 2004) or Trans Bavaria (dir. Konstantin Ferstl, 2012), or Ausgerechnet Sibirien (Lost in Siberia, dir., Ralf Huettner, 2012), in which travel to Russia captivates the filmmakers’ imaginations, or the recent film depicting Russians working out their cultural differences with Germans, Ziemlich russische Freunde (Fairly Russian Friends, dir. Esther Gronenborn, 2020).

The Nazi Ghost and the Sinti Woman in Kerstin Hensel’s Bell Vedere (1982) Ernest Schonfield, University of Glasgow

A

specter was haunting the German Democratic Republic in the 1970s and 1980s: the specter of right-wing violence and a resurgence of neo-Nazi activity. Despite the most extensive denazification measures having been pursued in the Soviet occupation zone after 1945, there was more continuity than the authorities would have cared to admit.1 The founding myth of the GDR as an antifascist state and the repressions of the Stalinist period meant that the GDR’s reckoning with Nazism had its limits.2 The reintegration of low-level Nazis took precedence over radical transformation, and some former Nazis became leading functionaries, not only in the Federal Republic but also (to a lesser extent) in the GDR.3 Jan Foitzik estimates that, in 1954, 32.2 percent of all civil servants in the GDR were former members of National Socialist organizations.4 Ideologically, the SED drew on a Marxist-Leninist reading of fascism, which understood it as an economic problem resulting from capitalism; they believed mistakenly that, having nationalized industry and reeducated their citizens, they had eliminated fascism and racism in the GDR. This was not the case.5 Among other things, the official designation of the Berlin Wall as an “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall” (antifascist defense wall) meant that the existence of right-wing extremism

1 Mary Fulbrook, Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 211. See also Timothy R. Vogt, Denazification in Soviet-occupied Germany: Brandenburg, 1945–1948 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 2 Konrad H. Jarausch, “The Failure of East German Antifascism: Some Ironies of History as Politics,” German Studies Review 14, no. 1 (1991): 85–102. 3 Harry Waibel, Diener vieler Herren: ehemalige NS-Funktionäre in der SBZ/DDR (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011). 4 Jan Foitzik, ed., Sowjetische Interessenpolitik in Deutschland 1944–54: Dokumente (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012). 5 Harry Waibel, Der gescheiterte Anti-Faschismus der SED: Rassismus in der DDR (Frankfurt am Main: PL Academic Research, 2014), 11.

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in the GDR was taboo.6 However, racist violence erupted in Erfurt in August 1975. Algerian contract workers were attacked in their residence by a mob of between 150 and 300 people; the Stasi arrested 57 of them.7 Whenever such racist attacks occurred, the East German authorities would claim that the perpetrators were a small minority of “criminal” or “antisocial” elements who were acting under the influence of Western media or agents.8 In the 1980s, however, the GDR authorities observed an increase in right-wing extremist activity. On November 13, 1985, swastikas were found painted in a barracks of the NVA and on October 17, 1987, thirty neo-Nazis attacked a punk rock concert at the Zionskirche.9 In 1988, right-wing militants in East Berlin set up “Bewegung 30. Januar” (Movement of January 30), the date of the Nazi power seizure in 1933; and on February 1, 1990, the neo-Nazi “Nationale Alternative” party was founded in East Berlin.10 The end of the GDR saw a surge in right-wing activity, which culminated in the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of August 1992.11 The GDR’s incomplete reckoning with the legacy of National Socialism was explored by canonical authors such as Heiner Müller and Christa Wolf. However, even they did not address the resurgence of neoNazi activity in the GDR. Neo-Nazi violence in the GDR of the 1980s was an uncomfortable fact, but it was also an explosive topic that artists and writers avoided, as it was unlikely to get past the state censors. Kerstin Hensel, born 1961, is a notable exception to this rule. In her work of the early 1980s, she persistently thematizes the threat of neo-Nazi violence in the GDR. This article focuses on Hensel’s most haunting early play, Bell Vedere (1982), about a Nazi ghost who tries to incite three men to murder a Sinti woman. The Sinti are a group of Roma who have lived in Germany

6 Gordon Charles Ross, The Swastika in Socialism: Right-Wing Extremism in the GDR (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2000). 7 Rainer Erices, “Pogromstimmung in Erfurt: ‘Gebt sie uns heraus, wir wollen sie hängen,’” Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk Thüringen, November 15, 2017, https://www.mdr.de/thueringen/mitte-west-thueringen/erfurt/alltagsrassis mus-in-der-ddr-100.html. 8 Waibel, Der gescheiterte Anti-Faschismus der SED, 9. 9 Bernd Wagner, “Vertuschte Gefahr: Die Stasi & Neonazis,” Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, January 2, 2018, https://www.bpb.de/geschichte/ deutsche-geschichte/stasi/218421/neonazis. 10 Rand C. Lewis, The Neo-Nazis and German Reunification (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 25–26. 11 Neo-Nazi violence has occurred in Western regions of Germany too, e.g., the pipe bomb attack in Düsseldorf station in July 2000, which targeted Jewish immigrants.

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since the fifteenth century.12 The name derives from Sindh, a region they are said to have originated from, in what is now Pakistan.13 Bell Vedere addresses two topics that were largely taboo in GDR literature: residual fascist tendencies and the genocide against Sinti and Roma. Hardly surprising, then, that the play was not approved by GDR cultural officials. It was never produced or published, but it can be accessed in the archives of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, together with the rejection letters Hensel received—one of which will be considered later on, in the final section.14 Based on archival research, this paper explores Hensel’s unpublished “ghost play” Bell Vedere and its taboo themes, the fascist legacy and violence against Sinti and Roma.15 It considers Bell Vedere as an important intervention into the critical tradition of the ghost genre in German literature between 1930 and 1990. Gero von Wilpert’s 1994 study examines ghosts in the work of Erwin Strittmatter and Marie Luise Kaschnitz, among others.16 However, the full extent of this tradition in the mid-twentieth century has yet to be reconstructed, as it also includes works by Brecht, Huchel, Aichinger, Bachmann, and Müller.17 Ghosts and hauntings also feature in the work of writers from the former German Democratic Republic after 1990, and they have proven to be an effective way to engage with the double legacy of the two German dictatorships. Catherine Smale argues that hauntings in Christa Wolf and Irina Liebmann “reveal the potential for the present

12 Lorely French, Roma Voices in the German-Speaking World (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 7. 13 Simone Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR: Alltag einer Minderheit,” in Markus Hawlik-Abramowitz and Simone Trieder, Sinti in der DDR: Alltag einer Minderheit (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2020), 6–7. 14 In Kerstin Hensel’s Vorlass in the Kerstin-Hensel-Archiv in the Akademie der Künste Archiv und Bibliothek, Robert Koch Platz, Berlin. I would like to thank Kerstin Hensel and the Archive of the Akademie der Künste for their kind permission to include quotations from Bell Vedere and from a publisher’s letter in this article. 15 I would like to thank the German Academic Exchange (DAAD) for funding my two-month research stay at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Arbeitsund Forschungsstelle Privatbibliothek Christa und Gerhard Wolf, in the autumn of 2018. I would also like to thank Birgit Dahlke, director of the Christa Wolf library at the HU, for her support and hospitality during my research visit. 16 Gero von Wilpert, Die deutsche Gespenstergeschichte: Motiv, Form, Entwicklung (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1994). 17 The tradition also includes, for example, Bertolt Brecht’s narrative poem Die drei Soldaten: Ein Kinderbuch (1932), Ilse Aichinger’s short story “Seegeister” (1953), Peter Huchel’s poem “Die Schattenchaussee” (1967), Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina (1971), and Heiner Müller’s Germania Tod in Berlin (1971).

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and the future to be scarred by similar losses and traumatic experiences.”18 This also applies to Heiner Müller’s final play, Germania 3: Gespenster am toten Mann (Germania 3: Ghosts at the Dead Man, 1995), and several of Volker Braun’s post-Wende poems, as Karen Leeder has shown.19 Heiner Müller had already engaged with the ghost genre in his play Germania Tod in Berlin (Germania Death in Berlin), first published in 1977 with the East German Rotbuch Verlag. Taking her cue from Heiner Müller, perhaps, Kerstin Hensel was the only East German author to engage intensively with the ghost genre before 1990. Hensel’s early works, like those of Heiner Müller, convey a series of visceral, unsettling experiences, deploying grotesque imagery as a means to engage with the grotesque character of German history.20 This article argues that Bell Vedere adopts the supernatural horror genre in order to suggest a continuity between the unresolved violence of the Nazi past and ongoing right-wing extremism in the present day. The play implies that there is a strong causal link between the genocide against Sinti and Roma of the 1940s and racist violence in the 1980s. While the GDR authorities sought to dismiss neo-Nazi activities as a “Randerscheinung” (marginal matter), for Hensel in the eighties they were central concerns. She depicts Nazi figures and neo-fascist behavior patterns as spectral presences which constantly threaten to erupt into present-day violence. Again and again, the familiar fabric of everyday life of the GDR is rendered uncanny by the intrusion of extreme violence against individuals who are “othered” in various ways. This occurs for example in “Stinopel,” a short story written in 1988 about a young man, Mäxi Mühe, who is encouraged by his Mephistophelian friend, Henry “der Höllenjunge” (Henry the Hell boy), to murder his wife Gretel (who dreams that she is a Jewess called Else).21 Hensel produced three dramas in the early 1980s featuring Nazi ghosts in the present-day GDR, all of which are available in the archives of the Akademie der Künste in typescript form. The focal point of this article is her third drama, Bell Vedere (1982), because of the compelling 18 Catherine Smale, Phantom Images: The Figure of the Ghost in the Work of Christa Wolf and Irina Liebmann (London: MHRA, 2013), 172. 19 Karen Leeder, “‘Nachleben’: Volker Braun and The Death and Afterlife of the GDR,” in German Life and Letters 63, no. 3 (2010), Special Issue: “The GDR Between Conformism and Subversion,” edited by Pól O’Dochartaigh: 265– 79; Karen Leeder, “‘After the Massacre of Illusions’: Specters of the GDR in the work of Volker Braun,” New German Critique 116 (2012), Special Issue: “Transformations of German Cultural Identity 1989–2009,” edited by Anne Fuchs and Kathleen James Chakraborty: 103–18. 20 On this theme in Heiner Müller, see Mirjam Meuser, Schwarzer Karneval: Heiner Müllers Poetik des Grotesken (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019). 21 The story was published a decade later in Neunerlei (1997).

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way in which it inscribes present-day ethnic violence, connecting it explicitly to the Nazi genocide of the 1940s. Here is a brief summary of action of the three plays, which form a series. In Die apokalyptische Hochzeit (The Apocalyptic Wedding, revised version, 1982), two Nazi soldiers, Fritz and Michel, emerge from the left luggage lockers of the ruined Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, itself a “Geisterbahnhof” (ghost station). The two revenants explore the forests and graveyards of East Germany in an attempt to get their hands on the atom bomb and start a nuclear war.22 In Karzinom (Carcinoma, second version, 1981), Professor Becherling, the chief surgeon of a provincial East German clinic, performs fatal surgery on his patients. It is then revealed that he is a war criminal who conducted experiments on female prisoners during the Second World War. He was born in 1850, which makes him over 130 years old.23 In Bell Vedere (1982), four characters are told to travel to a spa resort, the titular Bell Vedere. They are: Helfried Canditz, a party secretary; Horst Wünsch, a Volkspolizei-Angestellter (police employee); Freddy, a rebellious schoolboy; and Lilita, a Roma woman. They never get to Bell Vedere, and the holiday soon becomes a nightmare when they are trapped in the waiting room of a station which is haunted by Will, a ghostly old Nazi. One by one, Will appears to the men in a dream. In turn, he offers each man a gun and instructs him to shoot Lilita. The action of the drama thus hinges on a potential reenactment of the genocidal violence against Roma in the present day. The ending of the play is ambivalent: although Lilita survives, Freddy’s attempts to talk about what has just happened are met with incomprehension and denial. Nobody wants to know about the Nazi ghost. Of these three dramas, Bell Vedere is the one that makes the most explicit (and unnerving) thematic connection between the Nazi genocide of the past and racial violence in the period after 1945. Initially, Bell Vedere conjures up a vision of Eastern Europe as a holiday paradise where GDR citizens could escape from the monotony of their everyday routine. Adam T. Rosenbaum has observed that tourism in communist Eastern Europe was “a politically loaded practice that promised several benefits: it could restore the physical and mental strength of the proletariat, it could serve as a relatively safe form of consumption, and it could help to create ideal socialist citizens. . . . tourism was not only compatible with communism; it was one of its most attractive selling points.”24 The first scene of the play takes place in a doctor’s consulting 22 Kerstin Hensel Archiv, Archiv der Akademie der Künste, vorläufige Signatur 2: Dramatik. 23 Kerstin Hensel Archiv, Archiv der Akademie der Künste, vorläufige Signatur 4: Dramatik. 24 Adam T. Rosenbaum, “Leisure travel and real existing socialism: new research on tourism in the Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe,”

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room. Doctor Optall examines Party Secretary Canditz and observes that his fist is too small, his blood pressure is rather low, and his neck muscles are strained. Optall prescribes a six-week stay at a health spa, Bell Vedere. Canditz replies that he has never heard of it—he was expecting Liebenstein (in Thuringia), Bad Elster (in Saxony, close to the Bavarian border) or Karlovy Vary (now in the Czech Republic). Dr Optall is evasive about the location of the spa, but describes it as: Optall: Canditz: Optall:

Ein vorzüglicher Kurort. Mit Bäder und Massagen? Mit Allem! Es ist ein Paradies der himmlischen Ruhe. Ein kleines Kurhäuschen im Wald, Vögel, Blumen usw., nette Schwestern, nette Masseusen, nette Köchinnen, jeden Tag Massage und Ruhe, kein Stress, keine Hektik—Sie werden alles vergessen können.25

This opening scene evokes Eastern Europe (and the southeastern fringes of the GDR) as an unspoiled romantic paradise. It also alludes to the cultural tradition of the European spa resort as a site of modern consumerism and cosmopolitan encounters.26 But this positive vision is soon obliterated—instead, the promised journey eastwards transforms into a terrifying encounter with the racial violence of the Nazi past. In this way, the play conjures up an Eastern European idyll, only to cancel it out decisively. Although the play begins in a socially realistic way with a group of representative characters, it soon shifts gear into an existential mode, which recalls the Theater of the Absurd. The train that never arrives recalls Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953), in which the title figure never appears. The small group of characters who are forced together and who start to torment each other recalls Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos (1944, Vicious Circle, 1946). And the inexorable build-up towards premeditated collective violence draws on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Besuch der Journal of Tourism History, 7, nos. 1–2 (2015): 163. 25 Kerstin Hensel, Bell Vedere (typoscript), in Kerstin Hensel Archiv, vorläufige Signatur 2: Dramatik, 4–5. Subsequent references to the play will be given as page numbers in parentheses. 26 On the European spa tradition, see Astrid Köhler, “Böhmen am Meer: Zur Entwicklung der Kur- und Badekultur im 19. Jahrhundert,” in The Meeting of the Waters: Fluide Räume in Literatur und Kultur, edited by Marija Javor Briski and Irena Samide (Munich: Iudicium, 2015), 207–15; Astrid Köhler, “Pyrmont von verschiedenen Seiten betretend: Zum literarischen Umgang mit der Heterotopie Badeort um 1800,” Publications of the English Goethe Society, 84, no. 1 (2015): 48–62; Seán M. Williams, “Modern Central European Hotels and Spas in Cultural Criticism: Grand Hotel Nostalgia: An Introduction,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 55, no. 4 (2019): 415–25.

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alten Dame (1956, The Visit, 1958). As the author herself comments, “die Vorgänge sind eher dem absurden Theater entlehnt, als dem RealismusTheater” (the events are borrowed more from the Theater of the Absurd than from the theater of realism).27 In Bell Vedere, the abandoned station conveys a strong sense of existential paralysis. The characters are literally unable to move on, trapped by their own unconscious impulses. The train that fails to arrive, the conversion of the stage into a black space, and the sense of impending violence enable Hensel to suggest that the memory of the Nazi genocide persists as a subterranean presence which continues to haunt the GDR and, perhaps also, its relations with its eastern neighbors. The play also implies that there is a need to memorialize genocidal violence against Sinti and Roma in order to prevent such crimes from ever being repeated. Finally, Bell Vedere also expresses Hensel’s understanding of the profound connections between racial and sexual violence. Before turning to an analysis of Bell Vedere itself, however, it is worth outlining the historical context of the play’s thematization of the Nazi genocide against Sinti and Roma and the precarious situation of Sinti in the GDR in the 1980s.28

Sinti in the GDR The Romani genocide, the destruction of Sinti and Roma communities in Nazi-dominated Europe, known as Porrajmos (the devouring) in Romani, has only been officially recognized since the 1980s. Estimates of the death toll vary. It is generally estimated that between 220,000 and 500,000 Sinti and Roma were killed by the Germans and their collaborators, including those murdered in camps and by the SS Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units), who carried out mass executions in the occupied Soviet territories.29 According to Ian Hancock, the actual death toll could have been much higher, as much as one and a half million.30 In Nazi Germany itself, many of the Sinti who survived were subject to forced sterilization. After the war, survivors faced continuing discrimination in 27 Kerstin Hensel, in an email to E.S. on June 22, 2021. 28 See Ingrid Bettwieser and Tobias von Borcke, “Have We Learned the ‘Right’ Lessons from History? Antigypsyism and How the GDR Dealt with Sinti and Roma,” in After Auschwitz: The Difficult Legacies of the GDR, edited by Enrico Heitzer, Martin Jander, Anetta Kahane, and Patrice G. Poutrus (New York: Berghahn, 2021), 175–90. 29 Anton Weiss-Wendt, “Introduction,” in The Nazi Genocide of the Roma: Reassessment and Commemoration, edited by Anton Weiss-Wendt (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2013), 1–2. 30 Ian Hancock, “Romanies and the Holocaust: A Re-evaluation and Overview,” in The Historiography of the Holocaust, edited by Dan Stone (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 383–96.

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both Germanies and in many other central European countries; instances of justice and compensation were relatively rare. In the Federal Republic, the authorities refused to recognize the Roma as victims of the Nazis and, in 1964, Frankfurt magistrates decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the Nazi perpetrator Eva Justin, who wrote police reports on Roma while working for Robert Ritter, director of the Nazi “racial hygiene” unit.31 Ursula Krechel’s novel Geisterbahn (Ghost Train, 2018), set in Trier in the Federal Republic, uses the motif of the “ghost train” to recount the experiences of a Sinti family who open a restaurant in an abandoned train station, which is vandalized by neo-Nazis. The police response to the incident is: “There are no Nazis in this town.”32 The Romani genocide was formally recognized in West Germany in 1982. In the GDR, Sinti were a tiny minority. Their experiences are surveyed in a recent study by Simone Trieder, who estimates that there were between 200 and 300 Sinti living in the GDR in the sixties and seventies, of whom 122 were recognized by the authorities as “Verfolgte des Naziregimes” (Persecutees of the Nazi regime), which led to benefits in terms of housing and food allocations.33 Trieder draws on the work of Reimar Gilsenbach (1925–2001), an East German environmentalist and human rights campaigner who spent decades campaigning for Sinti rights in the GDR. After 1945, authorities in the Soviet occupation zone treated Sinti and Roma differently from other concentration camp survivors, assuming that they had been incarcerated for “anti-social behavior,” thus perpetuating racist assumptions from the Nazi era.34 Gilsenbach used his connections in the SED to seek greater recognition for Sinti survivors. During the Third Reich, many Roma had been incarcerated in a Zwangslager (labor camp) in Berlin Marzahn, which was also a deportation camp. Many of those who were not deported starved to death, and some survivors remained in the camp until as late as 1947. Marzahn survivors were not given the same recognition as concentration camp survivors and were not designated as Verfolgte (persecutees). Thanks to Gilsenbach’s efforts, in 1967 Zwangslager Marzahn was finally given an equivalent status to other Nazi forced labor camps.35 In 1985, Gilsenbach sent an Eingabe (petition) to Erich Honecker, which indirectly led to the

31 Gilad Margalit, “The Justice System of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies,” in The Nazi Genocide of the Roma, edited by Weiss-Wendt (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2013), 181–204. 32 Herbert Heuß, “Ursula Krechel: Geisterbahn,” Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti & Roma, September 20, 2019, https://zentralrat.sintiundroma.de/ ursula-krechel-geisterbahn/ 33 Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 21–22, 43. 34 Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 19. 35 Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 44.

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inauguration of a memorial for Sinti victims in Marzahn in September 1986.36 Article 40 of the East German constitution guaranteed the right to “freie volkstümliche Entwicklung” (free development as a people) only to the Sorbian ethnic minority, it did not mention Sinti.37 In contrast to other Eastern bloc countries, however, there was no forced settlement of Sinti and Roma in the GDR. Some of them only had winter quarters and were allowed to move around freely in summer.38 Sinti made very few appearances in the cultural life of the GDR. One significant exception was a popular children’s book by Alex Wedding (the pseudonym of Grete Weißkopf, 1905–1966): Ede und Unku (1931). Weißkopf based the title character, Unku, on her acquaintance Erna Lauenburger, a Sinti who was born in Berlin in 1920 and who later died in Auschwitz in 1944. The book, which depicts Unku and her family’s experiences of racial discrimination, was taught in East German schools from 1965 onwards. From 1972 onwards it was even a compulsory part of the syllabus. And yet the guidelines for schoolteachers stated, “dass eine solche Denk- und Handlungsweise, wie sie hier von Alex Wedding dargestellt ist, in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik unmöglich ist.”39 The possibility that anti-Roma prejudice could endure in the GDR thus remained taboo. When Reimar Gilsenbach wrote an article on the Sinti community in the GDR and their problems for Die Wochenpost in the late 1960s, it was rejected. As Gilsenbach later recalled, an editor warned him “daß jedes Wort [darüber] vorsichtig abgewogen werden müsse, was wohl auf eine Streichung hinauslaufen würde.”40 Even the words “Sinti” and “Roma” were almost completely unknown in the GDR, where the term Zigeuner (gypsies) was still widely used, often without pejorative intent. One East German recalls that her West German cousins who visited in the mid-1980s were shocked by her crude remarks about “Zigeuner”; she observes that by this time West Germans seemed more sensitized to these issues than East Germans.41 In Hensel’s play, the Sinti character is described throughout as a “Zigeunerin” (gypsy). Although the term is now outdated and even discredited, “Zigeuner” was the standard term in the GDR in 1982, when Hensel wrote Bell Vedere. Indeed, as noted above, it was the recognized term used on the school syllabus. In the 1980s, the term “Sinti” was so new that even some Sinti were unsure whether to spell it “Sinti” or “Zinti.”42 Lorely 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 56–59. Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 57. Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 22. Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 35–36. Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 38. Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 9. Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 46.

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French points out that, even well into in the twenty-first century, some German-speaking Roma still describe themselves as “Zigeuner” or even “gypsy” because “those terms evoke their long traditions, and most people are still more familiar with these words.”43 In her autobiography, the Austrian Porrajmos survivor Ceija Stojka (1933–2013) states that she can accept the term, “allerdings nur, wenn er nicht pejorativ besetzt [ist].”44 It is important to bear these points in mind when analysing Hensel’s Bell Vedere: Hensel uses the term “Zigeuner” simply because it was a standard term at that time, and therefore it does not necessarily imply a value judgment. If the play were to be published today, four decades later, the use of the term “Zigeuner” might perhaps make it seem dated, but that is surely the point: Bell Vedere is of its time. For its time, Bell Vedere is astonishingly progressive given the way in which it openly addresses the taboo subject of the Romani genocide and connects this with the contemporary situation of Sinti in the GDR.

The Sinteza in Bell Vedere The previous section outlined the limited representation of Sinti and Roma in the cultural life of the GDR. Having charted the cultural and historical context, we can now turn to a close analysis of the Sinti character, or “Sinteza,” in Kerstin Hensel’s Bell Vedere.45 The character’s name “Lilita” is highly significant because it gives her a mythical, even magical dimension. Her name clearly recalls the Biblical Lilith, a demonic, rebellious woman first mentioned in Isaiah 34:14 in a description of the kingdom of Edom: “Lilith (night demon) will settle there / And find herself a place of rest.”46 According to Hebrew mythology, Lilith was Adam’s first wife; she appears in Goethe’s Faust I (lines 4206–4211). Since the late nineteenth century, Lilith, like Salome, has been portrayed as a subversive female figure who rejects male authority; thus she is, to a certain extent, a proto-feminist icon. Lilith is the heroine of Kerstin Hensel’s early prose text “Lilit” (typoscript dated 1984), included in her “Abschlussarbeit” (final project) of 1985 for the Leipzig Literaturinstitut “Johannes R.

43 French, Roma Voices, 7. 44 Ceija Stojka, Wir leben im Verborgenen: Aufzeichnungen einer Romni zwischen den Welten (Vienna: Picus, 2013), 258. And Stojka adds: “Wir sagen auch Gadje zu ihnen.” 45 A female Sinti is variously referred to as a “Sintiza,” “Sintizza,” “Sinteza,” “Sintezza,” or “Sintesa” (French, Roma Voices, 7). Because of this orthographic variety, this essay refers to the Sinti woman in Hensel’s Bell Vedere as a Sinteza. 46 Isaiah 34:14, Amplified Bible version (1965).

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Becher,” and first published in the collection Hallimasch (1989).47 In Hensel’s short story, Lilit challenges God, saying “gib mir den Frevel an deiner Schöpfung.”48 She leaves Adam and goes to reside in a dark place where the birds and the panthers live. Lilit is a powerful figure who represents rebellion against patriarchal authority. She also deliberately assumes the weight (and burden) of insight into the fatal flaws in God’s creation. Lilit recognizes the limitations of God’s creation, but she is also capable of finding her own way, beyond what God has planned for her. She is “fähig zu empfinden was der VATER ihr nie zugedacht hat.”49 The fact that the Sinteza in Bell Vedere is called Lilita implies that, like her legendary forebear, she too is a primordial outcast, an unruly, demonic woman who is a threat to male authority. In this way, Lilita represents a “demonic” counterweight to the Nazi ghost in the play. She is uncanny precisely because she knows the truth about Will, the Nazi ghost—as a descendant of survivors of the Porrajmos, she is a living testimony to his crimes and a living reminder that he failed in his genocidal mission. The name Lilita may also have other secondary associations. Perhaps it also recalls Marlene Dietrich’s iconic song “Lili Marlen” as well as Dietrich’s character, the showgirl Lola Lola from the film Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg and based on Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat (Professor Filth, 1905), as well as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955). The Dietrich character is particularly relevant here, not only because many Sintezas worked as traveling performers or showgirls, but also because Lilita in Hensel’s play (like Lola Lola in the film) threatens to derail the career of the “establishment” character, Party Secretary Canditz, a married man who becomes wildly infatuated with Lilita, thus risking his marriage and his position in the party. On one level, then, Bell Vedere rehearses the same crisis of patriarchal authority as it is disarmed by femininity that Heinrich Mann depicted decades before. Lilita is, perhaps, rendered even more seductive by her ethnic “othering” (much as Lola Lola was “othered” by being working class, thus belonging to a different social order than the Professor). On another level, Lilita’s name could perhaps suggest her kinship with Sinti genocide victims and survivors. Her name recalls Lily van Angeren-Frantz (1924–2011), a Sinteza who survived Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, and who served as a key witness in one of the last trials of an 47 Kerstin Hensel, “Lilit,” in Kerstin Hensel, Abschlussarbeit [Prosa und Gedichte] (Leipzig, Literaturinstitut “Johannes R. Becher,” 1985), 19–22, https://sachsen.digital/sammlungen/sammlung-der-abschlussarbeiten-des-literaturinstituts-johannes-r-becher. “Lilit” was first published in Kerstin Hensel, Hallimasch: Erzählungen (Halle and Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1989), 121–25. 48 Hensel, Abschlussarbeit, 20. 49 Hensel, Abschlussarbeit, 20.

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SS officer, Ernst-August König, which took place in Siegen between 1987 and 1991. Her autobiography was first published in Dutch in 1997; it appeared in German translation in 2004.50 Although the trial began five years after Hensel completed her play, it is possible that Hensel encountered this woman’s name in another context. In any case, the primary association of Lilita’s name is Biblical. In Hensel’s short story “Lilit,” Lilith is a dark, oriental contrast to Adam who is described as “blond und begehrlich.”51 Thus her name is not only a marker of her ethnic otherness, it figures her as a marginal figure who refuses to fit into the patriarchal order established by God the father. Her very existence represents an existential challenge to white, male, European dominance. Lilita is characterized as a social outsider from the start of the play. She first appears in court, where the Untersuchungsrichter (investigating judge) accuses her of trying to sell her piglet in the Alexanderplatz subway. Significantly, she is being treated as a criminal by the authorities, which suggests that her way of life is being criminalized. Lilita threatens to kill herself if she does not get her piglet back. She grabs a letter opener and indicates that she will stab herself. The judge tells her to put it down, and adds that she and her piglet can go to hell. She embraces him and says: “Sie sind ein Engel! Gott schütze unser Vaterland für die gnädigen Richter!” Her flattery pays off, and the judge tells her that she can go and sell her piglet in Bell Vedere, a health resort (8). Thus from the outset, Lilita is portrayed as a character who is at odds with the authorities because she does not conform to the expected patterns of life in the GDR. Lilita is also characterized as “different” because of her artistic talents. In Part 1, Scene 2, she sings a melancholy song that expresses both her displacement and her attachment to her displaced way of life: Zieh weiter, Zigeuner, ins Land der Sonne, zieh deine Karren durch Gras und Wind. Ho ha ho ha im Land der Sonne, daß ich eine Heimat find. (12)

In Part 2, Scene 7, she dances and sings for the male characters, who form a circle around her and clap along to the rhythm. The lyrics of her song are a variation of “Rote Rosenknospen künden” (Red Rosebuds Proclaim), one of the Zigeunerlieder (Gypsy songs, 1887) by Johannes Brahms.52 The lyricist Hugo Conrat (1845–1906, born Hugo Cohn in 50 On Lily van Angeren-Frantz, see French, Roma Voices, 73–95. 51 Hensel, Abschlussarbeit, 19. 52 See Jenna Leigh Sims, “Hungarian Romani Influence on German Lieder: A Historical Analysis of Johannes Brahms’ Zigeunerlieder for the Solo Performer”

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Breslau) translated folk songs that he learned from his Hungarian maid. The lyrics are: Rote Rosenknospen künden schon des Lenzes Triebe. Rosenrote Wangen Deuten Mädchens erste Liebe. Kleiner roter Vogel, Flieg herab zur roten Rose! Bursche geht zum ros’gen Mädchen kosen.53

Hensel’s adaptation of the song accentuates its eroticism, drawing a parallel between the growing roses and the young woman’s growing breasts: Eine Rose wächst mir unterm Fenster. Soll sie wachsen, Wenn sie wächst. Brüste wachsen mir unterm Hemd. Sollen sie wachsen, wenn sie wachsen. Ich werde die Rose brechen und zwischen die Brüste stecken. Er soll sie verlangen, wenn er sie verlangt, wird er mir aufknöpfen. (21)

The rhythms are hypnotic, and the content is more sexually provocative than the original. The coy little birds are gone; instead of “rosy cheeks” there are now “breasts.” In line with her legendary namesake, Lilita is deliberately performing the role of a seductress. Hensel is alluding here to traditional romanticizing depictions of Roma, who have all too often been exoticized and stereotyped as being musical and undisciplined.54 And yet it is a fact that many Roma were (and are) singers and musicians, including the prominent Romani authors Ewald Hanstein, Mišo Nikolić, and Ceija Stojka, and many autobiographies stress (Bachelor’s thesis, University of Nevada, Rio, 2016). 53 Johannes Brahms, “Rote Rosenknospen künden,” Vier Zigeunerlieder (1887), Op. 112, https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=3971. 54 On this tradition, see Nicholas Saul and Susan Tebbutt, eds., Role of the Romanies: Images and Counter Images of “Gypsies”/Romanies in European Cultures (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004).

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the importance of music in the community’s everyday life.55 Hensel’s play references the Csárdás, a Hungarian Romani dance with a slow introduction and a fast, wild finish. Canditz would like to dance with Lilita, and Freddy comments sarcastically: “Klar doch, wer so aussieht, dem falln beim Csardas die Zähne aus” (21). This alludes to Lilith’s legendary function as a femme fatale. Like the action of the play itself, which oscillates between realistic and symbolic elements, the figure of Lilita is highly ambivalent, shifting back and forth between her symbolic function as a marginal, rebellious woman, and more realistic aspects of Sinti life in the GDR. For example, another aspect of Lilita’s characterization—the fact that she owns a piglet—corresponds to a documentary photograph of a Sinto with two pigs taken in Heiligenstadt in 1983.56 Although aspects of Lilita’s characterization in Bell Vedere correspond to documentary evidence about the everyday lives of Sinti, it is nevertheless possible to ask: does the play rehearse cultural clichés about Sinti? The answer is no—for several reasons. First, on a mythic level Lilita symbolizes the rebellious female principle. Her gender is just as important as her ethnicity, thus suggesting an intersectional critique. Second, she is depicted in a positive light in the play as ironic, witty, and intelligent. It seems that the audience is, on one level at least, supposed to identify with her and enjoy the challenge that she represents to the GDR authorities. Third, she is a creative artist, capable of transforming the situation. When the characters are stranded on a station platform waiting for the train to arrive, she paints a sign that reads “Bell Vedere,” thus suggesting that they do not have to wait, they can entertain themselves. The men laugh and applaud her work (15). Fourth, because of her artistic and poetic talents, and because of her subversive dealings with authority, Lilita seems to function as a figure of identification for the author herself. Simone Trieder comments that many East Germans were fascinated by Sinti precisely because they represented a kind of existential challenge to the GDR authorities: Teilweise scheint es, als wären die “Zigeuner” ein Gegenbild zum Leben in der DDR. Einem Leben, das viel mit Angst zu tun hatte, mit Reglementierung bis ins Private hinein. . . . Dem entgegengesetzt wurde Sehnsucht nach Ungebundenheit, nach Farben und andererseits Trotz gegenüber Behörden. Die Faszination für das “fahrende Volk” war stiller Protest gegen die Reglementierung in der DDR und ist nicht gleichzusetzen mit der Romantisierung der “Zigeuner.”57 55 French, Roma Voices, 97–101. 56 Hawlik-Abramowitz and Trieder, Sinti in der DDR, 134. 57 Trieder, “Sinti in der DDR,” 10.

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This suggests that Bell Vedere positively reevaluates and celebrates the anarchic, “unruly” qualities associated with Sinti and Roma. The figure of the Sinteza is being used partly because she represents a subculture which resists the regimentation of social life in the GDR. Lilita’s characterization is, however, radically deepened by the resonance of her legendary name and by the inclusion of the ghost story and the murder thematic, whereby the historical framework of the Romani genocide becomes an essential subtext for the play. This framework suggests that the true danger of anarchy, violence, and immorality does not come from the Sinti at all; on the contrary, it emerges from the “enemy within,” that is, the unacknowledged vestiges of fascism within the GDR itself, and by the determined refusal of the GDR authorities to engage in dialogue with critical, oppositional perspectives. Lilita’s mythical name suggests that she embodies an alternative historical perspective and an alternative mode of knowledge and expression, one that has been obscured by the GDR’s patriarchal, normative founding narratives. Lilita’s very presence in the play and the violent attempts made on her life suggest that there is unfinished business to attend to in the historical narrative of the GDR itself. Lilita has a certain kinship with the two characters of Hensel’s novella Tanz am Kanal (1994, Dance by the Canal, 2019): like Katka Lorenz, she is an unruly, artistic nonconformist; and like Gabriela von Haßlau, is targeted by neo-Nazi violence. The fact that attempts to murder Lilita appear to be sexually motivated enables the play to suggest a close connection between racial and sexual violence. As her legendary name indicates, Lilita is a “difficult woman” whom the male characters will try to silence, dismiss, or ignore. For all these reasons, the portrayal of Lilita in Bell Vedere has considerable psychological and historical depth. It anticipates Hensel’s later exploration of the Romani genocide in Lärchenau (Lark Vale, 2008), which contains a section about a Sinti family that reinforces the novel’s theme: the legacy of Nazi medical crimes, which included the forced sterilization of Sinti.58

The Nazi Ghost The title of Bell Vedere is extremely ironic: it promises a “pleasant view” that does not materialize. The characters are expecting a Central European health spa. Instead, they are caught in a nightmare. The setting, an eastbound station platform lined with black cloth, hints at the mass

58 Ernest Schonfield, “Medical Experiments on Humans in Kerstin Hensel’s Lärchenau (2008),” in Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-­ Speaking World, edited by Mererid Puw Davies and Sonu Shamdasani (London: UCL Press, 2020), 164–89.

