Victims and Perpetrators: 1933-1945: (Re)Presenting the Past in Post-Unification Culture 9783110897470, 9783110189827

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Victims and Perpetrators: 1933-1945

Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies Edited by

Scott Denham · Irene Kacandes Jonathan Petropoulos Volume 2

w DE

G

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Victims and Perpetrators: 1933-1945 (Re)Presenting the Past in Post-Unification Culture Edited by

Laurel Cohen-Pfister Dagmar Wienroeder-Skinner

w DE

G_ Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines, of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

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of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

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Victims and perpetrators, 1933-1945 : (representing the past in post-unification culture / edited by Laurel Cohen-Pfister, Dagmar WienroederSkinner. p. cm. - (Interdisciplinary German cultural studies ; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018982-7 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 3-11-18982-8 (alk. paper) 1. Memory — Political aspects — Germany. 2. World War, 1939 — 1945 - Historiography. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Conflict of generations — Germany — History — 20th century. 5. Germany — Civilization — Jewish influences. 6. Jews in literature. 7. Germany — Race relations — History — 21st century. I. Cohen-Pfister, Laurel, 1957— . II. Wienröder-Skinner, Dagmar. DD256.48.V53 2006 943.086072-dc22 2006024670

ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018982-7 ISBN-10: 3-11-018982-8 ISSN 1861-8030 Bibliographic information published l y the Deutsche

Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© Copyright 2006 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen

To my family LCP

To Charles and Tatrick DWS

Acknowledgements We would like to express our sincere gratitude to a number of persons and institutions associated with the various steps of this volume. Our profound thanks go to Heiko Hartmann of Walter de Gruyter who gave us much appreciated support and encouragement from the inception of this project to its completion. Likewise, we thank the IGCS editors, who provided helpful feedback early in the process that particularly guided key thoughts in the introduction. We are grateful to Michael Ritterson and Jules Cohen for the suggestions they offered when we faced translation dilemmas and to Elisabeth Pfister for her assistance behind the scenes. Hans Pfister und Björn Lübeck both invested an enormous amount of their time to format all articles and deserve our inexpressible gratitude. Gettysburg College and Saint Joseph's University generously supported this project financially. To our colleagues and friends who helped to make this volume possible, we give you our heartfelt thanks. Portions of this book have been previously presented. We thank Margit Sinka for organizing a panel dedicated to this volume entitled "Victims and Perpetrators: (Representing the Past in Post-Unification Culture" for the 2005 German Studies Association. Other portions were read at the 2006 Northeast Modern Language Association Conference. Our thanks go out to all participants. Finally, we recognize our families, who, quite amazingly, never tired in their unfailing support of this project. You kept us going. Laurel Cohen-Pfister, Gettysburg College Dagmar Wienroeder-Skinner, Saint Joseph's University June 2006

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

vii

LAUREL COHEN-PFISTER/ DAGMAR WIENROEDER-SKINNER

Introduction: History and the Memory of Suffering: Rethinking 1933-1945

3

Transgenerational Memory ALEIDA ASSMANN

Limits of Understanding: Generational Identities in Recent German Memory Literature

29

NIKHIL SATHE

"Ein Fressen für mein MG": The Problem of German Suffering in Uwe Timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders

49

RACHEL HALVERSON

Mothers, Memories, and Mnemonics: Hanna Johansen's Ijena and Judith Kuckart's Irenas Liebe

72

Air War and German Literature VOLKER HAGE

To Write or Remain Silent? The Portrayal of the Air War in German Literature

91

SUSANNE VEES-GULANI

The Language of Trauma: Dieter Forte's Memories of the Air War... 114 THOMAS FOX

Writing Dresden Across the Generations

136

χ

Table of Contents

Jewish Victimization: Silence and Remembrance ELKE SEGELCKE

Breaking the Taboo: Barbara Honigmann's Narrative Quest for a German-Jewish (Family) History

157

JAMES MARTIN

A World Turned Upside Down: Role Reversals in the VictimPerpetrator Complex in Christoph Ransmayr's Morbus Kitahara

178

MARGIT SINKA

The "Different" Holocaust Memorial in Berlin's Bayerisches Viertel·. Personal and Collective Remembrance Thematizing Perpetrator/Victim Relationships

197

Transnational Reconciliation VALENTINA GLAJAR

Victims and Perpetrators: Representations of the German-Czech Conflict in Texts by Peter Härtling, Pavel Kohout, and Jörg Bernig... 225 PAWEL LUTOMSKI

Acknowledging Each Other As Victims: An Unmet Challenge in the Process of Polish-German Reconciliation 241 DAGMAR WIENROEDER-SKINNER

Attempts at (Re)Conciliation: Polish-German Relations in Literary Texts by Stefan Chwin, Pawel Huelle, and Olga Tokarczuk

262

Historical Consciousness and the German Present HARALD WELZER

The Collateral Damage of Enlightenment: How Grandchildren Understand the History of National Socialist Crimes and Their Grandfathers'Past

285

BRAD PRAGER

The Haunted Screen (Again): The Historical Unconscious of Contemporary German Thrillers

296

Table of Contents

XI

LAUREL COHEN-PFISTER

Rape, War, and Outrage: Changing Perceptions on German Victimhood in the Period of Post-Unification

316

DANIEL BECKER

Coming to Terms with Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Walser's Sonntagsrede, the Kosovo War, and the Transformation of German Historical Consciousness 337 Notes on Contributors

363

Index of Names

369

Introduction

LAUREL COHEN-PFISTER DAGMAR WIENROEDER-SKINNER

History and the Memory of Suffering: Rethinking 1933-1945 In Germany, the past is alive as seldom before. With the entry into a new century, a new millennium even, the dead are returning. Germans have intensified their examination of the Third Reich and the Second World War. A flood of visual and literary documentation indicates a public need to acknowledge and publicize private memories of the war that have been both consciously suppressed and unconsciously repressed for decades. The fiftieth and sixtieth anniversaries of the end of World War II have given new immediacy to personalized images of the war through public commemorations and the popular media.1 Television documentaries, eyewitness accounts, autobiographies, and literary and filmic reviews of the past dominate the cultural landscape of the so-called Berlin Republic. Visual events like Spiegel magazine's special series on the air war and the expulsions, or Guido Knopp's popular television documentaries on German experiences of the Third Reich and the Second World War, recreate personal tragedies of the period for a new generation of Germans.2 Oliver Hirschbiegel's feature film Oer Untergang (2004) depicting the fall of Berlin has put Hitler center stage on the big screen. From Günter Grass's Im Krebsgang (2002) and Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand (2002) to the anonymous diary Eine Frau in Berlin (2003),3 the literary market has embraced the topic of the war. Noticeable is the concentration on 1

2

3

The fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War also occasioned reflection. Richard von Weizsäckers speech o f 8 May 1985, speaks not only of guilt and liberation, but also of suffering, flight, expulsions, and nights spent in bomb shelters. See the Spiegel series Die Flucht der Deutschen (2002) and Als Feuer vom Himmelfiel (2003). For a critique of Guido Knopp's popular style and impact on the German public, see Kümmel. On 5/6 March 2006, a television miniseries on the bombing of Dresden, the most expensive television production ever in Germany, attracted 12 million viewers. Although a ratings success, the film, entitled "Dresden," received criticism for trivializing the horror of the bombings with a contrived love story between a downed English pilot and a German nurse ("Movie"). For a more detailed listing of recent literary works dealing with German suffering, see Cohen-Pfister; for works dealing specifically with the air war, see Hage 9-131.

4

Introduction

German suffering through aerial bombardments, expulsion from eastern territories, rape by the Red Army, and the existential agonies that accompany war. In assessing the literary landscape, Ulrich Raulff calls 2003 "das Jahr, in dem 1945 zurückkehrt," noting a new development marked by the convergence and the magnitude of discourse on major themes of German suffering (Raulff).4 While time has brought distance to these events, they nonetheless maintain a stronghold on memory. Instead of paling over time, the Holocaust seems paradoxically to become more concrete and palpable as an event, intensifying its hold on emotion (Assmann and Frevert 29).5 So, too, the Third Reich remains entrenched in present memory. As Norbert Frei phrases it: "So viel Hider war nie" (7).6 Certainly a decisive factor in creating space for such memories has been the end to Germany's division into two states. With the "German question" politically resolved and the other German half no longer defined in a state of opposition, other German questions have surfaced. The past has broken free from the ideological schematizations of the Cold War, and Germany's East and West have begun to write, post-unification, a shared history (see Brunesen 26). Ultimately, the search for commonalities and collective experiences in this formerly divided country leads back to 1945 and includes the narrative of suffering in the Second World War. For a people once separated by the physical and ideological barriers spawned by the Cold War, remembering the past can be an exercise in nation building and molding a new national self-understanding. In defining who they are now, Germans are returning to the past, seeking a clearer understanding of their parents' and grandparents' experiences. As the generation passes that lived through the Third Reich, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, taking with it the lived memory of its experiences, it leaves behind the challenge to sort through contested, divergent, and complex narratives of anguish and complicity. Later generations are left with "history, not memory" (Frei 8). All the more significant then are the forms of cultural representation: In the politics of memory they define and solidify a particular understanding of the past that informs identities. Mary Nolan notes that "debates about history and memory have become more contentious": [. . .] they no longer center primarily on the uniqueness of the Holocaust or the structural/ systematic causes of genocide. Rather, they focus on the identity, behavior, and motives of the perpetrators and on the appropriate commemoration of and compensation for victims.

4 5 6

"the year in which 1945 returned." Unless noted, all translations are our own. Assmann refers here to H e r m a n n Lübbe, who pointed out this paradox already in 1983. "Never has there been so much Hider."

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

5

This, in turn, "has fueled a counterdiscourse on Germans as victims and on the seemingly agentless production of a diffuse and varied category of victims" (Nolan 114). As the subjectively recounted past becomes the "representative" past, critical discernment is essential: History proves that victims proclaim their suffering more easily than perpetrators their atrocities. Still, if the personal accounts of pain in the twentieth century make anything clear, it is that suffering in war transcends national borders, even those of the perpetrators, and that victim and victimizer can mirror the same face. Sixty years of postwar history mark various attempts to "come to terms" with twelve years of the Nazi past, and still the historical, judicial, and moral issues of this past cannot be entirely resolved. This process, labeled "the second history of National Socialism" (Reichel 199), the subject of both selective repressions and memorial gestures, has been a complex and ambiguous discourse that has oscillated between the dichotomies of guilt and victimhood. In what Klaus Naumann calls the decades of "ambivalente Suchbewegung" ("ambivalent searching") ("Institutionalisierte Ambivalenz" 65), the German confrontation with the past has evolved through phrases that span the spectrum from denial to remorse. In the post-unification years, it is characterized by a desire to move beyond guilt, to reconcile with family members of the perpetrator generation, and to renew an awareness of German victimhood.7 As second, third, and even fourth postwar generations evaluate the stories left behind—often with a new unreservedness (Unbefangenheit)—they mold the new German perception of familial and national guilt and pain.8 Their appraisal of events intimates a paradigmatic shift in the way the war is remembered and also in the way Germans officially view themselves. For some, the emphasis on German suffering proves unsettling, the harbinger of a new German myth of victimization (see Käppner). Others fear that the Holocaust, "a crucial event for Western civilization," might be relegated "to second place" (Bartov 6).9 Hannes Heer, co-initiator of 7

8

9

Frei differentiates between the following phases: The postwar years were characterized by a rejection of guilt (S chuldverweigerung), then followed by decades of processing guilt (Schuldbearbeitung). These years brought Germans finally, in an act of self-incrimination, to accept German crimes committed against humanity and assume responsibility for keeping the memory of these crimes alive. Eventually, according to Frei, the post-unification years resulted in a compensation for guilt (Schuldkompensation). Frei believes the process of Schuldbearbeitung concluded with unification (see Könczöl and Morina). For most of the writers of these generations, post-unification or post-Iron-Curtain politics are not divided into the traditional categories of Left and Right. Consequently, history is not charged primarily with politics and can be analyzed instead in a more "unreserved" manner. Bartov"s reference to a new German self-understanding beyond the centrality of the Holocaust to German national identity is here implicit. Further in Mirrors of Destruction, he refers

6

Introduction

the controversial Wehrmacht photo exhibits, believes the pervasive medial celebration of German wartime anguish signifies that a barrier has been broken, that the Germans "verwandeln sich mit einem Mal in ein Volk von Opfern" (7).10 As the title of his recent study claims, "the perpetrators have disappeared."11 Norbert Frei perceives unpolitical tones in the private, subjectified look at history "in der sich die Unterschiede zwischen Tätern, Opfern und Mitläufern verwischen" (14).12 Victims of the Holocaust and other National Socialist crimes, together with their descendents, face, as he sees it, an increasing number of Germans who define themselves as victims (15-16). The danger for a competition of suffering lies at hand.13 Adorno recognized early the irrationality of "drawing up a balance sheet of guilt [. . .], as though Dresden compensated for Auschwitz" ("Meaning" 4).^ Certainly the German self-perception as victims of World War II is neither a new phenomenon nor a new controversy. The "new victim feeling" (von Marshall) evolves from the continuum of a postwar confrontation with German identities in relation to Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. The postwar period in the West was characterized into the fifties and the early sixties by a sense of suffering that excluded acknowledgment of German guilt and complicity; not until the 1960s did West German memory culture noticeably shift to emphasize the Holocaust as the central defining event of the recent German past.15 German victimhood has remained nonetheless a cause celebre for ultra-conservative organizations, such as expellee groups, or for radically right-wing Neo-Nazi organizations.16 In the East, the antifascist legend of the foundation of the GDR elided an assumption of national guilt for Nazi crimes. It also allowed for mourning the devastation caused by the air war carried out by the Western, capitalist Anglo-American powers. As politically sensitive

10 11 12 13 14 15

16

to "the former rebels of the students' revolt," who "now move in the halls of power [. . .] and insist on the need to be liberated from the burden of the past" (214). In his discussion of Bernhard Schlink's novel Der Vorleser., he notes "an inversion of conventional roles, moral assumptions, and categories" (217). "are transforming themselves into a nation of victims" Vom Verschwinden der Täter: Oer Vernichtungskrieg fand statt aber keiner mar dabei. "where the differences between perpetrators, victims, and fellow travelers are obliterated" References to an Opferkonkurrew^&owiA. See, for instance, Frei 15; "Köhler-Rede"; Piper. "Aufrechnung der Schuld, als ob Dresden Auschwitz abgegolten hätte" (Gesammelte Schriften 10.2: 556) Although German reparation payments to Israel were negotiated between Adenauer and Ben Gurion to start as early as in 1953, other media-covered events, like the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1960-61), the Auschwitz trials in Frankfrirt/M (starting 1963), and the American TV miniseries Holocaust (1978; aired in Germany 1979) confronted Germans more vehemendy with unpleasant reminders of their National Socialist history. For discussion of the West, see Moeller, "Sinking Ships" or "War Stories"; Frei; Naumann, Nachkrieg.

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

7

subjects for the communist, East Block-aligned GDR, the expulsions and the rapes were suppressed, however.17 The frequent proclamation that taboos on discussing Germany's own victimization have been broken ignores the historical precedence of German discourse on suffering as well as the divergent political realities of East and West that resulted in different silences. The persistent reference in current discourse to the existence of such taboos seems instead to highlight the widespread perception of a "second victimization," a censorship of the real hardships of the experiencing generation. As German suffering re-enters public discourse, it is accompanied by voices from the political Left and Right that call for addressing the entire spectrum of German experiences in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century—which means allowing space for stories of German pain as well as those of perpetration.18 With the caesura of 1989-1990—marking the end to Germany's division at the end of World War II—the search for a usable past has emerged in the Berlin Republic as part of the process of "normalization" (Heer 8-9; see Moeller, "Usable Past"). Its leading role as a free and democratic nation in the new European order assured, post-unification Germany seeks to proceed "on the road to normalcy" (Markovits and Reich 10), to rehabilitate its image as one "normal" nation among others in the European Union.19 The period signifies, Fritz Stern hypothesizes, the country's "second chance" (20).20 The term "normalization" itself has become less controversial, Stuart Taberner points out, and is understood conventionally to denote "the forty years of 'successful' West German 17

18

19

20

T h e "divided m e m o r y " that Jeffrey Herf refers to in his like-tided examination of memory narratives in East and West Germany created diverging constructs of the victim/ perpetrator narrative. For discussion of the East, see Assmann and Frevert; Taberner, Recasting. Robert Moeller notes that the "ideological exploitation of suffering—the P O W in Soviet hands, the German w o m a n raped by the Red Army soldier—made victim groups prisoners of public memory, leaving them alone with individual memories that did not easily fit into [. . .] [the] national narratives [of West and East Germany]" ("Coming to T e r m s " 254). The new Germany, the "normal nation," is defined by "principles of good governance, equality before the law, human rights and multiculturalism." T h e Nazi past is understood as the antithesis of what Germany n o w stands for (Taberner, Recasting 2). It is important to note that this new "normality" is based on the West German experience exclusively (Taberner, Recasting 3). For more on normalization, see also Olick; Schoenbaum and Pond 230. Germany's first chance of acquiring a certain grandeur in Europe ("Deutschlands Jahrhundert") Stern says, was at the beginning of the twentieth century through the "unübertroffene Integration von Wissenschaft, Technologie und Unternehmertum" ("unsurpassed Integration of science, technology and entrepreneurialism") (12). The year 1990 offers Germany, n o w a nation with solid democratic institutions, a second chance to be a leading nation in Europe after the "Überwindung der alten Zerrissenheit" ("overcoming prior disunity") (23).

8

Introduction

history between 1949 and 1989 as the 'norm' from which united Germany might derive its identity and socio-political stability" {Recasting l). 21 When Gerhard Schröder spoke before those assembled to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 2005, he did so "als Repräsentant des demokratischen Deutschlands" ("Rede"; our emphasis).22 As the first German chancellor to participate in official D-Day ceremonies in France, he reminded listeners in 2004 that Germany had found "den Weg zurück in den Kreis der zivilisierten Völkergemeinschaft."23 The Holocaust itself, the giant whose shadow befalls the German landscape, is being reconsidered as a "transnational and collaborative enterprise," perpetrated in collusion and collaboration with a number of other countries, and losing its claim as a purely German event. Likewise, as Holocaust memory becomes globali2ed, meaning, as the Holocaust is transformed from an historically, temporally, and geographically fixed event into an iconic representation of genocide in global memory, its historical ties to Germans are loosened. These processes open up a space where "normalization" appears possible, indeed acceptable. It is the space, Bill Niven says, in which the rediscovery of German suffering can thrive ("Globalisation" 237). Such yearning for "normality" can be discomforting for many, especially those who understand themselves as the primary victim groups of National Socialism. The internal German memory controversies of the past two decades—the Historikerstreit (Historians' Debate), the rededication of the Neue Wache to all victims of the war, the Walser-Bubis debate, or the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, to name only a few— make clear that attempts to diffuse or suspend traditional categories of victim and perpetrator elicit an intensity of emotion that originates, in part, from personal or family histories of victimization on opposing sides of the debate. While some may yearn for "normality"—seeing in their own history of suffering a connection with other victims of war—others 21

Contrasting comments on "normalization" within Germany can be seen in the texts of Jürgen Habermas and Arnulf Baring. Habermas cannot accept any German desire for normality as it would relativize an anomaly: Auschwitz. Returning to the "normality" of a reestablished national state, he claims, would be equal to using "the devil to drive out Satan" (180). For Baring, on the other hand, Auschwitz is not "das zentrale Datum" ("the central date") and not the essence of German history (330). For a critical analysis of progressive and conservative views, see Jarausch 17, 55-57. On the contested use of the terms "normalization" or "normality" for the Berlin Republic, see Taberner's "Preface" to German Literature xiii-xxvii.

22 23

"as the representative of a democratic Germany" "the way back into the circle of civilized peoples." It is important to note that in both these speeches Schröder also emphasizes the responsibility of this democratic, civilized Germany to remember the victims of the "Deutschland jener finsteren Jahre" ("Germany of those dark years") ("Speech").

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

9

contest the possibility. For a people labeled in 2002 "das symbolische Volk der Täter" (Williams),24 recognition of non-Jewish German victimization during the Third Reich cannot transpire through an effacement of Holocaust memory. Though Germans may seek normality—and truly, recognizing Dresden while not forgetting Auschwitz is progress toward a larger view of history—the German past of perpetration will not soon fade from memory. The sum of all atrocities committed during the Nazi years, leading to an unparalleled breach in civilization, is engrained in the annals of the "symbolic" nation of perpetrators. In post-unified Germany, the balancing act lies, as Niven sees it, in the "broader awareness of the true extent of National Socialist criminality and the range of victims." While Niven optimistically views inclusiveness towards the past as a tool to strengthen democratic and social ideals, he also recognizes the "considerable resistance to making critical memory of German crimes a cornerstone of German national identity" (Facing 5).25 Where do the boundaries lie between victim and perpetrator in the history of massive air bombings, expulsion, and rape? Where and how do individuals, not only nations, address questions of guilt and responsibility? A binary understanding of the roles of victims and perpetrators and a schematized understanding of national histories prove inadequate for vast segments of Europe's population in light of the complexity of individual experiences. With an emphasis on personal over collective responsibility and suffering, the webwork of history challenges conventional narratives of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims. The processes at hand are not easily categorized. A differentiated analysis of the social, cultural, and political discourse, to which this volume stands as an early contribution, presents the problematic relationship between victims and perpetrators and calls into question the rigidity of traditionally defined roles in the period of the Third Reich and the Second World War. The essays collected here address the identity narratives mediated through culture that influence relations between individuals and nations in 24 25

"the symbolic nation of perpetrators" German national identity is influenced by a myriad of social, economic, and political factors, to be sure. Yet, even as the forces of globalization and multiculturalism diffuse an ethnocentric self-understanding of what it means to be German today, the emergence of 1945 in cultural memory as a collective national trauma moves German national identity in a Germano-centric direction. In this volume, Daniel Becker reminds us that defining national self-understanding in rigid reference to the German past maintains a homogenous, "white" German identity (see Wildenthal 9) that contradicts and ignores the multicultural quality of German society today. Taberner believes the new Germany's main challenge is to "live up to its own rhetoric of inclusiveness, diversity, and transparency. In this way it may be able to shape a form of German identity that moves away from a narrow focus on ethnic homogeneity towards a new pluralism [. . .]" (14).

10

Introduction

Europe in the present. Specifically, they survey how the historical constellation of victim and perpetrator is revisited in the culture of the postunification period. While the secondary literature on German suffering is expanding, little exists in collected form both to introduce and to review the polemic as well as to investigate its specific manifestations in contemporary culture. Examining the (representation of the German past—not only the way it is portrayed but also how it is being reevaluated— necessitates an interdisciplinary perspective. The discourse on German suffering filters into all aspects of culture in the post-unification period. Disciplines such as social psychology, political science, anthropology, history, and cultural studies are needed to query the extent and boundaries of the social shift occurring. That the majority of the following articles here represent literary studies lies in the fact that literature is one place where redefinitions of the past are most actively being contested. These essays represent not only a variety of disciplinary perspectives; also differentiating them are the diverse national and generational perspectives of their authors. Dissimilar viewpoints on themes like "dealing with the past" or the "normalization" of the Berlin Republic result from the distinct nationalizations and socializations of the authors. Collectively, the essays reveal spaces for shared memory, spaces for division, and, in part, possibilities for reconciliation between victim and perpetrator. The dialogue examined includes voices not only from contemporary Germany, but also from Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland—unequal partners in a convoluted history of oppression and victimization. The inclusion of Jewish voices ensures that the dialogue is contextualized within the framework of German perpetration in the 1930s and 1940s. The cultural, social, and political processes at hand interrelate in a complex web between the personal and the public. The culture of memory figures centrally. How the past is (represented in public commemoration, political dialogue between nations, or in private stories depends on how it is remembered both by individuals and the nations they comprise. Conversely, the "work of remembering" is central to constructing multifaceted European identities in the twenty-first century. Acts of remembrance, be they private (familial), public (national, political), or cultural (through literature, film, art), contribute to the formation of social memory. The power and politics of memory is staggering: While it can unlock the silences created by social, ideological, and moral taboos or unspoken guilt, it can also "block historical understanding and impede an open discussion of the past" (Moeller, "Terms" 255). The reevaluation of "personally experienced" wartime history is the attempt to thematize the divide between public and official commemoration, i. e., to allow for private family stories, previously "silenced" stories, to be told. Its effect

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

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on a more comprehensive understanding of the past is the subject of these inquiries. Thematically, the essays are grouped to reflect different foci in the new victim/perpetrator discourse: transgenerational memory, the air war and German literature, Jewish victimization, transnational reconciliation, and historical consciousness in the German present. While the thematic subdivisions in one sense guide the reader, they should not deflect from the interconnectedness of the subjects. It is impossible, for instance, to examine German historical consciousness or reconciliation processes in the twenty-first century without recognizing the generational shift in memory that informs these transformations. Similarly, silence and remembrance mark conflicting ways of dealing not only with GermanJewish history, but also with the Allied bombings of German cities, the expulsions from Central and Eastern Europe, or wartime rape. How and what is remembered across generations lies at the heart of studying the historical consciousness in younger generations—who were not eyewitnesses to these particular events. Just as the categories of trauma and complicity, victimhood and responsibility, personal and national myths, and ultimately, victim and perpetrator cannot be unequivocally categorized, neither can their analysis. Transgenerational Memory Aleida Assmann's study on the concept of generation within the frameworks of memory and the work of reconstructing the past appropriately introduces the volume. Much of current scholarship on the reevaluation of 1945 centers on the present shift in generational memory and generational identities. Assmann delineates the centrality of the concept of generation to identity construction and its application to comprehending history. Generational identity, Assmann explains, "is made up not only of shared perceptions and experiences, but also of the manner in which historical events are transformed and exchanged as memories." Recent German "generational" literature that thematizes the Second World War and the Holocaust, meshes individual, family, and national history as its protagonists' personal search for identity intertwines with the family history that has preceded them. Through the vehicle of the "family novel," the fundamental discrepancy between official and private memory that has defined the German postwar era is revealed. Assmann's analyses of Günter Grass's novella Im Krebsgang and Uwe Timm's novel Am Beispiel meines Bruders (2003) relate these significant contemporary texts to the

12

Introduction

conflict between history and memory in German families. Although the memories of postwar generations vary greatly, owing to differing family histories, Assmann believes today's memory literature possesses the potential to mediate between dissimilar memories. Second- and thirdgeneration writers, enabled by knowledge gained from decades of historical education, consciously seek to fill in the "blind spots" and "gaps in the consciousness of their parents." Today's memory literature, she states, contributes to the Halbwachsian "reshaping operation" on the past, "not only by adapting memories to the needs of the present time, but by also confronting memories from the Na2i period with what we know today, and by filling in the blind spots of a restricted awareness after the fact, imaginatively." Even as Assmann sees the potential in recent family novels to transfer private family memory into cultural memory by critically questioning unspoken family history, she reminds us that the transferal of memory from one generation to the next accentuates the limits of understanding and communication from an intergenerational perspective. Nikhil Sathe and Rachel Halverson illustrate this point with analyses of Am Beispiel meines Bruders and the novels hena (2002) and Irenas l^iebe (2002), respectively. The first-person narrator in Timm's novel is a study on the differences in mentality between the first generation—the supporters or fellow travelers of the Third Reich and the participants in the war—and the second generation, the so-called 1968ers, who protested against the unresolved dissonances in their parents' histories. Sathe's analysis supports Assmann's contention that the concept of generations has undergone a change. The bipolar generational constellation of earlier Väterliteratur ("father literature")—marked by the younger generation's accusation and moral condemnation of its father's generation and, hence, a breach between the generations—cedes to the idea of continuity and connections via family relationships in the "family novel." Sathe reads Timm's novel as a direct, critical commentary on the contemporary debates on German suffering and analyzes the distancing techniques Timm uses to "neutralize emotional identification with German victimization" and to remain mindful of German atrocities. Nonetheless, Sathe sees the novel as ultimately conciliatory, as overcoming the breach between generations outlined by Assmann. Although Timm refuses to accept the mindset and ideology of the wartime generation—the limits to his understanding of his parents' past—he attempts to make peace with their generation. The novel exemplifies intergenerational dialogue—even if the older generation has passed on—and the process of (posthumous) reconciliation between the generations.

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

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Whereas Timm's novel marks the limits of understanding, the novels Lena (Hanna Johansen) and Lenas Liebe (Judith Kuckart) lay bare the limits of communication. In her study of these literary representations of communicating between the generations, Rachel Halverson finds that a transfer of memory between generations demands "a clear sense o f self, place, and the past from both generations, not just from the older generation imparting their memories." As the main character in Lena searches for her own identity by trying to reconcile her youth with her old age, time and communication between generations come into focus. In Lena's Liebe, on the other hand, time and space are accentuated as the protagonists respond to historical ambivalences and sensitivities during a trip from Oswiecim (Auschwitz) to Berlin. 26 Both texts place the individuals and their memories in the "private sphere of families and interpersonal relationships" and highlight emotional memory over official memory. The idea o f "working through the past" acquires a personal, not a sociopolitical agenda, in these contemporary works where the younger generation traces the connections between personal and public history.

The Air War and German Literature

No topic, aside from perhaps the expulsions, has fueled the current discussion on German suffering more than the aerial bombing campaign against German cities conducted by British and American forces between 1940-1945. W. G. Sebald's Zurich lectures on the air war and German literature in 1997 first raised the question whether the trauma o f the air war had been duly represented in postwar Germany, suggesting not only that Germans had collectively suppressed the national trauma of the air war, but also that the topic was a taboo, perpetuated through the postwar generations into the present. In this volume, both Volker Hage and Susanne Vees-Gulani critically scrutinize Sebald's thesis, as each offers examples of German literary responses to the air war. Hage's study outlines the dilemma experienced by postwar generations of German writers on how to reconcile acknowledging German responsibility and guilt for wartime atrocities with their own suffering as victims of the air war. From Adorno's pronouncement in the 1950s that "to write after Auschwitz is barbaric" ("Cultural Criticism"

26

Where technically possible, diacritical marks have been reproduced throughout the volume; some diacritical marks were not reproducible in this font.

14

Introduction

162),27 through to the current writings of Dieter Forte and Durs Grünbein, Hage traces the German literary response—or lack of response—to the air war since the war's end. His summation that the void registered by Sebald is more a lack of reception rather than production, creates questions for further inquiry: namely, why the topic today, sixty years postwar, resonates so strongly in the German public. Susanne Vees-Gulani anaylzes trauma and personal memories in the writings of Dieter Forte, an author whose works articulate the struggle to remain silent or to speak about the anguish of living through Allied bombings as a child. Forte (b. 1935) clearly identifies himself as a victim of National Socialism ("Ich fühle mich"); his writings communicate the fragmentation of a world accessible only through memories. Vees-Gulani believes Forte's novels answer Sebald's challenge to aesthetically portray the traumatic memory of the air war. Forte's achievement, according to Vees-Gulani, lies in forming language for the "silent gaps between the facts" that house the experience of trauma. For Forte, healing means creating a space where emotional distress can be voiced and affirmed in the individual narrative. As a writer, Forte wields the power of language to facilitate recovery or even symbolic rebirth from the emotional darkness of painful memories. Sebald's argumentation on the air war, as indeed much of the literature that has ensued on the subject (e.g., Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand), reflects the West German history of discourse on this "taboo" topic. The fact that the subject of the air war was not only openly discussed in the GDR, but also used effectively in official, ideological positioning against Western ideas and values, is often overlooked. Thomas Fox argues that viewing Dresden as the German Hiroshima—a controversy played out in the landtag in the state of Sachsen in 2005—shows continuity with the GDR narrative on the war, the role East German literature played in that discourse, and the Dresden discourse of victimization. Fox's study of East German poetry and prose follows a consistent representation of the destruction of Dresden in the GDR. While early East German literary works reflect more the polemic language of propaganda, making Dresden's destruction a metaphor for capitalist aggression, then later, for the loss of childhood, texts by younger poets of the Sächsische Dichterschule relate decay in the city to the general tristesse of life in the GDR. From Heinz Czechowski and Volker Braun to Durs Grünbein, Fox follows the generational shift in memory in regard to the catastrophe "Dresden." With Grünbein, Fox intimates, poetry from Germany's East achieves a 27

"[. . .] nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch" (Gesammelte Schriften 10.1: 30).

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

15

critical reflection that creates new space for both German-Jewish and East/We st German memory.

Jewish Victimization: Silence and Remembrance

No two words better describe the contentious struggle to validate individual memory in the postwar era than "silence" and "remembrance." Particularly in reference to Jewish victimization, the words define postwar processes of dealing, or not dealing, with the systematic murder of Europe's Jews. The essays in this section approach the question o f silence and remembrance in vastly different ways. The first analyzes one author's personal engagement with family and political silences; the second examines a fictionalized confrontation with ritualized, and thus, meaningless memorialization; and the third investigates the silences and voices extant in existing Holocaust monuments in the Berlin landscape. Uniting them is their focus on the victims of Third Reich policies and particularly on Jewish suffering. They cover the conflict between silence and remembrance in the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic postunification, and Austria—demonstrating that these geographic locations of the former Third Reich continue to wrestle with their "unmastered" past. Writer Barbara Honigmann's struggle with a Jewish-German identity addresses the silence imposed on Jewish victims in the former G D R ; there, ideological censorship of "the Jewish question" and latent antiSemitism suppressed Jewish stories of victimization under National Socialism. Elke Segelcke explores this silence by analyzing Honigmann's narrative approach to family history and the history of Jewish oppression under the Third Reich and the socialist G D R state. Within the dialectic of the victim/perpetrator relationship, Honigmann assumes an assertive position, Segelcke argues. Through her writing, Honigmann reclaims her Judaism from the silences of an upbringing in the G D R , even as she rejects all discourses of victimization. This includes the German victim discourse of the 1950s and also the discourse on Jewish victimization and German guilt beginning in the 1970s, one that "reduced the GermanJewish relationship to the horrors of Auschwitz and anti-Semitism." Ultimately, Honigmann's journey into a family memory leads her to resist the past, a ritualized way of dealing with the Holocaust, and a victim identity in the present. Honigmann's criticism of the GDR's inability to recognize, let alone empathize, with Jewish victims of Nazism is starkly echoed, this time in

16

Introduction

relation to Austria, in Christoph Ransmayr's novel Morbus Kitahara. As James Martin makes clear in his study of the novel, the text points to the "blind spots" in Austria's history with regard to the Holocaust and National Socialism and to a corresponding blindness to individual suffering and historical acts of perpetration. Martin's analysis centers on the postwar politics of memory that have ritualized memory of the Holocaust and created a reified victim-perpetrator complex. Ransmayr's "disjunctive narrative"—a highly fictionalized portrayal of a world where World War II seems never to have ended—addresses the "insufficiency of collective memorialization to embody living personal memory," Martin notes. The novel thus illuminates the gap between public commemoration of the Holocaust and "the unvoiced private memories of death, loss, violence and suffering" that truly motivate remembrance and mourning. Ultimately, Martin claims, an inadequate and inaccurate representation of the past comes to bear "upon the postwar generations born in Austria, who have more often than not distanced themselves from the National Socialist past." Ransmayr's "deliberately peripheral view of history" in Morbus Kitahara probes precisely "the frailties of historical and literary representation" that threaten to make the Holocaust "a black hole in the field of historical vision." Representation of the Holocaust is again the subject in Margit Sinka's analysis of the memorial in Berlin's Bavarian Quarter, "Places of Remembrance." Sinka's essay directs attention to the difficulties in physically memorializing the Holocaust in the Berlin Republic. Whereas Martin stresses the representational void of personal, lived experiences of victimization in Holocaust commemoration, Sinka celebrates such a voicing in "Places of Remembrance," a memorial that consciously addresses these silences. Sinka gives special attention to the ten-year deliberation process that preceded the installment of the Bavarian Quarter memorial—a process that purposefully attempted to deal with the past and exclude "neither victim nor perpetrator." The very form of the memorial, a product of this long, personalized deliberation and confrontation with the Nazi past, defies a ritualized commemoration of the Holocaust that arrests memory; instead it activates it within the spectator. Consisting of eighty aluminum signs with simple designs of everyday objects on the one side and explanations of the Nazi edicts of suppression they represent on the other, the decentralized memorial spatially intersects with the everyday lives of present-day residents of the Bavarian Quarter. The dialogue between different generations and between survivors and bystanders that the memorial invites attempts to rectify the silence cloaking lost lives. By doing so, Sinka believes, "voids will have no home in 'Places of Remembrance.'"

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinnei

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Transnational Reconciliation Just as 1989 decisively changed Germany's geopolitical landscape and opened up new interpretations of the past within its reconstructed borders, so, too, did it decisively mark a turning point in the way Germany's neighbors to the east reviewed their own role in this history. Until 1989, public discourse in Czechoslovakia and Poland centered on each country's own national suffering, leaving the question of German suffering through the expulsions untouched. Since then, as archives are opened and historians reexamine the events that resulted in millions being uprooted—among these many tortured, traumatized, and others dead— the question of how younger generations of Poles and Czechs (and Germans) should remember the expulsions has become pressing. Political, public, and literary discussions in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany testify to a new, critical analysis of the relationships between Czechs and Germans and Germans and Poles, whose lives and histories intersected on multiple planes long before—and especially during—World War II and the resulting expulsions. Although the historical conflicts between Germany and its neighbors have been "officially" resolved, contemporary processes of reconciliation reveal the private wounds that still need healing. Literary and filmic representations of the expulsions figure significantly in how they are remembered and interpreted. As current narratives influence the formation of public and cultural memory, they also reflect, Valentina Glajar notes, "a political and cultural desire to normalize the past." Glajar's essay focuses on recent literary texts by Germans and Czech writers that call into question the dichotomous categories of "victim" and "perpetrator" in the Czech historiography of the expulsions. Using the novels Bo^ena by Peter Härtling (2003), Ηve^dnä hodina vrahu [The Widow Killer] by Pawel Kohout (1995), and Niemands^eit by Jörg Bernig (2002), Glajar considers how German and Czech writers now explore the labyrinth of the German/Czech conflict, whereby Germans—once oppressors of Czechs during the Nazi protectorate—became the victims of Czechs during the expulsions, and Czechs—once oppressed and victimized by the Nazis—became victimizers of Germans during the expulsions. Indicative of the current reevaluation of 1945, these discerning representations center on individual stories rather than collective fates— an approach which more easily questions reified categories of guilt and suffering since it channels history to the realm of personal experience. Glajar concludes that "a critical normalization of the past is still out of reach." Yet complex narratives that do not emphasize the victimization of

18

Introduction

one group by ignoring the suffering of another "suggest a possible reconciliation and a new stage in the process of working through the past by Czechs and Germans." Challenges to the reconciliation process between Germany and Poland sixty years postwar reiterate the conflicts that define GermanCzech identity narratives. In light of Germany's renewed emphasis on the expulsions and German suffering, Pawel Lutomiski asserts that PolishGerman relations find themselves in a period of redefinition. Debates surrounding a German Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (Center against Expulsions) or the foundation of the Preussische Treuhand (Prussian Claims Council)—a non-government supported organization that aims legally to reclaim individual property lost by the Germans through the expulsions— have unsettled a primary Polish self-understanding as victims of Nazi Germany. Lutomski traces waves of progress and regression in a genuine reconciliation between the countries. Central to attaining a common understanding, he avers, is establishing and nurturing a collective European memory unfettered by narrower nationalistic interests, one that allows for divergent memories of suffering to coexist. The controversies of the present, while potentially divisive, might conceivably also engender a dialogue that precludes the existing "competition for victimhood." "Acknowledging and dealing with the moral ambiguities of history," Lutomski states, "is necessary for both societies." Such an understanding of their shared history, replete with its ambiguities and complexities, might well come through contemporary Polish literature, Dagmar Wienroeder-Skinner argues. Younger Polish writers— here Stefan Chwin, Pawel Huelle, and Olga Tocarczuk—now freed from the ideological constraints of the 1945-1989 past, are searching into their own, new personal identities, as well as the once taboo topics of expulsions and forced resettlements. Their texts, "culturally rich and generous in gestures of reconciliation," avoid cliched portrayals of the past that have served to divide Poles and Germans into essentialist, opposing sides. In differentiating between causes and circumstances in the processes of suffering, they circumvent the unidimensional representation of GermanPolish history that has created "blind spots" in historical accounts. As younger Polish writers explore both real and fictitious roots, they simultaneously create a new regionalistic writing, which invariably intertwines with the reality of a German presence in pre-1945 Poland. In doing so, they generate "a new, primarily historically driven 'communicative memory'" essential to the post-1989 memory discourse. The "nonpolemical and anti-revisionist perspective" exemplified in these Polish literary texts at the turn of twenty-first century critically relates to cooperative efforts within Europe and the European Union. Similarly to Glajar and Lutomski, Wien-

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

19

roeder-Skinner concludes that the current processes of reflection carry strong momentum for the various stages of reconciliatation. On the other hand, "more mutual tolerance, genuine interest, and generous respect for each other's historical situation is needed to inspire a feeling of togetherness between nations." Historical Consciousness and the German Present What effect does the critical, yet often subjective public redefinition of victims and perpetrators in the German past have on the development of German self-identity? Conversely, how does the ongoing reevaluation of German war experiences reflect mindsets and perceptions that have long existed yet remained unspoken? Harald Welzer's study of historical consciousness in the post-unification period probes precisely such questions. Welzer reviews here the impetus for and results of the groundbreaking study Opa war kein Na^i, which he conducted together with Sabine Moller and Karoline Tschuggnall. The emotional dimension of historical consciousness, Welzer notes, profoundly influences, even reprograms how young people understand the German past of perpetration—despite decades of educating young Germans with factual knowledge of the Third Reich and the atrocities it perpetuated. Welzer documents the gap between official memory culture and communicative memory that defines the postwar era. While collective memory prioritizes the Holocaust and NS crimes, the private remembering of families focuses on suffering of family members in the war. The individual picture of German history reflects the felt history and emotions expressed and passed on within families. Welzer concludes that the need for loyalty and a strong identification with the grandparents' generation lead to the collective phenomenon of desiring and creating a "good" past—even if the facts in one's family history blatantly indicate otherwise. This view of National Socialism and the Holocaust separates Nazis and the Germans into two different groups of people and makes Germans themselves the victims of National Socialism. This model of history, Welzer believes, has a solid place in the communicative memory of the third and fourth generations in the Federal Republic. Moreover, in light of its significance, it has not yet been adequately examined. Based on Welzer's findings, how Germany as a "perpetrator nation" deals with the legacy of its "unusable" past remains a question of significant import. Brad Prager pursues one avenue in his study of contemporary German horror and thriller films. The historical past that has not

20

Introduction

been "mastered" on the private level, as documented by Welzer, can be visually transformed on the screen through the dark and uninhibited expression of primal violence. Filmic texts such as Robert Schwentke's Tattoo, Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomie, or Hirschbiegel's Das Experiment offer one way to work through a past of perpetration, Prager suggests, precisely because they do not shy from the brutality or the "evil" implicit in National Socialist atrocities: "Confronting the wounds of history by way of literal bodily wounds is one means of opening a path to working through the past of perpetration." In contrast to historical films (e.g., Oer Untergang) that tend to avoid a realistic portrayal of atrocities, genre-based films not only engage Germany's legacy as a perpetrator state, they also question the viability of this legacy into the present. The monster stories they construct reflect on the perpetuation of past violence into present space. As acts of perpetration are viewed beyond their culturally specific context, they reveal the "connection between authoritarian personalities and violence in the name of the State" that secures the continued existence of individual perpetrators and perpetrator nations into the present. Such a perspective places the victim/perpetrator complex into a global context that raises awareness of the unrelenting existence of perpetration. The trend in cultural, official, and public discourse shows that dissecting the victim and perpetrator roles of the German past grows increasingly insistent in the evolving and complex process of "normalization." Laurel Cohen-Pfister's inquiry into public and academic discourse on the wartime rape of German women traces the development in positions on German suffering and guilt in the post-unification period. Using two texts that portray the rapes, the film BeFreier und Befreite and the anonymous diary Eine Frau in Berlin, whose reception spans the post-unification period from the beginning to the present, Cohen-Pfister outlines to what degree the wartime rape of German women figures in the contemporary rendering of German history and of a national self-understanding. Reaction to the representation of the rapes has ranged from fears of revisionist history in the early 1990s to the embracing of felt history in the new millennium. Presently, public sentiment reveals a desire to accept and understand the experiences of the wartime generation as part of familiar family history. Daniel Becker's contribution fittingly concludes the volume. In a review of seminal moments in the transformation of German historical consciousness in the Postwende era—e.g., the debates over Martin Walser's peace prize speech, the Holocaust memorial, and German involvement in the Kosovo War—Becker questions whether the collective endeavor of coming to terms with the past has ended—"or perhaps even failed." He wonders further whether Germans have "developed the 'normal' national

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

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identity which some intellectuals embraced and others feared in the wake of unification." The current emphasis on non-Jewish German victims, reminiscent of the Germans' focus on their own suffering in the decade immediately following the war, raises the question whether Germans have abandoned the moral challenge to deal with their history. Although the Holocaust remains a focal point of German memory culture, "it is," Becker states, "no longer privileged in pivotal moments in the country's history important to individual and collective identities." Alongside the Holocaust, "German experiences of wartime trauma have surfaced [. . .] as legitimate narratives in the formation of personal and national identity." German historical memories become increasingly particularized and fragmented as Holocaust memory becomes more globalized. Ultimately, Becker views current developments optimistically. On the one hand, the Holocaust Memorial, precisely because of its abstraction to the historical event of the Holocaust, "facilitates a personal (r)approchement to the deed and its meaning(s)—by Germans, Jews, others." And, too, he notes, the current discourse on Germans as victims does not ignore the crimes perpetrated under National Socialism (see also Moeller, "Sinking Ships" 180-81). Becker believes historical consciousness in the Berlin Republic is not suspect to a new nationalism that disregards the past: "Rather, it reflects the manifold social and cultural changes the country has undergone in the decades since the end of World War II." Although the Germans are still grappling with their past, "they have perhaps," the author claims, "at least come to terms with the stupefying dilemmas of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.'' The essays in this volume indubitably testify to ongoing processes in interpreting and assessing a history that refuses to go away. Yet, what does it even—or still—mean to "come to terms" with the past in Germany in the twenty-first century? While sociopolitical developments in postunification Germany have certainly moved a self-perception of the German state into the future, i.e., into the framework of a free, democratic European Union, the renewed focus on German victimization revives the question to what degree or whether Germans can or may leave the Nazi past behind. The conference "The Politics of Guilt," sponsored by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and the German Historical Museum in 2005, signals that "coming to terms with the past" remains a moral challenge that assumes a new dimension in today's discourse on German suffering. In their summary of the conference, Barbara Könczol and Christina Morina articulate one of its conceptual premises: that the history of German Vergangenheitsbewältigung is above all "eine Geschichte von Vermeidungen, Verdrängungen, selektivem Vergessen und Erinnern—

22

Introduction

und angesichts der Last von historischer 'Schuld' und tradierter 'Verantwortung' zudem eine Geschichte des eigenen Opferdiskurses" (Könczol and Morina).28 The continued difficulty, or perhaps inability, to label the processes of dealing with the past in an adequate and acceptable terminology magnifies the polemics of this issue. Thomas Schmid says: "Aufarbeitung, Bewältigung, Trauerarbeit: Diese und andere Handwerkervokabeln, meist durchaus bemüht verwendet, beweisen in ihrer unangemessenen Forschheit nur, daß nicht möglich ist, was mit ihnen gemeint sein soll."29 Schmid even argues that the process of working through the past is not in its final stages; it is, in his view, just "in its beginning."30 For a civilization that once recognized the individual as sacred, the schism between the humanistic tradition and the Holocaust is enormous, he stresses; the attempt to address this discrepancy cannot occur within the measure of a few, brief decades: Deutschland hat die Zivilisation schlechthin zur Disposition gestellt. Das bewältigt man nicht, das arbeitet man nicht auf. Und es liegt auf der Hand, daß eine Zeitspanne, die vier Generationen umfaßt und an deren Ende die Zeitzeugen rar werden, bei weitem nicht ausreicht, das rätselhafte Verbrechen des Holocaust zu ermessen und eine angemessene Form der "Erinnerung", des "Gedenkens" und der "Trauer" um die Opfer zu finden. (Schmid) 31

In a commentary on the victim/perpetrator controversy, writer Richard Wagner discounts the idea that Germans can leave the past behind them. According to Wagner, such a passage cannot occur because the German collective consciousness has yet to truly comprehend the extent of Nazi crimes: "[. . .] eine konsequente Abnabelung vom übermächtigen Projekt des dritten Reichs [hat] niemals stattgefunden. Es ist unser Dilemma bis heute: Wir werden mit der Vergangenheit nicht fertig" (Wagner).32 The problem lies in any insistence on finality, on "closing the book." As 28

29

30 31

32

"a history of avoidance, repression, selective forgetting and remembering—and in view of the burden of historical 'guilt' und inherited 'responsibility,' it is also a history of Germans' own victim disourse" '"Working through the past,' 'mastering the past,' 'the work of mourning': These and other trade terms, usually used in a most conscientious manner, prove with their inappropriate brashness that it is impossible to do what is meant by them." The title of his article: "Die Begegnung der Deutschen mit ihrer Vergangenheit hat noch gar nicht begonnen." "Germany dispensed with civilization itself. You don't 'master' that; you don't 'come to terms' with it. It is also evident that a period that spans four generations and at whose end the eyewitnesses are becoming rare is by far not long enough to gauge the mysterious crime of the Holocaust and to find an appropriate form of 'remembrance,' 'commemoration,' and 'mourning' for the victims." "[. . .] we have never completely cut the cord with the overwhelming project of the Third Reich. It is our dilemma to this day: We cannot come to terms with this past."

23

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

Robert Moeller says: "The process of Aufarbeitung is dynamic; the move toward closure (Schlusstrich) or "mastery" (Bewältigung) is not ("Terms" 255).

This volume illuminates the social impact of cultural and political discourse on German suffering even as it demarcates the moral boundaries of this discourse. The Holocaust continues to figure centrally in the present understanding of German national identity, yet the degree to which different narratives of suffering will emerge and foreground themselves has not yet been determined. An official memory of the Holocaust seems assured, to which the memorial sites erected throughout Germany, in Berlin in particular, and also in Austria stand as witnesses. But the need to profess individual and collective stories of non-Jewish German civilian pain signifies a new turn in coming to terms with past, here understood most personally. Still, if the process of identity formation for the German nation in the post-unification era is to take place within the awareness gained of history over the past decades, the history of German suffering and traumatization can only be remembered alongside the history of National Socialist crimes. Felt history must be contextualized within the historical actuality of the Third Reich, National Socialism, and the "Final Solution." In the space created by acknowledging German victimhood without relativizing the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans lies the potential for grasping the complete experience of the Second World War and its aftermath. It is the space that allows Germans to envision and create in the twenty-first century a unified national self-understanding that recognizes both Germany's past of perpetration as well its suffering. Works Cited

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—. Gesammelte

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Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1977. —. "The Meaning of Working Through the Past." Can One Uve after Auschwitz

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Als Feuer vom Himmel fiel: Der bombenkrieg gegen die Deutschen. SPIEGEL· special 1 (2003). Anatomie \Anatomy\. Dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky. Columbia TriStar, 2000. Anonyma. Eine Frau in Berlin. Frankfurt/M: Eichborn, 2003. Assmann, Aleida, and Ute Frevert. Geschichtsvergessenheit—Geschichtsversessenheit:

Vom

Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999.

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Baring, Arnulf. Es lebe die Republik! Es lebe Deutschland! Stationen demokratischer Erneuerung 1949-1999. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999. Bartov, Omer. Minors of Destruction. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Bernig, Jörg. Niemands^eit. Stuttgart/München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002. Brunesen, Frank. "The New Self-Understanding of the Berlin Republic: Readings of Contemporary German History." Taberner and Finlay. 19-35. Cohen-Pfister, Laurel. "The Suffering of the Perpetrators: Unleashing German Postwar Collective Memory in German Literature of the Twenty-First Century." Forum for Modern Language Studies. Speaal Issue: Literary Reflections of Modern War 4Ί.2 (2005): 123-35. Dresden. Dir. Roland Suso Richter. ZDF, 2006. Das Experiment [The Experiment- Dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel. Samuel Goldwyn, 2001. Die Flucht der Deutschen: Die SPIEGELrSerie über Vertreibung aus dem Osten. SPIEGEL· spedal 2 (2002). Forte, Dieter. "Ich fühle mich wie ein Fremder." Interview with Uwe Wittstock. TagesAn^eiger 16 Nov. 2002: 49. Frei, Norbert. 1945 und wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen. München: Beck, 2005. Friedrich, Jörg. Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945. München: Propyläen, 2002.

Grass, Günter. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. Habermas, Jürgen. "1989 in the Shadow of 1945: On the Normality of a Future Berlin Republic." Berlin Republic: Writings on Germany. Trans. Steven Randall. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997. Hage, Volker. Zeugen der Zerstörung: Die Uteraten und der Luftkrieg. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2003. Härtling, Peter. Bo^ena. 1994. 4th ed. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2003. Heer, Hannes. Vom Verschwinden der Tater: Der Vernichtungskrieg fand statt, aber keiner war dabei. Berlin: Aufbau, 2004; Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005. Herf, Jeffrey. Divided Memory: The Na%i Past in the Two Germanys. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997. Holocaust. Dir. Marvin Chomsky. NBC, 1978. Jarausch, Konrad, ed. After Unity. Reconfiguring German Identities. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1997. Johansen, Hanna. Lena. Köln: München: Hanser, 2002. Käppner, Joachim. "Die Opfer im Land der Täter." Süddeutsche Zeitung 19 Apr. 2005: Serie 8. "Köhler-Rede zum Kriegsende stößt auf scharfe Kritik in der SPD." Agence France Presse 9 May 2005. Lexis-Nexis. 11 May 2006. . Kohout, Pawel. Hve^dnd hodina vrahu [The Widow Killer]. Praha: Mladä Fronta, 1995. Könczöl, Barbara, and Christina Morina. "Politik der Schuld." Conference report. H-So^-u-Kult. 11 Nov. 2005. 12 May 2006 . Kuckart, Judith. Irenas Liebe. Köln: DuMont, 2002. Kümmel, Peter. "Ein Volk in der Zeitmaschine." Die Zeit 26 Feb. 2004. 10 May 2006 .

Cohen-Pfister, Wienroeder-Skinner

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Markovits, Andrei S., and Simon Reich. The German Predicament. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997. Moeller, Robert. "Sinking Ships, the Lost Heimat and Broken Taboos: Günter Grass and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany." Contemporary European History 12.2 (2003): 147-81. —. "War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany." The American Historical Review 101 (1996): 1008-48. —. "What Has 'Coming to Terms with the Past' Meant in Postwar Germany? From History to Memory to the 'History of Memory.'" Central European History 35 (2002): 223-56. "Movie About Dresden Stirs Criticism in Germany." NPK 9 Mar. 2006. 10 May 2006 . Naumann, Klaus. "Institutionalisierte Ambivalenz. Deutsche Erinnerungspolitik und Gedenkkultur nach 1945." Mittelweg 36 2 (2004): 64-75. —, ed. Nachkrieg in Deutschland. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2001. Niven, Bill. Facing the Nasj Past. London/New York: Roudedge, 2002. —. "The Gobalisation of Memory and the Rediscovery of German Suffering." German Uterature in the Age of Globalisation. Ed. Stuart Taberner. Birmingham, UK: U of Birmingham P: 2004. 229-46. Nolan, Mary. The Politics of Memory in the Berlin Republic." Radical History Review 81 (2001): 113-32. Olick, Jeffrey K. "What Does It Mean to Normalize the Past? Official Memory in German Politics since 1989." Social Science History 22-4 (Winter 1998): 547-71. Piper, Ernst. "Ein einzig Volk von Opfern; Eine unabgeschlossene Geschichte der deutschen Gedenkpolitik." Frankfurter Rundschau 7 Feb. 2005: Feuilleton 10. Raulff, Ulrich. "1945; Ein Jahr kehrt zurück: Tausche Geschichte gegen Gefühl." Süddeutsche Zeitung 30 Oct. 2003: 11. Reichel, Peter. Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Deutschland: Die Auseinandersetzung mit der NSDiktatur von 1945 bis heute. München: Beck, 2001. Schlink, Bernhard. Der Vorleser. Zürich: Diogenes, 1995. Schmid, Thomas. "Erst 58 Jahre; Die Begegnung der Deutschen mit ihrer Vergangenheit hat noch nicht richtig begonnen. Rechts nicht—und links auch nicht." Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntags^eitung 16. Nov. 2003: Politik 17. Schmidt, Christopher. "Klopfzeichen; Gefühlte Geschichte und wahre Helden haben Konjunktur." Süddeutsche Zeitung 15 Nov. 2003: Feuilleton 13. Schoenbaum, David, and Elizabeth Pond. The German Question and Other German Questions. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Schröder, Gerhard. "Rede [. . .] aus Anlass des 60. Jahrestages der Befreiung des Konzentrationslagers Auschwitz." Die Bundesregierung. 25. Jan. 2005. 10 May 2006 \ (2003) was published a year after Grass's novella Im Krebsgang. In this text, Timm reflects both on the framework of memory and on that of perception. The author and first-person narrator draws a portrait of his brother, sixteen years his senior, whose story today does not fit within any social framework of memory and thus, even though it is one of hundreds of thousands, had been silenced and forgotten. The two brothers' biographies run diametrically opposite courses: The older one volunteered for the Waffen-SS and died in the Russian campaign in 1943; the younger one took part in the 1968 protest movement and became a writer. In this case, two brothers—members of the same family generation—find themselves in two historical generations. In his retrospective work of remembering, Timm probes the limits of understanding which separate the two brothers from each other. In addition to a single early memory and a few stories his family remembers, he also has access to his brother's wartime diary. Although he finds in these pages "keine antisemitischen Äußerungen und keine Stereotypen wie in den Feldpostbriefen anderer Soldaten" (152),25 he does find a whole repertory of words that set the pattern for

25

as I try to communicate them, I realize that I cannot convey the innocence of these memories" (trans. A. Assmann). "no anti-Semitic remarks or stereotyped phrases like those found in letters sent from the front by other soldiers" (In My Brother's Shadow 140; subsequent page references for English translations of Am Beispiel meines Bruders refer to this text).

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43

perception—or better, for the exclusion of it. In this connection, Timm speaks of "Wortverfinsterungen,"26 whose shadows in some cases fell into the postwar period (101). He himself remembers words that accompanied him in his childhood: "Worte, die [. . .] gleichermaßen Verrohung und Verdrängung in der Sprache wiedergeben" (100)27: "[. . .] die Umsiedlung für die slawischen Untermenschen und die Endlösung der Judenfrage. Endlösung. Ein Wort, das für immer geächtet bleiben wird. Und ein Beleg dafür, daß auch die Sprache, die deutsche, ihre On-schuld verloren hat" (101).28 War and murder begin with language: "Es ist die angelernte Sprache, die das Töten erleichtert: Untermenschen, Parasiten, Ungeziefer" (94).29 When these are used, murder becomes "eine hygienische Maßnahme" (94).30 Timm speaks of the conditioning of entire age cohorts, a process for which there was also an expression: His brother "wurde geschliffen" (93), he "had the corners knocked o f f hitri' (84). The result of this remodeling was a shift on the scale of what is "ordinary." His brother's view of the routine of war is "der normale Blick" (95); in his diary "findet sich kein Satz, der so etwas wie Mitgefühl verrät, nicht die Andeutung einer Kritik an den Zuständen. [. . .] Es spricht daraus—und das ist das Erschreckende—eine partielle Blindheit, nur das Normale wird registriert" (152).31 It is this inculcation of what is "ordinary" that produces blind spots. Once again Timm: Fast alle haben weggesehen und geschwiegen, als die jüdischen Nachbarn abgeholt wurden und einfach verschwanden, und die meisten schwiegen abermals nach

26 27 28

29 30 31

"darkness descending on words" (trans. Μ. Ritterson), or "a subversion of the language" (92). "Phrases [. . .] illustrating the impoverishment of language and linguistic expression alike" (90). "[. . .] resettlement for the inferior Slavs, and final solution to the 'Jewish Question." Final Solution. A term that will be held in contempt forever and proof of the fact that even the German language has lost its innocence [. . .]" (92). Monstrous as these words sound today, they were originally intended as reassuring and masking: They were supposed to divert attention from what was happening beneath their technically clean and seemingly rational surface. That strategy, unfortunately, has not gone out of date. Thus, each year, the "Un-word of the Year" is chosen—for example, "ethnic cleansing" or "human capital"—to make us aware of obvious meanings that are anything but obvious. "The language they've been taught makes killing easier: inferior human beings, parasites, vermin whose lives are dirty, degenerate, brutish" (85). "a hygienic measure" (85). "a normal view" (85); "[. . .] there is no phrase betraying anything like sympathy, no hint at any criticism of the conditions of the time. [. . .] What they [his notes] seem to express—and this I find terrifying—is a partial blindness: only what is ordinary is recorded" (140).

44

Transgenerational Memory dem Krieg, als man erfuhr, wohin die Verschwundenen verschwunden waren. (106)32

Whatever was omitted from the picture by voluntary restriction of what people could see before and during the war, vanished after the war in familiar old phrases: Es war nicht nur eine gekränkte, sondern auch eine kranke Generation, die ihr Trauma in einem lärmenden Wiederaufbau verdrängt hatte. Das Geschehen verschwand in den Stereotypen: Hiüer, der Verbrecher. (106) 3 3

With W. G. Sebald, we may speak here of an "ans Un-menschliche grenzenden Mangel an moralischer Empfindlichkeit" (52).34 Moral sense and personal conscience are individual achievements that were anesthetized when young people joined the collective body of the SS or adapted to the norms of the National Socialist state. Hand in hand with that surrendering of individuality went the restriction of one's range of perception. Abandoning one's individuality was not accomplished abruptly, but gradually, in accordance with the secondary virtues held in high esteem since the times of Prussian militarism: obedience, subordination, and honor. What should have been the object of criticism, indignation, revulsion, even trauma—the methodical humiliation and abasement, exclusion and expulsion, deportation and murder of Jewish fellow citizens—was separated and banished from consciousness. What one was not aware of at the time, because one did not want to be aware of it, could not serve later as an object of memory. In order to be able to remember something, one needs a memory trace. In order to retain a trace, something must have stood out as remarkable, been observed and registered in one's memory at an earlier time. One cannot remember blind spots. In Freud's words, something that could never be forgotten "weil es zu keiner Zeit gemerkt wurde, niemals bewußt war," cannot be remembered later ("Erinnern" 128). 35

32

33

34 35

"Almost everyone looked away and said nothing when their Jewish neighbors were taken off, simply disappeared, and most maintained that silence after the war when they learned where they had disappeared to" (96). "Theirs was not just an injured but a sick generation, one that had repressed its traumas and channeled them into an ostentatious reconstruction. What had happened was translated into stereotypes: Hitler the criminal" (97). "lack of moral sensitivity bordering on inhumanity" "[. . .] because it was never noticed, was never conscious." Cognitive psychology, which is interested particularly in errors of memory and gaps in memory, has since devoted much attention to this problem. The psychologist Daniel L. Schacter distinguishes between two types of forgetting: errors in encoding and errors in retrieval of memories. The Germans' blind spots, according to this view, would have been caused by encoding errors, an interruption of their attention in the act of observing. Schacter writes: "[A] good deal of forgetting likely occurs because insufficient attention is devoted to a stimulus at the time of

Assmann: Limits o f Understanding

45

In our everyday life, many situations are so well defined that attention can be reduced to a minimum and alternative actions are thereby unthinkable. There is a great difference between human action that involves mental assessments and decisions on the one hand and simple functioning that involves adapting to the demands of a situation on the other. In Hitler's Germany, many citizens voluntarily switched from human action and attention to simple functioning and adaptation. Whatever remains underexposed because of absent-mindedness, reduced attention, and willful overlooking, sinks into the unconscious, from where it can hardly be reactivated. "We didn't know anything," is a phrase that was frequendy used after the war. In this way, the nightmare of what had happened was kept at a distance and acquired no "mark of reality" ("Wirklichkeitsakzent" [Rosenthal 14]). (In sharp contrast to such forms and effects o f conditioning, Peter Ustinov speaks of the ability to be astonished or alarmed as a moral talent [281].) The writers of family novels, be they of the second or third generation, find themselves repeatedly confronted with the limited awareness or the "absent-mindedness" of their parents and grandparents. It is precisely these blind spots which ignite the writing-and-remembering work of their children and grandchildren. Behind it all is the desire to penetrate the armor of old prejudices and to overcome the boundaries of understanding between the generations. There is an inverse relationship between the situation of the children of victims and those of perpetrators. It results from the difference between having witnessed too much and having witnessed too little. While the children o f Holocaust survivors are haunted by what their parents witnessed and lived through, the children of Nazi families are haunted by what their parents did not see and have blotted out of their memory. They are compelled to fill in the blind spots and gaps in the consciousness of their parents. In this sense, Timm's literary memoir takes up the task of re-imagining what his brother could not imagine—for example, the individual human life of the Russian soldier smoking a cigarette as the brother fixed him in the crosshairs, or the predicament of the people in Russian villages where in winter the stoves were torn out of the houses for their tiles to be used in building roads. It takes up not only what the older people could not imagine, but also what they knew nothing about after the war and wanted to go on knowing nothing about. With the aid of historical sources and recently published research, Timm fills these gaps in consciousness with knowledge that has become part o f the German historical education of the second and third generations.

encoding or retrieval. [. . .] Such incidents o f forgetting [. . .] can be described as errors o f absent-mindedness" (186).

46

Transgenerational Memory

Uwe Timm's literary project of re-imagining the unimagined and filling up the blind spots of his brother sounds like another incident of Halbwachs's "reshaping operation" of the past. However, he shows, as opposed to Halbwachs, that it is entirely possible to retrieve one's own and one's family's memories without at the same time subjecting them to the dictates of the present. He likewise shows, as opposed to Walser, that a retrospective reevaluation of one's own memory is possible without automatically falsifying it. Timm remains emotionally bound to his own memories and those of his family and yet cognitively keeps them at arm's length. Between the remembered past and the individual remembering in the present, a space is opened up into which he writes his reflections and the knowledge he has acquired in the meantime. Like Walser, he cannot instruct his memories, but with the aid of hindsight, of subsequently acquired knowledge, he can learn from history. Remembering and selfinstruction need not mutually exclude each other as radically as Walser believed. The brother, Karlheinz Timm, ended his war diary with the words: "Hiermit schließe ich mein Tagebuch, da ich für unsinnig halte, über so grausame Dinge wie sie manchmal geschehen, Buch führen" (124).36 This gap in the diary keeps alive the projections and wishes encircling the image of his brother. The immediate wish is to fill this gap with something for which the later generations yearn, longing for identification beyond the contradictory worlds of then and now: Und da ist der Wunsch, mein Wunsch, diese Lücke möge für ein Nein stehen, für das non servo, das am Anfang der Aufkündigung v o n Gehorsam steht und mehr Mut erfordert, als für die vorstoßenden Panzer Breschen in Gräben zu sprengen. Das wäre der Mut, der in die Vereinzelung führt, sich dem Stolz und dem Schmerz des Einsamen nähert. (152) 37

Here Timm comes close to subjecting the past to the normative dictates of the present, but he does it only in the subjunctive verb form. The wish 36

"I close my diary here, because I don't see any point in recording the cruel things that sometimes happen" (114). Uwe Timm appends the following explanation here: "Über die Leiden zu schreiben, über die Opfer, das hieße auch die Frage nach den Tätern zu stellen, nach der Schuld, nach den Gründen für Grausamkeit und Tod—wie es eine Vorstellung gibt von den Engeln, die über all die Schandtaten und Leiden der Menschen Buch führen. Wenigstens das—Zeugnis ablegen" (124). ("Writing about suffering, about the victims, should also mean asking questions about the killers, about guilt, about the reasons for cruelty and death—like the idea of the recording angels who keep the books, writing down all the shameful deeds and suffering of mankind. That at least one should do—bear witness" [114]).

37

"And then there is the wish, my wish, that the lapse in time may stand for No, for the non servo that comes when we abjure obedience, that requires more courage than blowing breaches in trenches for tanks to move forward. That would be the courage that leads to isolation, comes close to the pride and pain of the man who stands alone" (140).

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47

remains a pious wish, for the gap cannot really be filled in; the boundaries of understanding remain insurmountable. But the consensus which we can no longer reach with the dead, we can and must reach with our contemporaries. Walser wished that people with mismatched past histories could live together as the dissimilar beings they are by virtue of their past. This is not wishful thinking; it accords with the "non-synchronicity of the synchronous," in which different generations coexist in a society. The memories of different generations will always differ sharply and remain mismatched, but that does not mean that subsequent judgments and attitudes must be correspondingly in disagreement. The "reshaping operation" on the past is not limited, as Halbwachs claimed, to the gradual adaptation of memories to the needs of the present time; it also includes the difficult task of confronting memories from the Nazi period with what we know today, and of filling in the blind spots of a restricted awareness after the fact, imaginatively. What had once been divided in the Väterliteratur into opposing positions in the dispute between generations has now taken in the family novels the form of an internalized conflict. In other words, the boundaries of understanding have moved from the outside to within. Translated by Michael Patterson Works Cited

Assmann, Aleida. "Persönliche Erinnerung und kollektives Gedächtnis in Deutschland nach 1945." Erinnern und Verstehen: Der Völkermord an den Juden im politischen Gedächtnis der Deutschen. Ed. Hans Erler. Frankfurt/M: Campus, 2003. 126-38. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Collected Works. Vol. 4. Ed. D. E. Wilson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2003. Fisher, Philip. "Local Meanings and Portable Objects: National Collections, Literatures, Music, and Architecture." The Formation of National Collections of Art and Archaeology. Ed. Gwendolyn Wright. Hanover: UP of New England, 1996. 15-27. Freud, Sigmund. "Erinnern, Wiederholen, Durcharbeiten." Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 10. 1946. Ed. Anna Freud, et al. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1969. 126-36. —. "Der Familienroman der Neurotiker." Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 7. 1941. Ed. Anna Freud, et al. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1966. 227-31. Friedl, Herwig. "Ralph Waldo Emerson und die Erosion der Metaphysik." Subversive Romantik. Ed. Volker Kapp, et al. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004. 53-78. Frisch, Max. Wilhelm Teil für die Schule. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1971. Grass, Günter. Crabwalk. Trans. Krishna Winston. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003.

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—. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Trans, and ed. Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. Hansen, M. Lee. The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Historical Society, 1938. Jeismann, Michael. "Voodoo Child: Die verhexten Kinder." Literaturen. May (2005): 15-19. Leggewie, Klaus, and Erik Meyer. Ein Ort, an den man gerne geht: Das Holocaust-Mahnmal und die deutsche Geschichtspolitik nach 1989. München: Hanser, 2005. Mannheim, Karl. "Das Problem der Generationen." Wissensso^ologie. Ed. Kurt H. Wolff. Soziologische Texte 28. Ed. Heinz Maus and Friedrich Fürstenberg. Berlin: Luchterhand, 1964. 509-65. Niethammer, Lutz. Kollektive Identität: Heimliche Quellen einer unheimlichen Konjunktur. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2000. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Use and Abuse of History." Thoughts Out of Season. Part II. Trans. Adrian Collins. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964. 1-100. —. "Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben." Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen: Zweites Stück. Werke in drei Bänden. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Ed. Karl Schlechta. München: Hanser, 1960. 209-85. Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Trans. C. K. Moncrieff and Frederick A. Blossom. 2 vols. NY: Random House, 1932-34. Rosenthal, Gabriele. "Geschichte in der Lebensgeschichte." Bios: Zeitschrift fur Biographieforschung 2 (1988): 3-15. Schacter, Daniel L. "The Seven Sins of Memory: Insights from Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience."^/wiraw« Psychologist 54.3 (1999): 182-203. Sebald, W. G. Luftkrieg und Literatur. München: Hanser, 1999. Timm, Uwe. Am Beispiel meines Bruders. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003. —. In My Brother's Shadow. Trans. Anthea Bell. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Ustinov, Peter. Achtung, Vorurteile! Nach Gesprächen mit Harald Wieser und Jürgen Ritte. 2003. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2004. Wackwitz, Stephan. Ein unsichtbares Land: Familienroman. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 2003. Walser, Martin. Ein springender Brunnen. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1998. —. Ober Deutschland reden. Edition Suhrkamp. Neue Folge 553. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1989. Weigel, Sigrid. "Generation, Genealogie, Geschlecht: Zur Geschichte des Generationskonzepts und seiner wissenschaftlichen Konzeptualisierung seit Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts." Kulturwissenschaften: Forschung—Praxis—Positionen. Ed. Lutz Musner and Gotthart Wunberg. Wien: Universitätsverlag, 2002. 161-90. Welzer, Harald, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall, Opa war kein Na%i: Nationalismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 2002.