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deportations of the Second World War.59 The stage is transformed into a fascist boot camp. The instructor who presides over this ghostly space is a spectral Nazi, Will. His name (short for “Wilhelm”) suggests that his origins go back as far as the Wilhelmine period and, perhaps, the mass killing of World War One. Will’s uncanny presence is underlined by the fact that, although he is an old man, he is played by an actress: he transgresses gender distinctions, as well as the boundaries between life and death, past and present. The stage directions introduce him as follows: Ein sehr alter Mann (dargestellt durch eine Schauspielerin) öffnet die Tür und schlürft herein, blickt sich lange um. Hinter sich her zieht er ein schwarzes Tuch und beginnt es, über den Raum zu breiten. (10)

In this way, Will occupies/takes possession of the theatrical space. As he lays the black cloth over the entire stage, he converts the stage into a timeless, funereal void. Implicitly, the characters will soon be falling into the black hole of their own unconscious fears and desires. Suddenly, a disembodied voice from offstage engages Will in conversation. The voice recognizes Will—it saw him last in the year 1939: Stimme: Du kannst schlecht laufen, Will. Als ich dich das letzte Mal gesehen habe, konntest du besser laufen. Will: Stimme: Will: Stimme: Will: Stimme: Will:

Das war neununddreißig, ja. (Er zieht das Tuch weiter) Ich habe dich damals sehr gemocht, Will. Erinnerst du dich an mich? Es waren doch tausende, die es erfuhren! Schweig. (Er hat den gesamten Raum bedeckt) Es ging sehr schnell damals. Schweig, Elende! Der Raum hat Ohren. (11)

The dialogue reveals that Will murdered thousands of people in 1939. This was before the extermination camps were in operation, thus it seems likely that Will participated in the mass shooting of civilians during the initial invasion of Poland. Now he exists under the cover of a new identity: “Man hat mir die Haut abgezogen. Ich bin nicht mehr DER Will” (11). On one level, this alludes to the ways in which former Nazis reinvented themselves after 1945. As Mary Fulbrook puts it: “People going through denazification generally saw the procedures as a hurdle to be jumped. . . . Biographies were reshaped and facts reinterpreted to fit into whichever

59 This is a theme that Hensel later revisits in her poem “Bahnhof verstehen” (Understanding Station).

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framework was most likely to lead to a desired outcome.”60 On another level, this can be interpreted literally, as it seems Will has actually died and metamorphosed into a ghost. As he himself declares: “jetzt bin ich ein Schatten” (11)—the voice responds that it is impressed by his tenacity. Will’s deathly existence is also emphasized when he tells Freddy: “Seit fast fünfzig Jahren habe ich nichts mehr gegessen” (11). This Nazi ghost is a cannibal, with a ravening hunger that can only be stilled by feeding on human flesh. Will is in search of willing pupils, accomplices to assist him in his deadly mission. For much of the play he is invisible to the other characters, but gradually he manifests himself to each of the three males in turn. The three men represent different sections of GDR society. Helfried Canditz is a Party secretary; in the first scene, we learn that his hands are too small for his leadership role (the same thing was said about Donald Trump). Horst Wünsch, a minor police clerk in a registration office, is fed up with his daily routine. Freddy is a rebellious teenager who was advised by the director of his school to visit Bell Vedere. Ironically, while Freddy is bored and frustrated with the GDR school syllabus, he is soon confronted with a terrifying alternative: instruction in the art of murder by a Nazi ghost. Will’s mission is to transmit his Nazi ideology, his xenophobic Weltanschauung to the next generation. All of the characters are hungry. They did not bring enough food with them. Lilith declares “Ich hab einen Mordshunger” (17). Only the policeman, Horst Wünsch, has brought food—a sausage roll; Canditz has a bottle of apricot juice. The characters share these items between them. Will seeks to exploit the characters’ hunger. He appears to Wünsch in the night and points out that there will be plenty of food, if he would only kill the Sinteza and her piglet. Wünsch tells him he is crazy. Will gets nasty and uses violent coercion, pressing his walking stick against the side of Wünsch’s head: “Spürst du was an den Schläfen, deinem Kopf? Du hast Glück. Früher ging das alles viel schneller” (14). Wünsch is speechless. The next day, he asks Freddy if he believes in “Gespenster,” but Freddy is distracted by Canditz trying to grope Lilita. Freddy punches Canditz in the face and they fight. Over the four nights, Will appears to each of the characters in turn. The fact that he only appears to them in the night implies that he is perhaps only a dream—or rather, a nightmare. He tries to exploit Canditz’s desire for Lilita, warning him that his wife will be unhappy if she learns of his infidelity. Will suggests a solution: if Canditz kills Lilita, then his wife will never know, because there will be no witnesses. Every night, the characters are plagued by these fascist whisperings. Eventually, Will even appears to Lilita herself: he calls her a “schöne Zigeunerin” and begs 60 Fulbrook, Reckonings, 211–12.

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her to give him some of her flesh (24). Later, Will boasts that the very first person he murdered was his sister, who suffered from cerebral damage; a reference to the Nazi euthanasia program: “Die erste war meine Schwester, sie hatte einen Cerebralschaden, verstehst du?” (26). Then he explains that, after a while, one “gets used” to killing in the service of an ideal. The violence becomes habitual: Später dann hat man so einen Blick, der nichts wahrnimmt, was deine Hände tun. Du bist nur besessen von der einen Idee, es zu schaffen, durchzuhalten, dazusein für die Sache. . . . Du hast wirklich Glück gehabt, Bübchen. Du bist mein Schüler. Nicht wer übrigbleibt, zählt, sondern was neu beginnt, was sich zusammenfindet aus dem Übriggebliebenen. Lehrmeister und Schüler. Das war zu allen Zeiten so. (26)

This is a terrifying masterclass in fascism. Will is convinced that he serves an “idea,” a greater “cause.” He is the teacher. Freddy is the lucky pupil who is supposed to appreciate this mentoring session. Will does not succeed in his pedagogic mission, but he comes scarily close. When Freddy refuses to continue his apprenticeship, Will instructs him to kill the policeman instead. Thus he seeks to exploit Freddy’s dislike of authority. When Wünsch sees Freddy with a gun in his hand, he shouts: “Du bist ein Anarchist, Rocker! Du wolltest uns töten, Verbrecher!” (27). Here he references the figure of the “Rowdy” (hooligan)—this was a catch-all term used in the Eastern bloc to denounce anti-social behavior among teenagers. As early as the 1960s, a consensus emerged in many socialist countries between governments, the judiciary, the police, and the wider public that there was a problem with “hooliganism,” which needed to be addressed in a coordinated way.61 There is a sense of displacement here, as the two establishment figures, Canditz and Wünsch, refuse to admit that the old Nazi exists, choosing instead to accuse the younger generation of irresponsibility. The fact that Freddy is accused of “hooliganism” contains a grain of truth, however, since his anarchic, rebellious qualities align him with Lilita—like her, he is an individualist who chafes against the paternalistic norms of the GDR. He also rejects the fascist tutelage offered by Will. At the climax of the play, in a desperate act of self-defense, Freddy turns the gun on Will and shoots him at close range. Will is unharmed, the bullets pass through him. He laughs and reprimands his unruly pupil: “Falsch Junge, völlig falsch. Dorthin solltest du zielen” (27). Freddy 61 The Russian word for “hooliganism” is khuliganstvo. See Matěj Kotalík, Rowdytum im Staatssozialismus: Ein Feindbild aus der Sowjetunion (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2019).

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shoots him again, now Will is disappointed: “Was soll das bloß, Freddy. Warum hast du mich belogen?” Then Will disappears suddenly—but Freddy remains convinced that he is still around somewhere close by. However, when Freddy tries to discuss this with the other characters, they deny that Will ever existed. Freddy shouts that Will is not dead, but Canditz and Wünsch drag him away. Even Lilita holds his mouth and tells him to be silent—it seems that she does not want him to speak on her behalf. The very last time we see Lilita in the play, she is trying to calm Freddy down. Her final words are: Sei still, mein Sohn, schlaf ein. Zigeuner trinken Wein, Zigeuner striegeln die Pferde, Zigeuner küssen die Erde. Sei still, mein Sohn, schlaf ein. (28)62

Lilita’s use of anaphora in her closing speech (or is it a song?) suggests her defiant affirmation of her ethnicity. Her people and their cultural traditions will always live on. They will always remain close to their animals and close to the earth, which they cherish. After Lilita has disappeared, Freddy is left alone on stage screaming: “Hört ihr denn nicht, der lebt noch! Die leben alle wieder, hört ihr denn nicht?” Freddy’s warning is ignored: the murderers are still among us— but nobody wants to know. The final scene returns us to the opening location: the office of Party secretary Canditz. Freddy has become his “Stellvertreter” (representative) while he is away. Freddy wants to telephone the minister and explain what has happened: Mein Auftrag als Parteisekretär ist es, die Leute darauf hinzuweisen, daß der Alte, den ich erschossen habe, lebt. Ich werde den Leuten nicht sagen, daß ICH ihn erschossen habe, den Vorrang verdient das Wesentliche. Ich muß die Leute warnen, weil er noch lebt. (28)

But Freddy finds that the ministry’s telephone number has too many digits, and when he tries to dial the number, his fingers get confused. He loses track of the number and he realizes he will never get through to the ministry. No one will ever learn that the Nazi ghost, whom he has shot, is still alive. The telephone dial starts spinning round and round hypnotically by itself, until it flies against the wall like a discus. The play ends as Freddy states numbly: “Der Minister war heute nicht zu sprechen. Morgen, sag ich mir, ist auch noch ein Tag” (29). Freddy is alone, unable 62 As mentioned previously, the terms “Sinti” and “Roma” were almost completely unknown in the GDR.

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to breach the wall of silence that prevents him from speaking of his experiences. The moral of the story: there are plenty of Nazis still with us, and nobody wants to know.

Conclusion The preceding analysis of Bell Vedere has shown that the play operates on two different levels—it shifts continually between recognizable, realistic details on the one hand, and, on the other hand, allegorical, even absurd aspects. The Romani woman, Lilita, and the Nazi ghost, Will, are both highly symbolic figures who challenge the behavioral norms of GDR society. Lilita signifies rebellion in terms of her gender, her marginalized ethnicity, and her subversive artistry. Will, in contrast, evokes Germany’s long tradition of racial violence, as shown by his boasts about killing thousands in 1939. In this way, both figures are uncanny presences because they represent aspects of recent history that were taboo. While Lilita embodies the memory of the Romani genocide and the continuing discrimination against her people, Will exemplifies the willing participation of many older Germans in National Socialist atrocities, and the potential that a younger generation of perpetrators could arise. This suggests that, even in the 1980s, the GDR still had a very long way to go before it could exorcise its Nazi demons. The play itself can be seen as a bid to perform precisely that: a form of exorcism on the East German stage. The play depicts a woman who is targeted by renewed racial violence in the present day. And it confronts audiences with a Nazi perpetrator who seeks to convert a new generation of followers to his cause. Such themes were too radical for the play to be produced in the GDR in the early eighties. Gregor Edelmann and Wolfgang Schuch, dramaturges at Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, rejected all three of Hensel’s early plays, Die apokalyptische Hochzeit, Karzinom, and Bell Vedere. They criticized the first of these plays, saying “daß wir den Zusammenhang zwischen Märchenwelt (Rotkäppchen), allegorische Figuren (Fritz, Michael, Jäger) und DDR-Realität der 80er Jahre nicht schlüssig herauszustellen vermögen.”63 Reading between the lines, it seems that the dramaturges were concerned about both the form and the content of the three dramas. They are objecting to Hensel’s debt to the Theater of the Absurd, and, implicitly, to the way that all three of these plays inserted “allegorical” Nazi figures into the contemporary reality of the GDR. They refused to see the connection between the symbolic, allegorical world of the three plays and their own present day, because it was taboo to admit such a connection. 63 Letter from Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft to Kerstin Hensel on February 15, 1983. In: Kerstin Hensel Archiv, Archiv der Akademie der Künste, vorläufige Signatur 86: Korrespondenz mit Institutionen, 1977–1987.

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They add that Bell Vedere and Karzinom are “beides sehr interessante Stücke, aber eben auch Stücke, die wir momentan ohne Vertriebschancen sehen.” However, the letter concludes with words of encouragement: “Die drei Texte jedenfalls, die wir bisher kennengelernt haben, machen uns sehr gespannt auf weitere dramatische Arbeiten von Ihnen.” In this way, the two dramaturges concede that Hensel’s early plays are thrilling, but they invite her to tone down the “allegorical” connections that she is making between the fascist past and the present-day period. Today, forty years after it was written, Bell Vedere is arguably as relevant as ever. It is one of few serious treatments of the Romani genocide ever produced in the GDR, and it resonates with contemporary concerns, in the context of an ongoing dispute about the disruption of the Sinti and Roma memorial in central Berlin due to rail construction work.64 It also resonates with the renewal of the far right in unified Germany and its move into mainstream politics. Until the German federal election of September 26, 2021, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was the official opposition party in the German parliament. Its leaders, Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel, are known for their racist rhetoric. Meanwhile Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) until he was finally expelled from the party on July 31, 2020, has published a series of bestselling books, starting with Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Abolishes Itself, 2010), that attempt to lend a “respectable,” “scientific” veneer to racial slurs and Islamophobia. The popularity of Sarrazin’s books shows that xenophobic rhetoric has been part of mainstream political discourse in Germany for at least a decade. Meanwhile, the British government’s current legislation, the “Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill,” triggered a series of UK-wide demonstrations in March 2021. The new Police Bill has been criticized not only for potential infringements to human rights, but also because it “threatens to effectively criminalise” Britain’s Romani and traveler communities.65 (Postscript: The Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts [PCSC] Act received Royal Assent and became law in England and Wales on April 28, 2022.) In this contemporary situation, it is well worth revisiting Bell Vedere and its staging of the fascist ghost story. The play tackles the long-term continuation of xenophobic attitudes towards Romani people in an exemplary, visceral manner. It is a lost classic that deserves to be discovered.

64 “Sinti and Roma fear for their Holocaust memorial in Berlin,” Deutsche Welle, July 31, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-sinti-roma-holocaustmemorial/a-54396853. 65 Luke Smith, “How the Police Bill Threatens Britain’s Gypsy and Traveller Communities,” Tribune, March 30, 2021, https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/03/ how-the-police-bill-threatens-britains-gypsy-and-traveller-communities.

The Haunted Landscape of Babi Yar: Memory, Language, and the Exploration of Holocaust Spaces in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther Deirdre Byrnes, University of Galway

T

Introduction

Tower of Faces, a permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, comprises some one thousand photographs of the residents of Eisiskes. Over a two-day period on September 25 and 26, 1941, the entire Jewish community of this town in southeastern Lithuania was murdered by Nazi Einsatzgruppen with the help of local auxiliaries. The photographs that constitute the towering memorial are reproductions of those taken in Eisiskes between 1890 and 1941 and later collected by the historian Dr. Yaffa Eliach from former shtetl residents who had fled Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century.1 Documenting the vibrancy of Jewish familial, societal, and economic relationships, these images are a haunting photographic memorial to a lost community and a lost way of life. Carved in stone at the entrance to that same museum, the words of Romanianborn Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel are a powerful, poignant reminder: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” In what follows, I will explore how the author Katja Petrowskaja bears witness in her critically acclaimed literary debut Vielleicht Esther (2014, Maybe Esther, 2018) to familial bonds so brutally ruptured by the Holocaust. Photographs of family members and of various locations that feature in the first-person narrator’s quest to learn more about her ancestors are inserted at various points in the text, even if, as Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer observe, photos invariably remain “haunting spectres,” he

1 Yaffa Eliach was the granddaughter of Yitzhak Uri Katz, who, along with his wife, Alte Katz, their assistant, Ben-Zion Szrejder, and Rephael Lejbowicz, took most of the photographs in the exhibition. For more information on the “Tower of Faces,” see the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1138417.

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signaling not only “a visceral material connection to the past” and carrying its traces forward, but also embodying “the very fractured process of its transmission.”2 Hirsch has written extensively about the concept of postmemory, which she defines as “the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before—to experiences they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up.”3 Postmemory is distinguished from memory by generational distance and from history by deep personal connection. Vielleicht Esther explores what Hirsch has described as “the connections and discontinuities between generations, the gaps in knowledge that define the aftermath of trauma.”4 Petrowskaja’s narrator is faced with many such gaps; indeed, all that remains, she tells us in the very opening chapter, are “Erinnerungsfetzen, zweifelhafte Notizen und Dokumente in fernen Archiven”5 (fragments of memory, notes of dubious value, and documents in distant archives).6 Even the image of her maternal great-grandmother Anna, who perished at Babi Yar, the ravine in Kyiv where Jews were massacred at the end of September 1941, “ist aus fremden, nicht zueinander passenden Fäden gewebt” (198; woven together from a set of extraneous, unmatching threads, ME, 176). As Hirsch observes, postmemory’s connection to the past is thus mediated “not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation.”7 Wishing to heal her profound sense of loss—“das Gefühl von Verlust” (25; the feeling of loss, ME, 15) emerging as a central theme both in Petrowskaja’s interviews and in her texts—and to overcome familial memory gaps, the narrator sets out to mend retrospectively her fractured family biography. She journeys through Central and Eastern Europe, retracing in a very literal sense the steps of her ancestors and visiting several locations, including Warsaw, the birthplace of her maternal 2 Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “What’s Wrong with this Picture?: Archival Photographs in Contemporary Narratives,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5, no. 2 (2006): 237. 3 Interview with Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University Press website, https://cup.columbia.edu/author-interviews/hirsch-generation-postmemory. 4 Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (2008): 107; also Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 6. 5 Katja Petrowskaja, Vielleicht Esther: Geschichten (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014), 30. Subsequent quotations from the text will be followed in parentheses by the relevant page number. 6 Katja Petrowskaja, Maybe Esther, translated by Shelley Frisch (London: 4th Estate, 2019), 23. Subsequent quotations from the English translation will be followed by the abbreviation ME and the relevant page number. 7 Interview with Marianne Hirsch.

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grandmother Rosa; Kalisz, where Rosa’s father Ozjel once lived; the memorial site at the former concentration camp of Mauthausen, where her maternal grandfather had been detained as a prisoner of war; and Babi Yar. Although these locations often raise more questions than they answer, they reveal to the narrator the extent of her Jewish heritage on both maternal and paternal sides. In a 2018 interview, Petrowskaja proferred a description of Vielleicht Esther that has particular resonance for this chapter: “Doch es geht im Buch eigentlich um einen modernen Menschen, der auf verschiedene Art und Weise über die Geschichte stolpert” (But the book is really about a modern person who stumbles over history in various ways).8 This stumbling upon and stumbling over history is a fitting description of the manner in which her narrator encounters the topography of Central and Eastern Europe. The verb “stolpern” evokes the Stolpersteine project, initiated by Gunter Demnig in 1992 as a memorial to victims of Nazi terror by physically marking their last dwelling place before they were taken to be executed. It also evokes sites of mass killings in Eastern Europe, one of which forms the focus of this chapter—the ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv which, on September 29 and 30, 1941, became the scene of the “largest isolated killing operation of World War II,”9 as Jessica Rapson reminds us. This chapter will first consider the significance of bearing witness in what Petrowskaja terms the “Sprache des Feindes” (80; the language of the enemy, ME, 69) to the horrors that unfolded there, before turning attention to Babi Yar as symbol and as topography. I will explore Petrowskaja’s interaction with the haunted landscape of the street in Kyiv where her paternal great-grandmother, the titular Esther, was shot dead by German officers on the morning of September 29, 1941, and with the ravine where her maternal great-grandmother Anna and Ljolja, one of Anna’s daughters, were executed. The author shows how this site of mass slaughter raises universal questions about violence, victimhood, and humanity.

Writing in the “Sprache des Feindes” Katja Petrowskaja was awarded the Bachmann Prize for her literary debut. “Eine wunderbare Öffnung des deutschen Sprachraums für die 8 Katja Petrowskaja, “Gespräch mit Katja Petrowskaja,” interview by Sandra Vlasta, in Literarische (Mehr)Sprachreflexionen, edited by Barbara Siller and Sandra Vlasta (Vienna: Praesens Verlag, 2020), 318. Translation my own. 9 Jessica Rapson, “Babi Yar: Transcultural Memories of Atrocity from Kiev to Denver,” in The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders, edited by Lucy Bond and Jessica Rapson (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), 139.

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Sammlung europäischer und außereuropäischer Bewusstseinslagen” (A beautiful opening for German-language literature to access a collection of European and non-European states of minds)10 was how Burckhard Spinnen, one of the jury members, described the significance of Vielleicht Esther. The text is part of an expansion of the literary landscape that has been identified by Brigid Haines as “the Eastern turn”11 in contemporary German-language literature, enacted by writers from former Easternbloc countries who have chosen to reflect in German upon such issues as migration, language, and identity. Petrowskaja is a particularly interesting example in this regard. Born in Kyiv and having studied in Estonia and in Moscow, she moved to Berlin in 1999, where she has worked as a journalist for both Russian and German print media. Telling her family story in German, a language which she only began learning in her twenties, is significant for several reasons.12 In an interview, the author explained that she had originally started writing the story of her ancestors in Russian, as this was the language in which anecdotes and fragments about various family members had been imparted to her. However, German soon emerged as the language in which the text was to be consigned to print: “Aber mit der Zeit wollte der Text auf Deutsch sein” (after a while the text wanted to be in German).13 In an illuminating conversation with Olesia Yaremchuk, Petrowskaja describes the book as having been written on the borderline of two languages, emerging from an interlinguistic and intercultural space.14 The author embeds in the sentences of Vielleicht Esther words and phrases from other languages, including Polish, English, 10 “Katja Petrowskaja (D): Jurydiskussion,” Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, http://archiv.bachmannpreis.orf.at/bachmannpreis.eu/de/news/4506/. Translation my own. 11 Brigid Haines, “The Eastern Turn in Contemporary German, Swiss and Austrian Literature,” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 16, no. 2 (2008): 135–49. See also Brigid Haines, “Introduction: The Eastern European Turn in Contemporary German-Language Literature,” German Life and Letters 68, no. 2 (2015): 143. 12 A detailed engagement with multilingualism in Vielleicht Esther can be found in my chapter “‘Ich hatte das Glück, mich in der Kluft der Sprachen . . . zu bewegen’: Formen und Funktionen der literarischen Mehrsprachigkeit in Katja Petrowskajas Vielleicht Esther,” in Literarische (Mehr)Sprachreflexionen, edited by Siller and Vlasta, 324–45. 13 Katja Petrowskaja, “Ich habe einfach auf meinen Rhythmus gehört,” interview by Julia Krautstengel and Eva Schneider, tell: Magazin für Literatur und Zeitgenossenschaft, December 8, 2016, https://tell-review.de/ich-habeeinfach-auf-meinen-rhythmus-gehoert/. Translation my own. 14 Olesia Yaremchuk, “Katja PETROWSKAJA: ‘There are no Somebody Else’s Victims,’” The Day 62 (2015), https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/ katja-petrowskaja-there-are-no-somebody-elses-victims.

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French, and Yiddish, thereby recounting a family story that refuses to be contained in one language only. In that same interview, Petrowsjaka recalls being astonished by the way in which Germans engage with the horrors of their recent past; this “Erinnerungskultur” also includes willingness to confront guilt and accept responsibility. Important, too, for the concerns of this chapter, is that writing in the “Sprache des Feindes” enabled the author to transcend the victim-perpetrator dichotomy: “for me . . . the German language was a way to stop lamenting about being a victim, which the native Russian language suggests for my history.”15 In his book The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, Michael Rothberg argues for the necessity of moving beyond such binary categories so as to enable “a larger reckoning with both the structures of power . . . and the histories that resonate as afterlives.”16 Speaking some four years before the publication of Rothberg’s text, Petrowskaja, too, pointed to a different way of considering traumatic historical pasts: “If you write in German, you . . . begin to see the problem in terms of anthropology. There is man and violence, and nothing else.”17 The author has described Vielleicht Esther as a book about loss, about the many different losses endured in the twentieth century: “Gulag und Kollektivierung, Repressalien und immer wieder der Krieg” (Gulag and collectivization, repressive measures, and again and again—war).18 Within this context, the choice of language acquires further significance. The author reflects that writing in German of such “Verlust” entailed another kind of loss: “In diesem Sinn war der Verlust der Muttersprache tatsächlich eine Grundlage oder eine adäquate Entscheidung. Ich musste selbst etwas verlieren. Dann verkörpert man selbst den Verlust” (Losing my mother tongue was, in this sense, really the foundation or the only possible decision. I had to lose something myself. Then you embody loss yourself).19 Against the backdrop of a family history ruptured by the Holocaust and confronted with frustrating fragments and memory gaps, the first-person narrator of Vielleicht Esther navigates the topography of Babi Yar; that she reflects upon her experience through the medium of German signifies Petrowskaja’s desire to transcend linguistic and geographical boundaries 15 Yaremchuk, “Katja PETROWSKAJA: ‘There are no Somebody Else’s Victims.’” 16 Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 10. 17 Yaremchuk, “Katja PETROWSKAJA: ‘There are no Somebody Else’s Victims.’” 18 Petrowskaja, “Gespräch mit Katja Petrowskaja,” interview by Sandra Vlasta, 318. Translation my own. 19 Petrowskaja, “Gespräch mit Katja Petrowskaja,” interview by Sandra Vlasta, 318. Translation my own.

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and to consider the horrors that unfolded at the site in terms of universal suffering and loss.

Babi Yar in History: Silence and Symbol Petrowskaja’s narrator attempts to reconstruct her family story, shattered in brutal and irreversible fashion by the horrors of the Holocaust as they unfolded on the streets of Kyiv on the morning of September 29, 1941 and, unrelentingly, over a two-day period in a ravine some six kilometers northwest of the city. On September 19, German forces had entered the capital of Soviet Ukraine. Many of Kyiv’s older Jews, remembering that Germans had stopped Jewish pogroms when they had occupied the city during World War I, erroneously believed that they would be safe this time also. The narrator’s paternal great-grandmother, too, fell victim to what Victoria Khiterer calls the “fatal role”20 of historical memory in this context. On that fateful morning of September 29, when all Kyivan Jews were ordered to assemble at 8 a.m. at the intersection of Melnikov and Degtiarev streets, the narrator’s paternal great-grandmother was slowly making her way towards two German officers, while addressing them in their mother tongue, when she was shot dead. “Vielleicht spiegelte sich in Vielleicht Esthers verzögertem Gang ein sprachlicher Irrtum wider” (213; It may be that Maybe Esther’s halting gait echoed an error of language, ME, 189), the narrator speculates, thereby underscoring once again the theme of language in her text: Viele jüdische Alte waren stolz auf ihr Deutsch, und als die Deutschen kamen, dachten sie möglicherweise . . ., dass sie, gerade sie, die nächsten Verwandten der Okkupationstruppen seien, ausgestattet mit dem besonderen Recht derer, für die das Wort alles ist. (213) [Many elderly Jews were proud of their command of German, and when the Germans came, they may have thought . . . that they, they in particular, were the closest relatives of the occupying troops, having that special entitlement for those for whom the word is everything. (ME, 190)]

As they made their way through the masses of people, the narrator’s maternal great-grandmother Anna sought to reassure her weeping 20 Victoria Khiterer, “Babi Yar, the Tragedy of Kiev’s Jews,” Brandeis Graduate Journal 2 (2004): 3. Khiterer notes that the Friendship Pact signed between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 furthered the misleading idea that Nazi Germany was well disposed towards the Soviet Union.

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daughter Ljolja in similar fashion: “beruhige dich, zu den Deutschen hatten wir schon immer gute Beziehungen” (197; Calm down, we’ve always had a good relationship with the Germans, ME, 175). Babi Yar became emblematic of the “Holocaust by bullets,”21 which was, as Linda Kinstler has described it, “a method of mass murder that preceded the gas chambers of Auschwitz and ensured victims came faceto-face with their killers.”22 The massacre was carried out by members of the SS Einsatzgruppe C, one of the infamous mobile killing squads, while Ukrainian police played an auxiliary role, marching Jews to the ravine and guarding it during the executions. Petrowskaja’s narrator contemplates the slaughter in figures: “man sagt, es sei das größte zweitägige Massaker des Holocaust. 33771 Menschen tötete man in zwei Tagen. Eine merkwürdig genaue Zahl” (186; it is said to be the largest two-day massacre of the Holocaust. Thirty-three thousand, seven hundred and seventy-one people were killed in two days. An oddly precise number, ME, 166). Khiterer underlines the impossibility of knowing exactly how many Jews were murdered at Babi Yar, not least because the Nazis were unable to register the sheer volume of them who had come to the ravine in the tragic belief that they were to be resettled.23 Karel C. Berkhoff concludes that the death count far exceeded the Nazis’ “improbably precise figures.”24 The massacre, which began on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the most sacred day in the Jewish religious year, found no place in official Soviet history. “Dem Töten folgte das Schweigen” (189; killing was followed by silence, ME, 168) is Petrowskaja’s chilling conclusion. She grew up in an area of Kyiv that had been established after World War II: “die keine Vergangenheit zu haben schien, nur eine saubere Zukunft” (40; that seemed to have no past, only a tidy future, ME, 31), as her narrator puts it. This orientation towards the future in the spirit of Communism was at the expense of any meaningful confrontation with the past. “Meine Babuschka liegt auch in Babij Yar” (my babushka is also in Babi Yar) the narrator’s father tells her during a family visit to the site, “Sie hat es nur nicht bis hierher geschafftˮ (187; she just did not make it 21 The French priest Fr. Patrick Desbois provides a harrowing account of such executions in his book The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews, translated by Catherine Spencer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 22 Linda Kinstler, “No Monument Stands over Babi Yar,” The Atlantic, September 30, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/ ukraine-jewish-babi-yar-russia-holocaust-germany-poroshenko/502517. 23 See Khiterer, “Babi Yar, the Tragedy of Kiev’s Jews,” 2. 24 Karel C. Berkhoff, “‘The Corpses in the Ravine Were Women, Men, and Children’: Written Testimonies from 1941 on the Babi Yar Massacre,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2 (2015): 252.

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this far, ME, 167), alluding to her execution on the street. The use of the euphemistic “liegen” indicates the inability of her parents to confront the full extent of the horror inflicted upon their grandparents: Anna wurde in Babij Jar umgebracht, obwohl meine Eltern nie umgebracht sagten. Sie sagten, Anna liegt in Babij Jar, als ob durch dieses Liegen die Seelen von Anna und meinen Eltern ihre Ruhe finden könnten und auch die Frage nach den Urhebern aufgehoben wäre. (197) [Anna was killed in Babi Yar, although my parents never used the word killed. They said, Anna is lying in Babi Yar, as though this lying could confer peace on the souls of Anna and my parents, setting aside the question of the originators of the deed. (ME, 175–76)]

Recalling her Soviet childhood, the narrator wryly remarks that a hazy family past was a shared experience that united all: “wir waren aber sowjetische Kinder, alle gleich, mit dem gleichen Nebel in der Familiengeschichte, der vielleicht eine Voraussetzung für unsere Gleichheit bildete” (91; but we were all Soviet children all the same, with the same haze surrounding our family histories, which may have been the very reason for our sameness, ME, 79). In his chapter “Die Tragödie von Babij Jar im sowjetischen Gedächtnis” (The tragedy of Babij Jar in Soviet memorial culture), Frank Grüner takes this nebulous history further, underscoring the glaring collective and societal omissions when he describes the massacre as a “großer, weißer Fleck” (huge blank spot)25 in Soviet society. Tracing cultural responses to Babi Yar, he highlights Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s famous poem and Dmitri Shostakovic’s Thirteenth Symphony (both of which are also referenced in Vielleicht Esther) as defining protests “gegen den Antisemitismus und das staatlich verordnete Schweigen über den Holocaust in der Sowjetunion” (against antisemitism and state ordered silence about the Holocaust in the Soviet Union).26 In the summer of 1943, as the Red Army advanced towards Kyiv, the Nazis ordered several hundred prisoners of war from a nearby camp to exhume and then burn the bodies. This was part of Sonderaktion 1005, conducted between 1942 and 1944, in order to conceal evidence of mass killings by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe. “Staub kann man nicht zählen” (188; dust can’t be counted, ME, 167) is how Petrowskaja’s narrator 25 Frank Grüner, “Die Tragödie von Babij Jar im sowjetischen Gedächtnis: Künstlerische Erinnerung versus offizielles Schweigen,” in “Zerstörer des Schweigens”: Formen künstlerischer Erinnerung and die nationalsozialistische Rassenund Vernichtungspolitik in Osteuropa, edited by Frank Grüner, Urs Heftrich, and Heinz-Dietrich Lowe (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006), 57. Translations my own. 26 Grüner, “Die Tragödie von Babij Jar,” 90.

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describes the outcome of this chilling project. In the aftermath of the massacre, the ravine thus became “a site not of remembrance, but of repression and renewed loss,”27 as Dora Osborne observes. For ten years, a brick factory pumped its refuse, sand, and water into the ravine; this postwar development is interpreted by the narrator as symbolic of the Soviet government’s desire “Babij Jar auch als Ort zu liquidieren” (189; to liquidate Babi Yar as a place as well, ME, 168). In 1961, a burst dam engulfed the ravine; the ensuing mudslide resulted in fatalities, but once again silence reigned. In the poignant fifth chapter of Vielleicht Esther, the narrator’s navigation of the topography of Babi Yar is Petrowskaja’s powerful response both to the state-sanctioned silence and to the silence within her own family; by envisaging her great-grandmother’s final journey, she counters what Maria Roca Lizarazu has called “the symbolic obfuscation of Jewish fates in Soviet and post-Soviet discourse.”28

Navigating the Topography of Babi Yar Petrowskaja devotes the penultimate chapter of her text to Babi Yar, focussing on the landscape and on family members who were executed there. In the first story, entitled “Ein Spaziergang” (A Walk), she carefully navigates the topography, while simultaneously reflecting on the site’s universal significance.29 In interviews, the author has described the painstaking search during the process of composition for just the right German words, concluding that her book is “a search for the innocence of language, or even an attempt to bring innocence back to language.”30 Indeed, “Babij Jar” is, as the narrator notes, “ein seltsam niedlicher Name” (183; an oddly sweet name, ME, 163), which gives no indication 27 Dora Osborne, “Encountering the Archive in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 52, no. 3 (2016): 266. 28 Maria Roca Lizarazu, “The Family Tree, the Web, and the Palimpsest: Figures of Postmemory in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther,” Modern Language Review 113, no. 1 (2018): 186. 29 In an interview with Maria Caspari, Petrowskaja elaborates on the significance of the text’s subtitle, “Geschichten”; the seventy “small stories” that comprise the book highlight the fact that “big history” is composed of just such stories. Moreover, she rejects the sense of wholeness which the term “novel” implies, turning instead to fragments: “I recall, restore, or experience only the fragments of a lost epic, as if the world is broken and you can find only pieces.” “There are no ‘Other’ People: A Conversation with Katja Petrowskaja,” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 2, 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ there-are-no-other-people-a-conversation-with-katja-petrowskaja/. 30 Yaremchuk, “Katja PETROWSKAJA: ‘There are no Somebody Else’s Victims.’”

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of the horrors perpetrated there. As she traverses this deceptive landscape, many painful questions arise: Bleibt ein Ort derselbe Ort, wenn man an diesem Ort mordet, dann verscharrt, sprengt, aushebt, verbrennt, mahlt, streut, schweigt, pflanzt, lügt, Müll ablagert, flutet, ausbetoniert, wieder schweigt, absperrt, Trauernde verhaftet, später zehn Mahnmale errichtet, der eigenen Opfer einmal pro Jahr gedenkt oder meint, man habe damit nichts zu tun? (184) [Does a place stay the same place if, at this place, people murder, bury, blast, hollow out, burn, grind up, scatter, hold their tongues, plant, lie, create landfills and backfills, fill up with concrete, once again hold their tongues, block off, arrest mourners, and then later construct ten monuments, commemorate their own victims once a year, or think they have nothing to do with it? (ME, 164)]

In a single sentence that encompasses the many frantic changes which the site has undergone, she encapsulates the history of this deeply troubling topography. The desire which persisted down through the decades to eradicate any traces of the massacre is captured in a rapid-fire succession of verbs. Although she has come to Babi Yar because it is “Teil meiner Geschichte” (184; a part of my history, ME, 164), Petrowskaja’s narrator wants to explore the possibility of interacting with the landscape in a manner which transcends religious background and/or affiliation: Ich möchte von diesem Spaziergang so erzählen . . ., als ob es möglich wäre, als abstrakter Mensch, als Mensch an sich und nicht nur als Nachfahrin des jüdischen Volkes, mit dem mich nur noch die Suche nach fehlenden Grabsteinen verbindet, als ob es möglich wäre, als solcher Mensch an diesem merkwürdigen Ort namens Babij Jar spazieren zu gehen. (184) [I’d like to speak about this walk . . . as if it were possible [to do so] . . . as a person in the abstract, a person per se, and not just as a descendant of the Jewish people to whom my only connection is the search for missing gravestones, as if it were possible to go for a walk as such a person at this odd place of Babi Yar. (ME, 164)]

And yet it is an inescapable part of her family’s history that her greatgrandmothers died because they were Jews. As such, Natasha Gordinky’s description of Vielleicht Esther as being situated in the “Spannungsfeld zwischen dem Universalen und dem Partikularen” (space of tension

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between the universal and the particular)31 is particularly apt. A single, devastating sentence describes the consequences of the mass executions: “Kiew, die älteste russische Stadt, in der auch die Juden seit tausend Jahren gelebt hatten, wurde judenfreiˮ (185; Kiev, the oldest Russian city in which the Jews had also been living for a thousand years, became judenfrei, ME, 165). In the very next sentences, however, we are reminded that those who perished were not a separate group (“die anderen”); rather they were “die Schulfreude, die Kinder aus dem Hinterhof, die Nachbarn, die Omas und die Onkel” (185; friends from school, kids next door, neighbours, grandmas and uncles, ME, 165). The narrator’s comment that she has never understood “warum dieses Unglück immer das Unglück der anderen sein sollte” (185; why this misfortune should always be the misfortune of the others, ME, 165) prompts the reader to reconsider this landscape of suffering. The losses sustained in the ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv transcended religious and cultural groupings, Petrowskaja is at pains to point out. Although numbers vary, it is estimated that between seventy and one hundred and twenty thousand people perished at the ravine, which continued to be used as a site of slaughter until the liberation of Kyiv by the Soviets in November 1943. Patients of the nearby Pavlov psychiatric hospital were gassed and their bodies dumped in the ravine. Members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Soviet prisoners of war, the residents of five Roma camps, and Soviet sailors were amongst those slaughtered at Babi Yar. The full extent of the horrors that unfolded over two brutal days in late September 1941 finds visceral expression in the following passage where the narrator recounts shocking details about the massacre: Als sie nach Babij Yar kamen, mussten sie sich ausziehen, wurden nackt durch die Reihen der Polizei getrieben, angeschrien und geschlagen—und dort, wo man durch die Öffnung den Himmel sah, am Rand der Schlucht, wurden sie von beiden Seiten mit Maschinengewehr erschossen. Oder anders: Nackte Lebende liegen auf nackten Leichen, erst dann wird geschossen, die Kinder wirft man einfach so auf die Leichen, um sie lebendig zu begraben, das spart Munition. (185) [When they came to Babi Yar, they had to undress; naked they went through the rows of police, being shoved, shouted at, and beaten— and at the spot where the sky shone through the opening, at the 31 Natasha Gordinsky, “Den Ort erzählen: Babij Jar in dem Roman Vielleicht Esther von Katja Petrowskaja,” in Blondzhende Stern: Jüdische Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller aus der Ukraine als Grenzgänger zwischen den Kulturen in Ost und West, edited by Kerstin Schoor, Ievgeniia Voloshchuk, and Borys Bigun (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2020), 72. Translation my own.

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edge of the ravine, they were shot to death with machine guns from both sides. Or alternatively: the naked living lay down on the naked dead, and only then did the shots ring out; the children were just thrown onto the dead, they were buried alive to save ammunition. (ME, 165)]

The almost imperceptible, but very significant change in tense underscores the lasting impact of the horror on a landscape that continues to be haunted by the presence of the past. In the very next paragraph, which interweaves the narrator’s visit to Babi Yar with the chilling words of the head of the Sonderkommado reporting back to Berlin at the start of October 1941, we follow her as she navigates the site: “Ich gehe durch eine mit Gestrüpp bewachsene flache Landschaft. Die Aktion sei reibungslos verlaufen, meldete der Führer des Sonderkommandos Anfang Oktober 1941 nach Berlinˮ (186; I am walking through a flat countryside overrun with scraggly plants. The operation had gone smoothly, the leaders of the Sonderkommando reported to Berlin in early October 1941, ME, 165). For the narrator, the past overwhelms her experience of the topography in the present: “War es hier? Die Menschen gehen spazieren, reden, gestikulieren in der Sonne. Ich höre nichts. Die Vergangenheit schluckt alle Laute der Gegenwart” (186; Did it happen here? People are out walking, chatting, gesturing with their hands in the sun. I do not hear anything. The past swallows up the sounds of the present, ME, 166). This coalescing of time and space in the Bakhtinian sense of the chronotope is apparent here, as is the continued effect of familial and societal trauma through the generations. Writing about the poetics of trauma after 9/11, Katharina Donn observes that traumatic chronotopes such as Auschwitz are doubly marked: “Time itself remains inherently doubled, and retains the present pasts of trauma alongside the progressive time of the everyday.”32 The narrator feels completely disconnected from her fellow-visitors as they wander around the site. “Gibt es etwas in ihrer Gestik, was den Ursprung der menschlichen Gewalt verrät?” (186; Is there something in their gestures that betrays the origins of human violence?, ME, 166), she wonders about those around her. She, on the other hand, feels a deep connection to the landscape, struggling to comprehend how others appear to be unaffected: “Wäre es mir lieber, wenn Babij Jar nun wie eine Mondlandschaft aussehen würde? Exotisch? Giftig? Alle Menschen—vom Leid zerfressen? Warum sehen sie nicht, was ich sehe?” (186; Would I prefer it if Babi Yar now looked like a moonscape? Exotic? Toxic? All people—consumed by suffering? Why don’t they see what I see?, ME, 166). 32 Katharina Donn, A Poetics of Trauma after 9/11: Representing Trauma in a Digitized Present (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 208.

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In the same chapter, the narrator recalls visiting Babi Yar with her parents many years previously. At that time, there was just a single monument on the site, erected thirty-five years after the massacre,33 but, as she observes, “am falschen Ort und am falschen Tag” (187; at the wrong place and on the wrong day, ME, 166) and with no specific reference to the fate of Kyivan Jews: “Muskulöse Sowjethelden—ein Matrose, ein Partisan und eine Ukrainerin—erobern die Vergangenheit. Die Wörter Heldentum, Mut, Vaterland, Kühnheit prallen von mir ab wie Pingpongbälle. Kein Wort davon, dass hier auch die Juden von Kiev liegen” (187; muscular Soviet heroes—a sailor, a partisan, and a Ukrainian woman—conquering the past. The words heroism, courage, fatherland, daring, bounded off me like ping-pong balls. Not a word about the fact that the Jews of Kiev are lying here as well, ME, 167). She turns her attention to the physical erasure of the once majestic ravine: “Wenn ich heute die majestätische Schlucht suche—vor dem Krieg zweieinhalb Kilometer lang, bis zu sechzig Meter tief und sehr steil—kann ich sie nicht finden” (189; When I look for the majestic ravine today—which before the war was two and a half kilometers long, up to sixty meters deep, and quite steep—I cannot find it, ME, 168). However, Babi Yar was, as Jeff Mankoff notes, “too big and too central to the experience of Soviet Jewry” to disappear as an image, “even if it could be physically removed from the landscape.”34 At the height of the flooding that followed the dam burst in 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Anatoly Kutznesov visited the site. A few months later, Yevtushenko’s seminal poem was published in Literaturnaja Gazeta, the famous opening lines of which are reproduced in Vielleicht Esther in Paul Celan’s German translation: “Über Babi Jar, da steht keinerlei Denkmal. / Ein schroffer Hang—der eine unbehauene Grabstein” (189; No monument stands over Babi Yar. / A drop sheer as a crude gravestone, ME, 169). Gordinsky reads the Celan citation as part of Petrowskaja’s poetic strategy, enabling the cultural transmission of a Soviet memoryscape within the German literary context. In terms of memorial landscapes, too, this interweaving of Soviet and German literature is significant: “So werden beide Gedichte, das russische Original und die deutsche Übersetzung zu

33 This monument, unveiled on July 2, 1976, was dedicated to citizens, soldiers, and prisoners of war who were murdered at Babi Yar; there was no specific mention of Jews. For a detailed account of the development of Babi Yar as a memorial site, see Alexsandr Burakovsky’s article “Holocaust Remembrance in Ukraine: Memorialization and the Jewish Tragedy at Babi Yar,” Nationalities Papers 39, no. 3 (2011): 371–89. 34 Jeff Mankoff, “Babi Yar and the Struggle for Memory, 1944–2004,” Ab Imperio 2 (2004): 414.

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einem literarischen Denkmal” (In this process, both poems, the Russian original and the German translation, become a literary memorial).35 Kutznesov had grown up close to the ravine and was just eleven years old when the mass shootings occurred; in 1966 his text Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel was published. In Vielleicht Esther the narrator’s mother recalls how they welcomed such interventions: “wir weinten vor Glück darüber, dass man über das Unglück nun endlich öffentlich sprach” (189; we were crying for joy that the catastrophe was finally being spoken about in public, ME, 169). The narrator underscores the cumulative and momentous effect of these cultural contributions: “Es schien, als wäre dieses Weltunglück nicht mehr obdachlos, als wäre die Ehre der Erinnerung wiederhergestellt worden” (190; It seemed as though this global calamity was no longer adrift, as though honour had been restored to the memory, ME, 169). Official commemoration at the site itself, however, has been a very protracted and haphazard affair, as Rapson notes: “The incoherence of Babi Yar’s landscape can be related to its slow and fractious development as a memoryscape.”36 It was only in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that newly independent Ukraine erected a menorahshaped monument to the Jews who had perished there. There is widespread ignorance in contemporary Ukraine of the horrors that unfolded at Babi Yar; a survey coinciding with the 2021 International Holocaust Remembrance Day revealed that a mere 16 percent of respondents were aware of the extent of the massacre.37 This shocking statistic renders Petrowskaja’s memory work in Vielleicht Esther all the more urgent and compelling. The reader follows her narrator as she navigates the commemorative topography in the present of the text: Ich gehe von Denkmal zu Denkmal. Großmütter spazieren mit ihren Enkelkindern umher und schauen sich die Monumente an, oft nur, weil ich das gerade mache. Als die Ukraine vor zwanzig Jahren unabhängig wurde, bekamen mit der Zeit alle Opfergruppen ihr Monument: Ein Holzkreuz für die ukrainischen Nationalisten, ein Denkmal für die Ostarbeiter, eines für die Mitglieder des geistlichen Widerstands, eine Tafel für die Zigeuner. (191) 35 Gordinsky, “Den Ort erzählen,” 71. Translation my own. 36 Rapson, “Babi Yar: Transcultural Memories of Atrocity from Kiev to Denver,” 145. 37 Yossi Lempkowicz, “Plans Unveiled for One of the World’s Largest Holocaust Memorial Centers at Baby Yar, Ukraine,” European Jewish Press, January 24, 2021, https://ejpress.org/plans-unveiled-for-one-of-worlds-largest-holocaustmemorial-centers-at-baby-yar-ukraine/. Plans are underway for the development on the site of a vast memorial complex which is to include museums, a religious/ spiritual center, and an educational and research center.

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[I go from monument to monument. Grandmothers look at them as they walk around with their grandchildren, often simply because they see me doing it. Twenty years ago, when Ukraine became independent, all groups of victims began to get monuments: a wooden cross for the Ukrainian nationalists, a memorial for forced laborers from the East, one for two members of the clergy who joined the resistance, a plaque for the gypsies. (ME, 170–71)]

She criticizes the proliferation of monuments for the selective character of their memorialization. In an observation which underscores the important role of language throughout the text, she also rejects on a linguistic level this division of the memorial landscape, the word “Selektion” resonating with Nazi overtones: “sogar im Gedenken setzt die Selektion sich fort” (191; even in commemoration, there was no end to selection, ME, 171). In Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, Michael Rothberg argues for the importance of moving away from what he terms “identitarian competition”;38 he has coined the term “multidirectional memory” to describe the productive dynamic and interaction of different historical memories. Rothberg sets out to “rethink the conceptualization of collective memory in multicultural and transnational contexts.”39 Multidirectional memory is shared memory; it is precisely this shared memory that is lacking in Babi Yar, as Petrowskaja’s narrator points out: “Zehn Denkmäler, aber keine gemeinsame Erinnerung” (191; Ten monuments, but no shared memory, ME, 171). In a simple, yet highly effective sentence, she prompts us to reconsider this deeply troubling topography, not as a space of competing memories, but rather in terms of our common humanity: “Was mir fehlt, ist das Wort Mensch” (191; What I am missing is the word human, ME, 171). Her encounter with the landscape of Babi Yar prompts her to ask such crucially important questions as “Wem gehören diese Opfer?” (Who do these victims belong to?) and “Sind sie Waisen unserer gescheiterten Erinnerung?” (191; Are they orphans of our failed memory?, ME, 171). By rescuing from familial and societal oblivion figures such as Esther, the author has found a voice “that doesn’t merely mourn, but opens up new ways of thinking through history.”40

38 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 21. 39 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 21. 40 Caspari, “There are no ʻOtherʼ People.”

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Perhaps Esther Petrowskaja devotes the final, deeply moving section of Chapter Five to her paternal great-grandmother. In the absence of precise details about her murder, the narrator envisages the nonchalant manner in which the soldiers extinguished the life of this elderly Jewish woman on the morning of September 29, 1941: “Sie wurde auf der Stelle erschossen, mit nachlässiger Routine” (221; She was shot on the spot, as a careless matter of routine, ME, 196). As postmemorial subject, her great-granddaughter is left to imagine how this scene played out on the Kyivan street; Esther’s death was so insignificant to the two soldiers that it did not even merit a break in their conversation: “ohne dass das Gespräch unterbrochen wurde, ohne sich ganz umzudrehen, ganz nebenbei” (221; without the officers interrupting their conversation, without turning around all the way, nonchalantly, ME, 196). The narrator envisages Esther’s slow but determined walk towards the two “flachsblonde, stramme, beinahe elegante Männer” (212; Two strapping, flaxen-haired, almost elegant men, ME, 188) in whom she erroneously sees allies rather than her executioners. “Ihr ging entwickelte sich wie ein episches Geschehen, nicht nur weil Vielleicht Esther sich wie die Schildkröte aus den Aporien von Zenon bewegte, Schritt für Schritt—langsam, aber sicher” (212; Her walked developed like an epic event, not just because Maybe Esther moved like the tortoise in the aporias of Zeno, step by step, slowly but surely, ME, 189), she notes, foregrounding the epic quality of this final walk towards her imminent death. We are reminded of Petrowskaja’s interpretation: “Symbolising the fate of so many, Esther embodies ‘our common landscape, our common sacrifices.’”41 Gordinsky observes that Petrowskaja counters the “radikale Un­sich­ erheit” (radical insecurity) surrounding her great-grandmother’s death by imagining her final moments “mit großer Akribie” (in meticulous detail).42 The past, however, retains its elusive quality: “Sosehr ich mich bemühe, ihre Gesichter zu sehen, in ihre Gesichter zu blicken . . . es geht nicht. Ich sehe die Gesichter nicht, verstehe nicht, und die Geschichtsbücher schweigen” (221; No matter how hard I try to see their faces, to peer into [their] faces . . . it doesn’t work. I don’t see their faces, I don’t understand, and the history books maintain their silence, ME, 196). We are reminded once again of the difficulties encountered by the postmemorial subject who is, as Hirsch explains, “shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the 41 Yaremchuk, “Katja PETROWSKAJA: ‘There are no Somebody Else’s Victims.’” 42 Gordinsky, “Den Ort erzählen,” 76.

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past, but their effects continue into the present.”43 An aerial photograph, taken in November 1941 and reproduced in the text, shows the extent of the damage both to the housing block on Engelstraße where Esther had lived and to the entire surroundings. On the fifth floor, a bed is still visible: “Auf einem deutschen Luftbild vom November 1941 kann man dieses Bett sehen, auf dem sich mein neunjähriger Vater noch im ersten Kriegssommer gesonnt hatte” (222; A German aerial photograph taken in November 1941 shows this bed where my nine-year-old father had sunbathed during the first summer of the war, ME, 197). However, the entire interior had been destroyed. Like Esther herself, this image—and the thirteen others dotted throughout the text—are examples of the “haunting spectres”44 to which I made reference in the introduction to this chapter; haunting Petrowskaja’s family story and her text, they are, as Hirsch reminds us, “fragments of history” that form a “narrative of unassimilable loss,” reinforcing at once “incomprehensibility and presence, a past that will neither fade away nor be integrated into the present.”45 However, as the narrator notes, there must have been witnesses to the events of that fateful morning: Als Vielleicht Esther einsam gegen die Zeit ging, gab es in unserer Geschichte eine ganze Menge unsichtbarer Zeugen: Passanten, die Verkäuferinnen in der Bäckerei drei Stufen tiefer und die Nachbarn hinter den Vorhängen dieser dicht bewohnten Straßen, eine nirgendwo erwähnte, gesichtslose Masse für die großen Flüchtlingszüge. (222) [When maybe Esther made her way alone, walking against time, there were many invisible witnesses to our story: passersby, the salesladies in the bakery three steps down, and the neighbors behind the curtains of this densely populated street, unmentioned, faceless masses for refugee processions. (ME, 197–98)]

In this description, too, Esther’s final journey assumes mythical dimensions; she is a solitary, frail figure who heroically challenges the might of history. What has become of the witnesses?, Petrowskaja’s narrator wonders: “Sie sind die letzten Erzähler. Wohin sind sie alle umgezogen?” (222; They are the last storytellers. Where did they all move to?, ME, 198).

43 Interview with Marianne Hirsch. 44 Hirsch and Spitzer, “What’s Wrong with this Picture?,” 237. 45 Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 40.

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Conclusion Vielleicht Esther is an important contribution to German memory discourses. Katja Petrowskaja’s acclaimed literary debut raises compelling questions about individual and societal forgetting and the repression of trauma; its narrator sets out to rescue from oblivion those figures like her paternal great-grandmother whom she so evocatively describes as the “Waisen unserer gescheiterten Erinnerung” (191; orphans of our failed memory, ME, 171). In so doing, she bears witness to the horrors of the Holocaust as they impacted upon her family. Babi Yar looms large in the text; exploring the memorial site and the street where Esther was shot enables her to envisage her great-grandmothers’ final moments. The narrator’s encounter with the site of mass killing shows how this traumatic space continues to be haunted by the presence of the past. Her navigation of the troubling topography of Babi Yar reveals the glaring omissions in Soviet historiography, while also countering the reticence in her own family to confront the full extent of the horror. Traversing the commemorative landscape, she criticizes the selective and disparate character of the memorialization; in so doing, she underscores the importance of different historical memories interacting in Holocaust spaces so as to create what Rothberg has called “a more just future of memory.”46 Moving beyond the victim-perpetrator dichotomy, most notably in the choice of language, Katja Petrowskaja demonstrates in her text that “there are no ‘somebody else’s’ sufferings and victims—they are all ‘ours.’”47 The haunted landscape of Babi Jar raises universal questions about the relationship between humankind and violence in a powerful, deeply moving text that demonstrates the importance for contemporary society of bearing witness in the present to the horrors of the Holocaust, even as Petrowskaja and her narrator grapple with the challenges of postmemory.

46 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 21. 47 Yaremchuk, “Katja PETROWSKAJA: ‘There are no Somebody Else’s Victims.’”

“dann hüpfe ich auch, komisch und ungeschickt, wie eine Nadel auf einer abgespielten Platte . . .”: Translational Ethics and Affects in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014) Daniel Harvey, University of Glasgow

A

cross academy and industry,

theory and practice, translation is increasingly understood to be a “cluster concept.”1 In other words, this fuzzy term encompasses a broad spectrum of practices that are inherently interdisciplinary, versatile, open-ended, and collaborative.2 Katja Petrowskaja’s translingual autofiction Vielleicht Esther (2014; Maybe Esther, 2019)3 likewise resists easy definition. Presenting readers with a patchwork of genres and languages, it weaves together diverse interdisciplinary strands, from historical documentation and autobiographical introspection to philological and philosophical meditation. 1 The term “cluster concept” rests on Wittgenstein’s discussion of open concepts, which comprise “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 32e, cited in Maria Tymoczko, “Trajectories of Research in Translation Studies,” Meta 50, no.4 (2005): 1085. 2 Matthew Reynolds’ recent work on “prismatic translation” challenges dominant mimetic metaphors (from channel and transfer to imitation and mirror) that tend to describe translation as a binary process; the prismatic paradigm offers instead a new conception comparable to the prism’s refractive potential. Reynolds reimagines translation as “fundamentally multiplicatory . . . not reproduction but proliferation,” encouraging us to consider translation “not so much [as] an endeavour to find equivalents for a set of given meanings,” but rather “as a matter of interactive discovery and co-creation.” Matthew Reynolds, Prismatic Translation (Oxford: Legenda, 2019), 2–3. 3 Katja Petrowskaja, Vielleicht Esther (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014); Katja Petrowskaja, Maybe Esther, translated by Shelley Frisch (New York: Harper Perennial, 2019). Subsequent references to this source and its translation will be indicated by the abbreviations VE and ME respectively with page numbers in the text.

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At times, these pursuits appear contradictory, and Petrowskaja knowingly frustrates our desire for a historical work that demystifies. Her hydraheaded “Text des Nachgedächtnisses” (text of postmemory)4 is only incidentally a travelogue, only superficially a family history, and only tangentially a novel; it betrays diffuse personal, authorial and translational desires, since her practice is led by conflicting urges to disentangle threads and to multiply entanglements. In a series of interconnected narrative fragments, the first-person narrator (also named Katja)5 sets off from Berlin to venture across Central and Eastern Europe, gathering traces of her ancestors who were murdered in the Holocaust. Petrowskaja is a Ukrainian Jew born twenty-five years after the end of the Second World War, who has since married a German, migrated to Germany, and ostensibly integrated into German culture and language. She admits that her knowledge of German far outstrips her grasp of Yiddish or Hebrew.6 Her historical investigation is simultaneously a linguistic adventure. As she traverses ghostly landscapes across Poland, Ukraine, and Austria, visiting concentration camps, mass graves, museums, archives, and memorials, Katja is constantly translating. Her self-conscious, translingual narration offers a poignant commentary on the challenges and opportunities arising from linguistic contact. The translational hurdles she encounters reflect the shifting borders, bodies, languages, and ideologies that constitute Europe’s hybridity, particularly Central and Eastern Europe over the last century. Each stop on her journey provides clues, but also poses further questions. Cities like Kyiv and Berlin sustain multiple conflicting memories and evoke contradictory associations that complicate the traditional 4 Eva Hausbacher, “‘Untermieter der Geschichte’: Formen und Funktionen transgenerationaler Erinnerungsnarrative,” Trauma—Generationen—Erzählen: Transgenerationale Narrative in der Gegenwartsliteratur zum ost-, ostmittel- und südosteuropäischen Raum, edited by Yvonne Drosihn, Ingeborg Jandl, and Eva Kowollik (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2020), 203–21. 5 The narrator is not a clear-cut autobiographical translation of Katja Petrowskaja, the author. This double je is a significant aspect of the text’s interrogation of preconceived conceptual borders and prevalent binary oppositions, whether it is straddling inherited and constructed identities; fact and fiction; or subjective and objective truths. As Hausbacher writes, “es bleibt offen, wie es in Vielleicht Esther heißt, ‘wo die Literatur beginnt und die Geschichte endet’” (Hausbacher, “Untermieter der Geschichter,” 206, It remains unclear, as it says in Maybe Esther, where literature starts and history ends). For the purposes of this essay, I will refer to Katja the narrator and Petrowskaja the author, although this endeavor is itself a wilful blending of conventional academic and queer naming practices. 6 Ironically, the only Yiddish word she knows is Meshuggeneh (a crazy or daft person), which leads her to ask rhetorically: “Ist die Verrücktheit meine letzte Verbindung mit dem Judentum?” (VE, 145; Is insanity my last connection to Jewishness?, ME, 127).

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binary between the foreign and the familiar, rendering the very notion of Heimat (homeland) irrevocably unheimlich (eery/uncanny). German, Russian, Ukrainian, English, Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew terms surface unexpectedly. Displaced words and anachronistic allusions punctuate the text—on street signs and napkins, in newspapers and recipe books— unpredictably inciting or hindering thoughts, feelings, connection, and closure for the author and reader alike. Showcasing an acute linguistic sensitivity, Petrowskaja’s reflections on these traces of historical translations—the spectral residue of migrations, invasions, occupations, and entanglements—reveal how the act of Übersetzung (translation) can also be a therapeutic act of Auseinandersetzung (engagement/confrontation), on both individual and collective levels. Relating the stories of her displaced and murdered relatives requires a hybrid translingual practice comprising speculation, memory, and fiction that inevitably raises ethical issues. Like all translators, Petrowskaja must speak on behalf of the mute other, treading the fine line between identification and ventriloquism; like all translators, she is compelled to interpret and imagine as the line between remembering and rewriting is increasingly blurred. Her attempt to represent the Shoah as experienced by her long-dead relatives places her in a double bind: she cannot listen or testify, but must somehow engage in both activities simultaneously.7 In a chiastic play on Lefevere’s assertion that all translation is rewriting,8 Petrowskaja dares to suggest that writing is, already, translation. Producing a first-person account of her family history in an acquired language, while weaving together the experienced and the imagined, her translingual autofictional practice further blends the traditionally discrete occupations of author and translator. In Vielleicht Esther, Petrowskaja wrestles with the paradoxical task before her: So gründet die Herkunft unserer Familie in einer fragwürdigen Übersetzung ohne Original, und ich erzähle die Geschichte dieser Familie nun auf Deutsch, ohne dass es für sie je ein russisches Original gegeben hätte. (VE, 52–53) [Our family’s history is predicated on a questionable translation without a source text, and I am now telling the story of this family in German without there ever having been a Russian original. (ME, 44)]

7 Victoria Aarons and Alan L. Berger, “On the Periphery: The ‘Tangled Roots’ of Holocaust Remembrance for the Third Generation,” in Third-­ Generation Holocaust Representation: Trauma, History, and Memory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 3–40. 8 André Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London: Routledge, 1992).

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Addressing her incongruous multilingual identity, but also the narrative instability that arises at the boundary between languages, at the limits of auto- and exofiction, Petrowskaja considers her own translational project in Benjaminian terms: the task of historical recuperation (translation) may be impossible, but it remains a vital ethical endeavor for future generations.9 Vielleicht Esther, then, stages the intertwined paradoxes of Holocaust translation10 and post-survivor testimony,11 literally asking and figuratively examining many of the questions raised at the intersection of these discourses: “Wer bin ich hier? Darf ich hinschauen?” (VE, 248; Who am I here? Can I have a look?, ME, 220); “Wie soll ich mich hier benehmen? Hier im KZ” (246; How am I supposed to behave here? Here in the concentration camp, ME, 219); “Warum lassen wir den Stein nicht liegen?” (270; Why not leave the boulder in place?, ME, 240).12 By revisiting the sites of twentieth-century trauma, Petrowskaja explores the affective dimension of attempts to translate the elusive past. She interrogates the psychological dilemma faced by second-, third-, and fourthgeneration survivors, whereby constructing a post-Shoah Jewish identity can appear to be a choice between reparative transformation or paranoid rumination: as if one could either take possession of the past or would remain haunted by it.13 Her own practice offers a versatile alternative to 9 Walter Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 19. 10 Peter Davies, Witnessing between Languages: The Translation of Holocaust Testimonies in Context (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018). 11 Maria Roca Lizarazu, “Moments of Possibility: Holocaust Postmemory, Subjunctivity and Futurity in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014) and Robert Menasse’s Die Hauptstadt (2017),” Forum for Modern Language Studies 56, no. 4 (2020): 406–426. 12 Petrowskaja’s practice calls to mind Laub and Felman’s seminal study of Holocaust representation, particularly their commentary on Lanzmann’s 1985 film Shoah. Laub and Felman’s assertion that the language of the Shoah “is a language of translation” reverberates loudly in Vielleicht Esther. Yet Petrowskaja reframes their inquiry for a contemporary audience even further removed from the Holocaust, and thus even more reliant on translation as a means and method for creatively and ethically making sense of this atrocity and its consequent trauma across the Jewish diaspora. Dori Laub and Shoshana Felman, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 1992), 212. 13 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s essay on paranoid and reparative reading will form one theoretical base for my analysis of Petrowskaja’s affective translational turn, particularly where Sedgwick applies concepts from Melanie Klein’s object relations theory to formulate a self-consciously vague mode of post-critical literary analysis. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Paranoid reading and reparative reading, or you’re so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you,” in Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,

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this fatalistic binary opposition, promoting a queer and post-critical,14 “komisch und ungeschickt” (VE, 77; comically and clumsily, ME, 66) ethical mode of rewriting. Petrowskaja’s commentary on translation conceives of a creative process of self-discovery and active, sensitive, therapeutic engagement with the seemingly untranslatable past. Her novel approach thus speaks a different language to the binary logic and paranoia of translational, literary, and historiographic orthodoxy. This essay will replay Vielleicht Esther’s anti-method by drawing serendipitous connections and contrasts between Petrowskaja’s practice, the reparative reading imagined by Sedgwick, and the translation theories outlined by Berman, Benjamin, and Reynolds.15 It will consider how her writing, in its translingual knottiness and methodological queerness,16 might reconceive translation as a spectrum of ethical embodied practices.

The Record Player and the Translator’s Testimony In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing (1992), Laub asserts, albeit ambiguously, that the “task of the listener is to be unobtrusively present throughout the testimony.”17 By focalizing a historical narrative through the liminal perspective of a secondary witness, Petrowskaja spotlights the indeterminacy of the Shoah translator, who, as Deane-Cox writes, “is—or ought to be—in/visible in the transmission of memory” to avoid “a discontinuity of witnessing,” yet “without whom interlingual and intercultural

2003); Melanie Klein, The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume 1: Love, Guilt and Reparation 1921–1945 and Other Works (New York: The Free Press, 1975). 14 In line with Sedgwick’s “reparative reading,” Petrowskaja challenges the “faith in exposure” that “is often implicit in what goes by the name critique” and gently contests the supremacy of “anxiously anticipatory knowingness” by revalorizing horizontal connections, alliances, and embodied relations—employing strategies of “attachment, incorporation [and] involvement” that are routinely “avoided or stigmatized as uncritical.” Michael Warner, “Uncritical Reading,” in Polemic: Critical or Uncritical, edited by Jane Gallop (New York: Routledge, 2004), 17. 15 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid”; Antoine Berman, “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign,” translated by Lawrence Venuti, in The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2000), 288; Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers”; Reynolds, Prismatic Translation. 16 As Warner notes, Sedgwick’s reparative paradigm “seems to be defined less by any project of its own than by its recoil from a manically programmatic intensification of the critical. It is not so much a method as (principled?) avoidance of method.” Warner, “Uncritical Reading,” 18. 17 Laub and Felman, Testimony, 71.

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transmission would not take place.”18 Augmenting recent scholarship on the ethics of testimony translation, Petrowskaja does not portray the translator as “unobtrusively present,”19 but instead presents an active, contemplative, and expressive protagonist who moves, writes, thinks, feels, discovers, and, most importantly, imagines. Rather than proceeding “weightlessly,”20 Petrowskaja considers the potential value of recording the “distortion” generated by the desire to translate, which is, according to Stahuljak, “the translator’s testimony.”21 Crucially, Petrowskaja does not shy away from exposing her own inadequacy as an unobtrusive witness; indeed, “mit [ihr]er auf die zunge geklebten deutschen sprache” (VE, 118; with [her] German language tacked to her tongue, ME, 103), she playfully amplifies the distortion. Recording is a thematic thread running through Vielleicht Esther.22 The terms “life record” and “death record” appear in English, as untranslatables, conveying the absurdity of a practice that purportedly records (documents, immortalizes) the life of a human subject, but merely quantifies, reducing a life to: “Namen, Daten, drei Orte: Geburt, Krieg, Tod, mehr nicht” (VE, 118; Name, dates, three places: of birth, war, death, nothing more, ME, 103). The computational ideals of equivalence-driven and documentary translation practice are portrayed as dehumanizing; moreover, they are contrasted with the communal affective and creative potency of live performance and recording practices. Petrowskaja and Katja both recognize and celebrate the embodiment respected and transmitted by analogue recording equipment and vinyl records.23 Indeed, the image of the record player is central to Petrowskaja’s self-conception as 18 Sharon Deane-Cox, “The translator as secondary witness: Mediating Memory in Antelme’s L’espèce humaine,” Translation Studies 6, no. 3 (2013): 313. 19 Laub and Felman, Testimony, 71. 20 Sarah Maitland, “Imagining otherness: on translation, harm and border logic,” The Translator 25, no. 3 (2019): 219. 21 Zrinka Stahuljak, “Violent Distortions: Bearing Witness to the Task of Wartime Translators,” TTR: traduction, terminologie, rédaction 13, no. 1 (2000): 40. 22 Incidentally, Benjamin’s term for the “ideal” reader/translator in his seminal essay on translation is “Aufnehmende[*r]” (recording). Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 9. 23 Significantly, vinyl culture, like Ugrešić’s karaoke culture, from collection to sampling and mixing knows no political or linguistic borders and, in principle, radically blurs egoistic distinctions for performers and audience members; it is notoriously intersubjective, interactive, participatory, and involves mutable references and shifting identifications, alliances, and kinships. Dubravka Ugrešić, Karaoke Culture, translated by David Williams (Rochester, NY: Open Letter Books, 2011).

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a translator: “Dann hüpfe ich auch, komisch und ungeschickt, wie eine Nadel auf einer abgespielten Platte, übersprang den ganzen Krieg wie ein Gebiet, das meinen rettenden Phantasien nicht unterstellt war” (VE, 77; Then I, too, skipped about comically and clumsily, like a needle on a worn record, skipped over the whole war like a realm not subject to my liberating fantasies, ME 66). Though mechanical in nature, the movement of the needle on the record player is a performance that never repeats itself exactly. Even when the same record is played twice, every iteration is unique, subtly resonating with, and inscribing, the precise environmental conditions—the target context—of the performance. This distortion functions as a sign or index of the translating subject. It also invites comparison with translation scholar Antoine Berman’s deforming tendencies: that is “the system of textual deformation that operates in every translation . . . these unconscious forces [that] form part of the translator’s being, determining the desire to translate.”24 According to Berman’s negative analytic, the target text is always haunted by the translator’s spectral presence. No translation is objective or neutral: a flawless performance or perfect reproduction is impossible, although a conscious attempt to avoid these deforming tendencies can mitigate translatorial bias. Petrowskaja challenges Berman’s paranoid stance by revalorizing textual distortion and welcoming the translator’s being and desire into the target text. In Vielleicht Esther, unconscious affective interference is brought to consciousness to consider its therapeutic and creative applications as part of translatorial action, rather than “neutralise[d], or attenuate[d].”25 Petrowskaja exposes the absurdity of attempts to remove the human element from mediation through figures such as the Kafkaesque receptionist at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial, who parrots “meldet sich niemand” (VE, 232; no one is answering, ME, 206) over the phone, rather than listening and responding to Katja’s queries. Katja is taken aback on realizing “dass es kein Anrufbeantworter war” (VE, 232; this was not an answering machine, ME, 206), but rather a human being void of humanity. The record player as translator not only embodies the intersubjectivity of identity, but also facilitates the awakening of repressed memories and the dawning of collective experiences through affective testimony. “Wäre diese Schallplatte nicht gewesen,” Katja speculates: so hätte sich das versiegelte Fenster ihrer frühen Kindheit nie mehr für uns geöffnet, und ich hätte niemals verstehen können, dass meine Babuschka aus einem Warschau kommt, das es nicht mehr gibt, dass wir von dort sind, ob ich will oder nicht, aus dieser verlorenen Welt, 24 Berman, “Translation and the Trials,” 286. 25 Berman, “Translation and the Trials,” 286.

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an die sich meine Großmutter, schon von uns gehend, abtretend, auf einer letzten Grenze, am Rande, erinnerte. (VE, 76) [if this record had not existed, this sealed window of her early childhood would never have opened up to us, and I never would have been able to understand that my babushka came from a Warsaw that no longer exists; whether I like it or not, we are from that lost world, which my grandmother, who was already going from us, stepping down, recalled at a final boundary, at the edge. (ME, 66)]

Petrowskaja’s use of the subjunctive is “ethically crucial”26 here, as it is the reparative mood par excellence, marking potential, hope, and desire. Her combination of the present participle with the preterite tense, which Frisch translates with the past continuous “was already going from us” complicates the distinction between past and present, completion and continuity. Petrowskaja figures translational memory as a reciprocal process, at once unfolding the past so that the subject can access it in the present, whilst also enfolding the subject in a history and legacy.27 Petrowskaja’s meandering syntax may echo Proust’s mémoire involontaire, but instead of extolling the restitutive power of smell and taste, her narrator turns our attention to the aural and oral faculties, which, stimulated by the translatorial mediation of the record player, are capable of overcoming temporal, geographical, and linguistic displacement, unlocking the past’s “versiegelte Fenster” (sealed window). Als wäre sie beim Erinnern ertappt worden, streckte sich die Zeit aus und griff nach Rosa, durch die Schallplatte erreichte sie mich und erweckte Rosas Erinnerungen, die, so schien es, völlig verstummt und verschüttet waren wie auch das, was einmal ihre Muttersprache gewesen sein mochte, die wir und sogar sie selbst vergessen hatte. (VE, 77) [As though she were caught in the act of recollection, her time stretched out and took hold of Rosa, and the record made it reach out to me and revive her memories, which, it appeared, had been thoroughly silenced and submerged, just like what may have been her mother tongue once, which we and even she herself had forgotten. (ME, 66)] 26 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 146. 27 Petrowskaja’s sensitivity to grammatical tense and mood imbues the narrative with a “hauntological” aspect, which portrays the unheimlich coincidence of presence and absence, the virtual and the actual in remembrance. See Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, translated by Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1993).