NIKHIL SATHE

"Ein Fressen für mein MG": The Problem of German Suffering in Uwe Timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders In a 2003 interview about the creation of a Center against Expulsions and Germany's history in general, Joshka Fischer calls the contemporary debate about Germans as victims "völlig verkürzt"(6).1 He criticizes attempts to speak about expellees that ignore the historical periods leading to this expulsion: Damit relativiert man die historische Schuld und kommt in die unheilvolle Konfrontation einer verzerrten Geschichtswahrnehmung, die weder der Wirklichkeit entspricht noch unseren europäischen Interessen. Die Debatte, die noch offen ist, heißt: Was haben wir uns selbst angetan?(6)2

Placing Auschwitz and Germany's self-inflicted destruction at the forefront—rather than the suffering inflicted on Germans—Fischer's views reflect leftist-liberal positions regarding the memory of the Second World War that have been in place at least since the societal shifts of 1968. To underline his remarks, Fischer turns to a text by a fellow member of the 1968 generation, Am Beispiel meines Bruders (2003), by Uwe Timm: "Anhand [Timms] Familienbiografie [. . .] wird mit sehr viel Mitgefühl die ganze Ambivalenz deutschen Erinnerns beeindruckend herausgearbeitet. Ich befürchte, dass diese Debatte um das Vertreibungszentrum dazu beiträgt, diese Ambivalenz zu verwischen."3 Fischer lauds Timm's nuanced portrayal of his family's struggle with their son's death, opposing this text's complexities against the recent emphasis on Germans as victims in contemporary discourses. 1 2

3

"completely reduced." Fischer's interview appeared in Die Zat on 28 Aug. 2003. "By doing this, one relativizes historical guilt and is faced with a disastrous confrontation with a distorted perception of history, which neither reflects reality nor our European interests. The debate that has yet to take place concerns the question: What have we done to ourselves?" Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. "With [Timm's] family biography [. . .] the whole ambivalence of German memory is worked through with a great deal of sympathy. I fear that this debate about the Center against Expulsions is contributing to an erasure of this ambivalence."

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Transgenerational Memory

Shortly after this interview, Timm's text, and the (former) vicechancellor's praise, were the subject of a trenchant attack by Günter Franzen in Der Spiegel with the revealing title, "Links, wo kein Herz ist."4 Franzen denounces Timm for what he calls his all too neat distinction between victim and perpetrator and his narcissistic, self-righteous identification with the victims. He alleges that Timm and the Left as a whole are blinded by political correctness and a lack of compassion that denies Germans access to their wartime suffering, which in his view, has a justified claim on Germans' emotions and memories (218). Franzen labels himself a leftist, but his criticisms employ arguments often associated with the Right. This is evident in the images of victimization he marshals in his cynical pun on Timm's title: A m Beispiel der imaginären Geschwister, deren Platz wir eingenommen haben, sei erinnert an: die tausend in einer Nacht verbrannten Kinder von Heilbronn, die viertausend in der Ostsee versunkenen Kinder und Jugendlichen der "Wilhelm Gusdoff", die Unzahl der in den Armen ihrer verrückt gewordenen Mütter erstarrten Säuglinge, deren kleine Körper die vereisten Fluchtwege säumten, die namenlose Legion der sich unter den Kolbenstößen der Soldateska windenden halbwüchsigen Nachrichtenhelferinnen in Ostpreußen und anderswo. (218)5

In contrast to Fischer's concerns about relativization, Franzen's melodramatic images of the ravages of war invite the reader to sympathize with Germans as victims. These different responses to Timm's text draw attention to key memory debates of roughly the last decade. Fischer's statements demonstrate a more traditional left-wing position regarding the centrality of Auschwitz for post-1945 memory. At the same time, however, he praises a differentiated portrayal, which seems to break with the Left's earlier insistence on moral, unambivalent criticism of the war generation. Franzen's comments reveal a desire to speak unashamedly of German victimization during the war and occupation, which he argues has been prohibited by the prevailing leftist consensus. Franzen's polemics seek to overturn a singular image of Germans as perpetrators, and his assertion that Germans are entided to these once prohibited memories further reflects post-unification calls for a renewal of national identity. 4 5

"On the left, where there's no heart." "Through the example of the imaginary siblings, whose places we have assumed, we should remember: the thousand children of Heilbronn who were burned to death in a single night; the four thousand children and youngsters who drowned in the Baltic Sea with the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the untold numbers of babies, whose tiny bodies lined the icy refugee trails and who suffocated in the arms of their mothers who were driven mad; the nameless legions of young women who delivered messages in East Prussia and elsewhere, who writhed under the crushing blows of the Soviet soldiers."

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At first glance, Uwe Timm's short, personal text, Am Beispiel meines Bruders, would not seem to tap into the contemporary debates that are evident in the responses to the text. In this autobiographical work, Timm, who was born in 1940, attempts to write about the older brother he barely knew, Karl-Heinz, who was a soldier in the SS-Totenkopf Division and died in 1943 after being wounded on the Russian front. Piecing together his own fragile memories, his parents' stories, and passages from family letters and above all from his brother's war diary, Timm probes the shadow his brother's death cast on his family, offering the reader an incisive study into the mentality of his parents' generation and the subsequent conflict with his own generation. Precisely by retracing how his family's responses to the experience of wartime suffering were and were not articulated in the post-1945 era, however, Timm's intimate portrait and his intense reflection about writing this text reveal his direct engagement with the present debates on wartime suffering. Timm presents a self-reflexive account of his struggles not only in writing about his family's attempt to come to terms with his brother's death, but also with his ultimate failure to understand his brother's actions. His text recounts and problematizes a response to wartime loss and suffering and thus must be read as a direct commentary on the contemporary debates about these issues. Am Beispiel meines Bruders has been widely, and largely positively reviewed in the German language press. Both in the media reception and in a number of scholarly works, numerous critics have viewed the text as an illustration of the shifting discourse on wartime suffering or of the blurred boundaries between victimhood and perpetration. Little attention, however, has been given to Timm's writing strategies in reconciling his family's loss with his convictions or to his attempt at writing about his own experience of the bombing of Hamburg. Hubert Spiegel's review praises Timm's unflinching account of German history, but his otherwise lucid reading of Timm's insertion of family and secondary documents neglects their relation to Timm's focus on contemporary discussions of wartime suffering (44). Placing Timm's text alongside Grass's Im Krebsgang for its reaffirmation of leftist critique, Stuart Taberner's study of German literature since the 1990s does highlight Timm's concerns regarding the inclusion of his brother's diaries, yet does not consider how Timm's portrayal of his family's response to the brother's death also reveals his reflection on present debates {literature 158-59). Harald Welzer argues that Timm's moral insistence on balance with regard to German suffering renders his attempt to write about his brother "inkompatibel mit dem

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Transgenerational Memory

neuen deutschen Opferdiskurs" ("Opa"),6 but fails to locate this same incongruence in Timm's revisiting of the aerial bombings. The following examines how Am Beispiel meines Bruders confronts the problem of German suffering. After a brief introduction to the intellectual and cultural contexts regarding the memory of wartime suffering, the first section reveals how Timm addresses these contexts by illiiminating the strategies the author employs to represent his brother and his writings, which illustrate his self-reflexive attempt at balance. Part II turns to Timm's participation in the discourse of suffering, further isolating the author's commentary on contemporary debates in his representation of his family's experience of the Allied bombing of Hamburg. Part III examines Timm's critical reading of the significance of his brother's memory for his parents' postwar lives, which emerges as a narrative of loss that was employed for consolation, resistance, and exculpation. The analysis of these three dimensions will show that Timm's text, while it clearly gives voice to German suffering, employs distancing techniques that neutralize emotional identification with German victimization and that redirect attention to the atrocities caused by Germans. Structured by these impulses, Timm's text can be best understood as his reflection on and his redrawing of the line in the sand that he implies has been crossed by the intensified focus on German suffering in recent discourse. I The issue of German wartime suffering has been raised frequently in literature and political speech since the mid-1990s and has been dominated by what Ulrich Raulff calls the "vier grosse[n] Reizthemen Bombenkrieg, Gefangenschaft, Vertreibung, und Vergewaltigung" ("1945" II). 7 To name a few examples: the complaints by CDU/CSU and FDP politicians about the neglect of suffering by Germans they perceived during the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the war's end; the call for a Center against Expulsions in Berlin; the success of Jörg Friedrich's controversial historical work Der Brand and the media echo it produced; and the acclaim for W.G. Sebald's lectures on the representation of the Allied aerial bombing of German cities or for Günter Grass's novel, Im Krebsgang. While the memory of German victimhood is certainly not new, its reemergence can partly be attributed to the passage of time. 6 7

"incompatible with the new discourse of German victimization" "four major controversial issues: aerial bombings, imprisonment, displacement, and rape"

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With the fading of the war generation, the memory of the past has hardly subsided. As Harald Welzer contends: "Damit wird Erinnerung freier verfügbar. Sie ist nicht mehr an eine Lebenserfahrung gebunden" (Welzer and Assmann I),8 which he finds reflected in recent literary works in which members of the first and second postwar generations raise questions about family secrets. The historical shifts of 1989 also contributed to the surfacing of these memories. The end of the Cold War opened a space for the memory of suffering by ending East-West tensions concerning the claim of being the better Germany as well as ideologically determined interpretations of National Socialism. Furthermore, in East Germany, as Bill Niven reminds us, there was indeed a taboo regarding the experience of suffering inflicted by Soviet troops during and after the war ("Dresden").9 To understand this recent discourse on German wartime suffering we must place it within the political and cultural contexts of events since unification. A significant factor here, as Stuart Taberner has shown, was a weakening in the currency of leftist thought in the 1990s, which allowed the Right to raise the issue of German victimhood with renewed vigor {Literature 138-39).10 The repudiation of socialism after 1989 and the return of genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda enabled the Right to criticize the validity of the Left's project of critical enlightenment, a criticism that extended to the Left's alleged hegemony of "political correctness" with regard to the National Socialist past, in which the Holocaust served as a constant reminder of German guilt. Leftist views regarding the Nazi past, evidenced in the success of Goldhagen's work on Germans as perpetrators or in the aims of the controversial exhibit on the crimes of the Wehrmacht, were not merely the target of criticism, but came to be seen, as can be observed in Franzen's review noted above, as prohibiting Germans from remembering their own experiences. This, for example, was a major thrust of Martin Walser's controversial Peace Prize speech of 1998 and his later debates with Ignatz Bubis. As Bill Niven argues, "the drive towards demonstrating historical victimhood underscores the sense of German victimhood in the present, legitimising a politics of self-righteousness and indignation" ("Dresden"). While the 8 9

10

"Memory thus becomes more freely accessible. It is no longer tied to a specific lived experience." Niven also notes that in official GDR discourse, the bombing of Dresden was invoked in terms of anti-American propaganda rather than the suffering of the local populace ("Dresden"). For Niven's disussion of the broader context of the memory of German suffering, see his "Globalisation" article. For a reading of the political instrumentalization of Dresden's Frauenkirche, see Vees-Gulani 56-67. See also Fox in this volume. For a detailed account of the intellectual trends shaping this issue, see Chapters 4-5 of Taberner's monograph, as well as his articles on Hans-Ulrich Treichel and Günter Grass.

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focus on German victimization might serve the Right's narrow political aims of discrediting the Left, it also reflects broader goals of establishing a more positive sense of German national identity after unification and, to borrow Stuart Taberner's assessment, the "normalization" of the Berlin Republic {IJterature xiii-xxv). While discussions of German wartime suffering in political discourse have been associated with the Right, much of this phenomenon in literary discourse has come from authors on the Left and the 1968 generation. Christoph Hein's recent novel, Landnahme (2004) or Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Der Verlorene (1998), for example, both focus on the plight of ethnic German expellees in, respectively, the GDR and FRG. Most prominently, Grass's Im Krebsgang even points to the Left's neglect of German suffering: His narrator reflects on the dangers of this silence, which in the novella allows the extreme Right to exploit the memory of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. While Uwe Timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders is not directly concerned with reclaiming narratives of German suffering from the Right, it must be seen alongside such works. His text, as this study shows, is rooted in and affirms the leftist positions on this issue. Uwe Timm's text clearly resonates with recent concerns of the German memory culture. His investigation of photographs and documents from his brother's service recalls the context and ensuing debates of the Wehrmacht exhibition. His intense examination of his parents and their troubled relationship towards their past also squarely places this text in a contemporary trend in which artists turn to family wartime histories.11 But as a reflection on wartime suffering, this work primarily centers on a dimension that has, understandably, received less attention: the death of a low-ranking soldier. While this particular subject is significant for Timm's engagement with the larger discourse on German suffering, it is the author's self-reflection on writing about it that becomes most crucial and most revealing of his positions on this discourse. Directly addressing recent discussions of German suffering in an interview, Timm's criticisms echo those of Joschka Fischer noted above. Timm charges: Ich schätze es gar nicht, wenn man in Deutschland versuchen sollte, sich eine kollektive Opferrolle buchstäblich zu erarbeiten. Natürlich soll man Verständnis haben mit den Vertriebenen und trauern um die Bombenkriegsopfer, aber man

11

See Raulff ("NS-Zeit"); Beyer; Sander; and Welzer ("Opa") for a complete discussion of recent examples.

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sollte die Gewichte nicht verschieben. Man kann nicht relativieren, was an Grausamkeiten von den Nazis und den Deutschen ausgegangen ist. ("Härte" 17) 12

Timm thus clearly subscribes to the more orthodox leftist position that refuses to allow an emphasis on German victimization as a relativization of German atrocities, primarily because this would enable a denial of responsibility. At the same time, though, he recognizes the legitimate suffering by Germans and the need for empathy. These two impulses charge Timm's text. As the author attempts to balance his convictions with his desire to write about the death of his brother and its meaning for his family, Timm's text dramatizes for the reader the difficulty of remembering and representing German suffering. By foregrounding his anxieties in writing and by using strategies to distance himself from his brother, Timm seeks to give voice to German suffering, yet not silence German perpetration. The book opens with Timm recounting one of his few memories of his brother. Timm strains to remember the expression on his brother's face as he made a surprise visit from the front and picked up the young Timm. This introduction sets the tone for the entire text: Timm attempts to write about his brother, yet grapples with this process and calls the reader's attention to his difficulties. This is familiar to readers of Timm's fictional texts, where his narrators highlight their uncertainties about the pitfalls of imposing narrative closure and causality.13 Here, Timm continues to contend with these problems, as well as with questions of time and memory, yet his struggles with this text are charged with deeper issues that underlie the problem of representing German suffering. First, there is the concern for his family. While Timm has included family stories and semi-autobiographical elements in previous works, Am Beispiel meines Bruders is clearly his most intimately personal text.14 The frankness with which he tackles this personal sphere was only possible later in life. Timm namely notes that he had long wanted to write this book, but could not do so until after the death of his sister and mother, who silenced earlier attempts to learn about his brother with the admonishment: "Tote soll man ruhen lassen" (12).15 Only after the death of these 12

13 14 15

"I could not stand it if people in Germany would literally attempt to establish for themselves a collective role as victims. Of course, we should have understanding for those who lost their homeland after the war, and we should mourn the victims of the aerial bombings, but we cannot shift the significance of these events. One cannot relativize this against the horrors that were committed by the Nazis and the Germans." This is most evident in Johannisnacht (1996) and Die Entdeckung der Currywurst (1993). Timm began prominently drawing on family stories with Der Mann auf dem Hochrad (1984) and Die Entdeckung der Currywurst. "Let the dead rest in peace" (In My Brother's Shadow 5; subsequent page references for English translations refer to this translation).

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remaining people who knew his brother, Timm writes, will he be free: "alle Fragen stellen zu können, auf nichts, auf niemanden Rücksicht nehmen zu müssen" (12).16 In this text, Timm indeed deconstructs his family's narratives about the brother and takes apart the brother's letters and diary. Timm's biggest obstacle, however, is perhaps with himself. The task of writing about this beloved family member, fraught with emotional strains, had physical consequences for the author. Timm writes that while working on this text and reading his brother's documents he developed a recurring and painful inflammation in both eyes (147). In the text itself Timm's difficulties are perhaps manifested, as Inge Schott notes, in his shifting use of references for his family ("Gespenst"). He switches between possessive pronouns and definite articles, referring, for example, rarely to "mein Bruder," preferring instead "der Bruder." Even when speaking of himself, however, Timm continues this strategy, often reverting to abstractions, such as "der Junge" (59, 72), "der Sohn" (84), "der Heranwachsende" (90), or his father's term "der Nachkömmling" (20).17 These shifting monikers reflect Timm's acknowledgement of temporal detachment from his subject, but also suggest an attempt at creating emotional distance from it. Writing about his brother necessitates that Timm confront the gaps in his brother's diary and letters, which, the author notes, has long been a source of anxiety for him. He fears the secrets he might uncover and likens his early inability to read about his brother to his childhood fear of the Grimms' Blaubart fairy tale. Timm namely pleaded that his mother stop reading just before Blaubart's wife opens the forbidden door, leaving the gruesome secrets of the hidden corpses untouched (11). Versed in the war and Nazi structures, Timm is aware of the horrors that may be in his brother's past. His continued anxiety about them is evident in his "what i f ' questions, for example: "Was, wenn der Bruder zur Wachmannschaft des KZ versetzt worden wäre?" (63),18 or his hope that his brother might secredy have rejected the war (152). His fears about his brother's wartime past are complicated by the fact that his brother's letters, and especially his diary, remain ambiguous. Written mostly in cryptic, telegram-style notes, these documents, which Timm inserts into his own text, offer little insight into the events they

16 17 18

"[. . .] I could ask all the questions I liked without having to consider anyone or anything else" (6). The terms translate in order as "youth/boy," "adolescent," "son," and "late starter" or "descendant." "Suppose my brother had been posted to join the concentration camp guards?" (55).

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describe.19 For example, his brother describes one day's events with the phrase: "Gelände wird durchgekämmt. Viel Beutet' (17).20 Another entry simply reads "7 Tag Ruhe, grosse Läusejagd, weiter nach Oneldd' (17).21 For Timm, the randomness of the diary entries and the lack of any explanation are troubling. The terms "Beute" ("loot") and "Läuse" ("lice") could be harmless, but they might also reflect Nazi jargon and thus indicate something more sinister, prompting his question: "War seine Einheit, das IV. Panzerpionierbataillon der Totenkopfdivision, bei sogenannten Säuberungen eingesetzt worden? Gegen Partisanen, Zivilisten, gegen Juden?" (36).22 If such terms remain indeterminate, the entry from 21 March 1943, leaves Timm with little doubt. This entry had long marked the point where Timm refused to continue reading: "Brückenkopf über den Done£ 75m raucht Iwan Zigaretten, ein Fressen für mein MG" (19).23 This account of killing a Russian soldier, which repeats cultural stereotypes and reveals the brother's detached fascination with violence, becomes the central image of Timm's text and will be repeated six times.24 Whereas this passage, as Spiegel correctly notes, registers Timm's shock at his brother's cold indifference (44), it more significantly underlines the core problem of representing German suffering. Echoing throughout Timm's book, this passage is a constant reminder that any attempt to get closer to his brother and understand his motivations and come to terms with his death will force Timm to confront the reality of his actions. For Timm, it becomes a struggle in examining his brother's suffering, and in turn that of his family, while at the same time not diminishing the suffering his brother inflicted. This tension is wound tightly throughout the text and manifested in Timm's narrative strategies that create distance with regard to his brother and his actions. Although Timm's brother is central to the text, he remains clearly outside it because Timm never attempts to recreate or narrate from his perspective. Instead, his brother's voice is restricted to reprintings of his diary and letters. Timm calls the reader's attention to this distinction— pointing out, for instance, his suspicion that his brother's suddenly large 19

20 21 22

23 24

The abbreviated style of the diary, Timm notes, might be explained by the SS prohibition of personal journals, which would have given the brother only limited writing opportunity (159). "Combing the terrain. Plenty of loot!' (11). All italicization appears in the original, where it marks quotations from other family members. "1 day's rest, big louse hunt, on to Oneldd' (11). "Did his unit, the 3 rd [sic, should be 4 th ] Armored Engineers Battalion of the Death's Head Division, take part in what were described as mopping-up operations? Mopping up partisans, civilians, Jews?" (29). "Bridgehead on the Done% 75 m away Ivan smoking tigarettes, fodderfor my MG" (12). The passage is reprinted three times on page 19 and then on 36, 102, 154.

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Tiansgenerational Memory

handwriting shows the influence of morphine (32), or his questioning why his brother's handwriting has become larger and more firmly imprinted (124). By conspicuously foregrounding this mediation, Timm keeps his brother removed, which limits the reader's empathy with his experience and frustrates expectations of gripping authenticity. This mediation also refuses to impose narrative meaning through a retelling of his brother's story, again placing emphasis on interpretation, not emotional involvement. The passages from other texts that Timm cites or references also distance us from his brother and demand an intellectual response to his story.25 In his review, Günter Franzen attacks Timm's use of these texts, denouncing this as an attempt to fill the gaps in his brother's story with indulgent, leftist dogma (218). Such a criticism ignores the function of the secondary texts that appear in Am Beispiel meines Bruders. The quotations and references do not try to explain what Timm's brother did, but often examine the historical context to show, much like Timm's "what i f ' questions, what his brother could have done. Timm cites Christopher Browning's study of a reserve unit in Poland, Ordinary Men, for example, to illuminate the possibility of being excused from participation in mass killings (103-4). Elsewhere, Timm employs the secondary texts as a corrective background for his family's often one-sided accounts. For instance, after describing his father's pleasure in telling heroic accounts of maneuvers in Chakrov and Kiev, where both Timm's father and brother were stationed, Timm then cites numerous historical details on the Nazi atrocities in nearby Babi Yar (140-41).26 Such passages keep the brother at a distance and do not allow readers to forget the broader context in which his death occurred. This strategy of creating contrasts is particularly visible when Timm cites his brother's letters and diary, only to follow them with his own reflections or quotations. These additions oppose his brother's writings, which feature his unfiltered perception of the war or mundane account of battles, with reflections or facts that strive to balance out the brother's writing. Timm juxtaposes, for instance, his brother's letter cursing a British general for conducting air raids against Hamburg with a letter by the German general Heinrici, in which he hints at remorse at the 25

26

Specific works mentioned are Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men [Gan% normale Männer] (103), Wolfram Wette's Die Wehrmacht (146), Primo Levi's Die Untergangenen und die Geretteten (105), Jean Amery's An den Grenzen des Geistes (Schuld und Sühne) (62), as well as unnamed tides by Levi, Amery, Jorge Semprum, Imre Kertesz, and Syren Kierkegaard, and also other wartime diaries (94,147). The text also cites numerous writings by Nazi figures. This incident, in which an estimated 100,000 Nazi victims were executed, was the subject of a recent film, BahtjJar: Das vergessene Verbrechen (2003), directed by Jeff Kanew.

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destruction leveled against Russian cities (28). A different example can be found in the book's key passage on the killing of the Russian soldier. After quoting this entry Timm breaks from the diary to imagine this incident from the other perspective: [. . .] ein russischer Soldat, vielleicht in seinem Alter. Ein junger Mann, der sich eben die Zigarette angezündet hatte—der erste Zug, das Ausatmen, dieses Genießen des Rauchs, der von der brennende Zigarette aufsteigt, vor dem nächsten Zug. A n was wird er gedacht haben? An die Ablösung, die bald kommen mußte? A n den Tee, etwas Brot, an die Freundin, die Mutter, den Vater? Ein sich zerfaserndes Rauchwölkchen in dieser von Feuchtigkeit getränkten Landschaft, Schneereste, Schmelzwasser hatte sich im Schützengraben gesammelt, das zarte Grün an den Weiden. (19) 27

By speculating about the soldier's thoughts, his pleasure in smoking, and even the landscape, Timm's somewhat sentimental images attempt to restore the humanity of his brother's victim and offset the brutality of his diary entry. Since this passage follows Timm's tender portrayal of his brother at the opening of the text, it offers another contrast in that it refuses the memory of Timm's brother as victim without inclusion of his role as perpetrator. Passages, such as the aforementioned one, might lend support to Franzen's allegations of Timm's lack of empathy noted earlier. While it is clear that Timm intends to limit an emotional response because it might facilitate an erasure of the past, it would be false to claim that Timm shows no compassion for his brother. His descriptions of his own memories and his accounts of family stories all present a sympathetic portrait, as do Timm's selection of letters and diary entries, which, for example, highlight his brother's sincere concerns for his family even after he has been wounded (57-58). What makes this text interesting for an understanding of present-day discussions of suffering is the tension that arises between the impulses to dwell on the brother's suffering and to give proper weight to the victims of National Socialism. Timm's treatment of the official notification of his brother's death illustrates the simultaneity of these tensions. After citing the letter's laconic register of personal objects (33-34), Timm first describes how his mother kept these objects until her death in the box in which they were sent and then relays his parents' recollections of his brother as a child (3427

"[. . .] a Russian soldier, perhaps his own age. A young man who had just lit a cigarette— drawing on it for the first time, breathing out, relishing the smoke rising from the burning cigarette before inhaling again. What was he thinking about? The troops who would soon arrive to relieve them? Tea, a piece of bread, his girlfriend, his mother, his father? A small cloud of smoke dispersing in that landscape, a place drenched in moisture, remnants of snow, meltwater lying where it had collected in the trenches, the tender green of the willow trees" (13).

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35). These moments are measured against an excerpt from a speech by Heinrich Himmler that heroicizes the goals of the Russian campaign and justifies the need to attack without mercy (36). Citing the SS leader's speech allows a critique of the Nazi state's complete disregard for human life, that of its enemies and of its own soldiers, which is evident in Himmler's propaganda. At the same time, this juxtaposition with the mother's rituals and memories decidedly establishes the brother's death not as an inexplicable, cosmic tragedy, but as a consequence of the Nazi regime. The contrast with Himmler shows further that the family's recollections on the brother's childhood, which speak to the memory of his humanity, must be placed in historical context. This image of the box containing his brother's final possessions thus becomes emblematic of Timm's position: We must acknowledge the genuine suffering and maintain our memories of it, but we cannot forget how it was delivered, that is, the conditions and actions that lead to this suffering. II If the death of a Waffen-SS soldier is a less conventional dimension of German suffering, the Allied aerial bombing of German cities is one to which perhaps most attention has been devoted in historiographical, literary, and popular discourse. Timm's text participates in this discourse by recounting the bombing and subsequent firestorms unleashed in Hamburg in the summer of 1943, which Timm, then three years old, survived with his family. Given the recent, controversial interest in this topic, representing the destruction of German cities has potential risks. Timm thus gauges his portrayal to problematize these discussions, but also to continue his critical approach to his brother. The bombing of Hamburg is not a new subject for Timm. He indirectly writes about it and chooses a bombed-out Hamburg as the backdrop in Die Entdeckung der Currywurst (1993). The protagonist of this novella prolongs her affair with a deserter she is hiding by concealing news of capitulation and telling him that the Germans have sided with the Western Allies against the Soviets, a fiction she abandons when she confronts the truth of the concentration camps. Similar tensions regarding the creation of a war narrative that retains the memory of the Holocaust are present in Timm's analysis of his family in Am Beispiel meines Bruders, but here the author is clearly taking issue with impulses to relativize German suffering in contemporary discussions of the air raids.

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Timm's text concedes the challenges of writing about the bombings. The trauma of the aerial destruction can hardly be grasped through language.28 Timm notes this when recalling his family's tales: Das Fürchterliche wurde damit in Details aufgelöst, wurde verständlich gemacht, domestiziert. Es löste sich meist beim gemütlichen Zusammensein in Anekdoten auf, und nur sehr selten, urplötzlich, brach das Entsetzen hervor. (102) 2 9

For Timm's family, a focus on details kept the emotional horrors at bay, but Timm is skeptical of this distancing. Too easily, he implies in an interview, did their stories become a "wohlfeile Unterhaltung" ("Härte" 18),30 which obfuscated an examination of the consequences leading to the bombings and enabled a disavowal of responsibility. Timm's reproach of the bombings as "Unterhaltung" must be seen as a further critique, given the recent media fascination with them. For his own portrayal of the bombings, Timm adopts a more sober than horrific approach. He presents brief scenes of destruction commonplace in current media accounts, such as the image of ashen corpses clinging to water pipes in air-raid bunkers (39-40).31 These moments, however, are tempered by Timm's reminder that the local bunker was underneath a shop whose owner was anti-Semitic (40). Similarly, when offering his own memories, Timm demystifies the destruction, removing from it the ahistorical or transcendental dimensions that W. G. Sebald has critici2ed in several postwar representations of the bombings (Sebald 52-63). For instance, Timm recalls his perception of giant torches lining the streets and flashes of fire shooting from windows. But this fantastic childhood image is corrected as Timm points out that he later realized that the torches were in fact trees on fire and the flames had been caused by igniting curtains (38). With only fragmentary memories of the bombings, Timm primarily represents them through family documents and stories, which provides an opportunity to question the omission of history. He first cites a letter his father wrote to his son on the front describing the destruction of Hamburg and then his own heroics in rousing neighbors to the air-raid shelters (37). Timm follows this with his brother's response:

28 29

30 31

See Vees-Gulani for an investigation of the implications of trauma psychology for literature by authors who experienced the bombings. "The terror was broken down into details, made comprehensible, domesticated. It was dissipated, usually by anecdotes told in cozy company. Only very seldom, and then very suddenly, did the horror come through" (93). "cheap entertainment" Recent media examples include the 2003 Spiegel-TV documentary "Operation Gomorrah" or Friedrich's photograph collection Brandstätten (2003).

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[...] mir standen trotzdem man sehr hart geworden ist, die Tränen in den Augen. War doch das Heim, ψ Hause, das woran man halt Freude und Erinnerung hatte und dieser unersetzliche Schate hin, soll weg, vernichtet sein. (40)32

Through this exchange, Timm's text gives voice to his father's dramatic experience and his brother's genuine expression of sorrow, both of which invite the reader's empathy. But if Timm briefly cedes authority to these authentic witnesses, he conspicuously revokes it. Timm namely cuts short his brother's letter with a visually and thematically jarring single sentence paragraph lacking personal or deictic references: "Juden war das Betreten des Luftschutzraums verboten" (40).33 Any empathy with the family's loss is unsettled, as this passage refuses to allow memories of the bombings without forcing the reader to consider the Holocaust. Timm's interruption of eyewitness accounts with an historicization is perhaps a response to Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand, in which many reviewers found problematic the reliance on local and personal histories as well as the failure to examine the role of the bombings in the entire course of the war.34 This above passage is further significant because it reasserts, on a textual level, the situation that critics on the Right have denounced: the privileging of officially sanctioned memory, which centers on German perpetration, above subjective memories, which include victimization. Timm presents here an intimate moment of family grief, but then inserts an external, historical reminder placing German guilt squarely in the foreground. Timm follows this clash with two images that advocate vigilance regarding the memory of the bombings. The first is of his astonishment at a visit to a bunker, where the luminescent paint continued to glow nearly sixty years after the war: a reminder that the raids may have long since ended, but their significance for present-day Germany has not. Timm juxtaposes this image with one of two damaged porcelain statues that similarly evoke the past. His family saved the statues from the bombings in 1943 and proudly displayed them thereafter as "Denkmäler dessen, was die Eltern im Krieg verloren hatten" (41).35 One depicts a man reading aloud, but this figure's book and several fingers were severed during the chaos. By highlighting the missing book, a conventional symbol of knowledge and enlightenment, Timm bestows a new interpretation on this 32

33 34

35

"[. . .] we've become hardened soldiers here, but I still had tears in my eyes. It was home, our home, a place of happy memories and now that ineplaceable treasure is gone, amply isn't here anymore, is destroyed' (33). "No Jews were allowed in the air-raid shelter" (33). For detailed criticism and more on the popular reception of Friedrich's text, see Η-German's online discussion threads on "World War II Bombing: Rethinking German Experiences." "memorials to what our parents had lost in the war" (34).

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mundane monument: Any memory of the bombing that would elevate personal experience against historical context can only be incomplete. Timm's final reference to the bombings reiterates this interpretation, as he questions his brother's failure to acknowledge the suffering on both sides. In a letter to his father, Timm's brother curses British bombing tactics as "Mord an Frauen und Kinder" (27, 93). 36 Timm pairs this with a diary entry from the same period, in which the brother mentions that his unit tore apart chimneys to build makeshift roads for tanks, but does not consider that this has lead to the destruction of Russian homes and their only heat source, nor does he mention the inevitable crushing of any resistance (92-93). By illuminating his brother's inability to see a connection between the destruction of his home by -Allied bombs and his demolition o f Russian villages, Timm is critical of his brother's failure to show compassion or to question Nazi tactics because of his assertion of his own suffering. This contradiction leads Timm to wonder: " E s ist schwer verständlich und nicht nachvollziehbar wie Teilnahme und Mitgefühl im Angesicht des Leids ausgeblendet wurden, wie es zu dieser Trennung von human zu Hause und human hier, in Rußland, kommt" (93). 37 Timm's incomprehension o f his brother's misperception and lack of empathy thus encapsulates his criticism of the present discourse on the bombings and German victimization: One's own suffering cannot justify blindness to another's.

Ill

Although Timm's text centers on his brother, much of it revolves around other family members. This focus allows Timm to emphasize the relevance o f his brother's story for present discussions of wartime suffering. An analysis of Timm's reading of his family's stories and their image of his brother shows that Timm not only overturns assumptions of a postwar taboo regarding German suffering, but also indirectly raises ethical questions regarding personal suffering and the relativization of guilt. Through his reflection on his parents, Timm also revisits this key issue of the generational conflicts of the "1968ers" and reveals a new, more conciliatory position.

36 37

"the murder o f women and children" (20, 84). "It is hard to comprehend and impossible to trace the way sympathy and compassion in the face o f suffering could be blanked out, while a distinction emerged between humanity at home and humanity here in Russia" (84).

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As noted above, Timm describes his family's frequent discussion of the bombings, and this allows him to challenge notions of taboo. The assumption of a taboo regarding wartime suffering, which is often suggested as a justification for this discourse, has been widely rejected.38 Timm further complicates notions of a taboo with his claim: Die Vätergeneration, die Tätergeneration, lebte vom Erzählen oder vom Verschweigen. Nur diese zwei Möglichkeiten schien es zu geben, entweder ständig davon zu reden oder gar nicht. Je nachdem, wie bedrückend, wie verstörend die Erinnerungen empfunden wurden. (102)39

Silence coincided with open discussion, and Timm provides numerous familial examples. He recalls both his father's silent tears, for which he offered no explanation (103), as well as the stories detailing the father's heroics or the daughter's attempt to save heirlooms during the bombings (39). Timm also recalls how his father and his companions were consumed with a similarly forbidden topic, a potential Nazi victory: "Es wurden noch einmal Schlachten geschlagen, Befehle korrigiert, unfähige Generäle abgesetzt, Hitler die militärische Befehlsgewalt entzogen" (78).40 Timm further shows that such open discussion was not confined to the family by citing from a postwar Latidser-Heft serial that sensationalizes a German's successful battle against the Soviets (100). These diverse examples that Timm's text offers do not simply empirically refute claims of a taboo regarding German suffering. Rather, they enable Timm to question the function these stories served his family and ultimately to contextualize their memory of his brother.41 Above all, Timm shows how their accounts allow the denial of personal guilt in National Socialism. As Timm argues, through his parents' stories: [. . .] so wurde das Geschehene und mit ihm die Schuld kleingemahlen. Und man konnte davon—was man sich heute nicht mehr vorstellen kann—ganz frei erzählen. Die Russen waren noch immer die Feinde, die Frauen vergewaltigt, Deutsche vertrieben hatten und noch immer deutsche Kriegsgefangene hungern

38 39

40 41

See, for example, Vees-Gulani on W.G. Sebald's seeming retractions of his thesis of a taboo, which he later restricts to the literary sphere (120-30). "My father's generation, the generation of perpetrators, lived by either talking about it or saying nothing at all. There seemed to be only those two options: either you kept discussing it or you never mentioned it, depending on how oppressive and disturbing you felt your memories to be" (93). "Battles were fought all over again, wrong orders put right, incompetent generals dismissed, Hitler deprived of his command of the army" (69). Given the strong explanatory impetus in Timm's many reflections on his family's memories, one can hardly share Klaus Siblewski's criticism that Timm's text is unsuccessful in locating the political and societal causes behind the father's "gefährlich dumpfen Brüten" ("dangerously gloomy brooding") ("Die schwierigste aller Fragen").

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Hessen, ohne daß sich die Frage nach der Schuld stellte, nach Chronologie und Kausalität der Grausamkeiten. (131-32) 42

While Timm concedes that his parents' stories were a part of their process of dealing with their ordeals, he contends that their retellings facilitated a disassociation from and an avoidance of the crimes committed by Germans. This same conclusion is at the center of his unease regarding the current focus on German victimization. His remark that one cannot "imagine" open discussion of this topic in the past must thus also be seen as a concern for its occurrence in the present.43 Timm further probes the link between suffering and the abdication of responsibility by examining how his family's stories centered on their loss. This focus omitted consideration of cause and effect: Den Jungen verloren und das Heim, das war einer der Sätze, mit denen man sich aus d e m Nachdenken über die Gründe entzog. Man glaubte mit diesem Leid seinen Teil an der allgemeinen Sühne geleistet zu haben. Fürchterlich war eben alles, schon weil m a n selbst Opfer geworden war, Opfer eines unerklärlichen kollektiven Schicksals. ( 9 1 ) «

Reducing their experience to their son's death and the destruction of their home enabled Timm's family to construct a narrative of loss, placing their suffering alongside the war's primary victims. Since they depicted the origins of this loss as an inexplicable collective fate, his parents saw in it a release from their own complicity. To help legitimize this narrative of loss, Timm's parents had to maintain a positive narrative about his brother. Timm carefully traces his parents' memories to show how their stories constructed Karl-Heinz as a brave, honest soldier. As Timm describes this: "Der Bruder, das war der Junge, der nicht log, der immer aufrecht war, der nicht weinte, der tapfer war, der gehorchte" (21).45 When Timm asked why the brother joined the SS, his mother replied: "Aus Idealismus. Er wollte nicht zurückstehen. Sich nicht drücken" (21).46 Timm's parents had little tolerance for deviations from 42

43 44

45 46

"[. . .] and they ground down and wore away what had happened, and with it the guilt. And you could talk about it perfecdy freely, something that seems unimaginable today. The Russians were still the enemy that had raped women, driven Germans out of their homes. They were still starving German prisoners of war, and no one asked questions of guilt, or the chronology and causes of these cruelties" (120-21). It is further significant that this quotation also references the three remaining of Raulff s "Reizthemen" mentioned earlier. "Our boy and our home both lost, it was the kind of remark that saved you having to think about the reasons. You felt that with that suffering you had done your bit for the general atonement. Everything was dreadful for the very reason that you had been a victim yourself, the victim of a collective and inexplicable fate" (82). "My brother was the boy who told no lies, who was always upright, shed no tears, was brave and obedient" (14). "Out of idealism. He didn't want to be left out. He didn't want to shirk his duty" (15).

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their image of a loyal soldier, and when faced with SS realities, shifted responsibility from him: "Die SS war eine normale Kampftruppe. Die Verbrecher waren die anderen, der SD. Die Einsatzgruppen. Vor allem die oben, die Führung. Der Idealismus des Jungen mißbraucht' (22).47 To validate their claims to suffering, their image of the son had to excise the atrocities he might have committed and extol military, authoritarian values. The narrative of the brave soldier not only upheld the family's picture of their loss but was further significant for his father's self-image in light of capitulation and failing business ventures. Describing his father's reaction to surrender, Timm writes: "Eine Generation war politisch, militärisch, mentalitätsmäßig entmachtet worden, und sie reagierte beleidigt, mit Trotz, Verstocktheit" (70).48 Timm's father resisted, in private, the authority of the Allies, treating any resistance as a noble effort. Timm recalls how he once declined a GI's offer of chocolate, which his father viewed as heroic, leading Timm to surmise his father's comparison: "Natürlich hätte das der Karl-Heinz genauso gemacht" (70).49 As Timm suggests, the bravery valorized in his father's image of the elder son served as a defiance against the humiliation he perceived from Allied conquerors. This function applied further with the father's brief success as a furrier in the early postwar years, when his improvisational talents brought success and a positive ego reinforcement (86-87). As his business stagnated, though, the son's absence became more pronounced: "Der Karlmann fehlte. Er fehlte nicht nur als Fachmann, der ja der Vater nicht war, sondern als Stütze, der Junge, der nicht nur Sohn war, sondern auch Freund und Kamerad [. . .]" (108).50 Karl-Heinz's steadfastness and shared war experience now served less the ideal of resistance than of consolation for the father's misfortunes. The idealized image of the brother, as Timm notes, also had a profound impact on his own relationship with his father. The military service and worldview his brother shared lead, in Timm's eyes, to his father's implicit comparison of his sons. The parents' discussions of his brother often seemed to Timm "ein Reden, zumal wenn es sich nicht an mich

47

48 49 50

"The SS was just α normal fighting unit. The criminals were the others, the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence and security service. The task force groups. Especially the men at the top, the leaders. Abunng a hoy's idealisnf' (15). "A whole generation had been deprived of political, military, and intellectual power, and reacted with a sense of injury, with defiance and obduracy" (62). "Karl-Heinz, of course, would have done just the same" (62). "Karl-Heinz was badly missed. He was missed not just as the professional craftsman his father was not but as his mainstay, the boy who was not only his son but his friend and comrade [. . .]" (98).

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67

richtete, [. . .] das mich in Frage stellte" (58). 51 While such passages about Timm's perceived comparisons may support Fran2en's charges of narcissism, focusing on such indulgence would miss Timm's point of showing how the memory of his brother infused his generational conflict. Timm describes dimensions of this discord that hinge partly on military experiences: for example, his father's rejection of Timm's taste in American fashion and music as products of Allied hegemony (69, 89-90), or Timm's critique of his parents' generation and their reliance on authoritarian upbringing (148-51). In particular, his father's refusal to question his actions and instead assert the Allies' guilt for failing to bomb concentration camps both lead Timm to conclude: "[. . .] dieses Durchhalten, Geradestehen, offenbarte sich jetzt als Schwäche, Feigheit" (134-35). 52 These same values that the father privileged in his memory of Karl-Heinz thus became, for Timm, indicative of his father's denial of guilt and widened the chasm between him and his father. The tensions charging Timm's conflict were central to the intergenerational conflicts of 1968, as the revolutionary young generation attacked their parents' silence and refusal to confront their involvement in National Socialism. The severity of these inquiries is evident in its literary expression in the so-called Väter- and Mütterliteratur of the 1970s and 1980s. Uwe Timm belongs to this generation, but his interrogation in Am Beispiel meines Bruders lacks the unflinching rigidity of these earlier literary inquisitions. Questioning why his parents did not resist or why they denied knowing about the Holocaust (63, 133, 147), Timm's text is certainly critical of his parents, but is ultimately reconciliatory. With regard to the memory of Karl-Heinz, Timm's text does not so much shatter his parents' conception of the brother as it seeks to understand the impact his death had on their lives. This is evident, for example, in Timm's analysis of his brother's significance for his father's self-image noted above, but also in Timm's reflections on his mother's lifelong desire to visit her son's grave (29). Such gestures locate Timm's work in a recent trend, in which authors of the 1968 generation demonstrate greater sympathy for the war generation. 53 Placing Timm's book alongside texts such as Ulla Hahn's Unscharfe Bilder (2003), Thomas Medicus's In den Augen meines Grossvaters (2004), and Stefan Wackwitz's Ein unsichtbares Land (2004), Harald Welzer suspects that such works reveal a new sense of guilt, centering not on the parents' 51 52 53

"[. . .] my own existence was always called into question by these conversations, especially when they weren't addressed to me" (51). "[. . .] holding out, standing firm—all this was now revealed as weakness and cowardess" (123). See Welzer ("Opa"), and Raulff ("NS-Zeit") for detailed analyses of this trend.

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Transgenerational Memory

responsibility for National Socialism, "sondern um die Schuld ihrer Kinder, ihnen [den Eltern] gegenüber kein Mitleid gezeigt zu haben" ("Opa").54 Welzer's comments surely apply to Timm's text, which indeed devotes considerable space to the final years and the death of both parents and his older sister and further seeks to comprehend the brother's significance and the author's conflict with the father, all of which clearly point to an attempt to make peace with this older generation. This compassion, coupled with an impulse towards understanding, replaces a relentless partisan critique, illustrating Aleida Assmann's remark, that the intergenerational dialogue that could never have happened in the wake of 1968 emerges now all the more vehemently, after the death of the parents, as a "Selbstgespräch" (Welzer and Assmann II).55 But if Timm's reconciliation with his parents marks a softening of his position as a '"68er," his inability to accept their image of his brother reasserts it. The diary entry on the Russian soldier and a later entry that acknowledges the brother's awareness of SS brutality (91) both become incongruous with the parents' picture of a soldier who simply did his duty. Timm's investigations can neither prove nor rule out his brother's involvement in war crimes, but his research indicates that he must have been exposed to them, if not a participant. Perhaps more unsettling for Timm is the diary's lack of compassion for the war's victims and the absence of criticism for the war and its architects. The only hope Timm finds is in the diary's enigmatic final entry: "Hiermit schließe ich mein Tagebuch, da ich für unsinnig halte, über so grausame Dinge wie sie manchmal geschehen, Buch führen" (124).56 Timm would like this abrupt ending to signal his brother's disillusionment and an awakening of resistance to authority (152). Without any explanatory context, however, the import of this passage and its potential awareness remain indeterminate. Ultimately, Timm is unable to get closer to his brother, to suspend his reservations regarding the memory of his brother. Navigating through the emotions burdening his parents' narratives, through the indifference in his brother's writings, and through the documented realities and puzzling voids, Timm is still left with the question at the close of the text: "Was würde er [der Bruder] sagen, wenn er heute diesen Satz lesen würde: 75m raucht Iwan Zigaretten, ein Fressen für mein MG?'{154).57 Though he has given 54 55 56 57

"but rather on the children's guilt for having not shown enough compassion for their parents" "a conversation with oneself' "I close my diary here, because I don't see any point in recording the cruel things that sometimes happen" (114). "What would he [my brother] say if he could read that sentence of his today: 75 m away Ivan smoking agarettes, fodder for my MG' (142).

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voice to his family's suffering, Timm cannot abandon his conviction that his brother's misdeeds be placed in the forefront. Recognizing the tension that Timm faces in this endeavor provides a clue to his text's ambivalent ending, for which Timm repeats the exact sentence that closes his brother's diary. Timm's borrowed words should not be understood as a prohibition against writing about his brother or, more generally, German suffering. Instead, this constitutes a resignation in the face of the "grausame Dinge" ("cruel things") (159) for which his brother is responsible. For Timm, these (un)known deeds separate him from his brother and cannot be overshadowed by his loss. With its focus on a family history of National Socialism and its harmonizing approach to the war generation, Am Beispiel meines Bruders takes its place within recent literary developments. With regard to the literary and political discourse concerning German suffering, however, Timm's text marks a significant break. Timm's story contributes to this discourse, but at the same time reasserts and reinforces its moral boundaries. Through the example of his brother, Timm offers representations of German suffering but demands that they avoid the elision of others' suffering. By placing his own apprehensions about writing on his brother at the center of his text, Timm forces readers to confront the difficulties of writing about German wartime suffering—of both remembering his family's loss, yet not forgetting the Nazi horrors of which it was a part. Works Cited Amery, Jean. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne·. Bewältigunsgversuche eines Überwältigten. 1966. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980. Babij Jar: Das vergessene Verbrechen. Dir. Jeff Kanew. Perf. Michael Degen, Barbara De Rossi, Katrin Saß. Universal, 2003. Beyer, Susanne. "Gesucht: die eigene Herkunft." Der Spiegel 12 July 2004: 118. Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Fischer, Joschka. lauesWunder ("Europa" 147), the last remaining bridge, and makes reference to Hiroshima ("Europa" 149). His description of the bombing is powerful and undoubtedly stands as one of the most important poetic renderings of Dresden's catastrophe. Nonetheless, the text signals a certain distance. In part this has to do with the author's age; in part due to his ability to "contain" the catastrophe within the strictures of elegant rhyme schemes. (Earlier Dresden poets such as Czechowski, Braun, and Mickel preferred free verse). Grünbein's intertextual references to other East German depictions of the bombings also carry an ironic undertone. The second poem begins with the line: "Dresden ist lange her" ("Europa" 144). 52 The flaues Wunder, which lends itself to all kinds of metaphorical interpretations and which plays a prominent role in Dresden poetry, for example in Barbara Köhler's yearning for freedom,53 is cited, but as a symbol it appears to have been emptied of meaning: "Das Blaue Wunder hieß flußaufwärts eine Brücke,/Die einem nichts erklärte. Immerhin, sie stand [. . .]" (147). 54 The Hiroshima references also resonate with black humor: "Ach, Hiroshima war nur zweite Wahl./Premiere haben sollte sie (sagt man) in Dresden," and ends: "Aufs Gemüt/Schlägt die Vision, wie stilvoll hier die legendäre/Finale Wolke aufgegangen wäre" (149).55 Despite his powerful evocation of the bombing and his personal memory of his grandmother, the poet, referring to Benjamin's famous image of the 50 51 52 53

54 55

For Grünbein's unflattering memories of his time in the NVA, see Ours Grünbein im Gespräch mit Heinz-Norbert Jocks (58-59). Poem IV in the cycle "Europa nach dem letzten Regen," dedicated to "Meiner Großmutter D o r a W . " (148). "Dresden was a long time ago." There are several references to this bridge in Köhler's "Elb-Alb," especially in "Elb— Alb 3" ("Dresdner Traum, Neustädter Seite"), where she dreams of an escape to the West via "das Blaue Wunder." See also Michael Wüstefeld's recent book Blaues Wunder. "The Blue Wonder was the name of a bridge upstream/That explained nothing. Nonetheless, the bridge was not destroyed. [. . . ] " "Oh, Hiroshima was only second choice./The atom bomb was supposed to have its premier (one says) in Dresden." "In the imagination/Comes the vision of how stylishly here the legendary/Mushroom cloud, grand finale, would have gone up."

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angel of history, asks: "Geschichte, -—/Geht mir der Staubwind wirklich nah,/Der alles auslöscht?" (150) and leaves the question open.56 Surveying the newly rebuilt Dresden, the one that pretends that nothing happened, the poet ends with another question, this one answered: "Soll man, wenn dort ein Zeppelin schwebt,/Melancholisch werden beim Anblick der ElbeP/Niemand, nach hundert Jahren, ließe sich soweit gehn" (153).57 In exploring the question of guilt, Grünbein again draws on a tradition of East German discourse. The ninth poem appears to cite the animal imagery in Mickel's "Die Elbe" as well as Barbara Köhler's mythological beasts in "Elb—Alb 2." Describing the animals during the bombing, Grünbein adds: "Keins ein Ungeheuer,/Verglichen mit den smarten Jungs, den Fliegern,/Die sich im Tiefflug Mensch und Bestie holten" ("Europa" 151). 58 Ruth J. Owen finds that this poem is "remarkably clear in apportioning blame," and she notes the religious imagery of the conclusion, where the Aposdes watch the bombing in horror (104).59 On the other hand, Amir Eschel, citing Holocaust references in Grünbein's oeuvre, in the entire volume Nach den Satiren and also in "Europa nach dem letzten Regen," asserts that Grünbein has created a poetic space for a heretofore divided German/Jewish memory (413). At a central point in "Europa nach dem letzten Regen," the poet writes: Und daß man verzichte Im Namen dessen was geschah A u f den Vermeer (verbrannt), den Bach (verschollen), W a r es das wert? Daß ganze Städte, Aus denen Züge zur Vernichtung rollten, Brachflächen wurden an den Ufern Lethes. (150) 60

56 57 58 59

60

"History, —/Does the whirlwind of dust really touch me,/That wipes out everything?" For more on Benjamin's angel of history, see Vees-Gulani in this volume. "If a Zeppelin floats there, is one supposed/To become melancholy at the sight of the Elbe?/No one, after a hundred years, would let himself go that far." "None of them a monster,/Compared with the cocky guys, the flyers,/Who in low-flying planes got people and beasts." See also Köhler's "Elb—Alb 2": "Der Engel auf der Kuppel der Akademie das Jüngste Gericht über der Stadt" (60). ("The angel on the dome of the Academy the Last Judgment over the city.") Grünbein also addresses the question of guilt in his "Gedicht über Dresden." There he writes of "fremde Bomber, Meister ihres Fachs" ("foreign bombers, masters of their trade"), but with his typical ironic distance he terms Dresden's destruction a "Gesamtkunstwerk" "des Malerlehrlings/Mit dem in Wien verstümperten Talent/Der halb Europa seinen Stilbruch aufzwang" (a "Gesamtkunstwerk" ["total work of art"] "of the apprentice painter/With his mangled amateur talent from Wien/Who forced his bad taste on half of Europe") (112). "And that one must do without/In the name of what happened/The Vermeer (burned), the Bach (disappeared)/Was it worth it? That entire cities,/Out of which trains rolled to extermination/Became wastelands on the banks of the river Lethe?"

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In addition to rehearsing the theme of memory and forgetting that interlaces this entire cycle, these lines pose the question of culpability and sequence in a different fashion, in a fashion that includes the Holocaust and again leaves the answer open. Griinbein's attention to the destruction of Dresden is not "new"; that destruction centered a public discourse in which Grünbein grew up— which plays almost no role in W. G. Sebald's now famous lectures published as Ljiftkrieg und Uteratur. Nonetheless, Griinbein's poetry post-1989 does demonstrate a different sensiblity than that expressed by the other poets of the Sächsische Dichterschule. For Braun or Czechowski, the destruction of Dresden coincides with the end of childhood. For Grünbein, it is pre-history, one to which he is connected via his family, but one whose memory is heavily influenced by a new catastophe called East Germany. As one born later, Grünbein remains well aware that he can only approach the destruction of Dresden through a web of at times competing memories, hence his often ironic and distanced tone. Amir Eschel's assertion that Grünbein helps bridge the divided memory of Germans and Jews is, I believe, appropriate, for there was practically no mention of the Holocaust in the previous poems of the East German Dresden poets, and in East German discourse, the Holocaust, while not absent, clearly played a secondary role.61 In the Dresden discourse, it appeared primarily as a means of linking innocent Dresden victims with innocent Jewish ones, a strategy we saw in Max Zimmering's early novel, and which today serves, mutatis mutandis, as a rallying cry for German Neo-Nazis. Taking this a step further, we can suggest that Griinbein's poetry serves not merely as a space for German-Jewish memory, but one for (East) German-(West) German memory as well. East German discourse did not emphasize the destruction of the Jews, and in West Germany one did not emphasize the destruction of Dresden. Ironically, yet necessarily, in creating new spaces for Jewish-German and German-German memory, Grünbein also creates new memory divisions. Although his poetry of Dresden would not be conceivable without the writing of Mickel, Czechowski, and Braun, as well as an entire discourse exemplified by Werner Weidauer and Max Seydewitz, it evinces nonetheless a radically different sensibility, one characterized by a distanced irony and a suspicion of political positions. In this it maps out a different terrain and discovers a different tone than one finds in the work of previous Dresden authors, and thus signals a clear change of generation with regard to the work of memory.

61

For an examination of Holocaust discourse in East Germany, see my Stated Memoty: Germany and the Holocaust.

East

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Works Cited Berendse, Gerrit-Jan. "Zu neuen Ufern: Lyrik der 'Sächsischen Dichterschule* im Spiegel der Elbe." Studies in GDR Culture and Sodety 10: Selected Papers from the Fifteenth New Hampshire Symposium on the German Democratic Republic. Ed. Margy Gerber, et al. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1991. 197-212. Braun, Volker. "Dresdens Andenken." Wir befinden uns soweit wohl. Wir sind erst einmal am Ende: Äußerungen. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1996. 112-16. —. "Material IX: Dresden als Landschaft." langsamer knirschender Morgen: Gedichte. Halle/Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1987. 55-57. —. "Wüstensturm." Die Zick^ackbrücke: Ein Abrißkalender. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1992. 86. Czechowski, Heinz. "An der Elbe." Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Gedichte undProsa 1958-1988. 7. —. "An der Elbe." Bekanntschaft mit uns selbst: Gedichte junger Menschen. Ed. Gerhard Wolf. Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1961. 57. —. "An der Elbe." Ich, beispielsweise: Gedichte. Leipzig: Reclam, 1982. 5. —. Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Gedichte und Prosa 1958-1988. Halle/Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1990. —. "Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt." Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Gedichte undProsa 1958-1988. 13-14. —. "Augustusweg." Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Gedichte undProsa 1958-1988. 90. —. "Charon." Sanft gehen wie Tiere die Berge neben dem Fluß. Bremen: Neue Bremer Presse, 1989. 66-69. —. "Frühe." Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt. Gedichte und Prosa 1958-1988. 8. —. "Ich und die Folgen." Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Gedichte und Prosa 19581988. 87-89. —. "Sic transit Gloria mundi." Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Gedichte und Prosa 1958-1988. 107-8. Deckert, Renatus. "Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt: Heinz Czechowski und die Debatte über den Luftkrieg." Merkur 659 (March 2004): 255-59. Eschel, Amir. "Diverging Memories? Durs Grünbein's Mnemonic Topographies and the Future of the German Past." The German Quarterly 74.4 (Fall 2001): 407-16. Fox, Thomas. Stated Memory: East Germany and the Holocaust. Rochester: Camden House, 1999. Groehler, Olaf. Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland. Berlin: Akademie, 1990. Grünbein, Durs. "Chimäre Dresden." Galilei vermißt Dantes Hölle und bleibt an den Maßen hängen: Aufsätze 1989-1995. 145-51. —. "Europa nach dem letzten Regen." Nach den Satiren. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1999. 143-53. —. Galilei vermißt Dantes Hölle und bleibt an den Maßen hängen: Aufsätze 1989-1995. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1996. —. "Gedicht über Dresden." Schädelbasislektion: Gedichte. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1991. 112. —. "No. 8." Grau^one morgens: Gedichte. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1988. 39-41.

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Huyssen, Andreas. "Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad." New German Critique 90 (2003): 163-76. Jocks, Heinz-Norbert, ed. Durs Grünbein im Gespräch mit Hein^-Norbert Jocks. Köln: DuMont, 2001. Köhler, Barbara. "Elb—Alb 1-9." Deutsches Roulette. Gedichte. 1984-1989. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1991. 59-68. Margalit, Gilad. "Der Luftangriff auf Dresden: Seine Bedeutung für die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und für die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen Kriegserinnerung im Westen." Narrative der Shoah: Repräsentationen der Vergangenheit in Historiographie, Kunst und Politik. Ed. Susanne Düwell and Matthias Schmidt. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002. 189-207. Mickel, Karl. "Dresdener Häuser (1958/65)." Vita nova mea. Gedichte. Berlin/Weimar: Aufbau, 1966; Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1967. 45-49. —. "Die Elbe." Eisenzeit. Gedichte. Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1975. 71-72. "NPD-Skandal in Dresden: Empörung über Holocaust-Vergleich." Spiegel-Online 21 Jan. 2005. 29 Jan. 2005 . "NPD spricht von Bomben-Holocaust." 22 Jan. 2002. 29 Jan. 2005 . Owen, Ruth J. '"Eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt': Dresden in Poetry." Gegenwartsliteratur. Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch. Ed. Paul-Michael Lützeler and Stephan Schindler. Vol. 1. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2002. 87-106. Panitz, Eberhard. Die Feuer sinken. Berlin: Verlag des Ministeriums für Nationale Verteidigung, 1960. Seydewitz, Max. Introduction. Die Dresdener Gemäldegalerie. Alte und neue Meister. Ed. Alfred Langer. Leipzig: VEB E. A. Seemann Verlag, 1972. v-x. —. Die unbesiegbare Stadt: Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden. 3rd ed. Berlin: Kongress, 1961. Taylor, Frederick. Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945. NY: HarperCollins, 2004. Tragelehn, Β. Κ. "Dresdener Elegie." NÖSPL: Gedichte 1956-1991. Basel: Stroemfeld; Frankfurt/M: Roter Stein, 1996. 11. Weidauer, Walter. Inferno Dresden. Über Lügen und Legenden um die Aktion 'Donnerschlag." 7* ed. Berlin: Dietz, 1989. Wüstefeld, Michael. Blaues Wunder. Berlin: Be.Bra, 2002. —. "Übigau hinter der Flutrinne." Stadtplan: Gedichte. Berlin/Weimar: Aufbau, 1990. 61-65. Zimmering, Max. Phosphor und Flieder. Vom Untergang und Wiederaufstieg der Stadt Dresden. Berlin: Dietz, 1954.

Jewish Victimization: Silence and Remembrance

ELKE SEGELCKE

Breaking the Taboo: Barbara Honigmann's Narrative Quest for a German-Jewish (Family) History Bom in 1949 in East Berlin to Jewish-Communist returned exiles, the writer and painter Barbara Honigmann belongs to those postwar GermanJewish authors who have made the experiences of their parents as the generation of Holocaust survivors a focal point of their writing. From the vantage point of a member of the successor generation and by means of autobiographical-fictional texts, Honigmann has confronted not only the traumas and taboos of the Holocaust, but also the experience of growing up in the GDR and its particular way of confronting the past. The result for Honigmann has been a break not only with the GDR, but also with Germany itself. Since 1984, she has lived in self-imposed exile in Strasbourg, France. Following her prose debut in 1986 with Roman von einem Kinde, six additional works have appeared. 1 In attempting to construct an identity for herself, her literary (self-) representations are focused on rediscovering her Judaism, confronting the burden of her family history, and defining herself as a writer. In their mixture of historical fact and fiction, her texts may properly be considered autobiographical fiction. In these texts, the life history and worldview of the author are usually congruent with those of a self-identical, first-person narrator, even though Honigmann does not fall into a mode of pure self-analysis. 2 Her retrospectives on the GDR and her recollections of her family's tales of exile are subjected through fictionalization to a conscious process of selection in which theoretical 1

2

Roman von einem Kinde. Sechs Erzählungen \A Child's Novel] (1986). Since then, she has published six more works: Eine Liebe aus Nichts (1991) \A Love Made out of Nothing, English translation published in 2003], Soharas Reise (1996) [Zohara's Journey, English translation published in 2003], Am Sonntag spielt der Rabbi Fußball [On Sunday the Rabbi Plays Soccer] (1998), Damals, dann und danach \At that Time, Then, and Afterwards} (1999), Alles, alles Liebe [With All My Love] (2000), Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben \A Chapter from My Life\ (2004). I would like to thank my colleague Andrew Weeks for his generous and invaluable help with the translation of this article. For a further discussion of congruencies and incongruencies between author and narrator and of Honigmann's conscious literary process of selection, see Stern 332.

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reflections and digressions are interwoven with descriptions of everyday events and thoughts. The result is an idiosyncratic personal Jewish narration, a kind of "pastiche," that interlinks a variety of styles.3 In her narrative and essay collection Damals, dann und danach (1999), she correlates the brevity of her texts with her fear of being ignored in any more extensive discourse: "[. . .] die Kürze meiner Texte [hängt] mit der Angst zusammen, daß man mir, wenn ich länger redete, gar nicht mehr zuhören würde, daß ich eben nur eine kurze Frist hätte" (Damals 47).4 Honigmann appears in this respect to obey a narrative taboo against the story of the GermanJewish experience—a topic that was not part of the narrative framework of her native GDR, which claimed to have abolished the Jewish Question by requiring any remaining Jews to assimilate completely.5 At the same time, this taboo was also imposed by her own family, who, as Jews, suffered the trauma as well as the guilt of Holocaust survivors, and who, as returned exiles and committed communists, conformed to the political expectations of the East German state. The author violates this taboo, however, by leaping from one narrative topic to another as she creates new frames of reference in which the taboo is rendered thematically explicit. Such is the case in "Selbstporträt als Jüdin," a fictionalized autobiographical sketch in which Honigmann remembers conversations from her childhood which illustrate the narrative taboo concerning the German-Jewish experience. In contrast, ordinary Germans of the postwar GDR enjoyed great freedom in speaking about their wartime suffering as self-conceived victims: [. . .] wenn die anderen vom Krieg, von Schlesien, von Ostpreußen, vom Treck, von den Bombardierungen der deutschen Städte und den Greueltaten der Roten Armee erzählten, schwiegen sie [ihre Eltern]. Ich dachte oft, warum darf jeder seine Geschichte erzählen, nur wir dürfen unsere Geschichte nicht erzählen." (Damals 48)«

3

4

5 6

See Stern 329, where he appropriately refers to Honigmann's texts as "pastiches of fictionalized autobiography [. . .] in which a goodly variety of narrative devices interlink. Epistolary passages, anecdotes, diary excerpts, quotes of lyric poetry, factual reportage, and musings and reflections of the narrator accommodate the authorial intention of shuffling between time frames and of creating continuity out of fragmentation." "The brevity of my texts has to do with my fear that no one would listen to any more extensive discourse, as if I had only a brief interval accorded to me." The translations of Honigmann's texts are my own, with assistance from Andrew Weeks; with regard to Eine Liebe aus Nichts, the English translation from 2003 was used. For more on this point, see in this article 169n51 and 174. "When other people were talking about the war, Silesia, East Prussia, their expulsion, the bombings of German cities and the atrocities committed by the Red Army, they Pier parents] were silent. I often wondered why it was that [the others] could all tell their stories and only we were not allowed to tell ours."

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Beyond the themes of trauma and taboo of a Jewish family saga explicit in these words, Honigmann's fictionalized memories reveal that the GDR was founded upon a different political system but not on a different nation. Accordingly, Aleida Assmann and Ute Frevert have documented in their investigation of German memory how the two German states— notwithstanding their divergent patterns of memory and their differing impositions of taboo—handled the "national catastrophe" of National Socialism in a remarkably parallel way in terms of the mechanisms serving to rationalize collective guilt (13). As indicated above, Honigmann's works are largely informed by her experience of the ongoing suppression of the Jewish voice and Jewish identity by both the state and her own family. Whereas scholars such as Guy Stern have focused on her texts as a paradigm for post-exile writings by German-Jewish authors, this article examines the way she approaches both family history and German history, giving specific attention to the narrative framework and writing strategy that allow her to reclaim her Judaism while, at the same time, reject all discourses of victimization. This rejection includes not only the German victim discourse of the 1950s, but also the discourse of Jewish victimization and the exaggerated, one-sided West German discourse on guilt after the 1970s—a discourse which prevented a more productive dialogue with the Jewish community as it reduced the German-Jewish relationship to the horrors of Auschwitz and anti-Semitism. Consequently, in contrast to other authors of memory literature, Honigmann assumes not the role of archivist or documentarian that would lead her to reaffirm the history of Jewish victimization; rather, she skeptically revisits German-Jewish (family) history as a late-born heir and as a member of the successor generation who resists the past. Honigmann's rejection of victimization and her particular labor of memory find special relevance in the "mnemo-political shift" (Frei 25) in the current German Gedächtniskultur ("memory culture").7 As the author observes in "Selbstporträt als Jüdin," the generation of survivors did not begin to speak until the late 1960s, when their suppressed memories at last surfaced in the form of novels, reports, and historical research on the Jewish experience and were acknowledged by the German public (Damals 48). Since the late 1990s, the continuing flood of Holocaust literature has been complemented by a renewed wave of German memoir-based writing concerned with flight, expulsion, and the air war but, unlike the forgotten war novels of the 1950s, is mostly written from the perspective of the children and grandchildren of the affected generation. 7

In the context of Germany's current shift in politics of cultural memory, Frei uses the term "erinnerungspolitischer Gezeitenwechsel."

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In consideration of the need to normalize German-Jewish relations and of the current generational shift, the continuation of remembering Jewish suffering as well as the renewal of divergent German memories seem especially important. This assessment is shared by Aleida Assmann when she points out: Das vielstimmige Aufbrechen der Erinnerungen kann nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass diejenigen, die mit dem Frühjahr 1945 noch biografische Erinnerungen verbinden, immer weniger mitsprechen, und dass das lebendige Erfahrungsgedächtnis im Begriff ist, von einem nationalen Kollektiv-Gedächtnis überlagert zu werden. ('Oefreit") 8

At the same time, however, she is right in stressing the dilemma of the following generations who, once individual living memories have disappeared and been replaced by a national collective memory, will have to depend solely on secondary experiences such as are derived from memorial sites, monuments, films and books ("Befreit"). Some critics, like the Jewish director of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial, fear that the mnemo-political shift of perspective threatens a relapse into a heightened German self-preoccupation, a kind of Germano-centric memory, 9 and thus a return to the victim discourse of the 1950s, or indeed even an "Opferkonkurrenz" ("competition of victimization") (Frei 25). These concerns are countered by the historian Sebastian Ullrich when he refers to the "completely transformed mnemo-political context" in which the representation of German suffering currently takes place (34).10 Though Berlin historian Wolfgang Wippermann basically agrees with this 8

9

10

"The polyvocal renewal of memories cannot obscure the fact, that those who still connect biographical memories with the Spring of 1945 express themselves less and less and that living memory is in the process of being covered with layers of national collective memory." See the article by Günter Morsch, director of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial, on the occasion of the commemoration of 8 May 2005: "Es gibt heute eine Art Germano-Zentriertheit. Das ist ein entscheidender Unterschied zum 50. Jahrestag. Man schaut weniger auf die Opfer als auf den eigenen Bauchnabel. [. . .] Das führt auch erkennbar zu Resignation bei ehemaligen KZ-Häftlingen. Natürlich hat diese Stimmung auch mit dem Rechtsextremismus zu tun, der seither nicht zurückgegangen ist. Und dazu kommt nun die verstärkte Hinwendung der Deutschen zu sich selbst hinzu. Das macht den Uberlebenden Sorge" ("Es gibt eine Germano-Zentriertheit"). ("There is a kind of Germanocentric memory today. This is a decisive difference compared to the fiftieth anniversary. People are less concerned with the victims than with themselves. [. . .] It is obvious that this also leads to a certain resignation among former KZ-prisoners. Of course, this sentiment also has to do with right-wing extremism, which has not declined since then. Adding to that is now a heightened German self-preoccupation. This creates concern for the survivors.") In his article, Ullrich stresses the fact that the current recollection of German suffering does not threaten a return to the victim-discourse of the 1950s due to today's "gänzlich veränderten erinnerungspolitischen Kontext," which no longer allows a relativization of the historical crimes of the German people.

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view, in his critical judgement, the earlier mnemo-political discussion on how to interpret the outcome of the Second World War has now ceded its place to a commercialization of the Shoah and the war ("Kommerzialisierung"). Moreover, Assmann confirms that the historical-political interpretive framework, which sees the outcome of the war as a liberation rather than a catastrophe—a fixture of public discourse established by Richard von Weizsäckers noted speech of the year 1985—now allows divergent experiences and recollections to be voiced more directly. The current tendency among members of the third generation to revisit the war and postwar experiences of the first generation, in conjunction with the trend of the literary market to promote the publication of their stories, could indeed contribute to a more enlightened remembering of the Nazi past, and thereby lead to a memory policy of "a new historical 'normality'" proclaimed by post-unification Germany's "Berlin Republic" ("Befreit"). 11 Unification, with its resultant disruption of the prevailing order and its, per Assmann and Frevert, "Konsequenzen für den weiteren Verlauf der deutschen Erinnerungsgeschichte" (142-43), 12 has not yet helped with the normalization of German-Jewish relations, however. The disappearance of familiar paradigms after 1989, the subsequent stream of immigrants—predominantly from Eastern Europe—and the increased focus on multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity have met with a growing tendency to define place and identity in national terms, resulting in an ideologically constructed "phantasm of cultural integrity" (Kosta and Kraft l). 1 3 Thus, the prospect for Germany becoming a racial and ethnic melting pot in the 1990s has, according to Gabriele Weinberger, affected the German-Jewish relationship as well, a centuries-long precarious coexistence that has been characterized as the Jewish-German "negative symbiosis" (347).14 The New Germany that resulted from unification, Weinberger notes, "was very eager to again break with its past [. . .] of the philo-Semitic postwar years, of often opportunistic shows of mourning and Holocaust restitution, and an ostentatious cosmopolitanism to avoid the appearance of nationalism" (348). This philo-Semitic era Weinberger sees now replaced by the "fear of a new culture, blended from the elements of all" and a new revival of "the xenophobic dogmas of the past." It includes a "present-day anti-Semitism" that needs to be acknowledged in spite of the fact that the German people "started a new era and do not want to be reminded of the

11 12 13 14

In the context of this memory policy, Assmann speaks in her article of the "neue historische 'Normalität.'" "consequences for the subsequent course of German remembering" For an assessment of the renewed popularity of Heimat, see Ecker. Weinberger points out that the term was first used by Dan Diner (see 351nl).