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This dizzying play of pronouns and clauses evokes the intersubjective indeterminacy of both remembrance and testimony as temporalities (past and present) and subjectivities (Rosa and Katja) become entangled. Frisch’s translation captures the restorative power of the record player with the verb “revive,” which is itself a reparative rewriting of Petrowskaja’s negative term “verschüttet” (buried/submerged); both versions identify the therapeutic opportunities for greater knowledge of the self and identification with the other made possible by embodied translation. Petrowskaja’s methodology and text broadly attest to the positive affect that can be unlocked by the very “play of hypertextual transformations” that Berman deplored, as part rather than instead of “a reflection on the properly ethical aim of the translating act (receiving the Foreign as Foreign).”28 In Vielleicht Esther, Berman’s paranoid conception of the haunted translation is replaced by a reparative image of the translator as spiritual medium and empath: deformation, both conscious and unconscious, is inevitable in translation and transmission, but, Petrowskaja suggests, distortion can be positive and ghosts can be illuminating. Her writing, and Katja’s wandering, express a desire to acknowledge and process negative affect—passing through the depressive position to access the reparative position—reckoning with fear and pain, so that empathy, reparation, and love can take (their) place. Like Berman, Holocaust scholars have expressed concern about the “naturalization” of the Foreign in uncritical translations. Larissa Allwork borrows translational terminology to criticize “historical narratives that domesticate . . . the excessive violence of the Holocaust and fail . . . to self-reflexively comment on the limits of reason in understanding this event and the traumatic opacity at its core.”29 Peter Davies imagines the self-reflexivity and responsibility required of secondary and tertiary witnesses as a “sensitive mode of reading” that involves “an active, participatory reader who is always aware of his or her own subject position”; he also warns against “the trap of identification, imposition of meaning, or usurping the voice of the witness for his or her own purposes.”30 Accordingly, nuanced, post-critical translators could employ “irony, self-reflexivity and particularity” to combat the “unspoken ‘paranoia’ of empiricist or positivist historiography,” for example.31 Yet, as Michael Rothberg has shown, 28 Berman, “Translation and the Trials,” 285–86. 29 Larissa Allwork, “Holocaust Trauma Between the National and the Transnational: Reflections on History’s ‘Broken Mirror,’” in Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature, edited by Susana Onega, Constanza del Rio, and Maite Escudero-Alías (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 85. 30 Davies, Witnessing between Languages, 13. 31 Paul Eisenstein, “History as/and Paranoia: David Grossman’s See Under: Love,” in Traumatic Encounters: Holocaust Representation and the Hegelian

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in the twenty-first century, “collective memory [appears to obey] a logic of scarcity.”32 The neoliberal economics of contemporary memory culture sees “collective memory as competitive memory,”33 reproducing the colonialist myth of monolingualism34 in the field of empathy, thus constructing a hierarchy of oppressions and traumas that tacitly conditions subjects to practice only identity-based empathy. Identification with and across heterogeneous groups is inefficient, costly, and thus economically unviable.35 Translating the Shoah in the twenty-first century entails practicing an anti-capitalist, decolonial mode of witnessing that is also demonstrably anti-instrumentalist; advocating a mute, weak, or absent translator is also out of the question, because refusing to translate would itself constitute an evasion of the ethical imperative to at least attempt to receive the Foreign as such.36 In response to these challenges, Petrowskaja turns to speculation, but in the literary rather than the economic sense. The speculative mood marked in the title Vielleicht Esther (Maybe Esther) is reinforced by the ambiguous subtitle Geschichten (stories, histories), which sets the tone for a work that meditates on historical relativism and semantic uncertainty, exploring the translational dialectics between fidelity and licence. The title Subject (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), 144. 32 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2009), 2. 33 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3. 34 “Colonialism rhymes with mono-lingualism.” Achille Mbembe, “Decolonizing the University: New Directions,” Arts and Humanities in Higher Eduction 15, no. 1 (2016): 35, cited in Michael Syrotinsky, “Postcolonial untranslatability: reading Achille Mbembe with Barbara Cassin,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 55, no. 6 (2019): 851. 35 The economic paradigm, spotlighted by Rothberg, inculcates a scarcity mindset that continuously triggers paranoia in the mind of the translator, reader, and writer, who begin to believe and reproduce the ideology that empathy and solidarity are luxury goods for which demand will always exceed supply. Quantitative translation is rarely seen, and even less frequently used, as a medium for transnational, -lingual and -cultural solidarity and identification; more often it showcases difference for difference’s sake (foreignization) or, worse, elides difference altogether (domestication). Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (London: Routledge, 2018). Reynolds contextualizes the channel metaphor of translation in European colonialist efforts to promote monolingualism as part of nation-state ideology. He notes how “centuries of state-sponsored cultural and educational labour have gone into the construction of standard French, English, German etc., defining them as separate from one another, and establishing habitual ways of lining them up through translation.” Reynolds, Prismatic Translation, 8; see also Naoki Sakai, “Translation” Theory, Culture & Society 23, nos. 2–3 (2006): 71–86. 36 Berman, “Translation and the Trials,” 286.

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refers to Petrowskaja’s paternal great-grandmother, who was murdered at the Babi Yar massacre in Kyiv. Many details of Vielleicht Esther’s life are untraceable: not even her name can be verified, as Katja’s father remarks, “[er] sagte Babuschka, und [s]eine Eltern sagten Mutter” (VE, 209; [he] said Babushka and [his] parents said Mother, ME, 186). Vielleicht Esther becomes a central figure in the hypothetical reconstruction of the Babi Yar massacre and a central example of Petrowskaja’s interweaving of fact and fiction. Couched in mythological allusions (from Zeno’s tortoise to Achilles and Homer), the tragic significance of Vielleicht Esther’s slow and unsuspecting walk to her death is imagined with intense pathos, alongside a reparative awareness of the event’s “profoundly painful, profoundly relieving”37 contingency: “Vielleicht spiegelte sich in Vielleicht Esthers verzögertem Gang ein sprachlicher Irrtum wider” (VE, 213; It may be that Maybe Esther’s halting gait echoed an error of language, ME, 189). As elsewhere, Petrowskaja echoes Hannah Arendt, who countered deterministic accounts of the Shoah and dismissed the mythological significance of the Nazis’ atrocities. Where Arendt deflated the epic aggrandizement of evil by pointing out its banality,38 Petrowskaja banalizes traditional fatalistic narratives by bringing destiny into relation with random human error. It is Esther’s faith in language as an ethical medium, a tool for bridging divides, that seals her fate: she mistakenly believes that her knowledge of Yiddish would warrant her special treatment from the occupying German troops. Language, in Petrowskaja’s poetics and ethics, is intrinsically linked to fate, yet Katja’s unmethodical, meandering (irrend) practice betrays a subtle continuity—of hope, rather than paranoia—with her great-grandmother.39 By imagining Esther’s Irrtum (error) in German-language autofiction, Petrowskaja repeats her greatgrandmother’s act of faith, not compulsively but reparatively. Determined to break the fatalistic curse of paranoid vigilance and avoidance, she risks repetition and gains solace when she accepts the conceivable, surmountable contingency of Esther’s tragedy, locally, and the Shoah, more

37 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 146. 38 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen (Munich: Piper, 1964). 39 As Sedgwick poignantly puts it: “Hope, often a fracturing, even a traumatic thing to experience, is among the energies by which the reparatively positioned reader tries to organize the fragments and part-objects she encounters or creates. Because the reader has room to realize that the future may be different from the present, it is also possible for her to entertain such profoundly painful, profoundly relieving, ethically crucial possibilities as that the past, in turn, could have happened differently from the way it actually did.” Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 146.

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broadly.40 As Petrowskaja’s own determination to master and express herself in German attests, she ascribes a futurity and fluid potentiality to language. Recognizing language acquisition as agency-producing, she adopts a perspective that is crucially at odds with orthodox deterministic conceptions of language, which primarily conceive of language as a given marker of origins and fixed genetic identity, which only serves to shore up ethnonationalist and monocultural/lingual agendas. Mute is a key word and theme in Vielleicht Esther. Katja’s ancestors opened a school for deaf-mute children. As Godela Weiss-Sussex notes, Petrowskaja’s ancestry is “a genealogy of providers of a voice to others while experiencing problems of speaking for themselves,” which serves as an analogue for “the Jewish experience of oppression.”41 The physical and textual retracing of her family’s steps is a means of realigning “with the family lineage,”42 through which she becomes a “Nachkommin der Kämpfer gegen die Stummheit” (VE, 101; descendants of battlers against muteness, ME, 88). Muteness is embedded in Vielleicht Esther’s linguistic fabric, as Petrowskaja herself makes clear: “Deutsch, nemeckij, ist im Russischen die Sprache der Stummen” (VE, 79; German, nemetskiy, is in Russian the language of the mute, ME, 68). Writing in German about the Holocaust, as Petrowskaja does, is a calculated, subversive act as it signals her intention to intercept what Y. Michal Bodemann calls the Gedächtnistheater (memory theater): “die eingespielte Interaktion zwischen deutscher Gesellschaft und jüdischer Minderheit” (the wellrehearsed interaction between German society and Jewish minority).43 Her choice to write in German also liberates the author “from the Russian hegemonic nationalistic discourse, in which Russians emerge as victors, only, with no room for guilt towards oppressed ethnic minorities or oppositional groups.”44 Petrowskaja forces the reader to question who has the right to speak and which language it is appropriate to speak in. Without imposing a concrete agenda, her practice implies that a genre-fluid, translingual take on life writing could lend itself to the thorny process of 40 The hypothetical or subjunctive mode empowers the author and encourages the reader to come to terms with “the necessary contingency of historical processes whose outcome, while not being deniable or reversible, needs to be seen as merely one option amongst many.” This affirmative position represents a creative engagement with the past that puts “the stress on the unrealized potential of a different result promot[ing] ‘futurity’ and agency.” Lizarazu, “Moments of Possibility,” 3. 41 Godela Weiss-Sussex, “‘dass diese tauben Geschichten aufflattern’: Narrative, Translingual Creativity and Belonging in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014),” Modern Languages Open 7 (2020): 13. 42 Weiss-Sussex, “dass diese tauben Geschichten,” 13. 43 Max Czollek, Desintegriert euch! (Munich: Carl Hanser, 2018), 9. 44 Weiss-Sussex, “dass diese tauben Geschichten,” 13.

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“overcoming the dichotomy of perpetrators and victims.”45 The German language acquires a divinatory quality, becoming “eine Wünschelrute auf der Suche nach den Meinigen” (VE, 79; a divining rod in the search for my family, ME, 68), which facilitates Katja’s quest and marks both a return to childhood, and a continuation of ancestral tradition: “als müsste ich das stumme Deutsch lernen, um sprechen zu können.” (VE, 79; as though I had to learn the mute German, so that I could speak, ME, 68). Advocating poetic justice or restitution as a creative, therapeutic response to historical trauma, Petrowskaja favors the symbolism of balance and harmony, however fleeting its affects. Not only is it “durch diese Sprache” that she achieves “ein Gleichgewicht gegenüber [ihr]er Herkunft” (VE, 78; balanced out [her] provenance, ME, 67), but she also imagines how the burden of fidelity to family tradition and religious and cultural practice could be absolved through self-defined acts of reparation: “Als wäre es die kleinste Münze, zahlte ich in dieser spät erworbenen Sprache meine Vergangenheit zurück” (VE, 79; I paid back my past in this language I acquired relatively late in life, as if counting out small change, ME, 67). Contesting Berman’s claim that translatorial distortion ought to be mitigated, but accepting that it should be signposted through the subjunctive mood, Petrowskaja offers responsible participatory readings of history.46 Her embedded commentary is surprising, but refreshingly honest. She admits to finding Mauthausen surprisingly “schön” (beautiful), even though “hier darf es nicht schön sein” (VE, 266; it couldn’t possibly be lovely here, ME, 236). Her reconstruction of events, whether biographical or autobiographical, flaunts its subjectivity to remind readers that translation and historiography are embodied, intentional practices. Breaking the taboo of translator testimony and the silence of the thinking, feeling witness, Petrowskaja invites readers of the imminent post-survivor era to participate in what Walter Benjamin called Fortleben47 (living on)—her writing, brimming with emotion, movement, and desire, puts into practice the necessarily vital and revitalizing task of translation. To live on, we learn, is not just about respecting tradition, but also about acknowledging the need to break with it. Petrowskaja rejects the translation paradigm of “adequate” documentation,48 which draws the life out of the source material and translator in its vain attempt to reproduce the former faithfully. This orientation not only denies the affective relation between source and target cultures and readers (Benjamin would say its 45 Weiss-Sussex, “dass diese tauben Geschichten,” 13. 46 Davies, Witnessing between Languages, 13. 47 Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 11. 48 Gideon Toury, “The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation,” in Descriptive Translation Studies—and Beyond (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins, 1995), 53–69.

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“Übersetzbarkeit,”49 [translatability]), but also purges textual sources of human error, uncertainty, and vitally creative polysemy. Attempting to produce a logical, coherent, linear narrative merely sustains an illusion of predetermined natural order that denies nature’s constant renewal and inexplicably purposive transformations.50 Petrowskaja’s implicit critique is that this amounts to another kind of “naturalization”: a blunting of the Foreign’s prismatic potential and affective reactivity, as well as a rationalist deadening of the affect-seeking and affect-producing translating subject.51 Benjamin argues that “die Übersetzung [ist] zuletzt zweckmäßig für den Ausdruck des innersten Verhältnisses der Sprachen zueinander” (Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages).52 Petrowskaja similarly reminds us that translation and history are not just about recounting but also relating. Balanced by a humble acceptance of the inadequacy of all translation,53 she spotlights the positive externalities of subjunctive identification, which can help to lovingly repair disrupted continua. Katja describes how her father is only able to acknowledge his own trauma through a translational process: “Die polnische Tragödie schmerzte ihn, als dürfe er das Eigene nur im Schmerz der anderen erkennen, in einer Art Übersetzung” (VE, 93; He regarded the Polish tragedy as a source of anguish, as though he could fathom his own pain only in the pain of others, in an act of translation, ME, 80). Just as her father gains access to his own pain in and through translation, Katja too can only relate (and relate to) her father’s pain by retranslating it. As such, it is the translation’s reciprocal, open-ended, and co-creative nature that renders it a participatory ethical practice—acknowledging and expressing difference while attempting to enact—and sustaining the hope of—common (even if incommunicable) experience.

49 Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 11. 50 Reynolds refutes the legendary “adequacy” of source-oriented translation, explaining that “there can be no theory of translation as introducing inevitable differences from ‘the source’ since any conception of the source is already a translation.” Reynolds, Prismatic Translation, 27–28. 51 Berman’s very notion of the Foreign appears antiquated and essentialist from the view of prismatic translation, which views languages, like temporalities and subjectivities, “more as a continuum of variation than as a collection of bounded entities.” Reynolds, Prismatic Translation, 3. 52 Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 12. English translation: Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Venuti, 71. 53 Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 9–10; Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005).

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Affective Inscription and Reparative Reading Petrowskaja not only embraces the ethical burden of translation, but also reveals its creative and therapeutic opportunities. Her affective inscriptions do not trivialize historical trauma, but pivot towards the reconciliatory potential of affective kinship across temporal, spatial, and national borders. Katja tries on many hats, combining journalistic evaluation, poetic reinterpretation, and quasi-religious exegesis to produce something tangible out of the absence or opacity that amount to her quantitative archaeological/archival findings. Half way through the text, she admits: “Es ging mir um die Restitution des Geistes, deutlicher konnte ich es nicht sehen, denn es nieselte, und ich fotografierte das Nieseln, um etwas aus Kalisz mitzunehmen” (VE, 132; at stake was a spiritual restitution, I couldn’t see clearly, it was drizzling, and I photographed the drizzle to take something from Kalisz with me, ME, 116). What begins as a quantifiable, materialist Übersetzung quickly becomes a moral Auseinandersetzung. Eventually Katja reveals, to the reader as much as to herself, that her quest is actually a fool’s errand, naively aiming for spiritual, and indeed, poetic justice. But as Segwick reminds us, naivety is often the surest route out of depression; hope, however “fracturing,” is a dependable antidote to paranoia.54 Petrowskaja encourages the reader to consider what is gained rather than lost in translation, even if only sensorially. Here, the camera—another prism—picks up where the record player left off. This mechanical device purports to faithfully reproduce reality, but cannot; reparative users, however, can repurpose it to record the filter of affect, instead of trying to fix the representational object. Inscribing the text with translator affect shifts the focus away from binary orientations to the fuzzy interstice: the recording device of the translator’s body. Advocating interaction and identification over interpretation, her work critiques the supremacy and fixation of the “critical” lens.55 Her quest appears to be less about pinpointing the Sinn (sense as in point) of her Herkunft (origin), and more about registering the Sinne (sense as in feeling) aroused by the process of researching.56 She circumvents the paranoid expectation that the historical account should aim for absolute 54 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 146. 55 Simultaneously her greater interest in embodiment and desire than identity is a celebration of the mobile, fluid, and contingent. She is, as she remarks, “eher zufällig jüdisch” (VE, 10; Jewish, more by accident than design, ME, 4). 56 Despite the paranoid structure imposed on the genre by industrial and academic pressures, Katja repeatedly returns to a reparative position, “from which it is possible in turn to use one’s own resources to assemble or ‘repair’ the murderous part-objects [of history, of language] into something like a whole— though, . . . not necessarily like any preexisting whole. Once assembled to one’s own specifications, the more satisfying object is available both to be identified

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fidelity, producing conclusive answers and verifiable truths. Instead, defining fidelity on her own realisable terms as personal solace, poetic justice, and fictional resolution, Petrowskaja seeks a range of affects, sketching patterns and drawing loose and disparate connections that offer a more holistic portrait of the translating subject. Vielleicht Esther overturns the economic paradigm of loss and gain in translation; Katja reconciles with loss in a reparative revaluation of the negative position, but ultimately acknowledges their dialectical relationship. Loss is figured as a point of departure towards gain: the pleasure of getting lost eventually leads to a gratifying return, and a renewed sense of belonging: Meine unübersetzbaren Leitsterne wiesen mir den Weg, ich schrieb und verirrte mich . . . man schreibt, wie man atmet, trist und Trost habe ich stets versöhnen wollen, als könnte mir diese Versöhnung einen Schluck Meeresbrise schenken. (VE, 79) [with my untranslatable lodestars pointing the way as I wrote and lost my bearings—one writes the way one breathes—and I always sought to reconcile somberness and solace, hoping this reconciliation could send a taste of the ocean breeze my way. (ME, 68)]

The sonorous affinity between “trist” (somberness) and “Trost” (solace) neatly underscores the interdependence of negative and positive affect, as if there could be no relief without grief. Life, like writing, is sustained by a perpetual movement and relation between contradictory impulses. Such social and therapeutic opportunities are only made possible when the translator explores the mutual constitution of the translating subject and the translated object. Inscribing the translator’s body in the text, Petrowskaja reimagines the translation process as a performative mode of subjectivation, which discards the mechanical conception of translation for one that is more human and more humane. Through self-reflexive commentary on the awkwardness and alienness of translational subjectivity, she poses the question of how to reconcile being at once a vessel of mediation and a body riddled with sensations, emotions, drives, and desires, before exploring the reconciliation possible between bodies through transcultural and translingual identification. Katja’s father admits: “Ich wollte mich immer mit der Geschichte beschäftigen . . . aber ich wollte nie, dass sie sich mit mir beschäftigt” (VE, 180; I always wanted to engage with history . . . but never wanted history to engage with me, ME, 159). Katja, however, refuses to make a choice between taking possession of the past (from an instrumentalist position) or being possessed with and to offer one nourishment and comfort in turn. Among Klein’s names for the reparative process is love.” Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 128.

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by it (in a documentary account). Instead, she opts to move through and between them, turning fate and contingency, fear and hope, into engines for creative relation. The unforeseeable obstacles and chance transformations that arise on Petrowskaja’s journey are registered with curiosity, rather than suppressed through fear or sublimated through shame. The opportunities unlocked by the queer and clumsy approach, contained in the verb hüpfen (skip), derive from the translating subject’s playfulness and receptivity to surprise.57 Contrasting with the melancholy and sobriety often expected of Holocaust memory culture,58 her writing is littered with references to risk-taking, serendipity, chance, and the thrill of possibility, even the joy of self-abandonment (VE, 115). Sedgwick suggests that “to read from a reparative position is to surrender the knowing, anxious paranoid determination that no horror, however apparently unthinkably, shall ever come to the reader as new; to a reparatively positioned reader, it can seem realistic and necessary to experience surprise.”59 Petrowskaja’s determination to steer the narrative away from determinism and bypass the impasse of silence and untranslatability shows that she understands that paranoid inquiry “represent[s] a way among other ways, of seeking, finding, and organizing knowledge.”60 Developing her own affective mode of translation, Katja is engaged in a task of sense-seeking 57 Petrowskaja explores the possibility of occupying multiple positions at once, of passing between emotional states and perspectives as fluidly as code switching, as creatively as translanguaging. Her approach resembles Sedgwick’s description of the versatility of psychological positions: “The flexible to-andfro movement implicit in Kleinian positions will be useful for my discussion of paranoid and reparative critical practices, not as theoretical ideologies . . . but as changing and heterogeneous relational stances.” Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 128. This offers a useful analogue to Reynolds’ re-conceptualization of translation as “prismatic,” where the prism metaphor figures this “opening up [of] the plural signifying potential of the source text,” which Reynolds extends to translation as a field, hypothesizing that prismatic thinking will “open . . . the way to more plural translation practices, and to an exploration of how far readers might be receptive to them’, thereby fostering “a more nuanced account of the relationship between the textuality of the source and the many translational textualities that can and do arise from it.” Reynolds, Prismatic Translation, 3. 58 Although comedy and theatricality have not been utterly repressed in responses to the trauma of the Shoah, as Stephanie Bird has shown. See Stephanie Bird, Comedy and Trauma in Germany and Austria after 1945: The Inner Side of Mourning (Oxford: Legenda, 2016). For further reading on contemporary texts that challenge the traumatic unspeakability of the Holocaust, see Maria Roca Lizarazu, Renegotiating Postmemory: The Holocaust in Contemporary GermanLanguage Jewish Literature (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2020). 59 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 146. 60 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 130.

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rather than sense-making.61 Both author and narrator object to the lack of imagination that presents her object (the past) and her subject (the body) as if either were closed, inert, and explicable. Consequently, she asserts her authority to translate the past reparatively, only insofar as she remains open for it to rewrite her in a reciprocal movement, exploring the mutual determining constitution of translating and translated bodies. Coming to terms with the untameable self and the unknowable other becomes a risky but rewarding act of reparative surrender.62 Letting go of “anxiously anticipatory knowingness” creates space for “attachment, incorporation[, and] involvement.”63 If her clumsy and queer approach leads Katja to play the “Clown” at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial, pulling “bunte Bänder aus [ihr]en Hosentaschen” (colorful ribbons out of [her] pants pockets), because she “will Freude verbreiten” (VE, 246; [is] hoping to spread a little joy, ME, 218–19), these acts of rebellion against orthodox absolutes (of translation, historiography, and mourning) are at least faithful to the spontaneous affects, interactions, and desires that accompany and inform all translational practices. When she mocks the absurdity of the phrase, “das gestalterische Konzept unseres Ortes der Information würdigt die Katastrophe in angemessener Weise” (VE, 247; the artistic concept of our information site addresses the catastrophe with befitting dignity, ME, 219), the implication is that the pressure to be solemn and gracious compounds the dehumanization of Jewish people in the form of an affective regulation

61 “Ich hatte nicht einmal den Wunsch, hier etwas zu finden. Hauptsache, wir suchen” (VE, 132; I wasn’t out to find something specific here; the point was to search, ME, 116). 62 Midway through the text, the narrator bemoans the slippery impenetrability of the past, and the fear of powerlessness it generates in her: “die Vergangenheit betrog meine Erwartungen, sie entschlüpfte meinen Händen und beging einen Fauxpas nach dem anderen . . . Adolf bestätigte meine Befürchtung, dass ich keine Macht über die Vergangenheit habe, sie lebt, wie sie will, sie schafft es nur nicht zu sterben” (VE, 133; The past betrayed my expectations, slipping out of my grasp and committing one faux pas after another. . . . Adolf confirmed my fear that I had no power over the past. It lives as it pleases, and just does not manage to die, ME, 116–17). Sedgwick, taking inspiration from Klein’s object relations theory (Klein, The Writings of Melanie Klein), was also aware of the necessary interplay and negotiation between reparative and paranoid readings. She notes, that “given the instability and mutual inscription built into the Kleinian notion of positions,” it is possible for “powerful reparative practices” to “infuse self-avowedly paranoid critical projects”; she likewise acknowledges “the paranoid exigencies that are often necessary for non-paranoid knowing and utterances.” Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 128–29. 63 Warner, “Uncritical Reading,” 18.

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of the “postmemory” generations.64 By dwelling on the term “angemessen” (VE, 247; befitting, ME, 219)—a prototypically German concept that is ironically utterly inappropriate in this context—Petrowskaja gives an ambivalent account of Holocaust memorialization, and concentration camp tourism in particular. Subtly interrogating the purpose of and intention behind the archiving of genocide sites, and obliquely critiquing the normative policing of Jewish responses to the Shoah under the auspices of propriety and dignity, she spotlights how Jews continue to be deprived of agency and self-determination as multi- or transcultural citizens, reduced to players in the Jewish-European Gedächtnistheater.65 By portraying Mauthausen as a circus—“Herzlich willkommen in Mauthausen! Kommen Sie herein!” (VE, 246; Welcome to Mauthausen! Step right in!, ME, 218)—and herself as a clown, Petrowskaja confronts her readers with an uncomfortable dramatization of performative penance, sparing neither herself nor her audience from this biting critique of intergenerational instrumentalism and European memorial culture’s complacency. Vielleicht Esther is no traditional linear quest, but rather an affective journey. The text revalorizes chance as a counterweight to the paranoid compulsion to take possession of the past, which has often been codified as affective penance or Vergangenheitsbewältigung.66 Early on, Petrowskaja rejects Tolstoy’s claim that “nur die unglücklichen einzigartig sind . . . als wäre nur das Unglück der Rede wert, das Glück aber leer” (VE, 20; only the unhappy [families] are unique . . . as though only unhappiness was worth words but happiness hollow, ME, 14) and so disavows the inherited paranoia of “die Falle” (the trap), “den Hang zum Unglück” (VE, 20; our penchant for unhappiness, ME, 14). Soon Katja begins to question the consensus that negative affect should color the natural order of things, reflecting on the language commonly used to describe the absence of Jewish history in Central and Eastern Europe:

64 Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 65 Czollek, Desintegriert euch!, 23. 66 Petrowskaja’s practice carefully avoids repeating a trope of mid- to latetwentieth-century writing: the attempt to enact Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Instead, her writing engages with contemporary shifts in public discourse towards a recognition of the past as an ongoing process, which continuously demands critical reflection. Supported by postmodernism, poststructuralism and deconstruction’s multi-pronged interrogation of the credibility and viability of attempts at “mastering the past,” Petrowskaja’s practice is an implicit critique of the desire to master, control, and ultimately close the past. Moreover, her structure and style subvert the reader’s expectation of a teleological narrative as the text refracts prismatically rather than unraveling, opening up rather than shutting down possibilities.

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Dort sei natürlich nichts geblieben, er sagte natürlich und nichts, um die Sinnlosigkeit seiner Reise zu betonen, ich sage auch oft natürlich oder sogar naturgemäß, als ob dieses Verschwinden oder dieses Nichts natürlich oder auch selbstverständlich sei. (VE, 10). [Naturally nothing remained there, he said naturally and nothing in order to emphasize the senselessness of his journey, I, too, often say naturally or even innately as though this disappearance or this nothingness was natural or even self-evident. (ME, 4)]

Instead of a mechanically paranoid search to root out the deforming tendencies of the translation process, Petrowskaja allows herself and the reader to wander until they stumble across linguistic and cultural hurdles without a predetermined destination.67 With long, angular, and meandering sentences, her writing is consciously uneven, bumpy, unheimlich. Its texture is reminiscent of the streets of European cities, scattered with Stolpersteine with the intention of triggering affective remembrance when one least expects it.68 By bringing these linguistic obstacles to light, magnifying them with curiosity and commenting on them, she overcomes the normative pressure to repress and eradicate problems of translatability and of meaning, and uses the translation process and etymological instability to unlock collective experiences and encourage new forms of kinship. Non-programmatic (and unprogrammable) wandering enables assumptions, inherited and integrated facts and beliefs, to surface, which can be observed without prior judgment, to be discarded or repaired. If uncertainty and fear of the unknown typically entrench faith in overarching narratives of paranoia and violence, Petrowskaja instead “über[läßt] [s]ich [ihr]em Glücksspiel” (VE, 115; abandon[s] [her]self to [her] game of chance, ME, 100). A major clue to her methodology is 67 Significantly, the narrative trajectory is neither linear nor circular as Vielleicht Esther plots a queer and clumsy, imperfect ellipse: the narrator travels in a curve through Central and Eastern Europe (moving East and then back West), but ends the text in Vienna, instead of returning to the initial point of departure, Berlin. 68 Stolpersteine represent a kind of decentralised or diasporic memorial practice that eschews the isolation, hoarding, and gatekeeping of institutionalised memory. Textural remembrance is integrated into the everyday fabric of life and encounters the public as subject rather than object. The Stein des Anstoßes (point of contention) becomes a Denkanstoß (prompt to think). Petrowskaja’s stolpernder Gang (stumpling gait) challenges the cults of efficiency and normativity (in translation and memory culture) as unfeeling and lazy: considering them not merely conservative and uncreative, but ultimately inhuman. Problems of translation and ineffability trigger common affects—surprise, frustration, and despair—that intercept ambitions for transparency and legibility, but can bring subjects into relation, where sense can be constructed collectively.

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contained in the statement: “Ich hatte das Glück, mich in der Kluft der Sprachen, im Tausch, in der Verwechslung von Rollen und Blickwinkeln zu bewegen” (VE, 115; I was lucky to be able to move in that space between languages, swapping words and switching roles and viewpoints, ME, 100). This trio of metaphorical positions reveals Petrowskaja’s dynamic understanding of how her languages interact with each other, and in turn, shape her malleable identity. A paranoid perspective could paint this a chaotic and dizzying experience of disintegration, whereas Petrowskaja explicitly revels in a double image of liberating movement and transformation.69 Summoning the reparative watchword “Glück” (which translates as both luck and happiness), she consistently wards off the Verhängnis (fate) that haunts her text and, more generally, the fatalistic intertext of post-Shoah literature.70 Embracing the transgressive perversity of her project, which positions her as a renegade from Jewish orthodoxy and the orthodoxy of Holocaust writing, she encourages the reader to question the policing of affect in the genre and its internalization as self-policing. Her resistance through affective deregulation and self-reflexive commentary unashamedly spotlights her embodiment, as author, narrator, translator, and post-survivor. Petrowskaja’s multi-clausal narration may have analogues in the genre of Holocaust representation, yet alongside contemporaries such as Grjasnowa, Biller, and Vertlib, her contribution rejects the idea that Holocaust narratives must inevitably be torturous.71 Aarons and Berger note that third-generation witness narratives tend to describe “fraught journeys” that “reveal anxiously motivated patterns of attachment and pursuit, narrative journeys, both imagined and real— both physical and psychic— back to the point of traumatic origin.”72 “Because of its emphasis on fragmentation,” postmodern Holocaust writing “offers innovative and experimental representational strategies for what has

69 It is worth noting that Frisch’s English translation flattens the ambivalence of the German here for a gentler, smoother rendering: “Kluft” (chasm or gulf) becomes “space”; “Verwechslung” (confusion, mistake, or mix-up) becomes “switching.” This could be seen as an optimistic rewriting of the source text, erasing ambiguity in order to concentrate on positive affect, yet Frisch’s distortion smacks of paranoia rather than reparation, since it divorces the negative and the positive where Petrowskaja allows them to mingle. Frisch’s rendering forecloses the complex versatility and interplay of affects as well as the dialectic that Petrowskaja posits between abandonment and joy, evoked by “perfekt verloren” (VE, 115; perfectly lost, ME, 109). 70 Bird, Comedy and Trauma. 71 Lizarazu, Renegotiating Postmemory. 72 Aarons and Berger, “On the Periphery,” 7–8.

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commonly been regarded as unrepresentable.”73 This fragmentation is precipitated by Petrowskaja’s unconsciously queer translation process, which scrambles the master narrative of causality whilst exorcising the curse of negative affect and paranoia about the subject’s unseemly embodiment in Shoah writing and translation. Her strategy critically and creatively engages with the past, raising moral questions without subscribing to a totalizing historical perspective or succumbing to the impossible burden of conclusive comprehension; what is more, it refuses to assign indisputable binary roles of victim or perpetrator. A mercy of the postsurvivor generation is no longer being forced to bear the full weight of either responsibility or trauma.74 Petrowskaja also belongs to the “generation of postmemory,” who cannot literally remember and whose experience of the past is therefore “mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation.”75 Onega et al. note that literary stylization produces “a necessary critical distance from the traumatic contents of the work,” allowing readers “to perceive faultlines, contradictions and silences, and transforms them all, transforms us all, into alert and empathic witnesses.”76 Camouflaging her search for her murdered relatives as a “Glücksspiel” (game of chance) or “eine Suche nach Gewinnzahlen” (VE, 29; search [for] winning numbers, ME, 21) enables Petrowskaja to foreground the translational process over the product. Her clumsy and queer style revalorizes optimism, serendipity, and hope, contesting the unimpeachable value of solemnity. This genre non-conforming and translanguaging practice actively embraces the risk of hopeful transformation in a queering of translation and historiographic 73 Miriam Carolin Raethel, “Witnessing from a distance: Postwar literary representations of the Holocaust” (PhD diss., Wilfrid Laurier University, 2010), ii. 74 Petrowskaja’s (anti-)method chimes with the postmodern shift to relativism, but more specifically with the memory turn in the humanities. The latter contests the self-fulfilling paranoia of New Historicism and concerns itself with “the problematisation of the idea of the grand narrative, of ‘History’ and its claims to universality, totality and objectivity,” for which it substitutes “lived experience, the local, subjective and partial— embodied by memory.” Rick Crownshaw, “The Future of Memory: Introduction,” in The Future of Memory (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011), edited by Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby, and Antony Rowland, 10, cited in Silvia Pellicer-Ortín, “Wandering Memory, Wandering Jews: Generic Hybridity and the Construction of Jewish Memory in Linda Grant’s Works,” in Traumatic Memory, edited by Onega, del Rio, and Escudero-Alías, 102. 75 Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 22. 76 Susana Onega, Constanza del Rio, and Maite Escudero-Alías, “Conclusion,” in Traumatic Memory, edited by Onega, del Rio, and Escudero-Alías, 315.

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practices that allows her to respond to the paranoid impulse with care and so disrupt its toxic spiral.

Translational Performance Petrowskaja’s penchant for the subjunctive eschews the documentary conventions of autobiographical and historical writing.77 This appears to have a dual function: the subjunctive mood allows the individual to find relief in the contingency of experience and to signpost the impossibility of a verifiable, objective reality.78 As in the writing of history, these are two aspects of the translational condition that are often denied a place in the target text; a “prismatic” translation written in the subjunctive, however, embraces its own speculative existence.79 Framing translation as speculation opens up the practice to ambiguity, diversity, experimentation and desire. Katja acknowledges: “die Vermeidung des Konjunktivs macht aus einer Vorstellung eine Erkenntnis oder sogar einen Bericht, man nimmt die Stelle eines anderen ein, katapultiert sich dorthin . . . so erprobe ich jede Rolle an mir selbst, als gäbe es keine Vergangenheit ohne irgendein Als-ob, Wenn oder Falls.” (VE, 45; avoidance of the subjunctive turns imagination into recognition or even statement, you take another’s place, catapult yourself there . . . and thus I try out every role on myself as though there was no past without an if, as, though, or in that case, ME, 36).80

77 Lizarazu, “Moments of Possibility.” 78 As Lizarazu notes, “contemporary German-Jewish writing about the Holocaust reconsiders not so much the status of reality and factuality, as the representational mode of realism. This renegotiation manifests itself in an increased popularity of the subjunctive mood and subjunctive approaches to history in recent examples of Holocaust writing, tied to speculations about both alternative pasts and unrealized futures.” Lizarazu, “Moments of Possibility,” 2. 79 Reynolds calls for a paradigm shift in translation, principally to account for this contingency and its concomitant ethical and creative opportunities. 80 The subjunctive is much less common in English and has become more or less obsolete in contemporary writing. That said, it is surprising that even in a passage where the narrator explicitly addresses her “lack of respect for grammar” (ME, 36) and her unorthodox usage of the mood helps to develop a linguistic philosophical argument, Fisch ignores, or more critically, redresses Petrowskaja’s creative intervention. The English version remains faithful to the generic conventions of the target language, which are, incidentally, also the generic conventions of the source language that Petrowskaja actively contests. Fisch fixes Petrowskaja’s “als gäbe es keine Vergangenheit” in the indicative, “as though there was no past” (ME, 36) reinscribing the border between sanctioned “Vorstellung” (imagination) of the author and the objective “Bericht” (reporting) of the translator.

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Experimenting through roleplay is a notably childlike and queer form that denies the supremacy of chronology.81 The performativity of identity runs through Vielleicht Esther as a subtext. Translation and transition are traditionally understood as teleological processes; both tend to garner approval only on completion and are judged according to how well their subjects pass. Queer writing from Nathanaël’s autotranslation to Sedgwick’s reparative paradigm and Preciado’s revolutionary aesthetics82 embrace undisciplined behavior, advocating “practices aimed at taking the terror out of error, at making the making of mistakes sexy, creative, even cognitively powerful.”83 Petrowskaja’s writing, too, enacts a refreshingly queer transvaluation: it celebrates failure,84 trial, and error, and asserts the power of looking and feeling without finding or knowing. Discovering a subterranean mutability beneath the stoic roughness of the German language, Petrowskaja’s play with subjunctive histories favors the caprice and fluidity of mood over the rationalist division of tense. Vielleicht Esther invites us to consider the translation process as an embodied performance: a single attempt that cannot and should not be verified or judged objectively, but seen as part of a spectrum of translational possibilities.85 When her aunt dies, Katja expresses that “Geschichte ist, wenn es plötzlich keine Menschen mehr gibt, die man fragen kann, sondern nur noch Quellen” (VE, 30; History begins when there are no more people to ask, only sources, ME, 22–23). Her visit to Mauthausen feels like another dead end: “Ich habe das Gefühl, ich rufe in der Vergangenheit an, und da ist niemand” (VE, 232; I get the feeling that I’m calling up the past, and no one is around, ME, 205). In both cases, her disappointment at the inhuman force and structural immobility of historical inquiry are clear. It is unsatisfying to contrive a flawless source-oriented reconstruction from “Erinnerungsfetzen, zweifelhafte Notizen und Dokumente in fernen Archiven” (VE, 30; fragments of memory, notes of dubious value, and documents in distant archives, 81 In an essay accompanying her self-translation Je Nathanal (2018) entitled “A Lie By Its Secret,” the author and translator interrogates the semantic association between lying and creation through the ambiguity of the term “fabrication” and reverses the negative conception of non-equivalence by suggesting that in many, if not all, cases the ostensibly original text is already riddled with historically determined mistakes: “Perhaps it is that the book itself asks to be disabused of its own history and the connections it seeks to set in place.” Nathanaël, “A Lie By Its Secret,” translated by Nathanaël (New York: Nightboat, 2018), 96. 82 Paul B. Preciado, “We Say Revolution,” in An Apartment on Uranus, translated by Charlotte Mandell (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020), 52. 83 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid, 147. 84 Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 85 Reynolds, Prismatic Translation.

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ME, 23). The paranoid pressure to translate adequately leaves her feeling disempowered and “der Geschichte ausgeliefert” (VE, 30; at the mercy of history, ME, 23). The trials and tribulations of the archivist, rather than submitted to in silent reverence, are staged for the reader as a relatable human tragicomedy, revealing their human cost and affective resonance.86 Such personal, visceral depictions of the work of translation render the desire for objective documentary truth and our understanding of it as absurd, Sisyphean. When Petrowskaja stumbles across a kvass recipe written by her aunt, its etymological instability becomes an ambiguous clue to the past. As an analogue for Petrowskaja’s entire project, the recipe functions as a transhistorical and translingual prism: diffracting the twentieth century into a spectrum of speculative readings. Jews and Europe are intertwined in the Cyrillic abbreviation EBP (VE, 31) by centuries of (re)translations, which reveal a network of contingent relations that point to interlocking and inextricable trans-histories: “als ob Europa und die Juden aus einer Wurzel stammten” (VE, 31; as though Europe and the Jews were descended from the same root, ME, 23). Claims of ownership and belonging are muddled when passed through the sieve of translation or inherited through the open source of oral culture. Borrowed, stolen, and blended recipes create opportunities for trans-identification. These silences, uncertainties, and inconclusive paths become invitations for creative and ethical practices that can bridge “real” intergenerational gaps with “virtual” transcultural and -linguistic kinships.87 The correlative queerness of gender-bending, cross-dressing, and translanguaging is figured by the video artist Katarzyna Kozyra, whose performed masculinity in a Polish sauna reminds us that belonging is never a given and always a question of roleplay. From Kozyra’s drag performance to the propaganda video Film Unfinished, not to mention Katja’s own gender, genre, and 86 “Deutschland zerbröselt, wird immer unfassbarer. . . . Je weiter ich lese, desto schneller zerfallen die Blätter. Ich möchte nicht weiter lesen, ich lese jeden Tag weiter. Ich stelle mir vor, wie am Ende des Lesens das Papier komplett zerfallen und das Wissen verschwunden wäre” (VE, 151; Germany itself is crumbling, becoming more and more unfathomable. . . . The further I read, the faster the pages fall apart. I don’t want to keep on reading, I keep on reading every day. I imagine the paper falling apart altogether at the end of my reading, and the knowledge vanishing, ME, 132–33). 87 Chiming with Paul B. Preciado’s revolutionary aesthetics, the narrator challenges normative regimes of identity, “to de-privatize proper nouns by borrowing names, and to undo the individualist fiction of the face by wearing the balaclava.” Paul B. Preciado, “Marcos Forever,” in An Apartment on Uranus, 91. Petrowskaja’s balaclava is, of course, the tacked-on tongue of German, which enables her to cross borders and genres “through the construction of a living fiction that allows [her] to resist the norm[s]” and binaries of Shoah representation and translation. Preciado, “Marcos Forever,” 92.

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language theatrics, the text’s blurring of candid and staged performances administers an antidote to essentialist and binary thinking, highlighting how important intention (skopos) is to ethical praxis. As Katja’s haunting depiction of gender and language assignment attests,88 identity signifiers are—especially for religious and ethnic minorities, cultural interlopers, and gender non-conforming individuals—a form of camouflage that one chooses to adopt, consciously or unconsciously. With time and practice, we may convince others and perhaps even ourselves that we belong, as Petrowskaja notes: “alle denken, ich gehöre dazu, dabei bin ich nicht von hier” (VE, 116; everyone thinks I belong even though I’m not from here, ME, 101). Approaching any source with a preconceived intention or intransigent paranoid stance inhibits the spontaneous reactivation of past fragments, limiting the possibility of self-discovery and preventing serendipitous engagement with its prismatic openness.89 Petrowskaja asks us to appreciate the contingency with which people come together, roads and meanings, fork and fracture, yet remain psychically linked despite temporal, geographical and linguistic displacements. Her writing does not return authority to divine power or providence,90 but suggests that solace arises from meeting the whim of the cosmos with a reparative embrace: trusting oneself to abandon fixed definitions and identify translingually and transculturally. Petrowskaja champions a translation praxis that favors fluidity over fluency. Presenting the self as existentially multiple and perpetually in motion is one way she resists the paranoid logic that demands a stable, rooted identity. The essentialist markers conventionally exhibited in autobiographical and historical writing (places, names, languages, dates) are shown to be contingent since they shift with each translation. Petrowskaja rejects their significance, preferring to register more flexible, intimate emotional values that are not socially determined.91 In a dream-like sequence, we see Petrowskaja’s desire to be rid of a territorialized and essentialist subjectivity, to be free to experience an unlimited range of contradictory affects and to lose herself in intersubjective identification and translational reformations. These are both mirrored and enacted in the fluid wordplay of code-switching and translanguaging:

88 “diese sprache, mein angeklebtes geschlecht” (VE, 118; this language, my tacked-on gender, ME, 103). 89 Reynolds, Prismatic Translation. 90 “Von Gott gibt es keine Nachricht. Keinen Pieps” (VE, 248; there is no message from God. Not a peep, ME, 221). 91 “die sprachwechsel, die ich unternehme, um beide seiten zu bewohnen, ich und nicht ich zugleich zu erleben” (VE, 117–18; the change of language i’m undertaking to inhabit both sides, to experience i and not-i at the same time, ME, 102).

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bin ich scheu, schau, shoa, kalt, wieder ganz kalt, aber ich kann so tun, und ich und ich und ich, was für ein seltsames wort, wie ort, was für ein ort, als ob ich zu jemandem gehörte, zu einer familie, zu einer sprache. (VE, 118) [i’m shy, show, shoah, cold, quite cold all over again, but i can play the part, and i and i, what a strange phrase, sounds like phase,92 what kind of phase, as though I belonged to someone, to a family, to a language. (ME, 103)]

Here, the wordplay between ‘schau’ and ‘shoa’ resonates in many European languages, transcending the text’s primarily German context, whilst expressing an unconscious fear about the performativity of Holocaust representations. The subjunctive phrase “als ob ich zu jemandem gehörte” (VE, 118; as though I belonged to somebody, ME, 103) betrays a renegade attitude: a desire for liberation from static, pre-ordained schemas of belonging. Petrowskaja’s fixation on “ort” (place) evokes Kleinian positions and posits mutable identity as a matter of translational migration. When she admits: “nirgendwo habe ich mich so perfekt verloren gefühlt” (VE, 115; I’ve never felt as perfectly lost as here, ME, 100), this is not just about geographic displacement but a desire for linguistic indeterminacy and a dream of (re)experiencing an egoless, genderless and pre-nationalist collectivity.93 In her alternative practice, Petrowskaja offers the translingual text as a virtual site of mutual exchange, relation, and collaboration; the deterministic violence of unilateral possession is

92 A judicious example of dynamic equivalence in translation is Frisch’s retention of the poetic characteristics (rhyme and free association) of the source text, whereby “wort” and “ort” become “phrase” and “phase.” Seemingly for coherence, Fisch produces the same shift in meaning at the start of the chapter, translating “nirgendwo” (VE, 115; nowhere) as “never” (ME, 100). The subtle semantic shift—from geographical to temporal displacement/indeterminacy—is nevertheless something that Petrowskaja’s writing also treats thematically. Prismatic translation, too, considers the spectrum of possible renderings facilitated by the diversity of both geographical and temporal continua. Reynolds, Prismatic Translation, 5. 93 Echoing Benjamin’s Utopian prophecy of a “reine Sprache,” it calls to mind the empowerment and liberation achieved in Uljana Wolf’s “poetic practice of multilingual blinking” which allows her and her readers “to see the gaps within and between languages,” opening the possibility of creating new forms of Verwandtschaft (relation/relatedness) beyond societal conventions that guarantee a more ramified and sustainable Fortleben. Benjamin, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 19. See also Sophie Seita, “Contemporary Experimental Translations and Translingual Poetics,” in Reading Experimental Writing, edited by Georgina Colby (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 131.

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supplanted by the agency-building of creative affiliation and the therapeutic opportunity for collective construction. A brief but poignant encounter at the close of the text sees the narrator “raving for peace” with the archetypically named Hans, “ein DJ aus Deutschland” (VE, 278–79), who shares her passion and calling for trans- (or rather trance) identification, pleasure-seeking, and intersubjective experiences: “er erzählte mir von Dionysos, seinem Kult und seinen Frauen, von der Selbstvergessenheit im Rhythmus, von Hingabe und Trance, von den Schwingungen der Masse in unserer globalisierten Welt” (VE, 278; he told me about Dionysus, his cult and his women, about the loss of self-consciousness that comes with rhythm, about abandonment and trance, masses in movement in our globalized world, ME, 248). The reparative metaphor of the record player is beamed from the local (grandmother’s living room) to the global (a packed-out nightclub). Her dance partner, set up to be a cartoonish foil, quickly morphs into her transnational kin, as the pair discover that both of their grandfathers were prisoners of war, “seiner als Deutscher in Sibirien, meiner als Russe in Österreich” (VE, 279; his as a German in Siberia, mine as a Russian in Austria, ME, 248). Reading (and translating) reparatively, then, favors dynamic relation over equivalence, recoding an activity formerly designated as paranoid repetition, submitted to in isolation, into a participatory, intersubjective act of reconciliation, connection, and liberation. Petrowskaja’s previous frustration with the inhumane computational logic of digital culture is pacified as she expresses a more nuanced recognition of technology’s (and techno’s) capacity to bring together diverse bodies in powerful, participatory moments of shared affect. Her clumsy, queer practice destabilizes the normative regimes of identity that crystalize around inherited conditions or characteristics, promoting transcultural empathy and solidarity based on self-determined identifications across ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural borders, galvanized by an awareness of our common affective existence. Nevertheless, a psychological ambivalence remains. The specter of paranoid reading scatters the prismatic potential for reparative transformation, when Katja’s dream morphs into a nightmare. The narrator admits an unconscious fear that her assumed identity is visibly performative, and thus inauthentic.94 There is an underlying concern that, like the female artist in the male sauna with her “angeklebten Penis” (VE, 116; tacked-on penis, ME, 101), Petrowskaja has only ever been passing as a German; or perhaps, as a Jewish witness of the post-survivor era, the anxiety of fraudulence, expressed as a kind of body dysmorphia, manifests a fear that she 94 “ich schwitze, mit meiner auf die zunge geklebten deutschen sprache” (VE, 118; i’m sweating, with my german language tacked to my tongue, ME, 103).

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is connected only “prosthetically” to a past she did not experience or witness directly.95 Horizontal roots, like transcultural affiliations, are more fragile, requiring greater care and trust. Conflating linguistic assimilation with drag or prosthesis reveals a perceived limit to the liberation that is possible through performative integration; consciousness of identity as performance and non-essentialist thinking can be deployed and received in both positive and negative ways. For example, Petrowskaja’s reparative acquisition of the German language is in stark contrast to Austria’s collective amnesia regarding empire and war. Her theatrical description of Otto von Habsburg’s farcical “üppige Begräbnis” (lavish funeral) in Vienna closes the text, leaving readers with the observation that solemnity can be faked and commemoration grotesquely employed to mask an uncritical and reactionary relation to history: “Darüber, wie diese Dynastie Europa in den Ersten Weltkrieg geführt hatte, kein Wort” (VE, 278; not a word about how this dynasty led Europe into World War 1, ME, 247). Rather than reinstating grand, paranoid, notions of in/authenticity, however, Vielleicht Esther gives a balanced account of the translational prism, highlighting its potential to realize both reparative dreams and perpetuate paranoid nightmares. Paranoid and reparative readings are, after all, not mutually exclusive, but “changing and heterogeneous relational stances.”96 Facing such specters as they surface reduces their unconscious power and facilitates critical and therapeutic engagement with possessed and dispossessed memories and histories. Unless translators account for their intention (skopos) and embodiment through careful reflection on their own motivations, notions of adequacy and fidelity are rendered meaningless, and ethical evaluation of their practice becomes inconceivable. Through Sedgwick, we can read Petrowskaja’s practice as ethically responsible, even as it calls for a creative break with the past in order to repair and reconstruct. Giving an account of oneself requires a self-reflexive sensitivity to one’s affective states as they change throughout the translation process; more reflection is needed to expand the ethical capacity of the field beyond identity-based representational/representative ethics. Petrowskaja’s translingual aesthetic benefits from and builds on ethically crucial discourse on the long-accepted crisis of articulation in Holocaust literature. Her work sidesteps the usual requirements of publishers and critics for a monolingual source text or a fluent, accessible 95 Lizarazu, “Moments of Possibility,” 14, citing Michael Rothberg, “Multi­ directional Memory and the Implicated Subject,” in Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, edited by Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik (New York and London: Routledge 2013), 40. See also Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory (New York: Columbia University Press 2004). 96 Sedgwick, “You’re so paranoid,” 128.

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translation. The autofictional framing she employs relieves her of the expectation of a factual, eyewitness account or verifiable historical reconstruction; the impossibility of a flawless critical mode empowers her to find solace and connection in the subjunctive mood, encouraging readers, witnesses of all degrees, to wonder “what might we see” or feel “if we did not take critical reading as an invisible norm?”97 Peter Davies asks “of what interest are the difficulties faced by a translator for readers who are looking for what they think of as a direct encounter with a survivor’s words?”98 In the self-reflexive, affective mode of twenty-first-century post-survivor testimony, a dialogue about, or better still a representation of these very difficulties is of vital interest to present and future generations of inquisitive readers, who are increasingly aware that they have no direct link to survivors’ voices. Temporal displacement makes new creative approaches to representation and translation even more urgent. As Lizarazu aptly puts it, “what the subsequent generations cannot remember, they must imagine or invent.”99 Incidentally, Davies answers his own question and outlines the significance of Petrowskaja’s undertaking: “making translation visible might provide a way out of this impasse, allowing us to trace and understand the transformations undergone by an account of a particular experience, not in order to solve the problems and produce an adequate translation, but in order to speak of them and learn from them.”100 Vielleicht Esther’s magnification of and reflection on the obstacles to translatability, alongside the implementation of an affective translation paradigm that scrupulously details her diverse intentions, enable Petrowskaja to resist claims of universality in representation. Her translingual approach is not merely a humble admission of her own distance from the source, but a humbling representation of German language and culture’s continued estrangement from Jewish suffering. Embracing futurity and agency, gently buoyed by nostalgia for the human touch, Petrowskaja commands us to attune our listening skills by returning to the record player and meditating on the medium. Vielleicht Esther helps us to imagine translator agency (and the translator’s affective testimony) not through a paranoid lens as interference, but reparatively as ethical harmonization.

97 Warner, “Uncritical Reading,” 20. 98 Davies, Witnessing between Languages, 14. 99 Lizarazu, “Moments of Possibility,” 2. 100 Davies, Witnessing between Languages, 18.

Expanding the Nationalgeschichte: Multidirectional European Memory in Nino Haratischwili and Saša Stanišić Amy Leech, Columbia University

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dichterlesen.net, the authors Marica Bodrožić and Deniz Utlu curated the collection “Unterhaltungen deutscher Eingewanderten” (Conversations of German Immigrants).1 This “audiovisueller Parcours” (audiovisual parcourse), as the digital sound archive is described on the website, creates and presents a network of audio clips from historical and contemporary event recordings. The title of the collection, itself a reference to Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1795, Conversations of German Emigrants), highlights Bodrožić and Utlu’s focus on exchange and situates writers who (or whose family) have migrated to Germany explicitly as German authors. Utlu names one of his own subsections “Die Nichtexistenz einer Migrationsliteratur” (The Non-existence of a Migration Literature) and argues that “Migrationsliteratur ist eine Perspektive auf Literatur, die nicht am Text ansetzt, sondern an einer Vorstellung von Gesellschaft” (Migration literature is a perspective on literature that does not depart from the text, but from an idea of society).2 His explication of “migration literature” as a classification that is placed on a text rather than originating in the text itself draws attention to the significant weight biography has been assigned when discussing texts written by authors who have migrated to Germany. Utlu instead calls for a reconceptualization, or rather elimination, of so-called “migrant literature” and its status as outside of or as supplement to the corresponding national literature. n the web portal

1 The collection “Unterhaltungen deutscher Eingewanderten” was published on January 18, 2017 and is an initiative by the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Literaturhaus Basel, and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Marica Bodrožić was born in Croatia and has been living in Germany since 1983. Deniz Utlu was born in Hannover in 1983. Marica Bodrožić and Deniz Utlu, “Unterhaltungen deutscher Eingewanderten,” dichterlesen.net, https://www.dichterlesen.net/unterhaltungen-deutscher-eingewanderten/. 2 Translations from the portal are my own.

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Acknowledging Utlu’s avowal of the “Nichtexistenz” of a migration literature, this article therefore argues for the inclusion of such contemporary German-language texts and the memories in them as thoroughly German by examining Bodrožić and Utlu’s dichterlesen.net archive as well as novels by Nino Haratischwili and Saša Stanišić. Both authors, like Utlu, reject categorizations of their work as “migration literature,” with Haratischwili asserting that “eine gute Literatur hat keine Nationalität— Punkt. Kunst ist obdachlos” (Good literature has no nationality—period. Art is homeless).3 Stanišić, on the other hand, adheres to some understanding of a national literature, but insists that to “speak of a single ‘immigrant literature’ is simply wrong, because it is wrongly simple.” He specifically argues that “immigrant literatures are not an isle in the sea of national literature, but a component, both in the depths, where the archaic squids of tradition live, and on the surface, where pop-cultural waves hit the shore.”4 In terms of authors in whose biography migration plays a role, this issue is oftentimes connected to memory. As Stanišić contends with regard to “immigrant literature,” I claim that migration or migrated memory does not remain an isle in the sea of national memory, separated without relation, but rather also contributes to the national memory as well as belonging to the national literature. Much scholarship has already explored this dynamic in relation to Leslie Adelson’s paradigmatic “Turkish turn” and its implications for the multilingual and diasporic poetics that have emerged.5 However, little work has been undertaken connecting the later Eastern Turn to the theoretical work that emerged from examining the implications of the Turkish one for the German memory landscape. Stanišić and Haratischwili, two authors that are also featured on the dichterlesen.net portal, both engage with questions of migration and memory within and beyond the German border. As authors that scholars often connect to an Eastern Turn in contemporary German literature, Stanišić and Haratischwili specifically negotiate the (hi)stories of former Yugoslavia

3 Nino Haratischwili, quoted in Lerke von Saalfeld, “‘Eine gute Literatur hat keine Nationalität—Punkt. Kunst ist obdachlos’—Die Dramatikerin Nino Haratischwili,” Chamisso: viele Kulturen, eine Sprache 4 (2010): 14–17. 4 Saša Stanišić, “Three Myths of Immigrant Writing: A View from Germany,” Words Without Borders, November 2008, https://www.wordswithoutborders. org/article/three-myths-of-immigrant-writing-a-view-from-germany. 5 E.g., Leslie Adelson, The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Michael Rothberg and Yasemin Yildiz, “Memory Citizenship: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance in Contemporary Germany,” Parallax, 17, no. 4 (2011): 32–48.

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and Georgia, respectively, in their work.6 In Stanišić’s Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, 2006) and Haratischwili’s Das achte Leben (für Brilka) (The Eighth Life [for Brilka], 2014), sociopolitical events, such as the 1992 Višegrad massacres, the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, are interwoven with deeply German narratives. The authors participate in the German discourse of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or rather Vergangenheitsbearbeitung, in order to critically engage with specific national histories of trauma and transformation, while simultaneously thinking about how this affects the current German memory discourse and the German Nationalgeschichte.7 In order to think through this nexus of migration and memory beyond bounded definitions of national memory with distinct spheres, I turn to Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider’s “cosmopolitan memory” as well as Michael Rothberg’s paradigmatic concept of multidirectional memory in my analyses of Stanišić’s and Haratischwili’s novels and Bodrožić and Utlu’s portal on dichterlesen.net. Levy and Sznaider argue that there has been a “transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures.”8 They contend that memory, particularly in the context of debates around memory in the 1990s, was transformed due to globalization processes whereby new global narratives of remembrance began to inform older national narratives.9 The cosmopolitanization of memory is a “nonlinear, dialectical process in which the global and local exist . . . as mutually binding and interdependent principles.”10 However, this cosmopolitan lens runs the risk of omitting nuances that still exist in national memory itself, since such nuances emerge from and are rooted in specific local contexts. These nuances include, for example, migrant authors’ and later generations’ histories that cannot be subsumed under one grand

6 Brigid Haines, “Introduction,” German Life and Letters, 68, no. 2 (2015), Special Issue: “The Eastern European Turn in Contemporary GermanLanguage Literature,” edited by Brigid Haines: 145–53; Brigid Haines, “The Eastern Turn in Contemporary German, Swiss and Austrian Literature,” Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 16, no. 2 (2008): 135–49. 7 Like Friederike Eigler, I prefer the term Vergangenheitsbearbeitung to Vergangenheitsbewältigung, since the latter implies a process that is closed off and completed whereas the former suggests a continuous process. Cf. Friederike Eigler, Gedächtnis und Geschichte in Generationenromanen seit der Wende (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2005), 10. n. 4. 8 Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age, translated by Assenka Oksiloff (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006), 2. 9 Levy and Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory, 3–4. 10 Levy and Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory, 9–10.

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overarching memory.11 There remains a continued significance of memory that is linked to specific groups, often within a national context, and that emerges from more local contexts, such as migrations from Eastern Europe to Germany. Rothberg’s theory of multidirectional memory looks beyond a national framework; however, he focuses on how different memories are able to interact with one another in a productive, non-competitive manner.12 Rothberg draws a distinction between a model of “competitive memory” and “multidirectional memory,” whereby the former works according to the logic of a “zero-sum struggle over scare resources” that necessarily means one history of violence blocks another from view.13 Multidirectional memory, on the other hand, looks at the negotiation and reception of different historical memories and ultimately works to create resonances between these different memories without creating a structure of hierarchy. Looking at the way memory is negotiated under a multidirectional lens is thus inherently futural since it seeks to show the productivity of comparing memories for the contemporary moment and the future.14 Methodologically, the following chapter aims at emphasizing this futurity of multidirectional memory by examining the memories that migrants bring with them and showing how these memories participate in German memory production. The Hörraum “Unterhaltungen deutscher Eingewanderten” on dichterlesen.net considers the issue of national collective memory in terms of other migrants, and particularly those authors from Eastern Europe such as Haratischwili and Stanišić. Utlu and Bodrožić present excerpts from events and readings that look precisely at connections that can be made between histories of migration, the Nationalgeschichte of the “new” home, and countries of origin in order to explore these issues. Utlu’s own section, “Die Sprache des Archivs” (The Language of the Archive), has a particular gesture of opening up and transcending commonplace boundaries that are often arbitrarily attributed along contemporary political national borders, as his third subheading indicates: “Die Öffnung der Nationalgeschichte” (The Opening of the National History). In its wording, the subheading recalls the common phrase relating to Germany’s divided past of the “Öffnung der Mauer” (Opening of 11 Cf. Andreas Huyssen, “Diaspora and Nation: Migration into Other Pasts,” New German Critique 88 (2003): 147–64. 12 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 13 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3. 14 See Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, Chapter 1. On futurity, see Amir Eshel, Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

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the Wall) and shows the attempt to transcend a bounded definition of Nationalgeschichte: Ebenso wichtig ist, dass die Geschichte, die die verschiedenen Menschen mitbringen, auch Teil der Nationalgeschichte wird. Plötzlich ist Titos Tod auch ein Teil der Geschichte des Einwan­ derungslands Deutschland, so auch der Befreiungskrieg in der Türkei nach dem Zerfall des Osmanischen Reichs und die Transfor­ mationsprozesse in Georgien und Aserbaidschan. [It’s just as important that the history, which different people bring with them, becomes part of the national history. Suddenly Tito’s death is also a part of the history of migration land Germany, similarly the emancipatory war in Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire as well as the transformation processes in Georgia and Azerbaijan.]15

Utlu acknowledges that such a thing as shared memory exists and that memory does have some significance in relation to nation since he still refers to historical events in reference to “der Geschichte des Einwanderungslands Deutschland.” This dialectical relationship recalls the transcultural lens of “cosmopolitan memory” and “multidirectionality” since Utlu similarly seeks to explore the relations between various collective memories and how they inflect memory on the national level. Utlu’s suggestion to incorporate defining events of other national histories into a German memory archive or its own Nationalgeschichte is novel. Similarly, in his response to the recent discussions of the so-called “Historikerstreit 2.0” (historians’ dispute 2.0), Jürgen Habermas emphasizes an immigrant’s agency and ability to change (verändern) or expand the national culture since they also have a public voice.16 These moves to think through the interaction between migrant’s and nation’s respective memories resonate in the context of the current political landscape, since they reflect an attempt at resisting an increasingly nationalistic discourse, the rise of right-wing politics, and anti-immigrant movements (e.g., Alternative für Deutschland, Pegida) amid the 2010s European migrant crisis which were the background context when “Unterhaltungen deutscher Eingewanderten” was published in January 2017. 15 Bodrožić and Utlu, “Unterhaltungen deutscher Eingewanderten.” 16 “Aber der Immigrant erwirbt gleichzeitig die Stimme eines Mitbürgers, die von nun an in der Öffentlichkeit zählt und unsere politische Kultur verändern und erweitern kann” (Yet the immigrant at the same time gains the voice of a fellow citizen, which from now on counts in public and is able to change and expand our political culture). Jürgen Habermas, “Der neue Historikerstreit,” Philosophie Magazin 60 (2021): 10–11.

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Shifting the perspective by taking migrant memory archives into account and reading these interactions with the German Nationalgeschichte as ones that belong and expand it, is a productive way to transcend bounded definitions of memory and look at the multidirectionality in a future-oriented way. Stanišić and Haratischwili relate their immigrant protagonists’ memories of events beyond Germany’s geopolitical borders in ways that demonstrate that Utlu’s suggestion is not only tenable but also integral to an understanding of the interactions between migrant memory archives and a German Nationalgeschichte informed by the collective memory post-unification. At the opening of Haratischwili’s novel Das achte Leben (für Brilka) the female narrator Niza Jaschi alludes to the complexity of different memories at play by problematizing the beginning of her text—a written account of her family’s history for her twelve-year-old niece Brilka, as indicated in the parentheses of the novel’s title. Niza states that the story of their family’s history, which spans six generations, has several beginnings and so she will begin with three at once: one beginning with the family’s roots and Niza’s unnamed great-great-grandfather “der Schokoladenfabrikant” (the chocolate maker), one with Niza herself living in Berlin, and finally a beginning with her niece Brilka in a train seeking “einen anderen Anfang für sich und ihre Geschichte” (another beginning for herself, for her story).17 The triptych of beginnings to the text attempts to break away from a linear concept of (hi)story. The multidirectional narrative creates resonances between the various strands of the family history and discloses that memory is not a closed-off entity that can be neatly transmitted, but that it is inherently open to new access points and potential changes in the future. It shows how later events can inflect earlier ones, or perhaps in the context of migration how earlier events from a different context can be subsumed into and inflect the German memory archive as a new component of it. In her 1279-page novel, Haratischwili traces the legacy of twentiethcentury European history—from Tsarist Russia and the two World Wars to the demise of the Soviet Union—through focusing on its implications for a particular fictional family and their native country of Georgia. The Generationenroman is divided into a prologue and eight books, with 17 Nino Haratischwili, Das achte Leben (für Brilka) (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 2018), 9. Subsequent citations from the text will be indicated in parentheses with the abbreviation AL and the corresponding page number. Nino Haratischvili, The Eighth Life (for Brilka), translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Melbourne and London: Scribe Publications, 2019), 1. Subsequent citations of the translation will be indicated with the abbreviation EL and the corresponding page number. The English translation differs from the German original in that it omits the third “beginning” of the family’s roots and the chocolate maker (EL, 1).

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each book dedicated to and focalized through a particular family member, beginning with the narrator’s great-grandmother Stasia in 1900 in Georgia. The final book is left as a blank page for the niece Brilka, whom the narrator describes in the prologue as traveling on a train through Germany in search of her family’s history. Through leaving gaps in the novel’s narrative (e.g., when the focalization changes between characters in the eight books), Haratischwili resists a teleological linearity although the novel is narrated largely chronologically from generation to generation. At the same time, however, she emphasizes the intertwinement and synchronicity of familial and sociopolitical memories without uniting them into one narrative. Haratischwili’s narrator, Niza, describes her own account of the Jaschi family’s memory with the image of a “Wollknäuel” that she attempts to pull apart since it contains so many familial and sociopolitical stories: “Ich versuche, dieses Wollknäuel auseinanderzuziehen, weil man ja die Dinge nacheinander erzählen muss, weil die Gleichzeitigkeit der Welt nicht in Worte zu fassen ist” (AL, 521; I’m trying to untangle this skein of wool because you have to tell things one after another, because you can’t put the simultaneity of the world into words, EL, 378). The tangled wool skein of “things” comprises layers or threads that bring fictional individual, familial, and actual socio-political memories into contact with one another multidirectionally, creating a new “Wollknäuel” that nevertheless retains the gaps of other untold potential stories. Friederike Eigler identifies this palimpsestuous multiplicity as a narrative tendency of Generationenromane published between 1989 and 2003 and describes this dynamic as existing somewhere between the conflicting poles of fictionality and referentiality (“im Spannungsfeld zwischen Fiktionalität und Referenzialität”).18 This leads Eigler to read the genre as contributing to the collective memory of a reunified Germany. While Eigler examines several examples of Generationenromane in terms of how they comment on and contribute to dealing with (Bearbeitung) the National Socialist past, the 1968 West German protest movement, and GDR socialism, Haratischwili presents an expansion of the scope of memory work in her novel. She introduces post-socialist memories from beyond the contemporary German border into her own contribution of a German Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. In her account of the Prague Spring, for example, Haratischwili’s narrator Niza recounts how her great aunt Kitty decided to sing an old Georgian folksong in the midst of the protest and Niza reflects on its later reception: In der kollektiven Erinnerung des Westens, Brilka, wird der “Prager Frühling” als eine der größten und mutigsten Revolten gegen die 18 Eigler, Gedächtnis und Geschichte, 10.

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sowjetische Tyrannei gefeiert. Für den Osten war es ein Klagelied, ein trauriger Moment, weil der Vorhang, der sich gerade einen kleinen Spalt geöffnet hatte, gleich nur noch fester zugezogen wurde. (AL, 626) [In the collective memory of the West, Brilka, the “Prague Spring” is celebrated as one of the biggest and most courageous revolts against the Soviet tyranny. For the East, it was a threnody, a moment of sadness, because the curtain that had just been pushed ever so slightly aside would soon be drawn even more firmly closed. (EL, 456)]

Haratischwili relates the post-socialist memory of the historical event through the insertion of the fictional familial memory, and highlights the Eastern European perspective of the Prague Spring by contrasting its reception with the one across the iron curtain. Kitty’s folksong becomes the lament for the East and serves as a contact point between the familial memory and the wider collective memory. Through this fictional character’s action in the constructed narrative as part of actual historical events, Haratischwili highlights the constructed feature of collective memory, including different perspectives between the East and West. Haratischwili’s narrator, Niza, explicitly reflects on what events end up becoming part of “history” or collective memory and asks “was wohl wäre, wenn das kollektive Gedächtnis der Welt andere Dinge erhalten und wiederum andere verloren hätte” (AL, 521–22; What would happen if the world’s collective memory had retained different things and lost others, EL, 378). These lost memories not only concern the post-socialist perspective, but also often the familial or everyday memory which Haratischwili’s novel also addresses. As the story predominantly takes place in the family’s native Georgia, Niza accordingly refers, or rather alludes, to the ways that political occurrences and the Cold War affect the family in a manner that frequently hides the explicitly political. While there are sufficient references to war and political events in the novel— such as the Russian Revolution, the Red Army invasion of Georgia, and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany—Niza consistently reports them in relation to the familial ones: “So waren im Jahr der Liebe meiner Urgroßmutter die Romanows nach 300 Jahren Herrschaft durch die Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte und eine provisorische Übergangsregierung ersetzt worden” (AL, 67; Thus, in the year of my great-grandmother’s love, the Romanovs were replaced, after three hundred years of rule, by the workers’ and soldiers’ councils and a provisional government, EL, 42). Similarly, large political figures, who sometimes appear in the text as characters themselves and interact with family members (particularly

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Lavrentiy Beria, director of the Soviet secret police), take a back seat and are not named until at the very end of the novel.19 While referring or alluding to major historical events of the twentieth century, the narrator places great emphasis on significant events in the lives of her forebears. This specifically pertains to the female members and their stories of migration. The Jaschi family’s history is transferred in this text through the female members of the family, namely through the great-grandmother Stasia whose stories Niza records. The many references to storytelling in relation to the family’s woven rug (Teppich) as a receptacle for the stories, or in the separate image of the skein of wool discussed above, immediately recall the common classical trope of the weaving woman (e.g., Homer’s Penelope or Ovid’s Philomela). The emphasis on the women and their stories, however, adapts the classical model whereby they become the active storytellers who do not need to resort to telling their stories silently through their weaving. Instead, their personal histories become part of a counter-discourse against the “great men” of history. Indeed, it is the fictional characters that have names whereas Haratischwili by and large does not name the historical figures. The women, particularly Brilka, Kitty, and the narrator Niza, depart on their own odyssey throughout Europe, traveling not only physically, but also symbolically into the collective memory of reunified Germany as a counterpoint to the “great men.” In her storytelling, Niza rubs against the novel’s chronology and inserts her present time synchronously into the narrative of past events, reminding the reader that this counter-history is not linear. In between her account of her mother’s birth, she describes the present as being “zu present, zu aufdringlich, ich kann dabei nicht der Vergangenheit zuhören” (AL, 523; too alive, too intrusive, and I can’t listen to the past, EL, 370). Felix Lempp reads this dynamic in Das achte Leben under a paradigm of a “Bruch.” Lempp sees such a “break” not only in the novel’s structure and content, but in Niza as the narrative voice (Erzählinstanz) itself as she is both the narrator and character of her own narrative.20 Reading Niza in terms of duality is productive for looking at the way memory works in Haratischwili’s novel. To differentiate between Niza’s roles, the author 19 E.g., Vladimir Lenin is referred to as “Genosse Uljanow” (Comrade Ulyanov) and Josef Stalin is described as “der Anführer dieser Räuberbande ist ein georgischer Schustersohn . . ., noch heißt er nicht der stählerne Mann” (AL, 68, emphasis in original; The leader of this band of robbers is a Georgian cobbler’s son . . . he is not yet called the man of steel, EL, 43). 20 Felix Lempp, “‘Teppiche sind aus Geschichten gewoben.’ Problematisierungen generationalen Erzählens in NINO HARATISCHWILIS Das achte Leben (Für Brilka) und JETTE STECKELS Inszenierung am Thalia Theater Hamburg,” in Convivium: Germanistisches Jahrbuch Polen (Lodz: Lodz University Press, 2020), 95.

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utilizes the present tense for Niza as narrator (Erzählzeit) and the preterit when she becomes the protagonist of her own narrative (erzählte Zeit). The insistence on the time of Niza’s narration as “too alive” reminds the audience of the trajectory of this story that she is telling, namely that she and her niece are navigating the German landscape and creating resonances between their familial, post-socialist memories with the German collective memory, thereby adding to its Nationalgeschichte. The novel emphasizes the interrelatedness of memories that are typically seen as “German” and those that have “travelled,” as I claim, into the German Nationalgeschichte. A particularly productive example is the relationship between Niza’s great aunt Kitty and the Austrian Jewish woman Fred Lieblich that develops after Kitty’s emigration over the Cold War divide to Western Europe. Kitty and Fred’s conversations about their traumatic pasts are a particularly notable point in the novel where two memories touch multidirectionally. Fred, a survivor of the Holocaust, relates her own memories of the camps Theresienstadt and Mauthausen during the Second World War (AL, 484–91; EL, 350–55) and Kitty later tells of her own experience of persecution at the hands of the NKVD, the Soviet interior ministry (AL, 563–64; EL, 411). Collective memory in the German (and European) context is closely tied to the Holocaust since rejection of the National Socialist past serves as a foundation for German identity in the postwar period through to reunification. Some scholars, such as political scientist Claus Leggewie and historian Dan Diner, suggest that the Holocaust therefore constitutes a negative foundational myth in collective memory in Europe.21 The Cold War divide and Stalinist crimes are recognized and form what Aleida Assmann names as one of the key events (Kernereignis) of European memory, while the Second World War and the Holocaust—the other key event—have received significantly more attention in scholarship and (Western) European memory culture until recently.22 Through Kitty and Fred’s interactions, Haratischwili creates a resonance between these two “key events” and situates them both as discourses pertinent to a German Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. The multidirectional 21 Claus Leggewie, “Die Grenzen der Nationalkultur,” in Transit Deutschland—Debatten zu Nation und Migration: Eine Dokumentation, edited by Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling, Anton Kaes, and Andreas Langenohl (Konstanz: Konstanz University Press, 2011), 749. Dan Diner, “Restitution and Memory: The Holocaust in European Political Cultures,” New German Critique 90 (2003): 36–44. See also Uilleam Blacker and Alexander Etkind, “Introduction,” in Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe, edited by Uilleam Blacker, Alexander Etkind, and Julie Fedo (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1–22. 22 Aleida Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur: Eine Intervention (Munich: Beck, 2013), 155. See also Blacker and Etkind, “Introduction,” 1–22.