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shameful events in what they have come to regard 'ancient history'" (349, 350-51). Notwithstanding ambivalent feelings toward Germany and Germans—"diese unzivilisierten Barbaren, vor denen unsere Eltern ins Exil geflohen waren" (Damals 26-27) 15 —Honigmann's main reasons for leaving Germany lay not only in the latent anti-Semitism of the GDR, but also in the subsequent ritualized way of dealing with the Holocaust. In this she rejects the "immerwährenden Antisemitismus-Diskurs" conducted in Germany with reference solely to Auschwitz and its "schreckliche Geschichte" without any real knowledge of things Jewish (Damals 15).16 In the author's view, it is precisely this reductionist discourse that has become the actual German-Jewish symbiosis, the "so oft beschworene deutsch-jüdische Symbiose, dieses Nicht-voneinander-loskommenKönnen," because Auschwitz inseparably paired the Germans and the Jews, even beyond death (Damals 16).17 According to Honigmann, this symbiosis casts its spell over German-Jewish interaction into the present day in the form of hypersensitivities and unrealistic demands on both sides. In Vornan von einem Kinde, the first-person narrator recalls her search for her Jewish heritage by employing the metaphor of a salto mortale that took her not only to the West, but also to France and to the Jewish community in Strasbourg, where she began studying the Torah: "Hier bin ich gelandet vom dreifachen Todessprung ohne Netz: vom Osten in den Westen, von Deutschland nach Frankreich und aus der Assimilation mitten in das Thora-Judentum hinein" (Roman III). 1 8 After making this leap, the author tentatively claims in 2000 in an interview with the Berliner Leitung to have discovered the long sought-after normality of intellectual Jewish life in France, the country with the world's third largest Jewish community ("Was kann jüdisches Leben"). Honigmann's voluntary expatriation as an existential necessity for overcoming the dilemma of being Jewish in post-Shoa Germany remains, however, a returning "nach Hause in die Fremde" (Roman 113),19 a dual existence between three cultures. In her tale on her forefathers, "Von meinem Urgrossvater, meinem Grossvater, meinem Vater und von mir," the female protagonist concedes that in France her sense of freedom of no longer being seen as Other derives mainly from the French lack of interest in the immigrant: "Daß diese Freiheit vor allem auf dem 15 16 17 18 19

"these uncivilized barbarians before whom our parents fled into exile" "incessant anti-Semitism discourse"; "terrible history" "much discussed German-Jewish symbiosis, this can't-live-without-each-other" "It was here that I landed after my triple salto mortale without a safety net: from East to West, from Germany to France, and from assimilation into the midst of Torah-Judaism." "home in a foreign environment"

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Desinteresse für den Zugewanderten beruht und oft schwer erträglich ist, will ich gleich hinzufügen [. . .]" (Damals 53).20 The diversity of Jewish culture in Strasbourg thus evokes not only a sense of wonderment in the narrator, recalling portrayals of pre-Hider Berlin, but also the fear "daß das nicht gut gehen kann auf die Dauer" (Roman 115).21 The rising antiSemitism in all of Europe,22 and especially in France after the Intifada of 2000, seems to confirm the author's pronouncements. Two years after her interview with the Berliner Zeitung the author critically addressed increasing anti-Semitism in an article in Die Zeit with the headline: "Hauptsache, der Jude ist schuld. In Frankreich brennen Synagogen, aber niemand will über Antisemitismus nachdenken" ("Hauptsache").23 Into this flood of divergent experiences and memories at the end of the twentieth century, Honigmann intends to insert her very own personal history as a Jew by means of her autobiographical fiction. As the firstperson narrator explains in her report on her forefathers: "Aber da ich nun Jüdin war, wollte ich es auch sagen können, und von mir, meinen Eltern und Großeltern erzählen [. . . ]" (Damals 49).24 In addition to expressing the need for an unconstrained articulation of her Jewishness, the same narrator in "Selbstporträt einer Jüdin" also comments on her generation's difficulty in trying to escape the imposed "history and stories" of its childhood.25 Thus, even after her parents' death, she is tempted yet again to fall under the spell of these legends, "Gesänge von den mythischen Orten und Begebenheiten" (Damals II), 26 and of the "Routen des Exils" (Damals 12),27 which are poetically captured in these lines: "Wien vor dem Krieg/Berlin vor dem Krieg/Paris bis zur Okkupation/London/Bomben auf London/der Blitz" (Damals 12)28—lines reflecting the disrupted lives of her parents as German-Jewish refugees. 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28

"I want to add right away that this sense of freedom derives mainly from the lack of interest in the immigrant and is frequendy unbearable." "that this cannot work out in the long run" For a discussion of the rising anti-Semitism in Europe, see Gellner. "Above all the J e w is to blame. In France, synagogues are burning but no one wants to think about anti-Semitism." "Since I was after all a Jew, I intended to be able to talk about it and to tell about myself, my parents, and grandparents." Honigmann writes: "Ich glaube, wir Kinder von Juden aus der Generation meiner Eltern sind [. . . ] Kinder unserer Eltern geblieben. [. . . ] Denn es war schwer, der Geschichte und den Geschichten unserer Eltern zu entrinnen" (11). ("I think that we children of Jews from my parents' generation [. . .] have remained our parents' children. [. . .] For it was difficult to escape the history and stories of our parents.") "sagas of mythical places and events" "routes of exile" "Vienna before the war/Berlin before the war/Paris until the occupation/London/ Bombs on London/The Blitz."

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By combining in her autobiographical fiction the exile experiences of the generation of the Holocaust with her own experiences of exile, Honigmann's texts belong to "post-exile writings" stemming from those postwar German-Jewish authors who "have become a successor generation to the exiles by vicariously reliving and fictionally recreating the experiences of their elders" (Stern 329, 337). She thus joins writers like Maxim Biller, Irene Dische, Esther Dischereit, Lea Fleischmann, Matthias Hermann, Robert Schindel, and Rafael Seligmann, who "manifest a preoccupation with exiles and Jewish characters in their writings," so that, according to Dieter Lamping, "in this aspect alone they prove to be a kind of exile literature—a second generational exile literature" (qtd. in Stern 337). In Honigmann's case, however, the literary representation of her parents' exile experience is joined by a reflection upon her own exile. 29 In a chapter on her family saga, the first-person narrator asserts that it was, in fact, her voluntary exile, her geopolitical and cultural distance from Germany, that provided the separation and her new experience of foreignness, necessary not only for the exploration of her Jewishness but also for her artistic self-representation. Recognizing the interconnectedness of life in exile, writing, and being Jewish, she concludes that: [. . . ] Schreiben Getrenntsein heißt und dem Exil sehr ähnlich ist, und daß [. . .] in diesem Sinne [. . . ] Schriftsteller sein und Jude sein sich ähnlich sind, wie sie nämlich vom Anderen abhängen. [. . .] Es gilt ja auch für beide, daß eine zu grosse Annäherung an den Anderen für sie gefährlich ist und eine völlige Übereinstimmung mit ihm ihren Untergang befördert. (Damals 47)30

Since for Honigmann being a writer and being a Jew entails both a dependence on and a critical distance from the Other in order "to establish the fertile ground of difference" (Guenther 2),31 she chooses to live in Strasbourg not in the monocultural quartier j u i f , but rather in the space of "in-betweenness" (Guenther 2) of the multicultural quarter among other foreigners and new arrivals, conscious of her marginal position in this new life between worlds. From this new locus, she is finally able to live and write in relation to the cultural and ethnic Other without, however, 29

30

31

Her mythologization calls to mind the Odyssey and Ellis Island as well as exile in its archetypal essence as an expression of desire, belonging, and salvation. With regard to Honigmann's "motivation of myth-making" and employment of exile as an archetypal motif of the "condition humaine," see Stem 339. "Writing means being cut off and resembles exile, and that in this sense being a writer and being a Jew are similar, in that they depend on the Other. It is also true for both writers and Jews, that too great a convergence with the Other endangers them, and complete unity with the Other is ruin." Guenther's article examines Honigmann's integration of a cultural hybrid's perspective into her construction of identity in the context of postmodern theories.

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sacrificing her Jewish identity: "Gerade in der Entfernung, als ob ich erst dort nun endlich anfangen könnte, meine eigene Geschichte zu erzählen, in der mir eigenen Form" {Damals 53).32 The poetic program for this form is enunciated by the narrator in the chapter on her forefathers in connection with her abbreviated account of German Jewry, traced in the example of the generations on her father's side, who represented the characteristic progression of the German-Jewish Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle class). Her great-grandfather, a child of the Enlightenment and a fearless progressive, had still struggled simultaneously for the democratic goals of the 1848 revolution as well as for the foundation of Reformed Judaism with its spiritual-intellectual and political-material emancipations (Damals 41-42). Her grandfather, a scholar and professor of the history of medicine had, in turn, already "exited" from his Jewishness and assimilated in the world of German culture (Damals 42). Her father finally had "nearly 'forgotten'" his Jewishness in his fervent belief that he was a German, until this faith was shattered in fleeing Germany (Damals 43). They had all dreamed of being "at home" in German culture but had usually met with rejection down to the "endgültigen Untergang der deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte" (Damals 45).33 After all these experiences of failed assimilation, Honigmann, describing herself as "die Urenkelin des unerschrockenen Vorkämpfers, [. . .] eine eher erschrockene Nachgeborne, eher ratlos" (Damals 45),34 arrives at the personal conclusion after these three generations that had talked and written much, all in vain, that she will speak in different words: "aber nicht in der Sprache der Vorkämpfer, die alles wissen und deren Worte ihre Ideen vor sich hertragen, sondern so wie es dem Ratlosen entspricht [. . .]" (Damals 51).35 Precisely this sense of being at a loss (Ratlosigkeit) opens up a new literary avenue: The words she seeks for her diverse recollections and poetic images are discovered within the realm of daily life and the ordinary (Damals 51). In view of this, Guy Stern rightly draws attention to a correspondence between Honigmann's "selection of episodes and details," borrowed from "precise observations of ordinary occurrences rather than from the large sweep of history," and the qualities of postmodern style. This he links to Siegfried Kracauer's demand that 32

33 34 35

"To tell my own story from a distance, as if it could finally begin there and nowhere else in the form peculiar to me." Regarding Honigmann's choice of a multicultural quarter in Strasbourg, see Lützeler 16-17. For Honigmann's German-Jewish writing in the context of multiculturalism in Germany and her self-imposed exile, see Collin 165-95. "final demise of German-Jewish history" "the great-granddaughter of the fearless progressive, a rather frightened member of the successor generation, rather at a loss" "but not in the language of those progressives who know everything and whose words proclaim their ideas, but rather as befitting someone who is at a loss"

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fiction "describe a period of culture by its surface manifestations (Oberflächenäußerungeti)" by which he means that the "basic substance of an era [. . .] is ascertainable by its neglected motions," such as everyday events (332). The narrative perspective of someone at a loss (Ratlose) is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's conception of the modernist narrator, as distinct from the oral narrator, whose epic memory interweaves its themes into the fabric of experienced life. The modernist narrator has lost the attendant "capacity to exchange experiences" and, therefore, can no longer impart "advice" (Rat) to the listener. 36 For her part, however, Honigmann does retain the tone of oral speech in her prose, although without certainties. She interweaves her tales with the fabric of experienced life to the extent that the clueless (ratlose) narrator recounts the "mythic" histories of her parents—known to her only in fragmentary form as episodes and details of everyday experiences (Damals 27). However, something new appears in her continuing and retelling of the parental histories of exile in the context of her Jewish family chronicle, inaugurated with Eine Uebe aus Nichts (1991)—composed in memory of her father—and resumed in the most recent autobiography—dedicated to her mother—Ein Kapitel aus meinem Eeben (2004). Things consigned to silence by her parents now find a voice. The narrating daughter recollects them from a skeptical distance, couching in questions what had been concealed, what had not been said "back then": '"Was ist eigentlich aus den anderen geworden, aus euren Familien in Ungarn, Österreich und Deutschland? Sind sie tot, leben sie noch, was für ein Leben, wo?'" (Damals 13).37 Accordingly, the narrator recalls laconically and pointedly in Ein Kapitel aus meinem heben how the focus of her parents' "England-Epos" ("England epic")—the partial story of their exile from 1934 to 1947, when they returned to postwar Germany—was centered not on tales of Jewish emigrant fates but rather on embellished accounts of English heroism during the nighttime bombing raids: [. . .] diese Bombennächte waren ein Zentrum ihres England-Epos, in dem nun hochdramatische Ereignisse zur Sprache kamen, brennende Straßen, einstürzende Häuser, die Furchdosigkeit und Diszipliniertheit, ja Heldenhaftigkeit der Londoner und das tapfere Königspaar, das mit seinen beiden kleinen Töchtern allgegenwärtig blieb und ihnen als Vorbild diente. (Kapitel 107)38

36 37 38

In Benjamin's words: "das Vermögen, Erfahrungen auszutauschen" (Benjamin 385). For his conception of epic memory and the modernist narrator, see Benjamin 385-410. '"What actually happened to the others, to your families in Hungary, Austria, and Germany? Are they dead, still living; how do they live; where?'" "These nighttime bombing raids were the center stage of their England epic; the most dramatic events were addressed, burning streets, collapsing houses, fearlessness, discipline,

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In Eine Liebe aus Nichts, the topic of the German air war against England is again recounted from the narrative perspective of the daughter. But this time the narrator focuses on the dual existence of her parents, who as emigrants shared the fate and suffering of the English and were spared the far worse fate of the European Jews—a trauma over which, however, guilt feelings cast a spell of taboo: "Weil sie Juden waren, ist die Emigration und sind die Bomben auf London nicht einmal das Schlimmste gewesen" (Liebe 34). 39 Even though her parents were able to escape the Holocaust, they would be compelled to remember its victims always. According to the daughter, that must have been a heavy burden: "so schwer, daß sie immer so taten, als hätten sie damit gar nichts zu tun gehabt und als hätte niemand jemals zu ihnen gehört, der in einem Getto verreckt oder in Auschwitz vergast worden ist" (Liebe 34) . 40 Still, from the daughter's perspective, her parents appear as momentary victors. After being fired from his newspaper job at the Vossische Zeitung in Berlin, her father continued his career as a journalist after emigrating to London with the Exchange Telegraph and for Reuters, where he compiled war reports for the British press. During this time, he joined the Communist Party. Her mother, whose communist activity forced her to leave Vienna in that same year, worked in a defense plant helping to construct English submarines for the war against Germany. This was her parents' way of fighting back: "Sie wollten sich wehren. Und Hider wurde besiegt. Er hat verloren und meine Eltern haben gesiegt" (Liebe 33).41 Because of their ideological certainties and their resistance, the fate of her parents in English exile differed fundamentally from the Jewish destinies and disasters of all those persecuted by the Nazi regime and forced into that other sort of emigration, which W. G. Sebald's collection of tales Die Ausgewanderten recounts. 42

39 40

41 42

even the heroism of the Londoners and the royal couple, that stood its ground with its two daughters, leading by example." "Because they were Jews, the emigration and the bombing of London weren't the worst of it" (Love 24). "a heavy burden—so heavy that they always acted as if they hadn't had anything to do with all that and as if they hadn't had any relatives who died in a ghetto or were gassed at Auschwitz" (Love 24). "They wanted to fight back. And Hider was beaten. He lost and my parents won" (Love 23-24). As for the Sebald controversy, it is worth mentioning that these tales "von deutscher Schuld und jüdischem Leiden" ("of German guilt and Jewish suffering") made his later controversial "Asthetisierung der deutschen Opfererfahrung" ("aestheticization of the German experience of victimization") in Luftkrieg und Literatur acceptable to literary critics like Andreas Isenschmid (Hage 113n201). Sebald himself maintained: "Ich glaubte einigermaßen sicher sein zu können, daß der Beifall von der falschen Seite, der zu erwarten war, mir nicht zu nahe kommen würde" ("Hitlers pyromanische Phantasien" 262). ("I feit relatively safe from the expected applause from the wrong quarter.")

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The themes of mourning and alienation in Sebald's early tales of emigrant fates are similarly taken up by Honigmann in reference to her parents, but only in connection with their return from English exile. Due to the author's personal experience with life in East Germany, her retrospection on the GDR leads to a fundamental shift in narrative perspective, changing from empathy to criticism, thereby questioning the parents' choice of country. In this context and with regard to Honigmann's generation, Stern has observed: "While the problem of return with all its ambivalence does occur in the fictional works of the earlier generation [. . .] some members of the successor generation question the wisdom of return with greater vehemence and finality" (338). Accordingly, in Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben, the author critically portrays the ongoing duality of her parents' existence—which now includes the daughter as well—in the GDR, a land which her father had hoped would promise a new Germany. Instead of the anticipated homecoming to the land of his fathers, however, the committed communist found not a new beginning, but rather a continuation of his previous experience of estrangement in spite of his privileged status. Like her friends of the emigrant circles that figure as "antifaschistischer Adel" ("antifascist aristocracy") (Kapitel 33), the narrator-daughter, too, coexists with the past of her parents. Given their secure status in the socialist state as members of the Communist Party elite and recognized victims of the Nazi regime, they could establish for themselves what the daughter ironically refers to as "ein ganz neues Genre bürgerlicher Existenz, etabliert, protegiert, ja priviligiert und doch gebrochen durch die vielfältigen Entwurzelungen, Ausgrenzungen und Verfolgungen" (Kapitel 35).43 The same could be said of the circle of her parents' friends, consisting of Jews, communists, former partisans, refugees, resistance fighters, and concentration camp survivors, "und manchmal alles zusammen" (Kapitel 33).44 The fact that her parents were even now no more inclined to talk about Auschwitz than about the Soviet camps is explained by the daughter in reference to their recognized status as "Verfolgte des Naziregimes," 45 which implied, though they did not care to acknowledge it, a certain "politisches Wohlverhalten" 46 : Meine Eltern gaben ungern zu, daß der Status eines "Verfolgten des Naziregimes" an politisches Wohlverhalten gebunden und nicht ein für alle Mal gesichert war, schon gar nicht etwa durch das Ausmaß an Leiden und Verfolgung, denn die etablierte Hierarchie stellte die "Kämpfer" über die "Opfer", gab

43 44 45 46

"an entirely new genre of bourgeois existence, established, patronized, even privileged, and yet fragmented because of the numerous forced departures, exclusions, and persecutions" "and in some cases, all in one" "those persecuted by the Nazi regime" "good political behavior"

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also den politisch Verfolgten einen höheren Rang und eine höhere Rente als denen, die etwa "nur" als Juden nach Auschwitz deportiert worden waren.

(Kapitel 123)«

Historians confirm Honigmann's mixture of personal recollection and historical reflection. Ute Frevert writes in a chapter on "OpferHierarchien" ("Victim Hierarchies") that communist resistance fighters were considered in the GDR to be the real and authentic victims of fascist dictatorship—those who had suffered in concentration camps and distinguished themselves through their "aktive, kämpferische Oppositionshaltung" (Assmann and Frevert 167). 48 The national political memory of the Nazi era narrows down to the commemoration of communist resistance fighters to the same degree that the GDR claimed the legacy of antifascism. Frevert notes that for this reason in the 1950s, the question of responsibility for Nazi crimes disappeared from public discourse (Assmann and Frevert 169). The noticeable assimilation, confirmed by Frevert, of numerous Jewish returnees—who had survived National Socialism by fleeing abroad, and who preferred to avoid mentioning their Jewishness and their own family histories of persecution (see Assmann and Frevert 171)—is reflected in the narrator's criticism of "eine der zahlreichen Unterwerfungsgesten" and "Anpassungsmanöver" of the bourgeois Jewish parents (Kapitel 123-24). 49 The GDR's policy of confronting the past that even made it necessary for Jews to "justify" the land of exile—"warum es ein westliches Land war und nicht die Sowjetunion" (Liebe 34) 50 —likewise falls under criticism. In connection with the everyday experience of her childhood, the daughter recalls that the Jewishness on both sides (of the family and the state) was not openly talked about. It was not only too painful, but also a clue pointing to the truth behind the antifascist foundational legend in a country that pretended "gar keine Rassen und nur noch Klassen zu kennen [. . .] und die 'Judenfrage' einfach an sich abschaffen wollte" (Damals 44). 51 Whereas the term "Jew" was never mentioned privately or publicly, there were nonetheless neighbors and classmates in the full normality of life in 47

48 49 50 51

"My parents did not care to acknowledge it, that—due to their status as those 'persecuted by the Nazi regime'—they were obliged to be on a certain good political behavior, and therefore not safe once and for all—certainly not based on the degree of their suffering and persecution. The official hierarchy placed 'fighters' above mere 'victims.' It gave those who had been persecuted officially a higher rank and larger pension than those who had been deported to Auschwitz 'only' as Jews." "active, militant resistance" "one of the countless gestures of submission"; "conformist maneuvering" "[. . .] why was it a Western country and not the Soviet Union?" (Love 24). "to know neither race nor class and had elected simply to abolish 'the Jewish Question' per se." For a discussion of the antifascist foundational legend, see Assmann and Frevert 13.

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the GDR whose husbands and fathers had been Wehrmacht soldiers (Kapitel 10). Their normal conversation could revolve around the bombing of German cities, expulsion, and the suffering under the Russians while fleeing from East Prussia. With regard to the reasons for their many war time stories, the narrator speculates: Vielleicht erzählten Lomi und Brauni auch deshalb so viel von den Leiden des Krieges, v o m Treck und von den Bomben, damit meine Mutter erst gar nicht anfing, von ihrem Leben zu erzählen. Sie schlug sowieso nur die Augen z u m Himmel über ihre Lamentiererei, die Engländer jedenfalls hätten sich auch in den schlimmsten Zeiten nicht so unwürdig beklagt. (Kapitel 8)

This recollected episode alludes to the pattern of taboos that played out differently in the GDR: While the Anglo-American bombing of Dresden could be mentioned, any other reference to German suffering such as the rapes by Russian soldiers, was taboo (see Maron 215). Likewise, it alludes to the Germans' foregrounding of themselves as victims—a common mechanism for gaining relief in West and East Germany following the trauma of total national defeat (see Assmann and Frevert 140-42). From the perspective of the successor generation, the return to a new socialist Germany burdened with so many illusions bode "eine zweite große Desillusionierung," as the author states in the interview with the berliner Zeitung ("Was kann jüdisches Leben");53 her parents could only respond in turn with total inward withdrawal. The fragmented biographies of the parental generation differ from the life of the children, however, who stood at a far greater distance to a system which, after all, they had not chosen ("Was kann jüdisches Leben"). The inchoate opposition of the offspring registers in Ein Kapitel aus meinem lieben in the daughter's recollection of GDR commemorations of May 8, the end of World War II—an occasion that still elicits divergent responses in Germany (see Assmann, "Befreit").54 The official East German celebration of the Day of Liberation is contrasted with a laconic description of the narrator's attendance at a May 9 celebration of the war's end among Russian dissidents in Moscow. It is only on this occasion that she learns about the Gulag and the crimes of the Stalinist era, which her meanwhile well-established 52

53 54

"Perhaps Lomi and Brauni talked so much about their wartime suffering, the Treck, and the bombs, so my mother wouldn't even have a chance to begin telling about her life. Anyway she rolled her eyes at their moaning: The English would hardly have whined so pitifully about the very worst of their times." "a second great disillusionment" In contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany, the East celebrated May 8 as the Day of Liberation and a legal holiday. Yet anyone who was not commandeered to take part in the liberation festivities took the opportunity to visit one of the lakes near Berlin, since no one felt indebted to the "Russen" ("Russians")—as the Soviet Army was called—as their liberators (Kapitel 67).

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parents had kept from her. Although the narrator, upon her return, does not dare accuse them of being complicit with the regime, she still expects them to admit "die Verbrechen [. . .], die da geschehen waren und immer noch geschahen" (Kapitell?)).'^ Instead, the narrator finds that her parents, in their increasing alienation from the East German state, react with cool irony to their daughter's indignation—neither admitting nor denying what the dissidents had revealed to her. In the end, after their return from exile to the GDR and the failed hopes of socialism, the daughter sees her parents as belonging neither to one world nor the other. In denial of their Jewishness and in abject submission to the party, "[gehörten sie] [. . .] nicht mehr zu den Juden [. . .] und [waren] keine Deutschen geworden" (Damals 14).56 For this reason, her father's final wish to be buried in the Jewish cemetery at Weimar with Hebrew rites strikes the narrator as rather grotesque, "denn er hatte in seinem ganzen Leben überhaupt keine Verbindung zum Judentum und nicht mal einen hebräischen Namen" (Liebe 7).57 With comparable irony, the narrator of Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben reports her mother's quitting the East German Socialist Unity Party and rejoining the Jewish congregation upon returning to Vienna late in life. This was, however, on her parents' part weniger eine Rückkehr zu den jüdischen Wurzeln als ein Ausdruck [. . .] [der] Scham über den radikalen Bruch mit ihrer Familie und Herkunft, über die Verachtung, mit der sie all denen begegnet waren, die nicht wie sie an die endgültige Befreiung aller Klassen und Rassen durch den Kommunismus geglaubt hatten. (Kapitel

134)5«

The lifelong dual existence of Honigmann's parents—rendered conscious and productive in the writing of their self-exiled daughter—takes on a heightened metaphorical ambivalence in the narrative procedure of Bin Kapitel aus meinem Leben. The "Kapitel" ("chapter") of the title is an historically based reference to what assuredly was the most important, spectacular, and mysterious biographical episode in the life of her mother. Born Alice Kohlmann in Vienna of Hungarian-Jewish descent, the mother was briefly married in the 1930s to the legendary Kim Philby, a British double agent who helped the Soviet Union obtain atomic weapons by handing over important military secrets to the KGB during and after the war. He was later exposed and sought refuge in Moscow in 1964. The 55 56 57

"the crimes that had been committed there and were still happening" "they no longer belonged to the Jewish people and had not become Germans" "because during his entire life he'd had no ties to Judaism at all, not even a Hebrew name"

58

"less a return to Jewish roots than an expression of shame at the radical abandonment of their family and origins and of their contempt for all those who, unlike them, had not had faith in the ultimate liberation from class and race by way of communism"

{Love 5).

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narrator characterizes her mother as usually "verschwiegenheitssüchtig," addicted to secrecy, in terms of her own parents and origins (Kapitel 76). After her lifelong claim not to be able to remember, however, the mother, shortly before her death, wants her writer-daughter finally, after years of merely vague hints, to become "Zeuge ihres schwachen Erinnerungsnetzes" (Kapitel 112).59 Lizzy Kohlmann demands of the daughter that she write down her [the mother's] own version of that chapter in her life—for which the daughter might be well compensated: "[. . .] meine Mutter [forderte mich] plötzlich auf, 'diese Geschichte' aufzuschreiben. [. . .] Vielleicht in einem Zeitungsartikel, für die Times oder die New York Times. Ich könne ein hohes Honorar verlangen, ein sehr hohes Honorar sogar" (Kapitel 78).60 Out of her mother's "Mischung aus andeutungsvollem Erzählen und vielem Verschweigen," the narrator ends up splicing together something of the world of secret services with its projected likenesses and its deceptions that, in the end, resembled "ein Spionageroman oder doch ein Romanfragment" beyond what she really knew or understood {Kapitel 75-76).61 The unreliability and incoherence of memory itself are the real theme that emerges from this evocation of double dealings in the life of secret agents, all of which conforms to the narrative role of the clueless daughter. According to Honigmann's acceptance speech for the Solothurn Prize for Literature, the consciousness of memory affects both the stories drawn from life, as well as from literature in general ("Eine unzuverlässige Geschichte"). Accordingly, the narrator's mother is neither able to explain her own role in the KGB, nor the improbability that she escaped the spy network of 1940s London unscathed with all she knew. Nor does her version of events mesh with Philby's own recollections that he conveyed to a Russian journalist not long before his death. The narrating daughter thus comments: "Aber etwas Ungereimteres als die Erinnerungen verschiedener Zeugen findest du sowieso nicht" (Kapitel 80).62 As the narrative persona of her mother's life, she concludes, based on her mother's unilluminating revelations, that she now brings the woman who gave birth to her back into the world as a legend which, in the words of her mother's credo, can be found "kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge" (Kapitel 138).63 In this way, the narrator-daughter fiction59 60

61 62 63

"witness to her weak memory network" "Suddenly my mother asked me to write down 'this story.' Maybe in a newspaper article for the [London] Times or the Nov York Times. I could request a high fee, even a very high fee." "mix of insinuating story-telling and much secrecy"; "spy story or novel fragment" "There can be nothing less coherent than the recollections of a variety of witnesses." "just behind the truth and right next to the lie"

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alizes her own protocols of her mother's stories as a kind of counterlegend alternating between nearness and distance without claiming any truth, without conducting research, consulting archives, or pursuing witnesses: Ich bin nirgends hingereist. [. . .] Habe keine Dokumente gesucht. [. . .] Ich habe mit niemandem gesprochen und keinem Menschen Fragen gestellt. {Kapitel 141)64

By the same token, Honigmann herself rejects any claim to authenticity in her autobiographical family research, with the exception of an occasional document that proves convenient—such as her father's pocket calendar, from which the narrator-daughter at first quotes, but to which she later adds her own entries. 65 Even then her implied entries subvert the distinction between the quotation and the fiction, and the few documents she calls to hand promise no truth beyond interpretation; rather, they reflect the unreliability and incoherence of memory. For example, in her mother's photo collection, confiscated by the narrator-daughter after her death, one picture shows a man in a World War I uniform—a man always presented to her as her mother's father, Israel Kohlmann. The narrator's father had always disputed this, however, having known his father-in law during the London exile years. In the end, the daughter is unable to verify either claim: "Vielleicht ist es mein Großvater. Vielleicht auch nicht" {Kapitel 142).66 Literature dealing with the Holocaust often employs authentic and non-fictional documentation. In Pawels Briefe, Monika Maron does this, as she says, out of respect, in order to let her grandparents speak for themselves (215-16). In contrast, research for Honigmann's narrative persona seems more like prying into private lives: "Doch solche Nachforschungen gleichen mir viel zu sehr dem Nachspionieren, einem Aneignen und Spiel mit dem fremden Leben" (Kapitel 140).67 Whereas Maron uses authentic documentation to give her grandparents their own voice as a show of respect, Honigmann refrains from doing so for similar reasons of respect. As indicated at the outset, the fictionalizations of the author's family 64 65

66 67

"I didn't go anywhere. [. . .] Didn't look for documents. [. . .] I didn't speak to anyone, and asked no one any questions." After her father's death, the daughter takes up writing in his pocket calendar, which had served her father as a kind of diary. This she does presumably out of a desire to sense parental connection and continuity, "so daß unsere Aufzeichnungen ineinander verliefen" (Liebe 99-100) ("so that our notes ran into each other" [Love 72]). "Maybe it is my grandfather. Maybe not." "Such research is too much like snooping, like stealing and playing with lives belonging to someone else."

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chronicle highlight the successor generation as heir, not as archivist or documentarian. In doing so, she resists surrendering to both history and the stories of her parents. In view of the historical tragedies of the twentieth century, Honigmann's history and stories are by no means dominated by Jewish experience alone, but rather by existential experience in general. However, they are, as she says, "vielleicht in der jüdischen Erfahrung ausgeprägter, katastrophaler" (Damals 50).68 Accordingly, when asked about her German or Jewish identity, the narrator in "Selbstporträt als Jüdin" asserts that she would speak of her existential membership to Judaism in order to distinguish herself from the Germans, even though she feels a strong and singular bond with the German language and literary tradition. This leads her to concede: "[. . .] kulturell gehöre ich wohl doch zu Deutschland und zu sonst gar nichts" (Damals 17).69 However, having known the longing for the erasure of the Jewish Question in the GDR, where even the very existence of a Jewish people was denied, her authorial alter ego rationalizes once again her detachment and separation from Germany by arguing: "Das deutsche Volk steht ja nicht in Frage, der Begriff vom jüdischen Volk aber bleibt doch immer im Vagen und Ungewissen" (Damals 17).70 Honigmann's need for a continuing affirmation of her Jewishness finds an extension not only in her literary writing, but also in some of her journalistic contributions to German newspapers, as her article in Die Zeit from 2002 demonstrates. In light of rising French anti-Semitism— manifested in the hatred expressed by French Arabs against French Jews (who are always identified with the politics of Israel)—and the relative indifference of the French public, the author calls for a "völlige Abkoppelung von den Problemen des Nahen Ostens" ("Hauptsache").71 Instead, she appeals for a policy of differentiation. In denying the misleading public interpretation of her move from Germany to the proximity of the Alsatian Jewish community as a "Flucht in die Orthodoxie" (Damals 15),72 the author herself draws the finer distinction with respect to her own Judaism (which she rediscovered in the mid-1970s in the GDR in connection with what was then an international movement of return). In an interview, she describes her "route to Judaism as an exploratory trip rather than a highway to a new identity" (Stern 340). Neither in the old nor in the new Germany could Honigmann find this option of experi68 69 70 71 72

"it may be that the Jewish experience is more dominant, more catastrophic" "but culturally I belong to Germany and nowhere else at all" "The German people are never in question, the concept of the Jewish people, however, remains always vague and uncertain." "total disconnection from the problems of the Middle East" "retreat into orthodoxy"

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meriting personally with her Jewish heritage, learning from it, and becoming involved with Jewish texts and history, and this with a certain "Innerlichkeit" ("inwardness") ("Was kann jüdisches Leben"). Like the narrator in the chapter "Meine sefardischen Freundinnen" who goes to Torah study, the author, too, finds normality in her Jewish life only in Strasbourg, "als dem letzten Schted der Welt, wo sich noch Juden der unterschiedlichsten Milieus begegnen" ("Hauptsache") 73 —even after unification and its memory-policy of a "new historical 'normality.'" As stated at the beginning of this study, Honigmann rejects all discourses of victimization and distances herself equally from the earlier undifferentiated concept of victim of postwar Germany and from the later exaggerated German discourse on guilt that reduces everything in the German-Jewish relationship to Auschwitz and anti-Semitism. Her attention to all possible Jewish backgrounds and positions again results in her distancing herself from a Jewish Opfergedächtnis ("victim memory") from the perspective of the successor generation. In her examination of German history and the culture of remembering, Aleida Assmann employs the term in reference to a specific form of memory and states: "Das historische Trauma einer gemeinsamen Opfererfahrung schlägt sich als eine unaustilgbare Spur im kollektiven Gedächtnis nieder und erzeugt einen besonders starken Zusammenhalt der betroffenen Gruppe" (Assmann and Frevert 44). 74 Yet, with her personally practiced Judaism—which the narrator ironically refers to as "Kosher light" and characterizes as not really Zionist—the author and her alter ego, though they do experience some connection to the land of Israel, experience no obligation to it. Both remain at a distance from those who make pilgrimages to the Promised Land or Auschwitz, "um sich als Juden fühlen zu können" (Damals 68).75 In her ongoing confrontation with the burden of her family history and life story, Barbara Honigmann recognizes in herself a late-born heir who resists history and experiences a longing for a normal Jewish life without the eternal discourse of victimization. Adding the (auto)biographical fictionalization of her diverse "Gedächtnishorizonte" ("horizons of memory") (Assmann and Frevert 36) and her very own personal history and perspective of the German past of the twentieth century to the rising flood of other memoir literature from the 1990s on, she takes her place among those authors who have succeeded in rendering their memory productive by connecting subjective experience with docu73 74

75

"the world's last stetl, where Jews of completely different background are present" "The historical trauma of a common victim experience leaves its mark as an inextinguishable trace in the collective memory, producing an especially powerful cohesion of the affected group." "in order to feel Jewish"

1

Jewish Victimization: Silence and Remembrance

mented history remembering.

and

the

German

discourse

on

national

political

Works Cited

Assmann, Aleida. "Befreit von uns selbst. Der Tag, an dem die Zukunft begann: der 8. Mai und seine Paradoxien." Der Tagesspiegel Online 7 May 2005. 7 May 2005 . —, and Ute Frevert. Geschichtsvergessenheit—Geschichtsversessenheit: Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999. Benjamin, Walter. "Der Erzähler: Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows." Walter Benjamin. Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften. Ed. Siegfried Unseld. Frankfurt/M: Suhtkamp, 1977. 385-410. Collin, Amy. "Multikulturalismus und das Prinzip der Anerkennung in der zeitgenössischen deutsch jüdischen Literatur." Schreiben fischen den Kulturen. Beiträge %ur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. Ed. Paul Michael Lützeler. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1996. 165-95. Ecker, Gisela. Kein Land in Sich: Heimat—weiblich? München: Fink, 1997. Frei, Norbert. "Gefühlte Geschichte." Die Zeit 6 Apr. 2005. Special insert Geschichte. Nr. 1. Part 1. Apr. 2005: 25. Gellner, Torsten. "Wissen schützt vor Antisemitismus nicht." Deutsche Welle 8 June 2005. 8 June 2005 . Guenther, Christina. "Exile and the Construction of Identity in Barbara Honigmann's Trilogy ofDiaspora." Comparative Literature Studies 40.2 (2003): 215-31. Hage, Volker. Zeugen der Zerstörung: Die Uteraten und der Luftkrieg. Essays und Gespräche. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 2003. Honigmann, Barbara. Damals, dann und danach. München: Hanser, 1999. —. "Hauptsache der Jude ist schuld. In Frankreich brennen Synagogen, aber niemand will über Antisemitismus nachdenken." Die Zeit 16/2002. 9 May 2005 . —. Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben. München: Hanser, 2004. —. Eine Liebe aus Nichts. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1991. —. Λ Love Made out of Nothing. Zohara's Journey. Two Novels. Trans. John Barrett. Boston: Verba Mundi, 2003. —. Roman von einem Kinde. Sechs Erzählungen. Darmstadt/Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1986. —. "Eine unzuverlässige Geschichte. Rede zur Entgegennahme des Solothurner Literaturpreises 2004." 28 June 2004. 9 May 2005 . —. "Was kann jüdisches Leben in Deutschland sein? Ein Gespräch mit der Schriftstellerin Barbara Honigmann, die am Sonnabend mit dem Kleist-Preis ausgezeichnet wird." Berliner Zeitung 14 Oct. 2000. 20 May 2006

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. Kosta, Barbara, and Helga Kraft, eds. Writing against Boundaries. Nationality, Rthnirity and Gender in the German-speaking Context. A m s t e r d a m / N e w York: Rodopi, 2003. Lorenz, Dagmar, and Gabriele Weinberger, eds. Insiders and Outsiders: Jewish and Gentile Culture in Germany since 1989. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1994. Lützeler, Paul Michael, ed. Schreiben %wischen den Kulturen. Beiträge ^ur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. F r a n k f u r t / M : Fischer, 1996. Maron, Monika. " D e r Fisch und die B o m b e n . " Interview with Volker Hage. Hage. 211-21.

Morsch, Günter. " E s gibt eine Germano-Zentriertheit i m G e d e n k e n . " Oer Tagesspiegel Online 7 May 2005. 20 May 2006 . Sebald, W . G . "Hiders pyromanische Phantasien." Interview with Volker Hage. Hage. 259-79. Stern, Guy. "Barbara Honigmann: A Preliminary Assessment." Lorenz and Weinberger. 329-46. Ullrich, Sebastian. "Wir sind, was wir erinnern." Die Zeit 6 Apr. 2005. Special insert Geschichte. Nr. 1. Part 1. Apr. 2005: 27-34. Weinberger, Gabriele. "Conclusion: T h e N e w G e r m a n y and the Future of a Negative Symbiosis." Lorenz and Weinberger. 347-51. W i p p e r m a n n , Wolfgang. "Die Kommerzialisierung des Zweiten Weltkriegs." Interview. Deutsche Welle 4 May 2005. 20 May 2006 < h t t p : / / w w w . d w world.de/dw/article/0„1525465,00.html?maca=deNewsisfree_germanhomepage _22-rdf>.

JAMES MARTIN

Α World Turned Upside Down: Role Reversals in the Victim-Perpetrator Complex in Christoph Ransmayr's Morbus Kitahara Most readers of German-language literature will recognize the name Christoph Ransmayr in connection with his critically acclaimed 1988 novel, Die letzte Welt. The book combined a virtuosic treatment of language, a unique blending of ancient and contemporary story elements, as well as a truly vivid evocation of fantastic imagery in narrative form. These attributes established Ransmayr's reputation on the international literary scene and, along with him, the reputation of a whole group of young Austrian authors. 1 It is this generation born after the war that reflected Austrian society's concerns about the legacy of the National Socialist past, spurred on by events in the 1980s and 1990s such as the Waldheim affair, heightened xenophobia, the rise of the FPÖ under Jörg Haider, and entrance into the EU. In addition to the international acclaim, the publication of Die letale Welt also resulted in widespread critical acceptance of the postmodern novel as a legitimate aesthetic form in Germanlanguage literature, after more than a decade of experiments with varying degrees of critical recognition. After this crucial success, the public had to wait seven years for the arrival of Ransmayr's next novel, Morbus Kitahara. When it was finally published, most did not know what to make of this unusual narrative that was part fairy tale, part horror story. Set against a recognizable yet distorted version of European history, the novel offered a more radically disjointed picture of history than the occasional anachronisms found in Die letzte Welt. The latent hints of European history contained in Ransmayr's Ovidian homage were fleshed out onto a nightmarish canvas of unrelenting world war, occupation and retribution in Morbus Kitahara. In contrast to many of his contemporaries' attempts to raise critical awareness of Austria's unmastered National Socialist past, Ransmayr's 1

For more on the popular and critical success of Austrian literature in the last decades of the twentieth century and Ransmayr's role in this situation, see Ruthner 208-9.

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creation of an alternative postwar history seeks to investigate the question whether such a traumatic past can indeed be mastered at all (Scheidl 97, 180-81). As a result of this decidedly postmodern reconstruction of postwar history, the novel offers a critique of the dynamics of guilt, retribution and domination, which were established in the Allied occupation of Central Europe. By blurring the boundaries between the fictional and the real, the author opens up a space for criticism of normative interpretations of postwar history that seek to inscribe guilt for the atrocities of the Holocaust in a reified victim-perpetrator complex. Highlighted by a number of other reversals and inversions in the novel, Ransmayr explores the reversal of roles within the victim-perpetrator complex to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the politics of memory to engender true empathy for the victims of Nazi genocide. This exploration is conducted against the background of the insufficiency of collective memorialization to embody living personal memory, as well as the ultimate instability of fixed categories of victims and perpetrators. Morbus Kitahara is the author's attempt to self-reflexively work though the malleable nuances of the victim-perpetrator complex by offering a specific, recontextualized literary account that seeks to bear witness to the suffering of others and the violence which objective history does to the subjective past. Ransmayr's third novel, published in 1995, focuses upon three characters in an unspecified alpine lakes region of German-speaking Central Europe. The protagonists, Bering, Lily and Ambras, all attempt to escape the tiny village of Moor, which has been cut off from the world by occupying military forces intent on exploiting the granite quarry located there. By obtaining positions of authority in the administration of the quarry or through their general utility vis-ä-vis the needs of the army, the three ultimately gain passage to Brazil, where the military is relocating the mining operation. The dysfunctional relationships among Bering, Lily and Ambras are played out against the backdrop of a desolate mountain landscape and, later, in the remote rain forest of Brazil. The indefinite nature of the setting is maintained throughout the narrative, which describes the final days of an unnamed war and the subsequent occupation by foreign armies, uncannily resembling the historical era of World War II Europe. 2 Rather than being defined by concrete geographic or temporal coordinates, the setting is determined instead by the context of various, disjointed "resonances" in the audience's historical understanding. There is a large vocabulary of facts and phrases that establish a direct connection 2

Ransmayr drew upon memories of his childhood, using the backdrop of the Salzkammergut, the Mauthausen concentration camp and the adjacent quarry, the Wiener Graben. For more autobiographical references, see Sigrid Löffler's interview with Ransmayr in Uwe Wittstock's Die Erfindung der Welt.

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to the recognizable discourse of the Holocaust, including Lager, Zwangsarbeit, Judenverfolgung, Täter, Opfer and Überlebende (Kunne 319).3 However, aspects of a recognizable reality take on a frightening character in the novel, describing a distorted world that has become increasingly surreal. The dubious relationship between the real and fictional is evident throughout the novel. The unnamed war ends twenty years later after an atomic bomb has been dropped on Nagoya, Japan, in obvious contradiction with the real history of World War II. This strategy of supplying distorted historical references can be read as a critical commentary on the problematic reception of history in our post-millenial, globalizing culture: A s political constructs, the landscapes in Morbus Kitahara are e m b e d d e d in a strangely Utopian time frame. A t once contemporary, archaic, and futuristic, they are shaped by a post-World W a r II, post-colonial, post-liberation and posthistorian era, in other words by a quasi-contemporary world. (Landa 140)

Our understanding of history is often culturally biased to an extreme, for example, the United States' almost complete historical disregard of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki versus the huge importance of the D-Day commemorations. Moving further away in time from the events of the World War II period, our understanding thereof becomes increasingly dominated by normative interpretations of history as historical distinctions fade into the dust and dim of the archives. Ransmayr problematizes the relationship between fiction and history through the radical intersection of these forms. The author underscores the discontinuities inherent in these representational systems by exploring the instability of memory and history as well as the psychological effects of role reversals in the victim-perpetrator complex. Ultimately, these considerations come to bear upon the postwar generations born in Austria, who have more often than not distanced themselves from the National Socialist past.4

3 4

The terms translate as "camp," "forced labor," "persecution of Jews," "perpetrators," "victims," and "survivors." While few Austrians would argue nowadays that they were the first victims of Nazism during the Anschluss, they still fall back on the myth of the untainted Second Republic, neutral and prosperous. Austria's status as an Insel der Seligen ("Island of the Blessed") in the Kreisky era came under sharp criticism following the Waldheim affair in the mideighties. Despite the brief flourish of Vergangenbeitsbewältigung that ensued, critical engagement with the past has remained largely the task of Austrian artists and intellectuals. More recently, the decision to join the European Union in the nineties and the accession of Jörg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the governing coalition in 2000 spurred a new debate about Austria's unresolved past and future political landscape.

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Historiographie Metafiction and the Postmodern Apocalyptic

Linda Hutcheon has introduced the term "historiographic metafiction" to describe postmodern writing that is highly self-reflexive and experiments with the blurring of history and fiction (113). Such texts critique their own narrative conventions and the cultural system within which they work by overtly undermining the totality of representation in narrative. Meaning is problemati2ed as history is shown to be discursively structured and fiction historically conditioned (Hutcheon 89). History is thus revealed as a construct that interprets past events through the ideological framework of the present. Postmodern narrative exposes the cultural moment as a dynamic intersection of the past and the present, both of which are "sites embedded in value-laden structures" (Ermarth 41-42). Ransmayr's distorted repetition of postwar history thus exhibits a typically postmodern disposition in its investigation of the discursive slippages between fiction and history. A primary example of this sort of self-reflexive gesture is the repetition of the first chapter of the novel, "Ein Feuer im Ozean" ("A Fire in the Ocean")," at the close of the novel, retitled "Das Feuer im Ozean" ("The Fire in the Ocean)." 5 Much as a typical detective story would, Ransmayr's novel begins by confronting the reader with mysterious corpses: "Zwei Tote lagen schwarz im Januar Brasiliens" (7).6 A surveyor flying overhead views the destruction caused by a bush fire and confirms the entry already written on his map, "deserted." The reader is invited to discover the human story that the surveyor has overlooked in his systematic mapping. Whereas cartography represents the attempt to encompass the totality of the real by means of reductive schematization, the literary account serves as the narrative restoration and recontextualization of the specific. It attempts to uncover distinctions that have been lost, while offering a commentary on the process of obscuration that occurs in any form of representation. When the reader returns to this scene in the final chapter, the landscape is transformed into an apocalyptic vision of the return of history. Among the smoke of a brushfire and the rusted remains of an abandoned jail, Ambras, Bering and Lily become separated from one another. Each becomes lost in his or her own vision of the past that threatens to ensnare them forever: for Bering, the scrap heap of his blacksmith father's forge; 5 6

Liessmann also notes Ransmayr's strategic use of repetitions (148). "Two bodies lay blackened in the Brazilian January" (The Dog King 3). All page references for English translations of Morbus Kitahara refer to the English translation by John E. Woods, published under the tide The Dog King.

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for Ambras, the ovens of the camp crematorium at the quarry; and for Lily, the waiting station of Moor, where as a child her initial attempt to flee to Bra2il with other German refugees was interrupted. In general, the apocalyptic landscape at the beginning and end of the novel shows the failure of "progress" in the plot, the emigration to Bra2il (Scherpe 166). The static repetition of the past has hung over the heads of all the protagonists since they first left Austria for the Brazilian frontier town: "Pantano", las Lily an einem Nachmittag, an dem der Zug Stunde um Stunde vor der Stahlbrücke einer Zonengrenze hielt, und reichte Ambras das Buch. "Pantano. Hier stehts doch; bedeutet: Sumpf, sumpfige Wildnis, Feuchtgebiet." Ambras nahm das aufgeschlagene Buch aus ihren Händen, ohne auch nur einen Blick auf die Zeile zu werfen, die sie ihm zeigen wollte, sah an Lily vorbei, hinaus in das winterliche Land, und sagte: "Moor." (402)7

It is in this final scene that Ransmayr combines the metafictional gesture of the return of history, distorted and ultimately static, with the dystopic theme of a permanent apocalypse. It has been argued that the increasingly apocalyptic mood of postmodern culture is a reflection of contemporary fears of atomic and ecological catastrophe, as well as the technological menace of pervasive surveillance and media overload (Bartsch 125). While these considerations are indeed prevalent in postmodern writing, I would argue that the gesture of apocalypse can be further understood as a poststructural awareness that our understanding of reality relies upon a corpus of knowledge which is always already destructed and deconstructed. Ransmayr's disjunctive narrative signals to the audience that they must reflect upon history simultaneously on multiple levels, including past and present interpretations thereof, as well as future possibilities of understanding history. In Dominick LaCapra's History, Politics, and the Novel, the author suggests a type of critical practice for reading that should take the form of a dialogue "between past and present" (9-10). This is not meant in a strictly hermeneutic sense, rather it entails an exploration of the divergence between the world represented in the text and that from which the reader or critic views the text. This type of practice is particularly appropriate for an analysis of Ransmayr's novel in which the borders between history, reality and fiction dissipate as dark images and fantastic language emerge to contest reified meaning. It is precisely in this divergence that there is a transformative possibility in the text, by allowing a plurality of voices (heteroglossia), including among them the repressed carnivalesque, to 7

"'Pantano,' Lily read one afternoon, when the train stood hour after hour just before a steel bridge at a zone crossing, and she handed Ambras the book. "'Pantano" It's right here. It means "marsh, swampy wilderness, wetlands.'" Ambras took the open book from her hands but without glancing at the lines she was trying to show him, looked past Lily and out into the winter landscape, and said, 'Moor'" (324).

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emerge in play with the structure of narrative and reality (Bakhtin 324-25). The metafictional techniques of the postmodern novel resist narrative closure, radically opening up the social nexus between utterance and understanding, creating a space for critique of both the past and the present.

Reality Overturned

Ransmayr applies metafictional strategies of disjunction not only to spatial and temporal coordinates, but also to the psychological realm of the victim-perpetrator complex. He does so through the introduction of unusual role reversals which begin with the military defeat and bombing of Moor. This event turns life in the town both literally and figuratively upside down. Bering is as yet unborn in the womb of his pregnant mother, who tries to reach shelter as the first bombs fall on the town. She is saved by a stranger who pulls her into the shelter of an underground cellar while the above world turns into a fiery hell. Day and night seem to reverse themselves and history collapses back upon its primal, apocalyptic roots: Zwischen schimmeligen Fässern brachte sie dann ihren zweiten Sohn um Wochen zu früh in eine Welt, die in das Zeitalter der Vulkane zurückzufallen schien: In den Nächten flackerte das Land unter einem roten Himmel. A m Tag verfinsterten Phosphorwolken die Sonne, und in Schuttwüsten machten die Bewohner von Höhlen Jagd auf Tauben, Eidechsen und Ratten. (9-10) 8

The unexpected rescuer of Bering's mother is a woman named Celina, a forced laborer from Poland. The overturning of the spatial relationship between the "living hell" above ground and safety below is mirrored in the reversed relationship between the two women, a prisoner saving a free woman. After helping with the birth, Celina begins to pray aloud, and her prayers quickly turn into judgements. She interprets the bombing to be the punishment that the Madonna has sent upon Moor for sending its men to the war. Her condemnation becomes a personal lamentation as she recites the crimes committed against her beginning with the death of her fiancee, the rape of her sister-in-law, friends forced to shovel their own graves, acquaintances who were turned to ash in the crematoriums. Her litany 8

"Among mildewed barrels, then, and several weeks too soon, she brought her second son into a world that seemed to have reverted to the age of volcanoes—nights when the earth flickered beneath a red sky. By day, clouds of phosphorus obscured the sun, and in wastelands of rubble the inhabitants of caves hunted pigeons, lizards and rats" (6).

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becomes an odd conflation of all of the Second World War's victims, regardless of whether civilians, partisans or concentration camp inmates. She proceeds to prophesy that the spirits of the dead Russians, Poles and Jews will come to bring a form of Final Judgment upon Moor. When the foreign troops arrive to liberate the prisoners from the forced labor camp, they do bring vengeance, but in an altogether human manner. Instead of the redemptive, biblical Apocalypse, the occupying soldiers are merely an extension of the war's chaos, violence and cruelty. Ironically, Celina becomes the first casualty of the occupation when she does not heed a command shouted at her in a foreign tongue (14). Beginning with the character Celina, the author plays out the reversal of roles and confusion of identities that result from the military occupation. Bering's mother slowly takes on the identity of Celina, praying incessantly and seeing visions of the Madonna as she raises her infant. Swaddled in the torn remains of flags, Bering grows up physically and symbolically amidst the tatters of a failed nation into a world of chaos and revenge. Ransmayr caricatures Moor's inhabitants as either overly repentant or entirely without remorse. Some adopt new, benevolent identities while others hide portraits of Hider in the attic and grumble about "What if . . . ?" This unflattering characterization is, however, not that far from the truth when one considers the disrupted historical self-understanding of a defeated nation branded by the victorious powers as "perpetrators and bystanders." Although in exaggerated form, Ransmayr depicts a people unable to come to terms with the collective guilt of genocide that is automatically imposed upon them through the Allied occupation of postwar Central Europe.9 The prisoners from the forced labor camp are freed and the town is placed under the military control of passing armies, including Siberian soldiers of the Red Army, a Moroccan troop under French command, a group of Scottish highlanders, and finally the American army.10 The military commander, Major Elliot from Oklahoma, arrives in Moor to establish order: "An die Stelle der wilden und regellosen Rache befreiter Zwangsarbeiter oder durchziehender Truppen trat nun das Standrecht

9

10

One immediately thinks of Eric Santner's analysis in Stranded Objeds where the inability to raoutn the primary narcissistic identifications of German fascism causes broader structures of trauma and forgetting that are transmitted through the family to subsequent generations (32-35). Ransmayr gathers his ensemble of military units from each of the Allied powers (USSR, France, UK and US). The American occupation of the Salzburg region left lasting ties between the US and Austria, in particular continued touristic interest and the 1965 film, The Sound of Music, which popularizes the myth of Austria as victims of Nazi annexation.

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einer siegreichen Armee" (17).11 The citizens of Moor are stripped of the freedom to move about, to possess weapons or any type of machinery. In other words they are placed in a version of the never-realized Morgenthau plan to turn Germany into an agrarian society after WWII. 12 In an isolated setting, a group of people are placed back centuries in time, caught in a temporal anomaly. The townspeople exist in this encapsulated time-space with contact to the outside world only under the guise of re-education films and radio broadcasts. For example, a rare concert is used as an opportunity to show films of the atrocities that occurred in the camps: Und dem Tor dieser immer noch Tarnfarben tragenden Konzerthalle war ein riesiges Armeezelt vorgebaut, in dem auf mehreren Leinwänden zugleich Dokumentarfilme liefen, Stummfilme im Endlosschleifen, die wieder und wieder die schnurgeraden Barackenzeilen am Schotterwerk vorführten, wieder und wieder einen Leichenstapel in einem weiß gekachelten Raum, einen Krematoriumsofen mit offener Feuertür, eine Häftlingskolonne am Seeufer—und im Hintergrund aller Erinnerungen, wieder und nieder, die verschneiten und sonnendurchglühten und regennassen und vereisten Wände des Steinbruchs v o n M o o r . . . (145-46) 1 3

By connecting the metaphor of frozen time with the repetitive images of the concentration camp films, Ransmayr emphasizes the ineffective nature of Allied reeducation and the overload of Holocaust images. The futile nature of the occupation's politics of memory becomes evident when Major Elliot attempts to force the inhabitants of Moor to realize their guilt through public commemorations detailing the horrors that occurred in the quarry. The didactic measures inevitably fail to truly change the people's minds and make them atone for their guilt. Elliot becomes a caricature of the Allied command in postwar Germany and Austria that heavy-handedly attempted to denazify and reeducate the population. The townspeople accept this new form of humiliation as part of the madness resulting from the war: "Es war eine murmelnde, gedemütigte Gesellschaft, in der die Mutigsten gerade noch hinter vorgehaltener Hand zu flüstern wagten, der Kommandant sei nun endgültig verrückt

11 12 13

"In place of the savage and random revenge of passing troops or prisoners freed from the labor camp, there was now the martial law of a victorious army" (11). See Neumann for a thorough discussion of Ransmayr's adaptation of the Morgenthau plan and critics' overreaction to the author's strategy of historical disjunctions. "At the doors to this concert hall (which was still wearing its camouflage colors) a giant army tent was erected in which documentary films were run simultaneously on several screens, silent, endless loops of film, showing over and over the perfecdy straight rows of the barracks by the gravel works, a pile of corpses in a white-tiled room, over and over, a crematorium oven with its firing door open, a column of prisoners beside the lakeshore— and in the background of all these reminders, over and over, the snowy and sun-baked and rain-drenched and ice-coated walls of Moor Quarry. . . ." (116).

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geworden" (40).14 Instead they reinforce the most urgent impression of the occupation, their own suffering, their own role as victims. Ransmayr thus comments on the huge gap between the extensive public drive to instigate commemoration and atonement for the victims of the Holocaust versus the unvoiced private memories of death, loss, violence and suffering that truly motivate remembrance and mourning. The necessary contextualization for understanding the suffering of others occurs only in literary form through the paradoxical reversal of roles. When the returning men of Moor arrive at the train station the author draws clear parallels to the deportation trains that brought forced laborers to work and die in the quarry: Der Z u g [. . .] glich auf den ersten Blick jenen Elendszügen, die in den Kriegsjahren mit Zwangsarbeitern und gefangenen Feinden vollgepfercht zumeist i m Morgengrauen in den Steinbruch von Moor gerollt waren: das gleiche Stöhnen aus d e m Inneren der Waggons. [. . .] Der gleiche Gestank, als die Schiebetüren endlich offenstanden. (23) 15

Except this time the train holds Moor's returning soldiers. Thus the novel can only hint at the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust by alluding to it in the depiction of the suffering of the perpetrators and bystanders from Moor. Nevertheless, perhaps this is the only acceptable aesthetic position for a writer bom after the fact and in a land of the "guilty" to address the memory of the Holocaust. 16 As the novel continues, the role reversals multiply and shift to include a bizarre range of transformations, doubles and mistaken identities. Memory and Memorialization

The overtly fictionalized world of Moor offers a stage upon which the author portrays the psychological difficulties involved in remembering the Holocaust from the perspective of Austrians or Germans, those categorized as "perpetrators and bystanders." Upon their arrival in Moor, Lily's father is recognized by other refugees as a ruthless, former deportation 14 15

16

"It was a muttering, humiliated company, in which even the bravest barely dared to whisper behind his hand that the commandant had gone crazy for good and all" (30). "The train [. . .] looked like those trains of misery that had rolled into Moor Quarry during the war years—usually at dawn and crammed with captured enemies and conscripts for forced labor. The same groans came from inside this train's cars. [. . .] The stench was the same, too, when the sliding doors stood open at last" (15-16). For a thorough critique of problematic stances taken by non-Jewish authors/filmmakers in various aesthetic representations of the Holocaust, see Omer Bartov's Murder in our Midst, especially Chapters 7 and 8.

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train guard. They attempt to lynch him until the grotesque scene is broken up by Red Army soldiers and Lily's father is taken away as a war criminal, never to return. For Lily's mother the burden of this memory, which she refers to only as "Vaters Schicksal' (120) ("Father's fate" [95]), becomes manageable through a slight trick of representation. Wishing to paint a portrait of her lost husband, she has only a photograph of him in his black uniform to work from: "Die Mutter saß und malte und erset2te die schwarze Uniform Pinselstrich für Pinselstrich durch einen Lodenanzug mit Hirschhornknöpfen und die Schirmmütze durch einen Filzhut, dem sie ein Sträußchen Heidekraut aufsteckte" (122).17 Without a living person to contradict the representation in the painting, the memory of her husband and his complicity in the crimes of a fascist regime are subsumed by the idealized, pastoral image of him in traditional apparel. The instability of memory and the manipulative nature of representations, whether visual, textual or otherwise, are primary elements with which Ransmayr thematizes the problematic transmission of historical realities when subsumed in discourses of guilt and retribution. In addition to investigating the vagaries and constructions of personal memory, Ransmayr also explores communal forms of commemoration and their effects. Major Elliot finds the register of those who died in the labor camp and has carpenters and masons piece together camp ruins to form an inscription that stretches across the entire quarry: HIER LIEGEN ELFTAUSENDNEUNHUNDERTDREIUNDSIEBZIG TOTE ERSCHLAGEN VON DEN EINGEBORENEN DIESES LANDES WILLKOMMEN IN MOOR (33)18

The inscription fixes the guilt of Moor's citizens in language, the basis of law. As a shared communal entity, law represents the imposition of 17

18

"The mother sat and painted and, brushstroke by brushstroke, substituted a loden suit with elkhorn buttons for the black uniform and a felt hat with a jaunty spray of heather for the brimmed cap" (96). "HERE ELEVEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED SEVENTY THREE PEOPLE LIE D E A D SLAIN BY THE INHABITANTS OF THIS LAND WELCOME TO MOOR" (24) The English translation does not adhere to the syntax or arrangement of the German original. Ransmayr's frequent use of italics and attention to the visual presentation of discursive fragments, such as a song {Morbus Kitahara 38) and a note (Morbus Kitahara 205), highlight the importance of language and beteroglosna in the novel. Here it is the language of guilt and the utterance of the town's sin that is encapsulated in the word "erschlagen" ("slain"), which stands alone in the center of the inscription.

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language as a means of regulating material and social reality. Writing further reifies the law and creates a lasting record so that the inscription in the quarry memorializes not only the dead, but also the town's perpetrator status. The inscription of Moor's guilt transforms the architectural remains of their crime (the barracks, watchtowers and bunker) into a new construction that is at once a greeting, a rebuke, a memorial and a warning set into the mountainous landscape. It is at the unveiling of the inscription that Elliot announces the peace plan that will turn the war-mongering people of Moor into peaceful farmers and shepherds as he yells: "Zurück! Zurück mit euch! Zurück in die Steinzeit!" (41).19 In essence, fixing Moor's guilt in stone letters is also an attempt by the occupying army to stop the sands of time through petrification. The inscription becomes a metaphor for all attempts to capture reality in writing for eternity (including cartography, memorials and the novel itself) and the unsuccessful attempt of the victors of a war to fix guilt for atrocities and extract atonement. The quantifying of the dead has an impact that is not lost upon the inhabitants of Moor, who try to tear down the letters spelling out the number in the night. The memorial tries to make experience concrete, to stabilize an historical event that would otherwise disappear as memory fades. Ransmayr critiques the reductive rationality that seeks to impose such an order upon human experience, highlighting the similarity of the letters of the inscription to the ordered rows of people, both soldiers and prisoners, who once stood in the quarry: Und so standen die gemauerten Lettern im Steinbruch schließlich groß, roh, weiß gekalkt, weithin sichtbar, standen in Reih und Glied wie Moors verschollene Soldaten, standen wie die Kolonnen der Zwangsarbeiter beim Zählappell, wie die Sieger unter den gehißten Flaggen ihres Triumphes. (33-34)20

However, nature slowly erases the human attempt to fix meaning in time as each spring the inscription must be cleared of ice and vegetation that covers it. After Elliot's departure the letters fade entirely into the landscape. A typical characteristic of Ransmayr's works and a key symbol of the postmodern crisis of knowledge is the inexorable erasure of writing and inscriptions by the destructive, cyclical forces of nature. Despite the initial power of the memorial to shame the townspeople, it eventually loses its meaning. According to Gerhard Melzer:

19 20

"Back! Back, all of you! Back to the Stone Age!" (32). "And so in the end, there the masonry letters at the quarry stood: huge, rough, whitewashed, and visible from a great distance; stood in closed ranks like Moor's vanished soldiers, stood like columns of slave laborers at roll call, like the victors beneath the hoisted banners of their triumph" (25).

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D a s M a h n m a l bewirkt freilich das Gegenteil dessen, was sein Ewigkeitsgestus suggeriert: statt E r i n n e r u n g wachzuhalten, fördert er das Vergessen, weil der allgemeine, sozusagen in sich selbst versteinerte Hinweis auf das Leid der O p f e r den lebendigen Nachvollzug dieses Leids verhindert. (174-75) 21

The reification of living memory in the form of script is highly problematic and fails as a didactic measure. The problem, however, lies not so much in the written form as in the emotional connection with memory as it is contained within text. This is seen clearly in the vague note written on the back of a photograph of a woman standing in the snow that Bering finds in Ambras's room: Nordpol, am Freitag. Ich habe eine Stunde im Eis auf dich gewartet. Wo warst du, mein Ueber? Vergiß mich nicht. L (205)22

The cryptic text cannot be understood until Ambras relates to Bering the story of how his Jewish lover and he were wrenched from their bed in the middle of the night, beaten and hauled off to the concentration camp, where he eventually lost her forever. Again, it is the contextuaÜ2ation of an individual discursive statement within the larger framework of history which creates the possibility for meaning. This is indeed the only means of bridging historical understanding between the particularity of the utterance and the generalization of codified history, especially within the realm of memory. The picture of Ambras's lover with a secret note was the only trace of her to survive the concentration camps, so that the message now conveys the unbearable breadth of yearning, sadness and despair of the many lovers and families sundered by the Nazi death camps. The ultimate inadequacy of writing to effectively capture reality and memory does not deter Major Elliot's efforts to mobilize the townspeople in the ritualistic commemoration of their guilt. He sends search parties to sort through the bombed-out labor camp to recover any surviving records. The lists, numbers and registers form a rationalistic account of the operation of the labor camp and, as if by chance, a binder is found containing photographs of the prisoners at work. Elliot takes it upon him21

22

"The memorial produces the opposite of that which its gesture towards eternity suggests: instead of keeping memory alert, it induces forgetting, because the general reference to the suffering of the victims, which one might say is petrified within itself, hinders the living realization of this suffering" (my translation). "North Pole, Friday. I waited an hourfor you in the ice. Where wereyou, my dear? Ό on'tforget me. L " (165).

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self to recreate the scenes from the photographs in as much detail as possible without unnecessarily submitting the townspeople of Moor to any cruelty, like "living pictures" from a museum exhibit (Orlowski 239). In one such reenactment the townspeople recreate a scene labeled "Die Stiege" (46) ("The Stairway [35]) that shows prisoners carrying blocks of stones upon their backs up a long, uneven flight of stairs carved into the side of the quarry's wall. 23 The reenactment serves as a form of communal realization of guilt because, despite whatever claims of ignorance made as to what was happening on the "Blind Shore" opposite the town, the grueling climb up the stairs and its consequences for the forced laborers could not be concealed. Elliot spares the townspeople the unbearable weight of reality by letting them carry papier-mache blocks, but it is precisely in this inconsistency of the repetition where the "impossibility of comprehending the authentic moment in all its horror" becomes most apparent (Cook 235). Nevertheless, Bering's father stubbornly decides to carry an actual block up the stairs. The weight of the block pulls him backward until he falls down the stairs to land on his back squirming like an overturned beetle—a scene reminiscent of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in which Gregor Samsa becomes estranged from reality, waking to find himself transformed into a huge insect and despised by his parents. However, Ransmayr reverses the relationship between father and son: D e r A n b l i c k seines s t r a m p e l n d e n V a t e r s b r a c h t e d e n S i e b e n j ä h r i g e n so sehr z u m L a c h e n , d a ß er sich schließlich w i e in e i n e m h y s t e r i s c h e n S p i e l n e b e n d i e s e m g r o ß e n K ä f e r a m R a n d eines G r u n d w a s s e r t ü m p e l s w a n d u n d k r e i s c h t e u n d u m sich schlug, b i s i h m ein W a c h s o l d a t m i t e i n e m A p f e l d e n M u n d stopfte. (37) 2 4

In the Kafka story, the father throws apples at the transformed Gregor, one of which lodges in his carapace and festers. A Freudian reading of the scene might interpret the apple as a symbol of the oedipal son's recognition of the law of the father and desire linked to the mother. In Ransmayr's novel, a soldier introduces the apple, imposing an external form of law not resulting from the familial dynamic. Bering is representative of the postwar generation in Austria and Germany who inherit the sins of the fathers and whose historical self-understanding is imposed upon them by the Allied occupation. As was the case with the second 23

24

The uneven steps of the "Stairway of Death" at Mauthausen repeatedly caused prisoners carrying granite blocks to stumble, eliciting brutal and often fatal reprisals. For more information, see the official Mauthausen Memorial. KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen website. "The sight of his father's struggles made the seven-year-old laugh so hard that it ended in a kind of hysterical game, and he wriggled alongside this big beetle at the edge of a pond, flung his arms about, and shrieked until a soldier on guard stopped his mouth with an apple" (28).

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generation writers of Väterliteratur, Bering will become further and further estranged from his father because of the wartime generation's moral and historical fall. Ransmayr is highly critical of rationalized attempts at commemoration which truncate the affective realm in which they might communicate meaning to others. Major Elliot repeatedly conflates verisimilitude with veracity in his rituals of remembrance: Gemäß den Häftlingsklassen, die Elliot in den geretteten Akten verbucht fand, bestand er dabei auch auf einer wirklichkeitsgetreuen Kostümierung und befahl den Statisten aus Moor, sich als Juden, als Kriegsgefangene, Zigeuner, Kommunisten oder Rassenschänder zu verkleiden. (45)25

Major Elliot's accurate reenactments do not do justice to the historical reality of the persecution and extermination of these groups of people. The grotesque role-play of the historical re-creation resorts to a reductive schematization of suffering and provides a vivid insight into Ransmayr's critique of the politics of memory. The instability of the victimperpetrator complex in Morbus Kitahara is played out against the utter inadequacy of memory and historical records (textual, visual, architectural, etc.) to accurately represent the past, let alone to fulfill the social function of fixing ethical categories of guilt and penance in postwar Central Europe.