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exchanges are inherently futural since they have the potential to expand the current Nationalgeschichte and thus the collective memory archive. The incorporation of Brilka, and as such the youngest member of the Jaschi family, as one of the three potential openings to the family’s story signals this awareness of the potential relevance of individual memory for the future and suggests that each person is to a certain extent a “new” beginning—demonstrated most explicitly in the blank page left for Brilka at the end of the novel. However, the beginning with the figure of Brilka not only discloses potential new ways to view the family’s own past in relation to its present (and future). It also puts the familial events into the broader context of post-1989 Europe, since the teenager is introduced in the prologue as looking at “das alte, neue Europa” (AL, 11; old, new Europe, EL, 2) from a train window.23 The youngest member of this Georgian family sets off as she seeks a connection to Europe because of her great aunt Kitty’s migration there. She moves through a narrative of family history and into the sociopolitical space of Europe, into the post-1989 constellation of theoretical European unity. While in itself this reference to Europe may not seem significant, the antonymic adjectives “old and new” reveal in a nutshell the futural perspective apparent in Haratischwili’s novel as they highlight the multidirectionality of memory at play. Europe can be seen as both “old and new” at the same time in its present and future. Similarly, the content of the novel relates scenes of familial memory multidirectionally to wider European events, whereby both familial and sociopolitical events are always present at the same time. Brilka’s traveling thus serves as an allegory for how this family’s memory of events beyond Germany is itself traveling into German national history through her act and for how their lived experiences can become part of the “new” memory landscape. Similar to lack of linearity in terms of the novel’s content, Das achte Leben does not only present the transgenerational transfer of memory as a linear interaction between an older generation and a younger one. Instead, it breaks through this order to reveal how the transfer of memory between family members is one of mutual interaction whereby each actor contributes actively to the present production of memory. This futureoriented logic enables later memories to resonate with earlier ones in a way that interweaves them multidirectionally, which not only pertains to familial but also to collective memory. Haratischwili uses several images of entanglement throughout her novel to emphasize this multidirectional structure of memory. Although the novel is generally narrated chronologically in terms of generations from Tsarist Russia to the demise of the Soviet Union, the prologue emphasizes an intertwinement of stories and 23 Emphasis in original German, but absent in the English translation.

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introduces such entangled images to highlight the ways that memory can work in a multidirectional network. Already in the prologue’s title “Prolog oder Die Partitur des Vergessens” (Prologue or the Score of Forgetting) the reader is presented with a polychronous image—a musical score that conjures up the idea of numerous elements functioning together simultaneously and relating to one another in various ways, just as the three beginnings in the prologue are narrated. Niza later describes the manner in which these stories work: Diese Geschichten, die ständig parallel verlaufen, chaotisch; die in den Vordergrund treten, sich verstecken und sich gegenseitig ins Wort fallen. Denn sie verknüpfen und durchbrechen sich, sie umgehen, sie überschneiden und bespitzeln sich gegenseitig, sie verraten und führen in die Irre, sie legen Spuren, verwischen sie, und vor allem bergen sie in sich noch Abertausende von anderen Geschichten. (AL, 31) [These stories that constantly run in parallel, chaotically; that appear in the foreground, conceal themselves, interrupt one another. Because they connect and break through each other, they betray and mislead, they lay tracks, cover them up, and most of all they contain within them hundreds of thousands of other stories. (EL, 16)]

Niza’s description of the multitude and confusion of stories and how each story contains “noch Abertausende” of other stories within them reflects memory’s openness and highlights that it is never entirely bounded with strict borders. For example, the Holocaust survivor Fred’s story (AL, 484–85) becomes part of the familial memory enacted in Niza’s retelling to Brilka. Fred’s story of persecution as a child runs “in parallel” soto-speak and resonates with great aunt Kitty’s own traumatic memory. Haratischwili’s novel thus shows on the micro level of one family unit how different memories run parallelly and resonate with one another, or even how memories that do not initially belong to a given collective memory are able to belong as a new component due to migration. Saša Stanišić relates familial post-socialist memories (in this case of a child) to wider sociopolitical events and entangles them in the German memory discourse. In his debut novel Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, 2006), Stanišić offers an Eastern European perspective on canonical German events.24 Similar to Haratischwili, this is already reflected in his approach to a 24 Saša Stanišić, Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (Berlin: btb, 2008). Citations from the text will be indicated in parentheses with the abbreviation SG and the corresponding page number. Saša Stanišić, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, translated by Anthea Bell (New York: Grove Press, 2008). Citations

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particular narrative genre. Whereas Haratischwili engages with the Generationenroman, Stanišić does so with the Bildungsroman. Narrated in the first person, his “transnational Bildungsroman” relates the experiences of its young protagonist Aleksandar Krsmanović during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995 and the eventual dissolution of Yugoslavia.25 At the beginning, Aleksandar lives in the Bosnian town Višegrad, but flees at the age of fourteen with his family to Germany because of the onset of ethnic cleansing in his hometown. After their migration, the novel continues predominantly in the form of Aleksandar’s letters and transcripts of phone calls to Asija, a Muslim girl from Višegrad whom he seeks after she disappeared during the war. In terms of the novel’s form, Stanišić’s narrative becomes fragmentary and approaches “a mosaic,” according to scholar Brigid Haines, which she claims is the author’s way of “reflect[ing] the difficulty of representing war.”26 Admittedly, Stanišić does rely heavily on the literary technique of montage for the purpose of relating this story and representing the gaps in Aleksandar’s memory. However, more is at work in Stanišić’s fragmented narrative. Through his poetics of montage, the author destabilizes the plot in order to avoid the usual generic trajectories of comingof-age novels through disrupting the chronology and teleological bias of the genre. While the narrative is focalized through the child Aleksandar’s perspective and thus retains this Bildungsroman characteristic, the novel differentiates itself from the genre by presenting multiple perspectives.27 As part of this narrative montage, Stanišić inserts a novel within the novel titled “Als alles gut war” (SG, 157–210; When Everything Was All Right, SR, 173–231). This novel-within-a-novel particularly showcases the text’s Eastern European perspective on sociopolitical events that Stanišić introduces multidirectionally into the German collective memory. It is not entirely clear, however, when Aleksandar is supposed to have written this inner novel.28 I understand this inner novel’s content as conof the translation will be indicated with the abbreviation SR and the corresponding page number. 25 Didem Uca, “‘Grissgott’ meets ‘Kung Fu’: Multilingualism, Humor, and Trauma in Saša Stanišić’s Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (2006),” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 73, no. 3 (2019): 185–201. 26 Brigid Haines, “Spot, Identity and War in Saša Stanišić’s Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert,” in Aesthetics and Politics in Modern German Culture: Festschrift in Honour of Rhys W. Williams, edited by Brigid Haines, Stephen Parker, and Colin Riordan (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), 156. 27 E.g., his schoolfriend Zoran (SG 61–66), Rabbi Avram (SG, 100–102), Serbian occupiers (SG, 129–30), and his Grandma Katarina (SG, 155–56). 28 Didem Uca argues that the adult Aleksandar wrote these texts, but Vladimir Biti describes the inner novel as “an alleged child’s story” while also questioning its status due to its position in the novel. Uca, “Grissgott” meets “Kung Fu,”

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sisting of texts that Aleksandar wrote as a child which his grandmother later sends to the young adult who then edits and “publishes” them as “Als alles gut war.” The title itself indicates that the adult Aleksandar compiles them, since it retroactively reflects on his childhood in the preterit as the time when things were “all right.” In the letter, for example, Aleksandar conceives of East Germany as the “better part” of the country rather than the West: “Im besseren Deutschland ist eine Wand umgefallen und ab jetzt gibt es nur noch das schlechtere Deutschland” (SG, 174; A wall has fallen down in the better part of Germany, and now only the not-so-good part of Germany is left, SR, 190). Stanišić reinforces that this Eastern European perspective on Germany is not just a “false” one from Aleksandar’s childhood that has since been “rectified” since his migration to Germany and the eventual disintegration of Yugoslavia: for while the status of these “childhood” texts as truthful is admittedly unclear (since they were written by a child), the fact that the adult Aleksandar assembles them in this manner and selects this title for the inner novel as an adult lends them weight. Stanišić introduces this point earlier in the novel with an allusion to Günter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959)—a key text of the postwar period and prominent example of the Bildungsroman genre in German and world literature—when Aleksandar states “ich [werde] vielleicht irgendwann aufhören . . ., zu wachsen” (SG, 78; I suppose I’ll stop growing some day, SR, 79). Rather than understanding this in a literal sense (i.e., that the child Aleksandar no longer grows), I claim that this pertains to the child’s Eastern European perspective which Stanišić emphasizes remains valid and is not automatically erased and replaced by a new narrative. The author challenges hegemonic ideas of Eastern Europe as an undesirable place or one of failure (i.e., since the communist state ceased to exist) and suggests that these post-socialist memories belong to a German Nationalgeschichte. Stanišić’s reference to Grass distinctly situates his own novel in direct relation to German-language literary traditions and thus as a thoroughly German text itself. Through his choice of Die Blechtrommel, a novel of world literature, as intertext, Stanišić at the same time acknowledges the wider global structure of memory, therefore simultaneously relating to both the global and local structure of memory. This intertextuality between Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert and Grass’s novel is not the only reference to texts from postwar literature. Perhaps the more striking reference in the context of memory and 186; Vladimir Biti, “Remembering Nowhere: The Homeland-on-the-Move in the Exile Writing of Saša Stanišić and Ismet Prcic,” in Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian Literature and Culture, edited by Vladislav Beronja and Stijn Vervaet (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2016), 53.

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its relation to Vergangenheitsbearbeitung is the one to Paul Celan’s poem “Todesfuge” (Death Fugue, 1948): “Ich lese und liebe das Lesen, der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland, er ist gerade ein Weltmeister aus Bosnien. Ich hasse die Brücke” (SG, 145; I like to read. Death is a German champion and a Bosnian outright world champion. I hate the bridge, SR, 156).29 After directly citing “Todesfuge,” Stanišić adapts Celan’s designation of death as the “Meister” from Germany to “Weltmeister” from Bosnia. Simultaneously alluding to Aleksandar’s passion for football, the escalation from “Meister” to “Weltmeister” together with the temporal adverb “gerade” highlights the scale of violence in the Bosnian wars. Despite using the clearly competitive term “Weltmeister,” I claim that Stanišić is not, however, establishing a relationship of competition through this comparison (i.e., the model of competitive memory), but rather cites this key text of Holocaust memory in order to emphasize that nationalism and ethnic cleansing still existed in post-1989 Europe—his mention of “the bridge” alludes to the historic Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge over the Drina river in Višegrad, a Bosnian city where Bosniaks were murdered as part of the ethnic cleansing by Serb military forces at the beginning of the Bosnian War. Aleksandar’s mentioning of “the bridge” presents a further intertextual reference in Stanišić’s work. It alludes to Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge over the Drina, 1945) by Nobel Laureate Ivo Andrić, a Yugoslav writer who is mentioned earlier in the novel. Andrić’s novel chronicles four centuries of Višegrad history spanning from its construction under the Ottomans to the bridge’s damage in the First World War. Haines describes Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert as a “homage to, and continuation of” Andrić’s novel, and indeed it does tell of the later history of Višegrad through the refracted memory of its child protagonist. Yet it also goes further by following the lines of memory and how they are intertwined with German history. The bridge serves as a metaphorical one between the two collective memories that transforms both respectively, connecting post-socialist memories to German ones. Through this reference to Andrić that directly follows a citation of Celan, Stanišić creates an entanglement of memory, or a “Wollknäuel” to use Haratischwili’s image, between German and Bosnian collective memory and intimates the multidirectionality of memory in this migrant’s story. Stanišić’s protagonist Aleksandar makes this entangled relationship explicit when he states “ich sammle die deutsche Sprache. Sammeln 29 Stanišić also alludes to postwar author Peter Handke, particularly to the controversy around the 2019 Nobel Laureate due to his depiction of Serbia as a victim during the Yugoslav conflicts and his support of Serbian President Slobodan Milosević: “višegrad genozid handke scham verantwortung” (SG, 215; višegrad genocide handke shame responsibility, SR 236).

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wiegt die schweren Antworten und die schweren Gedanken auf, die ich habe, wenn ich an Višegrad denke” (SG, 140; I’m collecting words in my new language. Collecting helps to make up for the hard answers and sad thoughts I have when I think of Višegrad, SR, 150). The child Aleksandar’s collecting of German as counterbalance to his memories of his native Bosnia reveals how entangled his memories are. It shows how it is impossible to conceive of the memories of the Yugoslav wars as separate from his later German ones and that they dialectically belong to both Bosnian and German memory at the same time. Stanišić underscores the connection between the two histories of memories through the child Aleksandar and shows their entanglement, resulting in the expansion of the German Nationalgeschichte through these histories becoming the objects of an engagement with the past. Understanding the Nationalgeschichte as open to new access points from beyond geographic delimitations makes space for migrant perspectives, and specifically Eastern European ones in the cases of Haratischwili and Stanišić, to be offered in discussions of memory and recognizes that there are other memories of histories of violence that exist in and are a part of contemporary Germany.The intertextual relationship between the archive “Unterhaltungen deutscher Einwanderer,” which I discussed at the beginning of this paper, and Goethe’s collection functions similarly to Haratischwili’s and Stanišić’s respective negotiations of post-socialist memories in the German memory landscape. This is already reflected in the play between the archive’s title and its Goethean precursor. The change of prefix from aus- to ein- in their respective titles reveals a play on perspective and belonging that Utlu and Bodrožić’s project also highlights. Utlu and Bodrožić draw on Goethe, and therefore, by extension, the German canon which he personifies,30 in a similar manner to Stanišić’s and Haratischwili’s interactions with German literature as ones that simultaneously connect to and expand the canon. In Utlu and Bodrožić’s project, they explicitly shift from the question of origins as seen in the model “Ausgewanderten” to an emphasis on where the migrants have travelled to and where they have subsequently settled—they are “Eingewanderten.” The Goethean title retains a temporal anteriority that focuses on the origin of the migrant that is also reflected today in the oft asked question “Where are you really from?”31 Utlu and Bodrožić’s adaptation on the other hand centers a futural 30 Alongside other key figures, Goethe’s name as a signifier of the Western canon can be seen, for example, on the side of Butler Library at Columbia University in New York. 31 Cf. Ming-Bao Yue, “On Not Looking German: Ethnicity, Diaspora and the Politics of Vision,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (2000): 173–94.

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perspective that emphasizes the migrant’s new home. The authors, therefore, retain Goethe’s use of the substantive adjective in order to emphasize that the act of migrating is already completed and does not remain an eternal process of always immigrating into the new home—i.e., they use the past participle “Eingewanderten” and not “Einwanderer.” This choice of “Eingewanderten” over “Einwanderer” also has implications for the expectations placed upon the immigrant in society. Continually labelled as an “Einwanderer,” the immigrant is consistently demanded to “adapt” and integrate into a limited idea of what the respective society is. The contemporary German poet and essayist Max Czollek describes this as a stance that continually indicates a “we were here first, you were here last” mindset, whereby problems arise when “perspectives offered by new arrivals are disregarded because they do not fit in with German expectations.”32 This rigid sense of what it means to be a German or to live in Germany precludes the immigrant from ever fully integrating and leaves them trapped in the eternal process of trying to fit in and always falling short, including in discussions of memory and Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. Looking at resonances between different memories and histories on the so-called “periphery” of Europe that are at play in these works by Haratischwili and Stanišić is a potential way to integrate post-socialist memories into the German memory archive. Through my reading of novels by these two authors of the Eastern Turn with consideration to the broader concerns of history and memory discourses relating to the former socialist states—as opposed to a biographic reading—I avoid consigning them to this trope of being “between two worlds” and of being a part of a so-called “migrant literature,” whose existence Utlu, Stanišić, and Haratischwili question, since it implies the authors’ exclusion from belonging to Germany, German-language literature, and to the Nationalgeschichte.33 In a memory landscape dominated by discussions of the Second World War and the Holocaust, authors of the Eastern Turn seek to particularly integrate post-socialist memories and experiences of state socialism as a new component in discussions of Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. Haratischwili and Stanišić narrate stories about Eastern Europe and explicitly narrate them in relations to canonical German events and literature—with a particular focus on the Second World War. However, in their 32 Valeriya Safronova, “In Germany, a Jewish Millennial Argues That the Past Isn’t Past,” New York Times, January 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes. com/2020/01/16/books/max-czollek-germany-desintegriert-euch.html. 33 See Leslie Adelson’s study on Turkish-German literature on the critical problems of such a paradigm: Adelson, The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature.

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framing of these stories, both authors emphasize the post-socialist aspects of memory and show how this also belongs to the German space. They connect to discourses of German memory in a multidirectional way while at the same time claiming space for their post-socialist memory within this very German discourse of Vergangenheitsbearbeitung through their nonlinear narratives. In this act of negotiation, they transcend a bounded definition of what constitutes a German memory by expanding the concept of what can belong, through actively integrating memories from other countries into the German memory archive.

Reading Photographic Images and Identifying Mnemonic Threads of the Post-Memorial Project in Sie kam aus Mariupol (2017) by Natascha Wodin Shivani Chauhan, University of Oxford

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Introduction

erman-speaking writers

with familial affiliations in Central and Eastern Europe employ literature as an important tool to reveal aspects of the European past that have yet to be accommodated in the literary landscape of German-language fiction.1 Through the recollection of their personal memories and those of their immediate family members, these writers not only skillfully register the turbulent influence of historical catastrophes on the intimate, private sphere of their families, but also offer a platform to integrate distinctive and specific memories from other parts of Europe into German literature and strengthen its transnational makeup.2 Against the backdrop of contentious memory politics in Germany and by extension in Europe, this essay examines the 1 Michael Hofmann and Iulia-Karin Patrut, Einführung in die interkulturelle Literatur (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2015), 7. 2 A few examples of such significant literary contributions by Germanlanguage writers with direct or indirect affiliations across Central and Eastern Europe are: Atemschaukel (2009; The Hunger Angel, 2012) by Herta Müller (the poetic rendering of the persecution of ethnic Germans in Romania by the Soviet regime), Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert (2006; How the Soldier Repairs the Grammophone, 2008) by Saša Stanišić (the literary treatment of historical memory associated with the war in the former Yugoslavia), and Der Schwimmer (The Swimmer, 2002) by Zsuzsa Bánk (the fictional reimagining of the collective trauma rooted in the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring), among others. See also: Brigid Haines, “German-Language Writing from Eastern and Central Europe,” in Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century, edited by Lyn Marven and Stuart Taberner (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011) and Stuart Taberner, Transnationalism and GermanLanguage Literature in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 60–64.

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post-memorial use of photographs as mnemonic artifacts in the work of Natascha Wodin. In her autobiographical novel Sie kam aus Mariupol (She Came from Mariupol, 2017), she creatively meditates upon the historical complexity associated with the trauma of her mother, who was deported from Eastern Europe to Nazi Germany as an Ostarbeiterin during World War II, and sets out to uncover the largely unremembered phenomenon of Nazi forced labor, especially in relation to the individuals who were deported from occupied Eastern European states into the Third Reich.3 In this process, Wodin uses techniques of “imaginative investment, projection, creation”4 as tools to work on the juxtaposition of photographic images within the narrative economy of the text. While her post-memorial project enables Wodin to point out the lacunae in the dominant European memory discourse,5 it also forms a literary platform where a productive interaction between the individual and collective memories takes place.

The “Eastern Turn” and the Diversification of the European Memory Landscape in German Literature German-speaking writers with a transnational background or family histories in Central and Eastern Europe have played a crucial role in transforming the mnemonic landscape of German-language fiction and carved out a distinct place for themselves within the literary scene of the past few decades. Drawing on the notion of a “Turkish turn,” in German-language literature that had been analyzed by Leslie Adelson several years earlier,6 Brigid Haines, in a key article taking stock of this development in 2008,

3 The number of literary engagements focusing on the plight of non-Jewish forced laborers under the Nazi regime is remarkably small. For instance, displaced persons are mentioned briefly in Ruth Klüger’s memoir Weiter Leben: Eine Jugend (Keep Living: A Youth, 1992) and Elfriede Jelinek’s drama Das Werk (The Work, 2002) draws attention to Austria’s abject past rooted in the exploitation of forced and slave laborers during the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the Austrian Alps. Furthermore, the reader also comes across a few characters representing forced laborers who have been Soviet POWs, such as Boris in Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady, 1971) or Stanisław in Rolf Hochhuth’s Eine Liebe in Deutschland (A Love in Germany, 1978). 4 Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 5. 5 The development of historiography related to the topic of slave labor in Nazi Germany is out of the scope of this paper, which focuses on the place of the topic in popular memory discourse. 6 Leslie Adelson, The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

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identifies their collective literary voice as evidence of an “Eastern Turn.”7 Driven by a desire to import memories from remote corners of Europe through aesthetic treatment of complex historical trajectories, these writers intervene in a process of the emergence of heterogeneous memory discourses that have been operative in contemporary German-language literature since the early 1990s.8 Since the generation with first-hand experiences of the Second World War is gradually disappearing from the scene,9 the transition from the organic memory of the first-hand historical subject to “prosthetic”10 memory of the remembering subject who did not bear witness to the event is becoming more prominent in contemporary discourse. In the absence of human carriers with first-hand memory and in light of ruptured generational ties, the possibility of an afterlife for these first-hand memories primarily hinges upon their mediation in cultural texts and other, external sites of memory.11 Reflections upon this development are also noticeable in the post-memorial renderings of family history by second-and-third postwar generations of writers from the “Eastern Turn” who have no personal memories of this historical epoch and are primarily reliant upon the external sources of information and mnemonic aids such as letters, diary entries, photographs, archival documents, and oral or written testimonies in order to recover and strategically record the impact of historical catastrophes on the intimate, private spheres of their families. Their “projects of narration and genealogy”12 mostly rooted in the lesser-known aspects of the European continent’s history of collective trauma integrate several subaltern and peripheral narratives into the German literature of memory and pursue a common endeavor to strengthen its transnational make-up. 7 Brigid Haines, “The Eastern Turn in Contemporary German, Swiss and Austrian Literature,” Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 16, no. 2 (2008): 136. 8 “Memory Texts” associated with Holocaust-literatur, Trümmerliteratur, the Gruppe 47, or the Väterliteratur of the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, have contributed substantially to public interest in the questions of memory and commemoration, thereby creating fertile ground for the heterogeneity of memory discourses in German-language literature. See: Caroline Schaumann, Memory Matters: Generational Reponses to Germany’s Nazi Past in Recent Women’s Literature (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 8. 9 Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture, translated by Sara B. Young (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 4. 10 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 11 Friederike Eigler, “Writing in the New Germany: Cultural Memory and Family Narratives,” German Politics and Society 23, no. 3 (2005): 17. 12 Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory, 3.

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Natascha Wodin’s autobiographical novel Sie kam aus Mariupol is one of those projects.

About the Author Natascha Wodin was born in 1945 in Fürth in Bavaria to Ukrainian parents who had been brought from their country to work as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. In postwar Germany, she grew up in camps for “displaced persons” (DPs) and later, after the suicide of her mother, in a Catholic children’s home. Wodin graduated from a language school and became one of the first interpreters for German industries and cultural organizations traveling to the Soviet Union in service of so-called “Eastern treaties” (Ostverträge). In 1980, she began her career as a full-time writer and has published many novels including Die gläserne Stadt: Eine Erzählung (The City of Glass: A Short Story, 1983), Einmal lebt ich (Once I Lived, 1989), Die Ehe (The Marriage, 1997), Nachtgeschwister (Siblings of the Night, 2009), Alter, fremdes Land (Old, Foreign Country, 2014), Sie kam aus Mariupol, and Irgendwo in diesem Dunkel (Somewhere in this Darkness, 2018).13 While a significant part of her repertoire of literary texts has engaged with varied thematic concerns such as the experience of rootlessness, homelessness, foreignness, and the search for love and security, she has only recently discovered her parents’ place in the broader scheme of historical catastrophes in her 2017 novel Sie kam aus Mariupol. Although Wodin has received critical attention, won prestigious awards, and has had her works translated into many languages, her writing has yet to reach a popular audience. However, with its remarkable intervention in the contemporary memory culture, Sie kam aus Mariupol represents a paradigm shift in her writing career and is by far the most popular of her works.14 In her laudation for Natascha Wodin at the award ceremony, Sigrid Löffler remarked: “Das erinnert nicht von ungefähr an die Verfahrensweise, mit der W. G. Sebald, der große deutsche Gedächtniskünstler, verlorene Lebensläufe der Vergessenheit entriss” (It reminds me of W. G. Sebald’s process as Germany’s great memory culture

13 For bibliographical information about the author, see: https://www. rowohlt.de/autor/natascha-wodin.html; https://www.no-mans-land.org/nata scha-wodin/; https://www.literaturport.de/Natascha.Wodin/. 14 Weertje Willms, “Zu einigen Gesetzmäßigkeiten des deutschen Literaturmarktes der Gegenwart am Beispiel von Olga Grjasnowa and Natascha Wodin,” in Literaturkontakte: Kulturen—Medien—Märkte, edited by Isabelle Oberle, Dorine Schellens, Michaela Frey, Clara Braune, and Diana Römer (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2018), 178.

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artist: to recover lost lives from the past).15 Moreover, the book was celebrated by several critics for establishing itself as a memorial to the millions of Eastern Europeans who were separated from their homeland and exploited ruthlessly as slave laborers in the Third Reich. Uli Hufen notes: “Natascha Wodin könnte gelingen, was den Historikern nicht zu gelingen scheint: die Geschichte der Zwangsarbeiter und Kriegsgefangenen im Bewusstsein einer breiten Öffentlichkeit zu verankern” (Natascha Wodin could accomplish what appears to be impossible for historians: to raise awareness for the history of forced laborers and prisoners of war in mainstream memorial discourse).16

Resurrecting Mnemonic Remnants and Protesting Historical Amnesia Examining family trauma through the post-memorial lens, Wodin militates against the layers of silence and ignorance shrouding one of the largest yet least remembered crimes perpetrated on the European continent during the Second World War.17 Slave labor in the Third Reich has been treated as an addendum to other events in popular and institutional memory, and is seldom included in the grand narratives of transnational memory because it does not fit neatly with categories of war, imprisonment, or genocide.18 As the phenomenon does not feature in the various mnemonic disputes that form the basis for analysis of cultural memory, slave labor beyond the concentration camp setting has yet to 15 Sigrid Löffler, cited in a brief commentary on Sie kam aus Mariupol on the website of the Freie Universität, Berlin, https://www.oei.fu-berlin.de/osteuropain-berlin/kultur/17022017-Natascha-Wodin/index.html. 16 Uli Hufen, “Was kann ein Mensch ertragen,” Deutschlandrundfunk, February 26, 2017, Section Büchermarkt, https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ roman-sie-kam-aus-mariupol-was-kann-ein-mensch-ertragen.700.de.html?dram: article_id=379905. 17 Natascha Wodin, Sie kam aus Mariupol, 5th edition (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2017). After this footnote, subsequent references to this text will appear in parenthesis in the main body of the text. 18 For example, in their model of the “seven circles of pan-European memory,” Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang identify seven important historical events in European history, namely, “Holocaust,” “Gulag,” “Ethnische Säuberungen” (ethic cleansing), “Kriege und Krisen” (wars and crises), “Kolonialverbrechen” (colonial crimes), “Migrationsgeschichte” (history of migration), and “Europäische Integration” (European integration). In the main description of these seven circles, the topic of forced labor under Nazi regime has been mentioned only once, that too in passing. Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung: Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011), 38.

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receive any significant attention from memory scholars.19 Wodin, who grew up under the shadow of her parents’ wartime trauma as victims of slave labor with “Abnäher—Ost” (dart—East), empathically registers the relegation of this historical chapter as “eine Marginalie, ein Anhängsel des Holocaust” (A sidenote, an addendum to the Holocaust, 24) in the institutionalized remembrance economy of Germany. Her post-memorial pursuit to, as Marianne Hirsch would have it, “revive and reembody”20 her mother’s anonymous life as a victim of “Zwangsarbeit” (forced labor) reveals that mnemonic records of forced labor in the Nazi era are fraught with “blinde . . . Flecken, Ungereimtheiten und Widersprüche” (blind . . . spots, inconsistensies and controversies, 38). She frequently stumbles upon the absence of this crime against humanity, not only in the collective psyche of the general public, but also in well-educated and informed academic circles (38).21 The narrator is perplexed to confront the truth that although Germany’s wartime landscape was permeated with more than thirty thousand work camps and the local German population was aware of the existence of “das Massenphänomen der Zwangsarbeit” (the ubiquity of forced labor, 38) in contemporary Germany, despite its 19 In another model of Europe’s divided memory, Aleida Assmann recognizes forced laborers solely as the victims of Stalinism. Here, the topic of Nazi forced labor is conspicuous by its absence: Aleida Assmann, “Europe’s Divided History,” in Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe, edited by Uilleam Blacker, Alexander Etkind, and Julie Fedo (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 25–41. 20 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 33. 21 Although historians have paid significant attention to the topic of forced labor, the majority of the general public is unaware of the scale or significance of this phenomenon, indicating the functional radius of cultural memory when it comes to this history. Some important historical studies on the topic include: Edward L. Homze, Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967); Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des “Ausländer-Einsatzes” in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Berlin and Bonn: Dietz, 1985); Europa und der “Reichseinsatz”: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und KZ-Häftlinge in Deutschland 1938–1945, edited by Ulrich Herbert (Essen: Klartext, 1991); Hitler’s Slaves: Life Stories of Forced Labourers in Nazi-Occupied Europe, edited by Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh, and Christoph Thonfeld (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010); Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1938–1945 (Stuttgart and Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001); Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, “Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers, and Survivors,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33, no. 2 (2002): 169–204; Marc Buggeln, “Unfreie Arbeit im Nationalsozialismus: Begrifflichkeiten und Vergleichsaspekte zu den Arbeitsbedingungen im Deutschen Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten,” in Arbeit im Nationalsozialismus, edited by Marc Buggeln and Michael Wildt (Munich: De Gruyter, 2014), 231–52.

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various emancipatory projects concerning coming to terms with the past, Germany still does not seem to comprehend the massive scale of human rights’ violations in the slave labor industry or the gravity of its repercussions for individual lives (13).22 Wodin challenges the inability of memory culture to accommodate the suffering of millions of slave laborers: Die nicht-jüdischen Zwangsarbeiter, die die Vernichtung durch Arbeit überlebt hatten, schwiegen. . . . Die nach Deutschland verschleppten Männer und Frauen wurden in bis heute unbekannter Zahl in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft zu Tode geschunden, aber noch Jahrzehnte nach Kriegsende fand sich über die Verbrechen an den sechs bis siebenundzwangzig Millionen Zwangsarbeitern—. . . nur gelegentlich ein einzelner, dünner Bericht in einem Kirchenblatt order in einer lokalen Sonntagszeitung. (23–24, my emphasis) [The non-jewish forced laborers, who survived extermination via labor, kept silent. . . . The men and women abducted to Germany were tortured to death in unknown numbers in the German war economy, but even decades after the end of the war there was very little to be found about the atrocities committed to hurt the six to twenty-seven million forced laborers . . . just occasionally a single slim report in a church newsletter or in a local Sunday newspaper.]

This wide-spread ignorance about the subject harks back to “an ice age of memory” in postwar Germany, when a tradition of defensive silence and blatant denial prevailed, as Aleida Assmann points out in her reflections on Europe’s divided memory.23 However, the silence of traumatized victims of forced labor from Eastern Europe is not simply predicated on the oppressive silence of perpetrators, rather it is defined by a complex interplay between the memory politics of the perpetrator nation, Germany, and that of their homeland, the Soviet Union. While deprived of their victim status or any reparative measures to restore their dignity, slave laborers were forced to eke out an impoverished existence in postwar Germany, their “guest-country,” where they were stigmatized as “Heimatlose Ausländer” (homeless foreigners) and “Barbaren” (barbarians), even as “Täter” (perpetrators), as Wodin explains, and those who “auf den Müll der Geschichte gehörten” (belonged on the garbage heap of history, 51). Back home in the Soviet Union, they were largely denigrated as “Vaterlandsverräter” (traitors to the fatherland) and “Kollaborateure” 22 Historian Mary Fulbrook reflects on Germany’s problematic approach concerning the reparations to forced laborers in the postwar climate since the 1980s. See: Mary Fulbrook, Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 343–46. 23 Assmann, “Europe’s Divided History,” 28.

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(collaborators, 17). The interaction between these dysfunctional cultures of remembrance does not allow traumatic memories of slave labor to surface in any social framework and they instead linger on the edges of the cultural unconscious in a zone of non-belonging that compounds victims’ isolation and denies them the therapeutic effects of recognition within a social context.

Reflections on Post-Memory The memories of a distant past rooted in a historical trauma not only continue to steer the course of victims’ lives in the present, but they also cast a devastating shadow on their descendants and their sense of identity. In her seminal work After Such Knowledge, Eva Hoffman recounts her experiences of growing up amidst a chaos of overwhelming emotions that emerged from her parents’ wartime memories. “In the lacunae between words,” “the talismanic litanies of sorrow,” “in the sounds of nightmares, the idiom of sighs and illness, of tears and the acute aches,” as a child of survivors she was destined to frequently encounter a past completely beyond her reach.24 The response of descendants to such a problematic family past has been defined by Marianne Hirsch as “post-memory.”25 Although they have come to perceive traumatic memories that preceded their birth as an incontrovertible part of their lives, there is no way for the generation of post-memory to truly understand, envisage or recreate the enormity of the transmitted experiences. This cultural trauma not only disrupts family bonds and upsets a sense of continuity within the intergenerational transmission of memories, but also disrupts the flow of historical information within platforms of collective remembrance. Ensuing ruptures and breaks inspire post-memorial subjects to devise their own techniques of “imaginative investment, creation, and projection”26 in order to produce a viable narrative of the painful past. This process of post-memorial work, as Marianne Hirsch suggests, consists of “reconstitution and repair”27 of the broken epistemological threads from the distant past, those “leftovers, debris, single items that are left to be collected and assembled in many ways.”28 One of the key items available 24 Eva Hoffman, After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 9, 11, 10. 25 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 6. 26 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 5. 27 Marianne Hirsch, “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory,” in Visual Culture and the Holocaust, edited by Barbie Zelizer (London: Athlone, 2001), 222. 28 Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 13.

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for this post-memorial assemblage of Wodin’s family history is photographs. Hirsch identifies photographic images as a resource that enables post-memorial subjects to follow their pursuits of imaginative investment and creation and to compensate for “insufficient material and narrative resources”29 in the realm of public memorial culture.

The Significance of Photographs Although various crimes in the history of the European continent have been recognized by the academic community and ceremoniously integrated into an institutionalized framework of cultural remembrance, a growing disconnect has emerged between “ritualized” forms of commemoration and private modes of remembering.30 Reflecting on the risk of de-personalizing history within official paradigms, Stefanie Harris convincingly argues that under these circumstances the past becomes an abstract entity, gradually divested of “its affective power and urgency.”31 By alluding to individual fates in literary narratives, however, photographic media attribute to literary texts the capacity to “personalize historical events”32 and serve as a defense against the anonymization of daunting historical statistics and hence, an ever-increasing ritualization of an institutionalized remembrance culture.33 Moreover, the visual device of photography functions as a palimpsest that interweaves and negotiates several strands of remembrance and functions as a mnemonic platform to think through the problems associated with intergenerational dynamics of memory at an individual as well as a collective level.

29 J. J. Long, W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 60. 30 Eigler, “Writing in the New Germany,” 19. 31 Stefanie Harris, “Imag(in)ing the Past: The Family Album in Marcel Beyer’s Spione,” Gegenwartsliteratur: A German Studies Yearbook 4 (2005): 164. 32 Susanne Lenné Jones, The Multiplicities of Memories in Contemporary German Literature: How Photographs Are Used to Reconstruct Narratives of History (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2013), 37. 33 Some German-language works that incorporate photographic images are: Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe (Pawel’s Letters, 1999), Stephan Wackwitz’s Ein Unsichtbares Land (An Invisible Land, 2003), Jana Hensel’s Zonenkinder (Zone Children, 2002), Peter Hanisch’s Die kleine Figur meines Vaters (The Small Figure of My Father, 1975), and W.G Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001). Furthermore, Vielleicht Esther (Maybe Esther, 2014) by Katja Petrowskaja is another example from the “Eastern Turn,” which deploys photographic images in a post-memorial narrative.

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Sie kam aus Mariupol as a Post-Memorial Project In Sie kam aus Mariupol, the narrator undertakes a post-memorial journey into her mother’s past and simultaneously provides a self-reflexive commentary on her painstaking research. Amidst the chaos of the Second World War, her mother was forcibly deported to Nazi Germany from occupied Eastern Europe to work as a slave laborer in the German war industries. Grievously traumatized by her experiences of exploitation, stigmatization, and dehumanization as an Ostarbeiterin in the Nazi labormachinery of the Third Reich and as a helpless victim of Stalin’s terror, she was unable to live a normal life even in the postwar period and committed suicide at the young age of 36, drowning herself in the Regnitz river and leaving the 10-year-old narrator and her 4-year-old sister behind. In 2013, when the 67-year-old narrator embarks on a post-memorial quest, she is only in possession of a few indeterminate facts and fleeting images of her mother. Her family heritage consists of a few documents—her parents’ marriage certificate, her father’s work permit, and three black-andwhite photographs (31). Given the historical distance as a constitutive element of her project, that is, a historical gap of more than ninety years between her mother’s birth in Ukraine (1920) and the beginning of her research (2013), the narrator reflects on the credibility of her own memories and her hope for the recovery of family’s history on the mother’s side. In this context, she admits her honest skepticism regarding her capacity to recreate her mother’s past: Diesem dürftigen Archiv konnte ich nur noch ein paar unscharfe, fragwürdige Erinnerungen hinzufügen, die Erinnerungen eines Kindes, die vielleicht gar keine Erinnerungen mehr waren, sondern bloßer Schaum, den die jahrzehntelangen Gärungsprozesse der Zeit in meinem Gedächtnis zurückgelassen hatten. (32) [I could only add some unclear, questionable memories to this very limited archive, memories of a child which maybe were not even memories, but only the foam that had been left behind in my brain after decades of distillation.]