Morbus Kitahara, the Disease

In Dominick LaCapra's Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma, the author applies aspects of psychoanalysis to his investigation of historical events akin to trauma to which writers of history (and I would suggest all authors) may react 1) by either attempting to achieve a false, totalizing closure of meaning through a redemptive narrative; 2) by avoiding closure of meaning and engaging in a symptomatic acting-out and repetition compulsion that recognizes only fragmentation, discontinuity, and elusiveness of meaning and in the end negates the possibility of socially and politically relevant thought; or 3) the difficult, but therapeutic working through of trauma that recognizes and criticizes the binary opposition of unity and disunity and seeks to engage this complex in a productive, self-reflexive manner (191-94). Ransmayr attempts to achieve the delicate balance of 25

"Using the classification of prisoners he found in the salvaged records, Elliot insisted on realistic costumes and ordered the supernumeraries from Moor to dress up as Jews, POWs, Gypsies, Communists, or race defilerf (35).

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this third strategy without reifying or erasing distinctions between victim and perpetrator, showing that these categories are malleable and in flux. This is achieved in Morbus Kitahara by insisting upon a specific, but contextualized account of the darker side of German and Austrian history without reverting to stereotypes or overly didactic representations of the past. Throughout the novel, the author attempts to portray the collective horror of the Nazi concentration camps through idiosyncratic, narrative accounts that offer an affective appeal to the reader. 26 Through the presentation of characters that are not types, rather highly differentiated, often eccentric individuals, the postmodern emphasis on plurality and difference is demonstrated in a meaningful way as alternative and different histories emerge. Ransmayr places his characters in a dark fairy tale, in which the experience of the subject has been reduced to suffering, inscribed upon the body and haunting the mind. The primary embodiment of this state is the character Ambras, otherwise known as "Der Hundekönig" ("The Dog King"), the only personalized character to stand in for the camp survivors. The novel attempts to bear witness to his suffering in an episode, ironically framed and almost concealed within the description of a concert. Ransmayr reveals that Ambras was tortured and crippled during his imprisonment at the quarry: Denn so tänzerisch leicht und hoch über den Kopf, wie in dieser Nacht Bering und Lily mit Tausenden anderen Begeisterten ihre Arme zu einem einzigen wehenden Feld erhoben, würde Ambras seine Arme niemals mehr erheben können . . . Ambras war ein Krüppel. Und Bering kannte sein Geheimnis. (172)27

Ambras's suffering, which Ransmayr takes care to convey in unadorned prose, is misperceived by Bering as part of the power dynamic in their unusual master-slave relationship, rather than understood as part of a greater historical suffering. 28 The second attempt within the novel to bear witness occurs shortly thereafter when Bering asks Ambras directly about his past for the first time as the two are alone on a boat: " Warum hat man 26

27

28

Both Niekerk (164) and Eshel (254) praise Ransmayr's effort to engage contemporary readers with individualized stories that, nevertheless, also capture the often fleeting details of the history of the Holocaust. "For Bering and Lily had raised their arms high above their heads with a dancer's grace to form a single waving field with thousands of other excited fans tonight—and Ambras would never be able to raise his arms like that again. Ambras was a cripple. And Bering knew his secret" (138). Ransmayr's depiction of the pendulum torture is motivated by historical accounts of punishment from the Ebensee subcamp at Mauthausen. In another of Ransmayr's postmodern reversals, Ambras becomes master of the dogs left behind by the camp commandant, an inverted image of the real-life Obersturmführer Georg Bachmayer, who would unleash his favorite dog on the victims of the pendulum torture. For more information and a brief history of the camp, see the Ebensee entry by Mark Vadasz on The Forgotten Camps website.

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Euch damals ins Lager gebracht?" (213).29 However, this episode is also framed by a disjunction of emotions, represented by Bering's feelings of guilt for having been caught in Ambras's room looking at the photograph of the mysterious woman in the snow identified only as "L." The simple depiction of suffering and loss in the recounting of these two brief memories is lost upon Bering and will have dire consequences in the closing scenes of the novel as misunderstanding turns into violence. When Bering later intrudes upon Lily making love to Ambras, an act whose motivation is never clarified as either pity for Ambras's intensifying suffering or as a form of repayment for her passage to Brazil, it is in the complete confusion of the Pantano present with memories from a Moor past. Ambras is so lost in his pain that he believes he is making love to his Jewish lover, while Bering is possessed by guilt from his murder of a skinhead earlier: Und der Leibwächter, selber noch schlaftrunken und verstrickt in einen Traum, war für einige Schritte, einige Augenblicke, wieder dort, w o er herkam, hörte das Keuchen des Kahlkopfs, der ihn verfolgte, hörte den Schmerzensschrei einer Frau, die an ihren Haaren in den frühen Morgen hinausgezerrt wurde. (422) 30

Unfortunately, Bering cannot recognize this, and thus, he proceeds automatically as if his fate were leading him to another murder. Rather than coming as a shock, Bering's inability to recognize his guilt in the act of killing is only the final discrepancy between perception, interpretation and action in the novel (Eshel 252). He mistakenly shoots Muyra, their Brazilian guide, whom he believes to be Lily and seeks one last time to flee from his guilt. Tying a red rope around Ambras, who is now irrevocably lost within his memories of the camp, the two fall from a cliff in a final moment of unity with a flock of startled birds. Memory and history can never be separated and the critics of memory do not seek to eliminate it entirely, rather they seek "a different kind of memory, of different subjects, and remembering in different wayf (Bartov 122). Ransmayr's novel is not a perfect solution to the difficulties entailed in representing the Holocaust, nor could it ever offer a complete account of survivors' memories or a reconstruction of the victims' experiences. Instead, Morbus Kitahara is a novelistic attempt by an Austrian author, born after the events he describes, to take on the issue of the effects of the Holocaust and the National Socialist past. The key to understanding Ransmayr's work is his concept of the blind spots caused by the eye 29 30

'"Why did they put you in the camp back then?" (172). "And for a few strides, a few seconds, the bodyguard, still dazed with sleep and entangled in a dream, was back where he came from, heard the skinhead panting in pursuit, heard the pained cries of a woman being dragged by the hair from her house in the early morning" (341).

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disease, morbus kitahara. The gradual darkening of sight is interpreted in the novel as the expression of individual obsessions, but there is also the propensity to see in it the image of submission to political ideology and historical forgetting (Scheck 285). The eye disease, pathologically connected with an obsessive focus on guilt, becomes a central metaphor for Bering's blindness to individual suffering and for the postwar politics of memory that perpetuates a reified victim-perpetrator complex. In the confusion of distorted historical references in the novel, there is an interesting referent that is strangely appropriate. The name Kitahara might indeed refer to a Japanese eye doctor as the novel claims, but could also refer to the Japanese Symbolist poet Kitahara Hakushu (1885-1942), who in his old age slowly became blind as a result of eyestrain (Fukasawa 158). He lost the most important sensory faculty for a writer of tanka, a form which captures the sensual beauty of the world in a few fleeting words. Bering experiences a similar debilitation in which a black spot appears in his field of vision, a psychological manifestation of his conscious guilt over killing and his unconscious lack of empathy. He suspects that this spot is linked to a larger darkness, but does not see his own descent away from reality into the realm of violence until he and Ambras perish in the apocalyptic fire of the abandoned prison island in Brazil. Ransmayr creates a multi-generational tableau of characters who all become entangled with the past in their attempts to dwell in, flee from, or ignore its consequences. The author thus comments on the dysfunctional relationship of the wartime and postwar generations to the history of the National Socialist period. The main characters' inability to engage history and memory in a productive, transformative manner leads them to fall into the blindness of escapist fantasy or become part of similar systems of repressive rationality. The faculty which is required when reading Morbus Kitahara and addressing the memory of the Holocaust is a sensitivity to the suffering of individuals and the violence done to the past by the politics of memory. The desire for an absolute dichotomy of victim and perpetrator breaks down when faced with the sheer multiplicity and complexity of gradations of moral culpability, which Primo Levi described as the "gray zone" (256-57). The Holocaust threatens to become a black hole in the field of historical vision that slips away when one attempts to focus directly upon it. Ransmayr takes a deliberately peripheral view of history in Morbus Kitahara that calls into question the frailties of historical and literary representation as well as the stability of the victim-perpetrator complex.

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Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Your Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. U of Texas Ρ Slavic Series 1. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. Bartov, Omer. Murder in our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing and Representation. New York/Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Bartsch, Kurt. "Dialog mit Antike und Mythos. Christoph Ransmayrs Ovid-Roman Die Letzte Welt." Modern Austrian Literature 23.3/4 (1990): 121-33. Cook, Lynne. "The Novels of Christoph Ransmayr: Towards a Final Myth." Modern Austrian Uterature 31.3/4 (1998): 225-39. Ermarth, Elizabeth. Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992. Eshel, Amir. "Der Wortlaut der Erinnerung: Christoph Ransmayrs Morbus Kitahara." In der Sprache der Täter: Neue Lektüren deutschsprachiger Nachkriegs- und Gegenwartsliteratur. Ed. Stephen Braese. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998. 227-55. Fukasawa, Margaret Benton. Kitahara Hakushu. His Life and Poetry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction. London/New York: Roudedge, 1988. Kunne, Andrea. "Heimat und Holocaust. Aspekte österreichischer Identität aus postmoderner Sicht. Christoph Ransmayrs Roman Morbus Kitahara." Postmoderne Uteratur in deutscher Sprache: Eine Ästhetik des Widerstands? Amsterdamer Beiträge %ur neueren Germanistik 49. Ed. Henk Harbers. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000: 311-33. LaCapra, Dominick. History, Politics and the Novel. Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell UP, 1987. —. Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma. Ithaca/London: Cornell UP, 1994. Landa, Jutta. "Fractured Vision in Christoph Ransmayr's Morbus Kitahara." The German Quarterly (Spring 1998): 136-45. Levi, Primo. "The Gray Zone." The Holocaust. Origins, Implementation, Aftermath. Ed. Omer Bartov. London/New York: Roudedge, 2000. 251-72. Liessmann, Konrad Paul. "Der Anfang ist das Ende: Morbus Kitahara und die Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will." Wittstock. 148-57. Mauthausen Memorial. KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen. Ed. Robert Woelfl. Bundesministerium für Inneres. 15 Jan. 2006 . Melzer, Gerhard. Die verschmegenen Engel: Aufsätze ψΓ österreichischen Uteratur. Graz: Droschl, 1998. Neumann, Thomas. "Mythenspur des Nationalsozialismus. Der Morgenthauplan und die deutsche Literaturkritik." Wittstock. 188-93. Niekerk, Carl. "Vom Kreislauf der Geschichte. Moderne-Postmoderne-Prämoderne: Ransmayrs Morbus Kitahara." Wittstock 158-80. Orlowski, Hubert. "Regressives Kastalien. Zu Christoph Ransmayrs Roman 'Morbus Kitahara.'" 'Moderne", "Spätmoderne" und 'Postmoderne" in der österreichischen Uteratur. Beiträge des 12. Österreichisch-Polnischen Germanistentrejfens, Gra^ 1996. Ed. Dietmar Goltschnigg, Günther A. Höfler, and Bettina Rabelhofer. Wien: Dokumentationsstelle für neuere österreichische Literatur im Literaturhaus, 1998. 233-45.

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Ransmayr, Christoph. The Dog King. Trans. John E. Woods. New York: Knopf, 1997. —. Morbus Kitahara. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1995. —. . . das Thema hat mich bedroht': Gespräch mit Sigrid Löffler über Morbus Kitahara (Dublin 1995)." Wittstock. 213-19. Ruthner, Clemens. "Ins eigene Nest gekackt? oder: Deutsche und österreichische Gegenwartsliteratur im Vergleichtest (1 Skizze)." NEUES. Trends und Motive in der (österreichischen) Gegenwartsliteratur. Ed. Friedbert Aspetsberger. Innsbruck/Wien: Studienverlag, 2003. 204-19. Santner, Eric. Stranded Objects: Mourning Memory, and Film in Postwar Germany. Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell UP, 1990. Scheck, Ulrich. "Schrift, Vergessen und Erinnern: Christoph Ransmayrs Morbus Kitahara (1996)." Towards the Millenium: Interpreting the Austrian Novel 1971-1996. Ed. Gerald Chappie. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2000. 277-91. Scheidl, Günther. Ein Land auf dem rechten Weg? Die Entmythisierung der Zweiten Republik in der österreichischen Literatur von 1985 bis 1995. Untersuchungen zur österreichischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts 17. Ed. Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler. Wien: Braunmüller, 2003. Scherpe, Klaus. Stadt. Krieg. Fremde: Literatur und Kultur nach den Katastrophen. Tübingen: Francke, 2002. Vadasz, Mark. "Ebensee (Austria)" The Forgotten Camps. Ed. Vincent Chatel and Chuck Ferree. 8 May 2004. 15 Jan. 2005 . Wittstock, Uwe, ed. Die Erfindung der Welt: Zum Werk von Christoph Ransmayr. Frankfurt/M: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 1997.

MARGIT SINKA

The "Different" Holocaust Memorial in Berlin's Bayerisches Viertel·. Personal and Collective Remembrance Thematizing Perpetrator/Victim Relationships On 10 May 2005, as the opening ceremony for Germany's national memorial dedicated to the murdered Jews of Europe was under way, Berliners not watching the milestone event on television or listening to its broadcast on radio could very well have been reading an article in that day's issue of the ta% tided "Gedenkmarathon mit der BVG" (Welgen).1 Perhaps contrary to expectations, the newspaper article did not deal with transportation possibilities to the contested national memorial supposedly capturing everyone's attention. Instead, it highlighted one of the monthly bus trips to six other, far smaller-scale Holocaust memorials in Berlin. The first stop of the three-hour trip was the memorial in the Bayerisches Viertel (Bavarian Quarter) in the district of Schöneberg. Yet the bus passengers searched in vain for a monument to admire or to prompt cathartic experiences of sorrow. Instead, they learned that the memorial is actually a permanent outdoor installation consisting of eighty aluminum signs attached to lampposts throughout Berlin's Bavarian Quarter. On one side, each of these signs depicts, in lively colors, everyday objects as they might appear in a children's storybook: a cake, a chessboard, a shawl and gloves, a newspaper, or a razor. On the other side of these enticing signs, one reads Nazi edicts against the Jews as well as the specific dates on which they were enacted—for example, Jews may not buy cakes (1942); Jews may not belong to the German Chess Association (1933); Jews must turn in all woolen and fur clothing (1942).2 The signs make abundantly 1

2

"Commemoration marathon with the Berlin Verkehrsbetnebi'—that is, with the transit authority. All translations from either German into English or English into German are my own. Stih and Schnock's Orte des Erinttertts includes all of the designed signs. The online version of Caroline Wiedmer's valuable "Remembrance in Schöneberg," linked to Stih and Schnock's home page, features excellent photographs of the memorial in its surroundings.

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clear just how systematically Jews were excluded from all aspects of everyday life until nothing remained but to have them disappear entirely. Whether or not the journalist intended to contrast this memorial, installed in June 1993, to the national one is unclear from her sketchy description, but if a contrast was intended, it would certainly not have been the first time that mention of this "local" memorial occurred in relation to the national one. Writing about the "new Berlin" for The New Yorker, Jane Kramer highlights the national Holocaust Memorial twice, once in 1995, in response to the winning design from the first competition, and once in 1999, soon after the bundestag approved Peter Eisenman's first-place design from the second competition. She expresses her disapproval of both designs clearly, first of the colossal tombstone with four million names that was to cover the five-acre area available for the memorial, and then of Peter Eisenman's 2,711 slabs now replacing the tombstone in this immense area. In each instance, she posits the Bavarian Quarter's memorial against the national one, endorsing the kind of remembrance the former impels and disparaging the kind the latter was likely to represent. Praising the Bavarian Quarter's memorial in the first article, Kramer states that "many Berliners think it is the only memorial that even begins to approach the experience of being Jewish in Germany under Hitler" (63). In the second article, she refines this opinion: The memorial in the Bavarian Quarter addresses the voids of Berlin successfully (63). Unlike the projected national monument, it does not memoriali2e the dead; it does not attempt to transcend history (64). Or, as James E. Young would say it, the Bavarian Quarter's memorial does not rely on "art's traditional redemptory function in the face of catastrophe" (2). Many others also perceive this memorial—its signs integrated into their settings much like advertisements—as a clear counterpart to the enormous national one. In December 1999, reporting from Berlin on Germany's active remembrance culture, Mike Shuster, of National Public Radio's All Things Considered, highlights the Bavarian Quarter's "extraordinary" and "astonishingly powerful" memorial, commending it for extending into "places where things happened" and chiding others for The website of the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies spotlights mainly the designed signs—ca. 35 of them, certainly far more than any other online site. Leipzig's Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst launched an excellent site in May 2005 that includes a description, photos, and a thoughtful evaluation of the Bavarian Quarter's memorial (Tilp). Of the several sites created by students in secondary schools, the one titled laufend-erinmrn, the result of German and Norwegian collaboration, is particularly impressive. Online since early 2005, it includes historical information, the biographies of several former inhabitants of the district, and audio interviews conducted with people in the neighborhood.

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their "focus on the creation of a single, grand memorial." Discussing "countermemorials," Young also refers indirectly to the national Holocaust Memorial as he praises Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, the artists who created the memorial in the Bavarian Quarter, for their skepticism of the tendency to gather memory "into a single spot" (114).3 The above differences between the national memorial and the local one pertain to obvious aspects: the colossal size of one, the human dimensions of the other; the centralized nature of one, the decentralized nature of the other; and the attempt at transcendence of the past implicated in one, the absence of symbolic significance in the other. Still, even these pronounced differences do not necessarily turn the one memorial into the opposite of the other. Rather, each represents different aspects of a collective national identity that still remains a work in progress, though not much doubt remains that its normative parameter has been set in the way described by Aleida Assmann: Diese N o r m ist das Gedächtnis an den Holocaust, die Anerkennung und A u f arbeitung der deutschen Schuld sowie die historische Verantwortung für die Gräueltaten des NS-Regimes. Sie bildet den Rahmen, in den alle Erinnerungsgeschichten einzugliedern sind. ("Funke")4

Katharina Kaiser, curator and director of artistic/cultural programs (.Kunstamtsleiterin) for the Berlin-Schöneberg district since 1982, also refuses to posit one memorial against the other. Instead, she places both the national memorial and the Bavarian Quarter's memorial, "Places of Remembrance," into a single, collective German framework of ruptured narratives. Underlining that both are embedded in the same process, she calls the national memorial the "grand" narrative ("grosse Erzählung") and the Bavarian Quarter's memorial one of its particularized narrative forms ("Erzählformen"). Like many others nationally, the site-specific memorial in the Bavarian Quarter gives practical, human dimensions to the "grand" form ("Unterbrochene"). Still, even in the panorama of site-specific memorials, the Bavarian Quarter's memorial has been admired for its singularity. Henry W. Pickford notes, for example, that it "eludes the entwinement of military and civil spheres, of national monument and military memorial" (163). Attempts to isolate its unique quality center on the memorial's ability to 3

4

Asked to respond to the finished national memorial in June 2005, the journalist Henryk Broder vehemently dismisses it as "a large nothing" ("ein großes Nichts"). In contrast, he highlights three other monuments in Berlin as outstanding and powerful; of these he mentions the one in the Bavarian Quarter first (Eckert). "This norm is remembrance of the Holocaust, the recognition of German guilt and the attempt to deal with it, as well as the historical responsibility for the horrendous deeds of the Nazi regime. It provides the framework into which all memory narratives must be placed."

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bring the past into the present by transposing history to short, contemporary advertising forms that merge unobtrusively with everyday surroundings but shock and induce open-ended reflection once they are noticed (e. g., Henninger 152-54; Straka 17; Pickford 166; Till 158-59; Wiedmer 9). "The burgeoning secondary literature" (Koss 128) on this memorial project largely fails, however, to recognize two of the main reasons for its uniqueness: its reference to victims and perpetrators alike— likewise its ability to elicit questions about the perpetrator/victim relationship without resolving them 5 —and the ten-year democratic process preceding the memorial's installation, guided and moderated in all of its phases by Kunstamt (Art Council) Director Kaiser. One of the reasons that neither the perpetrator/victim nexus nor the ten-year democratic process that shaped it have been specifically highlighted in criticism may be due to the fact that Stih and Schnock have not done so themselves. This lacuna is especially relevant since the secondary literature, frequendy based on author interviews with the artists, "almost invariably" reproduces "the artists' own claims for the work" (Koss 128). Thus the literature tends to exclusively credit the artists for the type of memorial that materialized. 6 Yet Kaiser, whose work in Berlin-Schöneberg over the course of ten years was crucial to shaping the narrative form peculiar to the Bavarian Quarter's memorial, emphasizes the process of collective remembrance work as one of the memorial's integral components ("Prozeß" 85), a view echoed by Wolfgang Nagel, Berlin's Bausenator ("senator for construction"), and Schöneberg's mayor Uwe Saager at the opening ceremony ("Drei Reden" 186-87). It was this process that led to the Berlin Senate's decision to fund a memorial contest for the Bavarian Quarter under its program "Kunst im Stadtraum" ("Art in Urban Spaces"). In fact, without this process, characterized in its first eight years by close collaboration between the Art Council, a citizen's group and, in its final, contest-phase, by the district's careful consultation with the art experts of the Berlin Senate, Stih and Schnock's memorial design might well have been rejected 5

6

To be sure, the memorial is by no means about the victim/perpetrator relationship itself. Kaiser stresses that this relationship cannot be represented, particularly not symbolically. Because the signs do not turn into symbols exacting their viewers to search for meanings—that is, precisely because they remain signs—Kaiser considers them particularly effective in prompting individual responses to the perpetrator/victim complex ("In den Symbolen" 42). A limited number of commentaries are the exception, in particular, those of Stefanie Endlich, Henry W. Pickford, Barbara Straka, and Caroline Wiedmer. Petra Henninger, also among the few who recognize the importance of the process, nevertheless repeats a mistake made by many others: stating that the citizens of Schöneberg opted for a decentralized memorial due to Stih and Schnock's design (153). She overlooks the fact that the call for designs already included decentralization as one of the specifications.

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(Endlich 24), as was the fate of many others that had tried to engender remembrance of perpetrator deeds site-specifically (Endlich 23). The memorial process, moreover, not only prepared the ground for the kind of design competition that led to designers Renate Stih and Frieder Schnock's entry in the first place and then to its top ranking in the competition but also to the community's highly positive response when the memorial was completed in 1993. Embedded in postwar confrontations with the German past—first in West German contexts and later in those of united Germany—the process of remembrance work reflects impassioned responses to national discourses involving perpetrators and victims, in its later stages especially to the discussions on perpetrators and victims entwined with the debates on the site and form of the central Holocaust Memorial. Precisely because it ultimately led to the memorial that (represents the German past in a distinct "narrative form," both the process itself—always involving Kaiser's mediation—and the resultant memorial highlighting the perpetrator/victim relationship deserve closer scrutiny. The recent German focus on the history of official postwar remembrance of the Nazi period in Germany—a focus related to fears about the future of memory when it will no longer be secured by the first-hand accounts of witnesses and will depend on second-hand, historicized, and mediated information—has resulted in creating general agreement about the history of the main stages of official remembrance. Critics agree, for instance, that only the Auschwitz and Eichmann trials of the sixties changed the way Germans viewed themselves. Before these trials, Germans rarely viewed themselves as perpetrators of Nazi crimes (Reichel, Vergangenheitsbewältigung 18-22; Frei 11-13; Schmitt; Roß). What had seemed like the new millennium's paradigmatic shift from emphasis on Germans as perpetrators to Germans as victims is not really so new after all, Helga Hirsch points out as she recapitulates the emphasis on German suffering in the Adenauer period. Norbert Frei argues that bombings, flight, and expulsions from eastern territories were prevalent topics throughout the Adenauer years, even in official commemorations ("Gefühlte Geschichte"). Harald Welzer's studies, documenting the differences between official and private memory, show how the official emphasis on Germans as perpetrators that had developed in the late sixties was, as a whole, not reflected in family discourses—indeed that even perpetrators' adult grandchildren, those particularly well-informed and enlightened about the Nazi era, tend not only to exculpate their own family members from the negative history but even to elevate them into resisters and heroes (13-16).

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Nonetheless, the 1968 generation did confront its elders, but its accusatory assaults had not been conducive to breaking the thick crusts of icy silence encasing the past or to eliciting anything other than defensive reactions from the generation of perpetrators and their millions of bystanders. Perhaps for this reason, the '68 generation was particularly adamant in branding its elders as perpetrators. As Kaiser notes, the system-orientation of the '68 generation that prompted many studies centered on the role of particular societal groups in the Nazi era—e.g., churches, firms, scientific institutions—led to the strict categorizing of older Germans into perpetrators and victims, a concern reflected in the national Holocaust Memorial's colossal size and in its emphatic dedication to victims ("Unterbrochene"). But Kaiser can also be considered a member of the '68 generation. In her case, the failure to break down barriers to dialogue with the parental generation led in the opposite direction. Rather than polarize further, she tried to find ways to motivate communication among victims and perpetrators and among generations, for she, too, was aware that the past would need to be mediated by the third postwar generation if it were to be passed on at all as an essential component of German identity. But, until the late seventies, much of the public resisted efforts to break through the silence. Despite assiduous investigations of the darkest chapter of its history in the course of the seventies, the Federal Republic of Germany continued to be diagnosed as a severely ailing patient: one with the incapacity to mourn its victims. The turning point came in 1979, the year the American TV feature film Holocaust was shown on West German television. While German eyes generally remained dry when viewing the historically accurate and thorough documentary films on the Holocaust that had been produced in abundance, the American Holocaust film released overnight, almost literally, a nationwide flood of tears. "Der Judenmord bewegt die Deutschen" ("The Murder of the Jews Moves the Germans"), the title page of the 29 January 1979 issue of Oer Spiegel proclaimed. Clearly, personal responses to the fate of a single family finally enabled West Germans to experience salutary sorrow and led to the kind of empathetic understanding that "objective" historical representations of a large group of victims had been unable to generate. The repercussions of the American Holocaust film on general political sensibilities should not be underestimated, Kaiser emphasizes ("Gedächtnis" 166). After the film, many contacted Jewish survivors in their midst or explored the fate of others no longer there. Had they emigrated in time, had they been deported? Suddenly the fates of individuals who had lived on their streets, perhaps in the same houses, had

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attended the same schools, had played in the same parks mattered enormously. In attempts at some kind of reconciliation with those still alive, innumerable townships, organizations, and schools located former fellow citizens in places as disparate as Israel or Australia and provided funds for visits to West Germany. People started to look for the concentration camps, for the synagogues ("Gedächtnis" 166). History workshops sprouted up everywhere, often connected with the "Grabe, wo du stehst" ("dig where you are") movement that had originated in Sweden. Sometimes there was literal digging. For instance, on the Prinz-Albrecht-Terrain (the former site of the Gestapo and Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann's offices), members of the Berlin group Aktives Museum unearthed Gestapo torture chambers in 1986. At other times there was simply painstaking research into history.7 Searching for viable ways to promote knowledge about the past and to relate it to the present, as well as help others overcome confrontational behavior and abysmal silences, Kaiser began to explore aesthetic possibilities for prompting communication about the past—among strangers, friends, and family members. With the intent of sponsoring exhibits that would intersect the present with the past, Kaiser, as Kunstamtsleiterin, encouraged engaged citizens to delve into several of the kinds of projects pursued so avidly throughout West Germany. Often this "history from below," as it was called nationally, was done in tandem with other groups of engaged citizens in the district. Researching the history of Jewish life in Schöneberg proved to be far more productive than many had expected. Major discoveries resulted—for example, the fact that the Bavarian Quarter was once the home of 16,000 Jews and used to be referred to as "Jewish Switzerland."8 Unlike the generally poorer and more orthodox Jews of Berlin's Scheunenviertel (Barn Quarter), the one usually associated with Jewish Berliners, Jews in the bayerisches Viertel were normally better off. A fair number of the deceased were illustrious personalities (for example, Albert Einstein, Erich Fried, and Walter Benjamin); some of those still alive are famous nationally (e.g., Inge Deutschkron and Marcel Reich-Ranicki). But interest in Schöneberg extended to all of its former Jewish citizens. Thus, 7

8

Of the thousands of students aged 8 to 21 who participated in the two year-long students' competitions on "Everyday Life under National Socialism" (1980, 1982) for the President's Award in German History, organized and financed by the Körber Foundation of Hamburg, one in four "researched what had happened to the once thriving Jewish communities in Germany during the Nazi years" (Beckett 8). Frequently they were the first in their localities to break down the walls of silence surrounding the topic of the Holocaust. For an informative, concise history of the Bayerisches Viertel, see Mayer.

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Schöneberg's Art Council initiated correspondence with a large number of exiles, asking them to recount their life stories without restricting themselves to the Holocaust period and requesting photos from the major periods of their lives. To combat tendencies to view Jews mainly as helpless, passive victims deserving pity, Kaiser had the Art Council prepare narratives including joyful moments from their lives, realizing of course that it would remain impossible to repair the ruptures the Holocaust had caused to their narratives. The presence of rupture in the continuum of life would then initiate the emotional jolts often necessary for prompting thinking processes. These, in turn, could lead to questions asked of others and thus start the communication process necessary for the formation of additional collective memories. Not coincidentally, the idea of affective jolts prompting thought and then communication is crucial also to the perpetrator/victim nexus characterizing the eighty signs of the Bavarian Quarter. All of the investigative activities and resultant countless discussions helped to provide the kind of positive climate that turned out to be crucial for all aspects related to the monument in the Bavarian Quarter—from the wording of the design competition to the installation of the winning design. In keeping with the commemorations abundantly held throughout West Germany in the eighties—e.g., the fifty-year anniversary of the start of the Nazi era in 1983, the forty-year anniversary of the freeing of the concentration camps and of Germany's unconditional capitulation in 1985, or the fifty-year anniversary of the so-called Reichskristallnacht in 1988 9 —the Schöneberg Art Council organized its share of exhibits and art installations. These were again coordinated with the local museum, churches, groups representing political parties, the local history workshops, and with interested individuals. Reflecting many others in the nation at that time, the Bavarian Quarter's 1983 exhibit emphasized German resistance during World War II. At the same time, it brought back into the public sphere much that was not common knowledge about its past: the residences of its former Jewish inhabitants, emigration and mass deportations, denunciations of neighbors and also instances of rescue (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 86). For Berlin's 750th anniversary, the Art Council organized an open-air exhibit on "Flanieren im Schatten der Vergangenheit" ("Flanerie in the Shadows of the Past"). It thematized the work of the Nazi bureaucratic apparatus that had been housed in the buildings surrounding the nearby Kleistpark and the consequences of this work: deportations and 9

"The German 1980s could be described as a decade obsessed with memory. [. . .] More than any of the earlier postwar decades, the 1980s seemed stuck in the past [. . .]" (Huyssen, "The Inevitability" 65).

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extensions of the war to the east. During the preparations for its next exhibit—one to be devoted exclusively to the expulsion of Jewish neighbors—Andreas Wilcke, working entirely on his own, undertook the project of gathering the names of Jewish citizens deported from the Bavarian Quarter, their residences, and their deportation sites. This was information available only at the Obetfinan^direktion (Central Department of Finance), which had recorded the belongings and assets of the deported Jews (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 86).10 For one hour each morning before the start of his workday, Wilcke copied information onto file cards. His copious transcriptions, lasting an entire year, resulted in more than 6,000 names. 11 None of the names belonged to people known to have survived the concentration camps. Deeply disquieted, Wilcke, along with other members of the local SPD, initiated the proposal for a memorial. They requested "eine weit sichtbare Mahn- und Gedenkstätte"—that is, a monument "visible from afar," 12 inscribed with the names of the 6,069 deported. It was to be dedicated to the victims, with the following phrase added: "Als Anklage gegen den Nationalsozialismus" ("As a condemnation of National Socialism"). The originators of the proposal clearly had a traditional, weighty memorial in mind. They wanted one strongly exhortative in the way older monuments had been and similar in tone to the many plaques and memorials with the "never again" inscription initiated by survivors earlier in the postwar period. They nonetheless firmly supported an artistic rather than technological rendering of the memorial (Kaiser, "Prozess" 86). Because of additional projects organized, supported, or mediated by the Schöneberg's Art Council, mentalities changed considerably by 1991 when the call for proposals went out. Of utmost importance was the "Pappaktion" ("Cardboard Operation") initiated by the local SPD for the fiftieth anniversary of the Reichskristallnacht 1988. In front of approximately seventy houses in the Bavarian Quarter from which ten or more Jews had been deported, sign-sized cardboards listing the names of the deported went up, along with the phrase "Wider das Vergessen" ("Against 10 11

12

Götz Aly explains how finance departments redistributed Jewish wealth (Alexander). The Art Council in Schöneberg prepared a Gedenkbuch, a memorial book, with the names of the deported and the other information Wilcke transcribed. The second volume of Orte des Erinnern, edited by the Schöneberg Art Council and two other institutions, lists the information compiled in the Gedenkbuch. The original files (those used by Wilcke) are now in Berlin's Landesarchiv (State Archives). The original SPD monument proposal appears in Kunstamt Schöneberg, et al. 1: 185. The Perspektive Berlin (a citizens' group headed by Lea Rosh and Eberhard Jäckel) was even more bombastic when it launched its proposal for a central, national Holocaust monument four months later (January 1989). It insisted on a monument that would be "unübersehbar" ("that couldn't be missed," or "that had to be noticed") rather than merely visible from a long distance (Rosh 20-21).

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Forgetting") in bold letters ("Denkmal" 73-74), as well as the exhortation to remember not only the prominent who had once lived in the area (like Einstein, for whom there was already a plaque) but the thousands of others almost completely forgotten, much as the Nazis had intended them to be. The attempt to "bring history home" to the inhabitants of the district worked, literally as well as conceptually. A Benjaminian shock occurred, resulting in changed outlooks. 13 Much in the vein of Robert Musil's tenet that nothing is quite as inconspicuous as a monument (506), inhabitants of the Bavarian Quarter started to raise their voices against a traditional central monument and in favor of a decentralized form of memorial art that would affect inhabitants on an everyday level in everyday surroundings. The idea of Stolpersteine ("stumbling blocks") to activate remembrance also occurred at this time ("Denkmal" 74). By 1989, with mindsets no longer as rigid as before, Kaiser could certainly have argued for a monument reflecting her own artistic preferences. It would of course not have been predicated on symbolic memorial art, its universal messages seeming shopworn, and also not on the artistic "voids" that had become so fashionable in the mid-eighties, 14 for these were unlikely to lead to productive communication. Like many artists grappling with redefining public space and the role of monuments and art in public spaces, Kaiser preferred conceptually based artistic constellations likely to trigger a process of responses thematizing forgetting and repression, recalling and remembrance, interpretation and reinterpretation (Korn, "Die Tafeln" 52). Her preface to Orte des Erinnerns, Vol. I,15 an extremely valuable, cutting-edge compilation of contributions on debates pertaining to monuments and remembrance, clearly delineates her approach. Relying on traditional monuments to express collective memory has become questionable, she states ("Vorwort" 5). On the other hand, many memorial attempts based on contemporary aesthetic concepts may meet with the approval of the art world, but because of their incomprehensibility to those not aesthetically initiated, they often alienate the very people for whom they were meant. Yet, if they are to be meaningful at all, they need to appeal to those whose attention they target. Considering the impossibility of representing and interpreting the Holocaust in aesthetic ways at all, artistic directors would be well advised to step back from personal ambitions in order to help mediate commemorative solutions not dependent either on outmoded memorial forms or on 13 14 15

For more on Walter Benjamin's concept of shock and its ability to render heightened consciousness in the modernist age of mechanical reproduction, see Benjamin 238-41. See Andreas Huyssen on "The Voids of Berlin." This reference is not to be confused with Stih and Schnock's publication with the same title.

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incomprehensible aesthetic conceptualizations ("Vorwort" 5). Thus, rather than steering others toward deciding on a call for designs involving her own artistic parameters for a memorial, Kaiser again opted for extending the questioning process in her district. The next stage of the process to determine which kind of memorial could address the ethical, historical, visual, and emotional concerns of Schöneberg's inhabitants involved three open-air exhibits on the Bayerischer Platz (two in 1989, and one in 1990), each of course stressing public spaces as conducive places for remembrance. At one of these, visitors received the opportunity to fill out questionnaires on monument designs on display or to jot down thoughts on the kind of artistic rendition they most preferred for their own memorial. The many thoughtful written responses were taken seriously in the discussions that ensued among the members of the local group established to decide on memorial matters. During this entire period, moreover, the extensive work of interviewing witnesses, contacting and corresponding with survivors scattered throughout the world, and organizing the incoming materials continued steadily. Since artists entering the contest were asked to familiarize themselves with the history of the quarter, much of the material received was compiled into dossiers for their benefit and made available to them in the Schöneberg Museum. Due to a continuous education process in matters of history and memorial art and the large number of animated discussions accompanying this process, a final consensus on what to include in the call for designs was attained relatively easily in 1991. No longer did anyone clamor for an emotionally overpowering monument or for a huge one "visible from afar" (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 88). The tide of the competition was changed as well, the new one emphasizing remembrance in the Bavarian Quarter rather than a memorial at the main plaza. 16 Design submissions were to interrelate central and decentralized remembrance with the documentation center in the local museum. The historical material prepared for competition applicants, accessible in the local museum, discouraged reliance on abstract art as well as on symbols and encouraged designs

16

It changed from "Mahn- und Gedenkstätte am Bayerischen Platz" to "Mahnen und Gedenken im Bayerischen Viertel" ("Memorial at the Bavarian Square" to "Reminding/ Admonishing and Remembering in the Bavarian Quarter"). Unfortunately, the German distinction between a "Mahnstätte" and "Gedenkstätte" cannot be rendered in English. While both translate into "memorial," "Gedenkstätte" is a neutral term; "Mahnstätte," on the other hand, refers to an exhortatory monument (Pickford 153). The new title reflects the activity of reminding, admonishing, or exhorting, as well as the act of remembrance, instead of indicating a site of remembrance. The title change also reflects the desire to have remembrance extend into all parts of the quarter rather than to limit it to a central site.

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relevant to everyday life in present-day surroundings (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 90). The memorial process by no means ended with the call for designs. In the next two years, particularly the continuing debates surrounding the proposed national Holocaust Memorial fueled heated discussions in Schöneberg. In retrospect, the central memorial has even been compared to a discourse generator continuously thrusting the German public into confrontations with and reevaluations of history (Herz).17 For memorial art, it raised elemental issues involving representation—who or what was to be represented and why. In the case of the Bavarian Quarter, the victim/perpetrator controversies prompted by the national monument helped the district to alter and/or refine its own memorial expectations (Straka 16). The full-page appeals for a national monument appearing in nonregional newspapers in January 1989—directed to the Berlin Senate, the governing bodies of all federal states, and to the federal government— demanded rather than requested a central memorial in Berlin dedicated to the murdered Jews of Europe. In a rather histrionic tone, they underlined that it was a "Schande" ("shame") that no such memorial existed in the land of the perpetrators and that erecting such a memorial was nothing less than a duty for all Germans, East and West (Rosh 20-21). That "remembrance and self-indictment seem so hopelessly at odds" (Young 7) clearly did not trouble the proponents of the national memorial. Remembrance refers of course to victims and self-indictment to perpetrators. Could a single monument combine both? To resolve this question is not, however, what Lea Rosh, the most vocal proponent of the national memorial, had in mind. Not budging from her stance that the purpose of the monument was to honor the victims, she insisted that the Holocaust Memorial be built on the Prinz-Albrecht-Terrain, the site most associated with the meticulous planning of Nazi terror (Sledz). When those in charge of the ensuing "Topography of Terror" exhibit, installed temporarily for Berlin's 750th anniversary but still there today, refused to budge, Rosh saw no problem with a national memorial dedicated to the murdered Jews of Europe peacefully co-existing with the "Topography of Terror."

17

Kaisei, in turn, likens it to a discourse catalyst that sparked the creation of many differentiated narrative forms in the collective remembrance process ("Unterbrochene"). In an August 2005 interview, she stressed that the national memorial continuously played an important role in visitor responses to the Schöneberg Art Council's exhibit even in 1995, the year in which the first national Holocaust Memorial competition ended with the controversial, gigantic tombstone as the winning design (Personal interview).

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The problem that others did see with this co-existence on the PrinzAlbrecht-Terrain18 was not resolved with the new area chosen for the national memorial after the unification of the two Germanys. The foundation promoting the memorial (the task was taken over from the citizens' group) then demanded five acres of land to the south of the Brandenburg Gate, an area on the former "death strip" (Todesstreifen) on the GDR side of the Berlin Wall. In the Nazi era, however, the Ministry Gardens, in the immediate vicinity of Hitler's Chancellery, had been located there—in fact, directly above the Goebbels bunker.19 Recognizing that this area was even more representative of perpetrators than the Prinz-AlbrechtTerrain,20 Rosh wasted no time in 1990 infusing a Holocaust Memorial at this potential site with symbolic value connoting at once both victims and perpetrators: "Auf den Trümmern dieses Zentrums der Nazi-Macht ein Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden zu errichten heißt, die Ermordeten über ihre Mörder, die Opfer über die Täter zu erheben" (qtd. in Ehmann 35).21 This attempt at generating symbolic content involving victims and perpetrators quickly backfired. Was Rosh trying to assign meaning to the senseless murder of six million Jews, thereby exculpating the perpetrators? The permanent association of Jews with their murderer, Rafael Seligman protested, would represent the triumph of Hitler (Ehmann 35). Rosh later dropped references of victims triumphing over perpetrators. She returned to her initial emphasis: The land of the perpetrators must build a central, national memorial dedicated to their victims. Nonetheless, even this victim-emphasis was problematic since many wanted a national memorial to focus on perpetrators rather than on victims. To be sure, Salomon Korn, a longtime advocate of more perpe18

19 20

21

In this regard, Rudy Koshar notes the following: "To honor victims at this site [. . .] was to give in to a growing public conviction that most Germans had been victimized by a regime alien to their traditions and values. But it was also to lose sight of who had perpetrated the Holocaust in the first place" (264). Though discovered before, Goebbels's bunker was not excavated until 1998. In the open meeting of the Committee for Culture and Media, held to discuss the winning design for the national memorial, Professor Ronte comments that one of the major attractive points about the land for the Holocaust Memorial is that it was not "belastet" ("compromised") in any way (Deutscher Bundestag 69-70). Yet the area was very close to Hitler's Chancellery, and Goebbels's bunker underneath the land had already been discovered. Today, the journalist Henryk Μ. Broder is one of the very few who continues to complain loudly about the inappropriate nature of Holocaust remembrance at this compromised site. By having turned the Holocaust Memorial into the "foundation stone" ("Grundstein") of the Berlin Republic, Broder emphasizes, Germany may publicly be assuming guilt for Nazi crimes, but it is no longer focused on the crimes themselves (Broder 25-26). Thus, it is ignoring the symbolic essence of this historical site. "To erect a monument for the murdered Jews of Europe on the ruins of this center of Nazi power means to raise the murdered above their murderers, the victims above the perpetrators."

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trator sites, concedes that all Holocaust memorials and sites, whether focused on victims or perpetrators, necessarily implicate the other: "In jedem Opfer-Denkmal wird—mal zurückhaltender, mal herausgehobener—immer auch das an den Opfern begangene Verbrechen erkennbar werden" (Korn, "Mit falschem Etikett" 175). 22 But the public did not find perpetrators reflected in the national memorial, either in its planning stages or upon its completion. In his speech at the opening ceremonies of the national Holocaust Memorial, Paul Spiegel—at that time head of Germany's Central Committee of Jews (now deceased)—felt compelled to comment on this defect. The memorial does not thematize perpetrators at all, he complained. He feared that the memorial would not prompt its visitors—these including visitors who think like the former perpetrators and bystanders— to reflect at all on the deeds of the perpetrators ("Einweihung"). In Spiegel's view, moreover, the "Site of Information" below the memorial does not compensate for this essential lack in the memorial itself, for he was convinced that many visitors will not bother to enter the information site. Spiegel does not mention how perpetrators could have been implicated in the central memorial. Instead, he highlights concentration camps as authentic perpetrator sites and expresses fear that the new memorial would detract from their upkeep. The former Israeli Consul Mordechay Lewy and the historian Michael Wolffsohn had already voiced this same fear in 1994 (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 82); many others have echoed it since then. Interestingly, proponents of "authentic" perpetrator sites generally refer to places of destruction, such as prisons, cemeteries and, above all, concentration camps. As Kaiser points out, the remembrance at the authentic places they mention does not focus on remembrance of life or even on remembrance of the process that led to destruction. Rather, it focuses on death, the end phase of the destruction process (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 82). Thus it is not surprising that many Jewish Germans have become tired of being depicted as pitiful victims on the way to death. Rafael Seligman, for example, complains that Jews are suffocating from a preponderance of victimizing activity robbing them of the vitality needed for living (84). Much like the national memorial plan, the first memorial initiative of the citizens of Berlin-Schöneberg also centered on victims. Their wish to mourn the victims was, moreover, credible, for they had at least bothered to find out how many of them had lived in the Bavarian Quarter and what they had been like. But, their investigations had also made them realize 22

"Every victim memorial will reveal also the crime committed toward victims, at times in more reserved fashion, at other times more emphatically."

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that authentic perpetrator sites were not necessarily restricted to the sites of power (e.g., the Wannsee Villa, the Prin2-Albrecht-Terrrain, the concentration camps Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen). They were no longer willing to deflect attention from the bystanders, the ones who had enabled the Nazi apparatus to function so seamlessly,23 by disparaging only individual, powerful Nazi figures. They now knew that perpetrators and bystanders had lived—and some were still living—in well-to-do neighborhoods such as Schöneberg's Bavarian Quarter and could, in fact, potentially be the people next door. Would commemoration not need to call attention to this as well? In the Bavarian Quarter, this potential focus was discussed heatedly by the citizens who had initiated the memorial proposal (Kaiser, "Denkmal" 74-76). Having read research on police records of specific denunciations in 1943—records that contained the names of both the denounced and their denouncers (Heimann 18-22)—the angered citizens had even considered making the names and addresses of the denouncers public—that is, in a manner similar to the way they planned to make the names and addresses of the deported Jews public. They desisted from this mainly because they did not want to be connected with denunciations themselves, and also because they were worried about the feelings of the descendants. Reluctantly they conceded that it would be hair-raising for a grandchild to read, in a public place accessible to all, that "grandma was a denouncer" (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 76). Nonetheless, the problem of somehow connecting perpetrators and victims in the memorial itself did not let them rest. Just as they wanted to draw attention to the many Jews who had lived on their streets, at their addresses, they wanted to draw attention to the many denouncers and bystanders who had also lived on their streets, at the very same addresses (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 76). But how? Especially since the Bayerisches Viertel was a quarter where just about everyone once had had a Jewish schoolmate, had gone to a Jewish doctor or to a Jewish bookseller, the perpetrator/victim connection did need to be emphasized, Kaiser agreed. Then, as she often does when arriving at an impasse, Kaiser wondered how art would be able to provide a solution. How could art, without moralizing, open eyes, make problems visible? How could it be the catalyst for conversations and deeper insights? Furthermore, how could art also express the dilemmas they were having, their hesitancies, their questions (Kaiser, "Prozeß" 85)? How could art, as Young, too, had

23

Focus on the average German as perpetrator started only after Stephen Spielberg's Schindler's Lisi (1993); later, it increased with the controversies surrounding the Wehrmacht exhibit (from 1995) and with the Daniel Goldhagen debate (1996).

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pondered in regard to the national memorial, "embody the intractable questions at the heart of [. . .] memory" (Young 194)? There were no models to follow. In Germany, neither local nor national memorial projects had yet thematized the victim/perpetrator relationship—Braunschweig's memorial, "Eine Stadt erinnert sich" ("A City Remembers"), was to do so only a few years later. 24 Thus Kaiser decided to trust the artists. It was a wise decision. At the opening ceremony for the memorial (June 1993), the speech by Schöneberg mayor Uwe Saager highlighted particularly the memorial's success in addressing the dialectical victim/perpetrator relationship (exactly the relationship Spiegel had not found in the central monument). Stih and Schnock's memorial causes pain, Saager emphasized, for it recalls not only the victims of violence but also raises questions about those who enabled the violence. Like Pickford, who later praised the memorial in the Bavarian Quarter for its "juxtaposition between then and now of sign, site and above all practical situation" (167), Saager pointed emphatically to the monument's incorporation of the present. As in the past, Saager specified, only small numbers of individuals carry out acts of violence; but they do so in a political climate made possible by the majority ignoring the many small steps from which it results ("Drei Reden" 187). These were not vague words on that day. The Neo-Nazi-instigated fire in Solingen that had shaken all of Germany a week before—three Turkish girls and two Turkish women had burned to death—was still on people's minds in Schöneberg. Almost six years later (February 1999), in a speech given upon being awarded the City of Berlin's honorary citizen title, former President Roman Herzog mentioned the memorial in the Bavarian Quarter in a similar context. Though not referring to a specific xenophobic incident, Herzog reminded Berliners that the memorial succeeds in keeping remembrance of the victims alive while also warning against the slowly festering, poisonous hatred able to dispossess minorities if remained unchecked. 25 In other words, he underlined its profound practical relevance for the present. Herzog, for whom neither victims nor

24

25

In Braunschweig, Sigrid Sigurdsson's empty plates, fastened onto the walls of a former concentration camp (a satellite of Hamburg's Camp Neuengamme) at the outskirts of the city, correspond to the empty pages of seventy archive boxes. Organizations—e.g., churches, political parties, football players, plumbers—can have a box assigned to them. Over a period of several years, they fill the empty pages of their box with various historical texts, documents, photos, and also with private reminiscences. The best of these then appear on the empty plates on the concentration camp's walls. Not all plates will be filled, for not all organizations will risk probing into their pasts (Kaiser, "Unterbrochene"). See also the Braunschweig memorial's official website. Herzog's speech was sent to me by the Kunstamt Schöneberg-Tempelhof.

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perpetrators are conceivable without the other, recognized instinctively that the Bavarian Quarter's monument implicates both. While the very precise, sinister title of the memorial refers exclusively to active perpetrator deeds, 26 the three large billboards (all alike) comprising the so-called central part of the memorial help to dispel the impression that the memorial focuses only on perpetrators. Rather than situated in a single, central location, the billboards are at three different "central" areas: one on the Bayerischer Platz, another on Münchener Straße in front of the secondary school (Gymnasium), and the third at the Rathaus in Schöneberg. The summarizing quality of the billboards is what seems to make them "central." Each shows a 1993 map superimposed on a 1933 map, but the superimposed maps do not "return" burned and bombed buildings to the district. They simply replace them with new ones. Clearly the billboards implicate victims and perpetrators, but how is one to untangle the relationships? Will it help to investigate the eighty "Places of Remembrance" signified by the green dots dispersed over the clearly drawn streets of the map? To experience the decentralized memorial most powerfully, it would be advisable to simply start walking through the Bavarian Quarter without a map and any preparatory reflections at all. Like the national Holocaust Memorial that visitors can enter from any point, visitors to the Bavarian Quarter can access its memorial from any point as well. To be sure, the laws and regulations enacted against Jews span the period from 1933 to 1945 (the specific date appears below the regulation or law printed on each of the signs). But, the signs are by no means arranged in linear fashion. The first sign one sees might be dated January 1942, the next March 1934, and the following one April 1943. Rather than linearly organized, the signs are placed according to function as much as possible—e.g., the law prohibiting Jews from buying books in front of a bookstore, the one prohibiting Jews from using public phones in the vicinity of a phone booth. Thus the "places of remembrance" marked by the signs are not historical sites at all, but places to jar or jolt residents, even more so than visitors, to remembrance of the past in the present. As projected into the present, the abridgement of rights at first seems like a well-planned, systematic, bureaucratic process. It is systematic in the sense that slowly, from one step to another (even as resident or visitor is making one step

26

"Orte des Erinnerns im Bayerischen Viertel: Ausgrenzung und Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Deportation und Ermordung von Berliner Juden in den Jahren von 1933 bis 1945" ("Places of Remembrance in the Bavarian Quarter: Exclusion and Deprivation of Rights, Expulsion, Deportation, and Murder of Berlin Jews from 1933 to 1945"). Not surprisingly, it contrasts with the more general dedication planned for the national Holocaust Memorial.

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and then another), each right is taken away until no rights forming the basis for living are left at all. The irrationality of the bureaucratic process becomes apparent on several fronts. The lack of linearity prompts the question of why one ordinance was passed before another. With the absence of a narrative progression that could provide at least some meaning, the laws seem haphazard, as if enacted on sadistic whims. Much as the temporal expectations, the spatial ones are also frequently thwarted—a picture of a cat, for example, does not mean that one can buy either a cat or cat food nearby. It means instead that Jews were forbidden to have household pets. But, one needs to read the regulation to find that out; one cannot merely guess the law from its image. Normal logic becomes useless. Empathy with the victims, completely at the mercy of this nonsensical, cruel "system," becomes pronounced, as does the anger at those who invented and enacted this "system." Clearly the signs themselves, as much as the spatial and temporal meandering through the quarter, thematize the victim/perpetrator complex. One side of the signs is always only half of the picture. Both sides are necessary to complete the picture. The images depicted on one side in the fashion of children's picture books suggest innocence, safe havens, and, frequently, simple childhood pleasures: a beach, a sports field, a hopscotch board. But, much like Hansel and Gretel had to learn that the gingerbread house they had found so enticing was in actuality a cleverly concocted ruse to lure them into danger, the visitor soon learns to mistrust the images, particularly since they never function as symbols. On their other side, the colorful, vibrant signs always turn into cold, menacing laws, printed in large, black letters not open to interpretation. They metamorphose into concrete danger—not in mysterious forests or urban jungles, but in placid neighborhoods. The dispersed memorial problematizes an issue critics have often mentioned: the German wish to identify with suffering victims rather than with reprehensible perpetrators. Walking through the Bavarian Quarter and constantly making the attempt to see the two sides of each sign does represent an "overcoming of a one-sided perception of the area's history" and "assists in the demystification of both past and present," as Caroline Wiedmer notes in her article on "Remembrance in Schöneberg" (11). When she extends her scrutiny of the role of the passerby, Wiedmer assigns the passerby an essential role in creating the open-ended meaning of the memorial: The passerby turns into "a potential collaborator or Mitläufer [χκ·]" (11) rather than a potential victim. As strollers wander along the streets gathering one sign after another, Wiedmer continues, they slowly come "to know the intertext of the memorial narrative, that is, the

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sights, sounds, and social structures of the quarter today. [. . .] After the first shock, even the alert stroller begins to assimilate each successive law more easily" (11). Thus, "the role of Mitläufer [sic\ literally unfolds as one walks along the memory lines created by the memorial" (ll). 2 7 Would the resident's act of seeing turn even more readily into an act of not watching, one wonders. Aware of this danger, the artists have of course tried to mitigate it, though probably not wishing to remove it entirely. As Kaiser stresses in an unpublished article titled "Orte der Täter—Orte der Opfer" (with a purposely long line between "sites of the victims" and "sites of the perpetrators" to show how very much the one type of site tends to exclude the other), the Bavarian Quarter's memorial site is not merely a presentation of historical facts but an aesthetic construct to attain Stih and Schnock's goal of "making facts visible" ("Sichtbarmachen von Sachverhalten," [Kaiser, "Orte der Täter" 7-8]). 28 Rather than promoting closure, making the facts visible leads to irritations resulting in vigorous questioning, for the inherent contradictions between image and text cannot be resolved (Kaiser, "Orte der Täter" 7). To prevent residents and visitors from simply getting used to image and text, the artists consciously vary their relationships to each other (Kaiser, "Orte der Täter" 7; Straka 16-17). At times, there seems to be congruence between the two: The image of water and the beach means that Jews may not use the public beach at Wannsee. The relationship between image and text shifts somewhat when two wedding rings do not signify that Jews are not allowed to marry but that Jews and Arians are not allowed to wed each other. A further shift results when a German shepherd, generally associated with Nazis and Neo-Nazis, becomes associated with Jews at all (it imparts the message that Jews are no longer allowed to become veterinarians). 29 Image and text become even more asymmetrical when, for example, the musical notes provided for the song "Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen, den schickt er in die weite Welt" 30 prevent Jews from joining choirs, or a postcard means that post office personnel married to Jewish women needed to retire immediately. There is frequent irony; for example, a welcome sign means anything but a welcome. The completely black sign containing no image

27 28 29 30

The page number refers to the article reprinted in Stih and Schnock. Kaiser presented this paper on a U.S. lecture tour in spring 2000. In connection with this sign, Ingrid Schmidt mentions that Nazis often used German shepherds for torturing and murdering victims (123). "Those to whom God wants to grant true favor, He sends into the great, wide world." The lines are excerpted from Joseph von Eichendorffs poem "Der frohe Wandersmann" (1823).

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whatsoever is equated with death, but a torturous death, since its text from 1941 states only that Jews are not allowed to leave Germany. Other than perhaps the letter "J" that had to mark Jewish passports after October 1938, the images do not refer directly to Jews. There is no Talmud; there are no Stars of David (Straka 6). Automatic empathy with suffering Jews does not ensue. Again and again the unexpected juxtapositions create a surprise effect. Those studying the signs cannot fall into the comfort of interpreting lofty symbolism. Instead, they cannot help wondering, repeatedly, how one law or the other would curtail their own lives. Which law would be the worst—not ever being able to eat eggs again or never again being allowed to listen to the radio? Which combination of laws would turn most unbearable the most rapidly, or how could they bear the steadily increasing isolation the laws imply? And, inevitably, they start wondering about what the people were like who had thought up these laws in the first place, or who had approved of them, or who had simply looked away. This memorial does ask the question "Why?" that so many other memorials avoid, showing rather than asserting that there is no overarching answer. But, those who have studied the signs in the Bavarian Quarter now doubt the most frequent statement non-Jewish members of the quarter volunteered about their Jewish neighbors: "They suddenly disappeared." The laws, known to all in the Nazi era, demonstrate that there were no "sudden" disappearances. Police records, now accessible in the Schöneberg Museum to all who care to look at them, prove other aspects about the so-called disappearances: Many occurred at daytime and were observed by groups of neighborhood residents; others would not have occurred if non-Jews had not denounced their neighbors. One of the most remarkable aspects of this memorial is its ability to generate conversations. Strangers standing together at one or the other lamppost readily convey their responses to this or that image, to this or that law. Schoolchildren express their sadness that someone's cat would be taken away. Teens address older senior citizens, wondering whether they ever went shopping during the one afternoon hour the Jews were allowed to buy groceries. What was it like on the streets? The attitude is generally curious, not accusatory. In the conversation with Kaiser concluding the first volume of the documentation materials pertaining to the memorial, Andreas Sander refers to this kind of attitude as the prerequisite for prompting "smaller" perpetrators to talk. Their words are needed, Sander stresses, since greater understanding of background reasons will be possible only if they, too, contribute to the collective narrative ("Gedächtnis" 168). And, as Kaiser notes in a paper she presented in June 2005, even the oldest people in the neighborhood—those

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who had lived there when the laws were in effect—do begin to talk voluntarily, not only with their grandchildren but also with the people from the Kunstamt Schöneberg ("Unterbrochene"), now officially Kunstamt Tempelhof-Schöneberg. She stresses that particularly the images, the side of the sign that draws many children and teenagers to them as well, serve as catalysts for conversation. The images help them recall episodes from the past that they suddenly wish to convey, to narrate. Much as the process that led to the memorial, the dialogue prompted by the memorial is also part of the memorial. This dialogue between different generations and between survivors and bystanders continues unabated. The life narratives of more than 100 survivors and bystanders have now been compiled into attractive, laminated reading albums, punctuated with photographs. Available for immersed readings at various exhibits devoted to highlighting them, 31 they, too, generate the kind of dialogue needed for rapprochement. Perpetrator, victims, and bystanders—they are all talking now, in this decade characterized by witness testimonies, notes Norbert Frei (1945 und wir 9). Katharina Kaiser is assuring that their spoken and written narratives are gathered, preserved, and repeatedly mediated. Trusting the combinatory power of words and images (the latter as signs rather than symbols), she continues to join them in unexpected, artistic ways to create the kind of curiosity and tension that will necessitate discussion in public places. Since monuments are indeed a reflection of the people who set them—a statement uttered so often that it has become folk wisdom not to be doubted, voids will have no home in "Places of Remembrance."

31

Regularly held exhibits since 1995 have highlighted compilations of life narratives. By the 2005 exhibit, organized in Schöneberg's Rathaus under the title "Wir waren Nachbarn" ("We were Neighbors"), there were 92 albums; when the exhibit opened again in January 2006 under the same title, the number of albums had increased to 102. Due to its immense success in 2005, the exhibit has now found a permanent home in the Schöneberg Rathaus. As in 2005 and 2006, it will open on 27 January, the date coinciding with the liberation of Auschwitz (now a German national holiday), and will remain open for three months each year. Even as a permanent installation, it will retain its nature as a "work in progress," but not only because new albums will continue to be added. Its Archiv der 'Erinnerungen (Memory Archive), a feature added in 2006, will keep on gathering and storing Erinnerungssplitter ("memory splinters") t o r n non-Jewish citizens that recount their memories of the Nazi era, or—in the case of non-Jews of the second and third generations—the ways in which the Nazi era was and is being discussed in their families. For a text and photo documentation of the 2005 and 2006 exhibits on "Wir waren Nachbarn," turn to the website of the Haus am Kleistpark, where the Kunstamt Tempelhof-Schöneberg is located.

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Works Cited Alexander, Robin. Interview with Götz Aly. "Der Holocaust geschah zum Vorteil aller Deutschen." die tagesyeitung 15 Jan. 2005: 4-5. "AH Things Considered." Narr. Robert Shuster. National Public Radio. MyETV, Columbia, SC. 9 Dec. 1999. Transcript. Assmann, Aleida. "Funke einer gesamtgesellschaftlichen Erregung. Eine Frage der Hierarchie: Leid und Schuld sind in der deutschen Erinnerung keineswegs so unvereinbar wie es scheint." Frankfurter Rundschau 3 Feb. 2004: Feuilleton 19. Beckert, Sven. "Quiet and Ashamed We Face the History of Our Town." Remembering the Holocaust: Some Experiences of the German President's History Competition for Young People. Ed. Claudia Musekamp and Barbara van Kaick. Hamburg: Körber Foundation, 1995. 7-41. Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Illuminations. Ed. and trans. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969. 217-51. Broder, Henryk Μ. "Über dem Führerbunker, Berlin." Böse Orte: Stätten nationalsozialistischer Selbstdarstellung—heute. Ed. Stephan Porombka and Hilmar Schmundt. Berlin: Ciaassen, 2005. 19-29. Cullen, Michael S., ed. Όas Holocaust-Mahnmal: Dokumentation einer Debatte. Zürich: Pendo, 1999. "Ein Denkmal und keine Gedenkstätte. Ein Gespräch mit Bewohnern des Bayerischen Viertels, die den Denkmalsprozeß in Gang gebracht haben." Conversation with Andreas Wilcke, et al. 2 Dec. 1993. Kunstamt Schöneberg, et al. 1: 72-81. Deutscher Bundestag. Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. Gesellschaftliche Diskussion und parlamentarisches Verfahren. Ed. Referat Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Bonn: Bonner Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1999. "Drei Reden anläßlich der Übergabe des Denkmals von Stih/Schnock im Bayerischen Viertel am 11. Juni 1993." Speeches by Jerzy Kanal, Wolfgang Nagel, and Uwe Saager. Kunstamt Schöneberg, et al. 1: 186-88. Eckert, Thomas and Joachim Huber. "Das ist die Fortsetzung des dritten Reichs. Was soll, was kann, was hilft das Berliner Holocaust-Mahnmal? Ein Streitgespräch mit Henryk M. Broder und Wolfgang Menge." Tagesspiegel 9 June 2005. 18 May 2006 . Ehmann, Annegret. "Kein Ort für Kaddisch?! Anmerkungen zum Mahnmalstreit." Der Wettbewerb für das "Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas." Ed. Leonie Baumann, et al. Berlin: Verlag der Kunst, 1995. 31-36. Frei, Norbert. "Gefühlte Geschichte." Die Zeit 21 Oct. 2004. Abbreviated version at Goethe Institut. 17 May 2006 . —. 1945 und wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen. München: Beck, 2005. "Gedächtnis und Erinnerung. Zur Konjunktur zweier Begriffe: Ein Gespräch." Conversation with Insa Eschebach, Claudia John, Katharina Kaiser, Andreas Sander, and Sigrid Schade. 7 Apr. 1994. Berlin. Kunstamt Schöneberg, et al. 1: 1 6 1 - 6 8 .

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"Gedenkstätte KZ-Außenlager Braunschweig Schillsttaße." Stadt Braunschweig. 12 May 2006 . Heimann, Siegfried. "Judenverfolgung im Spiegel der Schöneberger Polizeiberichte von 1941 bis 1945." Kunstamt Schöneberg, et al. 2: 18-22. Henninger, Petra. "Renata Stih, Frieder Schnock: Orte des Erinnerns, 1994." Kunst in der Stadt. Skulpturen in Berlin. 1980-2000. Ed. Hans Dickel and Uwe Fleckner. Berlin: Nicolai, 2003. 152-54. Herz, Manuel. "Das institutionalisierte Experiment. Architektur mit jüdischem Bezug in Deutschland." Neue Zürcher Zeitung 21 May 2005: 68. Hirsch, Helga. "Kollektive Erinnerung im Wandel." Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. B/40-41 (2003). Rpt. in Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. 29 June 2005 . Holocaust. Dir. Marvin Chomsky. NBC, 1978. Huyssen, Andreas. "The Inevitability of Nation: German Intellectuals after Unification." October 61 (1992): 65-73. —. Present Fasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. —. "The Voids of Berlin." Critical Inquiry 24 (1997): 57-81. Kaiser, Katharina. "In den Symbolen verschwindet Geschichte: Das Denkmal von Stih/Schnock vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Denkmalsdebatte." Kunstamt Schöneberg, etal. 1: 28-43. —. "Orte der Täter—Orte der Opfer." Unpublished essay, 2000. —. Personal interview. 4 Aug. 2005. —. "Der Prozeß gehört zum Denkmal. Oder: Wer definiert den öffentlichen Raum als Erinnerunsgsort?" Kunstamt Schöneberg, et al. 1: 82-92. —. "Unterbrochene Erzählung." International symposium on Urbane Erinnerungskulturen: Berlin und Buenos Aires. Europäische Akademie Berlin. 22 June 2005. —. "Vorwort." Kunstamt Schöneberg, et al. 1: 5-6. Korn, Salomon. "Mit falschem Etikett. Verhindert das Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden ein zentrales Mahnmal gegen Tat und Täter?" Frankfurter Rundschau 4 Sept. 1997. Rpt. in Cullen. 171-77. —. "Die Tafeln sind zerbrochen: Über die Darstellung des Unvorstellbaren, das Vergessen und den Streit um das Holocaust-Mahnmal in Berlin." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 9 Feb.1996. Rpt. in Cullen. 49-60. Koshar, Rudy. From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990. Berkeley: U of California P, 2000. Koss, Juliet. "Coming to Terms with the Present." Grey Room 16 (2004): 116-31. Kramer, Jane. "Living with Berlin." New Yorker 5 July 1999: 50-64. —. "The Politics of Memory." New Yorker 14 Aug. 1995: 48-65. Kunstamt Schöneberg, Schöneberg Museum, and Gedenkstätte Haus der WannseeKonferenz, eds. Orte des Erinnerns: Jüdisches Alltagsleben im Bayerischen Viertel. 2 vols. Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1994. laufend-erinnern. Jüdische Geschichte im Bayerischen Viertel in Berlin-Schöneberg. 18 May 2006 . Mayer, Herbert. "Geschichtslektion im Bayerischen Viertel." Berlinische Monatsschrift 4 (1998): 73-78.

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Musil, Robert. "Denkmale." Gesammelte Werke. Ed. Adolf Frise. 2nd ed. Vol. 7. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981. 506-9. Pickford, Henry W. "Conflict and Commemoration: Two Berlin Memorials." Modernism I modernity 12.1 (2005): 133-73. Places of Remembrance. Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. University of Minnesota. 17 May 2006 . Reichel, Peter. Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Deutschland: Die Auseinandersetzung mit derNSDiktatur von 1945 bis heute. München: Beck, 2001. Rosh, Lea. "Von der Idee zur Entscheidung. Ein langer Weg." "Die Juden, das sind doch die anderen." Der Streit um ein deutsches Denkmal. Ed. Lea Rosh. Berlin: Philo, 1999. 15-151. Roß, Jan. "Wie weit liegt Auschwitz? Gespräche mit Künsdem und Intellektuellen über unsere Gedenkkultur." Die Zeit 27 Jan. 2005. 20 May 2006 . Schmidt, Ingrid. "Orte des Erinnerns in Berlin. Das Denkmal im Bayerischen Viertel." Warum soll ich trauern? Gedenkstättenbesuche vorbereiten und begleiten. Ed. Helmut Ruppel and Ingrid Schmidt. Berlin: Wichern-Verlag, 2002. 122-29. Schmitt, Axel. "Die Inflationierung und Verkitschung des Holocaust: Norman Finkelstein, Peter Novick und die konjunkturellen Debatten über den Massenmord an den europäischen Juden in Deutschland." Uteraturkritik.de 3 Mar. 2001. 13 July 2005 < http://www.literaturkritik.de>. Seligman, Rafael. "Genug bemideidet. Gegen ein deutsches Holocaust-Mahnmal." Spiegel 16 Jan. 1995. Rpt. in Mahnmal Mitte. Ed. Michael Jeismann. Köln: DuMont, 1999. 80-85. Sledz, Jan. "Internationales Dokumentations- und Begegnungszentrum Topographie des Terrors." Hochschule für Grafik und "Buchkunst, n.d. 17 May 2006 . Spiegel, Paul. "Einweihung des Denkmals für die ermordeten Juden Europas." Speech of the President of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, Berlin, 10 May 2005. Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland. 12 Mar. 2006 . Stih, Renata, and Frieder Schnock. Home page. 13 March 2006 . —, eds. Orte des Erinnerns: Ausgrenzung und Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Deportation und Ermordung von Berliner Juden in den Jahren 1933 bis 1945. Denkmal in Berlin-Schöneberg (1993). 3rd ed. Berlin: Haude & Spenersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2002. Straka, Barbara. "Normalität des Schreckens. Eine Denk-Installation für das Bayerische Viertel in Berlin." Stih and Schnock. 15-19. Till, Karen E. The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2005. Tilp, Henning. "Orte des Erinnerns im Bayerischen Viertel, Berlin und Bus Stop— The Non-Monument, Projekt für das Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Berlin von Renata Stih und Frieder Schnock." Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, n.d. 20 May 2005 . Welgen, Nicole. "Gedenkmarathon mit der BVG." die tages^eitung 10 May 2005. 17 May 2006 .

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Welzer, Harald, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall. Opa war kein Ναζί. Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familien-gedächtnis. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 2002. Wiedmer, Caroline. "Remembrance in Schöneberg." Alphabet City. No. 4+5 (1995): 6-12. Rpt. in Stih and Schnock. 7-11. "Wir waren Nachbarn." Kunstamt Tempelhof-Schöneberg. 19 May 2006 . Young, James E. At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000.

Transnational Reconciliation

VALENTINA GLAJAR

Victims and Perpetrators: Representations of the German-Czech Conflict in Texts by Peter Härtling, Pavel Kohout, and Jörg Bernig W e n n wir, alle die in den böhmischen Ländern Geborenen, darunter [unter Lebensbewältigung] entweder nur die deutsche Okkupation mit ihren Demütigungen und ihrer unverhohlenen Brutalität gegenüber den Tschechen, oder nur die tschechische Vertreibungspolitik mit ihren zunächst unfaßbaren Maßnahmen und ihren langwährenden schmerzhaften Folgen für die Deutschen verstehen, dann haben wir nur erst ungeklärte Anklagen in unserer Erinnerung. Vergangenheitsbewältigung ist das nicht. (Seibt 395) 1

Since 1989, the fate of the three million Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945 has experienced a revival in interest in political, public, and literary discussions. The opening of archives and the flow of information coming from this former Eastern Block country have enabled historians to study and reassess the expulsion and the way it transpired at the end of World War II.2 Although it was not uncommon for Czech emigres to criticize the inhumane and indiscriminate treatment of Germans during the expulsion, 3 most Czechs at home had maintained the wholesale communist line of thought that considered the expulsion justified and all Czech Germans responsible for Nazi atrocities and for betraying their

1

2

3

"If, to all of us who were born in Bohemian lands, coping with life either exclusively refers to the German occupation, its humiliations and blatant brutality against the Czechs, or merely bears on Czech expulsion politics associated with its initially inconceivable measures and long-lasting painful consequences for the Germans, then, in our memory, we have not moved beyond a stage of unclarified accusations. Then, we have not come to terms with the past" (trans. Christine Schiller). See, for example, Detlef Brandes's Der Weg ψΓ Vertreibung 1938-1945. In his study Verfolgung 1945, Tomas Stanek contends that a complex historical analysis of the post-World War II reprisals is still missing in Czech historiography (17). Ota Filip has been an outspoken critic of the way the expulsion was carried out by the Czechs and pleads for reconciliation between Czechs and Germans. For an overview of Czech exiles' and dissidents' critical position on the expulsion, see Filip's essay "Nachdenken über ein Tabu—Tschechische Oppositionelle greifen das Thema Vertreibung a u f ' in Die stillen Toten unterm Klee (34-39).

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country.4 In 1990, however, during the visit of German President Richard von Weizsäcker to Prague, Czech President Vaclav Havel publicly apologized for the expulsion of innocent Germans in 1945 (Havel 21-28).5 Havel's acknowledgement that many innocent Czech Germans were unjusdy treated and that many of them died during the expulsion created a forum for a topic long avoided: the persecution of the Germans in the aftermath of World War II.6 Furthermore, the wars and the ethnic cleansing that devastated the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s have attracted comparisons to the fate of the expelled Germans of half a century earlier ("Die Flucht" 36-37), with some historians applying the same principles of ethnic cleansing to both events (Glassheim; Ther and Siljak; Naimark; Frommer). Such developments fueled the German expellees' claim to victimhood that was exacerbated at the beginning of the twenty-first century when the Bund der Vertriebenen (Federation of Expellees) proposed the founding of a Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (Center against Expulsions) and suggested it be situated next to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.7 Surprisingly, the proposal gained support from representatives of the two major parties in Germany.8 These events that break taboos while revising the perception of Germans as perpetrators or, at most, deserving victims, reflect also larger political and cultural issues: the 4

5 6

7 8

A survey done by the Center for Public Opinion in Prague ( C W M ) reveals that in 2002, 64% of Czechs considered the expulsion just, versus 22% who considered it unjust. Interestingly enough, while the conflict has been officially "resolved," an increasing number of Czechs agreed with the expulsion in 2002 (17% more than in 2001) (Bock 81). This increase could also be explained by the heated debate regarding the Benes decrees that preceded and threatened the Czech entry into the European Union. Havel acknowledges the fact that the punishment of Germans at the end of World War II "went beyond the rule of law. This was not punishment. It was revenge" (23). Although he was criticized by both Czechs and Germans, especially by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft (Sudeten German Regional Organization), Havel initiated a debate on the expulsion that had to be discussed openly by both sides and that contributed to founding a new relationship between Germany and Czechoslovakia. As a result, an appointed commission of Czech, Slovak, and German historians analyzed the historical events and wrote a report that constituted the base of the bilateral accord on wartime abuses signed by Germany and the Czech Republic in December 1996. It came as no surprise that the accord attracted harsh criticism from the Sudetendeutsche handsmannschirft because there was no reference to compensation or restitution for the expelled Germans. For an excellent discussion of the debate surrounding the Center against Expulsions, see Lutomski 449-68. Erika Steinbach (CDU), President of the Bund der Vertriebenen, is the most vocal and controversial figure in this debate. However, well-known liberals such as Günter Grass and Peter Glotz (deceased in 2005) were also strong supporters of founding the Center against Expulsions. It is, however, important to note that former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (die Grünen/Bündnis 90) vehemently opposed the idea of founding the center in Berlin, while the present chancellor, Angela Merkel (CDU), was in favor of a center in Berlin. See, for example, Heims, and the anonymous article "Merkel will Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen in Berlin."

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Berlin Republic's desire for a normalization of the past and an acknowledgement of the changed political relationship between the Czech Republic and Germany as equal members in the European Union. Although Germany and the Czech Republic have officially resolved the historical conflict—sealing it with the Bilateral Accord on Wartime Abuses in December 1996—on a popular level many unresolved issues remain and are being perpetuated. How is the expulsion to be remembered by the new generations of Germans and Czechs? Literary and filmic representations of the expulsion play an important role in how it is remembered and interpreted. The new generation of recent narratives creates public and cultural memory through a fictional medium that affects the readers while reflecting a political and cultural desire to normalize the past. 9 While traditional pre-1989 German-language representations mostly dwelled on the suffering of Germans and ignored the persecution of Czechs during the Nazi protectorate, more recent representations portray more complex characters that invalidate stereotypical paradigms. By the same token, most pre-1989 Czech-language texts ignored the expulsion, focusing instead on the Nazi atrocities committed in Czechoslovakia. 10 The extermination of Czech Jews either is rarely mentioned or is manipulated by both sides in order to blame the other for having allowed it to happen. Literary scholarship in Germany discusses the expulsion as a joint Polish-Czech affair and focuses on the historical and sociological aspects of the narratives. 11 The inflammatory discourse of the rightist Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, supported by the conservative German party CDU and its Bavarian sister-party CSU, has kept scholars from exploring the expulsion out of fear of being associated with the Landsmannschaft. On the Czech side, scholarship has been emerging as Czech historians reassess the events of 1945 in the light of new material made accessible after 1989. Literary texts dealing with the expulsion have been abundant at the new fin-de-siecle. The so-called Erlebnisgeneration12 of writers, who were 9

10

11 12

Anton Kaes draws attention to the role of films and the media in shaping public memory and historical consciousness: "A film can make history come alive, can represent it, more vividly than commemorative addresses, exhibitions, or museums." Kaes's insightful question at the end of this statement also applies to the way fiction represents history and shapes public and cultural memory: "But whose history?" (Kaes 196). One important exception is Jaroslav Durych, Gottes Regenbogen (Czech, 1969; German, 1975). From a Catholic perspective, the author tries to come to terms with the expulsion and the pain and suffering inflicted upon Germans at the end of World War II. See Mehnert, for example. In this article I refer specifically to Germans who were expelled from Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II. They, the Erlebnisgeneration, experienced the expulsion and have to be differentiated from those who just witnessed the retaliation against Germans, the

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expelled as children or teenagers, continue to enrich a culture of memory that includes novels by Erica Pedretti, Ilse Tieisch, and Peter Härtling. 13 Czech emigres such as Ota Filip have returned to their country and investigated stories of crimes against Germans. 14 Czech writer Pavel Kohout brings the protectorate years to life in his thriller Hve^dnd hodina vrahu.xs Among the post-World War II generation, Libuse Monikova, who ranks as the most important German-language writer of Czech descent, confronts the history of her country in the novels Treibeis and Die Fassade, and more centrally the German-Czech conflict in Verklärte Nacht.u Children's literature about the expulsion done by writers who were expelled as children has become quite popular, as exampled by Gudrun Pausewang, who tells the stories of expelled Germans in her Rosinkawiese series. 17 Josef Holub's endearing characters in Der rote Nepomuk (1993) introduce children to a world in which politics threatens the friendship between two twelve-year-old boys, one Czech and one German. Furthermore, thirdgeneration writer-relatives of expelled Germans address the stories of their grandparents, such as Jörg Bernig, in his novel Niemands^eit (2002). On the Czech side, Jan Hrebejk's movie Musime sipomdhat [Divided We FaII\ (2000) contributes to our understanding of the events leading up to the expulsion. In their film Theresienstadt sieht aus wie ein Curort (1995), Nadja Seelich and Bernd Neuburger highlight an often ignored aspect of the conflict: the fate of Czech Jews in the transitional camp north of Prague, Terezin/Theresienstadt, during the protectorate years. These post-1989 narratives negotiate cultural and historical problems that crystallize around the experiences of a multicultural society that moved from hope to fear, from friendship to enmity, from loyalty to betrayal and deceit. I propose to explore and analyze the portrayals of collaborators, victims, and perpetrators in Härtling's novella Bojern, Kohout's detective novel Hve^dna hodina vrahu, and Jörg Bemig's novel Niemands^eit. As some Germans revise history and exonerate the expelled by proclaiming them German victims, Czechs are also reluctantly accepting responsibility for the abuses that occurred in the first months of the expulsion, referred to as the wild odsun. How are we to approach texts in which the familiar categories of "victim" and "perpetrator" are toppled 13

14 15 16 17

Pedretti, Engste Heimat (1995); Tieisch, Die Ahnenpyramide (1980); Heimatsuchen (1982); Die Früchte der Tränen (1988); Die Zerstörung der Bilder (1991); Härtling, Bo^ena (2003); Große, kleine Schwester (1998). Filip, Die stillen Toten unterm Klee;. . . doch die Märchen sprechen deutsch (1992). Kohout's novel was published in both Czech and German (Sternstunde der Mörder) in 1995. In this article I use the English translation by Neil Bermel, The Widow Killer. Monikovä, Die Fassade: M.N.O.P.Q. (1987); Treibeis (1992); Verklärte Nacht (1996). Rosinkawiese—damals und heute (1989); Rosinkawiese (2004); Fern von der Rosinkawiese (1989); Geliebte Rosinkawiese (1990).

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and, in some instances, reversed? These developments cannot be read in isolation as they describe a phenomenon reflected in a German society seemingly ready for change, for a normalization of the past. The traumatic victimization of both Czechs and Germans has to be scrutinized if we are to establish a clearer picture of the events during the various processes of coming to terms with the past. Representations of the expulsion cannot be interpreted separately from depictions of atrocities committed by Nazis in Czechoslovakia, which, in turn, cannot justify the brutal expulsions of 1945. In his collection of essays, Present Pasts, Andreas Huyssen argues that "explorations of memory in our world cannot do without the notion of historical trauma" (9), and goes on to comment on the legitimacy of trauma: "The focus on trauma is legitimate where nations or groups of people are trying to come to terms with a history of violence suffered or violence perpetrated" (9). How then does his focus on legitimate trauma apply to Sudeten-German expellees from Czechoslovakia? Is the violence they suffered in 1945 the result of violence they (or their fellow Germans) inflicted upon their Czech countrymen during the Nazi protectorate? Furthermore, Sudeten Germans are both perpetrators of crimes and victims of violence. On what side does trauma rank as more legitimate? Ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia is credited with drawing the attention of liberals to the fate of German expellees from the East. In a Spiegel issue dedicated to the expulsions, the article by Hans-Joachim Noack sets the stage for the discussion of ethnic cleansing by presenting two large pictures facing each other: the first is an old black-and-white photograph of German women expelled in 1945, while the second one shows a color photograph of a group of Bosnians fleeing from their wartorn homes (36-37). 18 Each photo focuses on one particular female: a German mother with a young child in her arms and a Bosnian mother nursing her baby on the flight. By juxtaposing the two photographs, the editors establish a historical and ethical parallel between the events of 1945 and those of the 1990s. Women and young children invoke empathy, whereas expelled German women that look helpless, rushed, and confused replace the image of ruthless Nazi Germans often associated with World War II. The photographs then convey the message that ethnic cleansing is tragic and unjust regardless of circumstance, ethnicity, or culpability. By erasing the differences between Germans that flee the Red Army, or are expelled by Czechs, and Bosnians who try to escape from their Serbian persecutors—and by emphasizing the human factor that 18

Interestingly enough, the same photo featuring the Bosnian woman breastfeeding her baby appears also in the collection edited by Klinger and Krüger, Flucht und Vertreibung 11.

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unites us all—the Spiegel article constructs a new image of German victimhood. If Germans are to be seen as innocent victims, those who expelled them, in this case the Czechs, must be perpetrators akin to the Serbs in the 1990s. This kind of logic can only obscure the truth as it ignores a critical fact: Czechs never started World War II and were not responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews. In the global age of memory culture, Huyssen contends the Holocaust has become "a cipher" for the twentieth century and a metaphor for other "traumatic histories and memories" (13-14). If the Holocaust has become a "universal trope" for suffering and genocide (Huyssen 14) in the memory culture of the twentieth century, can some Germans legitimately appropriate this metaphor to illustrate their own suffering and victimization? In analyzing German wartime suffering, Huyssen accurately elucidates the complex aspects of German postwar trauma that entails the following layers: [ . . . ] the feeling of the humiliation of total defeat, which is not erased by emphasizing that capitulation was also liberation; the deep guilt feelings about the Holocaust, itself not a German trauma but rather the trauma of its victims, which as such blocks the desired normalization; the experience of expulsion from the East and the experience of the bombardment of German cities, both of which have been used either to constitute the German as victim in an Aufrechnungsdiskurs, a compensatory discourse of moral equity (look how we suffered), or as a cathartic argument that retribution was justified (serves us right!) with permanent implications of national identity and statehood. (146)

I would argue in the following that the narratives I analyze do not fit neatly into either category as set forth by Huyssen. All three texts distance themselves from more traditional representations of the events of 19381945 in Czechoslovakia by transgressing ethnic and ideological borders. Furthermore, they throw into question the categories of "victim" and "perpetrator" and demonstrate that shifting the focus from collective guilt to individual responsibility, as Havel suggested, complicates both Czech and German "official" versions of events. Although many German-language authors belonging to the Erlebnisgeneration have been accused of addressing the German-Czech historical conflict selectively, Peter Härtling stands out as one who refuses to appropriate the discourse of alternative historiography developed by the Sudetendeutsche 'Landsmannschaft over the years. His texts address all three sides: the Czech, German, and Jewish experiences. The suffering and persecution of Jews in Czechoslovakia have been discussed in Holocaust studies, yet many Sudeten Germans have readily dismissed the plight of the Jews as an inconvenient topic, a challenge to their self-absorbed victimhood. Moreover, accepting a role of active or passive involvement in the persecution of Jews and their deportation to the transitional camp of Theresienstadt or other

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extermination camps would entail taking responsibility for these crimes. 19 Stuart Taberner claims that "the emphasis on German suffering may function as a form of displaced identification which allows Germans, in the present as much as in the past, to associate themselves with Jewish victimhood and escape the shame of perpetration" (163). Härtling does not shy away from addressing the fate of Czech-Jewish victims and dedicates a book to Franz Kafka's sister Ottla, who perished in a concentration camp. Theresienstadt plays an important role in several texts, including his latest novel Große, kleine Schwester, which tells the story of two German sisters and their Jewish friends whose lives are destroyed when they are deported to Theresienstadt. In his novella, Bozena, Härtling illustrates the historical conflict from the Czech perspective. The book tells the story of a Czech student who seals her destruction by refusing to quit her job working for a German lawyer during the protectorate years. Throughout her life, Bozena suffers the consequences of having been on the wrong side of a politically correct border that shifted with every new political oppressive system of control and discrimination: Mit vierundzwanzig Jahren sollte ich gescheit genug sein, Grenzen zu kennen, nicht meine, sondern alle die, die mir gezogen werden, eben weil ich vierundzwanzig bin, eine Tschechin mit abgebrochenem Studium, aber auch eine, die für einen Deutschen arbeitet. Auf welcher Seite der Grenze ich mich auch aufhalte, ich stehe falsch. (22) 20

On the one side, Bozena has to suffer the consequences of being Czech under the Nazi occupation. All Czech universities were closed during the protectorate, and Bozena is therefore denied the right to continue her college education. On the other side, she chooses to work for a German, although she is aware of the Czechs' disapproval as they view her choice of employment as unpatriotic. The impact the Nazi regime and the ensuing postwar Czech regimes have on Bozena's life are indicative of how Czechs treated German sympathizers in general. As a woman she is not simply a collaborator; she

19

20

Ferdinand Seibt, an expellee himself, has addressed this sensitive issue regarding his countrymen. According to Seibt, Sudeten Germans have concentrated too much on the "Leidensgemeinschaft" ("community of sufferers"), ignoring thereby the more critical "Tätergemeinschaft" ("community of perpetrators") (396). "At the age of twenty-four, I should be smart enough to know borderlines, not my own, but rather all those that are being drawn for me for the very reason that I'm twenty-four, a Czech woman who has dropped out of college, but also one who works for a German. No matter what side of the borderline I find myself on, I'm in the wrong position" (trans. Christine Schiller).

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bears the stigma of a "Nazinutte" ("Nazi whore") (75).21 Her platonic infatuation with her German employer, a lawyer, who does not even notice her as a woman but rather values her as his able assistant, justifies in part her choice. However, having to pay for this unfulfilled relationship for the rest of her life appears ridiculous and tragic. By the end of the novella, Bozena's beloved lawyer is rehabilitated post-mortem and his honor is restored by the communist regime. As Bozena had suspected all along, he was not the Nazi "Tschechenfresser" (literally, "Czech eater") (22) that Czechs labeled most Germans; on the contrary, he risked his life by helping both Czechs and Jews during the protectorate years. In the end, the so-called Nazi perpetrator turns out to be a victim of sorts who dies in an internment camp in 1945. The real victim, however, remains Bozena, whose life was ruined by the rebellious decision she had made in her twenties. As a Czech, she could not be expelled after 1945 like all other alleged German collaborators, which in her case likely would have been preferable to the persecution she suffers in her own country. 22 In Pavel Kohout's novel, Hve^dna hodina vrahu, the spotlight is reversed: Kohout's Czech text focuses on a German detective who works for the Gestapo in occupied Prague. Against all odds, Kohout strives to render Oberkriminalrat (Chief Inspector) Erwin Buback as a sympathetic character. Just the term "Gestapo" sends shivers down a reader's spine and associates Buback with stereotypical Nazi monsters who murder Czechs and Jews with impunity. However, Buback is not represented as an inhumane Nazi killing machine. In the course of the thriller, Buback's character undergoes a most dramatic evolution. From a German spy who infiltrates the Prague police under the pretext of collaborating with them in capturing a serial killer, he develops into an opponent of the Nazi regime and a Czech sympathizer. In working with his Czech associate, the assistant superintendent of the Prague Police, Jan Morava, Buback gradually uncovers the fact of his mixed heritage as well as suppressed memories of his Czech mother and his childhood spent in Prague. 21

The Czech retribution was very severe against Czech women who fraternized with German men. Just like German women who were incarcerated, they were subjected to misogynistic violence, were raped by Red Army soldiers, who sometimes were allowed to choose their victims, and were ordered to strip naked for their interrogation (Frommer 5657 )·

22

As Frommer contends in National Cleannng, many Germans who were imprisoned because of their collaboration with the Nazi protectorate regime were later released and expelled after having served only a fraction of their sentences. Czechs, on the other hand, stayed in prison for most of their sentence, since as Czech citizens they did not have the option to be expelled (256-60). Moreover, according to King, in May and December 1945, the Czech postwar government retroactively legalized criminal acts such as rape and murder if they had been committed by Czechs against Germans or Nazi collaborators (King 193).

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Pavel Kohout's novel encompasses as many voices as characters in the book and represents the prototype of Bakhtin's heteroglossia,23 The omniscient narrator offers psychological insight into most of the characters, regardless how brief their appearances are, and, in doing so, allows the reader complete access into Buback's evolution from a convinced supporter of the Führer to one who has no desire to participate in a senseless war any longer. As it turns out, Buback cannot be categorized as an innocent victim or a criminal perpetrator. "Where does a bilingual German from nonexistent Czechoslovakia belong anyway? Especially one from Prague?" (64). As a child he learned to speak Czech and went to a Czech grammar school in his native Prague. After his mother died, the father remarried a wealthy German woman from Karlsbad. The family moved to Karlsbad, where Erwin Buback attended a German Gymnasium before moving on to Dresden to study law. "His parents," as Buback reminisces, "wanted to strengthen Erwin's identification with the nationality they shared" (64). When the Nazis came to power, Buback supported them wholeheartedly. He admired how order was restored in Germany, and he welcomed Hitler as the renewer of German honor: They [his family] wholeheartedly welcomed the annexation of Austria in 1938. Erwin was gready pleased when Bohemia returned to Greater Germany's embrace. He experienced a heady Night of Torches in liberated Karlsbad, and tears sprang to his eyes when the banner of new Germany waved over his native Prague as well. (64-65)

According to his development, his answer to his heritage is simple: "He was a German, and that was that" (64). But Buback realizes he is not simply German. When he finally exposes his identity to the Czech criminal police and warns them of the German plans to destroy Prague, he tries to justify his act of treason toward Germans: [ . . . ] he had simply tried to mitigate the effects of a grand treason his people had perpetrated on . . . on his people, yes. . . . what was he anyway? A Czech, like his mother, or a German, like his father? Wasn't he a living example of the senselessness of nationalism? (271; my emphasis)

Nationalism, politics, and ethnicity seem to be fixed categories that pigeonhole Germans as perpetrators and Czechs as victims. Buback transgresses these imposed borders as he exemplifies the born-again Prager who undergoes a marked transformation, turns on his fellow Germans, and in the end pays the ultimate price. Discovering his Czech heritage and speaking the language:

23

"Authorial speech, the speeches of the narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those fundamental compositional features with whose help heteroglossia can enter the novel [. . .]" (Bakhtin 263).

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[. . .] did not quite make him a Czech, but he could not call himself a pure German either. So he was simply a native of Prague, heir to two and more cultures which for centuries had lived side by side, separate but not hostile. He must have had more of Prague in him than he realized, since both his Czech and German sides hoped with equal fervor the splendid scene before him would be preserved for future generations. (280-81)

Ironically, he dies at the hands of the Czech serial killer whose investigation brought him closer to Czechs and his Czech roots. In the end, the reader might conclude that Buback's efforts to save Prague from total destruction and his ultimate sacrifice go far in redeeming his previous sins as a Gestapo detective. The narrator makes a real effort to construct a positive image of Buback and appeals to every possible quality that would endear him to the readers. In one awkwardly constructed episode, Buback takes his Czech colleagues to Terezin in order to express his disapproval of the Holocaust—a small gesture that admittedly cannot erase the fact that he, too, has been a cog in the wheel of destruction in spite of his last-minute realization. The complication and controversy with Kohout's novel arises with his choice of a serial killer, who happens to be Czech, and the evolution of this character throughout the novel. The fact that this killer named Rykl turns into the most vengeful and cruel member of the Revolutionary Guard and takes it upon himself to gather other criminals in order to cleanse the city and the country of Germans sheds an interesting light on the mission and the character of the Revolutionary Guard that was responsible for the wild odsun.2A Kohout portrays these men who hunt down Germans and kill them in the most gruesome ways as perpetrators and as people that were predisposed to crime before the end of the war. The leader of the pack is none other than the serial killer sought by both Germans and Czechs for murdering several women, including detective Morava's pregnant wife: The Germans in Prague were just an appetizer for the meaty morsel that, by all accounts, awaited them in the Sudetenland. The sharper kids in the Revolutionary Guards predicted that the former border regions would return to the Czechoslovak motherland, and the Germans living there would be expelled (heim ins Reich with them!). In all probability the Krauts would only get to take what they could carry, just like in Prague, and then what would be left. . . ? (376)

24

The leading Czech historian on the transfer, Tomas Stanek, has already suggested in his recent study, Verfolgung 1945, that the tactics of the Revolutionary Guard were ruthless and vicious. For fear of being raped, many women committed suicide or accepted being killed by their husbands. As Stanek reports, a man from Freudenthal killed his wife and two children, and another women with her two children. Later he hung himself in his cell (69). This incident was not an exception; Naimark cites Czech sources that state that in 1946 alone, 5,558 Germans committed suicide (118).

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The Germans appear to be at the mercy of murderers and thieves who seize the opportunity to continue their killing spree. Since the serial killer did not at first differentiate between German and Czech women when he mutilated them alive, the Germans he now murders in similarly brutal fashion are presented as defenseless and, for the most part, innocent victims as well. By juxtaposing images of Czech corpses aligned along the street— mosdy women and children killed by the retreating German soldiers— with the picture of German women and children escorted by rebels wearing RG (Revolutionary Guard) armbands, Kohout's text frames German victimization within the historical context of Nazi oppression. The scenes of spontaneous outrage against German civilians pale in comparison with the dead Czech bodies on the roadside. Morava, for example, witnesses the rage of Czechs at the sight of a group of Germans that were ready for expulsion: The Czech onlookers left their dead in front of the houses and realigned themselves along the procession route. Two columns of frosty silence greeted the parade of pale faces. [. . . ] Suddenly one of the Czechs, to judge by her expression half crazed with grief, slipped through the escort and fell upon a tall German woman with a blond braid, w h o even in her humbled state reminded Morava of the Nazi ideal of Germanic beauty as extolled in films and posters. A s if lashing out at all Germans through this one, she scratched the woman's face with her nails and lacerated her skin. The victim cried out in pain, dropped her overflowing bag, and covered her face with both hands; two little girls beside her burst into tears. Instantly two escorts were there; they pulled the attacker o f f and tried to return her as carefully as possible to the sidewalk, but just then pure hatred erupted. There was a forest of menacing fists, insults, and threats, gobs of spit flying over the guard's [.rzV] heads and onto them as well. (355-56)

Although many Czech Germans committed no crimes, they actively supported the German occupation, as did some Czechs. 25 In the passage above, Czech onlookers lash out at what these Germans represented collectively and do not consider their individual guilt or innocence. 26 Even detective Morava, who witnesses the scene of outrage and who generally displays a more moderate attitude toward Czech Germans in the novel, agrees with their expulsion without any exceptions: What do I feel toward these Germans, Morava wondered, and was suddenly surprised to find: nothing. The innocent rain-drenched [Czech] victims on

25

26

According to Frommer, the initial rage of Czechs could hardly be contained at the end of the war. Furthermore, wild retribution was not specific to the Czech provinces, as vigilantes executed nearly 10,000 alleged collaborators in France (35). Naimark claims that both "Czechs and Poles used the cover of war and the transition from war to peace to expel Germans from their countries and to settle old scores" (136).

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tarpaulin ruled out regret. But neither could he feel hate; these were defenseless and horrified people paying for what were by and large the sins of others. Most of all, he felt like packing every one of them—even those who were born here— off to the ruins of their ancestral homeland. Germany had unleashed this hell with their blessing, and he never wanted to see or hear them again. (355)

In this paragraph Morava illuminates the situation of Czech Germans who had not fled before the end of the war and who probably never foresaw that the Czech revenge would take such a tragic turn. It is indeed the helplessness of these Sudeten Germans who have to pay for their mistakes, especially for betraying their country and for siding with Nazi Germany, and even more, for the atrocities committed by their fellow Germans from the Reich. In his novel Niemands^eit, Thomas Bernig pays particular attention to the situation of fleeing or expelled Germans that feel there is no law or law enforcement to protect them. Unlike the literary narratives of the Erkbnisgeneration, whose stories are steeped in autobiography, Bernig, a third-generation Sudeten German, describes the trauma that is perpetuated from expellees to their children and grandchildren in a process that Huyssen calls "transgenerational traumatization" (149): Die Menschen dort hatten es nicht anders verdient. Selbst wenn sie keine Verbrecher waren im einzelnen, waren nicht von den Ihren Verbrechen begangen worden? Wo sollte da die Unterscheidung beginnen? Es gab kein Ausweichen vor den Taten der Vergangenheit. Auch für die nicht, die nichts mit ihnen zu tun hatten. Das sollten sie mitnehmen über die Grenze und weitergeben die Generationen hinab, das Gefühl der Angst, der Schutzlosigkeit und des Ausgeliefertseins. Noch ihre Kinder und Kindeskinder sollten sie spüren, die Schwermut, wie sie nur einer erfahrt, der sich nicht zu Hause weiß. (14) 27

Just like Kohout's character Morava, the narrator of Niemands^eit casts doubt on the collective guilt theory, which held all Germans responsible for the Nazi atrocities. However, while Kohout's Morava agrees with the expulsion of all Germans, guilty or innocent, the irony in the statements made by Bernig's narrator not only questions the expulsion but also draws attention to the brutality and traumatic effects of the expulsion and the emotional wounds that have marked many expellees for life. In Niemands^eit, Bernig constructs a microcosm of interethnic relations that develops as a refuge from postwar retaliation. In a deserted 27

"People there didn't deserve any better. Even if, as individuals, they weren't criminals, had not their kin committed crimes? Where should one begin to distinguish? There was no evading the deeds of the past. Not even for those who had nothing to do with them. That's what they were to bring along over the border and pass on to coming generations, that feeling of fear and vulnerability, of being at the mercy of others. Even their children and grandchildren were supposed to experience it, that sorrow in the hearts of only those who do not feel at home" (trans. Christine Schiller).

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Czech-German village on the border of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, Czech deserters from the Revolutionary Guard along with Germans that escaped the expulsion find a new community and provisory home. Like hunted animals, these people live in constant fear of the Revolutionary Guard that combs the country looking for any remaining Germans in 1946. As in most featured love stories between Czechs and Germans, the relationship between the two protagonists, Theres and Tomas, is profoundly influenced by politics and ideology. 28 Theres's father is a convinced Sudeten-German Nazi who sends Tomas to forced labor in the Reich in order to separate the two young people. At the end of the war, Theres's father is one of the first to be hung, her mother dies, and Theres is left for dead. Ironically, Theres is saved by Antonin Mrha, a former member of the Revolutionary Guard, who carries her to his temporary safe haven in the deserted village. Tomas, on the other hand, survives the war and returns home only to join the Revolutionary Guard. As a pathfinder, his only goal remains to find Theres and save her from his comrades. Unfortunately, Tomas, the hunter and pathfinder for the Revolutionary Guard, cannot save Theres; inadvertently he becomes her killer. The categories of victim and perpetrator are as nebulous in Bernig's novel as they are in the texts of Kohout and Härtling. Bernig presents not only the suffering of Germans but also the consequences of a senseless nationalism as realized on both sides. Theres, who witnesses the transformation of her patriarchal father into a convinced Nazi, necessarily suffers as a consequence of his decision both during the protectorate and certainly at the end of the war. First, Theres loses her lover because her father forbids an interethnic relationship and wields the power to destroy it, and in the end, she loses her identity completely as she becomes "die Unsichtbare," the invisible one (22). Her name, her family, her home, and her country all vanish in the span of a couple of hours. Antonin is depicted as a victim as well—first of the Nazi regime and then as a result of his 28

Vladimir Körner's novel Adelheid (2005) presents a love story between a Czech officer returning home from England and the daughter of a Czech-German Nazi in 1945. Reduced to being a maid in her parents' house, which belonged to a Jewish family before the war, she changes the life of Viktor, who falls in love with her. Adelheid is caught while she tries to escape with her brother, and she commits suicide. Viktor cannot cope with her loss and leaves the village a marked man. The novel was also made into a movie, directed by Frantisek Vläcil in 1969. In Harding's Große, kleine Schwester, Lea, the younger of the two sisters, marries an older Czech before 1938. Hitler's rise to power and the political situation of Czechs and Germans during the protectorate takes its toll on their marriage. The polarization of Czechs and Germans has a strong impact on their relationship, and in the end they distance themselves from one another. After 1945, she is not immediately expelled because she was married to a Czech, but soon afterwards she follows her sister and mother to Germany.

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desertion from the Revolutionary Guard. As a deserter, he becomes a target for the guard, as are the Germans that find refuge in this secluded village. Tomas, on the other hand, is a victim whose obsession with Theres transforms him into a perpetrator. His actions are justified by the suffering he endured as an innocent young Czech who happened to fall in love with the daughter of a Nazi. However, unlike Antonin, he cannot recognize the real nature of the guard's actions as all his obsessive energy is channeled toward one goal: finding his lost love, Theres. As Härtling's, Kohout's and Bernig's texts illustrate, the shift in portraying Germans and Czechs as both perpetrators and victims allows for new critical representations of the historical conflict that focus on individual stories rather than collective fates. However, by emphasizing the personal stories of extraordinary characters such as Bozena, for example, who is falsely accused of being a German collaborator and never exonerated, Härtling's novella casts little light on the true stories of German collaborators who welcomed the Nazi regime and contributed to the destruction of Czechoslovakia. Pavel Kohout's novel offers a sympathetic portrayal of a German detective working for the Gestapo. However, the character Erwin Buback constitutes an exception, and as much as his novel casts doubt on the image of Germans depicted as Nazis, Buback will gain scant sympathy from Czech readers. Bernig's characters portray the story of innocent Germans such as Theres, who suffers for the mistakes of her parents, as well as stories of Czechs who opposed the brutality of the expulsion. While these accounts are valid and have to be told, a discussion about legitimate trauma has to include Jewish stories as they cast yet a different light on the victim-perpetrator schism inherent in the German-Czech conflict. While Czech and German characters are portrayed along a spectrum ranging from black to white that, in part, contradict or affirm stereotypical images of perpetrator and victim, one has to return to the Jewish victims and discuss their position in the conflict between Czechs and Germans and how they influence the interpretative categories of victim and perpetrator.29 A critical normali2ation of the past is still out of reach, but complex narratives that question the traditional 29

In Jan Hrebejk's movie Musime si pomahalfor example, we meet David Wiener, who escapes from Auschwitz and returns to his Bohemian hometown in hopes of finding a shelter with his friends and former employees. The story exposes the actions of average Czech and Czech-German citizens when faced with the opportunity of saving a life— David's—by putting their own in jeopardy. Josef, the Czech who hides David in his pantry, has to work for the Nazis in order to avoid suspicion. J o s e f s neighbor, on the other hand, who tried to denounce David to the Nazis, becomes a patriot and member of the resistance at the end of the war. Ultimately, Horst, the Sudeten-German Nazi sympathizer who suspected all along that Josef was hiding somebody, chooses to vouch for J o s e f s family, and indirectly for David, during a deadly Nazi raid.

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Aufrechnungsdiskurs and do not emphasize the victimization of one group by ignoring the suffering of others suggest a possible reconciliation and a new stage in the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung by Czechs and Germans.

Works Cited

Adelheid. Dir. Frantisek Vlacil. 1969. Facets Multi-Media, Inc., 2002. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. U of Texas Ρ Slavic Series 1. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. Bernig, Jörg. Νiemands^eit. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002. Bock, Ivo. "Das 'sudetendeutsche Thema' in der tschechischen Literatur." Osteuropa 53 (2003): 77-93. Brandes, Dedef. Oer Weg %ur Vertreibung 1938-1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen %um Transfer der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen. München: Oldenbourg, 2004. Durych, Jaroslav. Gottes Regenbogen. Trans. Jan Patocka with Frank Boldt. 1975. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999. Trans, of Βοτζί duha. Praha: Vimperk, 1969. Filip, Ota. . . . doch die Märchen sprechen deutsch: Geschichten aus Böhmen. München: Langen Müller, 1996. —. Die stillen Toten unterm Klee: Wiedersehen mit Böhmen. München: Langen Müller, 1992. "Die Flucht: SPIEGEL-Serie über die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten." Spiegel {13) 25 Mar. 2002: 36-64. Frommer, Benjamin. National Cleansing. Retribution against Ναζί Collaborators in Postwar Chechoslovakia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Glassheim, Eagle. "National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of C2echoslovak Germans in 1945." Central European History 33.4 (2000): 463-86. Harding, Peter. Bo^ena. 1994. 4th ed. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2003. —. Für Ottla. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Radius, 1984. —. Große, kleine Schwester. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998. Havel, Vaclav. The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice. Trans. Paul Wilson, et al. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1997. Heims, Hans-Jörg. "Schröder verteidigt EU-Verfassung-Entwurf." Süddeutsche Zeitung 23 Sept. 2003: 5. Holub, Josef. Der rote Nepomuk. Weinheim: Beltz & Gelberg, 1993. Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2003. Kaes, Anton. From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989. King, Jeremy. Budweisers into Czechs and Germans. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002. Klingner, Inga, and Annette Krüger, eds. Flucht und Vertreibung: Europa ^wischen 1939 und 1948. Hamburg: Ellert & Richter, 2004. Kohout, Pavel. Hve^dnä hodina vrahu. Praha: Mlada Fronta, 1995.

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—. Sternstunde der Mörder. Trans. Karl-Heinz Jähn. München: Knaus Verlag, 1995. —. The Widow Killer. Trans. Neil Bermel. New York: St. Martin's Ρ, 1998. Körner, Vladimir. Adelheid. Trans. Vaclav Maidl. Wuppertal: Arco, 2005. Lutomski, Pawel. "The Debate about a Center against Expulsions: An Unexpected Crisis in German-Polish Relations?" German Studies Review 27.3 (2004): 449-68. Mehnert, Elke, ed. Landschaften der Erinnerung: Flucht und Vertreibung aus deutscher, polnischer und tschechischer Sicht. Studien zur Reiseliteratur- und Imagologieforschung 5. Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2001. "Merkel will Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen in Berlin." Süddeutsche Zeitung 23 Aug. 2003: Nachrichten 5. Monikovä, Libuse. Die Fassade: M.N.O.P.Q. München: Hanser, 1987. —. Treibeis. München: Hanser, 1992. —. Verklärte Nacht. München: Hanser, 1996. Musime sipomähat [Divided We Fall], Dir. Jan Hrebejk. Columbia/Tristar, 2000. Naimark, Norman M. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Centuiy Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. Noack, Hans-Joachim. "Die Deutschen als Opfer." Spiegel25 Mar. 2002: 36-39. Pausewang, Gudrun. Fern von der Rosinkamese: Die Geschichte einer Flucht. 1989. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993. —. Geliebte Rosinkawiese·. Die Geschichte einer Flucht über die Grenze. 1990. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993. —. Rosinkawiese. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2004. —. Rosinkawiese—damals und heute. 1989. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2004. Pedretti, Erica. Engste Heimat. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1995. Seibt, Ferdinand. Deutschland und die Tschechen. 4th ed. München: Piper, 1998. Stanek, Tomas. Verfolgung 1945: Die Stellung der Deutschen in Rohmen, Mähren und Schlesien (außerhalb der hager und Gefängnisse). Trans. Otfrid Pustejovsky. Ed. and trans. Walter Reichel. Wien: Böhlau, 2001. Taberner, Stuart. German Literature of the 1990s and Beyond: Normalisation and the Berlin Republic. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005. Ther, Philipp and Ana Siljak, eds. Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Theresienstadt sieht aus wie ein Curort. Dir. Nadja Seelich and Bernd Neuburger. extrafilm, 1995. Tieisch, Ilse. Die Ahnenpyramide. Graz: Styria, 1980. —. Die Früchte der Tränen. Graz: Styria, 1988. —. Heimatsuchen. Graz: Styria, 1982. —. Die Zerstörung der Bilder: Unsentimentale Reisen durch Mähren und Böhmen. Graz: Styria, 1991.

PAWEL LUTOMSKI

Acknowledging Each Other as Victims: An Unmet Challenge in the Process of Polish-German Reconciliation More than sixty years after its end, World War II still heavily influences the relations between Germany and Poland. The subject of the war, and especially of its aftermath, has not ceased to create conflict and considerable tension between the two nations. Over the four decades spanning the Cold War, the issue of the expulsions of Germans from the eastern territories of the Third Reich, designated at the Yalta summit as future Polish territory, and the expulsion of Poles from Eastern Poland was politically manipulated to such a degree that it almost purposefully promoted discord and confrontation between Germans and Poles. Only after 1989, in a fundamentally changed geopolitical situation, was it possible for both sides to interpret these events in a manner divorced from crude political motivations and so enable the process of attempting reconciliation to finally begin. 1 By the end of the 1990s, some disagreements in the realm of contemporary politics and economics notwithstanding, this seemed to be a fait accompli: World War II and the expulsions would finally cease to disturb bilateral relations. However, a parallel set of developments in the German public discourse after unification—while marking a new phase in the process of formation of German collective memory and national identity—has influenced the context for Polish-German relations, as German attempts to reinterpret the past have provoked renewed tensions. While more and more Germans have begun to focus on their own suffering during the years of war and its aftermath and to see themselves not only as perpetrators but also as victims, many Poles have witnessed this situation with certain unease. The Polish reaction is motivated in part by the fear that German claims of being victims of World War II, or of the expulsions, could threaten the "traditional" status of Poles as victims and, moreover, 1

For the purposes of the considerations in this chapter, I use "reconciliation" to mean a restoration of a relationship free of animosity and hostility.

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could possibly impute to them instead the status of perpetrators in addition to possibly burdening them with legal liability for repossessed private property as a consequence of the expulsions. This chapter examines the achievements and challenges of the reconciliation process since the end of the Cold War and German unification— two events that have paved the way to overcoming the historical antagonisms and animosities between Poles and Germans in the last century. The reconciliation process, which took off impressively in the early 1990s following the ideological freeze of the Cold War, has stagnated markedly (if not even deteriorated) since 2002. While much success has been achieved in the dialogue since 1989, the question arises why the process has not progressed steadily, and why it has not yet achieved its ultimate goal of creating a comfortable, respectful neighborliness that is free of mutual distrust and not easily disturbed by inquiries into the mutual past. The reconciliation process, while an imperative, poses challenges that have so far been unmet—the most important of which is to engage in a discourse that mutually negotiates a respective status as victim and perpetrator. The very terms "victim" and "perpetrator" may be too unidimensional or even simplistic here to describe the complexities of the historical situation, as it is impossible to assign these labels exclusively to either nation. The Polish public must understand and accept a growing German self-understanding as not only perpetrators, but also as (partial) victims of World War II and its aftermath. Conversely, Poles must come to terms with their own history and possibly consider their share of responsibility as perpetrators with regard to the German people they expelled. The multifaceted character of this yet unmet challenge suggests that it may take a long time to overcome an historically ingrained mutual distrust. In the end, this somewhat tense phase of German-Polish relations possibly offers a chance for a more genuine reconciliation between the two societies at large, not just among the scholars, intellectuals, and politicians who carried efforts for increased rapport and understanding in the previous decade. These same groups, supported especially by the media and institutions of education, bear a responsibility to work diligently and creatively to disseminate and share knowledge about each nation's past and present to a degree that so far has not been realized in either country. The expulsion of some twelve million Germans at the end of World War II from parts of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe was the largest movement of a European people in the twentieth century (Münz 132-54). In modern historiography it has been unambiguously labeled as

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"ethnic cleansing," a claim just recently emphatically made by the British historian Norman Davies (Davies). 2 In Polish discourse, the expulsions of the German population have been considered in three different but interrelated contexts: first, the Nazi racial policies during World War II and atrocities committed during the occupation; second, the geopolitical considerations by the Allies at the end of World War II; and third, the purposeful communist policy of ethnic homogeneity (Naimark, "On the Issue" 2-4). The standard scholarly and intellectual discourse in Poland frames the Vertreibungen ("expulsions") predominantiy within the first and second contexts, thereby placing Poles outside the realm of moral or legal responsibility for the expulsions. Seen within these contexts, the Germans, by committing unspeakable atrocities on the Poles, initiated the spiral of hatred and violence—a view that exculpates the Poles, as they were clearly the victims of the German perpetrators. The international aspect of the resettlement in this account likewise exonerates the Poles, as it represents the expulsions as an action imposed upon Polish society and its political leadership. The Allies' decisions sanctioned the expulsions as a "legal" action following the defeat of the German aggressor. The third context, the communist policy of ethnic homogeneity, was not examined in Poland until communist rule ended in 1989. Much of Polish research done since 1989 shows conclusively that the deportations undertaken by the Polish administration were marked by a hatred of the Germans that was widespread, intense, and often indiscriminate. 3 Polish civilians also committed violent acts when they, themselves expelled from the Polish East, took over German territories—eager to make a new 2

The expulsions from the territories taken over by Poland were carried out in three phases. In the first phase, up to April of 1945, approximately 3.5 million Germans fled the oncoming Red Army. In the second phase, between May and August of 1945, the "wild expulsions" took place, in which between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were dispossessed and ordered to leave. In the third phase, which took place from the sanction of the Potsdam Agreement until the end of 1947, almost three million Germans were expelled from Poland, although one more million Germans were kept by the Polish authorities, as they were critical for the economic sustenance of the annexed territories. The third phase is the one in which the Poles were charged with responsibility for gruesome and merciless treatment of many millions of Germans living in the area that became part of Poland (Naimark, Fires 126-28). (For different numbers of the expelled population, see Borodziej and Lemberg.) Certainly, these events cannot be discussed in isolation from the chronological sequence of the events starting with Hitler's aggression on Poland on 1 September 1939, through the brutal occupation, and ending with the methodical destruction of Warsaw and much of the Polish territory during the Germans' retreat from the advancing Red Army at the end of 1944 and into 1945.

3

These issues are addressed in many publications listed in n6. Many of the documents indicate that while the communist administration was the main agent carrying out the action, the majority of the Polish population concurred with it.

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home in the area to which they had been deported. 4 An emotional yearning for collective revenge on "the Germans" for initiating a war that caused death, suffering, and displacement to millions of Poles (and others) further motivated these actions. The postwar history of the relations between Poland and Germany during the Cold War shows categorically a lack of determination on both sides to acknowledge the tangled intricacies of the issue of expulsions. To the contrary, these complexities were continuously ignored. In West Germany, where the expellees were politically radicalized and either manipulated or marginalized for many decades, a wide-ranging discussion and reflection on the period in question did not take place. During the fortyfive years of communist rule in Poland, such deliberation was officially suppressed. Instead, doctrinaire and propaganda-driven accusations that painted history in black and white prevailed and fed into existing, deep historical animosities, cliches, and stereotypes. When Polish Catholic bishops wrote a letter to their German counterparts in 1965 stating, "We forgive you, and also ask you for forgiveness," the event understandably lit up the dark sky of Cold Warmotivated, Polish-German recriminations like an unexplainably bright bursting star (Wolff-Poweska 241-42). The shock value of this message was high. In the confrontational atmosphere of the times, the conciliatory tone of the letter surprised the German public; on the Polish side, it was not evident why one should be asking Germans for forgiveness. As one would expect, communist propaganda and the censorship mechanisms controlling the public media (except for the church) responded with unease and disapproval. The Polish population, conditioned by the fabrications, omissions, and distortions of official propaganda (in addition to the still "fresh" wounds from the war) objected as well, a stance that remained firm until the mid-1990s. In fact, a 1996 CBOS (Polish abbreviation for "Center for Public Opinion Research") poll regarding the expulsions that used the very statement of the Polish bishops to the German bishops in 1965 showed that even in 1996 barely 28% of the respondents agreed with the statement; 45% considered it partially correct ("because one ought to forgive, but we don't have anything to ask for forgiveness for"); and 22% rejected it altogether ("we can't forgive the Germans, and have nothing to ask forgiveness for"). 5 In the years between the end of World War II and 1989, the question of Polish responsibility for an unjust displacement of the millions of Germans could not be contemplated or admitted in Poland for reasons 4 5

Jerzy Kochanowski calculates that about 1.7 million Poles were deported from the pre-World War II Polish East (67). For a thorough discussion of this poll, see Borodziej and Hajnicz 439—75.

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beyond the East-West antagonism of the Cold War. Stalin's plan of incorporating the Polish territories annexed after 17 September 1939—a result of the Zusatsprotokoll (secret protocol) in the Hitler-Stalin Pact—also entailed a transfer of the Poles to new Polish territories in the West (see also n4). These expellees were officially labeled "repatriates" (repatriana) returning to their old "regained lands" (Zieme Od^yskane). A debate about the Soviet annexation of the Polish eastern territories was impossible for political reasons, of course. The displacement of the Germans was thus understood as a "just" and unavoidable action by the Poles. According to this logic, the Russian-imposed displacement of the Poles justified the displacement of the Germans by the Poles—especially since the Germans had initiated the war by invading Poland, and, in the changed geopolitical context, Poland could not reclaim its eastern territory from Russia. The end of the Cold War, following the tumultuous year of 1989, dramatically changed the confrontational situation between communist Poland and the Federal Republic. The 1990s have been hailed in both countries for their productive and fruitful reassessment of the expulsions and for improving bilateral relations. The border treaty of 1990 between the Federal Republic and democratic Poland, which acknowledged the finality and inviolability of the Oder/Neisse border, marked a watershed in the political and public treatment of the problem of the expulsions both internationally and domestically. This fundamental treaty was followed in 1991 by the treaty on good, neighborly relations and cooperation between Germany and Poland. In May 2005, these official political contracts found a follow-up through the "Polish-German Year" with mutual cultural celebrations in both countries sponsored by both governments. In the 1990s, Polish historians acknowledged a lack of scholarly inquiry into the expulsions period and began the work of reducing this deficit. Finally free of communist censorship and prohibitions, Polish scholarship, often with German collaboration, flourished and yielded astonishingly honest and temperate results. 6 Among the productive results of this collaboration are the anthology Verlorene Heimat: Die Vertreibungsdebatte in Polen [Lost Homeland: The Expulsion Debate in Poland\ (Bachmann and Kranz), published in both countries; the multi-volume work Niemcy w Polsce 1945-1950: Wybor dokumentow [The Germans in Poland, 1945-1950: A Selection of Document.r] (Borodziej and Lemberg); and Utracona Ojc^y^na: Pr^ymusowe wysiedlenia, deportacje, i pr^esiedlenia jako mpolne dosiviadc^enie [Lost Homeland: Forced Resettlement, Deportations, and Population Transfers as Shared Experience] (Orlowski and Sakson). 6

Some of the most important ones are, in chronological order: Podlasek; Ther; Bömelburg, Stössinger, and Traba; Borodziej and Lemberg; Nitschke; Madajczyk; Lawaty and Orlowski.

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Over the course of the nineties, Polish historians came to concur that the manner of some deportations did indeed make perpetrators of the Poles in regard to the Germans. Artur Hajnicz, one of the most respected Polish expulsion scholars, cogently argues the point in his 1998 essay entided "Aussiedlung—Vertreibung—Umsiedlung—Repatriierung: Ein historisches Übel, aber eben ein Übel" ["Transfer—Expulsion— Resettlement—Repatriation: An Historical Iniquity, but Still an Iniquity"] (Bachmann and Kranz 93-102). According to Hajnicz, the Germans bear what he calls the "causal responsibility" for the expulsions (by initiating the war), the Allies bear the "decisional responsibility" (by prescribing the resetdement), but the Poles bear the "executive responsibility" (by carrying it out). 7 Scholarly initiatives in the mid-1990s placed the issue of the Vertreibungen in a new, critical, non-ideological context (see n6). Conferences, seminars, and research projects involving scholars from both countries resulted in a number of publications that, in some cases, appeared simultaneously in both countries. One of the most important among them, a volume of essays and analyses from 1998 entitled Kompleks Wyped^enia [The Complex of the Expulsion] (Borodziej and Hajnicz), contains studies written during the two years' existence of a Polish-German research project on expulsions, including a final report on the state of German-Polish relations in the context of the Vertreibungen. Several politically symbolic events also took place in those years, perhaps the most important being an historic speech to the joint session of the German Bundesrat and Bundestag in 1995 by then Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who expressed his nation's regret about the suffering of innocent Germans during the expulsions. 8 Entering the new millennium, discourse on the expulsions has still been determined by the "asymmetry of memories and experiences," as it has come to be called in newer scholarly discourse in Poland (e.g., Traba; Orlowski, "Semantyka"). Nevertheless, the specific time span of the 1990s stands as a period of extraordinary sensitivity in dealing with the moral ambiguity of the expulsions. The very question of an adequate terminology in Poland for the expulsions exemplifies this sensitivity. Until 1989, the term "expulsion" (wyped^enie) was banned and officially not in 7 8

Piskorski refers to this categorization of responsibility (87). An excerpt of this speech is in Bachmann and Kranz 33.

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use. Instead, one referred to "resettlement" (pr^esiedlenie) or "transfer.," or the Germans "leaving the historic Polish territories." 9 The relevant language used in the official bilateral treaties in 1990 and 1991 refers for the first time to "expulsions," and not to "transfers" or "resettlement," which were part of the old propaganda phraseology. This new terminology helped set in motion an intense and protracted moral examination of the expulsions among many Polish scholars and in parts of the Polish public sphere. Questions regarding the actual numbers of those expelled or those who perished during these events began to be raised, followed by further inquiries regarding the responsibility of the Poles for the suffering inflicted on the Germans during their act of ethnic cleansing. This period, dominated almost exclusively by encouraging scholarly collaboration and political gestures of mutual respect, did not last long. Even though official relations between the German and Polish governments have remained cordial in the new millennium, and even though much of the scholarly collaboration begun in the previous decade has progressed unimpeded, the popular perception of Germans by the Polish public has undergone a subtle, yet complex change. Over a decade after unification, Germany's intensified interest in its own suffering during World War II has negatively influenced Polish public opinion. While marking a qualitatively new phase in the transformation of collective historical memory in Germany, this shift has only been supported by the German government to a limited degree. All the more noticeable in the national debate are the political circles of formerly marginalized, far-right expellee groups, such as the Bund der Vertriebenen, or BdV (Federation of Expellees). Their public and parliamentary appeal for a space commemorating German expellees from the East has elicited an overwhelmingly adverse reaction in Poland, something demonstrated exhaustively in Polish newspapers, magazines, and other media. This development poses a certain setback to the encouraging reconciliation process begun in the early 1990s. The negativity of the Polish response seems to suggest that a deep, historical distrust of German neighbors did not dissipate during the first decade of reconciliation dialogue. If intensified and not appropriately counterbalanced, this circumspection might provoke political actions by the Polish government that could significantly complicate bilateral relations, an indication of which is discussed below. Clearly, the attempts in German society to reconstitute itself as a "community of victims" are faced with unease and disorientation among Polish intellectuals and other public figures, as well as in Polish society at large. This apprehension indicates that the Polish-German dialogue needs 9

See Kersten in Bachmann and Kranz 103-15; for a slightly different perspective, Piskorski.

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to be intensified and deepened; but it may also require that the issue of Polish responsibility for injustices inflicted on Germans after the end of World War II be taken up and examined more scrupulously in the Polish public sphere. The proposal to construct a national Center against Expulsions in Berlin stands at the center of a public debate on the expulsions, both in Germany and in Poland. While there is no dearth of centers and museums commemorating the past of the expellees in the locales where they finally resettled, the Center against Expulsions was initially envisioned as a national memorial to be sponsored by the German federal government and to be centrally and prominently located in Berlin. 10 This proposal was first formulated by Erika Steinbach, the new leader of the BdV since 1998, who—her critics notwithstanding—has brought new promise and impetus into the fading and faltering BdV. 11 Over a few short years, her political instincts and a certain personal charisma have helped the BdV to cope more successfully with the traditional stigma of extreme radicalism and with the burdens of political marginalization while bringing it closer to the political mainstream. Organized in the early 1950s as an extremeconservative group, the BdV, while enjoying some initial support under conservative German administrations, experienced significant political and public marginalization in the wake of Willi Brandt's foreign policy in Eastern Europe (Ostpolitik) and the following normalization treaties with Poland and other Eastern European countries in the 1970s. Although the Charter of the BdV from 1950 clearly treats the expellees as victims, it also expounds a "Verzicht auf Rache" ("renunciation of revenge") (BdV-Charter, Paragraph l). 12 Notwithstanding this rhetorical figure, the political stance of the BdV had been unforgiving and confrontational for decades, as if in contradiction to this very statement. The expellees did not abandon their resentments even after the end of the Cold War. The best example of this vehemence may be the fact that Erika Steinbach, who is also a CDU parliamentarian, voted firmly against ratifi10

11

12

To name just a few: the Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg, the Ostpreußische Landesmuseum in Lüneburg, the Westpreußische Landesmuseum in Münster, the Pommersche Museum in Greifswald, the Schlesische Museum in Görlitz, the Donauschwäbische Zentralmuseum in Ulm, or the Siebenbürgische Museum in Gundelsheim. This list, as well as an interesting commentary on the federal Vertnebenenpolitik, can be found in Lau. Steinbach's claims to expellee status are disputable. Steinbach was born in 1943 to a Wehrmacht officer who moved to the Polish area northwest of Gdansk/Danzig with his army unit as part of the occupying forces. The area, under Polish jurisdiction and occupied by the German army as a result of the war, can hardly be claimed by Steinbach as her "native soil" from which she was "expelled" at the end of the war. One might note that this declaration betrays a certain arrogance, especially as seen from the perspective of those who traditionally consider themselves victims of the Germans and could question the expellees' justification for revenge.

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cation of the treaties between Germany and Poland of 1990 and 1991. Only in recent years has this stance seemingly changed, as Steinbach has assumed a more conciliatory position toward Poland while distancing herself from the more radical demands of some of her constituents. The Center against Expulsions Foundation, created in 2000 by Steinbach, who is also its president, to promote and further develop the idea of an actual Center against Expulsions, has included a wide array of known public figures. Perhaps the three most prominent are German-Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Ralph Giordano, Catholic cardinal Karl Lehmann, and Peter Glotz (now deceased), a long-time social-democratic ideologue and card-carrying SPD party member. On 4 July 2002, the debate on a national memorial site for the expellees in the Bundestag, initiated by Steinbach, yielded an ambiguous resolution supporting the idea of a European Center against Expulsions, but promised no financial assistance and did not specify its location. Thus, Steinbach's attempt to have the Bundestag back her proposal fell flat. It became clear that Steinbach's Berlin center would have to be funded privately. The initiative caused considerable consternation in Germany, especially in a climate already rife with controversy over German expellees from Günter Grass's depiction of expellees' plight in his novella Im Krebsgang, which was published the same year (2002). 13 Several public protests erupted, perhaps the most significant being the Gerolsteiner Appell, which was signed by some seventy intellectuals from Germany and Poland. 14 Concurrently, a considerable polemic arose as to where—if at all—such a center should actually be located. 15 The debate about the Center against Expulsions in Berlin found a strong resonance in Poland. Seen from the uniformly negative Polish perspective, at stake was a rhetorical shift and a turning point in the 13

14 15

Grass's book Im Krebsgang set in motion a wide public debate in Germany about the expulsions and fostered the idea that Germans, too, were victims of World War II. To be sure, Grass's book was not the first one that aimed to shed a different light on this topic, as one only needs to recall that Walter Kempowski's first volume of Echolot appeared in 1993. However, Polish observers widely view Grass's book as the catalyst that unleashed the intense debate on the shifting perspective on the expulsions and the suffering of Germans—whether or not it really deserves to be credited as a genuinely pioneering book in its own terms (Buras 8-12). It was signed on 13 September 2003 ("Internationaler Protest"). Steinbach, as the author of the proposal, has maintained firmly that only Berlin is an appropriate place for such a site. The social-democratic parliamentarian Markus Meckel suggested the city of Wroclaw (formerly Breslau) as a more appropriate site for such a center. Two prominent Polish intellectuals, Adam Michnik and Adam Krzeminski, supported this idea in an open letter from 2002 to the German chancellor and the Polish prime minister (Krzeminski and Michnik 11). This idea in turn astonished most of the Polish public and politicians alike, as they did not expect this issue to reappear at that time, nor were they prepared to deal with it constructively.

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reshaping of German public memory. Vehement opposition to the idea of such a center was accompanied by concrete fears about political and legal claims for resetdement compensation that such an institutionalized representation of German suffering would bolster. 16 Of further concern was that the idea of such a national center seemingly signaled that "the" Germans had not learned sufficiently from the horrors of the war. The proposal polarized the view on who were the victims and who were the perpetrators in the events started by the Nazi aggression on Poland. Thus, many Poles expressed the fear that the German proposal sent a message of disrespect, arrogance, and maybe even animosity to their historical neighbors across the Oder and Neisse. 17 After 2002, the topic became widely debated in the Polish media. The two biggest and most important Polish newspapers, Ga^eta Wyborc^a and Rs^c^pospolita, published numerous articles and letters from readers, including contributions from German supporters and opponents of the Berlin center. 18 The voices critical of Steinbach's idea clearly prevailed. The Polish polemics directed against the BdV leader and her allies contained accusations of attempting to create a false historical consciousness, and of a selective collective memory on the part of German society. The unfolding German move to forge a new identity as acknowledged victims of World War II and of the expulsions also came under fire. Critics accused Germans of employing false analogies and attempting to create new myths about the expulsions, as exemplified by Jörg Friedrich's bestseller Oer Brand (2002), or even Günter Grass's Im Krebsgang, among others (Semka). What transpires most from these negative comments is a deep distrust of the intentions supporting the idea of the Berlin center and of the collective capacity of "the" Germans to differentiate consequences from reasons. 19 The situation in Germany has become more complicated and less transparent for many Poles than it was during the Cold War. Confusion arises when old, right-wing expellee politicians, like Herbert Hupka, are joined by the children of the 1968 generation such as Helga Hirsch, Jörg Friedrich, or Otto Schily. A clear view of events is even more difficult 16 17

18

19

I provide here a partial summary, elaborated on more in my article on "The Debate about a Center against Expulsions" (449-68). The best examples for these voices of concern can be found in the online archives of the influential daily, K^ec^pospolita, that has established a separate link for articles regarding this debate at . See n l 7 above. Supporting voices were of course Steinbach herself, as well as Zeit journalist Helga Hirsch and Friedrich Pflüger, spokesperson of the parliamentary CDU/CSU coalition. An opposing voice was Markus Meckel. I.e., the expulsions were justified as a result of Hitler's aggression; therefore, viewing German expellees as victims of Polish acts is simply wrong.

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when other traditional left-wing figures seem to support the old expellees in their proclaimed right to public reflection (especially Günter Grass, Peter Glotz, or Daniel Cohn-Bendit). The complexity of the evolved situation is increased when personalities with high "moral credentials," who include the writer Ralph Giordano, Rupert Neudeck (known through his work with Vietnamese refugees), or the historian Julius Schoeps, back the initiative of the old expellees. 20 From the perspective of some Poles, it appears surprising that such personalities use their moral authority to lend support to the political circles once viewed so critically by the traditional Left. In this challenging nuance, old stereotypes and cliches offer a dangerously tempting tool of oversimplification and fuel a general antiGerman resentment. The situation seems to suggest that the advances made in the 1990s were rather superficial, incremental, and insufficient to preclude the recurrence of old stigmas and trauma. Moreover, in the 1990s, the discourse on German victimhood was at most in its developing stages and thus not discernible for either side in the bi-national dialogue. Meanwhile, many Poles—barring a few notable exceptions discussed below—do not realize that this political reconfiguration is rather an internal German and intergenerational phenomenon that has little if anything to do with animosity towards Poland. The new proximity between conservative expellee forces and the Left that had once opposed them was made possible by equating "Kosovo with Silesia." Repulsed by the atrocities that happened in the aftermath of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, increasingly significant elements of the traditional German Left began to protest against any ethnic cleansing and human rights abuse. It was reasoned that a protest against human rights abuses cannot be selective; it must be universal. Thus, if one protested against Kosovo, one should also object to the human rights abuses committed during the expulsions (Semka; Buras). As Piotr Buras writes, the particular historical circumstances of a state action causing human suffering became less significant when countered with the generalised sense of a wrong committed on the basis of human rights abuses (Buras and Maciejewski 17). Therefore, the particular circumstances of the expulsions, i.e., the historical context of Nazi aggression and occupation that preceded Polish abuses during the expulsions, became irrelevant. Clearly, suffering occurred that was sponsored by the Polish state, and Germans were victims of these state actions. Thus, the 1968 generation has embraced the older generation of their

20

Glotz, a Sudeten German, was probably the most prominent left-wing liberal politician supporting Steinbach's proposal. He himself published in 2003 a book on the topic entitled Die Vertreibung. Böhmen als Lehrstück .

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formerly discredited parents, and has also extended to the expellees, in part, empathy and regret. 21 On the political-cultural level, this unusual political fusion and realignment of traditionally entrenched fronts—while embarking on a redefinition of German national identity—has presented an unexpected threat to the seeming success of the reconciliation in the 1990s. The expulsions and their interpretations are enormously important in this context, as the comparatively recent alliance brings forth new versions of collectively felt emotion and produces a different historical memory with potentially crucial cultural, political, and legal consequences. It is important to add that the prevailing negative Polish reaction is primarily fueled by a growing uncertainty among Polish citizens and politicians alike as to what the German developments might mean for them not only symbolically, but also politically and financially. Besides the mentioned fear of reversing the historically understood roles of victims and perpetrators, there is concern that if the BdV assumes even more prominence and acclaim, it might mean that Poland will be financially liable for the property in the territories annexed after the Potsdam Agreement, which has a value estimated at around 19 billion euro ("Niemiecki" Particularly unsettling, not only for the Poles, but also for many Germans, is a fairly new institutional, non-government supported initiative called the Preussiscbe Treuhand (PT).22 Founded in 2000, this organization has as its stated aim reclaiming by means of legal action some of the individual property lost by Germans through the expulsions. As this would practically mean repossession of certain property now on Polish territory and in Polish hands (instead of a monetary compensation for loss), and as the situation—seen from the purely legal point of view—is indeed abstruse, these actions have had a frightening effect in Poland. Even though there seems to be a clear rift between the BdV and the PT, and even though Steinbach openly distances herself from the PT by publicly claiming that the BdV will not seek compensation in any form other than that of a "symbolic gesture" (Jendroszczyk), these circumstances do not seem sufficient to dispel doubts and concerns. 23 Mean21 22

23

As well as the younger generation of writers, such as Tanja Dückers, Anita Kugler, and others. It calls itself in English the Prussian Claims Society, possibly in an analogy to the Jewish Claims Conference. To learn more about this organization as it describes itself and its mission, consult its website at . Even some critics of the hysteria are themselves very distrustful of Steinbach's ultimate intentions. For instance, Kazimierz Woycicki writes in his excellent book about the Germans coming to terms with their history, that ultimately, he has not seen anything in writing by Steinbach that would declare a renunciation of any material claims (237n320).

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while, these property questions will most likely be decided by the courts and no longer just by public opinion. This conflict escalated further in its political dimension when, in 2004, a Polish center-right parliamentarian, Dorota Arciszewska-Mielewczyk, formed an organization called the Powiernictwo Polskie (Polish Claims Society). This organization is meant as a direct answer to the Preussische Treuhand, its stated aim is pursuing in courts claims of a similar type against Germany. In what might be considered another symptom of Poland's starkly negative reaction, the Polish parliament unanimously accepted a resolution on 10 September 2004 (328 deputies in favor and one abstention), that requires the Polish government to seek compensation from Germany for the damage suffered by the Poles during World War II. Even though this questionable resolution practically has no legal force, its political message is clear. It appears that Polish political representatives feel that an offense is the best self-defense. The election of the right-of center Lech Kaczynski as Poland's president in the fall of 2005 has reinforced this line of thinking: Kaczynski has repeatedly stated that he is in favor of suing Germany for damages caused to Polish cities during World War II. However, many current critics of "Germany" do not realize that the German government is not responsible for the legal threats by the PT, and that it has been unmistakably distancing itself from the PT. 24 As unfortunate as it may be, both the legal restitution and political reparation claims raise the stakes for the moral consideration of who counts as the "real" victim or the "real" perpetrator. As this debacle continues to varying degrees and with different twists and turns since its inception in 2003, it clearly represents a regression in a meaningful approach to the complexities of the Polish-German questions of victimhood. One is left with hope for its gradual dissipation. Considering such a surprising escalation of emotional reactions on both Polish and German sides after the promising period of the 1990s, it becomes clear that a genuine reconciliation process requires much more time. It will not happen quickly in the social and public dimension, notwithstanding the agreements of political elites and symbolic acts by the German government that are aimed to assuage the Polish public. 25

24 25

For instance, Schröder in his remarks in Poland in August 2004 ("Miejsce"). See also n25 below. Thus it was certainly significant and duly noted in the media at the time that President Köhler visited Poland in July 2004, in part to attempt to ease the tension about the Berlin center. Likewise, Chancellor Schröder visited Poland in August 2004 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Warsaw uprising, while stating the opposition of his government to Steinbach's proposal and to the claims voiced by the Preussische Treuhand (Schröder).

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What is to be done in the face of such developments in the extraordinarily important relations of the two nations? Fortunately, beside the majority of these overly emotional and self-defensive statements and actions, a few Polish voices try to assess the situation more analytically and evenhandedly. They are not necessarily confined to the academic realm. Even though in a minority, the merit and significance of these voices ought not to be underestimated. They are soberly engaged in continuing and deepening the reconciliation dialogue that has only begun in earnest. Publicists, political scientists, and historians such as Adam Kr2eminski, Anna WolffPoweska, Kazimierz Woycicki, Piotr Buras, and also Jerzy Holzer, Janusz Reiter, and Jerzy Kranz, offer different particulars in their analyses, but are all critical of prevailing Polish reactions. Each agrees that the spiral of accusations is lethal for German-Polish reconciliation. Anna Wolff-Poweska, one of the foremost authorities on Germany in Poland, whose texts appear occasionally in the popular press, calls for "taking up the risk of increased mutual trust" on the part of the Poles and the Germans and argues that the collective Polish mentality regarding the Germans has to change (249).26 Kazimierz Woycicki rejects Polish accusations that the Germans never really came to terms with their past and did not deal sufficiently with questions of responsibility for what happened in and around the war period (235). He argues that German society has dealt with these questions extensively throughout its postwar history. Furthermore, he claims the lack of an "infrastructure" for historical memory, a condition which he believes frustrates Poles and possibly makes them envy the Germans, is a weakness in Polish society (229-31). Piotr Buras patiently seeks to persuade his Polish audience that the Germans as an entire society are "taking an impetuous and emotional inventory of their collective memory" and that German suffering is becoming a part of the universal catalogue of human suffering (Buras and Majewski 16-17).27 He vehemently advocates the need for creating a "common language of memory" for which a dialogue is necessary although not sufficient (Buras and Majewski 18).28 Finally, Adam Krzeminski, a publicist and expert on Germany also critical of the only seemingly successful reconciliation process of the 1990s, points out many missed chances to do "better" on the part of both the German and Polish governments. He refers to this period as "kicz pojednania," "reconciliation kitsch," a term that is also

26 27

"[...] podjecie ryzyka wzajemnego zaufania." "Jest raczej zywiolowym i emocjonalnym remanentem zbiorowej pamieci. [

28

"Wspolny jezyk pamieci."

]"

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widely used by others. 29 Krzeminski is horrified by current Polish reactions that resound with sarcasm and outrage, some of which come from intellectual giants like the famous philosopher Leszek Kolakowski and the late, equally famous, writer Stanislaw Lern, or from moral authorities from the past like the already mentioned Bartoszewski or Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the resistance units in the Jewish ghetto uprising in Warsaw. 30 As is apparent even from the thoughts presented here, the collective stance among the Poles with regard to the Germans is emotional, confused, and conflicted. The mass media, in particular the press, fuel a simmering nationalism, even if only to increase sales profits. One is reminded of the cover of the widely circulated weekly Wprost from September 2003, which consisted of a photomontage of Erika Steinbach in an SS uniform, triumphant and riding on the back of smiling Chancellor Schröder, along with the caption: "Niemiecki kon trojanski?" ["The German Trojan Horse?"] ("Niemiecki"). 31 Interestingly, this picture was rather negatively received in Germany and reportedly judged by a Bundestag parliamentarian as "geschmacklos" ("tasteless") (Braun). It became an emblematic example of the level of the current Polish discourse on Germany and of the character of Polish reactions to the German processes of reshaping its collective historical memory and self-understanding. AntiGerman sentiment also seems to be nourished by recent books with titles such as Wypomed^iec ivojne Niemcom [Declare War on the Germans] (Wieckowski)] or Polska, Niemcy—Trudne Sasied^tm [Germany, Poland—A 29

30

31

This term has been used very widely in Poland; it is attributed to Klaus Bachmann, the then Polish correspondent of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and currendy a professor at the WilliBrandt-Center of Wroclaw University, Poland. For instance, Bartoszewski, in his article "Przeciw wybiorczej pamieci" ["Against Selective Memory"], called the proposed Center against Expulsions "an attempt to build a false historical consciousness that, besides the Jews, the Germans were the main victims of World War II." ("Dlaczego podniesiono kwestie powstania Centrum przeciw Wypedzeniom w roku 2002? Aby zbudowac falszywa swiadomosc, ze poza Zydami ofiarami drugiej wojny swiatowej byli glownie Niemcy" [Bartoszewski].) Edelman said in an interview that he is afraid that it would be a "catastrophe" if, as a result of erecting a memorial for the German expellees, there would emerge an opinion that the Germans were wronged in World War II. He added, "it would mean that they can seek revenge. And, we know what that means." ("Gdyby w efekcie zbudowania pomnika wypedzonym mial zapanowac poglad, ze Niemcy zostali przez te wojne pokrzywdzeni, bylaby to kleska. Znaczyloby to tez, ze oni moga szukac odwetu. A my wiemy, co to znaczy" ["Nie litowac sie"].) A useful compilation of relevant materials published by R^ec^pospolita on the topic (such as interviews, letters to the editors, and regular contributions, including statements quoted above) can be found at the website . The rest of the headline on the cover reads: "Niemcy sa winni Polakom miliard dolarow za Druga Wojne Swiatowa" ["The Germans Owe the Poles a Trillion Dollars for World War Two"].