With her repository of some apparently illusive reminiscences, mnemonic fragments, and historical knowledge (“Vorstellungen und Hypothesen” [imaginations and hypotheses, 110]), “zufällige Ablagerung in [d]em Gehirn” (random sediments in the brain, 15), “ein paar vage Irrlichter in [d]em Kopf” (a couple of vague flickerings in the head, 23), “ein paar unscharfe, fragwürdige Erinnerungen” (a couple of blurry, unreliable memories, 32), “Geschichtsschreibung”

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(historiography, 23), the narrator mobilizes her belated urge to recuperate her family’s history and shares the delights and disappointments (“das Glück über das Gefundene oder der Schmerz über das Versäumte” [The happiness one feels when finding something or the sorrow one feels over things not done, 141]) of her research with the reader. Her reflections on the interplay between memory and imagination, fact and fiction, and vagueness and clarity, are evidently characteristic of a postmemorial venture and provide the reader with a critical insight into the constructed nature of her project. Her painstaking research eventually yields life-stories of many of her photographed relatives and family members, who stood in a close relationship with her mother, Jewgenia Jakowlewna Iwaschtschenko. The narrator’s interest in other members of Jewgenia’s extended family seems to suggest her desire to establish a post-memorial proximity with her absent mother. Consequently, Jewgenia remains the primary subject matter without her continuous presence in the narrative. That’s why, the following sections comment on two selected images of Jewgenia from the author’s private archive and assess their relevance for her post-memorial project, that is, the imaginative projection, creation, and reconstruction of an unknown past.

Reading Memory through Photographs A close-up portrait of young Jewgenia, a beautiful face kerchiefed in a traditional Ukrainian folk-style scarf (245) is intercalated in the elaborate narrative of Zwangsarbeit in the third section, in which various evidential documents of historical significance are supplemented by the author’s self-reflexive commentary and imaginative account of her mother’s dehumanizing existence in the slave labor industry of the Third Reich. Instead of just formulating historical linkages of her project in her own words in this part, the narrator also allows historical voices from the past anchored in the multiple external sources articulate their truth. Whilst Heinrich Himmler lays bare his annihilationist plans for the economic exploitation of “Slavic” subhumans in the Posen speech (265) and Josef Goebbels marshals racial arguments about Slavs’ supposed inferiority (271), Fritz Sauckel, the plenipotentiary and chief architect of the systematic enslavement of millions of Eastern Europeans, issues instructions for camp functionaries on the “proper” punishment of the Slavic “Untermensch” (270). In addition, eyewitness accounts of the deportations of Ostarbeiterinnen from occupied Eastern European countries and their dismal life-circumstances in work and transit camps seem to ventriloquize the inanimate picture of Jewgenia (251–53, 278–80).

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These “disembodied relics and abandoned materials”34 from the annals of “storage memory”35 function as political statements and their reassembly, reclamation, and reinvention serve as an intervention in memory discourse. Investing these objects with a contextual meaning is not only an endeavor to testify to the historical veracity of Jewgenia’s tragic fate as an Ostarbeiterin, as one among millions of victims, but also underscores the embeddedness of this post-memorial discourse in the broader scheme of cultural memories and histories. In addition, while communicating with these documents from the historical archives, this image not only gains its voice in a wider historical context, but also attaches a concrete face to the undifferentiated mass of slave laborers in Nazi Germany and takes on a “symbolic” function for millions of anonymous victims of systematic enslavement. The narrator’s post-memorial project can thereby be accurately described with the same words used by J. J. Long in his characterization of W. G. Sebald’s writing as “a hybrid construction consisting of and mediated through” multiple voices emanating from the interactive juxtaposition between cultural records and mnemotechnical sources located in the private reservoir of family memory.36 Furthermore, this photograph (for that matter, Jewgenia’s other photographs including the cover image in the book) is juxtaposed with a narrative that highlights the multilayered complexity of the fate of a victim who has succumbed to the “Reißwolf zweier Diktaturen” (the shredder of two dictatorships, 10), that is, Stalinism and Nazism. This historical complexity becomes clearly pronounced in the narrator’s use of specific vocabulary, through which she brings the terrors of Stalinism and Nazism in a dialogue by their supposed comparison, for instance, the use

34 Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 125. 35 In her book Cultural Memory and Western Civilization, Aleida Assmann distinguishes between functional memory and storage memory. Functional memory, on the one hand, could be understood as a set of memories that have been consciously incorporated in the narrative framework of a collective through a retrospective construction of meaning. Mnemonic narratives within functional memory have specific objectives for a group, society, nation, or community such as identity formation, circulation of cultural knowledge, the legitimization of power, etc. Storage memory, on the other hand, is a category of unintegrated memories that encompasses the background and unrecognized dimension of functional memory. According to Assmann, Storage memory is a ‘fundamental resource for all cultural renewal and change’ and may be considered as an important repository for future functional memories. See: Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization, 119–32 (especially 125, 130). 36 Long, W. G. Sebald, 122.

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of phrase “Vernichtung durch Arbeit”37 (extermination through labor, 23) to describe the maltreatment of the forced laborers in Nazi Germany, the description of wartime Germany permeated with numerous work camps as “ein einziger Gulag” (one massive gulag, 38), or the description of Jewgenia’s arrival in Germany as a slave laborer as her entry “hinein in den Gulag, dem sie sich für immer entkommen glaubte” (into the gulag which she had thought to have escaped from forever, 262). Through this strategic use of specific vocabulary related to the Holocaust and Gulag to describe her mother’s victimhood to the Nazi forced labor regime, the narrator subtly touches upon the highly contentious debates surrounding the comparison between the atrocities of Nazism and Stalinism.38 By so doing, she brings supposedly incommensurable memories of National Socialism and Stalinism in a productive, multidirectional dialogue,39 thereby emphasizing the heterogeneity of broader memory discourses involved in her post-memorial project and hence, the multilayered strands of personal and historical memories attached to this photograph. In this photograph, Jewgenia, “blutjung, schön, unschuldig” (extremely young, beautiful, innocent) and possessing an “Aura der vorrevolutionären Elite” (aura of the pre-revolutionary elites, 246), with her downcast eyes and tilted gaze, stares away from the viewer’s gaze. Owing to the historical tumult of her time, as the narrator describes in the text, Jewgenia remained a “Wurzellose von Anfang an” (rootless from the start, 197) and “ein Mensch ohne Vergangenheit und Zukunft” (a person without a past or a future, 260). Having been informed about her trauma leading up to suicide in postwar Germany and her premature encounter with the havoc caused by the unprecedented violence of historical events such as the dispossession of her aristocratic family in the wake of revolution and civil war, hunger catastrophe in the Soviet Union (Holodomor), the Stalinist purges, and her deportation to Nazi Germany earlier in the book (10), we as readers are bound to project our imaginings gleaned from the aesthetic reproduction of the narrator’s childhood memories and her critical investigation of historical background onto this photograph. This implies that the preceding narration and the narrator’s reading of the photograph have laid out an interpretative frame or perhaps shaped a particular disposition in the reader. By the time we come across the image, we do not assess its visual content at face value rather invest our understanding of Jewgenia’s past into it, thereby searching for 37 “Vernichtung” being a widely-established term in reference to the extermination of European Jewry. 38 Aleida Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur: Eine Intervention (Munich: Beck, 2013), 114; Assmann, “Europe’s Divided Memory.” 39 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

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visual traces of certain character traits or trauma rooted in her past experiences on Jewgenia’s face. Thus, even though the visual content of this photograph does not divulge any clues to Jewgenia’s trauma, against the narrative underpinning we read her splendid face as an enigmatic surface of “Schönheit und Unglück” (29; beauty and misfortune), which camouflages the turbulence of historical catastrophes along with the sheer defenselessness of an ordinary individual in the face of monumental loss. Instead of perceiving Jewgenia just as another anonymous victim, we follow the author’s post-memorial act of witnessing and invest this image with concrete insinuations of individual suffering and pain. For instance, the narrator recalls memories of an inconceivable pain and abysmal horror in her mother’s eyes: Augen in denen ein Entsetzen steht, das für mich zum Inbegriff von ihr werden wird. Ein Entsetzen von weit her, weit über mich hinaus, unbegreiflich, bodenlos. Das Entsetzen, das sie meint, wenn sie sagt: Wenn du gesehen hättest, was ich gesehen habe . . . Immer wieder, der Kehrreim meiner Kindheit: “Wenn du gesehen hättest, was ich gesehen habe . . ..” (28) [eyes reflecting a horror which becomes to me the quintessence of how I understand her. A horror from far away, transcending me, not intelligible, abysmal. The horror she refers to when she says: if you had seen what I have seen . . . again and again, the refrain of my childhood: “if you had seen what I have seen . . ..”]

In another passage, she describes a peculiar greed in her mother’s eyes that in all likelihood goes back to her manifold experience of hunger in Holodomor in the Soviet Union, wartime starvation in German-occupied Ukraine, and then in work camps in the Third Reich: “Ich erinnere mich an die ängstliche Gier in ihren Augen, wenn sie aß—immer so, als könnte man ihr das Essen im nächsten Augenblick wieder wegnehmen, als täte sie etwas Verbotenes” (I remember the greed in her eyes, almost as if she was scared, when she was eating—always as if her food could be taken away from her any minute, as if she was doing something forbidden, 200). Having encountered these childhood reminiscences of the narrator, we do not read this photograph merely as an empty signifier, rather we imagine that unknown terror and permanent hunger in Jewgenia’s eyes, thereby perusing the photographic image within the realm of its narrative contextualization or following the collaborative enterprise of the visual and textual information. Besides, the narrator’s reading of an “Anflug eines Lächelns” (hint of a smile, 29) on her mother’s face affirms her own yearning for an exchange of intimacy and “the fantasy of recognition and embrace,” rather than an

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actual trace of a smile in her mother’s facial expressions.40 This desire for a smile on her mother’s face is emblematic of a post-memorial act which implies a desolate hope for the validation of familial relationality between the mother and the daughter.41 Thus, functioning as a projection-surface for the needs, desires, and longings of a post-memorial subject, this image echoes the pain of maternal abandonment and loss, which is revealed elsewhere in the book in a remembered childhood conversation between the narrator and her mother: Sie schaut mich mit ihren verschatteten Augen an. “Vielleicht wäre es besser, wenn du nicht auf die Welt gekommen wärst”, sagt sie. ‘Wenn du gesehen hättest, was ich gesehen habe . . .” Und wieder blicken ihre Augen irgendwohin ins für mich Unsichtbare, wo es mich nicht gibt. (319) [She looks at me with her hooded eyes. “Maybe it would have been better if you had not been born,” she says. “If you had seen what I have seen . . .” and again her gaze goes into the invisible, invisible to me, a space where I do not exist.]

While in the textual description of this portrait, the narrator reads her mother’s eyes as looking “ganz nach innen, in irgendeine ferne, unergründliche Landschaft” (inwards, towards a far away, unfathomable landscape, 29), the collaborative reading of text and image makes it evident that for the narrator, the unfathomable and distant gaze of this severely traumatized woman is associated with her mother’s permanent mourning on the abrupt and hopeless separation from her family and home. This separation, as the narrator’s memories indicate, gradually extinguished the very essence of her mother, resulting in a symbolic death. Hence, contrary to the traditional understanding of a photograph as a mode of remembrance for someone else, the narrator suggests, her mother preserved this portrait as “das Andenken an sich selbst” (the momento of herself, 255) to commemorate her old self. In this regard, carrying a photograph as “das Andenken an sich selbst” or as a memento of her old self reflects the paradoxical effort of remembrance as well as coercive disassociation from her previous life. However, this does not prove to be an effective strategy in Jewgenia’s case, since she found it difficult to ward off the intrusive memories and has been haunted by the specters of the past throughout her life. In the novel, the narrator exercises her imagination and attempts to read her mother’s thoughts while she works at an assembly line in the aircraft manufacturing industry of Flick-corporation: 40 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 46. 41 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 37.

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Immer wieder, beinah zwanghaft, ziehen vor ihrem inneren Auge die Gesichter derer vorbei, die sie gekannt hat, die Gesichter der Eltern, der Geschwister, der Freunde und Bekannten. Mit jedem von ihnen führt sie Zwiegespräche, in denen sie nach sich selbst sucht, nach dem Menschen, der sie früher einmal gewesen ist. (275) [Again and again, as if under duress, the faces of the people she knew parade in front of her inner gaze, the faces of the parents, the siblings, the friends and acquaintances. She has conversations with each of them, in which she is looking for herself, for the person she used to be.]

Burdened by emotional exhaustion, a constant fear of death, and simply silenced by her subjugation to the historical catastrophes, Jewgenia was fated to endure this permanent state of psychological turmoil and could not even articulate her trauma in the most natural way, thereby disrupting the mourning process altogether. For instance, the narrator reconstructs the conditions of her deportation from Odessa to Germany on a German military ship, on which “Zwangsarbeiter, die mittransportiert werden, dienen als menschlicher Schutzschild gegen die sowjetische Armee, die die feindlichen Schiffe aus der Luft und zu Wasser angreift” (Forced laborers who are transported are used as a human shield against the soviet army, attacking the enemy vessels from the air and from the water, 258). In the face of these precarious circumstances of war, her mother could not even afford to shed tears on the loss of home, independence, and security: “Zum Weinen hat sie keine Zeit. Sie weiß, dass sie in den nächsten Stunden sterben kann, den die Flottenverbände der zurückgedrängten, abziehenden Deutschen werden gnadenlos bombardiert” (She has no time to cry. She knows she may die in the coming hours, because the naval formations of the repelled, retreating Germans are attacked mercilessly, 258). The psychological response of her mother to the overwhelming force of the tragic past that persisted even in postwar Germany is also symptomatic of what trauma theory calls “soul murder.”42 “Soul murder” in Sie kam aus Mariupol can be interpreted through the fact that the menace of historical times hollowed out Jewgenia’s spirit while keeping her body alive.43 Subjected to abysmal melancholy, she has internalized what Gabriele Schwab, meditating on the insidious impact of violent events on an individual, defines as “a state of deprivation that attacks more than self-understanding, self-consciousness, and self-representation.”44 This 42 Gabriele Schwab, Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 167. 43 Schwab, Haunting Legacies, 18. 44 Schwab, Haunting Legacies, 167.

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portrait is especially marked by the mnemonic traces of her soul murder or broken spirit for the narrator because before drowning herself in the Regnitz River, her mother has not only marked a suicide date on the calendar, but she had also torn her portrait in two pieces. Thus, for the narrator this photograph of her young mother in a floral scarf may function as a testimonial object, which embodies an elusive hope for a smile or an imaginary family reunion as well as the spectral revenant of a “verängstigte, nervenschwache” (anxious, nervous, 269) mother, who was stranded in “the abyss of traumatic abjection”:45 Irgendwann gehe ich ins Schlafzimmer, . . . und sofort sehe ich was sich verändert hat. Seit jeher hing hier an der Wand der vergrößerte Abzug des Porträtfotos meiner Mutter, das sie mit dem ukrainischen Kopftuch zeigt und immer als besonderer Beleg ihrer Schönheit galt. Jetzt ist das Foto abgenommen, es liegt auf dem Bett, in der Mitte durchgerissen. (355) [At some point I go into the bedroom. . . . and I see the changes immediately. There has always been an enlarged portrait photograph of my mother on the wall, showing her in a traditional Ukrainian headscarf which was always seen as proof for her beauty. Now, the photograph has been taken down, it lies on the bed, ripped in half.]

An image of Jewgenia’s grave is produced at the beginning of the last section (295). It shows the ten-year-old Wodin with her younger sister and father standing behind the gravestone with a Russian inscription on the rugged terrain of a cemetery. The background on the upper half of the photograph draws our attention to faint traces of cloud and thickets of wild shrubs that seem to recede into a panoramic vista. The surface of the cemetery strewn with cobblestones, thistles, wild flowers, and blotches of grass stalks can be seen in the lower half of the photograph. The shadows of gravestones and the photographed persons merged with the visual details of the burial ground and the surrounding vegetation lends a haunting character to the image and makes the first traumatic encounter with loss in the narrator’s life legible. While both sisters return the gaze of camera through their strikingly different facial expressions, staring pensively into blank space, the father flees the photographic gaze altogether. Whereas possibly oblivious of the gravity of the situation, the child on our right (Wodin’s sister) smiles at the viewer, Wodin appears to be grappling with the sudden shock of her mother’s departure. Although we can never know for sure what Wodin’s childhood self might be thinking at the moment, decoded within the interpretative gesture of narrated childhood 45 Schwab, Haunting Legacies, 169.

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memories, the reader is tempted to surmise that her gaze seeks answers to the questions such as: why the mother had not taken them along with her? Were they not worthy of her love? Or did she not love her children enough to choose them as her companions for long journey? (358). Thus, it is possible that at the time of its occurrence, this premature confrontation with the irremediable loss remained beyond understanding for the narrator in childhood. Only with hindsight, by exploiting the privilege of a temporal distance and assuming the position of a post-memorial subject, can she now endeavor to bestow a meaning on this unfathomable catastrophe through belated excavations and retrospective narrativization. However, the belated response to her mother’s multilayered trauma and the act of witnessing only yields a “blurred” image; a hybrid composite of fantasy and second-hand knowledge gleaned through historical resources, which is symptomatic of post-memorial condition: Was ich von ihren Erzählungen über ihr Leben in der Ukraine noch im Gedächtnis hatte, waren nicht mehr als ein paar vage Irrlichter in meinem Kopf. Ich konnte nur versuchen, eine fiktionale Biografie zu schreiben, die sich auf die Geschichtsschreibung stützte, auf die bekannten Fakten der Orte und der Zeit, in der meine Mutter gelebt hatte. (23) [What I remember from her stories about her life in Ukraine was not much more than flickering lights in my head. I only could try to write a fictional biography, relying on historiography, on known facts about the time and place my mother inhabited.]

Though both sisters might be aware of the mere facticity of their mother’s death and might comprehend the mnemonic role of a grave, the narrator’s recollections confirm that she and her sister had no inkling of their mother’s trauma, that is, the grave she was carrying within herself. Besides, the inclusion of this image within the narrative record of family history is indicative of the obliteration of mnemonic threads in both the private memory of the family and cultural memory at official level. The photograph of Jewgenia’s grave stands for the unavailability of an embodied connection to the past since this visual trace of Jewgenia’s grave remains the only spectral evidence its existence, the physical grave has long been irrevocably liquidated:46 46 Monica Black’s brilliant meditation on burial practices in Berlin from Weimar era to divided Germany helps us to understand the power dynamics associated with the destruction of graves which can be also interpreted in conjunction with the cultural, political, and social spectrum of certain historical times. See: Monica Black, Death in Berlin: From Weimar to Divided Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 161.

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Noch lange stand der Grabstein mit der russischen Inschrift in einer von Baggern und Planierraupen durchgepflügten Wüste. Inzwischen existiert das Grab nicht mehr. Es existiert nichts mehr von ihr außer ein paar alten Schwarzweißfotos, einer seitenverkehrten Kopie ihrer Heiratsurkunde und einer Ikone, die sie einst aus der Ukraine mitgebracht hat. (358) [For a long time, the head stone with the Russian inscription stood in a desert that was ploughed through by baggers and bulldozers. Now, the grave no longer exists. There is nothing left of her but a few old black and white photographs, a reversed copy of her marriage certificate, and an icon she brought with her from Ukraine.]

Although the concrete description of the disappearance of Jewgenia’s grave is absent, the frantic bustle generated by bulldozers and excavators in its surroundings and its subsequent physical destruction symbolically indicate the irreversible aberration within family memory induced by the monumental development of an “aggressively coercive Erinnerungskultur” that has been dramatically intensified a few decades after the end of the Second World War and kept memory actors preoccupied with some specific narratives.47 Examining the fate of Jewish ruins in postwar Germany and Poland, Michael Meng reflects on how the reconstruction (“Wiederaufbau”) projects in many cities resulted in the demolition and neglect of several Jewish sites. Important for our argument is his insight on the recreation of topographical memory in several cities, that is, how reshaping the urban landscape in the postwar era was basically marked by the efforts of local officials to cover over the inglorious past or to sweep away any reminders of war crimes.48 While photographic evidence of the mother’s missing grave presents an incontrovertible proof “that what remains is also an indicator of what is missing,” it also makes clear that the external mnemotechnical structures of cultural memory play a crucial role in regulating the functional constitution of individual and family memory.49 Although the grave should signify a place of mourning, where regular visits and commemoration could give rest to the soul of dead, this photographed grave, pregnant with the connotations of suppressed memory, fulfils none of these functions. It signifies a melancholic hollowness, nothingness, and absence. In addition, the presence of two more graves in 47 Dora Osborne, “Encountering the Archive in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 52, no. 3 (2016): 257. 48 Michael Meng, Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 111–13. 49 Osborne, “Encountering the Archive,” 255.

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the background suggests that not only Jewgenia’s memory longs to claim acknowledgement into the “politically shared discursive space which regulates what is important and sayable,” but there might also be millions of others (in the context of Wodin’s narrative, forced laborers) whose identities and stories remain unknown and voices unheard to this day, depriving memory culture of substantial narratives of historical importance.50

Conclusion Intervening in the contentious memory politics of Germany and by extension in Europe, Wodin’s Sie kam aus Mariupol, with its post-memorial investigation into her mother’s life, draws the reader’s attention to the counter-hegemonic memory of slave labor in Nazi Germany and opens up new avenues to develop comprehensive perspectives on Europe’s multilayered mnemonic space within German literature, thereby highlighting its transnational foundation. By giving literary contours to intergenerational ravages of family trauma, the author, herself “ein Kind der Zwangsarbeiter” (a child of forced laborers, 24) seeks to plant hope of historical justice for the victims of “das Massenphänomen der Zwangsarbeit” (the ubiquity of forced labor, 24) in Nazi Germany. A paradigmatic example of post-memorial enquiry, this text allows the reader to comprehend the challenges associated with the belated recuperation of traumatic family history. In order to examine the mnemonic dynamics associated with the theoretical framework of post-memory, this essay has contemplated the mnemonic potential of two selected photographic images in the narrative economy of the text. Firstly, serving as a projection surface for the narrator’s longing for a maternal gaze and a mnemonic artifact interacting with other documents of historical evidence in the text, a close-up portrait of the author’s mother is instrumental in establishing post-memory as a multilayered space of remembrance. In the second picture, of Jewgenia’s grave, the viewer/reader is provided with visual cues to interpret the narrator’s childhood trauma within narrative contextualization. The narrative framework around this image makes the inextricable connections between various forms of memory legible. Deciphered within the literary reconstruction of the narrator’s memories, the visual details of this photograph and their ekphrastic description acquire a significant value for examining various traumatic strands at an individual as well as a collective level.

50 Ann Rigney, “Cultural Memory Studies: Mediation, Narrative, and the Aesthetic,” in Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, edited by Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen (London: Routledge, 2016), 70.

Navid Kermani’s Entlang den Gräben (2018) and Its Readers: Remapping Europe’s East Karolina Watroba, All Souls College, University of Oxford

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n 2016, German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani set off on a journey east: a journey across space, but also across cultural representations of that space. The resulting travelogue, Entlang den Gräben: Eine Reise durch das östliche Europa bis nach Isfahan (2018, Along the Trenches: A Journey through Eastern Europe to Isfahan, 2020), can be read as an attempt to remap the east of Europe with an eye to changing how it is commonly perceived both in Germany and in Western Europe more generally. Like many of Kermani’s earlier works, Entlang den Gräben sold very well in Germany, was widely reviewed in the media, and was promoted on an extensive book tour. But how successful has the book been at influencing the perceptions of its readers? In this essay, I place Entlang den Gräben in the context of the broader role that the east of Europe has played in the German cultural imaginary. I also analyze Kermani’s unusual and original intervention into this discourse achieved through his self-reflexive positioning as a historical subject, as well as his selective use of tropes familiar from older German visions of the east of Europe and his strategic deployment of a variety of tropes and cultural intertexts. Last but not least, I consider his book’s reception in Germany and beyond. Since the focus is on representations of space, I pay special attention to the book’s paratextual material, which includes maps and photographs. These paratexts have interesting counterparts in Kermani’s thirteen-part travel reportage published in Der Spiegel in 2016 and 2017, which gave rise to Entlang den Gräben, and the book’s English translation—the only one that has appeared to date.1 While the extent of Kermani’s authorial control over these paratexts is unclear, they play a crucial role as the first indication of the nature of his project for the book’s readers.

1 Navid Kermani, Along the Trenches: A Journey through Eastern Europe to Isfahan, translated by Tony Crawford (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020).

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The vast majority of scholarship on Kermani to date has focused on the topic of Islam and migration in Germany, and with good reason.2 His upbringing as a son of Iranian immigrants and his profound engagement with various schools of Islamic theology are clearly central elements in his works. In Joseph Twist’s words, Kermani’s writing “evoke[s] a skeptical and mystical Islam in order to convey a cosmopolitan sense of openness toward others and undermine the stable and coherent sense of self that [can be viewed] as contributing to identity conflict.”3 This “cosmopolitan sense of openness toward others,” grounded in Islamic theology, permeates Kermani’s writing even when he is not explicitly discussing Islam or migration. However, the extraordinary emphasis placed on these themes in Kermani’s critical and popular reception means that much remains to be written on his engagement with other topics. While his personal and intellectual interest in Islam and migration is not absent from Entlang den Gräben, its main focus is clearly different, and the book offers an opportunity to engage in a more wide-ranging discussion of Kermani’s work. How to begin to understand Kermani’s project in Entlang den Gräben? A useful starting point is to consider other German-language books about the east of Europe that Kermani lines up as reference points in his narrative. In describing his travels in the east of Europe, he presents himself as a prodigious reader of history books, cultural criticism, as well as various novels. If his own readers were to follow up on his reading material, they would discover that one of the novels he introduces in Entlang den Gräben begins with a geography lesson in which the question of boundaries, of the geographical reach of the east of Europe, is left open. A teacher tells his students: “Im Norden, Süden und Westen ist Europa von Meeren umgeben. Das Nördliche Polarmeer, das Mittelmeer und der Atlantische Ozean bilden die natürlichen Grenzen dieses Kontinents. . . . 2 One notable exception is Claudia Breger’s chapter “Einbruch der Wirklichkeit (Incursion of Reality): Navid Kermani’s Engaged Realism,” in Protest und Verweigerung / Protest and Refusal: Neue Tendenzen in der deutschen Literatur seit 1989 / New Trends in German Literature since 1989, edited by Hans Adler and Sonja E. Klocke (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2019), 23–43, which discusses Kermani as a contemporary participant in a long debate about committed literature alongside Sartre, Adorno, and more recently Latour, with mentions of Brecht, Camus, and Lukács as well. 3 Joseph Twist, Mystical Islam and Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary German Literature: Openness to Alterity (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018), 139. For other valuable discussions of Islam and migration in Kermani’s writing, see articles collected in Michael Hofmann, Klaus von Stosch, and Swen Schulte Eickholt, eds., Navid Kermani (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2019), Torsten Hoffmann, ed., Navid Kermani, text + kritik 217 (2018), and Helga Druxes, Karolin Machtans, and Alexandar Mihailovic, eds., Navid Kermani (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016).

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Die Ostgrenze Europas zieht sich durch das Russische Kaiserreich den Ural entlang, durchschneidet das Kaspische Meer und läuft dann durch Transkaukasien. Hier hat die Wissenschaft ihr letztes Wort noch nicht gesprochen” (From the north, south, and west, Europe is surrounded by seas. The Arctic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean form the natural borders of this continent. . . . Europe’s eastern border goes through the Russian Empire along the Ural Mountains, traverses the Caspian Sea, and then continues across Transcaucasia. No scientific consensus has been reached here yet).4 Those are the opening sentences of Ali und Nino, a novel about an intercultural love story between the titular characters first published in German in Vienna in 1937, under the pseudonym Kurban Said. The identity of the author of the novel is still disputed, but he is widely assumed to be Lev Nussimbaum (1905–42). Raised in Baku, Nussimbaum later emigrated to Berlin, where he converted from Judaism to Islam and was active as a successful journalist and writer under yet another pseudonym— Essad Bey.5 Ali und Nino, his most famous book, is set in the Caucasus in the late 1910s, and chronicles a stormy period in the history of the region, characterized by the coexistence of ancient Islamic and Christian traditions, the advent of European modernity in the wake of the discovery of vast oil reserves in Baku, and the specter of the Bolshevik revolution. Both Nussimbaum’s complex authorial persona and the plot of his novel—as its first sentences already signal—highlight the complexity of cultural belonging. Kermani’s choice to discuss Ali und Nino in Entlang den Gräben reinforces two interrelated questions that are at the heart of his own book. First, where does the eastern border of Europe lie? And second, how can we disrupt traditional narratives about the location of German culture? As he travels—and reads his way—across Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, Kermani finds it “berührend zu sehen, . . . daß in allen drei Ländern des Transkaukasus so etwas wie ein moderner Nationalroman von einem Schriftsteller deutscher Sprache und jüdischer Herkunft verfaßt worden ist” (it is moving . . . to see that, in each of the three Transcaucasian countries, a novel of the modern nation, so to speak, was written by a writer whose language was German and whose origins were Jewish).6 These three novels are Ali und Nino in Azerbaijan, Franz Werfel’s 4 Kurban Said, Ali und Nino (Berlin: Ullstein, 2019), 5. 5 See Tom Reiss, The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught between East and West (London: Vintage, 2005) and Carl Niekerk and Cori Crane, eds., Approaches to Kurban Said’s “Ali and Nino”: Love, Identity, and Intercultural Conflict (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2017). 6 Navid Kermani, Entlang den Gräben: Eine Reise durch das östliche Europa bis nach Isfahan (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2018), 294. English translation: Kermani, Along the Trenches, 234. Subsequent page references for this work will be given in

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Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (1933, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, 2012) in Armenia, and Givi Margvelashvili’s Kapitän Wakusch (Captain Vakush, 1991) in Georgia. Despite having been written in German by an Austrian-Bohemian author, Werfel’s thousand-page long novel—his best-known work—is one of the most famous literary portrayals of the Armenian Genocide during World War I and the local resistance against it. Margvelashvili was born in 1927 in Berlin to Georgian parents and his autobiographical novel chronicles his life between Germany and Georgia, marked by the horrors of twentieth-century history. Kermani’s choice to highlight these three novels in his book is meant to capture the connections between German-speaking Europe and the Caucasus, two realms that might seem entirely separate at first glance. However, it is not only in the Caucasus that Kermani encounters such complex webs of cultural, linguistic, and religious heritage. He sees them—and trains his readers to see them—everywhere he goes on his journey. Kermani’s project of remapping the east of Europe in this way is signaled already on the dust jacket of the German hard-bound edition of Kermani’s book, which shows a literal map. It is a somewhat blurry, slightly enlarged and tilted version of the political map that is printed on both the front and back flyleaf, which also shows Kermani’s route traced out in red. The map extends from Cologne, where Kermani lives, in the top-left corner, to Isfahan, where his parents come from, in the bottom-right corner; parts of Germany to the west of Cologne and parts of Iran to the east of Isfahan are trimmed off. To the eyes of German readers, and, by extension, Western European readers, this map is highly unusual because it suggests an alternative way of centering European geography. This is contrasted with the perceptual habits that Kermani describes towards the beginning of Entlang den Gräben: “tief im Westen Deutschlands geboren und aufgewachsen, schauten wir immer nach Frankreich, Italien, zu den Vereinigten Staaten; selbst den Orient kannten wir besser als den Osten des eigenen Landes” (EG, 21; Born and raised deep in the west of Germany, we always looked towards France, Italy, the United States; we knew even the Middle East better than the east of our own country, AT, 9). His use of the first-person plural here stakes a claim to a collective rather than individual experience. The blurriness of the map on the cover corresponds to Kermani’s unfamiliarity with the region before he sets off on his journey; in one interview, he calls it “a blind spot for me.”7 In the center of the map is the Black Sea. Also prominent and fully visible are the countries that parentheses in the body of the text, with EG referring to the German original and AT referring to the translation. 7 Christoph Driessen, “Navid Kermani hat sich ‘noch nie so deutsch gefühlt wie in Auschwitz,’” Südkurier, February 23, 2018, https://www.suedkurier.de/

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Kermani visits on his journey: Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and other territories in the Caucasus. The flyleaf additionally features a close-up map of the whole Caucasus, which, as it happens, covers up most of Italy and all of Greece on the main map. The map on the cover and flyleaf of the book is of a region further east than the maps that Kermani and his implied readers grew up seeing. In this way, the book challenges the potential reader’s habitual perception of European geography before they even open it up. Many reviews of Entlang den Gräben confirm the effectiveness of this strategy. One reviewer praises “die Verschiebung des Blicks vom europäischen Zentrum in die sog. Peripherie” (the shifting of the gaze away from the European center to the so-called periphery) achieved by Kermani’s book, which is necessary, since “man sich im Westen eher weniger für die Ränder Europas interessiert” (in the West, people tend to be less interested in Europe’s edges). The careful language used in this review (“the so-called periphery”) performs the reorientation of perspective advocated by Kermani: “eben diese Verschiebung der Perspektiven ist programmatisch für sein Buch” (especially this shift in perspectives is programmatic for his book).8 Other readers of the book use strikingly similar vocabulary to describe this effect. For example, one blogger writes: “durch Entlang den Gräben hat sich mein historisches Verständnis verschoben” (Along the Trenches has helped shift my understanding of history);9 and one interviewer touches on this topic in a conversation with Kermani when he comments: “der Osten hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang ist nach Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges aus dem Blick gerückt” (the East behind the Iron Curtain disappeared from view after World War II).10 Kermani’s travelogue shifts the gaze of its German readers to the east—starting on the very cover of the book. Reviewers’ preoccupation with the front cover indicates the potential for Western readers to regard this shift as a form of confrontation. Wolfgang Lienemann opens his review with the following observation: ueberregional/kultur/Navid-Kermani-hat-sich-noch-nie-so-deutsch-gefuehltwie-in-Auschwitz;art10399,9631310. 8 Irine Beridze, “Von Wald- und Wüstenmenschen—Navid Kermani: Entlang den Gräben. Eine Reise durch das östliche Europa bis nach Isfahan,” Read Ost: Der Blog für mittel- und osteuropäische Literatur und Kultur, June 30, 2018, https://read-ost.com/2018/06/30/navid-kermani-entlang-den-graeben/. 9 Janine Rumrich, “Entlang den Gräben von Navid Kermani oder Reise nach Osten,” Frau Hemingway: Buch- und Literaturblog, March 31, 2018, https://frauhemingway.de/entlang-den-graeben-von-navid-kermani-oder-reise-nach-osten/. 10 Ruth Bender, “Reise durch die Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Lübecker Nachrichten, January 28, 2018, https://www.ln-online.de/Nachrichten/ Kultur/Kultur-im-Rest-der-Welt/Navid-Kermani-ueber-sein-ReisetagebuchEntlang-den-Graeben-Osteuropa-Offenheit-und-Heimat.

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“die Innenseiten des Einbandes dieses Buches stellen Landkarten dar, die in diesem Zuschnitt sonst selten zu sehen sind und schon auf die Besonderheit des Buches verweisen: Fast ganz West- und Südeuropa sind abgeschnitten, so dass Deutschland ganz am Rand einer Landmasse zu liegen kommt, die weit nach Sibirien und vor allem bis zum Schwarzen Meer und zum Kaspischen Meer reicht” (On the inside of the cover of this book, you will find geographical maps which are rarely seen in the way they are presented here, and therefore underscore the peculiarity of this book: nearly all of Western and Southern Europe has been cut off, so that Germany comes to occupy the edge of a land mass that reaches all the way to Siberia and especially the Black and Caspian Seas).11 Other reviews confirm this view. One is illustrated with a reproduction of the map used in the book and states: “allein die geografischen Dimensionen dieses Teils von Europa haben mich, der ich mich in Geographie eigentlich als ziemlich bewandert betrachte, förmlich erschlagen” (the geographical dimensions of this part of Europe alone really bowled me over, and I consider myself reasonably well versed in geography).12 Denis Scheck, writing for the Tagesspiegel, similarly calls it “ein horizonterweiterndes Buch” (a book that expands horizons).13 This quite literally enlarged or expanded understanding of Europe is signaled not only through the graphic design, but also in the subtitle of the book: Eine Reise durch das östliche Europa bis nach Isfahan. First of all, the subtitle implies that Europe stretches almost all the way to Isfahan— which is true, at least according to the definition used by geographers. Second, the phrase “das östliche Europa” used here is much less common than the usual “Osteuropa” (Eastern Europe) and in this way further destabilizes the habitual ways of talking about and conceptualizing the region. The dust-jacket blurb uses another less common phrase, “der Osten Europas” (the east of Europe); nowhere on the cover does the phrase “Osteuropa” come up, although it is used a few times in the text of the book itself. The use of this less common terminology might suggest a desire to displace the stark, Cold War–era division of the continent into two blocks. In the graphic design of the cover and the terminology used in the title, then, readers’ likely preconceptions about the region are carefully evoked but never reinforced. 11 Wolfgang Lienemann, “Vom östlichen Europa bis zum Iran,” Fachbuchjournal, https://www.fachbuchjournal.de/vom-oestlichen-europa-bis-zum-iran/. 12 Mario Keipert, “Reisen (1): Navid Kermani—Entlang den Gräben,” textwärts, May 26, 2018, https://mariokeipert.de/textwaerts/navid-kermanientlang-den-graeben. 13 Denis Scheck, “Denis Scheck kommentiert die Bestsellerliste,” Tages­spiegel, March 26, 2018, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/joschka-fischer-ranga-yo geshwar-und-michael-wolff-denis-scheck-kommentiert-die-bestsellerliste/ 21111230.html.

Figure 1.  Cover of the German edition, C. H. Beck 2018.

Figure 2.  Cover design for the English translation of Kermani’s text, translated by Tony Crawford. Cover © Lyn Davies Design.

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Other paratextual elements, however, work against this nuanced approach. The first sentence of the back-cover blurb, also used in most online bookshops that sell the book, and as the description of Kermani’s book tour events, for example in Schauspiel Köln and Deutsches Theater in Berlin, reads: “ein immer noch fremd anmutendes, von Kriegen und Katastrophen zerklüftetes Gebiet beginnt östlich von Deutschland und erstreckt sich über Russland bis zum Orient” (an area which still seems foreign, riven by wars and other catastrophes, begins to the east of Germany and stretches across Russia all the way to the Orient). Due to the syntax of this sentence, stereotypical clichés about the east of Europe precede even the naming of the destination of Kermani’s journey, which is described further on in the blurb as “vergessene Regionen” (forgotten regions).14 Forgotten by whom? Seeming foreign and alien (“fremd”) to whom? Clearly not to people who live in or come from this part of the world; these formulations express the preconceptions that other elements of the paratextual apparatus seek to challenge. Similarly, the title of the book clearly links Isfahan and Europe, perhaps even suggesting that Isfahan belongs in it, whereas the back-cover blurb relegates it to an illdefined, vague, and stereotypical sphere of the “Orient.” The English edition of Kermani’s book, translated by Tony Crawford with a grant from the Goethe Institut and published by Polity Press in 2020, looks and feels very different from C. H. Beck’s German edition. The cover features a grey-toned stock image of the so-called “Death Gate” in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, enveloped in fog. By using an image that represents German atrocities during World War II, it adheres to a familiar pattern for publications about Germany on the Anglophone book market. As a result, it reinforces the main association with the east of Europe that many Western European readers already have: the horrors of German death camps. The description of Kermani’s visit to Auschwitz has been highlighted in numerous reviews in Germany and elsewhere as one of the focal points of his journey. However, it takes place on the third of fifty-four days of travel, and so can hardly stand in for the journey in its entirety. Moreover, the book emphasizes the unfamiliarity of most of Europe’s east for Kermani and his implied readers. Auschwitz is unusual in this respect and not representative of most of the places Kermani visits. Unlike the German edition, the English translation does not challenge established preconceptions about the region in its name either: “das östliche Europa” becomes the usual English term “Eastern Europe.” The back-cover blurb opens with a description of the region that further reinforces these preconceptions: “between Germany and Russia is a region strewn with monuments to the horrors of war, genocide, and disaster.” 14 As of April 15, 2021, C. H. Beck’s website still listed this description of the book, https://www.chbeck.de/kermani-entlang-graeben/product/29929924.

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This description is problematic because it undermines Kermani’s goal of shifting and expanding his readers’ perception of the east of Europe in two ways. First, it only accurately describes less than half of Kermani’s text, the second half of which is set in the Caucasus and Iran, so not at all between Germany and Russia. Second, it reinforces the perception of the region—it is here simply an unnamed “region,” syntactically secondary to “Germany and Russia”—as a historical buffer zone between two powerful empires. While Kermani very often engages with this past in the book, and indeed visits many historical monuments, he does not reduce the east of Europe to a passive setting for wars waged by others. At the same time, he suggests that many historical catastrophes, including the Holocaust, are in fact not appropriately memorialized in several countries he visits. In any case, his portrayal of the region is far more nuanced than the English blurb implies. While the graphic design of the German edition manages to convey at least some of Kermani’s challenge to stereotypical representations of Europe’s east that are reinforced in the framing of the English edition, the visual connotations of the earlier reportage in Der Spiegel are particularly complex. Unlike the book editions, the magazine reportage is illustrated with photographs taken by Dmitrij Leltschuk and Nazik Armenakyan, who accompanied Kermani on various stages of the journey, as well as small maps that illustrate Kermani’s route. Like Kermani’s text, the photos capture details of everyday life in the places he visits in ways that often challenge preconceptions about them. For example, the first part of the reportage includes Leltschuk’s photo from Auschwitz that could not be more different from the stock photograph on the cover of the English translation of Entlang den Gräben: it shows a big group of smiling teenagers being photographed under the “Arbeit macht frei” sign on a sunny day, framed so that the sign itself is barely visible among the foliage of surrounding trees.15 This photo accompanies Kermani’s conversation with a group of young Israeli tourists: he is interested in seeing Auschwitz through the eyes of the descendants of Holocaust survivors who come to see it. Kermani and his interlocutors participate in the reality of mass tourism that makes the memory culture in Auschwitz much more complex and ambiguous than conventionalized images of an empty, gloomy space imply. Another graphic element that accompanies Kermani’s reportage in Der Spiegel are small maps that schematically illustrate his route across the east of Europe. In the first part of the reportage, the map shows Germany and Poland; in the second, Lithuania is added; in the third, Belarus appears below Lithuania; in the fourth, Ukraine is added to the south 15 See Navid Kermani, “Eine Reise entlang am Riss,” Der Spiegel, October 1, 2016.

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of Belarus.16 The resulting effect is that the map of the region literally expands as Kermani makes his way through it. This interpretation resonates with Kermani’s own framing of his book in numerous press interviews: “Europa hat sich als viel größer erwiesen, als mir vorher bewusst war. Die eigentliche Mitte liegt nicht in Brüssel, Berlin oder Paris, sie verläuft durch die Bloodlands im Osten, der eigentlich Zentraleuropa ist” (Europe proved to be much bigger than I had thought. Its center does not really lie in Brussels, Berlin, or Paris; it lies in the bloodlands in the east, which is really the center of Europe).17 Kermani’s use of the English term “Bloodlands,” the title of historian Timothy Snyder’s critically acclaimed book of 2010,18 which serves as a frequent point of reference on his journey, indicates an important fact: a map that shows a path from Germany to Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine is perhaps less unfamiliar to the German cultural imaginary than implied in the reviews of Kermani’s book quoted above. It largely coincides with the Nazi propaganda maps of the German “Lebensraum” produced in large numbers before and during World War II, especially in the context of the “Generalplan Ost”: the territory where Hitler’s and Stalin’s cruel regimes met. In Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space, Kristin Kopp analyzes German “cartographic representation of lost colonial space in the interwar period”: these maps, which show the German “Volksboden” and “Kulturboden” extending far beyond the eastern border of the German state, retrospectively linked the Nazi ideology of “Lebensraum” to historical events such as medieval Christianization.19 Claims about Germany’s utter lack of familiarity with the east of Europe must be balanced by the recognition that for decades, or even centuries, this space functioned as Germany’s colonial fantasy land. The map of Kermani’s journey in Der Spiegel eerily evokes the patterns of visual representation described by Kopp, intimately connected to Germany’s expansionist politics motivated by myths of cultural and ethnic superiority. As Kermani travels across the east of Europe, he negotiates the politics of memory inherent in the cultural discourse on this space. In several interviews, Kermani comments: “die Schrecken des Zweiten Weltkrieges und des Holocaust, die sich vor allem im östlichen Europa abgespielt haben, [wurden] zwar als Wissen bewahrt, aber sozusagen aus 16 See Navid Kermani, “Als wäre der Krieg nur ein Spiel,” Der Spiegel, October 28, 2016. 17 Bender, “Reise durch die Geschichte.” 18 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London: Vintage, 2011). 19 Kristin Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 124–59. See especially her Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 on 152–53. See also the map titled “The Bloodlands” in Snyder’s Bloodlands, ix.

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unserem topographischen Bewusstsein getilgt” (the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, which largely took place in the east of Europe, were preserved as knowledge, but erased from our topographical awareness, as it were).20 For Germans, the east of Europe is familiar as the setting of notorious historical events, and yet unfamiliar as a real space in the present day. The text of Entlang den Gräben repeatedly evokes this “erased” topographic or cartographic memory, for example in the passage about the river Memel, which Kermani describes as familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Unfamiliar, since he has never seen it before; familiar because its name appears in the very first strophe of the “Deutschlandlied” to denote the Eastern border of the lands inhabited by German-speaking peoples before Germany’s unification. But this strophe is no longer a part of the German national anthem due to its use during the Nazi era as an expression of Germany’s expansionist ambitions. Every step of the way, Kermani’s retelling of his journey is haunted by history and its cartographic representations. But what is so interesting and unusual about Kermani’s route is that it also stretches between his two homes—Cologne and Isfahan. As he says in one interview, “Köln und Isfahan sind . . . Orte, an denen ich zu Hause bin. Und dazwischen liegen Welten, die ich nicht kenne. Diesen Weg zu machen, das war auch ein Auslöser für die Reise” (Cologne and Isfahan are both places where I am at home. And between them lie worlds I do not know. To get to know them was a trigger for this journey too).21 Kermani makes clear that his journey does not just take him away from his German home, but also towards his other home in Iran. In his account, the cartographic memory of the Nazi era—which he accepts as part of his tarnished cultural legacy as a German, and seeks to understand and commemorate accordingly—coexists with his remapping of Europe’s east as an area that geographically and culturally links and mediates between Germany and Iran, as he demonstrates time and again by describing various overlapping traditions in the region, including the three monotheistic religions. Kermani’s destination reframes his entire journey as not simply “east of Germany” (or, as I will explain shortly, “east of the Elbe”), but also “west of Isfahan”—a geographic point of reference that most Europeans are not used to seeing in this context. As Kermani put it in one interview, “plötzlich werden Deutschland und Iran Nachbarn, oder genauer gesagt, selbst zwei so fern scheinende Kulturen überlappen und vermischen sich” (suddenly, Germany and Iran become neighbors, or to be 20 Philipp Holstein, “Navid Kermani—der Geschichtsschreiber der Gegenwart,” Rheinische Post, February 15, 2018, https://rp-online.de/kultur/buch/ navid-kermani-der-geschichtsschreiber-der-gegenwart_aid-18941767. 21 Bender, “Reise durch die Geschichte.”

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more precise: even two cultures that seem so far apart overlap and mix with one another).22 Because he is familiar with both cultures, he can appreciate their intermingling, and consequently perceive and represent the region differently; his mental geography is richer. Kermani’s goal is to share this appreciation of interconnectedness with his readers and help them change, or at least adjust, their mental geography too, even—or especially—if they do not share his cosmopolitan (migrant, minority) background. Kermani’s readers can acquire this new perspective through exposure to his, by learning that there are people with different mental geographies which disrupt more widespread homogenous mappings and cultural narratives. As I indicated above, many reviewers—both in the press and on personal blogs—describe how reading Kermani’s book had just such an effect on them. Some more specialist reviews written by experts on the region, however, are more critical of Kermani’s project. Edward Lucas, a writer and consultant who specializes in the questions of politics, economics, and security in Eastern Europe, wrote a mixed review for the Financial Times, one of only a handful that came out after the publication of the English translation of Entlang den Gräben. “Kermani’s approach to Europe’s eastern borderlands would attract instant condemnation if applied to Africa. Savage history, weird languages, exotic people—and some of them really well educated!,” he writes sarcastically.23 Similarly, Sonja Zekri, a writer and journalist with a degree in Slavonic Studies, asks rhetorically in her review in Süddeutsche Zeitung, titled “Das westdeutsche Staunen des Navid Kermani” (The Western German Astonishment of Navid Kermani): “ob der Orientalist Kermani glücklich wäre, wenn ein Westeuropäer auf diese Weise die Schädelstätten des Nahen Ostens abhaken würde?” (would the Orientalist Kermani be happy about Western Europeans ticking off the calvaries of the Middle East like that?).24 Nina Brnada similarly claims in her review in the Austrian weekly Falter: “Kermanis zuweilen penetrante Westperspektive erschwert den Versuch, den Osten wirklich zu begreifen” (Kermani’s sometimes obtrusively Western perspective complicates the attempt to really understand the East).25 These comments emphasize Kermani’s position as a traveler from West Germany (or, 22 Driessen, Südkurier. 23 Edward Lucas, “Along the Trenches—A Thought-Provoking Travelogue on Eastern Europe,” Financial Times, January 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/ content/dc4f649e-d308-11e9-8d46-8def889b4137. 24 Sonja Zekri, “Das westdeutsche Staunen des Navid Kermani,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 20, 2018, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/ entlang-den-graeben-das-westdeutsche-staunen-des-navid-kermani-1.3868657. 25 Nina Brnada, “Mit einem Deutschen durch den Osten,” Falter, Feb­ruary 28, 2018, https://www.falter.at/zeitung/20180228/mit-einem-deutschen-durchden-osten/b15ca199ee.

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more broadly, Germany, or even the West in general) to accuse him of an Orientalist or colonial perspective on Europe’s east. Lucas even echoes Kristin Kopp’s terminology when he writes of “an unconscious but very (West) German feeling that the ‘wild east’ starts on the Polish border.”26 It surely is unfair to imply that Kermani is not conscious of his position, though, since he makes it explicit at every turn. In an attempt to discredit Kermani’s method—“particularly jarring is a preference for rhetorical questions over answers, and a blurry approach to facts”; “initial ignorance is not fatal in travel writing, but it needs to be balanced with humility and curiosity”; “throughout the book, this likeable and conscientious writer urges his readers to engage fair-mindedly with unfamiliar countries, cultures and history. Annoyingly, he does not follow his own strictures”27—Lucas seems to miss the point of Kermani’s book. It is not intended as an expert handbook on Eastern Europe written from the perspective of area studies, but rather an attempt to shift the perception of the east of Europe today away from a place that is solely of interest to experts on European security. This implicit expectation becomes apparent when Lucas states that Kermani’s book “lacks a thread” and asks: “why has Kermani chosen these places and not others? If conflict is the theme, what about the Balkans? Or the other Baltic states? The approach is patchy.” These rhetorical questions imply that there is a narrow array of themes that can or should be addressed when speaking of the east of Europe and entirely overlook Kermani’s personal project of remapping the region as a space that connects Germany and Iran in an attempt to break out of stereotypical approaches to Europe’s east. Moreover, the idea that the ultimate goal of travel writing is to arrive at a fixed, objective understanding of a foreign land is itself deeply colonial in nature.28 In considering whether Kermani’s approach to the east of Europe risks orientalizing the region or is undermined by his West German perspective, it is also instructive to consider responses to his book in Poland. None of his books have been published in Polish, but a couple of shorter texts have been translated for the liberal Catholic magazine Znak,29 and in June 2018, a few months after the publication of Entlang den Gräben, Kermani shared the Samuel Bogumił Linde Prize, awarded jointly by partner cities Toruń and Göttingen, with a respected Polish reportage writer Małgorzata Szejnert. Journalist Jacek Lepiarz wrote a Polish-language 26 Lucas, “Along the Trenches.” 27 Lucas, “Along the Trenches.” 28 I am indebted to one of the reviewers of the manuscript for this last observation. 29 Here I would like to acknowledge Michał Jędrzejek, who translated one of these texts for Znak and introduced me to Kermani’s work in 2016.

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review of Entlang den Gräben for Deutsche Welle, in which he praised Kermani’s book for exhibiting “dużo zrozumienia dla Polski” (a lot of understanding for Poland); he emphasizes that Kermani “chwali Europę Wschodnią za mocne trwanie przy swojej tożsamości i języku” (praises Eastern Europe for standing by its identity and language).30 The only academic article on Entlang den Gräben written by a Slavist so far— Stephan Walter—similarly finds Kermani’s perspective valuable: “für Slavisten und Regionalexperten kann die Lektüre insofern bereichernd sein, da eine vertraute Region mit den Augen eines neugierigen Fremden, eines Durchreisenden neu betrachtet wird, der, je weiter östlich er sich befindet, seine eigene Perspektive allmählich verändert” (For Slavists and experts on the region, reading this text can be fruitful since they get to see a familiar space anew through the eyes of a curious outsider, a traveler who, the farther east he goes, changes his perspective more and more).31 In a similar vein, in 2017 Adam Krzemiński wrote an article introducing Kermani for Polityka, one of the most popular Polish weeklies, in which he mentions many of Kermani’s reportage works, including his reportage from Eastern Europe published in Der Spiegel, which he suggests should find a publisher in Poland.32 Restricted as Kermani’s reception in Poland might be to date, it is striking that his work has been widely praised and recognized, and specifically his writing on Europe’s east has been presented as highly interesting, fair, and valuable. What this implies is that the expectations that some Western European experts on Eastern Europe place on Entlang den Gräben might be out of touch not only with non-expert readers in Germany, but also readers in Eastern Europe itself. It also challenges the thesis that Kermani’s book is “ein sehr deutsches Buch für sehr deutsche Leser” (a very German book for very German readers), as one Austrian reviewer stated.33 (It is interesting to note that from the perspective of an Austrian reviewer, the book is “German” rather than specifically “West German.”) A persistent thread in Kermani’s writings is his orientation not only towards other 30 Jacek Lepiarz, “Pisarz Navid Kermani: zrozumieć Polskę i Europę Wschod­ nią,” Deutsche Welle, February 13, 2018, https://www.dw.com/pl/pisarz-navidkermani-zrozumieć-polskę-i-europę-wschodnią/a-42558912. 31 Stephan Walter, “Kermanis Osteuropa: Perspektiven eines Nicht-nurDeutschen auf eine unvertraute Region,” Russland übersetzen / Russia in Translation / Россия в переводе, edited by Christine Engel, Irina Pohlan, and Stephan Walter (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2020), 81. 32 Adam Krzemiński, “Navid Kermani—pisarz z pogranicza kultur,” Polityka, March 14, 2017, https://www.polityka.pl/tygodnikpolityka/swiat/1697 406,1,navid-kermani--pisarz-z-pogranicza-kultur.read?page=4&moduleId=4781. 33 Bert Rebhandl, “Navid Kermani: In 55 Tagen 5115 Kilometer,” Der Standard, February 24, 2018, https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000074876350/ navid-kermani-in-55-tagen-5115-kilometer.

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cosmopolitan intellectuals like himself, but also towards people different from him, both in terms of educational background and political outlook. This is reflected in Entlang den Gräben too, where in each country he visits, Kermani speaks to a wide range of interlocutors. In Poland, for example, he meets prominent journalists from the full spectrum of Polish politics: both left and right wing. Kermani’s ability to speak to people who disagree with him, and not just preach to the converted, has won him a lot of praise from different quarters, as shown even in some reviews from more rightwing readers. David Platzer complements Along the Trenches in his review in The Catholic Herald despite betraying a political orientation much more to the right of the book’s author. For example, he does not appreciate the fact that “Kermani follows the standard line against nationalism as the root of all evil,” but he praises him by adding: “even so, he quotes others who feel differently.”34 Another reviewer writes similarly that “Kermani’s talent as a writer, and a journalist, is his ability to not only encourage people to talk to him, but to report what they say with little or no filtering.” He gives the following example: “we hear from both sides of the Ukraine conflict: those who want the Crimea to be part of Russia and those who want it to stay part of the Ukraine and each of them sounds perfectly reasonable. In fact, the most frightening thing about this book is how everybody sounds so reasonable.”35 But this strategy does not compromise Kermani’s own strongly held beliefs. In her discussion of Kermani’s earlier reportage about the refugee crisis, Einbruch der Wirklichkeit, Claudia Breger calls his approach “engaged” or “ethical realism.” She argues that “in engaging anti-refugee perspectives, and acknowledging the concerns underlying them, Kermani does not in any way justify the transformation of concern into hatred, or the discursive articulation of hatred as concern that has acquired prominence in recent German politics.”36 This ability is a function of Kermani’s programmatic belief, reiterated in many of his essays and speeches, and in Vergesst Deutschland! Eine patriotische Rede (Forget Germany! A Patriotic Speech) linked specifically to his reading of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s work. It is his belief in “de[n] Respekt für das andere und die Unerbittlichkeit gegen das 34 David Platzer, “A Mournful Travelogue from Cologne to Isfahan,” Catholic Herald, January 16, 2020, https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-mournfultravelogue-from-cologne-to-isfahan/. 35 Richard Marcus, “Book Review: Along the Trenches by Navid Kermani,” Blogcritics, December 11, 2019, https://blogcritics.org/book-review-along-thetrenches-by-navid-kermani/. 36 Breger, “Einbruch der Wirklichkeit (Incursion of Reality): Navid Kermani’s Engaged Realism,” 41.

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Eigene” (respect for the other and implacability towards one’s own).37 This is the foundation of Kermani’s ability to perceive problematic aspects of his own perspective and of his empathy with others, even if he disagrees with them. As Edward Lucas puts it, “he shows an appealing, instinctive sympathy with the underdog and the outsider—the pervasive feeling of being on the margin of a richer, safer and happier life.”38 It is from this perspective that Kermani approaches supporters of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in Schwerin, for instance: while strongly disagreeing with their chosen form of political action, he seeks to understand their frustration with everyday problems such as low pensions. His desire “die Selbstkritik zum Prinzip zu erheben” (to raise self-critique to a principle)39 is also why Kermani is often critical towards Islam and Iran. In his review in The Jewish Herald-Voice, Aaron Howard goes as far as to claim that in Iran, “Kermani’s objectivity slides” and “he sounds a bit judgmental”40—but this is precisely because Kermani feels a moral obligation to a heightened critical self-awareness when writing about Isfahan. In Entlang den Gräben, Kermani is not only critical towards Iran, but also West Germany, Western Europe more generally, and its middle-class, leftleaning intellectual milieu: all of which inform his own identity. From the opening of the book, he critically analyzes his own implicit assumptions and biases as they emerge during his journey. Here it is important to note that Kermani’s journey does not start in Poland, but in his own largely migrant neighborhood in Cologne, evoked through an extract from his 2011 novel Dein Name (Your Name), before moving to Schwerin in East Germany. The travelogue itself opens with Kermani’s question in the middle of a conversation with one of his interviewees in Schwerin, a woman from Syria: “Gibt es denn überhaupt keine Probleme?” frage ich ungläubig die Frau, die in der Plattenbausiedlung die Sonntagsschule für syrische Kinder leitet. “Nein,” antwortet die Frau, “nicht wirklich.” Ab und zu mal ein unschönes Wort wegen ihres Kopftuchs, aber was sei das schon gegen das, was ihre Familie in Syrien durchgemacht habe, im

37 Navid Kermani, Vergesst Deutschland! Eine patriotische Rede (Berlin: Ullstein, 2012), 27. See also Karolin Machtans, “Navid Kermani: Advocate for an Antipatriotic Patriotism and a Multireligious, Multicultural Europe,” in Envisioning Social Justice in Contemporary German Culture, edited by Jill E. Twark and Axel Hildebrandt (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015), 290–311. 38 Lucas, “Along the Trenches.” 39 Kermani, Vergesst Deutschland! Eine patriotische Rede, 27. 40 Aaron Howard, “Along the Trenches Follows Writer’s Eastward Trek,” The Jewish Herald-Voice, March 26, 2020, https://jhvonline.com/along-thetrenches-follows-writers-eastward-trek-p27419-152.htm.

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Krieg. Das Kind, das sie im Bauch trage, werde in Frieden geboren. (EG 13) [“Are there really no problems at all?” I ask the woman who directs the Sunday school for Syrian children in the concrete high-rise housing estate. “No,” the woman answers, “nothing serious.” Once in a while an unfriendly word about her headscarf, she says, but nothing worth mentioning compared to what her family went through in Syria, in the war. The child she is carrying in her womb will be born in peace. (AT, 2)]

In Schwerin, Kermani meets a woman from Syria: although he does not say this explicitly, in the very first sentence of his travelogue the approximate geographical outlines of the region he will travel across are intimated, with Syria and Iran separated only by a strip of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, inhabited—like the neighboring regions in Syria and Iran—largely by Kurds. This opening passage evokes several common tropes of German narratives about the refugee crisis: Muslim children practicing their Arabic in an East German “Plattenbausiedlung,” while white Germans verbally abuse their teacher, a pregnant Syrian woman wearing a headscarf. But all this is undercut from the start by Kermani’s question: primed by alarmist reports in the media, he had expected the situation in Schwerin to be riddled with all sorts of dramatic tensions, and yet it is far from it. As he gradually discovers, the situation poses problems, but they are largely met with pragmatic solutions. The question that Kermani starts with alludes to the tone of sensationalist media reports about the integration of refugees in Germany, but the passages that follow focus on the everyday, lived reality of inhabitants of Schwerin, such as the condition of local allotments. The fact that the first stop on Kermani’s journey is in Schwerin suggests that, for him, “das östliche Europa” does not start east of Germany, but rather in East Germany, east of the river Elbe. As some reviewers have pointed out, “bei dieser Frage [wo beginnt der Osten?] muss Kermani an Konrad Adenauer denken” (With this question [where does the East begin?] Kermani must have Konrad Adenauer in mind).41 Adenauer was said to “close the curtains in his train compartment whenever he passed eastwards across the Elbe, muttering: ‘schon wieder Asien’ [Asia yet again]”42—a fact that James Hawes has recently taken as an emblematic 41 Christoph Driessen, “Navid Kermani erkundet Osteuropa,” Frankfurter Neue Presse, February 12, 2018, https://www.fnp.de/kultur/navid-kermanierkundet-osteuropa-10421841.html. 42 James Hawes, The Shortest History of Germany (London: Old Street Publishing, 2017), 150.

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expression of a much wider and much longer tendency in German history to see the country as fundamentally split into two cultural zones, long before the advent of the Cold War.43 The tendency to view the east of Europe as more akin to Asia has a long history in Germany culture, too; the region was often referred to as “Halb-Asien” in the nineteenth century, for example.44 The cultural trope of a fundamental division of Europe into two cultural zones is reflected in the title of Kermani’s book. As he has explained in several interviews, and as many reviewers note too, the title is polysemous. The word “ein Graben” can refer literally to sites where soil had been “umgegraben”—war trenches, mass graves (the word “ein Grab” shares this etymology), and even the decontamination of soil after the radioactive explosion in Chernobyl—but it can also be used figuratively to describe ideological and cultural divides. Kermani seeks to bring both these literal and figurative trenches to light, but he also seeks to bridge the divides in the mutual perceptions of different parts of Europe. He challenges the stereotypical narrative about an ideological and cultural “Graben” separating Western from Eastern Europe, but he also attempts to keep various points of view in play, including this widespread stereotype itself. This strategy has its risks. While many reviews testify to its effectiveness in challenging readers’ mental habits, as demonstrated above, it is not always successful. One review on Amazon states: “das Buch macht Lust auf eine Reise in den wilden Osten, der uns merkwürdig fremd ist, obwohl er so nahe liegt” (the book entices the reader to journey into the wild East which is so foreign to us even though it is so close);45 another reviewer writes on Goodreads: “gemeinsam mit dem Autor, stellt man beim Lesen fast, wie fern doch der so nahe Osten eigentlich ist” (together with the author, the reader realizes that the East is, although so close, very far away).46 Both reviews reproduce the clichéd terminology and binary categories to describe the region that Kermani challenges (“nah”—“fern,” “wild,” “fremd”); they insist on the fundamental discontinuity between the East and the West. Meanwhile, the very format of Kermani’s travelogue seems to make the opposite claim. It is divided into chapters headed by the number of travel days that have elapsed rather 43 For a critical review of Hawes’s thesis, see Seán Williams, “Telling Trabbies from Junkers,” History Today 67 (2017), https://www.historytoday.com/ reviews/telling-trabbies-junkers-0. 44 Kopp, Germany’s Wild East, 104. 45 Tobias Oberzeller, “Ein wunderbarer Reisebericht der den Leser einfängt!,” Amazon, April 4, 2018, https://www.amazon.com/Entlang-denGräben/dp/3406747671. 46 Melanie, “Entlang den Gräben: Eine Reise durch das östliche Europa bis nach Isfahan,” Goodreads, April 12, 2018, https://www.goodreads.com/review/ show/2359398531.

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than countries visited; the changes between different places Kermani visits tend to be described as gradual and incremental; the suggestion is that there is no fundamental break between the familiar and the unfamiliar. As discussed above, this is facilitated by the fact that for Kermani, neither his start nor his end point is foreign: he is traveling between two familiar places. But upon closer inspection, the tension between continuity and discontinuity turns out to be present in the structure and format of Entlang den Gräben too. At the very end of the book, the messy reality behind Kermani’s journey is acknowledged. It turns out that the whole travelogue is in fact based on several separate journeys undertaken in 2016 and 2017—a fact that is only mentioned in passing in the main text.47 It was impossible to travel directly across several borders on Kermani’s route because of political tensions in the region. This intrusion of politically motivated discontinuity into the (seemingly continuous) narrative of cultural continuity could be termed “Einbruch der Wirklichkeit” (Incursion of Reality) following the title of Kermani’s earlier reportage about the refugee crisis.48 Magda Tarnawska Senel described the structure of that earlier reportage as fragmented, so that it “parallels and underscores both the shattered lives of the refugees and the divided Europe.”49 But in Entlang den Gräben, the focus is on unity as much as fragmentation, continuity as well as discontinuity, both in the content of the text—the geographic and cultural reality of the east of Europe—and its form—with several shorter trips disrupted by political tensions reconstructed as one long journey, but then deconstructed again in the paratextual note appended by the author.

47 Swen Schulte Eickholt discusses the significance of form in Entlang den Gräben in his chapter “‘Aber manches versteht man auch erst, wenn man reist, nicht wenn man bleibt.’ Der Schriftsteller als Berichterstatter—zu Navid Kermanis Reportagen (2001–2018),” in Navid Kermani, edited by Hofmann, Stosch, and Eickholt, 216. He comments on the illusion that Kermani creates of having made only one journey, and the fact that his narrative is broken down into individual days rather than separate countries, but does not consider that its goal might be to reflect or enact the fluidity of borders that Kermani describes. 48 Navid Kermani, Einbruch der Wirklichkeit: Auf dem Flüchtlingstreck durch Europa (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2016). 49 Magda Tarnawska Senel, “Europe, the Middle East, and Identities in Transition: Navid Kermani’s Einbruch der Wirklichkeit: Auf dem Flüchtlingstreck durch Europa,” in Anxious Journeys: Twenty-First-Century Travel Writing in German, edited by Karin Baumgartner and Monika Shafi (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019), 42. See also Elke Segelcke, “The Political Anthropology of Navid Kermani’s Travelogues,” in Navid Kermani, edited by Druxes, Machtans, and Mihailovic, 181–200.

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In Entlang den Gräben, the east of Europe is represented not only in the text of the book, but also in its rich paratextual material, including maps, photographs, and evocations of historical cartography as well as perceptual habits of the book’s potential readers. By analyzing this material, we can better understand not only Kermani’s representational strategy, but also the multilayered background of historical and present-day forms of representation of the region that he is working against. Given Kermani’s orientation towards a diverse readership, it is particularly instructive to see how his book fares in the hands of real-life readers from various backgrounds, ranging from Western European experts on Eastern Europe to Polish journalists to German readers posting reviews on the Internet. Several themes come to the fore again and again in Kermani’s text, as well as the titles, subtitles, and covers of the German and English editions of the book, the different maps and photographs featured in the initial reportage in Der Spiegel, and recurring vocabulary choices made in various reviews and discussions of Entlang den Gräben. In his project of remapping the east of Europe, Kermani models a critical reassessment of one’s own perspective for his readers—a shifting of one’s gaze—by highlighting tensions between familiarity and unfamiliarity as well as continuity and discontinuity in his encounter with the region. Entlang den Gräben makes clear that German cultural identity has been shaped by its relationship to its Eastern neighbors, and has heavily influenced that region in turn. In this way, Kermani’s book can be placed in the context of recent literary scholarship that considers the entanglements of local, national, imperial, and global allegiances that have always made up German culture, such as Todd Kontje’s monograph Imperial Fictions: German Literature Before and Beyond the Nation-State, published in the same year as Entlang den Gräben.50 Much like Kermani’s travelogue, Kontje’s sweeping account moves from the Middle Ages to the present day in an attempt to rewrite the history of German culture without taking the problematic concept of the unitary nation as its starting point. Kermani’s narrative both highlights and questions present-day state boundaries in the area stretching between his hometown of Cologne and his parents’ hometown of Isfahan, repeatedly pointing to the power of literature, arts, and culture—such as Kurban Said’s novel Ali und Nino with which I started my discussion—to reimagine the boundaries of political communities. His own book contributes to the same project: like much of his other work, it links the identity of contemporary multi­ lingual, multiethnic, and multi-faith Europe to its rich, complex history. In this essay, I have discussed Kermani’s narrative strategies, the paratextual material framing various versions of his text, and the reception 50 Todd Kontje, Imperial Fictions: German Literature Before and Beyond the Nation-State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018).

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of his book in Germany and beyond to show how a finer focus on the fraught history of the cultural relations between Germany and Europe’s east can become a gateway to a reflection on multicultural entanglements, inequalities, and interdependencies more broadly, which—needless to say—we badly need in our own cultural moment.

Contributors Deirdre Byrnes is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Galway. Her research interests include GDR literature, contemporary women writers in German-language literature, generational memory transmission, and contested memories. She has published extensively on Monika Maron, including a monograph, Rereading Monika Maron: Text, CounterText and Context (Peter Lang, 2011). She is coeditor, together with Dr. Jean Conacher and Dr. Gisela Holfter, of German Reunification and the Legacy of GDR Literature and Culture (Brill, 2018) and Perceptions and Perspectives: Exploring Connections between Ireland and the GDR (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2019). Raluca Cernahoschi is Associate Professor of German at Bates College (Maine), where she teaches in the German and European Studies programs. She received her PhD in Germanic Studies from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) in 2010. Her publications include articles on literature and film from/on East-Central Europe with a focus on generational, gender, and ethnic identity constructions. Most recently, she coedited (with Enikő Dácz) two special issues on transnational conceptualizations of the Carpathians (Spiegelungen volume 16, issues 1.21 and 2.21). Shivani Chauhan is a DPhil student and Clarendon scholar at the University of Oxford (St Anne’s College). She has completed MA and MPhil degrees in German literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has attended the University of Education Weingarten, the University of Wuppertal, and the University of Freiburg in Germany as a guest scholar on short-term research stays. Her current research interests include memory studies, aesthetics of migration, and questions of Heimat in the German-language literary landscape. Enikő Dácz received her first degree in German and English Language and Literature at Babeș-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca), a second MA in Central European Studies at Andrassy Gyula German-Speaking University Budapest, and her PhD in German Literature at the University of Szeged. She worked as a research associate at Andrassy University and since 2014 has been a research associate at the Institute for German Culture

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and History of Southeastern Europe at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. Olha Flachs studied Applied Linguistics in Lviv and German and English Philology in Heidelberg. In 2016 she received her PhD with a dissertation on Max von Waldberg, the Jewish PhD advisor of Josef Goebbels. During her doctoral studies she worked at the Institute for German Language (Mannheim) on a lexicographic project, “The Weimar Republic as Linguistic Caesura.” At present, she is researching the German-language literature of Galicia and Bukovina. Daniel Harvey writes, translates, and researches translingual fiction. They have an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol and a BA in Modern Languages from Brasenose College, Oxford. In the hope of queering translation and comparative literary studies, their current PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow considers the creative and ethical opportunities arising from engagement with experi­mental translingual and genre-bending practices from Central and Eastern Europe. Jakub Kazecki is Associate Professor of German at Bates College, Lewis­ ton, Maine. He teaches German language, literature, and film courses, and contributes to the program in European Studies. His research interests include twentieth-century German literature (especially literature about the First World War), images of German-Polish relationships in literature, film, and visual arts, and laughter and comedy in different media. He is the author of Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives (2012) and the coeditor of the books Heroism and Gender in Film (2014, together with Karen A. Ritzenhoff) and Border Visions: Borderlands in Film and Literature (2013, together with Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Cynthia Miller). Amy Leech is a sixth-year PhD student in the Germanic Languages Department at Columbia University in the City of New York. Having received her BA in Combined Honors (German, Classics & Ancient History) from Durham University, Amy joined the graduate program at Columbia in 2015, where she is also affiliated with the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Her research interests include postwar and contemporary literature, trauma and memory studies, postsocialist memory, gender studies, and literatures of migration. Amy is currently working on her dissertation, which is titled “A Multidirectional Europe: Post-Socialist Memory and the Holocaust in Contemporary German Literature.” This project looks at the negotiations of the socialist past in Eastern Europe in texts by Herta Müller, Nino Haratischwili, Saša Stanišić, and Terézia Mora.

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Michel Mallet is Associate Professor of German in the Department of Translation and Languages at the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada. Coeditor of the special issue “Herta Müller and the Currents of European History” (German Life and Letters 73, no. 1), his current research projects continue to explore Müller’s oeuvre, as well as ex-Yugoslav migrant and exile authors, such as Danijela Pilić and Saša Stanišić, who address the themes of loss of Heimat and nostalgia in their writings. With Maria Mayr and Kristin Rebien, he is currently coediting the collective volume Unrealized Futures: Post-Socialist Memory in German-speaking Literature and Culture (de Gruyter, Media and Cultural Memory Series). Paul Peters is Professor in German Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His main research interests revolve around the authors Heine, Kafka, Brecht, and Celan. Other areas of interest are the Weimar and Romantic periods in German cultural history, as well as the socialist and post-socialist authors Volker Braun and Heiner Müller, and the two great metropolises of Berlin and Vienna. Ernest Schonfield is Lecturer in German at the University of Glasgow (since 2013). He studied at the University of Sussex (BA) and University College London (PhD). He has previously taught at University College London and Oxford. His PhD was published as Art and Its Uses in Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull (MHRA, 2008). His recent monograph is: Business Rhetoric in German Novels: From Buddenbrooks to the Global Corporation (Camden House, 2018). Hanna Schumacher is currently Teaching and Research Fellow in German Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She was awarded her PhD in 2019 by the University of Warwick, having studied previously at the University of Trier. Her research focuses on German Science Fiction, Critical Posthumanism, and Critical Theory, but she is also interested in postmemory, conceptions of futurity, and memorial cultures. She is currently working on turning her PhD thesis into a monograph (Working title: Nach der Langeweile: Narratives of the Future in Contemporary German Literature). Karolina Watroba is a postdoctoral research fellow in Modern Languages at All Souls College, University of Oxford. She is interested in modern literature, film, and critical theory, and in her comparative research she works primarily with material in German, English, and Polish. Her DPhil thesis, which was completed at Oxford in 2019 and is currently being

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developed into a monograph, explores the cultural impact that Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg has made beyond academic circles. Jenny Watson studied German and Dutch at the University of Sheffield before completing her PhD in German Studies at Swansea University. Her first monograph, Affective Affinities: Herta Müller’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung, is currently in preparation. In January 2019, she joined the University of Edinburgh as a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, with a project entitled “Restless Earth: Landscapes of Extra-Concentrationary Violence in German Literature.” She was appointed University of Edinburgh Chancellor’s Fellow in April 2021 and is currently continuing her research with a focus on the theme of “intimate violence” in the German literature of memory.