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Difficult Neighborhood (Dobrosz). Confrontational in spirit, they feed old tensions and capitalize on current Polish insecurities. Even though they do not rank among bestsellers, the fact that they are written, published, read, and discussed is emblematic for fluctuating Polish perceptions of Germans. Several Polish analysts bemoan the "asymmetry of knowledge" between the two societies. 32 According to this view, Germans know too litde about Poland, both the contemporary one and the one that under Nazi occupation lost six million of its citizens. This is certainly a valid observation. Nonetheless, it might be more accurate to talk of a mutual deficit of knowledge, since Poles also know litde about specifics and nuances of German society and thus on occasion revert to detrimental cliches, as previously shown. That private initiatives such as the Center against Expulsions Foundation have in actuality litde to do with the majority of the German public or the current German government, most likely even in its post-Schröder era, is lost on most of the Polish public—as are the nuances between the Bund der Vertriebenen and the Vreussische Treuhand. Ultimately, reconciliation between Germany and Poland must be carried out by individual citizens, not by politicians or by historians exclusively, even though their roles are clearly indispensable. The controversy shows that the Poles' old, nationalistic way of regarding the Germans may be interfering with their ability to allow the Germans to come to terms with questions of their victimhood. A traditional suspicion of some genetically encoded propensity to Nazism on the part of the Germans should be recognized as no longer helpful or called for. The controversy also shows that the Poles must learn more about their own history in order to free themselves of the lingering influence of communist propaganda and gain a genuinely sovereign historical self-consciousness. Whether the victims of the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities on the one hand, and the victims of the expulsions and mass bombardments by the Allies on the other, can coexist is certainly still an open question, not to be answered anytime soon. However, it is worthwhile to pursue this long-term idea consciously. As several Polish commentators remark, the common goal for both societies should be achieving and enriching a collective European memory without influence by narrower nationalistic

32

See, for instance, Piskorski's chapter "W Polsce, czyli nigdzie" ["In Poland, Which Is Nowhere"], bemoaning the gaps in knowledge that, according to him, most Germans have regarding Poland—although he also acknowledges that Polish intellectuals and others, have failed in this because they for some time had avoided, out of politeness, conflicts and confrontations about some thorny issues from history (120-34).

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interests.33 In the long run, maybe it is ultimately beneficial that the "reconciliation kitsch" of the 1990s was critically challenged after just a few years, since the present situation might actually nurture a more thorough dialogue in which the existing "competition for victimhood" would become unthinkable. Slowly there appear more optimistic voices about the German-Polish future. 34 Acknowledging and dealing with the moral ambiguities of history is necessary for both societies, and while progress has been achieved, especially compared to the decades of the Cold War, not all challenges encountered in the ongoing reconciliation process have been met. As argued here, one of the most important challenges yet to be dealt with constructively is a mutual and nuanced recognition of each other as victims of World War II. This is perhaps the greater challenge for the Poles since they are accustomed, for better or worse, to their historical status as victims of German perpetrators. Still, as a positive example, Polish children currently learn in school from innovatively designed materials about the partial responsibility of the Poles for the horror of the Vertreibungen, giving the process of reconciliation a better chance for the future.35 Despite the controversies surrounding the idea of a Berlin Center against Expulsions, as well as the threatened actions by the Preussische Treuhand and the Powiernictum Polskie, popular Polish perceptions of the Germans appear to be slowly changing for the better. Evidence for the validity of this statement comes from a poll taken by the Emnid Institute in Germany and PBS in Poland in August 2003 ("Sondaz"). It asked 1000 Germans and 999 Poles, among others, the following question: "Were Germans, like Poles, Jews, and Roma, victims of World War II?" The result was astonishing, especially considering the result of the 1996 poll 33 34

35

In this vein, many opinions regarding the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of Berlin as a location of a Center against Expulsions were presented at an international conference in Darmstadt (December 2002) that was organized by the Polish Institute (Danyel and Ther). A good example of a constructive assessment of the local German past is, for instance, a recent interview on the cultural and architectural history of Breslau and its German links to the Polish present conducted with Elzbieta Dzikowska, a professor of German literature at the Wroclaw University, and Piotr Zuk, her colleague from the Sociology Department (Maciejewska). Such positive voices also fully support the intergovernmental initiative of celebrating the "Polish-German Year" in Germany and in Poland between May 2005 and May 2006. It seems remarkable that this initiative also includes a planned, collaborative, artistic performance at the Teatr Wspolczesny in Wroclaw (Breslau), entitled Trantfer, that is supposed to treat the expulsions of the Germans from Silesia and those of the Poles from Eastern Poland in the context of a Greek tragedy ("Transfer"; Wysocki). For more information about this and other elements of the "Polish-German Year," see the official website of the initiative . See, for instance, Polish schoolbooks containing frank discussions about expulsions, one example of which is Kowalski, Sielatycki, and Kozlowska.

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regarding the Polish bishops: 57% of the Polish respondents n o w agreed that G e r m a n s also were victims of W o r l d W a r II. 36 While the result disconcerted s o m e Poles, it seems to suggest that a g r o w i n g n u m b e r of Poles are prepared to see G e r m a n s as victims of W o r l d W a r II. 37 This, of course, does not m e a n that the Poles are equally prepared to see t h e m selves as perpetrators w i t h regard to the Germans. Yet, being willing to see themselves as b o t h — t h e victims and the perpetrators—would m e a n a readiness to strive for ultimate reconciliation.

W o r k s Cited

Bachmann, Klaus, and Jerzy Kranz, eds. Verlorene Heimat: Die Vertreibungsdebatte in Polen. Bonn: Bouvier, 1998. Bartoszewski, Wladyslaw. "Przeciw wybiorczej pamieci" ["Against Selective Memory"]. R%ectf>ospolita 15 July 2003. 16 May 2006 . Bömelburg, Hans-Jürgen, Renate Stössinger, and Robert Traba, eds. Vertreibung aus dem Osten: Deutsche und Polen erinnern sich. Olsztyn: Borussia, 2000. Borodziej, Wlodzimierz, and Artur Hajnicz, eds. Kompleks Wypedyenia [The Complex of the Expulsion\. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1998. —, and Hans Lemberg, eds. Niemg at Polsce 1945-1950: Wybor dokumentow [Germans in Poland 1945-1950: Selection of Document^. 4 vols. Warszawa: Neriton, 2000. Braun, Matthias. "Zentrum gegen Verteibungen: Streit um Steinbach." Die Tageszeitung 19 Sept. 2003. 16 May 2006 . Buras, Piotr. "Smutna prawda ο braku pojednania" ["Sad Truth About the Lack of Reconciliation"]. R^ectyospolita 26 Sept. 2003. 7 May 2006 . — , and Piotr Majewski, eds. Pamiec Wypedspnych: Grass, Benes i srodkotvoeuropejskie ro^rachunki [The Memory of the Expellees: Grass, Benes and Central-European Settling L^£>]. Warszawa: Wiez, 2003. "Charta der deutschen Heimatvertriebenen." Bund der Vertriebenen. 16 May 2006 . Davies, Norman. "Europe's forgotten war crime." Sunday Times News Review 1 Apr. 2005. 16. Sept. 2005 . Danyel, Jürgen, and Philipp Ther, eds. Flucht und Vertreibung in europäischer Perspektive. Berlin: Metropol, 2003.

36 37

In the German part of the poll, 36% of those polled thought that Germans were also victims, 52% disagreed, and 12% did not know ("Sondaz"). The subsequent issues of K^ec^pospolita, directly following publication of the poll results, contain an interesting array of positions commenting on the poll's findings. Most of these voices appear surprised and incredulous.

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Dobrosz, Janusz Konrad. Polska, Niem/y—Trudne Sasied^two \Polatid, Germany—A. Difficult Neighborhood^. Warszawa: LSW, 2000. Dückers, Tanja. Himmelskörper. Berlin: Aufbau, 2004. Die Flucht der Deutschen: Die SPIEGEL-Serie über Vertreibung aus dem Osten. SPIEGEL· special 2 (2002). Friedrich, Jörg. Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940—1945. München: Propyläen, 2002. —. Brandstätten: Der Anblick des Bombenkriegs. Berlin: Propyläen, 2003. "Für einen kritischen und aufgeklärten Vergangenheitsdiskurs." International protest against the Center against Expulsions project. 16 May 2006 Glotz, Peter. Die Vertreibung: Böhmen als Lehrstück. Frankfurt/M: Ullstein, 2003. Grass, Günter. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. Jendroszczyk, Piotr. "Nowe oblicze Eriki Steinbach" ["A New Face of Erika Steinbach']. R%ecspospolita 6 Sept. 2004. 7 May 2006 . Kempowski, Walter. Das Echolot: Ein kollektives Tagebuch, Januar und Februar 1943. München: Knaus, 1993. Kersten, Krystyna. "Das Jahrhundert der Ubersiedler: Erzwungene Bevölkerungsverlagerungen—Versuch einer Typologisierung." Bachmann and Kranz. 103-115. Kochanowski, Jerzy. "Eine andere Schuldrechnung: Die polnischen Umsiedler und ihr Kampf um Entschädigungen." Danyel and Ther. 64-73. Kowalski, Jacek, Miroslaw Sielatycki, and Wieslawa E. Kozlowska. Polacy i Niemcy u> nornj Europie: Partner\Poles and Germans in a New Europe: Partnerx], Warszawa: CODN, 1998. Krzeminski, Adam. "Kto skonczy te wojne? Polska-Niemcy: co sie ζ nami stalo?" ["Who Will End this War? Poland and Germany: What Happened to Us?]. Polityka 3 (2004). 4 June 2005 . —, and Adam Michnik. "Wo Geschichte europäisch wird." Die Zeit 26 (2002): 11. 7 May 2006 . Kugler, Anita. Scherwity. Derjüdische SS-Offizier. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2004. Lau, Jörg. "Blühende Museumslandschaften: Der Bund fördert die Kultur der Vertriebenen mit Millionen—zum Hintergrund des Denkmalstreits." Die Zeit 25 Sept. 2003. 7 May 2006 . Lawaty, Andreas, and Hubert Orlowski, eds. Polag i Niemty: Historia, kultura, polityka [Poles and Germans: History, Culture, Politicj]. Poznan: Wydawnictwo Poznanskie, 2003. Lutomski, Pawel. "The Debate about a Center against Expulsions: A Surprising Crisis in German-Polish Relations?" German Studies Review 26.3 (2004): 449-68. Maciejewska, Beata. "Ogniwo w lancuchu pokolen" [A Link in the Generational Chain], Ga^eta Wjborc^a 14-15 May 2005: 15. Madajczyk, Piotr. Niemcy polscy 1944-1989 [Polish Germans 1944-1989\. Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 2001. Münz, Rainer. "Das Jahrhundert der Vertreibungen." Transit: Europäische Revue 23 (2002): 132-54.

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Naimark, Norman M. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. —. "On the Issue of the 'Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen."' Comments solicited by the SPD-parliamentarians of the Bundestag. Unpublished manuscript. 1 Dec. 2003. 1-15. "Nie litowac sie nad Niemcami" ["Don't Take Pity on the Germans"]. Interview with Marek Edelman. Tygodnik Pows^echny 17 Aug. 2003. 16 May 2006 "Niemiecki kon trojanski? Niemcy sa winni Polakom miliard dolarow za Druga Wojne Swiatowa" ["German Trojan Horse? The Germans Owe the Poles a Trillion Dollars for World War Two"]. WprostlX Sept. 2003. Nitschke, Bernadetta. Wysiedlenie c%y uyped^enie? Ludnosc niemiecka w Polsce iv latach 1945— 1949 \Kssettlement or Expulsion? German Populations in Poland, 1945-1949\. Torun: Adam Marszalek, 2000. Orlowski, Hubert. "Semantyka deprywacji" ["The Semantics of Deprivation"]. Lawaty and Orlowski. 146-59. —, and Andrzej Sakson, eds. Utracona Ojc^y^na: Pr^ymusowe uysiedlenia, deportage, i pr%esiedlenia jako wspolne doswiadcyenie [Lost Native Soil: Forced Deportations and "Resettlements as a SharedExperience\. Poznan: Instytut Zachodni, 1996. Piskorski, Jan M. Polacy i Niemy: Czy pr^es^losc musi bye pr^es^koda? \Poles and Germans: Must the Past Be an Obstacle?[. Poznan: Wydawnictwo Poznanskie, 2004. Podlasek, Maria. Wypedyenie Niemcow ζ terenow na wschod od Odty i Nysy Luyckiej: Kelage Swiadkow [Expulsion of Germans from the Territories East of Oder and Neisse: Eyewitness Reports\. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polsko-Niemieckie, 1995. Die Preußische Treuhand. Die Preußische Treuhand GmbH & Co. KG a. A. 26 Sept. 2005. 16 May 2006 "Preußische Treuhand will Rückgabe, nicht Entschädigung für deutsche Vertriebene." Die Welt 4 Aug. 2004. 7 May 2006 . Röhl, Klaus Rainer. Verbotene Trauer Ende der deutschen Tabus. München: Universitas, 2002. Roisch, Sabine. "Polens Westen fest in deutscher Hand: Zwischen Deutschen und Polen." n.d. 7 May 2006. . Rok Polsko-Niemiecki/Deutsch-Polnisches Jahr 2005-2006. 3 June 2006 . R%ec%pospolita. l j u n e 2006. . Schröder, Gerhard. "Miejsce polskiej dumy i niemieckiej hanby" [The Place of Polish Pride and German Dishonor"]. R^ectyospolita 3. Aug. 2004. 7 May 2006 . Semka, Piotr. "Dzieci Hupki i Coca-Coli" ["The Children of Hupka and Coca-Cola"]. R%ec%pospolita 10 Sept. 2003. 7 May 2006 . "Sondaz R^eciypospolitej·. Kim sa ofiary drugiej wojny?" ['Toll by R%ec%pospolita·. Who Are the Victims of World War II?"]. R\ec?pospolita 28 Aug. 2003. 7 May 2006 .

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Ther, Philipp. Deutsche und Polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in SBZ/DDRundin Polen 1945-1956. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1998. Traba, Robert. "Gedächtnisfalle: 'Vertreibung' als Katalysator im Verständigungsprozess zwischen Deutschen und Polen?" Literatur im Zeugenstand. Beiträge %ur deutschsprachigen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Hubert Orlowski. Ed. Edward Bialek, Manfred Durzak, and Marek Zybura. Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 2002. 175-85. "Transfer! Ein Theaterprojekt über Vertreibung von Jan Klata im Rahmen von Büro Kopernikus. Deutsch-Polnische Kulturprojekte." Kulturstiftung des Bundes. 16 May 2006 . Wieckowski, Andrzej. Wypomedsjec ivojne Niemcom \Declare War on the Germanj], Krakow: Wydawnictwo Krakowskie, 2003. Wolff-Poweska, Anna. Mied^y Rsnem a Bugiem, w Europie [Between Rhine and Bug, in Europe], Wroclaw: ATUT, 2004. Woycicki, Kazimierz. Niemiecki royrachunek sumienia: Niemgi mbec pr%_es%losci 1933-1945 [Germans Squaring Up With Their Conscience: the German Past, 1933-1945]. Wroclaw: ATUT, 2004. Wysocki, Tomasz. "Przyjezdzam tu pooddychac: Rozmowa ζ Janem Klata" ["I come here to breath some fresh air: A conversation with Jan Klata"]. Ga^eta Wyborc^a 11 Feb. 2006. 16 May 2006. Zagrodzka, Danuta. "Polsko-niemiecka misja przyjazni" ["Polish-German Friendship Mission"]. Ga^eta Wyborc^a 12 June 2005. 12 June 2005 . "Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen." Bohemistik. Arbeitsstelle "Historische Stereotypenforschung." 16 May 2006 . Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen. Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen Stiftung. 16 May 2006 .

DAGMAR WIENROEDER-SKINNER

Attempts at (Re)Conciliation: Polish-German Relations in Literary Texts by Stefan Chwin, Pawel Huelle, and Olga Tokarczuk Events such as the "Polish-German Year" (2005-6), which has encouraged hundreds of cultural exchanges between Poland and Germany, indicate a belief that culture serves as a reliable link of understanding between nations. In this light, contemporary Polish literature may well serve to improve the understanding of the two countries' shared history. In recent Polish literature, younger authors demonstrate a profound interest in the history of Poland and Germany surrounding World War II. Instead of focusing on tumultuous events, such as the Solidarnosc uprisings of the 1980s that led to fundamental changes in their own lives, many younger authors prefer instead to explore the regional and multicultural layers of pre- and post-World War II times.1 Starting in the nineties, just a few years after the end of Soviet-imposed communism in Poland, younger generation authors began to discover a world that had been ideologically blocked, politically camouflaged and, therefore, virtually unknown to them. Having lived for decades under a system of tight ideological schematization, these writers now desire to set out and explore their real and fictitious roots. They produce a kind of "postmodern regional literature" that is defined by the concept of kleine Heimat? Their literature selectively 1

2

A retrospective literary investigation ten years after the end of communism by Ga^eta Wjbor^ca concluded that recent Polish events of historic magnitude, such as the 1980 Solidarnosc uprising, did not create any significant writing impulses among authors of literature in Poland ("Duftende Schürze"). The author Pawel Huelle, who worked as a journalist for Solidarnosc, just mentions the movement, albeit favorably, in his debut novel Weiser Oawidek (1987). One reason for the general literary lack of interest may be Solidarnosc's long-term failure to establish itself as a popular party (the party's official name is the Akcja Wybor^ca Solidarnosc [AWS]) in post-communist times (Raabe). Solidarnosc was generally blamed for the negative economic and social outcome of the revolution in Poland, symbolically demonstrated by the departure of its former chairman Lech Walesa on 30 August 2005. The term "postmodern regional literature" was first used by Kazimierz Brakoniecki (Orlowski, "Tabuisierte Bereiche" 107). Brakoniecki is a leading writer of the regional

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reflects on regions throughout Poland: on parts of the former Polish eastern territories ikresy) that fell to the Soviet Union in accordance with the provisions of the secret protocol to the Hider-Stalin pact in 1939,3 or on the southern part of the former East Prussian region around Olsztyn (Allenstein). 4 It explores the western Polish territories {kresy %achodnie), in the North-South axis from the Baltic sea with its port cities of Szczecin (Stettin) and Gdansk (Danzig), 5 and regions close to the Polish-Czech border in and around Wroclaw (Breslau), which became part of Poland in 1945.6 These recent literary texts reflect a post-1989 regionalism that is coupled with the vision of a new Heimat. Although perhaps connected by motif, i. e., the literary search for a lost past, they cannot be seen as a succession to the earlier "mythographic borderlands literature" (Komendant) 7 or the "literature of deprivation" ("Deprivationsliteratur" [Orlowski "Tabuisierte Bereiche" 91-96]) that started in the 1950s and concerned itself with lost Polish eastern regions. The trauma of losing one's homeland without being allowed to write about it led to an uncensored samisdatstyle literature. 8 Quite a different motivation inspires the generation of

3

4 5

6

7

8

Oslztyn-based Borussia movement, which was founded in 1990, and whose aim is to provide knowledge of the culture of the region, Poland, and Europe (see ). The term "kleine Heimat" refers to a small town or region evoking specific memory. There is no equivalent in Polish for the German Heimat, so it finds its expression in the Polish word for "private fatherland" (ptywatna ojc^y^na) (Orlowski, "Topos" 188). Literary texts on the Central and Eastern European border regions (mainly Polish, Ukranian, Lithuanian) are Bialy Kamien (1994) [Der weisse Stein (1998)] by Anna Bolecka; and Bialy kruk (1995) [Der weisse Rabe (1998)], Dukla (1997) [Die Welt hinter Dukla (2000)], Opowiesä galigjskie (1995) [Gallische Geschichten (2002)], and Jadac do Babadag (2005) [Unterwegs nach Babadag (2005)] by Andrzej Stasiuk. For subsequently named Polish tides that have been translated into German, the title of the German translation will be provided. See Traba, "Kollektives Gedächtnis" 317-30. Traba is also the editor of the Olsztyn-based cultural journal Borussia. Literary texts on the Szczecin region are Eiszeit. Steinzeit (1997) by Leszek Szaruga (the author is also the editor of the Szcecin-based cultural journal Pogranic^a [Border Regans]), and Eine kleine (2001) [Sonate fir J". (2003)] by Artur Daniel Liskowacki. Stefan Chwin's text on Gdansk is Hanemann (1995) [Tod in Danzig (2004)]. Pawel Huelle's texts on Gdansk are Weiser Dawidek (1987) [Weiser Damdek (1991)] and Pienvs^a milosc i inne opomadania (1996) [Silberregen: Danger Erzählungen (2000)]. Literary texts on the Polish-Czech border region are Dom d^enny, dorn nocny (1998) [Taghaus, Nachthaus (2001)] by Olga Tokarczuk, and, specifically on the Wroclaw region, finis silesia (2003) by Henryk Waniek. The quotation is from the German translation of the website, where it is called "mythographische Grenzlandliteratur" (the English translation is "mythological literature of the lost East"). See "Duftende Schürze." Komendant cites in this context Tadeusz Konwicki, Andrzej Kusniewicz, Julian Stryjkowski, and Leopold Buczkowski. See also Wlodzimierz Pazniewski, Krotkie dni (1983).

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younger authors who grew up in the western part of communist Poland, and who, due to their age, cannot refer to memories destroyed by the constraints of ideology.9 These new authors were not allowed to form their own identities under the restrictions imposed by the demands of a "homogenous" communist society.10 Their post-1989 research into their own regions, also described as "the reading of cemeteries and the 'dead time' of the Martial Law period" (Komendant) is the attempt to gather hitherto suppressed knowledge and to make up for lost time due to indoctrination. In Polish literary criticism, these authors are described as young writers "who, creatively, without succumbing to patriotic and ideological party demands, have recently forayed into the history of conquered towns and regions [. . .] to discover unfamiliar traditions as well as their own forgotten traditions" (Brakoniecki qtd. in Orlowski, "Tabuisierte Bereiche" 108; my emphasis).11 Their texts also reflect World War II expulsions and displacements in various areas and regions of Central and Eastern Europe, which affected millions of people, whose numbers are, regrettably, almost impossible to ascertain in any unequivocal manner.12 9

10 11

12

See Orlowski, who explains this "shift in paradigm" ("Paradigmenwechsel") as "a transfer from a syndrome of loss to one of renunciation" ("Ubergang vom Verlustssyndrom zum Verzicht-Syndrom" ["Tabuisierte Bereiche" 107]). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. For more details on the post-1989 "regional movements," see Traba, "Regionalismen" 463. "die kreativ, ohne linientreuen patriotischen und ideologischen Forderungen zu erliegen, jüngst in die Geschichte der eroberten Städte und Landstriche eindrangen, [. . .], und so sowohl fremde Traditionen als auch vergessene eigene Traditionen entdeckten" According to the "relocation" strategies decided during the Conference of Yalta and finalized in Potsdam in 1945, approximately two million Poles were told or "persuaded" to leave their eastern Polish homelands, which are today part of Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine. Urban speaks of "at best two million Poles" ("bestenfalls zwei Millionen Polen" [153]), while Kersten mentions 1.5 million Poles (qtd. in Münz 37). On the problem of precise data and the question of forced or voluntary departure, see Dmitrow, "Flucht." For reasons of historical correctness, reference is made to earlier expulsion operations enforced by the German Nazi government, which had forced the Polish population out of Poland's former western territories to settle in the so-called Generalgouvernement (Nazi occupied Poland, 1939-1945) beginning as early as in the fall of 1939. Wehler speaks of the instant displacement of "500,000 Poles [who] were taken [. . .] into the Generalgouvernement [. . .] while 2 million Poles were compelled into forced labor in the territory of the Reich" ("500 000 Polen [wurden in] [. . .] das 'Generalgouvernement' abtransportiert, während zwei Millionen polnische Zwangsarbeiter ins Reich verschleppt wurden" [12]). Statistics presented by Bade and Oltmer present the lump sum of "1.2 millions of Poles and Jews" (49). All enforced displacements took place to transfer Volksdeutsche (Germans from areas in Southeastern Europe and Central Europe as well as Germans from the actual territory of the Reich) into the Warthegau during the Heim-tns-Rach initiative, so that the various groups of resetded Germans could live in the now enlarged German Reich (Luczak 217-26). As for Germans who were to leave Poland after the end of the second world war, Kurcz quotes 8,810,200 Germans who lived in former German territories taken over by Poland in 1945 and wonders if they all were expelled ("vertrieben") or resettled ("ausge-

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The topic of Polish East-West expulsion and displacement was excluded from public discourse by the centralist communist government until 1989, and instead officially treated as a "repatriation" procedure—quite an indoctrinating term, as the "repatriates" had never lived in those areas before. 13 It is probably no coincidence that most younger authors writing in the context of "regionalism" in what is now western Poland originate from families who were forced to leave their homes in the former East in order to resettle in western Poland. In northwestern Poland, this group includes Stefan Chwin and Pawel Huelle, and in the southwest, Olga Tokarczuk. 14 This article focuses on these three authors' motivation to devote themselves to exploring Polish and German historical roots and to making both of their cultural heritages the subject of literary texts. In postcentralist Poland, all three authors celebrate their individual regions by connecting the past with the present and giving their loci a continuity that touches on the future in positive tones. They grant their protagonists a way out of historically damaged environments (the urban region Gdansk and the peripheral Polish-Czech border region). The literature that the three authors write stays within the parameters of their respective lieux of residence, mentally and physically speaking. Their goal is twofold: by exploring regional history, they create memory and find "new" historical identities that were denied to them until 1989. Essential elements of that identity are part of the fabric of kleine Heimat—a region allocated to its inhabitants through history and politics and now appropriated by the generation of post-1989 authors. Simultaneously, they deconstruct any reference to the centralist structures of culture. In fact, their concept of regionalism is often an attempt to overcome post-communist structures of centralism. 15 siedelt") (40). Naimark quotes "3 million [. . .] [who] were driven from Silesia alone and 4.5 [million] Germans from the new Poland as a whole" ( 2 2 8 n l l l ) , adding that probably half a million [Germans] died in Soviet and Polish camps and "at least twice that many lost their lives [. . .] as the result of the ethnic cleansing of Poland" (126). On the issue of Vertriebene ("expellees") in West Germany, see Schwartz. On Vertriebene versus XJmnedler ("resettlers"), as they were called in East Germany, see Mehnert. 13 14

15

See Borodziej, "Flucht" 90. The three literary texts analyzed for this article are Hanemann by Stefan Chwin, Piertvs^a milosc i inne opomadania by Pawel Huelle, and Dom dyienny, dorn nocny by Olga Tocarczuk. In my research, I used both the English and German translations of Chwin, Death in Danzig and Tod in Danzig, the German translation of Huelle, Silberregen: Dan^iger Erzählungen·, and both the English and German translations of Tocarczuk, House of Day, House of Night and Taghaus, Nachthaus. I discovered that the two foreign language editions contain different additional cultural information (see n28 and n36). See Orlowski, "Atlantis des Nordens" 348-61; Huelle and Grass 558-59; Traba, "Regionalismen" 455-65.

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Stefan Chwin and Pawel Huelle felt tempted to explore the past of their hometown, Gdansk, which in itself has turned into a region or center of interest. 16 In exploring German traces in the history of Gdansk/ Danzig, 17 Chwin and Huelle also deconstruct the myth of a homogenous society and identity officially upheld until 1989. Both authors' literary work has created general interest in the history of Gdansk, which had hitherto been vehemendy ignored during 1945-1989. Both authors' texts have become very popular outside Poland, especially in Germany. 18 Stefan Chwin, whose father left Vilna to escape Soviet internment, and whose mother fled Warsaw after the disastrous Nazi response to the Warsaw uprising in August 1944, was born in Gdansk in 1949. As his parents found it difficult to adjust to the unfamiliar environment forced upon them, Chwin grew up hearing their anti-German sentiments. Still, he could not help but develop an interest in reading and exploring the literature of the former enemy, now long gone. His boyhood exploration of neighborhood attics and basements of his hometown uncovered quite a variety of German traces: books written by German authors and examples of German art and architecture. Being aware of Auschwitz, the Holocaust, and further atrocities committed by the Nazis, Chwin tried with great difficulty to free himself from negative feelings. The result of this long and painful process is expressed in his novel Hanemann,19 Hanemann covers parts of the city from the 1930s to the German occupation and then leads into the postwar years. Chwin presents Danzig as a city that has no choice but to tolerate both the eviction of the Germans after the arrival of the Russian Red Army and the resetdement of the evacuated urban space by Poles.20 The Polish and the German 16 17

Chwin speaks of Gdansk as a "palimpsest" ("Region" 420). In world history, few cities have experienced an abrupt and total break of continuity through a near total population exchange like Gdansk/Danzig in 1945. Once a member of the Hanseatic League, this multi-ethnic city has German roots going back to the fourteenth century. Danzig stayed under German control for almost five hundred years until the Treaty of Versailles (1919) transformed the "Free City of Danzig" into a city under the supervision of the League of Nations and a port under Polish administration (which bore the name Gdansk). As of September 1939, Danzig was part of Nazi Germany. In 1945 it was added to the Polish map, and subsequently, its center was carefully restored to recreate the city's sumptuous architectural beauty.

18

The Gdansk journals Konteksty und Pr%eg/ad Polityc^ny were founded after texts by Chwin and Huelle had become generally known (see Orlowski, "Tabuisierte Bereiche" 108-9). Chwin received the Andreas Gryphius Prize from the Artists' Guild ( Y j i n s t l e r g l d e ) of Esslingen (1999) for Hanemann, a prize that has been awarded since 1957 for reconciliation efforts between Germany and its Eastern European neighbors. Huelle's debut novel Weiser Damdek was an international success. To date, it has been translated into ten languages. See also Chwin, Stätten des Hnnnems 21. These Poles had been forced to leave the former eastern Polish territories, which had now become part of the Soviet Union.

19 20

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protagonists demonstrate reconciliatory behavior in complicated situations, caused first by the war, and subsequently by the ensuing expulsions and displacements. At the core of the novel are its like-named protagonist, Hanemann, a German pathologist, and a Polish family that has moved into Dan2ig/Gdansk from eastern Poland. All share in the difficulties of the complicated postwar times. Nonetheless, they attempt to enter this period of adjustment with a peaceful disposition. The reconciliatory symbolism of Hanemann's personality is deeply connected with his personal tragedy. Having lost his beloved in a mysterious boat accident, he finds himself in a state of ambiguity and deep apathy, "frozen in [. . .] [a] state of slumber, half-alive," in a state of "hibernation that took his soul and anesthetized it against the voices of the world" (DiD 99). 21 Hanemann's mental and emotional struggle to face and endure this pain prepares and enables him to reconcile with life. In the beginning of the novel, Hanemann owns a villa, which he rents to other Germans. Once the Red Army arrrives, Hanemann and his German neighbors plan to flee Danzig and head for German shores aboard the ship the Friedrich Bernhoff. The mass exodus of Germans from the city is described in great detail: The objects packed are the most necessary, the clothes are worn in many layers, and the mood is unsentimental and hurried. Despite fearing the Russians, Hanemann finds himself caught by painful and paralyzing moments of hesitation and eventually returns to town in the general chaos—a risky venture—unable to make the final decision to leave. Back again in his home, fast and drastic changes ensue. Virtually overnight, Hanemann no longer shares his house with other Germans, but rather with Poles. A newly arrived Polish family from eastern Poland even intends to assume Hanemann's own apartment in the house. Just before they can enter it, though, two Polish soldiers, intent on looting, begin a fight with Hanemann over his valuables, some of which they maliciously destroy. Outraged at this act of violence, his new Polish neighbor interferes to protect him, even though he had desired Hanemann's apartment himself. Instead, he and his family move into an apartment that was vacated one floor down. Chwin presents this first gesture of reconciliation gracefully, as he depicts Polish-German interaction positively. Human beings find the ability to actually understand and accept each other's situation despite incredible cruelties endured during the war. At the same time, everyone involved is losing or about to lose continuity in their lives and is likely to confront unforeseeable and undeserved sorrow.

21

English quotes are from the English translation of Hanemann, Death in Danzig, abbreviated as DiD.

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Chwin sees the actual possibilities for reconciliation much less optimistically when he claims in an essay: "The true foundation for reconciliation between enemy peoples is, as a rule, death—death of a generation that is passing away, death of the victims and the witnesses. The real master of reconciliation is time" (Chwin, "Geheimnis"). 22 Contrasting this statement to the fictitious text, it may be assumed that Chwin is interested in contributing to processes of reconciliation by trying to apply a conciliatory paradigm, while realizing that the more idealistic solution may not be so readily achievable in real life. Instead, he offers a more inspirational suggestion, a more encouraging vision in fiction. Due to his reconciliatory personality, Hanemann is able to connect to the neighborhood Poles by teaching German language and culture to their children. In addition, he saves the life of Hanka, a young woman from an undefined eastern territory who tries to commit suicide because of atrocities done to her. Quite amazingly, he also teaches sign language to Adam, a deaf foundling who is also from the East. Both Hanka and Adam live with the Polish family. The message to the reader is that they all can co-exist and can even be of help to each other if only they find a way to accept and respect themselves—and each other. Hanemann's individual story, connected with the small and, multiethnically speaking, exemplary group of the new population of the city, is one part of the novel. An almost more impressive focus is placed on the beauty and the aesthetic richness of the objects Chwin describes so masterly and artfully. With great detail he connects artistic expressions with objects of daily use, as when introducing the pale water lilies painted on cups, or the flora and plant-like motives engraved in silver spoons and other such objects. The level of importance the author attaches to the aesthetic of everyday life is exemplified in the lengthy and sentimental reflective memory from the perspective of a young child asking: What was on the mug in which Grandmother served us her freshly pressed apple juice? A rose leaf? A shepherdess cradling a lamb? What were the sugar cubes in when we stole them from the China cabinet? And the tea boxes? Did they have a Turkish minaret on a blue background and a note about the Dardanelles? Or was it an Indian elephant with a funny-scary, raspberry-colored trunk? (DiD 150)

The aestheticization of the objects symbolizing the old Danzig and one specific style of living is sensual and delicate and has a touch of sentimentality. Because of the continuity it offers, it adopts an almost paradoxical but highly irresistible power of stability. Things that had to be left behind are fully accepted, taken over, and continue to be used, indicating 22

"Das wahre Fundament fur die Versöhnung zwischen verfeindeten Völkern ist in der Regel der Tod—der Tod einer abtretenden Generation, der Tod der Opfer und der Zeugen. Der wahre Baumeister der Versöhnung ist die Zeit. [. . . ] "

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that beauty is simply passing from German to Polish hands. It is the depiction of beautiful things in everyday life that makes the cruelty and horror of war so much more deeply upsetting. The description of flawless and fragile beauty morally resonates more powerfully than any historically motivated polemical accusations ever could. 23 Ultimately, the author's tribute goes to the city of Danzig, and to its very few old and its many new inhabitants, exemplified by those living in Lessingstrasse. As Danzig turns into Gdansk, Lessingstrasse becomes Ulica Grottgera, and the incoming Poles acquire and use the objects left by the departed Germans. All these factors serve as alienated indicators towards a more hopeful, even peaceful future. The most important gesture of reconciliation that Chwin offers is the survival of the city of Danzig and of its inhabitants. He shows the continuity of the city, since post-Yalta Gdansk survives the horrors of World War II and is then able to accommodate a new conglomerate of multi-ethnic groups—mainly coming in from Eastern European lands. In the middle of this transformation stands Hanemann, sharing his knowledge as a connective link to the German culture of Danzig and submitting "to the play of images from the past, now purged of everything that was painful" (DiD 96). Nothing stands between him and "the things of the world," even when he takes a sudden interest in the beauty of objects in his environment—the same objects he had found "senseless" in the past (DiD 97). Chwin's novel aims not to reanimate German-Polish resentment, but to present a possibility for confronting and solving some of the problems of historically unavoidable and emotionally complex situations. Nevertheless, Chwin does not admit to a harmonious ending. At the end, Hanemann, Hanka, and Adam, lumped together by the events of history, with their further existence in Gdansk threatened under the new communist administration, form a small reconciled ethnic group and leave the city as a precautionary step to be safer elsewhere. For fear of being observed, as the suppressive mechanisms of the authoritarian system have entered everyday life, they leave the house individually. The narrator (who is the son of Hanemann's Polish neighbors) watches them approach the train station from a distance—and at this point of departure, his own childhood comes to an

23

This state of affairs is tangentially reflected in the stoicism of the inhabitants of Danzig, old and new, who are struggling to survive in the middle of the general chaos. The horrors and frustrations are almost unimaginable, but there are no pronounced (and otherwise futile) complaints—and the historical circumstances are accepted to a point where they are not even disputed or questioned. This total lack of lamentation reaches a high point after the departure of the Friedrich Bernhoff, when a father, as the ultimate act of mercy, pushes his whole family one by one into the sea, as he considers this act to be the only opportunity for their possible survival from deadly fire on the torpedoed and burning ship (DiD 104-5).

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end. Ultimately, all the novel's protagonists' momentum of survival is reflected in the city's own survival: [. . .] a small flock of pigeons flew over the High Gate, and when we shaded our eyes and focused on the far horizon, pierced by the spires of the Katharinenkirche [. . .] we could make out a strip of sea past the dark haze that stretched from the sandbars of the Frische Nehrung to the cliffs at Adlershorst, and we knew for certain that the city would stand forever. (DiD 31)

Rich in imaginative details, Chwin's language is always of breathtaking beauty. The deeper appeal, however, lies in the humanity of the people and the enduring beauty of things they use. Just as Chwin engagingly presents positive human behavior under disastrous circumstances, so, too, does the author Pawel Huelle. In many of Huelle's texts, the protagonists enjoy relative happiness, demonstrating that there is quality to their lives independent of history's tribulations. Huelle—whose father is originally from Lwow (Lemberg)—was born in Gdansk in 1957, and debuted as an author with the novel Weiser Daividek. In this text, Huelle presents his hometown Gdansk as deeply harmed by the war and connects fictitious events with historical roots in the few central personae. The time spans from the end of World War II to the beginning of Solidarnosc.2A In the narration volume Pierws^a milosc i inne opomadania, Gdansk and its history again play a central role. 25 "That has a real and a symbolic meaning," says the author: [. . .] the fate of millions of Poles, who lost their homes in the East, was similar to that of millions of Germans who lost their homes and homelands ["kleine Heimat") here in the North and the West [of Poland]. That is the reality. On a symbolic level, Gdansk is of importance to me because its history contains the whole tragedy of World War II. (qtd. in Rausch)26

Consequently, Huelle's narrations are memories, commemorations of Danzig and its Pomeranian and Kashubian hinterlands. 27 With remarkably refreshing humorous undertones, the narrations disclose the fate of the individual in the large maelstrom of history: The present and the past are

24 25 26

27

Solidarnosis emergence is indicated, but it does not play a pivotal role in the text (see nl). As previously noted, I used the German translation, Silberregen: Danger Erzählungen, in my research. English translations from the German are my own. "[. . .] das Schicksal von Millionen Polen, die ihre Heimat im Osten verloren haben, ähnlich wie das von Millionen von Deutschen, die ihre kleine Heimat hier im Norden und im Westen verloren haben. Das ist die Realität. Auf symbolischer Ebene ist Gdansk für mich von Bedeutung, weil seine Geschichte die ganze Tragödie des zweiten Weltkriegs beinhaltet." Historically speaking, Pomerania was part of West Prussia, while the Kaschubei is a region outside Gdansk, made famous by Günter Grass's trilogy Die Blechtrommel (1957), Kat% und Maus (1961) and Hundejahre (1963).

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always connected. Thus, a seemingly lost world reemerges and its transitoriness and fleeting nature is, at least temporarily, invisible. The first narration, "Erste Liebe," serves, consciously or not, as the author's response to the seemingly dichotomous relationship between German culture and German atrocities. The short narration leads to Pelonker Weg/Ulica Polanki, to the house of Albert Forster, the former German governor of Danzig-West Prussia—installed by the National Socialists in 1939 and beheaded by the Poles after World War II. The last text of the volume presents another inhabitant of the same road, Arthur Schopenhauer, who, at the end of the narration, "had run up this hill, from which one could see the bay and the ships and get the feeling of former centuries in the cracks of the monastery walls" (266).28 It seems that the cultural and philosophical aspects of German traces in Gdansk may well be able to offer a view of continuity. In addition, the narrative presents a bridge to post-communist days by mild but persistent critical commentary directed toward former president Lech Walesa and his successor in office, Aleksander Kwasniewski. 29 In this typical way of connecting the past and the present Gdansk in one single narration, Huelle sees one ideal possibility to establish a "new" post-1989 identity for himself and for the city (Huelle and Grass 549-50). In the narration "Silberregen," Huelle attempts a fictional healing for the ruptures of the past by reconciling in the present a diverse group whose members each share in the postwar history of loss and anguish. Here, the lonely and widowed puppet performer Anusewicz dreams of two persons, a young girl and a pastor, whom he knew in his youth and who have been missing since the German and Soviet occupations. One unusual event in this dream is realized when an older man, a former German citizen of Danzig, arrives from Germany to search for a treasure of old coins hidden at the end of the war. The treasure is found with Anusewicz's help, and, rich in symbolism, is lost again in the port of Gdansk. Yet the German visitor offers no complaint. Instead, in the company of Anusewicz and the latter's brother-in-law, he rejoices in a spontaneous fraternization feast, animated by vodka and the specific hilarity of German hiking songs. For a short period of time, the three 28

29

"der [. . .] auf diesen Hügel gelaufen war, von dem man aus damals die Bucht und die Schiffe sehen und in den Rissen der Klostermauern die früheren Jahrhunderte ahnen konnte." The text is tided "Ulica Polanki" in Silbenregen: Dawgger Erzählungen 223-69. To cite an example of the murkiness of historical knowledge: The exact date of Alfred Forster's execution is unclear. In the German version of Hammann, Chwin mentions the year 1947 (Tod in Danzig 280), while Urban quotes 1952 (Der Verlust 179). Lech Walesa is a resident of Gdansk; Aleksander Kwasniewski was a student at the University of Gdansk. As for connecting history to modernity, see also Huelle, Mercedes-Ben% % listotv do Hrabala [Mercedes Ben% Aus den Briefen an Hrabal\.

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men's biographies interweave. Their narratives reflect the similarity of experiences of loss in this very wounded part of Central Europe. Four decades after undergoing displacement and forced relocation, and after years of ideological indoctrination, the three are able to enjoy an amicable encounter, even if only for a limited time. Historically speaking, the participants are aligned in a politically correct manner that shows a gesture of harmonization: Anusewicz originates from former Eastern Poland (part of today's Belorussia), his brother-in-law is Kashubian, and the mildmannered former Danzig citizen comes from Germany. It is up to the reader to accept this scene and environment as a true attempt at PolishGerman reconciliation. For Huelle, literature's most important characteristic is its autonomy. He does not want to see it lose its narrative and imaginative power. By no means should literature, in Huelle's view, be displaced by (the boom of) the entertainment industry, nor should literature seek a compromise with the audio-visual competition of the media. Consequently, Huelle is not ready to accept the literary limitations of the times he lives in. Instead, he challenges the modes of his writing. He often places reality behind a screen of the unreal and dreamlike, thus creating more space for his poetic and playful imagination. In "Silberregen," the puppeteer Anusewicz undergoes this change from the real to the unreal, and vice versa, when his story begins and ends with a dream. Anusewicz's visions indicate gestures of reconciliation. Reality, in turn, enables him to experience them. Gdansk and its history of European turbulences offer catalystic opportunities when the past connects to the present, and both indicate a future rich in promise. To find his place as an author, Huelle draws continuously from the multi-ethnic history of Danzig—a place which he finds equally difficult and important to locate after living more than thirty years under a centralist communist system (Huelle and Grass 554-58). In contrast to multi-ethnic Gdansk, a mysterious and peaceful image of Poland's southwestern countryside is given in Olga Tokarczuk's novel Dom d^ienny, dom nocny.V) The author reveals stories of the past and the present of the Glatzer Land, a small region in Poland, close to the Czech border. 31 It is located in the vicinity of Wroclaw (Breslau) and Walbrzych (Waldenburg), both towns of considerable migrations. Tokarczuk's parents were displaced from Galicia, and the author was born near the western Polish town of Zielona Gora (Grünberg) in 1962. The novel is a narration of the difficulties of finding and establishing a new homeland 30 31

Quotes are from the English translation of the novel, House of Day, House of Night, abbreviated as HDN. Historically speaking, ownership of the Glatzer Land was long contested by Poland and Bohemia. It became part of Poland after World War II.

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and getting acquainted with its characteristics. The pain she experiences is only vaguely connected to her family's flight and escape, but is very distinctly felt in the long and difficult process of finding and taking possession of a new Heimat. An essential part of this painful process of identification is connected to the attempt of establishing roots through the exploration of the region's history. Although Tokarczuk's text is anchored in the present, it scrutinizes the past, thus turning to other times and locations. Dom c^ienny, dorn nocny unfolds from house to village and eventually develops into a region with manifold stories of its individual inhabitants and their secrets, who all find themselves between day and night, between consciousness and dream, even between life and death. The author changes the perspective frequently by allowing her narrative to take place between dream and reality, as she sees life in two dimensions of time, one being linear and progressive on the historical level, the other circular and mythical as "the time of the body, of myth and of dreams" (Tokarczuk, "Landkarte"). 32 She enriches her fables through the creation of real and dreamlike worlds. In fact, the author, who is a trained psychologist, considers the lack of dreams as something disquieting. That concept may have motivated her to establish a chain of dream narrations as a connective element for the manifold stories in the novel in which people communicate all over the word to tell each other their dreams through the internet. Marta, one of the text's main narrators, says at one point: "You don't have to leave home to know the world [. . .]" (HDN 42). In the novel, the world enters the home through dreams, while the real homeland attracts the author through its untouched and unspoiled soil that gives it an air of mystery, comparable to being "on an island of the ocean of history" (Tokarczuk, "Landkarte"). 33 It seems that Olga Tokarczuk tries to overcome her longing for the lost homeland by finding a microcosmic world in the kleine Heimat that provides her with the vision that "life can be everywhere" (Tokarczuk, "Landkarte"). 34 The author's accounts of expulsion and arrival to the new homeland are presented in a very concise and emotionally detached manner, free of sentimentality, especially when it comes to the presence of Germans. Seeking truth in Silesia includes searching for German traces. "The open and unideological contemplation of the history of Silesia and the German-Polish relations has become something normal for my generation" says Tokarczuk (my emphasis). "We accept the German cultural heritage and 32 33 34

"die Zeit des Körpers, des Mythos und des Traums" "auf einer Insel auf dem Ozean der Geschichte" "das Leben kann überall sein"

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the German traditions of Silesia, and we integrate them into our view of history. This negative and demonic relationship with the Germans that I have known since my childhood is gone" (Tokarcuk, "Landkarte"). 35 Her further writing supports her claim. In one of the multiple stories in the novel, Germans start traveling to Central Europe in order to see their former homelands again. One of them is the elderly and mildmannered Hans Dieter, one of the most outstanding protagonists of German descent. Hans Dieter climbs a mountain to be able to see his childhood village, a bucolic, idyllic place—with abundant greeneries, farmers carrying water buckets, and people singing—far removed from a Western European lifestyle. Once the foreign visitor arrives at the top of the mountain, he discovers that he is close to the Polish-Czech border. Sitting literally on the border, the mentally strained and physically exhausted Hans Dieter suffers a heart attack and dies, quite peacefully. Alternately, Czech and Polish border patrol push first his leg to the other side, then his entire body, as nobody wants to deal with the bureaucratic complications of dying in two nations. The transgressionist-style handling of the dead body calls to mind a Schweijk-like charade ä la Jaroslav Hashek. From an historical point of view, this tragic little episode, told in a caring and, at the same time, matter-of-fact style, also symbolizes and reflects the post World War I and II redrawings of borders and land shuffles in Central and Eastern Europe, when millions of people were politically uninvolved in the decisions made by a few politicians that would fundamentally and lastingly transform their lives. Another excellent narrative example showing emotional distance as well as rendering historical information through a personified account, is the story of the resettlement of the eastern Polish Bobol family, who is about to move into the house of a German family of women and children (the men have been lost in the war). They are bound to live together and manage to interact without major acts of hostility as they need each other—the Germans are namely in charge of the work in the fields they had once owned while they wait for their order to leave. The Poles seem fortunate to have found a place to resettle, celebrating their arrival by singing and dancing: It w a s better n o t to think a b o u t the future, b e c a u s e it w a s u n c e r t a i n ; better to sing duets, d a n c e , m a k e w i l d p a s s i o n a t e love i n the b u s h e s , a n d n o t l o o k those leftover G e r m a n s in the face, b e c a u s e it w a s all their f a u l t — t h e y w e r e t h e o n e s w h o

35

"Die offene, unideologische Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte Schlesiens und der deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen ist für meine Generation normal geworden. Das deutsche Kulturerbe, die deutschen Traditionen Schlesiens werden von uns akzeptiert und in unser Geschichtsbild integriert. Dieses dämonische, negative Verhältnis zu den Deutschen, das ich aus meiner Kindheit noch kenne, ist verschwunden."

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had sparked off the w a r and it was their fault the world had ended. [. . .] it wasn't the Poles' fault they had ended up here, it hadn't been their idea to leave their extensive fields in the east and spend two months wandering about. ( H D N 23637)

Told from the Polish perspective, this quote reflects the attitude that was held by quite a number of Poles until the end of censorship in 1989. Until then, the issue of forced expulsions of the Polish, and to a lesser degree, of the German population, was not taught, and little knowledge was available.36 The Nazi terror and the mass killings during 1939-45 resulted in an extremely negative German stereotype. In the postcommunist world, Olga Tokarczuk reviews history with her somewhat "humorous, distanced treatment with this [German] issue" that enabled her and her generation "to free [themselves] from the demons of the past." Tokarczuk adds that she wants to live "free from lies and falsification of history in Silesia" ("Landkarte").37 This comment may induce the reader to assume that young Polish literature has taken a large step towards exploring historical "truth," or at least attempting to find historical "correctness," with the goal of putting an end to thinking in damaging cliches. To achieve this goal, Olga Tokarczuk prefers to use humor, dreams, and the creation of myths. The strong and irresistible attachment to the historically unstable border region, which she attempted to make her home, indicates also an almost magnetic attraction to its diverse nature: "There are regions that are doomed to be a permanent borderland between different cultures, even civilizations, and whose inhabitants stay close and distant to each other. [. . .] It is not we who own the land, the land owns us" (Tokarczuk qtd. in Peter).38 Olga Tokarczuk's claim to be a

36

37

38

For further details see Michnik; and Dmitrow, "Bedeutung" 55. The lack of knowledge was briefly interrupted in 1965 when Polish bishops wrote a letter to the German government acknowledging that the displacement of the German population was a tragedy, and, therefore, an expression of regret was in order (Dimitrow, "Bedeutung" 58; Michnik). The absence of knowledge may have been mutual. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the translator of the English version of Olga Tokarczuk's Dom d^ienny, dom nocny, esteemed it necessary to add to the book this introductory note: "The book is set in south-west Poland, in the region known as Silesia. This was part of the German Reich until 1945, when at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences the Allies agreed to move the borders of Poland westwards. Many Polish citizens were transported from the land lost to the east (annexed by the USSR) and resetded in formerly German territory to the west, where they were given the homes and property of evacuated Germans" (HDN, translator's note, introductory page). [. . .] dass diese Art von humorvollem, distanziertem Umgang mit diesem Thema uns von den Dämonen der Vergangenheit befreien kann. Ich persönlich möchte frei von Lügen und historischen Verfälschungen in Schlesien leben." "Es gibt Regionen [. . .] die zum Dasein als ewiges Grenzland zwischen unterschiedlichen Kulturen, ja Zivilisationen verdammt sind und deren Bewohner zu beiden Seiten sich sehr fern und nah zugleich sind. [. . .] Nicht wir besitzen das Land, das Land besitzt uns."

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member of the "generation without history" ("Olga Tokarczuk") 39 finds one expression when she explores the past in order to acquaint herself with and to emotionally settle in the region in which she lives. Connecting Polish and German history as well as tying the past to the present in the context of flight, expulsion, and resetdements is not exactly a preferred subject for German authors writing about their former German/Polish environments. Earlier texts by Siegfried Lenz or Arno Surminksi, who both originate from Eastern Prussia, and whose focus lies primarily on the glorification of idyllic lost homelands (Lenz), or the suffering and the feeling of loss of the German expellees (Surminski), offer no gestures of reconciliation. 40 Even Günter Grass's comments on the Danzig Trilogy reveal him as a writer motivated by the feeling of personal loss. He "was able to write about Danzig," Grass says, because "he had lost it as 'Heimat' forever." 41 In the more recent threegenerational novel Im Krebsgang (2002), he presents a new outlook on history, one where three generations view the past from their individual perspective of deeply felt loss (the mother), of relative indifference (her son), and of inflammatory deed and murderous action (her grandson). Grass suggests that loss that is not "worked through" leads us into more chaos—summarized so shrewdly by the last words of the novel, "It doesn't end. Never will it end." 42 Still, any specific indication of reconciliation is missing in this text. It is his Danzig Trilogy—which depicts German-Polish life in Danzig/Gdansk before, during and after the Second World War from the perspective of a former Kashubian-German citizen of Danzig—that can be read as the author's rapprochement with Poland. The strongest attempt in German literature to approach Polish neighbors comes in texts written by the younger generation of German authors, those who may be more "unreserved" (unbefangen) with the darker aspects of Polish-German history of the twentieth century. 43 In texts by Tanja Dückers and Olaf Müller—both born in the 1960s—Germans show genuine and very personal interest in their Polish neighbors, 44 placing these texts tangentially in the context of the younger post-1989 Polish literature.

39 40 41 42 43 44

"geschichtslose Generation" Typical texts are So zärtlich war Suleyken: Masurische Geschichten (1955) by Siegfried Lenz and Jokehnen oder Wie lange fährt man von Ostpreussen nach Deutschland? (1974) by Arno Surminski. About the "feeling of loss," see Huelle and Grass 560. Quoted after the English translation by Krishna Winston (Crabwalk 234). The term "unreserved" has its own ambivalence (see Dückers "Schrecken"). Texts are Himmelskörper (2003) by Tanja Dückers; Schlesisches Wetter (2003) by Olaf Müller; also Die Reise nach Zamosch (2003) by Michael Zeller (born 1944).

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The inclusive character of the literature written by younger authors is one step towards reconciliation. On the other hand, most scientific methods of exploring and analyzing history try to avoid distorted historical views. Accounts and comments of the origins of flight and escape, expulsion and resettlement, forced or voluntary, should, ideally, attempt to exclude asymmetries. 45 At least as importantly, they should be kept alive so that future generations have the information they need to be able to evaluate their social and historical roots. Recent West European models of memory show us that the past does not just exist per se as a "tradition." Instead, it requires continuous and continued analysis through a variety of methods, as it is (also) a construction of later generations. 46 The questions remain: What do we remember about our past, and how do we remember it? Through what kind of media and which institutions? Ideology and its inherent blocking of the past through the creation of "blind spots" in historical accounts tends to prevent the kind of "communicative memory" that is such an important part of contemporary Western memory discourse. The values of a society are "evident" "in what it hands down to posterity" writes Jan Assmann (16).47 Stefan Chwin reports that until 1989 in his society, memory and history were separated into two unequal spheres: one that could be tangentially talked about—the flight/expulsion of the Germans from the Polish western territories—and a second one that could not ever be mentioned—the East-West migration transfer (or "repatriation") of Poles, as it was forced upon them within their own country ("Echo" 6). In the context of politically motivated silencing of inconvenient facts, the texts written by the post-1989 authors are not just a new literary phenomenon; they also form a new awareness of complex historical and intercultural contexts. Through their texts, these authors also oppose the neglect of history due to ideologically driven flights from reality. As a group, these "post-modern regionalists" might have begun the process of initiating a "transgenerational memory" ("transgenerationelles Gedächtnis") as thematized by Aleida Assmann (see "Wozu" 112). Chwin, Huelle, and Tokarczuk write literary accounts of a period and a region in Central Europe that has left millions of humans for decades in a deeply disturbing state of political ambiguity. All three authors succeed in presenting a nonpolemical literary image of senseless destruction and painful struggles to survive the damage caused by greed and annihilation. 45

46 47

It should be pointed out that historians in Poland and Germany have recently started to publish collaborative bilingual accounts of German-Polish and Polish-German displacements and flights using Polish archives that were not accessible until 1989 (see Borodziej and Lemberg; Borodziej and Ziemer). See also Aleida Assmann in this volume. "sichtbar"; "in ihrer kulturellen Überlieferung"

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The memory of their texts is culturally rich and generous in gestures of reconciliation. All these accomplishments are achieved by this younger generation of Polish authors who consciously decide to let the ideology of the past rest, and who view history from a new perspective that avoids resentful and damaging cliches. The nonpolemical and anti-revisionist view offered in Polish literature at the turn of twenty-first century is especially relevant to cooperative efforts in a European context. As Europe reviews its fundamental structures to be able to remain a more and not less united continent, it faces crises as a political and cultural institution. Its precarious status quo seems complicated recently by potentially explosive and divisive issues in Germany and in Poland (surrounding, for instance, the Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen [Center against Expulsions] and threats by the Preussische Treuhand [Prussian Claims Society] as well as the Pomernictm Polskie [Polish Claims Society]). 48 Part of the process of unifying Europe will require that these old wounds be healed through improved communication and cultural exchange between Polish and German civil societies. In fact, closer contact between Poles and Germans, facilitated by a willingness to acquire more knowledge about each other—and celebrated throughout the "Polish-German Year" 2005-6—may lead away from daily politics and focus instead on the long-term vision of a unified Europe, while providing an understanding of the point of view of the Other as well as varying concepts of (injustice and tolerance. Fritz Stem, who was only ten years old when his family was forced to leave Wroclaw asserts that "acknowledging that an injustice occurred [. . .] is the prerequisite for reconciliation" (Stern 287). 49 Honoring the past by understanding and conserving it, certainly has a strong momentum, but more mutual tolerance, genuine interest, and generous respect for each other's historical situation is needed to inspire a feeling of togetherness between nations. One such opportunity is offered by Viadrina president Gesine Schwan, who suggests "The Poles are superior to us [Germans]" 50 (so the title of her essay) in political and cultural perspectives. She praises the energy and optimism she sees in Poland, but misses in Germany, and encourages Germans to overcome asymmetries of interest and knowledge (32-34). Schwan offers constructive thoughts, to which Adam Michnik responds by expressing his belief that the PolishGerman relations are of "[. . .] key importance for stabilization and peace in the center of Europe." Michnik suggests that Germans and Poles 48 49 50

For more details on this issue, see Pawel Lutomski in this volume. "Die Anerkennung, daß Unrecht geschehen ist [. . .] ist die Vorbedingung für Versöhnung." "Die Polen sind uns überlegen"

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should "nurture them together" (31).51 Certainly, the literature written in the context of Polish-German reconciliation can be seen as an important step forward on the road to a hopeful, even successful Europe.

Works Cited Assmann, Aleida. "Wozu 'nationales Gedenken?" Kobylinska and Lawaty. 110-19. Assmann, Jan. "Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität." }iultur und Gedächtnis. Ed. Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1988. 9-19. Bade, Klaus, and Jochen Oltmer. Normalfall Migration. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2004. Bolecka, Anna. Bialy Kamien. Warszawa: Szpak, 1994. —. Der weisse Stein. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1998. Borodziej, Wlodzimierz. "Flucht—Vertreibung-Zwangsaussiedlung." Lawaty and Orlowski. 88-95. —, and Hans Lemberg, eds. Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neisse: 1945-1950. Dokumente aus polnischen Archiven. 4 vols. Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 20002003. —, and Klaus Ziemer, eds. Deutsch-polnische Beziehungen: 1939-1945-1949. Osnabrück: fibre, 2000. Borussia. 3 June 2006 . Chwin, Stefan. Death in Dan^ig. Trans. Philip Boehm. Orlando: Harcourt, 2004. —. "Das Echo der Vergangenheit." ta% 8 April 2005: 6. —. "Das Geheimnis der Vertreibung. Ein polnischer Schriftsteller über Heimatverlust und die Logik der 'ethischen Säuberung.'" Die Welt.de 21 Aug. 1999. 18 May 2006 . —. Hanemann. Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Marabut, 1995. —. Stätten des Erinnerns: Gedächnisbilder aus Mitteleuropa. Dresdner Poetikvorlesung. Trans. Sylvia Miodona, Alfred Sproede, and Bogumila Partyk-Hirschberger. Dresden: Thelem, 2005. —. "Region als geographische Tatsache und als Werk der Einbildungskraft." Gössmann and Roth. 417-22. —. Tod in Dan^ig. Trans. Renate Schmidgall. 2nd ed. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuchverlag, 2001. Dmitrow, Edmond. "Die Bedeutung der Erinnerung für den polnisch-deutschen Dialog." Kobylinska and Lawaty. 53-65. —. "Flucht—Vertreibung—Zwangsaussiedlung." Kobylinska, Lawaty, and Stephan. 420-27. Dückers, Tanja. Himmelskörper. Berlin: Aufbau, 2003. —. "Der Schrecken nimmt nicht ab, sondern wächst." Lyrikwelt. Spring 2002. 30 May 2006. . 51

"[. . .] ein Schüssel zur Stabilisierung und zum Frieden im Herzen Europas. Pflegen wir sie gemeinsam."

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"Duftende Schürze der Grossmutter. Über die polnische Prosa der kleinen Heimaten." Neue Zürcher Zeitung 14 Oct. 2000: Literatur und Kunst 84. Gössmann, Wilhelm, and Klaus-Hinrich Roth, eds. Uterarisches Schreiben aus regionaler Erfahrung. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996. Grass, Günter. Die Blechtrommel. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1959. —. Crabwalk. Trans. Krishna Winston. Orlando: Harcourt, 2002. —. üundejahre. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1963. —. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. —. Kat^undMaus. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1961. Huelle, Pawel. Mercedes-Ben£· Aus den Briefen an Hrabal. Trans. Renate Schmidgall. München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 2001. —. Mercedes-Ben£· ζ listow do Hrabala. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2001. —. Pierws^a milosc i inne opowiadania. London: Puls Publications, 1996. —. Silberregen: Dan^iger Erzählungen. Trans. Renate Schmidgall. Berlin: Rowohlt, 2000. —. Weiser Dawidek. Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1987. —. Weiser Daividek. Trans. Renate Schmidgall. Frankfurt/M: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1990. —. Who Was David Weiser? Τrans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. London: Bloomsbury, 1991. —, and Günter Grass. "Danzig/Gdansk." Conversation. Kobylinska, Lawaty, and Stephan. 547-61. Kobylinska, Ewa, and Andreas Lawaty, eds. Erinnern, vergessen, verdrängen: Polnische und deutsche Erfahrungen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998. —, Andreas Lawaty, and Rüdiger Stephan, eds. Deutsche und Polen: 100 Schlüsselbegriffe. München: Piper, 1992. Komendant, Tadeusz. "Local Patriotism." lnstytut Ksia^ki n. d. 18 May 2006 chttp://www.bookinstitute.pl/index.php?id=18&L=l&user_oliteraturze_pil[sh owUid] =25&no_cache=l >. Kurcz, Zbigniew. "Aussiedlungen und Umsiedlungen in den östlichen und westlichen Grenzgebieten Polens." Bevölkerungstransfer und Sjstemivandel: Ostmitteleuropäische Grenzen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Ed. Helga Schultz. Berlin: Arno Spitz, 1998. 39-54. Lawaty, Andreas, and Hubert Orlowski, eds. Deutsche und Polen: Geschichte, Kultur, Politik. München: Beck, 2003. Lenz, Siegfried. So zärtlich war Sutyken: Masurische Geschichten. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1955. Liskowacki, Artur Daniel. Eine kleine. Szcecin: Wydawnictwo 13 Muz, 2000. —. Sonate für S. München: Knaus, 2003. Luczak, Czeslaw. "Verhaltensweisen Deutscher gegenüber Polen im Reichsgau Wartheland (1939-1945)." Preussens Osten—Polens Westen: Das Zerbrechen einer Nachbarschaft. Ed. Helga Schultz. Berlin: Arno Spitz, 2001. 217-26. Mehnert, Elke, ed. Landschaften der Erinnerung: Flucht und Vertreibung aus deutscher, polnischer und tschechischer Sicht. Studien zur Reiseliteratur- und Imagologieforschung 5. Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2001. —. "Vertriebene versus Umsiedler—der ostdeutsche Blick auf ein Kapitel Nachkriegsgeschichte." Mehnert. 133-57.

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Michnik, Adam. "Liebe Gesine Schwan, das trennt uns noch." Cicero (May 2004): 3132. Müller, Olaf. Schlesisches Wetter. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2003. Münz, Rainer. "Phasen und Formen der europäischen Migration." Migration und Flucht: Aufgaben und Strategien für Deutschland, Europa, und die internationale Gemeinschaft. Ed. Steffen Angenendt. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1997. 34-47. Naimark, Norman. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. "Olga Tokarczuk." Botschaft der Republik Polen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, n. d. 18 May 2006 . Orlowski, Hubert. "Adantis des Nordens oder vom Gesamtkunstwerk Borussia. Kulturregionale Aktivitäten im polnischen Ostpreussen." Gössmann and Roth. 348-61. —. "Tabuisierte Bereiche im deutsch-polnischen Gedächtnisraum. Zur literarischen Aufarbeitung von Flucht, Zwangsaussiedlung und Vertreibung nach 1945." Mehnert. 82-113. —. "Der Topos der verlorenen Heimat.'" Kobylinska, Lawaty, and Stephan. 187-94. Pazniewski, Wlodzimierz. Krotkie dni. Warszawa: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1983. Peter, Stefanie. "Grenzlandliteratur: Der Stoff liegt auf der Straße." fluter.de. Magazin der Bundes^entrale für politische Bildung. 29 Sept. 2002. 18 May 2006. . Raabe, Stephan Georg. "Die Solidarnosc-Bewegung im Wandel der Zeiten." KonradAdenauer-Stiftung. 15 Aug. 2005. 18 May 2006. . Rausch, Mechthild. "Pawell Huelle: Silberregen." Bayerischer Rundfunk. 15 Oct. 2000. 18 May 2006 . Schwan, Gesine. "Die Polen sind uns überlegen." Cicero (April 2004): 32-34. Schwartz, Michael. "Zwangsheimat Deutschland." Nachkrieg in Deutschland. Ed. Michael Naumann. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition HIS Verlag, 2001. 114-48. Stasiuk, Andrzej. Bialy kruk. Poznan: Biblioteka Czasu Kultury, 1995. —. Dukla. Gladyszow: Czarne, 1997. —. Gallische Geschichten. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2002. —. Jadac do Babadag. Wolowiec: Czarne, 2004. —. Opowiesä Galiyjskie. Krakow: Znak, 1995. —. Unterwegs nach Babadag. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2005. —. Der weisse Rabe. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1998. —. Die Welt hinter Dukla. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 2000. Stern, Fritz. "Verlorene Heimat." Verspielte Größe: Essays ψΓ deutschen Geschichte. München: Beck, 1996. 283-96. Surminski, Arno. Jokehnen oder Wie lange fährt man von Ostpreussen nach Deutschland? Stuttgart: Gebühr, 1974. Szaruga, Leszek. Eiszeit, Steinzeit. 1997. Hamburg: Rospo, 1999. Tokarczuk, Olga. Dom d^ienny, dorn nocny. Walbrzych: Wydawnictwo Ruta, 1998.

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—. House of Day, House of Night. Trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. London: Granta Publications, 2002. —. "Landkarte realer und erträumter Welten." Interview with Dorota DanielewiczKerski. Freitag. 12 Oct. 2001. Updated 30 May 2006. 30 May 2006. . —. Taghaus, Nachthaus. Trans. Esther Kinsky. München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 2004. Traba, Robert. "Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Landschaft: Der Soldatenfriedhof in Drweck (Dröbnitz)." Kobylinska and Lawaty. 317-30. —. "Regionalismen. Zwischen Heimat und einem Europa der Regionen." Lawaty and Orlowski. 455-65. Urban, Thomas. Oer Verlust. Die Vertreibung der Deutschen und Polen im 20. Jahrhundert. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2005. Waniek, Henryk. Finis silesiae. Wroclaw: Widawnictwo Dolnoslaskie, 2003. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. Introduction. Die Flucht. Ober die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Ed. Stefan Aust and Stephan Burgdorff. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2003. 9-14. Zeller, Michael. Die Reise nach Samosch. Cadolzburg [Germany]: Ars vivendi, 2003.

Historical Consciousness and the German Present

HARALD WELZER

The Collateral Damage of Enlightenment: How Grandchildren Understand the History of National Socialist Crimes and Their Grandfathers' Past ι

The impetus for the study published under the title "Opa war kein Na^i" originated in university seminars I conducted for some time on questions of social psychology in the study of perpetrators. The seminars dealt specifically with questions pertaining to the social psychology of mass murder and genocide. Elderly students, so-called senior-citizen students, liked to participate in these seminars and made valuable contributions based on their own knowledge and observations of history. It was interesting that something of a "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" effect occasionally presented itself whenever these speakers began to recall their own experiential history, meaning, when they talked about the Hitler Youth or their involvement in the anti-aircraft auxiliary. Suddenly, their demeanor changed: Their eyes sparkled, and they spoke with emotion. This effect was not limited to the speakers themselves; it could also be seen in the reaction of the younger students: They listened intendy, absorbed in a way that did not match their response to other seminar topics. Based on this observation, I was interested in examining the emotional dimension of historical consciousness, its constitution, and the sources from which it stems. Prevailing studies of historical consciousness strongly neglect the emotional dimension by concentrating primarily on what young people know about history. Yet generally speaking, one can say that historical consciousness derives from varied sources and that history classes provide only one source of historical consciousness. Many additional sources exist that, surprisingly, have been scarcely investigated. Together with Sabine Moller and Karoline Tschuggnall, I considered which of these many

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sources might lend itself to empirical research. Our experiment examined a source of historical consciousness that derives from direct communication about the past: How do German families discuss the National Socialist era? This question initiated our study. We were able to find forty families to participate in conversations, or more precisely, to participate in joint family conversation, in which three generations sat together to discuss the past. Individual interviews with the respective members of the different generations then followed. The design of the examination was simple: The members of the eyewitness generation were asked: "You were eleven (or sixteen) years old in 1933; tell us what you experienced." The members of the successor generations, the children and grandchildren, were asked: "Your grandfather (or your father) was such and such an age in 1933; tell us what he has talked about." Our study results created a certain unease among those in the Federal Republic who concern themselves professionally with teaching, remembering, and commemoration: politicians, educators, journalists, and those who work on memorials, to name a few. The agitation could be traced to a surprising discovery: Although German schoolchildren possess an impressive factual knowledge of National Socialist crimes and the Holocaust, absolutely nothing is known about what use they make of such knowledge. Most importantly, our study revealed a phenomenon that we called cumulative heroization. This means, the stories that are told in families improve from generation to generation. In the grandchildren's generation, Oma and Opa (grandma and grandpa) are seen as thoroughly moral persons of integrity who opposed National Socialism and did all they could in a dangerous time to be of assistance and do good deeds. Our material contains stories that cover the entire spectrum of opposition to the regime—accounts of resistance or resolute vocal criticism, tales of civil courage (to the extent that Opa shot German officers in order to hinder them from committing atrocities), or, rather obligatorily, that grandparents had also once hidden a Jewish prisoner. Remarkable in all this is not that these stories of goodness were told, but that they were created by the grandchildren's generation and cannot be traced back to the way members of the eyewitness generation portray themselves. To the contrary, there are cases in which members of the eyewitness generation mention their crimes in interviews, yet at the end of the narration chain, which passes the stories from one generation to the next, the grandchildren tell "good stories" about these persons. One example illustrating this concerns a family living in the vicinity of Bergen-Belsen. Ninety-year-old Frau Krug (all names of those interviewed

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have been changed) said in an interview that she knew nothing about the concentration camps. However, after the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen camp, former prisoners moved through the village and Frau Krug was obligated by the occupying power to offer them shelter. She narrates her tale in the following manner: Well, the Jews were the worst afterwards. They really harassed us. [. . .] They just sat themselves down and let us wait on them. We had such a [. . .] large hay barn, they slept there at night. [. . .] Yes, I always saw Jews. Later I did it differendy. [. . .] I saw to it that I didn't get any [Russians and Jews]. They were totally repulsive. [. . .] And then I stood on the street in front of the driveway, and when they asked, "Shelter?" "Nope," I said, "already filled up." [. . .] So when Jews or something like that came, then I said: "It's full of Russians, you can join them." "No, no, no." [. . .] And when the Russians came, then I said to them: "There are Jews here," or something like that.1

What is remarkable about this story? When people narrate they believe they know which story will appeal to their listeners. Therefore, this story finds its meaning in relation to the partner in the conversation. In this situation, Frau Krug thinks her story illustrates how she cleverly kept from sheltering undesirable people through deception. She believes she tells this story well in her interview in the late 1990s. The fact that she employs anti-Semitic concepts does not appear problematic to her. The account, which from her perspective is worth telling, comes from the time direcdy following the liberation of the camp. The central element of this narration is a trick, which is how she plays people off against each other and in the process achieves her goal. Her son, Bernd Hofmann in our study, also has a story. It is a tale he heard second-hand from his deceased wife, also mentioned in the interviews. Hofmann's wife told the following account, which Herr Hofmann repeats: One year she [his wife] was at the farm in Belsen. [. . .] They went right by there. [. . .] Oma hid some of them, and they huddled in a wooden crate. [. . .] They came around, they were sticking their noses in everywhere. [. . .] "One of them

1

"Also die Juden waren nachher die Schlimmsten. Also die haben uns richtig schikaniert. [. . .] Die setzten sich hin, die ließen sich bedienen von uns. [. . .] Wir hatten ja so'n [. . .] großes Heufach, da schliefen immer die drin, nachtsüber. [. . .] Also Juden hab' ich immer gesehen. Nachher hab' ich das anders gemacht. [. . .] Ich hab' immer gesehen, dass ich die [Juden und Russen] nicht kriegte. Die war'n ganz widerlich. [. . .] Und dann hab' ich mich immer vor unten an'ner Straße gestellt, vor'n Tor, und wenn se sagten: 'Quartier!' 'Nee' sag' ich, 'schon alles voll!' [. . .] Wenn nun die Juden oder so was kamen, denn sagt' ich: 'Sind alles voll Russen, könnt ihr mit reingehen!' "Nein, nein, nein! [. . .]' Und wenn die Russen kamen, denn [. . .] hab' ich das auch denn irgend so einem gesagt, sind Juden da oder irgend so was."

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must have hid himself here." They would've shot Oma on the spot for sure. [. . .] She put a pot of hot potatoes on top of it so that [. . .] they wouldn't get him.2

The story that Bernd Hoffmann tells takes place apparently at a different time—when the Bergen-Belsen camp still existed—and the person in question is apparently an escaped Jewish prisoner, who is protected here by an old lady risking her life by acting bravely and cleverly to enable the person to elude his capturers. Here too, a story is told that deals with a trick, which is the truly resourceful behavior of this Oma, her involvement, and her presence of mind that help this inmate to escape his persecutors. (Incidentally, whether these stories have any historical core plays no role in our observation. Our concern is finding out which stories interviewees decide to tell and which function they assume in the family.) The story then told by Bernd Hofmann's daughter, Sylvia Hofmann, refers to her own grandmother, Frau Krug: And then she told some story—I found it somehow really interesting—[. . .] that [. . .] our village lay in the path to Bergen-Belsen and [. . .] that at one point she hid somebody who had fled from some kind of transport, and [. . .] actually hid him in some interesting way in some kind of grain box, something with straw or such sticking out. And then, of course, people came and searched for him at our farm, and she stayed cool and said nothing. And that, I think, is a small act that I really give her total credit for.3

Without analyzing this extensively, one can see that Sylvia Hofmann, in a fashion typical for stories told by grandchildren, maintains the essential components of the stories that have been told, yet arranges and systematizes them differently. "Straw" replaces the former "hay barn." The situation of "tricking someone" remains. Yet these narrative elements have been jumbled as if in a kaleidoscope and come together in a completely new story. In the new tale, Silvia Hofmann has, as it were, adopted the grandmother belonging to someone else and has her appear in the form of her own grandmother. In the process, the good story emerges in which her own Oma risked her life in order to save someone. It is interesting 2

3

"Ein Jahr war se in Belsen a u f m Bauernhof. [. . .] Da sind sie direkt vorbei. [. . .] Die Oma hat dann welche versteckt, und dann, in einem Holzkessel hab'n die gesessen, [. . .] sind die rumgekommen, überall reingesteckt. [. . .] H i e r muss sich einer versteckt hab'n.' Dann hätten se die Oma ja sofort erschossen. [. . .] Sie hat einen heißen Topf mit heißen Kartoffeln draufgesetzt, [. . .] dass [. . .] se den nicht gekriegt hab'n." "Und dann hat sie auch noch mal irgend'ne Geschichte erzählt, das fand ich dann irgendwie ganz interessant, [. . .] dass [. . .] unser Dorf dann ja schon auf dieser Strecke nach Bergen-Belsen lag, und [. . .] dass sie dann schon mal irgendwen versteckt hat, der halt geflohen ist von irgend so 'nem Transport, und [. . .] den auch auf ganz interessante Art und Weise in irgend 'ner Getreidekiste irgendwie mit Strohhalm, und so rausgucken, hat die den dann echt versteckt. Und es kamen halt auch Leute und haben den gesucht bei ihr a u f m Hof und sie hat da echt dicht gehalten, und das find' ich ist so ne' kleine Tat, die ich ihr wohl echt total gut anrechne, so."

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that the grandmother herself told a tale that indicated precisely the opposite of a willingness to help, that even communicated at its core that her cleverness lay precisely in denying help. The central element in Sylvia Hofmann's story is also the trick supposedly played by her Oma in order to accomplish this deed. From our perspective, this aspect is essential, since it is difficult to conceive that the process of handing down stories, e.g., communicating the past through conversation from one generation to the next, transpires through content alone. Rather, it appears that the trick functions in each case as a carrier capable of transporting completely different messages. The carrier makes it possible to tell the stories across the generations while reconfiguring them at any one time according to the message preferred from a generational viewpoint. From the viewpoint of today's generation of grandchildren, it is highly desirable from a normative standpoint that the Oma behaved as she did in Sylvia Hofmann's story and not in the manner that Frau Krug herself narrated. This finding, which occurred in two-thirds of our families with varying stories, shows that the grandchildren's generation apparently strives to construct positive stories about their family members because they know so much about the period of National Socialism. A knowledge of the horrors of the past generates the question: "If everything was so terrible, and the life of my family members intersects with this period about which I know so much, what did they actually do?" The question is rather problematic because it relates directly to family loyalty and one's own identity. There can really be only one answer to this question that does justice to both a knowledge of history and the obligation to and need for loyalty to one's own relatives: The story must portray Oma and Opa in such a way that the past casts no shadow on their moral integrity. Accordingly, one's own grandparents always belonged to the side of the others, the good Germans, irrespective of whether they were in the Party, the SS, or in the Gestapo. We observe here a paradoxical effect of education about the past that relates to the previously mentioned relationship between historical knowledge and the use of that knowledge. This paradoxical effect of education, or enlightenment about the past, which I once polemically called the collateral damage of enlightenment, is that what students learn subjectively about the past differs completely from the knowledge educators and history experts intend to impart. This means that in its view of history, the grandchildren's generation acknowledges NS crimes in their entire historical breadth. Yet in the socially intimate circle of the family, no persons appear from the grandchildren's perspective who are identified with National Socialism or who are anti-Semites, let alone perpetrators.

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Despite all successful educational efforts in the last couple of decades, the view of history of today's youth resembles the caricature known from the 1950s, which we believed to have long since overcome: In 1933 the space ship arrives with the Nazis. They get out, seduce the German people, fly away again in 1945, and leave behind a host of dead and a German people embarrassingly moved and somehow vaguely ashamed, yet, as we now know from the new debate on the bombing war and expulsion, occupied with other worries and injuries. For some time we have observed a tendency in German memory culture—with the thematization of expulsion, the air war, and other horrors, like the mass rapes in Berlin—to portray the Germans as victims. I do not wish to judge the legitimacy of this thematization. However, it signals a shift, and this shift—I would venture to say based on our materials—has a lot to do with felt history, as we see also in our conversations in private memory culture. The books by Jörg Friedrich, Günter Grass, or Wibke Bruhns, for example, are so successful and are printed in large numbers precisely because they address the feeling of history that is present in the everyday life of families. A knowledge of history can even be responsible for thinking it is no longer necessary to deal with the past, as seen in the following example. In the Eeven's family conversation, the virtually absurd situation arises that the grandfather, Albert Eeven, demands that his grandson ask critical questions. Toward the end of the family conversation, the member of the eyewitness generation, Albert Eeven, says: "Why don't you ask now: Opa, why did you all go along with everything?—Why didn't you do that?'— Why don't you ask that question?" Thomas Eeven, the grandson, replies: "Oh, Opa!" Albert Eeven's daughter Eva interjects: "Yes, but you all didn't resist because you had been drilled to listen and obey and believe that everything should be orderly. Well, I mean, you just can't compare that with the way kids are raised today." Thomas, the grandson, adds: "Opa, that's the easiest question you can ask, of course. But in the meantime, if you then, um . . . , the answers are so complex, and the stories that you all just told are already so different that you, well—I just can't ask a question like that, because I already know too much about it." 4

4

"Warum fragst du nun nicht: 'Opa, wieso habt ihr das alles mitgemacht? Warum habt ihr das nicht gemacht?' Warum stellst du nicht die Frage?" "Ach, Opa!" "Ja, aber ihr habt euch ja nicht aufgelehnt, weil ihr ja so da drauf auf Gehorsam und gehorchen und so 'alles seine Ordnung haben,' wart ihr ja hingedrillt. Also ich meine, das kannst du ja mit der Erziehung heute gar nicht mehr vergleichen." "Opa, das ist die einfachste Frage, die man stellen kann natürlich. Aber das ist mittlerweile, wenn du dann äh, die Antworten sind ja so vielschichtig und die Geschichten, die ihr jetzt auch erzählt habt, sind ja so verschieden schon, dass man da—so 'ne Frage kann ich gerade nicht stellen, dafür weiß ich auch zu viel darüber schon."

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In this case, the children and grandchildren generation enlighten the grandfather on his own past. This enlightenment resembles an absolution, for from the daughter's viewpoint, the drilling experienced by members of the eyewitness generation "can't be compared to today." The grandson apparently knows even more than his grandfather. This knowledge is so profound that his grandfather's opinion is no longer required. To the contrary, the grandfather is chastised for not realizing that the question he would like to have asked is simply no longer asked today. That an eyewitness demands to be critically questioned and that he is denied this is in itself a part of the "enlightenment" process and a part of the memory culture established in the past two decades in relation to National Socialism and the Holocaust. Herr Eeven is no longer asked this question because familial discourse has offered enough links and indices to depict the picture of a transgenerational anti-National-Socialist Eeven family, which should not be blemished, if possible, by Opa's question. What conclusions can be drawn from this tendency toward a cumulative heroization in the intergenerational process of transferal? I have already named one conclusion: a paradoxical effect of education, or enlightenment, about the past—which, one might note, is not necessarily entirely negative. At least our study shows that the ideal figures or role models for the grandchildren are not Nazis, but people who opposed National Socialism. This is acceptable from a social psychological standpoint if the imagined grandfather role model leads the grandchild to emulate behavior that the grandfather supposedly demonstrated historically (so the grandchild believes), rather than modeling the more realistic picture, which would mean to do nothing, to remain passive. Yet the phenomenon we describe has completely different implications for younger Germans' historical view of National Socialism and the Holocaust. It implies the restoration of the handed-down, widespread belief that the Nazis and the Germans were two different groups of people and that the Germans were a seduced, misused group, robbed of their youth, and themselves victims of National Socialism. This model of history apparently has a solid place in the communicative memory of the Federal Republic. To this view of history belong, of course, the television features in the style of Guido Knopp—"Hitler's Helpers," "Hitler's Children," etc.—that establish a picture of history that, again, has much to do with felt history and the passing on of feelings. This appears to be an enormously important aspect that, in light of its significance, has not yet been adequately addressed. At the same time, it appears to me that the German historical consciousness of National Socialism is in danger of

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losing an important historical and political reality. The fact is, it was possible, with the active participation of the overwhelming majority of a welleducated population, socialized for the most part before 1933, in the civilized, and, in many regards, modern twentieth century, to exclude a subgroup of precisely this population from the social contract, to consider this subgroup harmful and worthless, to see to its deportation, to draw profit from it, and to accept or actively participate in the extermination of this subgroup. A clear gap between what could be called official memory culture and communicative memory becomes apparent. While official memory culture is strongly marked by the thematization of National Socialist crimes and the Holocaust, on a private level a completely different historical discourse exists—and this despite all the factual knowledge of history that has been so successfully disseminated.

II

Our study of forty families was a qualitative study with a selective sampling of families since we wanted only those families that spoke about the past and whose family members were willing to talk about it. Consequently, it included no families with massive conflicts over the past. Therefore, the question arises: How validly can our findings be generalized? To further test our findings, we operationalized certain questions that emerged from our study for a representative public poll that was then carried out by the EMNID Institute. The phenomenon of cumulative heroization was not reflected in the representative poll since a poll questions randomly selected people and forfeits the generational chain. Nonetheless, the poll examined how those questioned view their family members' attitude toward the Third Reich and how they view the role of and the behavior of their own family members during this period. We asked, for example, how the parents or grandparents of those questioned stood on National Socialism, and we inquired into attitude and behavior patterns. The answers always reflected the perspective of the person being questioned, of course. In a certain way, these results proved more irritating than those in the qualitative study. For example, approximately half of the total population is of the opinion that their family members regarded National Socialism negatively or even very negatively. Only 4% believe that their family members had a positive attitude. Among those questioned with an Abitur (advanced high school degree) or a college

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degree, the numbers break down even more distincdy. Here 56% assign negative attitudes toward National Socialism to their family members. Another question addressed attitudes, experiences, and actions of the parents or grandparents, which those polled would have known through family conversations. In this regard, 3% of Germans believe their family members were anti-Jewish and only 1% consider it possible that these members had participated in crimes. On the other hand, 26% of those questioned are convinced that their family members helped people who were persecuted; and 35% believe that, if possible, their family members did not take part in anything at all. These results break down even more distincdy when those questioned possess a college degree. For example, 30% of those with a college degree are of the opinion that their family members helped the persecuted. This means that the higher the level of education, the greater the number of resisters there were in the family. Another result can be interpreted in the direction of cumulative heroization. More younger people questioned believe that their grandparents offered resistance than those questioned of middle age. However, owing to somewhat smaller deviations, these data must be interpreted with caution. Other results point to phenomena that occurred in the qualitative conversations and affirm commentary on the "tricks" mentioned in the conversations. For example, stereotypes play an enormously large role in family conversations. Stereotypes exist for the "Russians" and the "Jews" that permeate, to an extent unfiltered, the intergenerational conversation. Altogether, the most spectacular result is that the thematic orientation in family conversation differs completely from official memory culture. The Holocaust does not appear in family conversations, and if it appears, then only upon the interviewer's inquiry. If even mentioned at that point, then it is referred to only vaguely, with obscure references to time. The conversations turn to Jewish persons who at some point "emigrated," who were then "gone." Yet the speakers do not thematize why they were "gone"—"they probably moved or emigrated," with "emigration" being the most commonly used term. Returning Jews appear in the conversations usually as key witnesses to the fact that the speaker himself or his relative was always proper and helpful. The Holocaust itself, as stated, does not exist in family conversations. It has its place in the cognitive realm of our knowledge of history, but not in family histories. It has no systematic place in German family memory, which, according to our thesis, is the primary source of historical consciousness. Its narrative stems from an external source, formed from history lessons in the classroom, commemorative work, documentaries, and feature films. However, knowledge communicated in such a manner

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runs counter to the fundamental understanding that members of a memory community have of their community's own past.

Ill

The findings of our study created a furor even before the final report was published. All major newspapers and many radio and television stations reported on the results. Once the book had been published, its conclusions found their way into speeches by politicians and government officials concerned that the educational efforts of the last two decades had apparently borne such astonishingly little fruit. Professional memory agents in schools, in foundations, and at memorial sites appeared highly unsettled. The investigation also provoked scholarly attention and was the subject of numerous podium discussions and conferences. 5 In the meantime, the book itself has become the theme of many school projects. Even though the study documented that the role models of the grandchildren's generation were at least resistance fighters and not Nazis—which can certainly be viewed as an educational success—public reaction proved rather alarmist. In speeches, high-ranking politicians worriedly demanded still more education on the past, and the media seized on the fact that the grandchildren apparently made different use of their knowledge of history than educators had believed. Foreign reactions to the study, such as in Norwegian daily and weekly newspapers, interpreted the results indicative of an unsuccessful Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the recent right-wing extremist orientation of young Germans. 6 It becomes evident that the study can serve to mirror one's own difficulties in dealing with the past. This holds true for the representatives of counter-memories on the extreme Right. For instance, the NPD had T-shirts and posters printed with the slogan "Opa war in Ordnung!" ("Opa was OK!"); in doing so, its members perpetuated the heroization myth that is part of the empirical findings of the study. Worth mentioning in this regard is that younger Neo-Nazis occasionally came to public lectures on the subject to offer "good stories" about their own grandfathers who had devoted themselves to their Volk. This highlights a truly interesting aspect of the book's reception history: In public discourse and in 5

6

In the meantime, a subsequent study has begun that will analyze the memory cultures in West European countries (the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) as well as Southeast European countries (Serbia, Croatia) using the same research design. Articles appeared, for instance, in Oagsavism (9 Sept. 2003), Morgenbladet (21 Nov. 2003), Klassekampen (10 Nov. 2003), and Oagbladet (18 Feb. 2006).

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public reaction to lectures and podium discussions, the core results of the study were confirmed in vivo, so to speak. People interested in proclaiming their view of their parents' or grandparents' history articulated that their parents or grandparents had opposed Hider, had always wanted only the best, had not known anything, and so forth and so on—quod erat demonstrandum. It was interesting to observe that original quotes cited in lectures as well as those used in the study itself evoked strong identification with the generation of eyewitnesses and the desire to defend this generation. Accordingly, criticism was levied at members of the project group, claiming they had dealt too righteously and unjusdy with the eyewitness generation, even though the study refrains from any moralizing commentary on historical actions or behavior, particularly since the research focuses expressly on communication about the past. Not infrequently, even from an academic audience, I was belligerendy asked the classic, legitimizing question: "What would you have done?"—as if it were improper to publish the personal statements of former perpetrators. These responses showed even more clearly than the study itself how strong the need for loyalty to the grandparents' generation and the identification with this generation still are in Germany today. This, together with the results of the representative poll, suggests that the desire for a "good" past is a collective phenomenon in a society in which the Holocaust is, as Raul Hilberg once formulated, family history. 7 Translated by l^aurel Cohen-Pfister

Works Cited

Bruhns, Wibke. Meines Vaters Land. München: Econ, 2004. Friedrich, Jörg. Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945. München: Propyläen, 2002. Grass, Günter. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. Hilberg, Raul. Press conference. Hannover. 28 May, 1999. Welzer, Harald, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall. "Opa war kein Na%i": Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 2002.

7

The quote stems from a press conference in November 1999 in Hannover.

BRAD PRAGER

The Haunted Screen (Again): The Historical Unconscious of Contemporary German Thrillers ι

In an essay in Die Zeit, the German filmmaker Wim Wenders reflected critically on Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 film Der Untergang. Wenders compared the film unfavorably to the popular, mass-marketed film Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the sequel to the first Resident Evil film. 1 Although one deals with a "downfall" and the other with an "apocalypse," the link between the two films is not only nominal; they are also linked through the involvement of their German producer, Bernd Eichinger, who was both the executive producer of the Resident Evil films and the author and producer of Der Untergang. Eichinger also produced Wenders's own 1975 film, Falsche Bewegung. Wenders indicates that as someone who has worked with Eichinger, he generally takes pleasure in his fellow countryman's success; but Eichinger's involvement with Der Untergang came as a disappointment to him. When comparing Resident Evil: Apocalypse to Downfall, Wenders finds the Resident Evil sequel superior. As he sees it, this zombie film based on a video game—referred to in one review as "survival horror" 2 —conveys both a greater truth about fascism than Hirschbiegel's critically acclaimed Hider film and a sterner warning. Wenders's criticism concerns how Germany as a "perpetrator nation" can make films that deal with or engage effectively with the legacy of what it means to have been historical malfeasants. Reaching back to Karl Jaspers's 1946 reflection on the question of German guilt, Germans have long been engaged in a project of coming to terms with a past of perpetration, with varying degrees of success. Hirschbiegel's cinematic drama 1

2

Although Wenders speaks only of ReHdent Evil, he is certainly writing about Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the sequel to the first Resident Evil film, which was in theaters at the same time Oer Untergang was having its release in Germany. This description appeared among the many user reviews of the Resident Evil: Apocalypse DVD on the commercial German website .

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about Hitler's last days in the Führerbunker is one among many recent efforts on the part of post-perpetrator generations to come to terms with their legacy, a project with which some critics, especially Martin Walser, have grown weary. With an eye to reflecting on perpetrator guilt and motivation, the word "resident" in the title of Kesident Evil catches Wenders's attention. He asks whether Der Untergang forces a consideration of the "resident evil" that may still lurk in German culture, or implicitly, how such a film would meet with Adorno's demand to remind us that fascism is always present and could return at any time. 3 Wenders once similarly disputed with the historian Joachim Fest—the author of one of the two key texts that served as sources for Der Untergang—over Fest's film Hitler. Eine Karriere.4 Almost thirty years earlier Wenders argued that Fest's reproduction of images of Hitler in his 1977 film was not enough to create a critical consciousness about those dangerous images. According to Wenders, both then and more recendy with Der Untergang, Fest was complicit in reproducing a problematic fascination with the person of Hitler, especially on film, a medium that the Nazis had used so effectively. Wenders credits the Nazis' total control of the production of cinematic images with enabling Hider's "career." Thanks to Hider, he writes, "there was a hole in the film culture of this country which lasted for thirty or forty years." Wenders adds that Fest and those involved with Hitler: Eine Karriere reopen the wounds that the Nazi era inflicted on German cinema, and that they are "proud of their gruesome discoveries" ("Entertainment" 128). Wenders labels Fest's film a failure because it avoids commenting on the flood of images it unleashes. He explains: "[Fest's] film is so fascinated by its object, by its importance [. . .] that th[e] object again and again takes control of the film, becoming its secret narrator" ("Entertainment" 130). As he sees it, the fascination with historical images becomes an obstacle to critical reflection on the present. Wenders appears to charge German film with the task of finding a way to represent history other than "as it actually was." In the following essay, I argue that contemporary genre films, especially popular "thrillers" including Robert Schwentke's Tattoo, Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomie, and Oliver Hirschbiegel's own Das Experiment, represent an alternative to recent trends in historical filmmaking. They 3

4

See Adorno, who concludes his essay "What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?" with the comment, "We will not have come to terms with the past until the causes of what happened then are no longer active. Only because these causes live on does the spell of the past remain, to this very day, unbroken" (129). The two texts that serve as sources for the film Der Untergang are Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Käches by Joachim C. Fest and Bis %ur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr heben by Gertraud Junge, as detailed in the list of works cited.

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open a new path to working through a past of perpetration, a task all the more necessary in Germany as Germany continues to struggle to find new ways of speaking about its history. Distinct from the spate of recent historical films, which have generally been well received in both intellectual circles and internationally, thrillers and horror films offer Germany a worthwhile opportunity to approach this same struggle with a certain candor. Historical films, which focus frequently on presenting the past in apparently realistic detail, often steer away from presenting a genuine confrontation with atrocities. As a consequence of their efforts to stay within the bounds of good taste, they tend to avoid being atrocious, and can therefore make litde claim to have addressed brutal truths. Contemporary thrillers, by contrast, have the advantage of being less constrained. To think along the lines of Wenders's assessment, survival-horror films such as Resident Evil have a number of advantages over "tasteful" historical filmmaking. 5 Wenders notes that Resident Evil: Apocalypse deals with a world-dominating empire, biological weapons, and genetic engineering. 6 According to his account, the film thinks varied modes of violence generally associated with fascism through to their science-fiction conclusions. As survival-horror films (to apply again this genre-defining term), such works are less bound by the strictures of serious or historical filmmaking than dramas such as Oer Untergang, or any of the recent group of what Lutz Koepnick has described as "heritage films," including The Harmonists, Aimee und Jaguar, Gloomy Sunday—Ein Lied von Juiebe und Tod, and Nirgendwo in Afrika.1 Additionally, Wenders points out that Resident Evil: Apocalypse has yet another advantage over Oer Untergang. It proposes that the threat of fascism continues even after the film's conclusion. Not only does the film's fictional Umbrella Corporation cover up their responsibility for the horrors we see depicted, but Resident Evil: Apocalypse also, at its end, returns the protagonist to us as a dangerous, reconstructed corporate agent. Wenders explains that the film reminds us wherever possible that the "residing evil" of the tide is an omnipresent, ever-growing threat. 5

6

7

I do not mean to suggest that the Resident Evil films are specifically German thrillers. Although Bernd Eichinger, Alexander Witt, Thomas Kretschmann, and Bjom Schroeder were all involved, these were very international productions. Because of Wenders's comments, I am merely using these films as a convenient example of the sort of work thrillers are capable of doing. The corporation depicted in the film is the fictional Umbrella Corporation. In a special documentary feature on the Resident Evi/: Apocalypse DVD entitled Corporate Malfeasance, it is explained that the Umbrella Corporation is meant to represent something of a synthesis between Microsoft and the U.S. Military. See Koepnick's article about German "heritage films," esp. 49-50. Koepnick studies in particular the large number of these films that appeared in the late 1990s, although this tendency has obviously continued. In some sense, Oer Untergang may be considered an outgrowth or extension of this overall trend.

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Seen in this light, Der Untergang, by contrast, has rendered fascism innocuous. Still another of Oer Untergangs shortcomings is that Hirschbiegel's film chooses not to represent Hitler's suicide. This historical event takes place off screen. Wenders strongly criticizes Oer Untergangs reluctance to depict this as a gruesome horror. This is not to say that Oer Untergang is tasteful at every turn—indeed, many would argue that the whole concept guiding the film's production was tasteless—but it is to suggest that the film takes pains to avoid confronting its audience with certain horrors. It may be groundbreaking insofar as it is a German film that depicts Hitler, but as an historical drama, seen as an outgrowth of other recent "heritage films," it is less so. The film has boundary lines it elects not to cross, ones with which genre films would never be concerned. To use a metaphor borrowed from Wenders's earlier essay, one could argue that Hirschbiegel's historically "accurate" film takes too much care to dam the violent images that might otherwise come gushing out of the screens of midnight movie houses. As an historical drama, Oer Untergang is unwilling to present the wounds of German history by way of literal bodily wounds, as such films often fail to do in their search for wider audiences. Wenders also argues that the film re-auraticizes or re-sacrilizes Hitler's and Goebbels's deaths by refusing to represent the horror of their bodily destruction. He would prefer that we have the opportunity to see these auratic leaders eaten by zombies, as was the fate of Resident Evils own corporate fascist, a role played, incidentally, with a heavy German accent by the actor Thomas Kretschmann. 8 It is along these very lines that thrillers can make a special claim: They have a more candid relationship with sex and violence because of their explicit, and expected, connection to the demands of the libido. Although generic films, and their cult siblings in the "trash cinema," may seem unlikely candidates to carry political or historical weight, it is often the case that thrillers associated with explosive action or grotesque horror— or, in the case of the Resident Evil films, hybrids that conform exacdy to the norms of no particular genre—have a closer relationship to the truth of historical atrocities than films that would seek to render history digestible or tasteful. Genre films of the midnight cinema are harder to swallow because of their direct tie not to history as such, but to the libido, the death drive, and to a dark social-psychological underbelly, a characteristic distinction long self-evident to scholars who specialize in science fiction

8

Kretschmann has the distinction of having been in both films under discussion, having also starred as 5S-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein in Der Untergang.

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and horror. 9 By definition, generic films create expectations that can be toyed with, and as in dreams, where the id plays an active role, such films offer manifest content beneath which lurk latent truths. This should, of course, not be taken to imply that genre films never directly tackle historical problems such as perpetrator guilt. Films such as Ilsa, She-wolf of the SS or the Italian filmL·'Ultima Orgia del III. Reich certainly appear to be staring German violence in the face. My point, however, is that such films need not approach fascism or other historical atrocities head-on in order to address them; indeed, works such as Tattoo and Das Experiment speak more suggestively about the sex and aggression that are part of the historical document of barbarism when they take the liberty of doing so from behind the acceptable veil of generic expectation. The so-called "trash" cinema of Jörg Buttgereit, the director of films such as Oer Todesking as well as the infamous Nekromantik films, exemplifies German films in which sex and horror are unconventionally foregrounded. Linnie Blake writes that Buttgereit's works (in which, among other things, protagonists have sex with exhumed corpses) "dwell on the existential isolation of the desiring German subject and the libidinally ambiguous re-animation of the deeply repressed historical past." She concludes: "Through his unruly and repulsive imagery we are offered Die Unbewältigte Vergangenheit—the past that has not been adequately dealt with" (192). That genre films may be more adept at dealing with these issues than highbrow or art house cinema is not a new assertion. Lotte Eisner's psychologically oriented assessments about horror in The Haunted Screen could easily be understood as the first stab, so to speak, at putting forward this thesis. Even after German Expressionism faded, the undead reappeared on German screens, subsequent to a hiatus under the Third Reich. In an essay about the 1952 film Rosen blühen auf dem Heidegrab, Johannes Von Moltke points out that the film, about a farm girl who is being bullied into a marriage with a local man rather than with her childhood sweetheart, is actually a partly horrific confrontation with the specters of the war and with the U.S. occupation. Focusing in particular on a scene in which one the of the film's characters rises from the dead, Von Moltke argues for what can be viewed as the film's indirect engagement with the unmastered past, an engagement in which the trappings of generic expectations serve as a screen behind which historical issues can be said to operate. In his reading as well as in Eisner's work, horror films can be understood as having a particular claim on psychological 9

There are numerous examples of such work. Recent research that approaches the question from a specifically German perspective includes Hantke's Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear as well as Randall Halle's essay on Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantik films in Ught Motives.

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complexity because the ghosts and the skeletons in their closets always indicate the return of something that has been repressed, and even more so because they allow themselves to inquire into the consequences of allowing the libido to run rampant, inquiries that Freud was willing to make with respect to the overall causes of violence and war. 10 Arguably it was for this reason that the Nazis rejected horror as a genre. Where there is horror there is an evocation of the social-psychological. It is no wonder that the frankness of such films concerned them. Stefan Ruzowitzky's film Anatomie is one recent example of a generic thriller's indirect engagement with Germany's past of perpetration. Anatomie is a horror film in which history functions more as subtext than as text, yet it forces a confrontation with the question of German atrocities and their legacy. The film depicts a young student, Paula, who moves to Heidelberg for medical school and discovers that a number of her fellow students as well as her teachers are members of a secret society, the anti-Hippocratics, which is dedicated to engaging in grotesque experiments on live subjects. Paula realizes that her grandfather was also part of this secret society, and that her father, though likely aware of her grandfather's hobbies, did nothing to stand in his own father's way. In a parallel with Günter Grass's recent working-out-the-past novel Im Krebsgang, the middle generation, the one born during or at the end of the war, is depicted as passive; the representative of this immediate postwar generation appears anxious about taking a position on the perpetrator past of his parents, preferring instead to avoid trouble. By contrast, the younger generation, born two or three decades after the end of the war, is now viewed as having an inclination to engage with the past, or to make more emphatic statements about crimes committed by their grandparents. The film's two main characters, Paula and the psychopathic killer, Hein, are both of this same, younger generation. In one scene, Hein stabs his fellow anti-Hippocratic, Grombek, who is in the process of betraying him to Paula. This scene of violent murder is intercut with shots of Paula locating the certificate of the anti-Hippocratic society on the wall of her grandfather's study. As Paula smashes the framed document to pieces, the montage connects her with Hein—the heroine and the killer—as twin representatives of a generation with an opportunity to make a choice: either to repeat the mistakes of their grandparents, as the secret society continues to do through experiments that very obviously recall Nazi research, or to identify with the victims, in this case those on the operating table. As far as the film is concerned, Paula's choice to expose the anti10

I am thinking here in particular of comments made in Sections Five and Six of Civilisation and its Discontents, as well as the discussion of the causes of war in the famous letter exchange from 1932 entitled "Why War?"

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Hippocratic society is not enough; the narrative requires her to go an extra step and put herself in the place of the victims. At one point close to the film's denouement, she finds herself on the operating table, injected with the debilitating drug Promidal, a potential victim of Nazi-style experimentation. In its willingness to be graphic, Anatomie is not only able to evoke the memory of Nazi atrocities, but it also, by taking place in the present rather than in the distant past, meets the important demand of calling to consciousness the continued presence of potential perpetrators. It makes this point especially clear by way of an epilogue that depicts medical students first apparently expressing regret over the scandal at their medical school, and then revealing that they have every intention of continuing to engage in such experiments once they go into private practice. Despite the fact that it is a genre-based horror film, Anatomie achieves the same goal with which Wenders credits Resident Evil. It reminds us that latent fascist tendencies persist, that its traces have not been completely extruded. It draws our attention to the problem of the legacy of German perpetration. 11 This genre-based film is not significant because it reaches a wider audience—it does not likely reach a wider audience than either the Oscar-nominated Der Untergang or the Oscar-winning Nirgendwo in Afrika—but because it can successfully talk about the atrocities of the past in a way that is frank with respect to violence, and one that suggests the possibility that such violence will return. While one may hesitate to apply these conclusions uniformly to all genre films, I would argue that because of their relationship to sex and aggression, action and horror films or contemporary thrillers may more ably turn their gaze upon the war. As Lotte Eisner quite credibly notes, horror films are uniquely conjoined with psychological subtexts. German Expressionism, its stepchild, Vilm Noir, and—as I argue—contemporary thrillers, can always be viewed as part of an attempt to "draw something into the light that had been festering in the dark." 12 Horror films are able to confront the past not only by virtue of their special relationship to the demands of the libido, but because (especially for the purposes of this inquiry), one can say that they have a willingness to depict monsters of one kind or another. If we accept this premise—that some, though not all, popular German horror films are uniquely capable of directing our attention to the monsters of the past—we are led to a secondary question: What kind of 11 12

For a more extensive discussion of Anatomie, see Hantke's essay in College Uterature. This is a phrase used by Robert Schwentke to describe his own film Tattoo on an interview on the UK issued DVD of the film. Any references to interviews with Schwentke refer to this edition of the DVD, detailed in the list of works cited.

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monsters do these contemporary German films construct? Historical narratives that theorize perpetrator motivation such as Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners and Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, are likewise monster stories. Although many have accused these tales of perpetrator motivation of being too streamlined or simplistic, or of separating the monsters of the past from the more ubiquitous ones of the present, they, like the horror films under discussion, provide answers to the question of whether the perpetrators are still among the living. It is my intention, then, in the following parts of this essay, to look respectively at how recent German thrillers—ones that do not shy away from violence— have constructed their monsters, how those monsters of the present provide an opportunity to confront audiences with the past, and for better or for worse, whether they offer a means of working it through. By way of a reading of Schwentke's Tattoo and Hirschbiegel's Das Experiment, I argue in favor of understanding apparendy ordinary, popular genre films in the light of this ongoing project. Tattoo deals directly with the perpetration of atrocities, and how affect and identification play a part in confronting the crimes of the perpetrators. In the case of Das Experiment, the question that guides the film's director is the social-psychological one of how the perpetrators themselves were led to violence.

II

It is clear that Robert Schwentke's Tattoo means to evoke, at least in some measure, specters of the Holocaust. Of the film's most notorious set, a special room, designed by a lawyer who collaborates with the film's violent killer, in which all the furniture is upholstered in human skin, Schwentke says that German viewers immediately see the connection to the past, or that they "get it" right away. Here, the screen is once again haunted, although Lotte Eisner's chiaroscuro has now become a gray and brown palette that identifies a contemporary, alienated, hyper-industrial cityscape. At times consciously and at times unconsciously, the violence in Tattoo is calculated to recall Holocaust atrocities. It also provides, I suggest, instruction as to how viewers of post-perpetrator generations should orient themselves toward those atrocities. In the mode of postmemorial identification, the violence in the film opens a path by which contemporary Germans can think themselves into identifying with the traumatized victim. In both form and content, Schwentke's film shares a close relationship to the hit U.S. thriller Se7en. Though the films are not directly related,

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they indisputably share some key plot elements. Tattoo was inspired by the latter's overall aesthetic sensibility. In Schwentke's film, a murderer selects victims with tattoos, removes large swaths of tattooed skin, and sells them to collectors in private internet auctions. Tough-talking, two-fisted Inspector Minks of the homicide division is assigned to the case. He especially requests that Marc Schräder, a rookie direct from the police academy, be recruited as his new partner. Minks has an ulterior motive for choosing this rookie; Schräder is immersed in Berlin nightlife and Minks hopes that he will be helpful in locating his own daughter who has run away from home following the death of her mother. Again, in ways that resonate with the plot and style of Se7en, the film's diabolical killer torments the police, playing cat and mouse with them, and ultimately locates and victimizes Minks's own daughter. Her murder drives Minks to suicide, leaving the rookie on his own to catch the killer. Schräder does not close the case, however, leaving open the possibility of continued violence. The presence of tattooing is in some measure an evocation of the past, although here one must tread carefully. The tattoo itself does not always mark a victim, and it is certainly not equivalent with a reference to Jewish victims, as that theme is never mentioned directly. It is symptomatic of the form of indirect representation of which I am writing, that such meanings are not fixed or over-determined. The film's primary perpetrator of violence, Maya, is herself tattooed, and additionally, at one point the investigation leads Minks and Schräder to a tattoo parlor where a young man sits in the foreground of the frame having a Neo-Nazi style tattoo etched into his arm. Schwentke is making the point that the tattoo on its own does not unambiguously signify the presence of a victim, but rather that the combination of the atrocious violence and dehumanization allows the tattooing in the film to carry this connotation. In an essay on the historical legacy and re-employment of Holocaustrelated tattoos among young people, Dora Apel has looked at how a number of artists, some of them Jews, have used tattoos to re-semanticize the history of the concentration camp. Apel cites the case of one conceptual artist, John Scott, who had himself tattooed and then had the tattooed section of skin—his thigh, inked with three small roses and a seven-digit number, resembling, but not the same as numbers of camp inmates— removed and displayed. While some viewed the exhibition as a simplistic means of showing identification with the victims, the artist himself averred that this had more to do with critiquing what he described as "a certain notion of our collective self image" (qtd. in Apel 303). The removal and display of the tattooed skin sounds much like what is transpiring in Tattoo, in which tattooed skin is likewise aestheticized and placed on display. The controversy and multiple readings surrounding Scott's

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work points to a network of meanings one can also productively read into Tattoo. Though this evocation of the Holocaust is somewhat indirect, there are ways in which the film insists that viewers make a link between tattooing, the murders, and Holocaust violence. In the film's very first sequence, a woman who is missing a patch of once tattooed skin runs, wounded and naked, out into the street. She then steps in front of a bus and is burned in the ensuing fire. The notion that she was "completely burned" ("völlig verbrannt"), as it is put in the film, redoubles the resonance of her victimization with specific characteristics of Nazi atrocity. More important, however, is the film's subsequent depiction of the skin room, as well as a later scene in which Minks learns that his daughter has been attacked by the killer. In that scene, the perpetrator sends Minks a wallet made from a fragment of his daughter's own tattooed body. The still bloody section of skin, drawn upon and transformed into an accessory, unambiguously recalls images that many Germans were compelled to confront in the period immediately following the war. Sequences in George Stevens's film Na%i Concentration Camps include the documentation of how skin of Jewish victims was used for similar purposes. Stevens's film was mandatory postwar viewing for many. These images were also employed as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. 13 Samuel Fuller's film Verboten! includes a staging of a fictionalized representation of the effect that seeing such images was supposed to have on perpetrators, including a sequence in which a visit to the Nuremberg trials provokes at once catharsis and conversion on the part of a potential postwar Neo-Nazi. It is hard to imagine that Schwentke's image of a wallet made out of tattooed skin would not resonate for some viewers as a resurfaced collective memory. If the film evokes memories of this sort by showing the consequences of violence, it deals with the issue of perpetration through the filter of generational conflict. In other words, it not only confronts its viewers with atrocities consonant with wartime ones, but enacts conflicted affective responses to those atrocities. As I indicated earlier with reference to the recent example of Grass's Im Krebsgang (although one could cite numerous others), a key question is how different generations deal with one another both with respect to revealing a secret history of perpetration as well as with respect to the degree to which one is permitted to identify with the victims in question. In ways that resonate with films such as Das schreckliche Mädchen, the use of this intergenerational motif suggests that something in the past had not been properly dealt with, and that the 13

For discussion of this, see Barnouw's chapter "To Make them See," esp. 7-12. On the use of the film Na%i Concentration Camps at Nuremberg, see Chapter One of Lawrence Douglas's The Memory of Judgement 11-37.

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younger generation, often that of the grandchildren, has an obligation to take guilt upon themselves and confront it. This was certainly the case with the character Paula in Anatomie, who was compelled to look directly upon her grandfather's role as the perpetrator of awful medical experiments. In Tattoo, Schräder is forced to wonder about the older cop with whom he has been partnered. He appears to him as a father figure, but it also occurs to him that Minks may himself be a perpetrator of violence. He has been nicknamed "Minks the Killer" by other members of the force, and we are supposed to wonder whether or not he secretly murdered the man who recklessly killed his wife. While this difference between the generations is consistent with the motif of uncovering concealed truth, in one sequence, as a body unrelated to the case is being exhumed (a motif that recalls films such as Nekromantik), the only truth that is uncovered consists of Minks revealing his feelings about his wife's death. The main thrust of this scene, therefore, is not so much in uncovering buried "facts" about Minks or about an older generation's crimes, but rather in its representation of affect. The distinction with which it plays—the generational distinction—ultimately involves the younger cop learning both to acknowledge and to act upon an apparendy appropriate empathetic response when confronted with the victims of violence; it involves inquiring into what it would take for a member of this younger generation to put him or herself in the place of victims of atrocities. The film addresses, in other words, an act of post-memorial traumatic identification with the victims on the part of the grandchildren of possible perpetrators. As in Anatomie, the perpetrator of Tattoo, Maya, is of the same generation as the protagonist. She collaborates with a whitehaired lawyer who enjoys his skin-upholstered furniture and comes across (stylistically if not otherwise) as an unreformed Nazi. Like the character Hein in Anatomie, Maya passes for an ordinary young person. Schräder, by contrast, describes himself only half-jokingly as being part of a new, reform-oriented generation of police. Once again, the film is about a choice offered to this younger generation, either to repeat the mistakes of their grandparents, or to identify with the victims of atrocious violence. The transformation in the character Schräder is marked by the way he is depicted at the film's onset. He likes to dance alone and take recreational drugs in a way that, the film suggests, puts him out of touch with his feelings. By the end of the film, however, not only has Schräder learned to be a better detective insofar as he now takes crime personally, but, as is revealed to us during the course of the film's closing credits, he has himself tattooed, taking on a mark that indicates his fascination and identification with the victims. Much as Paula had ended up on the table

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in Anatomie, Schräder is willing to become a potential victim in order to get at the truth. Though all of this may seem somewhat removed from Tattoo's manifest content, Schwentke himself has averred that he meant, at least in part, to screen the Nazi past. In an interview about Tattoo, he reflected on his own experience growing up in Germany, asking a question often asked by members of his generation: "Am I guilty because I'm German?" 14 In the same way, Jörg Buttgereit has also wondered about having grown up under the shadow of taboos, and about the impulse to find new ways of dealing with a legacy of violence. Buttgereit explains the motivation on the part of filmmakers of his generation to play with, work through, and re-deploy images of the past. He recalls hearing about historical atrocities as a child at school, and later feeling a sense of "artificially implanted guilt" because he had not himself been the perpetrator of violence. Decontextualizing and recontextualizing the images and icons from the past came to him as a liberating opportunity. He adds, "when I saw Sid Vicious running around with a swastika T-shirt it was a relief. [. . .] When I first saw I/sa, She Wolf of the SS, I was totally amazed by the possibilities of doing such an unthinkable thing" (Perks 207). In some respects, the unthinkable things that occur in Tattoo—or in Der Todesking or in Anatomie— become a productive means of bringing past atrocities into the psychic space of the present.

Ill

Oliver Hirschbiegel's film Das Experiment is not a horror film in the conventional sense, although it does deal with medical experiments and does not shy away from depicting graphic violence. The film is more a thriller than a horror film, and is explicitly concerned with violence insofar as it asks what conclusions can be drawn by social psychology regarding perpetrator motivation. Das Experiment centers on a journalist, Tarek Fahd, who, at the onset, is working as a cab driver (for reasons that are left somewhat vague). Tarek hopes to return to journalism through writing an investigative story about a psychological experiment in which twenty male participants are placed in a simulated prison, eight of whom are to play the role of guards and twelve of whom are to play the role of prisoners. Tarek applies and is included in the experiment. The guards are tasked with 14

This comment is made in the interview with the director on the UK edition of the DVD. See the list of films cited.

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enforcing the regulations regarding meal times and bed times. Tarek, playing the part of a prisoner, rejects the rules of the game, owing to his antiauthoritarian personality, his desire to generate an interesting story, or both, and things quickly spiral out of control. He threatens the guards' sense of dominance and masculinity, and brings about a violent response. Despite the film's disclaimer, it quite evidently draws its inspiration from the well-known Stanford Prison Experiment, a 1971 study of the psychology of prison life conducted by Philip Zimbardo. The original study was meant to last two weeks, but it had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of the damaging and frightening consequences for the participants. In a much shorter time than anticipated, the guards became sadistic and the prisoners became clinically depressed. 15 The film, Das Experiment, goes farther than Zimbardo's study: Where the Stanford Prison experiment was aborted, Hirschbiegel's film takes the extra step of envisioning a violent denouement. Das Experiment never refers directly to Nazi violence, and for the purposes of this essay, it should be noted that Nazism is barely even mentioned in the film. As with Tattoo, the connection is indirect; it is one of resonance and implication. The entirety of the psychological experiment, and the bulk of the film, takes place in a space that is meant to be outside of or removed from the German cultural life-world. The "black box" in which the experiment is conducted is not only the title of Mario Giordano's novel on which the film is based, but it is also one of the film's key metaphors; it is the basement laboratory in which all its events transpire, and it is meant to suggest a blacking out of the issues of ideology, history, and generational conflict. One may then ask whether references to Nazism and German history are deliberately avoided. There are points during the course of the film when it would otherwise seem likely that German history would make an appearance. For example, during a "reference test" meant to gauge Tarek's psychological response to a series of strong images, none of the violent pictures are of Holocaust atrocities. It seems as if this scene, one that recalls similar sequences in A Clockwork Orange or in The Parallax View, would be the appropriate place for those historical images, yet they are left out. The series of images in this test are totally deracinated and make no reference to the subject's German identity. At another point in the film, Schütte, one of the prisoners, refers to Berrus, the guard most given to violence, as a Nazi, along with other epithets. This is the only time the word is used in the film. Because Schütte mentions it, Berrus 15

A detailed description of the experiment appears on the official website of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

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immediately hits him over the head, a blow that is ultimately fatal. The drama of Berrus's over-reaction may reveal the fact that Hirschbiegel, who was later to direct Der Untergang, is aware of the weight of this label, given the implications of his overall project. To focus for a moment on the experiment itself, it is worth asking what conclusions the experimenters hoped to draw from the original study. The Zimbardo experiment is often linked to other behavioral experiments, such as those performed by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram, experiments to which Christopher Browning refers in Ordinary Men, his study of perpetrator motivation.16 The question Milgram meant to research was one of what people will do in the name of obedience, or how his test's subjects were willing to overlook their consciences in the interest of complying with authority. Milgram drew connections between his work and violence under the Third Reich, connections that Das Experiment never explicitly draws. This type of social-psychological inquiry has a particular resonance with the theorization of the psychology of Nazi perpetrators. Browning, who had investigated the police battalions who committed mass murder against Jewish communities in Poland under the Nazis, studied how one unit made up not of Nazi ideologues, but of relatively "ordinary" German men, became killers. According to the historian Omer Bartov: Browning's explanation of this phenomenon is that these "ordinary men" became acclimatized to mass killing during the first few murder operations and ended up (with few exceptions) viewing them as part of a job, distasteful as it might have been to some of them, which they had to carry out. In Browning's account, it was not beliefs but circumstances which made ordinary men into killers. (129-30)"

The main thrust of Browning's thesis, and its relevance for Das Experiment, is that the killers in question were not "special" Germans. Drawn at random from a cross-section of German society, these men did not kill because they were compelled to or because they were threatened with dire punishment, they killed because, according to Browning, most ordinary men put in similar circumstances would have responded to orders in the same way. His study claims not to be about Germans, but about "ordinary men." As he puts it in his own concluding remarks: The fundamental problem is not to explain why ordinary Germans, as members of a people utterly different from us and shaped by a culture that permitted them 16

17

For an account of the experiment, see Milgram's own Obedience to Authority. For his comments relating his own work to crimes committed during the Nazi era, see esp. 175-78. Browning also refers directly to Milgram in Ordinary Men, esp. 171-76. For much more on this, as well as a critical perspective on the applicability of Milgram's study, see Chapter Six, "Germans as Nazis."

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to think and act in no other way than to want to be genocidal executioners, eagerly killed Jews when the opportunity offered. The fundamental problem is to explain why ordinary men—shaped by a culture that had its own particularities but was nonetheless within the mainstream of western, Christian, and Enlightenment traditions—under specific circumstances willingly carried out the most extreme genocide in human history." (222)

Browning's work, and in some measure this film, manages to exonerate the Germans as Germans. The idea of "ordinariness" stands in for universality; it brackets out the possibility that the proclivity to violence is culturally specific. In its effort to understand the psychology of the perpetrators, peerpressure plays a key role, one that is significant in both Browning's story and in Hirschbiegel's film. Group dynamics, including peer-pressure centered around generally accepted concepts of masculinity, guide the formation of perpetrators. From the onset, the phallic apparatus of penal accoutrements fascinates the guards-to-be. One of them, who turns out to have a rapist buried not very deeply beneath his surface is an Elvis impersonator, and it could be argued that his proclivity toward violence was already prefigured by the way he enthusiastically wears his role. At one point the Elvis impersonator (who is also the one who sneaks a gun into the experiment) reacts defensively when the other guards ask him if he is a family man like them. The moment when he would otherwise have to reveal that he does not have a wife and kids is the very moment that he, in order to prove his masculinity, engages in one of the precipitating acts of aggression against the prisoners. Browning's emphasis on the truths of social science is underscored by what is depicted in Das Experiment, which intends not to implicate German culture in the crimes of Germany's past. On the one hand, this argument that perpetrators were ordinary, that they were no different from us, can be a distressing thought. As Tim Cole has explained: There is a sense in which we feel that such an outrageous notion as the systematic murder of people because of their Jewishness must have been the product of crazy minds. What is disturbing is when we come to the dawning realization that such a degenerate scheme was thought up and carried out by men and women who were 'normal' (people like Eichmann). [. . .] There is something terrifyingly nihilistic about the idea of banal murder and banal murderers. (71)

In some ways, therefore, Das Experiment is more frightening because of its decontextualization of German violence, or the suggestion that perpetrators might not be dissimilar to us. On the other hand, such a narrative of perpetrator motivation can also be reassuring for Germans. It may provide an alibi or an excuse not to understand perpetration as part of a cultural legacy. It is convenient to imagine that the perpetration of atrocities is a uniform, transcultural possibility.

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Hirschbiegel's film, however, chooses a third way. It is not about German men or ordinary men, it is about men with authoritarian personalities, and as such it deals with the past without pointing an accusatory finger at its audience. Presumably, no audience member would imagine that they themselves would have been given to violence. In Ordinary Men, Browning makes a distinction between "eager killers" and "non-shooters." A similar distinction is put forward in Hirschbiegel's film. Not everyone is a potential killer; one must be predisposed. Berrus, the most violent perpetrator, is an eager killer, while another guard, Bosch, comes across as something like a non-shooter. The latter, it seems, was ill-suited among the guards as he gets no pleasure from his duties. At one turning point in the film, Bosch speaks directly to a surveillance camera in order to plead with the researcher in charge of the experiment, Dr. Thon, for guidance. Berrus, by contrast, during that same crisis, advises his fellow guards that they will likely regain control over the prisoners through humiliating them. Berrus here reveals himself as the film's monster, as an extreme authoritarian personality, as the leader among the guards. It is clear that the doctors also feel as though their experiment would not be the same without him, which casts doubt on the idea that almost anyone would react to the experiment's conditions in the same way. The researchers realize that their experiment requires not only Berrus, but that it needs Tarek as well. In the context of the experiment, Tarek sometimes plays the part of an anarchist, appearing to reject the rules simply because they are rules, and sometimes he plays the part of a collective organizer, such as when he gets all the prisoners to do push-ups in defense of the prisoner Schütte, who is lactose-intolerant, but who has been forced to drink milk. The only insight we get into Tarek's background is that his Oedipal conflicts—his relationships to authority—were such that if his father told him not to do something, he did it.18 In his Oedipal relation to figures of authority, Tarek is the opposite of Berrus. As ground personnel for an airline, Berrus is at home in a uniform even before the experiment begins. He completely identifies with the rules, wanting to take orders only from Dr. Thon. To borrow the phrase that Raul Hilberg used in the film Shoah to describe perpetrators of Nazi atrocities, Berrus is the one who takes it upon himself to "become creative." The last shot from within the world of the experiment, though not the last scene of the film, is a tracking shot that surveys the physically and psychologically wounded as if from the point of view of one who had 18

In his article in Kinoeye, Hantke theorizes more about Tarek's background, taking note of the very important fact that he is likely Turkish-German.

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witnessed the whole event and was now assessing the damages. Unlike historical films, which, owing to their explicit temporal distance remove us from their events, this film issues us a challenge. It means to suggest that we, the viewers, regardless of backgrounds, are equally implicated in the experiment's "findings." As indicated, this can be seen problematically as an alibi for Germans, giving them the sense, as had Ordinary Men, that the problem of perpetration is not culturally specific. On the other hand, it conveys the unsettling truth that there are always perpetrators among us, and it illuminates the connection between authoritarian personalities and violence in the name of the State apparatus. Through the contemporary trappings of a thriller, rather than the histrionics of the heritage film, Hirschbiegel sets up a stage on which the drama of victims and perpetrators can be produced such that it again becomes present to the postmemorial generation. IV

It should be noted that Oliver Hirschbiegel directed both Das Experiment and Der Untergang. The two films have in common that they both take place beneath the surface. The basement in Der Untergang, the Führerbunker, is a perverse world, similar to the uncontrollable institution depicted in Werner Herzog's Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen. This space, however, the "black box" in which Der Untergang takes place, is entirely disjoined from the present. How are we to watch the film while bearing in mind Adorno's claim that the past that we so much wish to evade is still intensely alive? In his essay, "What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?" Adorno reminds us: "National Socialism lives on, and to this day we don't know whether it is only the ghost of what was so monstrous that it didn't even die off with its own death, or whether it never died in the first place—whether the readiness for unspeakable actions survives in people, as in the social conditions that hem them in" (115). While they are not perfect means of coming to terms with that past, films like Anatomie, Tattoo, or Das Experiment can be more effective in the process than historical dramas like Der Untergang. These contemporary genre films, unlike historical dramas, are not afraid to shock or transgress against what is generally understood to be tasteful. Such transgression is the very hallmark of generic cinema. As Lotte Eisner's work shows us, blood spattered across the screen can serve as a signpost, meant to indicate that something that has been repressed is returning, or that a dam of sorts has been torn open. Confronting the wounds of history by way of

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literal bodily wounds is one means of opening a path to working through the past of perpetration. Yesterday's atrocities can be thrust into today's psychic space. In this way, contemporary thrillers have an unparalleled ability to speak about violence and the uncontrolled id, as well as to challenge us by haunting today's screens with the monstrous ghosts of the past.

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor W. "What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?" 1959. Trans. Timothy Bahti and Geoffrey Hartman. Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective. Ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 114-29. Apel, Dora. "The Tattooed Jew." Visual Culture and the Holocaust. Ed. Barbie Zelizer. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2001. 300-20. Barnouw, Dagmar. Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996. Bartov, Omer. Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003. Blake, Linnie. "Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantiks: Things to Do in Germany with the Dead." Mathijs and Mendik. 191-202. Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. 1992. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998. Cole, Tim. Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler. How History is Bought, Packaged, and Sold. New York: Roudedge, 1999. Douglas, Lawrence. The Memory of Judgment: Making Taiv and History in the Trials of the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001. Eisner, Lotte. The Haunted Screen. Trans. Roger Greaves. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. Fest, Joachim C. Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches: eine historische Ski^e. Berlin: Alexander Fest, 2002. Freud, Sigmund. Civilisation and its Discontents. 1929. Standard Editon of the Psychological Work of Sigmund Freud. Ed. James Strachey. Vol. 21. London: Hogarth [1961, 1964] 1968. —. "Why War?" 1932. Standard Editon of the Psychological Work of Sigmund Freud. Ed. James Strachey. Vol. 22. London: Hogarth [1964] 1968. 203-15. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners·. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1996. Grass, Günter. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. Halle, Randall. "Unification Horror: Queer Desire and Uncanny Visions." Tight Motives: German Popular Film in Perspective. Ed. Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2003. 281-303. Hantke, Steffen, ed. Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2004.

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—. "Horror Film and the Historical Uncanny: The New Germany in Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomie" College literature 31..2 (2004): 117-42. —. "The Origins of Violence in a Peaceful Society." Kinoeye 3.6 (2003) . Junge, Gertraud. Bis %ur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr lieben. München: Ciaassen, 2002. Koepnick, Lutz. "Reframing the Past: Heritage Cinema and Holocaust in the 1990s." New German Critique 87 (2002): 47-82. Mathijs, Ernest, and Xavier Mendik, eds. Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945. London: Wallflower, 2004. Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. Perks, Marcelle. "A Very German Post-Mortem: Jörg Buttgereit and Co-Writer/ Assistant Director Franz Rodenkirchen Speak." Mathijs and Mendik. 203-15. Stanford Prison Experiment. Ed. Philip G. Zimbardo. 13 June 2005 . Von Moltke, Johannes. "Der Heimatfilm als Horrorfilm: Rosen blühen auf dem Heidegrab (1952)." WerkstattGeschichte 33 (2002): 82-99. Wenders, Wim. "That's Entertainment: Hider." 1977. West German Filmmakers on Film: Visions and Voices. Ed. Eric Rentschler. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988. 12631. —. "Tja, dann wollen wir mal." Die Zeit 21 Oct. 2004. 5 April 2006. .

Films Cited

Aimee und Jaguar [Aime'e and Jaguai], Dir. Max Färberböck. Senator Film, 1999. Anatomie [Anatomy]. Dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky. Columbia TriStar, 2000. Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen [Even Dwarves Started Small], Dir. Werner Herzog. Anchor Bay, 1970. Das Experiment [The ExperimentDir. Oliver Hirschbiegel. Samuel Goldwyn, 2001. Falsche Bewegung [Wrong Move]. Dir. Wim Wenders. Westdeutscher Rundfunk, 1975. Gloomy Sunday—Ein Lted von Liebe und Tod [Gloomy Sunday]. Dir. Rolf Schübel. Studio Hamburg, 1999. The Harmonists. Dir. Joseph Vilsmaier. Bavaria Film, 1997. Hitler: Eine Karriere [Hitler. A Career], Dir. Joachim Fest. Interart, 1977. Ilsa: She-Wolfofthe SS. Dir. Don Edmonds. Anchor Bay, 1975. Ναζί Concentration Camps. Dir. George Stevens. 1945. Nekromantik. Dir. Jörg Buttgereit. Film Threat Video, 1987. Nirgendwo in Afrika [Nowhere in Africa], Dir. Caroline Link. Bavaria Film, 2001. Rßrident Eml. Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson. Sony Pictures, 2002. Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Dir. Alexander Witt. Screen Gems, 2004. Das schreckliche Mädchen [The Nasty Girl]. Dir. Michael Verhoeven. Miramax Films, 1990. Se7en. Dir. David Fincher. New Line, 1995.

Präger: The Haunted Screen (Again)

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Shoah. Dir. Claude Lanzmann. New Yorker Films, 1985. Tattoo. Dir. Robert Schwentke. Tobis Studio Canal, 2002. DVD Tartan, 2004. Der Todesking. [The Death King\. Dir. Jörg Buttgereit. Manga Films S.L. (Spain), 1989. L'U/tima Orgia del III. Reich [Gestapo's Last Orgy\. Dir. Cesare Canevari. Shock-O-Rama Cinema, 1977. Der Untergang \Doivnfall\. Dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel. Constantin, 2004. Verboten! Dir. Samuel Fuller. Columbia, 1959.

LAUREL COHEN-PFISTER

Rape, War, and Outrage: Changing Perceptions on German Victimhood in the Period of Post-unification Among the major themes of German suffering much discussed in the Postmnde era, the rape of German women by the advancing Red Army in 1945 is arguably the most problematic. When Heike Sander broached the topic in 1992 with her documentary BeFreier und Befreite [The Liberators Take Liberties], she questioned why the subject had been silenced for almost fifty years. The taboo originated not only in political suppression of the topic, Sander maintained, but also in the social censure of rape as a crime of gender (Sander and Johr 9-20).1 While the documentary was heralded as a breakthrough in the decades-long silence surrounding the rape of an estimated two million German women,2 it was also attacked for portraying German women as victims, disassociated from their responsibility as supporters of the regime that caused the war. Historian Atina Grossman argued, "this is not [. . .] a 'universal' story of women being raped by men, as Heike Sander would have it, but of German women being abused and violated by an army that fought Nazi Germany and liberated death camps. Mass rapes of civilian women also signaled the defeat of Nazi Germany" ("Question" 48). Sander's documentary unleashed an academic controversy over the boundaries between women's victimization and their complicity with the regime whose policies created the war. Its discussion illuminated the complexities attached to identity when the women raped belong to the aggressor's side. While the lines between victim and perpetrator are clearly drawn in the crime of rape, these same roles are obfuscated when the victims belong to the wrong side. In the early 1990s, the worldwide focus on Moslem women raped by Serbs, and the scant regard for Serbian 1 2

Other scholars confirm Sander's point; cf. Schmidt-Harzbach 21-45; Epp 58-87; Poutrus 127-29. Estimates on the actual number of women and girls raped vary greatly, from several tens of thousands to more than 110,000 in Berlin alone. BeFreier und Befreite claims approximately 1.9 million women were raped in former German territories in the East (Sander and Johr 46-73; cf. Heinemann 364; Poutrus 123; Grossmann 46).

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victims of rape, made Serbian feminists proclaim that rape victims are divided "according to whether they belong to the 'good guys' or 'bad guys.'" Women's interests, they brought forth, lose to the "interest of the women belonging to the side that was [. . .] the good side in [. . .] [the] war" (Nikolic-Ristanovic 45). The defining question is, how much recognition should be accorded to the injury of the "assailants," or indeed, whether the raped who belong to the wrong side are even victims. 3 The answers say as much about the way the particular historical events are perceived as they do about the degree to which wartime rape is understood in its specific contexts. Precisely because the rape of German women in 1945 defies essentialist definitions of victim and perpetrator, it serves as a marker for evaluating the changing perception of Germans' historical roles in the Second World War. Germany's status as a perpetrator nation during World War Two and the Holocaust remains untouched. However, as German suffering through Allied bombings, expulsion, or rape becomes the focus of public discussion in the Federal Republic, the emphasis that should be placed on German victimhood is open to debate. Examining the degree to which German women raped in the war have been foregrounded as victims in the Postivende period reveals much about an understanding of German identity in the present. Two texts in particular that present the rapes, the film BeFreier und Befreite and the anonymous diary Bine Frau in Berlin [A Woman in Berlin] serve such an inquiry well as both have penetrated public consciousness and simultaneously raised awareness and controversy. Since the film was released in 1992 and the diary in 2003, the reaction they have elicited spans the post-unification period from the beginning to the present. Their reception substantiates not only a shift in discourse on the German past that emphasizes suffering over guilt, but also the increasingly prominent role that the wartime rape of German women plays in the contemporary rendering of German history and of a national selfunderstanding. The first monument in Germany to German women victimized by the war, "the victims of expulsion, abduction, rape, and forced labor" 4 —a material signpost of the current attention to German wartime suffering—magnifies the complexities of the issues at hand. Its dedication to "innocent children and mothers, women and girls" 5 elides the role adult women played in the political circumstances that precipitated their victimization. On the other hand, its installation in 2001, fifty3 4 5

The title of Grossmann's analysis of the German rapes, "A Question of Suffering," illustrates this point. "die Opfer von Vertreibung, Verschleppung, Vergewaltigung und Zwangsarbeit." All translations are my own. "Unschuldige Kinder und Mütter, Frauen und Mädchen"

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six years post facto in the relative obscurity of the Standortfriedhof in BerlinNeukölln, speaks volumes for the political and social constraints that have limited public recognition of this particular group. 6 To be clear, the rapes at war's end have never lacked citation. In the decades since 1945, they have been documented in sources ranging from published diaries, films, journalistic reports, and historical studies to the published records of the German Federal Archives. 7 Remembering the rape of German women has proven schizophrenic, however. On the one hand, the rapes have been an assumed part of the collective narrative of the war's end, a well-known fact that, while suppressed in public discussion, nonetheless has been alive in private circles.8 On the other hand, the repeated "discovery" of the rapes, particularly of the extent of the rapes, continually registers shock among historians and the public alike.9 The topic is a taboo repeatedly broken and then reinstituted. In the period of post-unification alone, this is evidenced by the two texts under examination here. Sander's film opened discussion and raised awareness of the rapes in the early nineties, particularly at a time when the systematic rapes in the former Yugoslavia were also garnering media attention. Yet the shock leveled by the frank portrayal of widespread raping in the diary Eine Frau in Berlin suggests this was the first time the public comprehended the extent and the brutality of the Berlin rapes. Newspaper commentaries on the diary rarely indicate that a decade before Heike Sander had, in her own words, broken the taboo on the subject (Sander, "Response" 86).10 The shock factor is all the more noteworthy considering the fact that Eine Frau in Berlin was not new to the German market: The diary had first been published in German in 1959. At that time, however, the book was not well received (Enzensberger, "Profilneurose"). A recent commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung suggests that the 2003 publication of Eine Frau in Berlin, with its depiction of "women's fates" in the year 1945 during the Soviet invasion of Berlin, divulges "the tip of to-date untold suffering" (Jeismann). 11 Considering the extent of the rapes documented 6 7

8 9 10 11

The monument duplicates a monument erected in 1995 in the Siberian city of Schadrinsk at a mass grave of German women ("Denkmal"). Sander and Johr provide an extensive bibliography in the volume Befreier und Befreite 218-26. The German Federal Archives investigation into crimes of expulsion, including rape, was completed in 1974 but was not published and made accessible to the public until 1989 (Sander, "Response" 87; Naumann 15n22). Grossmann "Question"; Sander in Sander and Johr 9-20; Sander, "Response" 86-87; Liebman and Michelson 9-10; Heinemann 368-70. See, for example, Summers; "War Rape"; Kielinger. One reader laments the lack of reference to BeFreier und Befreite in the current discourse in a letter to the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Weber). "die Spitze von bislang nicht erzähltem Leid"

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by the book, a reviewer in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung finds it odd how litde about the rapes has been published in the Federal Republic (Schwartz). In the post-unification period alone, the rapes have been repeatedly addressed in public, however, beginning with Sander's documentary. On the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, numerous eyewitness reports became the center of public interest in remembering the war and its aftermath. Personal experiences of the war, a number of which mention the rapes, appeared in newspapers.12 An article by Bruno Schrep on the children of the rapes, "Kinder der Schande" ["Children of Disgrace"], ran in Oer Spiegel.™ The same year, the Charlottenburg Museum offered an exhibit with the theme, "Worüber kaum gesprochen wurde—Frauen und alliierte Soldaten."14 A workshop with Heike Sander on the film BeFreier und Befreite complemented the exhibit's thematization of rape and prostitution for survival (Scheub). Sander's documentary reached a wider audience when it was shown on television several times. Freya Klier's documentary and book on the rape and abduction of German civilian women for forced labor in the Soviet Union, both entided Verschleppt ans Ende der Welt,15 appeared in 1993 and 1996, respectively. English historian Antony Beevor's documentation of the Soviet rape of German women, Berlin—The Downfall 1945, appeared in German translation in 2002. Interestingly, Beevor uses Eine Frau in Berlin as a documentary source. A special issue of Oer Spiegel devoted to the flight and expulsion of Germans at the war's end (Die Flucht der Deutschen [2002]) covers the brutality of rapes in eastern territories. Therefore, when a reader's letter to the Stuttgarter Zeitung in 2003 questions why Germans still know so little about the mass rape of German women at the war's end, particularly in light of the pervasiveness of the crime (S. Schubert), it speaks to a layering of taboos that influence discourse on the wartime rape of German women into the present. Discussion of the rapes reveals emotions not associated with other facets of German wartime suffering, such as the air war or expulsion. The common use of terms like Schändung ("despoilment") and Erniedrigung ("degradation") even in current journalistic discourse illuminates the stigma attached to rape victims, despite the horror, shock, or pity that the rapes elicit. Anonyma recognizes even in the midst of events that rape 12

13 14 15

Elke Schubert comments in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (7 Sept. 1996) that the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II has put eye-witness accounts of the war into the public eye, where once they had been only the focus of academic research. Schrep consulted with Sander in gathering material for the article; he does not mention her, however, to Sander's surprise (Smith 254). "A Silenced Topic: Women and Allied Soldiers" The title translates as Dragged to the Ends of the Earth.

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victims will have to endure self-censure in order to find social acceptance: "We [. . .] will have to keep our mouths shut, will have to pretend as if we, yes, we, were spared. Otherwise no man will ever want to touch us" (167).16 Acknowledging this stigma, Götz Aly claims it is no wonder German women long remained silent; they needed to protect themselves from public scorn. He suggests that the passage of time has opened public interest in personal recollections of rape. While the first German edition of Eine Frau in Berlin did not win public favor in 1959, the 2003 edition has enough distance to the events to be a bestseller (Aly). Aly's speculations are credible enough in regard to the distance afforded through time, yet they do not suffice alone to explain the book's popularity. This owes just as much to a climate presently open to exploring the history of German suffering. The mass rape of German women registers with many as a long-silenced, long-suffered trauma of the wartime generation. Public outrage expressed over rapes, that are still perceived as suppressed common knowledge, subdy reflects public disapproval that the suffering of Germans in World War II has not been adequately addressed. Already in the mid-nineties, supporters credit Sander with providing a "mode of access to a space within which Germans may mourn hundreds of thousands of rape victims" (Liebman and Michelson 14).17 Her twopart documentary includes interviews with German women raped during the invasion of Berlin. For many of the women, their filmed testimony was the first time they had spoken publicly about the rapes since 1945. Sander's probing goes beyond uncovering long untold stories of rape, however. Her interviews with persons conceived through the rapes personalize long-term effects and trauma passed on to the next generation. Sander also makes, as she claims, the first attempt to assess the total number of women raped during the fall of Berlin in 1945. To this end, the documentary presents statistical analysis of hospital records on pregnancies, abortions, and births. Sander questions why men rape in war, in general, and specifically, why the Soviet soldiers raped German women. In following this line of inquiry, the documentary includes historical documentary footage that shows not only German women raped and murdered by the Soviets, but also Soviet women raped and murdered by the German army. In an interview, Sander maintained that the documen16 17

"Wir [. . .] werden fein den Mund halten müssen, werden so mn müssen, als habe es uns, gerade uns ausgespart. Sonst mag uns am Ende kein Mann mehr anrühren." Liebman and Michelson's use of "hundred of thousands" to numerate the rape victims seems at odds with Sander and Johr's own assessment of the number of women raped. However, it illuminates the wide range in numbers used to approximate the number of women raped—a testimony to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of determining actual numbers (see n2).

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tary is "not a scholarly work," rather, that it "addresses [. . .] many different emotions" (Smith 256-57). Sander's documentary gives voice literally to the personal history of sexual victimization experienced by untold German women in 1945. Sander herself comes to conclude, "on the basis of the facts uncovered, the history of the postwar period must be rewritten" (qtd. in Liebman and Michelson 12). While the film opened to positive public reception, Sander's own encounters in the mid-eighties with funding difficulties led her to conclude that interest in the topic at that time was low, a claim she upheld in 1992 ("Dokumentation"). Although the film ran in movie theaters for over a year and was broadcast on television several times, the real confrontation with the movie occurred in academic circles (McCormick 100).18 There, Sander was attacked because the documentary "risked [. . .] proximity to revisionist ideas about German history and the Holocaust that right-wing West German historians had expounded during the Histonkerstreit (historians' debate) of the 1980s" (McCormick 100).19 For some, Sander's call to rewrite German history to acknowledge the suffering of rape victims echoed right-wing admonitions to supplant official remembrance of the Holocaust and German war crimes with a remembrance of non-Jewish German wartime suffering. In this vein, one interviewed rape victim laments in the documentary: "[. . .] everybody just always beats up on the Germans; what our people suffered, nobody ever talks about that."20 The question BeFreier und Befreite raised is, how correct is it to address German suffering in light of the suffering caused by Germans or whether German victimhood can even be addressed without simultaneously calling into remembrance the millions harmed or killed by the Germans. In the mid-nineties, the debate surrounding the documentary centered precisely on accusations that Sander ignored the historical context in which the rapes occurred. By decontextualizing the historical event of the rapes, it was argued that Sander simplistically reduced the event to a binary opposition between the genders: Men appear in Sander's portrayal as eternal rapists and women as their eternal victims (Gättens 269; Koch 11; Levin 33-77; Kosta 225; Grossmann, "Question" 47). Scholars questioned whether German women raped in Berlin in 1945 could right18 19 20

McCormick offers a brief introduction to the controversy over the film and an overview of the film's content. For analyses of the historians' debate, see the special issue on the Historikerstreit, New German Critique 44 (Spring/Summer 1988). "[. . .] man hackt nur auf den Deutschen rum, was unsere Leute gelitten haben, darüber spricht niemand" (quotes from the film are cited in Sander and Johr, BeFreier und Befreite, the companion volume to the film; here 87).

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fully be portrayed as victims irrespective of their complicity with the Nazi regime. In this regard, BeFreier und Befreite continued the Historikerlnnenstreit begun in the late eighties, when feminists dissected a divisive polarity in gendered or historical perspectives of women's experiences during the Third Reich. BeFreier und Befreite provided fodder for the battle over "the degree to which women who lived in/under/through the Third Reich should be judged Victims' or 'perpetrators'" (Grossmann, "Feminist Debates" 330).21 Numerous feminist critics relegated Sander's portrayal of women's victimization in 1945 to a gendered perspective that excluded the historical framework of women's "agency during and after the Third Reich and as contributors to the reworking of national identity in both West and East Germany" (Grossmann, "Question" 63).22 Atina Grossmann argued that "Sander's eagerness to integrate German women into the international transhistorical sisterhood of victims of male violence leads to a problematic historical slippage and displacement in which German women seem to become the victims primarily of National Socialism and the war, rather than of the failure of National Socialism, and defeat in the war" ("Question" 49). For Sander's critics, the documentary's so-called "fetish" with documenting the number of women raped resembled a competition in victim status—one that pitted German deaths and traumatization against Jewish/Soviet deaths and traumatization (Grossmann, "Question" 46; Gättens 270). One of the documentary's remarkable achievements is recording the testimony of raped women. In a climate where memory and remembering the lived experiences of the Second World War are accorded increasing significance, BeFreier und Befreite stands as an early post-unification text dedicated to preserving the memory of the wartime generation. Yet in the early 1990s, the documentary fell prey to concerns over the foregrounding of German victimhood that were raised in both the historians' and feminist historians' debates of the previous decade. Although critics praised Sander for creating "a public space for stories that bear witness to the sexual violence committed against women during war" (Kosta 218), they also criticized her for decontextualizing the recollections of raped women. When, for example, racist perspectives on the "bestial hordes" ("bestialischen Horden" [131]) or "Mongols" ("Mongolen" [110])—references to the Soviet troops—slip into biographical testimony, Sander leaves

21 22

Grossman provides an excellent overview of the feminist historians' debate in "Feminist Debates." Grossmann's words are not directed here specifically to Sander, but rather to all feminists, who, she states, need to confront and acknowledge the relationship between women and Nazism.

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uncommented this vestige of Nazist ideology (Kosta 228-29). 23 Moreover, in failing to express her own position on such comments, Sander appears to provide a sympathetic ear to victims' memories that convey complicity with National Socialist policies and ideology. By allowing such statements to stand uncontested, Sander's critics claimed she leaves "undiscovered the intersection of biographical testimony, politics, and history." In other words, simply "recalling experience does not automatically lead to its insightful processing" (Kosta 229, 218). Within heated debates over historical revisionism and a binary understanding of victim and perpetrator roles, BeFreier und Befreite was maligned by critics in the nineties as advancing the victim role for Germans revisiting 1945. In the period since, Sander has repeatedly expressed exasperation over criticism of the documentary. Feeling misunderstood, Sander has asserted that the film was meant only to open discussion on the complex, unaddressed topic of the 1945 rapes, not provide all the answers. Indeed, the multifaceted problems portrayed raise questions she hopes that others will investigate (Sander and Johr 19; Smith 253). Sander realizes that the dichotomy of perpetrator and victim roles for Germans stands at the center of the controversy. She contests the traditional appropriation of these roles by the political Left and the political Right, respectively. She risks what she calls "unjustified" criticism from those contending she "fraudulently resolves the question of guilt by comparing the Holocaust with other crimes" because she believes in the right to tell the German story of sexual victimization in 1945: To me, this is not a duel between men which ends in death at the hands of a victor automatically assumed to be in the right. The rapes were hushed up, and this silence, which had consequences, extended to the social discourse about the events. [. . .] What must this [silence] mean to those struggling bitterly to learn to remember the consequences of the Hitler regime they had established but who were not permitted any memories of other events? ("Response" 84-85)

Sander addresses the discrepancy between an official remembrance of the Holocaust and the private remembrance of German suffering. In the early nineties, she recognizes that it would be politically correct to avoid the subject of German victimhood, and in doing so, avoid any dilemma over the question of German guilt. In a response to her critics, she contends, "[. . .] one can more easily show oneself to be a 'good German' if one leaves problematic questions alone. One can use this dilemma as a cudgel to impose censorship if one wants to avoid difficulties" ("Response" 85). She realizes that addressing the sexual victimization of German women in 23

Grossmann thinks Sander even plays to the Nazi image of the Mongol by choosing a toothless soldier for a frontal close-up and having an educated Soviet officer filmed with his back to camera (Grossmann, "Question" 60).

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World War II takes on a narrative long upheld by the far Right.24 In part then, the taboos being broken in the film are, as Eric Santner states, the taboos of the Left: Narratives of German victimization never really ceased being told in Germany, especially by the organizations of the expellees from the Eastern territories whose place in West German society was on the far right. The leftists' traditional enemy in West Germany, it turns out, is the group Sander now wants to have empathy with, listen to, and bear witness to. (Hyussen et al. 102; cf. Liebman and Michelson 13)

Sander's history of work in feminist activism should have countered attempts to assail BeFreier und Befreite as right-wing revisionism. Nonetheless, the controversy created by portraying German rape victims precisely as victims exemplifies the unease in assigning the victim role to Germans in the early nineties. A more conciliatory critique of BeFreier und Befreite and the controversy surrounding it offered by Richard McCormick in 2001 shows a development in views on the victim/perpetrator complex in the decade since. McCormick's analysis of BeFreier und Befreite parallels growing academic interest in analyzing German incidents of wartime victimization outside the polarity of positions of the political Left or Right. McCormick's defense of the film lies precisely in arguing that stories of non-Jewish German women's victimization have a legitimate place in historical documentation. He asserts: Certainly some middle-class feminists in Germany (and elsewhere) have used an ahistorical, universalized, idealized concept of 'women as victims' to efface their own class and ethnic privilege. [. . .] But nonetheless, a historian and/or filmmaker ought to have the right to focus on actual, 'material' examples of women's victimization, even if those women were primarily non-Jewish Germans at the end of World War II. (101)

McCormick argues that the film "testifies to the complexity of the issues at hand," referring to mutating roles of perpetrators and victims in the German/Soviet saga (114). Yet McCormick questions the relevancy of German women's complicity with the Nazi regime in regard to the rapes, as if their guilt would justify the crime of rape (122-24). Furthermore, he points out, "Complicity is neither a consideration in the rape of young German girls, nor is it relevant to the case of the children who were conceived as a result of the rapes, whose plight is a major focus of Sander's film" (125). McCormick rightly registers the politically innocent victims of the rapes: young girls who were raped and the children born of the rapes—many of whom testify to a life of stigmatization and rejection. 24

Sander was afraid that the political Right would "try to drag [her] into their camp." She was surprised at the ferocity of the attack from the Left (Smith 253).

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His defense of the film is simultaneously a defense of the right for victims or survivors of sexual violence in World War II to break the silence and voice their pain. McCormick contends the film is not revisionist, noting that the documentary does not ignore German war crimes (118). He further maintains, one cannot "insist that the only proper historical context in which these crimes may be explained is the one defined by ethnic and national identity" (123). McCormick says the film is not the only contextualization possible, nor does it claim to be, since the film does not claim to be the "whole" truth (126). This reiterates Sander's own position that the film is meant to create a platform for discussion, not be a comprehensive, historical evaluation of the rapes. McCormick's analysis signals a new perspective in recent scholarship on Sander's film and the topic of German victimization. As narratives of German suffering find acceptance in mainstream discourse, the resistance or even opposition to foregrounding raped German women as victims increasingly cedes to an interest in a more differentiated understanding of Germans' historical roles in the Second World War. The reception of the diary Eine Frau in Berlin might indicate that this understanding even allows more space for the narrative of German victimhood over that of German guilt. It certainly evidences a greater emphasis on Germans' roles as victims rather than as perpetrators—and that the topic of German victimhood has emerged from under the cloak of the Holocaust as a dominant and politically acceptable focus of dialogue in the Federal Republic. While the controversy over BeFreier und Befreite took place primarily in scholarly journals, the debate over the diary Eine Frau in Berlin has commanded a more publicly visible space, namely, the pages of German newspapers. The overtly public deliberation on Eine Frau in Berlin testifies to a shift in location of interest in the 1945 rapes from the limited sphere of academics to the greater public. While Sander found general regard for the topic low in 1992, the bestselling success of the diary, public dramatic readings, and marked discussion of both the diary and the rapes in newspapers, suggest the sexual victimization of German women in World War II has since become a topic of public interest. The diary shares an important commonality with the film in that both present biographical testimonies of German women raped in Berlin in 1945. Sander even uses excerpts from the diary, read dramatically by actress Hildegard Knef, as experiential testimony in BeFreier und Befreite. An important differentiation is that the live oral testimonies in the film, recorded forty-five years after the end of the war, have weathered four decades of experiences post-war, whereas the diary claims to be authentic testimony recorded in 1945, in the midst of the experience. The testi-

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monies share nonetheless the women's intimate witness to both the pervasiveness and brutality of the rapes. Likewise, racist perspectives on the Russians and a sense of German superiority come through in both. Anonyma acknowledges that she was a Mitläuferin, a fellow traveler, of the Nazi regime, and that it colored her perception of the world (187). However, while comments in BeFreier und Befreite were severely criticized for reflecting Nazist ideology, a more moderate tone reigns over the discussion of Eine Frau in Berlin. The diary spans the days between 20 April and 22 June 1945. With unsentimental observation, the author documents hunger, bombings, sexual violence, and prostitution for survival in a city where all norms of social behavior have disintegrated along with the collapse of the National Socialist government. According to the foreword, the author penned her thoughts during the Soviet invasion of Berlin and then expanded them into a lengthier narrative shordy thereafter in 1945 (5). With the help of writer Kurt W. Marek (C. W. Ceram), a personal friend of the anonymous author, the diary was first published in English in the United States in 1954. As previously mentioned, a German edition did not appear until 1959, that then failed on the German market. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, editor of the 2003 edition, avers that the social climate of the 1950s created little welcome for this unsparing portrayal of the rapes. After readers' accusations that she sullied the honor of German women, the anonymous author refused a German republication of the diary during her lifetime ("Profilneurose"; cf. Sander, "Response" 86).25 The public's keen interest in and approval of the book sixty years postwar prove all the more remarkable and worth exploring, therefore. Heike Sander's desire to acknowledge private memories of victimization in the early 1990s collided with an official remembrance of German acts of perpetration. One decade later, emotional references to the rapes—the "horror," the "brutal humiliation many women had to bear," the "desperate fight for survival of the conquered and subjugated" 26 — illustrate that "felt history" ("gefühlte Geschichte") 27 has found its place in cultural representations of the German past. Indeed, it is the driving force 25 26

27

If Jen Bisky's research into the identity of the author is correct, she died in June 2001 (Bisky). "Dann beginnt der Horror, der alle Befürchtungen übertrifft: Die Russen sind plötzlich da, und für knapp zwei Wochen sind die Frauen Freiwild [. . .]" (Bielefeld). "Den verzweifelten Uberlebenskampf der Besiegten und Unterworfenen [. . .] hat die Autorin mit weit offenen Augen wahrgenommen" (Bielefeld). "Der bewegende Bericht schildert die Not der Uberlebenden—und die brutalen Demütigungen, die viele Frauen ertragen mussten" (Kronsbein). The term "gefühlte Geschichte" appears frequently in writings on the current social climate (see Frei; Garbrecht; Welzer ["Schön unscharf']; and Schmidt).

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behind the shift in perceptions on German identities during the Nazi years. Texts like Eine Frau in Berlin, Günter Grass's Im Krebsgang, or Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand enjoy popularity, maintains social psychologist Harald Welzer, precisely because they reflect more the "felt history" or "real memory" of German citizens than the authoritative narrative of the elimination of the European Jews and other crimes of the Third Reich (53).28 Such texts address private, family history and familiar emotions. Renee Zucker's defensive review of Eine Frau in Berlin exemplifies Welzer's position. There, Zucker claims she recognizes in the diary her own mother's voice and that of her mother's generation. The markedly unsentimental, "cool and anesthetized" tone of the writing is for Zucker indicative of an entire generation practiced in the art of selectively forgetting both information and memories (Zucker). 29 More than one reviewer claims that the book's intimate insight into the events of Berlin 1945 reveals with unparalleled clarity the wartime suffering of the older generation (e.g., Gutzeit, Zucker). The text speaks an identifiable voice to second and third generation postwar Germans: It is the voice of their parents or grandparents. While the "exchange of history for emotion" is not without its critics (Raulff), 30 it is noteworthy that sentiment has found its way into both academic and public debate. Whereas Sander's attempt to address "many different emotions" in BeFreier und Befreite could not overcome ideological criticism levied by feminist historians, Eine Frau in Berlin has not been criticized for its subjective view of events. Indeed, current public interest in tales of German suffering, either from aerial bombings, expulsion, flight, or rape is interest in primarily civilian experiences that circumvent the militaristic and racial policies of the Third Reich. Sander was criticized heftily for presenting women's remembrances decontextualized from the history of National Socialism. Yet such remembrances have taken center stage in German cultural texts in the twenty-first century. 31 As with other 28

29 30 31

While collective memory prioritizes the Holocaust and NS crimes, the private remembering of families focuses on suffering of family members in war. Welzer's studies indicate that 65% of Germans believe their families (e.g., their grandparents) suffered during the war ("Die lieben Verwandten"). "kühl und anästhesiert" The tide of Raulff s critique on new literary publications that bring 1945 back to life is "Tausche Geschichte gegen Gefühl." In an interesting web of cross-references, Atina Grossmann, who heavily criticized BeFreier und Bereite, also noted in the 1990s that Eine Frau in Berlin voices the German women's conviction of their own cultural superiority over the "primitive" Russians—which was a result of Nazi propaganda (Grossman 60-61; cf. Aly). Yet Grossmann's criticism of this Nazist worldview is not reiterated in the heated debate over the diary in 2003; to the contrary, the diarist is frequently praised for her critical self-reflection.

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German diaries that document the latter years of the war, Eine Frau in Berlin focuses on the author's existential crisis precipitated by the collapse of the government and social order. While the author does allude briefly to the possibility of German war crimes, the deportation and extermination of Jews and other persons persecuted under National Socialist policies are not central to the reflective moment. 32 Like the women in BeFreier und Befreite, the author speaks primarily of surviving, both physically and emotionally. Separated by a decade and marked differences in sociopolitical interpretative frameworks, the similar emphases on portraying personal suffering in BeFreier und Befreite and Eine Frau in Berlin have provoked opposite reactions that speak volumes to the shift in perceptions on Germans roles in World War II. Although both texts can be considered post-unification texts, the difference in social and political thought in the infancy period of unified Germany compared to the present, where unification's effects continue to multiply over time, is crucial to understanding their different receptions. 33 The controversy surrounding Eine Frau in Berlin has rested not in its portrayal of victimization over complicity, but rather in the value of the text itself as an historical document. In question is no longer to what degree German women were to blame for their fate in 1945, or, more generally, whether it is politically correct to feel outrage for German victims of sexual violence without mention of the millions who suffered at the hands of the Germans. Rather, the central question played out in the culture sections of major newspapers in the fall of 2003 was to what degree the published text corresponds to the text penned in 1945, and to what degree its first editor, Kurt W. Marek—a "master of successful docufiction" 34 —embellished the original to make it appeal more to a public market. 35 With Jens Bisky heading the attack, critics disputed the text's value as an historical document, particularly since the publisher, Eichborn Verlag, and editor, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, stressed its authenticity. The question was even raised whether Eichborn and Enzensberger profited from the current growing interest in the suffering of the German civilian population during the bombing war and expul-

32 33 34 35

See zur Nieden's analysis of women's diaries in World War II, esp. 199-200. Other forces, such as globalization and multiculturalism factor in changing the sociopolitical interpretative framework, as well (see Becker in this volume). Gustav Seibt calls Marek "ein Meister erfolgreicher Dokufiktion" (Seibt). Grossmann was an early doubter of the text's authenticity. In the same article that criticizes BeFreier und Befreite, she expresses her reservations over the authorship and authenticity of Eine Frau in Berlin. She does concede, however, that the "language used and the experiences reported are consistent with other reports" (Grossmann, "Question" 55n28).

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sion with a falsified text.36 Considering the success and effect of the book, Die Tageszeitung declared it the publisher's duty to verify the text's authenticity ("Unterm Strich"). Enzensberger found himself on the defensive. Walter Kempowski, author of the collective diary series Das Echolot, was called in to compare the handwritten diary with the typescript. His proclamation of authenticity in the Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung (20 Jan. 2004) was hailed by some critics as "a triumph of truth," and dismissed by others as "insufficient." 37 Adding to the controversy was Bisky's posthumous outing of the anonymous author. Although the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called the diary "one of the most lucid and moving accounts of the war's end," it proclaimed that until questions related to the authenticity of the diary as a first-hand account of the rapes could be clarified, the work remained foremostly a literary document (Papst). 38 Conversely, a commentator in the Frankfurter Allgemeine insisted the book remained "without a doubt a document of eminent historical and literary value" (von Lovenberg; my emphasis). 39 Both positions within the heated debate underscore a public interest in the rapes that had not been present a decade before. The controversy over authenticity and the author's identity are reminders of the social and political constraints related to the rape of German women in 1945 and rape in general. Analysts point to the difficulty still surrounding an open discussion of rape, as well as ideological conflicts in some circles for implicating the Red Army. Enzensberger finds noteworthy the "aggression" caused by the book, which he ascribes to a left-wing defense of the honor of the Red Army. In an attack aimed specifically at Bisky, Enzensberger accuses the critic of trying to "discredit the witness" and "humiliate the victim of rape," since he cannot deny the facts ("Profilneurose"). 40 Richard Wagner's analysis of the controversy comes to a similar conclusion. Wagner asserts that doubts over the diary's authenticity show how—still—little willingness exists to talk about a topic like the rape of German women. Wagner, like Enzensberger, wonders whether the resistance stems from an ideological conflict with dismantling "the myth of liberation by the Red Army." Wagner questions, however, whether this myth even exists in collective memory, 36

37 38 39 40

Ursula März raises the question in an article in the Frankfurter Rundschau ("Das Prinzip aussitzen"). Uwe Wittstock rhetorically asks the question in an assessment of Bisky's criticism. While Wittstock goes on to admit that Bisky's reproaches do not indeed go that far, intentionally or not, he introduces the suspicion ('"Speichel"'). "Triumph der Wahrheit"; "unzureichend." These responses are found in a summary of the reaction to Kempowski's verdict, "Der schale Nachgeschmack einer Verleumdung." "eine der luzidesten und bewegendsten Schilderungen des Kriegsendes" "[. . .] das jetzige Buch, an dessen Rang als Dokument von eminentem historischem und literarischen Wert kein Zweifel besteht" "die [. . .] Zeugin zu diskreditieren"; "das Opfer der Vergewaltigung zu erniedrigen"

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since—however unpleasant the truth—most Germans experienced the end of the war as a defeat, Finis Germaniae (Wagner). 41 Defenders of the text insist its value lies precisely in reminding the public that the rapes occurred and that its victims suffered, regardless of machinations by either political wing to exploit the topic. Konstanze Jaiser criticizes the moralizing turmoil over the outing of the author as detracting from the author's critical perspective on events of 1945. In an effort to refocus the discussion, Jaiser emphasizes the documentary value of the book in exposing the "mechanisms of intergendered relationships of exploitation." 42 The diary, Jaiser asserts, documents concrete traumatic experiences of sexual violence and the horror felt at the defeat and disintegration of a once orderly and structured National Socialist society. Uwe Wittstock defends the book irrespective of outside authentication precisely because it is one of the few documents on the Berlin summer of 1945. As Wittstock asserts, the author was ashamed to be interrogated about how often she was raped and where to prove the authenticity of her experiences. Wittstock postulates that the need to publish material on the rapes, in effect, to publicize the rapes, creates permission to publish the book unquestioned and requires the reader to simply believe that the book is the truth ("Ungeprüfte Anonyma"). Although Renee Zucker expresses concern over the possibility that gullible readers might have been misled by an unauthenticated text, she nonetheless fastidiously defends the book because it illuminated her personal understanding of both Berlin in 1945 as well the experiences of the wartime generation (Zucker). The comments by Wittstock and Zucker highlight a public demand for information relating to German experiences at the end of World War II. In this regard, Eine Frau in Berlin joins texts like Im Krebsgang and Der Brand that serve as a welcome, belated collective remembrance of suffering. The book's foreword claims: "Her person is inconsequential anyway, since this is not a portrayal of one interesting, individual case, but rather the gray mass fate of uncountable women" (6).43 Anonyma herself calls the mass rapes a "collective experience" ("ein kollektives Erlebnis") that must be emotionally mastered collectively (164-65). Remarks that the book reads like self-therapy, a claim made by Marek himself in his epilogue to the diary (286), hint also at a reception sympathetic to and cognizant of traumatic suffering. 44 The book touches an emotional vein as 41 42 43 44

"Befreiungsmythos der Roten Armee" "Mechanismen 'zwischengeschlechtlicher Ausbeutungsverhältnisse'"; Jaiser quotes Katarina Döblet Qaiser n5). "Ihre Person ist ohnehin belanglos, da hier kein interessanter Einzelfall geschildert wird, sondern ein graues Massenschicksal ungezählter Frauen." See, for example, the article '"Hätte man doch wenigstens ein Stück Seife.'"

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a witness to a collective experience. The danger in this personalized approach to recounting history—here a reminder of the criticism levied at BeFreier und Befreite—lies in its ability to inform national self-understanding in a dehistoricized, decontextualized manner. Norbert Frei issues one of the few warnings on the current emphasis on private, emotional recollections: If literature o n the subject [of the N a z i p e r i o d ] i n c r e a s i n g l y o r e v e n exclusively relies o n t h e alleged " a u t h e n t i c i t y " of e y e w i t n e s s e s a n d o n their p e r s o n a l interp r e t i v e logic, there will b e c o n s e q u e n c e s f o r our v i e w of history. N a t i o n a l Sociali s m will t h e n a p p e a r as a s y s t e m u n d e r s t o o d t h r o u g h the s u m o f the retros p e c t i v e s e l f - e x p l a n a t i o n s of its last c o n t e m p o r a r i e s . T h e o n l y p e o p l e w h o could w a n t that, h o w e v e r , are t h o s e w h o d o n o t fear a r e l a p s e i n t o the w a y [our history] w a s interpreted in the fifties, w h e r e G e r m a n s w e r e H i d e r ' s first—and t r u e — v i c t i m s . ( I I ) 4 5

Frei's caution is not without substance. The bestselling success of Eine Frau in Berlin implies that its reception relates not primarily to the gendered experience of sexual victimization of German women, but rather to generalized feelings of German victimhood. 46 Transcribing the sexual victimization of German women in 1945 to the greater narrative of German wartime suffering recalls the formation of German national identity in the early postwar period. Then, the traumatizing experiences of women as a subgroup came to represent the suffering of the German people as a whole. 47 The current attention to German suffering through rape, Allied bombings, flight and expulsion circumvents or ignores the fact that these were primarily experiences of victimization for women and children. This signifies a digression from gains made through feminist scholarship to recognize particular gendered experiences of Nazism and World War II. The recent re-release of the multi-volume documentation of the flight and expulsion of Germans from the East, first printed in the 1950s by the Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, and War Victims (Schieder et al.), nurtures a revival of the image of a degendered, raped Germany. Elizabeth Heinemann points out that the work, which 45

46

47

"Wenn einschlägige Produktionen sich immer stärker oder ausschließlich auf die vermeintliche 'Authentizität' der Zeitzeugen verlassen und deren persönlicher Deutungslogik, dann hat das Konsequenzen für unser Geschichtsbild: Der Nationalismus erscheint dann als ein System, das aus der Summe der retrospektiven Selbsterklärungen seiner letzten Zeitgenossen zu begreifen ist. Das aber kann nur wollen, wer den Rückfall in die Deutungsmuster der fünfziger Jahre nicht furchtet, in denen sich die Deutschen als Hitlers erste— und eigentliche—Opfer verstanden." Sander noted that the reception of BeFreier und Befreite was primarily gendered; the audience usually consisted mostly of women (Smith 257). Sander's own gendered perspective on the subject affected its reception by men (see Johnson 81). Heinemann offers a thorough analysis of the appropriation of primarily female wartime experiences for postwar German national identity in "The Hour of the W o m a n " 354-95.

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documents the "very real hardships of Germans who fled or were evacuated from their homes in violent circumstances," was in many ways official endorsement of "the image of Germany raped by the Soviets" (370). The trend points toward reclaiming the particular, gendered experience of sexual victimization in 1945 for the narrative of victimization of the whole. The topic of the rape of German women continues to gain visibility. In particular, the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war, just like the fiftieth anniversary, has sparked reflection on the facet of human suffering in the war. 48 Sander's film BeFreier und Befreite has found a new actuality, as evidenced in renewed showings of the documentary. Sander agrees that sixty years after the war's end, the rapes are, once again, a topic ("Mich interessiert"). The diary of the Red Army lieutenant, Wladimir Gelfand, Deutschland Tagebuch 1945-46, released in 2005, offers a perspective of the rapes from the viewpoint of the conquerers. Anonyma's memoirs in Eine Frau in Berlin may soon be turned into a movie; Focus Magazin reports that producer Günter Rohrbach has bought the rights from Eichborn Verlag for the endeavor. In the decade since Heike Sander began discussion of the rape of German women in post-unification Germany, the topic has simultaneously gained visibility and evolved as a politically acceptable topic of inquiry. Sander's probe into the taboo topic in the early nineties countered resistance from scholars wary of exploring German victimization in World War II. Criticized for reconstructing the victim status popular among right-wing circles, Sander's exploration into German women's victimization elicited a strong academic concern for ignoring Nazi crimes in favor of German suffering. Remarkably, a decade later, public discourse on Eine Frau in Berlin circumvents the question of how appropriate it is to concentrate on the victimization of German women to the exclusion of Auschwitz. Missing in the discussion is the forced dichotomy of victim and perpetrator roles. Instead, discourse reveals a readiness to explore the experiences of the wartime generation as part of real, familiar history, known through family history. Concurrently, it is a readiness to embrace a both real and felt history of German suffering. English historian Antony Beevor, whose own research in recently opened Soviet archives provides historical documentation of the rapes, echoes the belief of many that Germany's confrontation with its own history has entered a new phase, a process of "normalization." In the newspaper Die Welt, Beevor labels it progress for German suffering to have its due. Nonetheless, he avows, the 48

For example, the series "60 Jahre Kriegsende" appeared in several major magazines and newspapers, recreating graphic images of the war's end and the existential suffering of the German civilian population.

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topic of German suffering can never be separated from admitting the German aggression that started the war and elicited acts of revenge (Beevor, "Kein Volk"). Therein lies ultimately the beginning and end point of all contemplation on German suffering in the Second World War. As Richard Wagner phrases it: "Auschwitz is the stumbling block of the revisionists." 49 Wagner concedes that Germans need to be able to talk about their traumatic wartime experiences, but need to give up the idea of being pardoned—an idea as useless as the term "Vergangenheitsbewältigung." He questions in this context whether the Holocaust Memorial and a Center against Expulsions are intended to counter-balance each other. Both, Wagner points out, are the goals of German initiatives: "Germans celebrate both, the perpetrator role and the victim role. And both threaten to become an ornament on the facade of the Berlin Republic." 50 The trend in cultural, official, and public discourse shows that deliberating the victim and perpetrator roles of the German past grows increasingly insistent. In this regard, an informed and differentiated understanding of women's roles in this history—while still underdeveloped in the discourse on German suffering—proves indispensable.

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49 50

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Koch, Gertrud. "Blut, Sperma, Tränen." Frauen und Vilm 54-55 (1994): 3-14. Kosta, Barbara. "Rape, Nation and Remembering History: Heike Sander's Liberators Take Uberties." Gender and Germanness. Cultural Productions of Nation. Ed. Patricia Herminghouse and Magda Mueller. Providence, Oxford: Berghahn, 1997: 21731. Kronsbein, Joachim. "Die Frau als Kriegsbeute." Oer Spiegel 14 Apr. 2003: 182. Levin, David. "Taking Liberties with Liberties Taken: On the Politics of Heike Sander's BeFreier und Befreite." Octoberl2 (1995): 33-77. Liebman, Stuart, and Annette Michelson. "After the Fall: Women in the House of the Hangmen." October 72 (1995): 5-14. Majer O'Sickey, Ingeborg, and Ingeborg von Zadow, eds. Triangulated Visions: Women in Recent German Cinema. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998. März, Ursula. "Das Prinzip Aussitzen; Trotz ihres Erfolges bleibt die Edition der 'Anonyma' dubios." Frankfurter Rundschau 20 Dec. 2003: Feuilleton 15. McCormick, Richard. "Rape and War, Gender and Nation, Victims and Victimizers: Helker Sander's BeFreier und Befreite." Camera obscura 16.1 (2001): 99-141. Naumann, Klaus. "Vertreibung: Ein Problem deutscher Selbstthematisierung." Mittelweg 36 3 (2005): 4-18. Nikolic-Ristanovic, Vesna. "Sexual Violence." Trans. Borislav Radovic. Women, Violence and War: Wartime Victimisation of Refugees in the Balkans. Ed. Vesna NikolicRistanovic. Budapest: Central European UP, 2000. 41-77. Papst, Μ. 'Ouch: Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin." Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag 29 June 2003: 63. Poutrus, Kirsten. "Ein fixiertes Trauma—Massenvergewaltigungen bei Kriegsende in Berlin." Feministische Studien 13.2 (1995): 120-29. Raulff, Ulrich. "1945; Ein Jahr kehrt zurück: Tausche Geschichte gegen Gefühl." Süddeutsche Zeitung 30 Oct. 2003: Feuilleton 11. Sander, Heike. "Dokumentation eines grauenhaften Tabus." Interview with Michaela Haas. Süddeutsche Zeitung 8 Dec. 1992: 15. —. '"Mich interessiert besonders, was unter den Tisch gefallen ist.'" Interview with Gabriele Meierding. Hamburger Abendblatt 21 Oct. 2004: Film 9. —. "A Response to My Critics." Trans. Stuart Liebman. October 72 (1995): 81-88. —, and Barbara Johr, eds. BeFreier und Befreite. BeFreier und Befreite: Krieg, Vergewaltigungen, Kinder. München: Verlag Antje Kunstmann, 1992. "Der schale Nachgeschmack einer Verleumdung." Spiegel Online 20 Jan. 2004. 14 Oct. 2005 . Scheub, Ute. "Hier kommt viel Neues an die Öffentlichkeit." Die Tageszeitung 28 Mar. 1995: 24. Schieder, Thomas, et al., Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa. 8 vols. 1954-1961. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2004. Schmid, Thomas. "Erst 28 Jahre; Die Begegnung der Deutschen mit ihrer Vergangenheit hat noch gar nicht richtig begonnen. Rechts nicht—und links auch nicht." Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagsyeitung 16 Nov. 2003: Politik 17. Schmidt, Christopher. "Klopfzeichen; Gefühlte Geschichte und wahre Helden haben Konjunkur." Süddeutsche Zeitung 15 Nov. 2003: Feuilleton 13. Schmidt-Harzbach, Ingrid. "Eine Woche im April: Berlin 1945: Vergewaltigung als Massenschicksal." Sander and Johr. 21-45.

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Schrep, Bruno. "Kinder der Schande." Der Spiegel 10 July 1995: 56-65. Schubert, Elke. "Lieber einen Russen auf dem Bauch. Berlin im Jahre Null: Margret Boverts Briefe über die Tage des Überlebens." Süddeutsche Zeitung 7 Sept. 1996: VI. Schubert, Silke. "Verbrechen aufarbeiten." Stuttgarter Zeitung 30 June 2003: Briefe 10. Schwartz, Claudia. "Das historische Buch: Tagebuch einer Unbekannten." Neue Zürcher Zeitung 20 Aug. 2003: Feuilleton 44. Seibt, Gustav. "Schaulust vor dem Schrecken: Was für die Identifizierung der Anonyma spricht." Süddeutsche Zeitung!! Sept. 2003: Feuilleton 13. Smith, Sabine. "Interview with Heike Sander: Reception of Liberators Take Uberties·. I would have hoped for a different discussion . . . ." O'Sickey and von Zadow. 251-60. Summers, Chris. "Red Army Rapists Exposed." BBC News 29 Apr. 2002. 26 May 2006 . "Unterm Strich," Die Tageszeitung 25 Sept. 2003: Kultur 17. von Lovenberg, Felicitas. "Eine Frau in Berlin: Kein Zweifel an dem Tagebuch der Anonyma." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 25 Sept. 2003: Feuilleton 42. Wagner, Richard. "Jenseits der Endastung; Die Liebe zur Wahrheit und ein neuer Revisionismus." Frankfurter Rundschau 13 Nov. 2003: Feuilleton 17. "War Rape." Woman's Hour. BBC Radio 4. 3 July 2002. 28 Apr. 2006 . Weber, Katja. "Gruselschocker-Kriegsthema." Süddeutsche Zeitung 31 Oct. 2003: Leserbriefe 44. Welzer, Harald. "Die lieben Verwandten; Wie aus den Deutschen ein Volk von NaziGegnern wurde." Süddeutsche Zeitung 12 Sept. 2002: Feuilleton 13. —. "Schön unscharf. Uber die Konjunktur der Familien- und Generationenromane." Beilage ψηι Mittelweg 36 1 (2004): 53-64. Wittstock, Uwe. "Ungeprüfte Anonyma." Die Welt 28 Jan. 2004: Glosse 27. —. '"Sein Speichel in meinem Mund'; Hans Magnus Enzensberger, das Tagebuch einer vergewaltigten Frau und die Wahrheit." Die Welt.de 27 Sept. 03. 19 July 2005 . A Woman in Berlin. Trans. James Stern. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1954. Zucker, Renee. "Erfahrung einer Generation." Die Tageszeitung 30 Sept. 2003: Politisches Buch 14. zur Nieden, Susanne. Alltag im Ausnahmezustand: Frauentagebücher im zerstörten Deutschland 1943 bis 1945. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1993.

DANIEL BECKER

Coming to Terms with Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Walser's Sonntagsrede, the Kosovo War, and the Transformation of German Historical Consciousness Between the neoclassical Pariser Platz framed by the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the rebuilt Hotel Adlon in the north, and the colorful thoroughfare in the postmodern office blocks and shopping malls on Potsdamer Platz in the south, a disconcerting, abstract array of 2,711 concrete slabs now graces the center of Berlin. Peter Eisenman's design for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe marks a curiously ambivalent space in the German capital's cityscape. Like its neighbors, it is a symbolic landmark of the "Berlin Republic." But if Pariser Platz successfully evokes the return to the "normalcy" of the bourgeois nation-state after almost half a century of national division and Potsdamer Platz epitomizes a new, united Germany, more cosmopolitan than its predecessors (see Till 31-57), the Holocaust Memorial proves strangely anticlimactic, imprecise, unaffirmative. Visitors' reactions oscillate from somber contemplation to thoughtless improprieties, with children innocendy using the maze for playing hide-and-seek in-between (Götz; Hartmann). It is a heterotopia in a Foucauldian sense, offering vistas into the nation's past appropriate for an understanding of the present without clearly prescribing how the confluence of past, present, and future in it can provide meaning (Foucault 25-26). The reactions to the memorial reflect a significant change in German historical consciousness in the decade and a half since unification. The monument's existence and apparendy fairly widespread popular acceptance underline that the extermination of the Jews remains a focal point of German memory culture. Yet, as the last wave of books, films, and television programs, and even the most recent World War II commemorations demonstrate, Germans increasingly put the Holocaust in perspective. It now seems to stand alongside other historical experiences from that era: the plight of the civilian population during the Allied bombing raids, the expulsion of Germans from the territories ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union, the violence and vengeance mainly women had to endure from

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(not only) the advancing Red Army (see Frevert; Moeller, "Sinking Ships"; Nolan; Childers). Apparently acceptable politically and intellectually at present, such memories would have earned their proponents such labels as "nationalist," "revisionist," or even "relativizer" two decades earlier (see Habermas, "Setdement" 29-33). Have the Germans thus drawn the (in)famous Schlußstrich ("closing of the books") under the Nazi legacy, focusing, as they did immediately after the war, on their "own" victims rather than empathizing with those who suffered from their crimes (see Moeller, War Stories)? Have the critical endeavors to work through the past that had emerged since the late 1950s ended—perhaps even failed? 1 Have Germans developed the "normal" national identity which some intellectuals embraced and others feared in the wake of unification? 2 One thing seems clear: Somewhere between the two summers of 1998 and 1999, the long-anticipated "Berlin Republic" became actuality. Between the Left's return to power and the government's move to the old/new capital of the Reich one year later, three events in particular reconfigured the politics of memory and historical consciousness in Germany: the debate about the speech by novelist Mardn Walser upon receiving the German Booksellers Association's Peace Prize, the Bundesmht's involvement in NATO's airborne attacks against Serbia in the Kosovo conflict, and, almost as an afterthought, the ultimate decision to build the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Yet scholars do not seem to agree on what exacdy this transformation signified. Some argue that it merely meant a new phase of memory politics, inaugurated by the slow passing away of the eyewitness generations (e.g., Assmann and Frevert 22-23). But most seem to believe that it marked the beginning of a new historical revisionism seeping into the highest layers of politics and society, which denies German responsibility in the face of history (e.g., Bartov 214-16). 3 This essay contends that at century's end, Germany witnessed neither memory-business as usual, with only certain well-worn faces disappearing, nor a return to patterns of denial and forgetting first developed in the immediate wake of World War II. Instead, the flurry of discursive events marked a much more profound epistemic rupture with ultimately beneficial consequences for contemporary Germany's memory culture. This transformation has been obscured because most literature on the country's politics of history confuses a particular, normatively loaded episteme defining one possible way of working through the past with the 1

Thus the thrust, for example, of Bartov; but compare the much more balanced account by Niven.

2

The most useful treatment of these debates is J.-W. Müller.

3

Even more glaringly in this vein, the purportively "academic" studies by Klotz and Wiegel, and Rohloff.

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myriad possibilities of giving individual and collective meaning to the legacies of the past in a more general, theoretical sense. Since 1945, Germans had grappled with German history in various (and often contested and contradictory) ways. 4 But at the time of unification, one particular political-historical interpretation of the Third Reich and its legacy had emerged (at least in West Germany) as the hegemonic discourse about the past: Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Developed and upheld by the left-liberal West German intelligentsia since the 1960s, it drew its strength largely from the wide-ranging societal impact of the Frankfurt School's "critical pedagogy" (Albrecht et aL 189-90, 443-53). Postulating that the social, economic, and psychological preconditions of National Socialism had not entirely disappeared, it demanded that Germans had constantly to account for the loss and suffering they caused their victims in order to prevent repetition (Adorno, "Aufarbeitung" 566; Albrecht et al. 569; Kauders 1023)· Although the term itself had slowly disappeared from the vocabulary of those most actively promoting this narrative since the 1980s (Frei 3738), the logic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung continued to inform mainstream memory politics. 5 But with less and less past injustices left to settle juridically or even politically by the 1980s, it developed into a teleological concept legitimating the profound changes in public memory and historical consciousness that the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s had effected. As Jürgen Habermas, who became something of a spiritus rector of German discourse about the Nazi legacy, put it during the Historikerstreit of 1986-87: The unreserved opening of the Federal Republic to the political culture of the West is the great intellectual achievement of the postwar period, of which my generation in particular could be proud. [. . .] The only patriotism which does not alienate us f r o m the West is a constitutional patriotism. A commitment to universalistic constitutional principles which is anchored by conviction has unfortunately only been able to develop in the German Kulturnation since—and because of—Auschwitz. ("Settlement" 39; see also Maler)

In this reading, the Shoah was a cathartic experience which made democracy in Germany possible, and any attempt to commemorate German 4 5

The literature on German ways of working through the past is immense by now. For excellent overviews, see Moeller, "Coming to Terms with the Past"; Confino. Unlike most German-language scholarship on the topic (e.g., Frei; Assmann and Frevert), my use of the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung does not reflect the politics of memory as a whole, which, according to these studies, have moved from a juridical-political phase of "mastering" the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigun'g) to a more exclusively commemorative phase of "conserving" it (Vergangenheitsbewahrung). Instead, I understand Vergangenheitsbetvältigung as shorthand for the discursive formation established since the 1960s, which remained largely intact even as its societal purpose changed.

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suffering for the sake of identity formation amounted to a "relativi2ation" of the horrors of the "Final Solution" and a return to a potentially disastrous new nationalism (Wolfrum 336-40; Assmann and Frevert 260-63). Indeed, for some liberal intellectuals, Günter Grass for example, unification remained morally impossible even in 1990 because of the Holocaust ("Kurze Rede"). But to construe the Holocaust as the single most important "identityforming foundational event" of postwar German history in this way (Diner, "Guilt" 301) inexorably led back to the problematic questions of guilt and responsibility that had shaped German encounters with National Socialism since 1945. Sigrid Weigel has described this logic as a double "guilt angst" which fuels the German "obsession" with the Holocaust: "Through the commemorative figure of proscription/prescription, the guilt angst, inscribed in the Germans' desire to forget, is doubled and strengthened by a second guilt angst, the fear of guilt by forgetting" (249).6 The discourse of Vergangenheitsbewältigung thus created a somewhat inescapable commemorative predicament, a "memory dilemma," as Salomon Korn has put it: Germans had to commemorate from the perpetrators' perspective—yet this implied denigrating the memory of the victims. They also had to commemorate the victims' suffering—yet this could result in an undue self-exculpation strategy if empathy with the victims alienated or freed Germans from their identity as the perpetrator nation. If Germans chose not to commemorate publicly at all, they would simply affirm an obstinate refusal to acknowledge the legacy of the past ("Holocaust-Gedenken" 29). As long as witnesses, be they perpetrators, victims, or bystanders, could still testify to the past behind the representations dominating the (quasi-)official politics of memory, their presence could in some ways mitigate the memory dilemma. Yet at the very moment when memory seemed to be passing into history, it questioned and recast the grand narrative by which, it seemed, that history would be told. As more and more "authentic" voices slowly passed away, it became necessary to come to terms with the circular logic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in order to make possible the next generations' working through the past. Perhaps not coincidentally, the controversy surrounding Walser's speech, which some critics have retrospectively elevated to a "foundational dispute" of the "Berlin Republic" (Brumlik et al. 10), found its major protagonists among the survivors of the Second World War: Walser 6

"Durch die Verbots-/Gebotsfigur des Gedenkens aber wird die Schuldangst, die dem Vergessensbegehren der Deutschen eingeschrieben ist, durch eine zweite Schuldangst, die Angst vor der Vergessenschuld, verdoppelt und verstärkt." All translations from the German are my own.

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himself, an adolescent when the war ended, Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, a Holocaust survivor, or Klaus von Dohnanyi, former mayor of Hamburg and son of a member of the German resistance. In the exchanges between these three elderly gentlemen, the public debate they unleashed retained a very personal flavor. Initiated by Walser, all three publicly negotiated their personal memories and the lessons they personally thought to have learnt from history. More importantly, these three survivors' personal experiences subdy contradicted and eventually helped to deconstruct the established discursive routines of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Walser began his Sonntagsrede with a fairly frank confession. He admitted that he could no longer "participate in the disqualification of repression" (8).7 Moreover, the "constant presentation" of the German people's "disgrace" made him "look the other way," especially since the Holocaust was "presented in this decade like never before" (11-12).8 Indeed, he "could not make it through the day and certainly not through the night without looking and thinking the other way" because he did not think "that everything must be redeemed" and he "need not be able to bear something unbearable" (8).9 Even if the novelist did in fact not relegate the memory of German crimes exclusively to the private sphere, he wanted to free German discourse from the impossibility of not speaking about the Holocaust on public occasions (7, 12). Walser maintained that such (real or perceived) oversaturation was unnecessary, for "[no] serious human being denies Auschwitz; no sensible human being misconstrues the horror of Auschwitz" (ll). 1 0 Furthermore, the constant need to evoke the Shoah was misleading and ahistorical: "[Whoever] sees everything as a way that could only end in Auschwitz turns the German-Jewish relationship into an unconditionally fateful catastrophe" (12).11 But Walser challenged the basic tenets of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, not just its teleological structure. Praising "repression" and bemoaning overrepresentation meant litde else than advocating the exact opposite of the Frankfurt School's original project. This, he implied, had ultimately and utterly failed. Faulting two ominous straw men—a "poet" (probably 7 8 9

10 11

"An der Disqualifizierung des Verdrängens kann ich mich nicht beteiligen." "diese Dauerpräsentation unserer Schande"; "wegzuschauen"; "in diesem Jahrzehnt [wird] die Vergangenheit präsentiert [. . .] wie noch nie zuvor" "Ich käme ohne Wegdenken und Wegschauen nicht durch den Tag und schon gar nicht durch die Nacht. Ich bin auch nicht der Ansicht, daß alles gesühnt werden muß." "Unerträgliches muß ich nicht ertragen können. [. . .]" "Kein ernstzunehmender Mench leugnet Auschwitz; kein noch zurechnungsfähiger Mensch deutelt an der Grauenhafügkeit von Auschwitz herum. [. . .]" "[. . .] wer alles als einen Weg sieht, der nur in Auschwitz enden konnte, der macht aus dem deutsch-jüdischen Verhältnis eine Schicksalskatastrophe unter gar allen Umständen."

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Grass) and a "thinker" (most certainly Habermas) (10)—for using "Auschwitz" as a "threat routine, an ever-ready means of intimidation, or moral cudgel" (13), 12 the novelist contended that Holocaust discourse did not serve "commemoration, or the proscription of forgetting," but the "instrumentalization of our disgrace for present ends" (12). 13 Not surprisingly, he considered the planned memorial in Berlin "a nightmare the size of a soccer field" and castigated it as the expression of a "negative nationalism" which was "no better than its opposite" (13). 14 To him, this approach to the past seemed problematic because it could produce, at worst, outright resistance to commemoration or, at best, mere "lip service" ("Lippengebet" [13]). Indeed, he alleged, the critical intellectuals who had become the self-proclaimed guardians of memory had ulterior motives. Did they perhaps for a second succumb to the illusion that, because they confront us with the disgrace, because they have again labored in the gruesome service o f memory, they have excused themselves a little, that they are for a moment even closer to the victims than to the perpetrators?" (II) 1 5

In a sense, then, Walser's public negotiation of conscience elaborated on a personal level the multiple contradictions of the Germans' collective "memory dilemma." Yet inexorably, the novelist himself got caught up in its pitfalls and complexities. Perhaps due to its ambivalence, his text diffused into the public debate as a series of provocative keywords, often torn out of their proper context and seemingly drawn from the vocabulary of the radical Right.16 When Ignatz Bubis inaugurated the controversy, he accused the 12 13 14 15

16

"Dichter"; "Denker"; "Drohroutine, [. . .] jederzeit einsetzbares Einschüchterungsgmittel oder Moralkeule" '[. . .] daß öfter nicht mehr das Gedenken, das Nichtvergessendürfen das Motiv ist, sondern die Instrumentalisierung unsrerer Schande zu gegenwärtigen Zwecken" "einem fußballfeldgroßen Alptraum"; '"negativen Nationalismus'"; "kein bißchen besser ist als sein Gegenteil" "[. . .] dadurch, daß sie uns die Schande vorhalten, eine Sekunde lang der Illusion verfallen, sie hätten sich, weil sie wieder im grausamen Erinnerungsdienst gearbeitet haben, ein wenig entschuldigt, seien für einen Augenblick sogar näher bei den Opfern als dei den Tätern?" In a sense, Walser's critique invited misinterpretations by recalling the language of, for example, Botho Strauß and the self-proclaimed "new intellectual Right," who had already voiced a similar criticism in 1993-94 (see Schwilk and Schacht; J.-W. Müller 199-210; Woods). It is thus not surprising that Walser's critics fell victim to the misconception that the novelist's challenge was merely a warmed-up version of "the burps of an undigested past which have come out of the Federal Republic's stomach at regular intervals" ("Rülpsern einer unverdauten Vergangenheit, die aus dem Bauch der Bundesrepublik in regelmäßigen Abständen aufsteigen" [Habermas, "Zeigefinger" 42]). Indeed, even most scholarly analyses perpetuate it (see Evers; Taberner; Zuckermann 9-32; Brumlik et al. 3253; still in this general direction, but more differentiated, Assmann and Frevert 94-96). As

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writer of "intellectual arson" because Walser's comments reminded him of political leaders on the extremist fringe ("Geistige Brandstiftung" 34). Walser, Bubis alleged, attempted "to deny history or exterminate memory" ("Rede" 108).17 Furthermore, Bubis saw an "intellectual nationalism" emerging in the country, "not entirely free of latent anti-Semitism" (112).18 In such a situation, he retorted, it was perhaps "necessary to use morality as a cudgel because some people would otherwise not want to learn it [morality]" (112).19 Indeed, listening to some of Walser's supporters, one could easily get the impression that Bubis did not overreact at all. In Spiegel magazine, for example, Rudolf Augstein seconded the novelist by denouncing the planned Holocaust Memorial as a "memorial of shame" "directed against the capital and the new Germany forming in Berlin." Augstein even maintained that Germans could not prevent its construction "considering the New York Press and the sharks in lawyer's robes" (287).20 To put it bluntly, the erstwhile preceptor of German liberal journalism saw Holocaust memory as one of the many insidious ploys by the infamous "Jewish world conspiracy" to subdue the nation into compliance with its own enrichment schemes. And although he probably meant to say something else, Klaus von Dohnanyi's much maligned intervention in the debate—demanding of German Jews to "question themselves whether they would have behaved so much more courageously than most other Germans if 'only' the handicapped, the homosexuals, or the Roma had been dragged into the extermination camps after 1933" ("Friedensrede" 148) 21 —was ambivalent enough to invite misinterpretation as a "malicious" ("bösartig") insinuation (Bubis, "Ich" 158). With such commentary, the Sonntagsrede controversy unwittingly revolved around the themes of denial or acceptance of German guilt and responsibility on the one hand, and anti-Semitism and revisionism on the other. Walser's critics insisted that the novelist's desire for national "normalcy" was merely another attempt to draw a Schlußstrich under the Nazi era and reestablish a "conventional" German national identity

17 18 19 20

21

far as I can see, the only analysis of the speech that grasps its literary, linguistic, and rhetorical subtleties (and thus comes to quite different conclusions) is Brockmann. "Geschichte zu verdrängen beziehungsweise, die Erinnerung auszulöschen" "der intellektuelle Nationalismus"; "nicht ganz frei von unterschwelligem Antisemitismus" "die Moral als Keule zu benutzen, weil manche sie sonst vielleicht nicht lernen wollen" "[. . .] dieses Schandmal [ist] gegen die Hauptstadt und das in Berlin sich neu formierende Deutschland gerichtet"; "mit Rücksicht auf die New Yorker Presse und die Haifische im Anwaltsgewand" "Allerdings müßten sich natürlich auch die jüdischen Bürger in Deutschland fragen, ob sie sich so sehr viel tapferer als die meisten anderen Deutschen verhalten hätten, wenn nach 1933 'nur' die Behinderten, die Homosexuellen oder die Roma in die Vernichtungslager geschleppt worden wären."

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(Assheuer 134). Two concerned university professors from Duisburg alleged, rather opaquely, that his use of the term "disgrace"—instead of "guilt" or "crimes"—allegedly fell "behind the first attempts at a rational approach to what has happened" and evoked "nationalist topoi" designed to "obscure historical facts" and to engineer "a role reversal of perpetrators and victims" (Bogdal and Brocke 119-20).22 Walser appeared to heed "the unholy German tradition of an unpolitical individualism" (Reinecke 262) and "place national politics of history above universalistic politics of memory" (Schütte 45).23 Yet the critics themselves never elaborated on what they meant by all this. Instead of pondering whether Walser's arguments contained perhaps a grain of truth, they simply responded to the challenge of his catchphrases with more catchphrases. In fact, in most cases they merely reiterated the often rather opaque criticism Habermas had already launched against the alleged "revisionists" in the Historikerstreit twelve years earlier. In 1986, he had argued that his opponents wanted to "shake off the debts of a successfully de-moralized past" in order to "revive an identity which is unreflectively anchored in national consciousness" and to "call Germans back to a conventional form of national identity," which, he contended, had fostered the authoritarian traditions that had ultimately led to the Holocaust ("Settlement" 37, 39).24 The Sonntagsrede now seemingly promoted a similar agenda. Klaus Harpprecht, for example, feared Walser wanted to reestablish the fateful traditions of German nationalism which (as Habermas had argued) the Holocaust had made possible to overcome: Wiped out—the memory that it is precisely normalcy that tortures us: the normalcy of the community of perpetrators. Wiped out—the insight that the permanent debate about the—so-called—past has done its share to contain that perversion of normalcy and to establish us as citizens in the house of Europe." (52) 25

Yet unwittingly, such criticisms only confirmed the point Walser had made: the logic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung ultimately led its proponents to

22

23 24 25

"Mit [. . .] [dem] Begriff der "Schande" (gegen die Schuld) fallen Sie nicht nur hinter die ersten Versuche rationaler Annäherung an das Geschehene zurück, sondern rufen zugleich nationalistische Topoi ab, die [. . .] auf eine Verdunkelung geschichtlicher Tatsachen und die Verkehrung der Tätet- und Opferrollen zielen." "die unselige deutsche Tradition eines unpolitischen Individualismus"; "Er setzt nationale Geschichtspolitik über universalistische Erinnerungspolitik." This was Habermas's version of the Sonderweg paradigm; for a lucid retrospective discussion of this problem, see Jarausch and Geyer 85-108. "Fortgewischt die Erinnerung, daß es gerade die Normalität ist, die uns quälend folgt: die Normalität der Tätergesellschaft. Fortgewischt die Einsicht, daß die permanente Debatte über die Vergangenheit—die sogenannte—daß ihre getan hat, jene Perversion der Normalität in Schach zu halten und uns als Bürger im europäischen Haus einzurichten."

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"instumentalize" the Holocaust "for present ends," in this case the defense of Germany's open society against an alleged nationalistic attack. Not surprisingly, to Walser's critics, the Holocaust Memorial, which the novelist had so harshly criticized, became a symbolic benchmark of Germany's continued adherence to the liberal principles of Western democracy: "The debate about the memorial will be the contest in which the ethical foundations of the Berlin Republic will be laid and its moral coordinates adjusted," asserted Micha Brumlik. "After the vote [of the Bundestag we will know if the coveted happiness of national belonging or the clarity of historical responsibility will become the beacon of the republic" (51).26 When the Walser debate drew to a close around the turn of 1998, it seemed that the novelist's opponents had carried the day. "It is no bad luck at all if the Berlin Republic, which leading representatives of German normalcy would like to see unburdened by history, got off to a false start right in the beginning," hoped Daniel Cohn-Bendit (574-75). 27 Altering or even abandoning the established rituals of commemorating the Holocaust had become a political impossibility. The new government, initially reluctant about if not outright hostile to a national Holocaust Memorial, could no longer hope to question the " i f ' of the project, only to influence the "how." 28 Habermas rejoiced (somewhat elusively) that Walser had unwittingly "turned the tide" so that "for the first time in the fifty-year history of the Federal Republic," it had become possible to set a "conspicuous [. . .] sign of a reformed German collective identity" ("Zeigefinger" 42). 29 Even President Roman Herzog, whose call for an "uncramped" ("unverkrampfte") nation in his inaugural address in 1994 had caused unease among liberal intellectuals, now seemed to embrace the "constitutional patriotism" the Nazi legacy demanded: In his address honoring the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, for example, he affirmed, in 26

"Die Debatte um das Mahnmal wild jene Auseinandersetzung sein, in der die ethischen Grundlagen der Berliner Republik gelegt und ihre moralischen Koordinaten gerichtet werden. [. . .] Nach der Abstimmung werden wir wissen, ob das erstrebte Glück nationaler Zusammengehörigkeit oder die Klarheit historischer Verantwortung zum Leitstern der Republik wird."

27

"Letztlich muß es kein Unglück sein, wenn der Aufbruch in die Berliner Republik, den auch führende Repräsentanten deutscher Normalität gerne unbeschwert von der Geschichte sähen, gleich zu Beginn verstolpert wurde." Being labeled as something akin to a co-conspirator in the writer's plot to prevent the Holocaust Memorial (e.g. Joffe; Assheuer), for example, put the new minister of culture, Michael Naumann, in an untenable and unenviable position. The scandal forced him to renege his earlier opposition to the project.

28

29

"hat das Blatt gewendet"; "In der fünfzigjährigen Geschichte der Bundesrepublik ist dies der erste Zeitpunkt"; "ein solches unübersehbar in die Zukunft hineinragendes Zeichen einer geläuterten kollektiven Identität"

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almost Habermasian terminology, that "every single one of these aspects [of freedom and democracy in Germany] is an antithesis to the teachings of National Socialism" ("Sich der Geschichte stellen" 604). 30 The debate seemed to subside as merely another episode on the "spasmodic, eruptive, and uncontrollable memory trail of public outrages," along which, as Aleida Assmann and Ute Frevert have written, German memory politics had developed and continuously been reaffirmed since the late 1970s (21). 3 1

Yet the very success of the idea that the Holocaust was an "identityforming foundational event" of post-war German democracy—and that this idea had somehow "survived" even as the "Federal Republic" morphed into "Germany" (Diner, "Guilt" 306)—created its own dilemmas because it became increasingly unspecifically German. In a sense, the Holocaust no longer signified a pathology of a particular national history but one of the human condition. Was the Holocaust Memorial not an "expression of something which many nations should add to the national idea of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries," namely, that "every nation, every history, has its own barbarity" and that "all [peoples and states] have had to learn after Auschwitz that the pain and the shame caused by criminals of their own people also belong to national consciousness" (Duve 176)? 32 If, as President Herzog argued, "The unthinkable has become reality once, and thus [. . .] remains a historical possibility—everywhere in the world' ("Reichskristallnacht" 114; my emphasis) 33 did "Auschwitz" not give the Germans a "disquieting political responsibility" (Habermas, "Zeigefinger" 42) 34 —even if it remained unclear, for the time being, how far and, more importantly, toward what this responsibility should extend? Habermas, for example, seemed to think it was boundless, demanding of Germans "a spatial and temporal universalization of the moral responsibilities of democratic civil society" ("Zeigefinger" 44). 35 30 31 32

33 34 35

"Jeder einzelne dieser Aspekte unseres Gemeinwesens ist eine Antithese zu dem, was der Nationalsozialismus verkündet hat." "diese sprunghafte, eruptive und unkontrollierbare Erinnerungsspur öffentlicher Erregungen" "Ausdruck für das, was viele Nationen dem Nationalgedanken des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts hinzufugen sollten"; "[. . .] in jedem Volk, in jeder Geschichte gibt es auch die eigene Barbarei. [. . .] wir alle haben nach Auschwitz lernen müssen, daß in das nationale Bewußtsein auch der Schmerz und die Scham gehören, die die Verbrecher des eigenen Volkes ausgelöst haben." "Das Undenkbare ist einmal Wirklichkeit geworden, und damit bleibt es historische Möglichkeit—überall auf der Welt." "beunruhigende politische Verantwortung" "einer räumlichen und zeitlichen Entgrenzung der moralischen Verantwortung der demokratischen Bürgergesellschaft"

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Contemporary Germany now simply served as an example of a global predicament. Indeed, it seemed predestined to put the lessons learnt from the genocidal cataclysm into practice. "Auschwitz" now served as a legitimation of war. Throughout the 1990s, Germans had looked on as genocide propelled through Rwanda and as, closer to home, civil wars rocked the former Yugoslavia. But as the global spiral of violence escalated, at least in their perception, so did their political leaders' rhetoric condemning it. Especially in an age when new "fascisms" cropped up and new genocides occurred with disquietingly increasing frequency, it became paramount to stop "expulsion [and] ethnic warfare [from] reemerging in Europe and a bloody whirlwind [from] being reaped" (Fischer, "Nie wieder"). 36 Since the Germans had meanwhile, as defense minister Rudolf Scharping put it, "deep inside our soul" turned away from annihilationist warfare (219), they seemed particularly legitimized, indeed almost burdened to intervene and "not to permit the contortions of the wars of the first half of the century and of the past to determine the future in Europe" {Plenarprotokolle 2424). 37 And thus, from 24 March 1999, German aircraft bombed, alongside their NATO allies, targets in Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo, in order to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe" ("humanitäre Katastrophe"): the impending "ethnic cleansing" ("ethnische Säuberung") and mass murder of Albanians by Serbian nationalists (Gerhard Schröder, Plenarprotokolle 2620; similarly CDU spokesman Wolfgang Schäuble, Plenarprotokolle 2623). 38 For the new center-left German government—staffed by the 1968 generation which had played a crucial role in placing Vergangenheitsbewältigung at the center of German political discourse 39 —history was repeating itself in the Balkans. The anti-Albanian campaign of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic represented the "völkisch politics of violence" (Peter Struck, Plenarprotokolle 2628) of an "unchecked nation36

"[. . .] wenn Vertreibung, ethnische Kriegsführung in Europa wieder Einzug halten und eine blutige Ernte mittlerweile zu verzeichnen ist." For a detailed analysis of the emergence of the comparison between contemporary genocides and Nazi crimes during the 1990s, especially with regard to the German Left and particularly Joschka Fischer's switch from pacifist abstentionism to humanitarian interventionism after the massacre at Srebrenica, see Schwab-Trapp.

37

"im Innern unserer Seele"; "[...] nicht zuzulassen, daß in Europa die Fratze der Kriege der ersten Hälfte dieses Jahrhunderts und der Vergangenheit die Zukunft bestimmt" The event marked a significant shift in Germany's foreign policy, even though the German radical Left's claim that it meant a resurgence of German "militarism" proved completely unfounded. For brief overviews of the political repercussions of the war, see HeinemannGrüder, who argues from a highly critical German left-wing perspective, and the slighdy more balanced article by Hyde-Price. From different angles, see Albrecht, et al. 387-447; Kraushaar; Koshar, esp. Chapter 4; Assmann and Frevert 226-29.

38

39

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alism" (Re2Zo Schlauch, Plenarprotokolle 2634). 40 Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer even saw "a crude form of fascism" at work in Kosovo, with "Einsatzgruppen" implementing "a greater Serbian nationalism like the one we also had with the greater German nationalism," an exclusionary hypernationalism based on the belief "that one's own people is most important and that therefore other peoples may be expelled, suppressed, and massacred" {Plenarprotokolle 2638-39). 41 Social Democrat Peter Struck characterized Milosevic as another "crazy, power-hungry dictator," who, "at the end of this century ripe with horrors," tried to "expel or exterminate a whole people and to get closer to his racist goal of an 'ethnically pure' Serbia" (Plenarprotokolle 2627). 42 In short, the government rationalized Germany's first involvement in a war since World War II—a war of aggression no less, only flimsily legitimized by international law— by evoking the strategy of historical experience. Milosevic became a new "Hitler," his policies in Kosovo a new "Holocaust." The government's war rhetoric thus affirmed the tendency toward universalizing the German way of working through the past, which the Walser debate had already made apparent. If (hyper-)nationalism (rather than anti-Semitism) lay at the heart of the Holocaust, as Walser's critics had implied, the analogies likening the situation in Kosovo to the Shoah may not even have been entirely out of place. But they also pointed to a (probably unconscious) German self-exculpation based on the idea that (hyper-)nationalism was indeed not a problem of German history alone. 43 Perhaps not coincidentally, Scharping alluded to "the contortions of the wars of the first half of the century," and not more concretely and more appropriately to the "contortions" of the Second World War. His colleague Fischer spoke of exclusionary violence and nationalism as "that plague of the European past" (Plenarprotokolle 2638; my emphasis). 44 Whether or not they explicidy used the metaphor of "Auschwitz" to describe the contemporary plight of the Albanians, whether or not they endorsed comparisons between the two events, the Holocaust now

40 41

42

43

44

"völkische Gewaltpolitik"; "hemmungslosen Nationalismus" "rohe Form von Faschismus"; "einen großserbischen Nationalismus wie den, den wir mit dem großdeutschen Nationalismus auch hatten"; "daß das eigene Volk das wichtigste ist und deswegen andere Völker vertrieben, unterdrückt und massakriert werden dürfen" "Am Ende dieses an Schrecken reichen Jahrhunderts versucht noch einmal ein wahnwitziger, machtbesessener Diktator, eine ganze Volksgruppe zu vertreiben oder auszulöschen und seinem rassistischen Ziel eines "ethnisch reinen" Serbiens näherzukommen." This is quite glaringly apparent, for example, in the contributions by Duve; and Herzog, "Reichskristallnacht," already cited. But one can even trace it back to Habermas's arguments in favor of a "constitutional patriotism" a decade and a half earlier. "diese Pest der europäischen Vergangenheit"

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figured as the epitomic crime against humanity but no longer as a specifically German deed. "No more Auschwitz" had long been the motto of Fischer's political generation. Yet if it had once been meant to buttress the fight against a resurgence of exclusionary nationalism in Germany (see Albrecht et al. 387-447), it now served as "the historical admonition to prevent the beginnings of a possible genocide" elsewhere, too (Fischer, "Serbien"). 45 "Auschwitz" was now no longer only a constant thorn in the Germans' side reminding them never to embark on nationalist, exclusionary political projects and to embrace an open, democratic form of governance. It had also become a European, perhaps even a global legacy. Yet ultimately, the Kosovo War revolved less around preventing a second Holocaust. From a German standpoint, it rather served symbolically to undo the first, or at least its consequences. 46 For even as the Auschwitz analogy receded in public pronouncements and more wideranging historical comparisons entered the debate about the war's meaning, 47 most commentators agreed that the event underlined Germany's long desired and long doubted "partnership in a Western political culture which was originally alien to the Germans" (Diner, "Schlüsselereignis"). 48 "The predominance of normative arguments" in the debate about the war explained, to Habermas, for example, "the reassuring fact that public discussion and opinion in Germany do not differ from those in other Western European countries." Germans had learned from the cataclysmic experience of the Holocaust and apparently no longer treaded on a Sonderweg and exhibited "no special selfconsciousness" ("Bestialität" l). 4 9 The war showed that, despite efforts to 45

"Nie wieder Auschwitz ist die historische Mahnung, den Anfängen eines möglichen Völkermordes zu wehren." See also his speech at the Green Party convention, "Nie wieder."

46

See Heinemann-Grüder 42; see also the similar contemporary comments in Zeese; and Schirrmacher, "Luftkampf." For example, Hans Magnus Enzensberger wittily suggested that instead of looking to the Holocaust or "relying on CNN," one should instead "read Grimmelshausen" to understand what was happening in Kosovo ("Ein seltsamer Krieg"). Other commentators proposed the Balkan conflicts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as possible points of reference (see Diner, "Europa"; Konräd; and Lohr). Perhaps this was also an important aspect of coming to terms with Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The Kosovo War, in a sense, broke the hegemony of the Holocaust as the almost exclusive historical point of reference in German political discourse (on this problem, see Bohrer).

47

48 49

"die Teilnahme und Teilhabe an einer westlichen politischen Kultur, die den Deutschen ursprünglich fremd gewesen war" "der Vorrang normativer Argumente"; "den beruhigenden Umstand, daß öffentliche Diskussion und Stimmung in Deutschland nicht anders sind als in anderen westeuropäischen Ländern"; "kein Sonderbewußtsein"

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the contrary, revisionist attempts to "call Germans back to a conventional form of national identity" had failed. Despite national unification, the "unreserved opening of the Federal Republic to the political culture of the West" had remained in place. At the same time that the war seemed to confirm the general direction and indeed success of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, however, it also deconstructed its basic underlying assumptions. At least since the Historikerstreit, the idea that Na2i crimes, in particular the "Final Solution," remained "singular" events in world history had been a centerpiece of German memory politics. Neither comparisons to other genocides nor empathetic memories of German victims of war and expulsion were appropriate in the face of a crime of such metaphysical proportions. Indeed, in the logic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, both seemed to be manifestations of selfexculpatory strategies, which underlined an obstinate German refusal to work through the past. During the Kosovo War, this figure of thought quite glaringly collapsed. Even when Fischer, for example, affirmed that what Serbs did to Albanians in Kosovo was incomparable to what Germans had done to Jews in the extermination camps, he still asserted that Milosevic intended "to exterminate the [Albanians'] cultural identity," whence it was "only a small step to genocide" (Fischer, "Serbien"; my emphasis). 50 Another "Auschwit2" seemed to lurk on the horizon. But Germans no longer needed to fear their own genocidal impulses; the danger now lay elsewhere. Moreover, if the war effort required empathy with the victims of air raids, persecution, and expulsions in Kosovo, why should commemorating and mourning the German victims of fifty years ago constitute an act of relativizing the Holocaust? After all, as Daniel Goldhagen—rather unexpectedly—argued in support of the NATO mission, "all the dead civilians—whether we call it genocide or not—are just as dead as the murdered Jews, Poles, Russians, homosexuals in Hitler's time." It did not matter any more whether or not a peculiarly German "eliminationist anti-Semitism" propelled the atrocities ("Deutsche Lösung" 17).51 Ironically, the forms of representing the Holocaust which had so strongly enhanced Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the 1990s—or, as Walser had complained in his Sonntagsrede, were "presented in this decade like never before"—now facilitated this breakup of its figures of thought. Except for the American TV miniseries Holocaust, which aired on German channels in 1979, and a number of documentaries not targeted toward a mass audi50 51

"daß die kulturelle Identität ausgelöscht werden soll"; "Zum Völkermord fehlt dann nur noch ein kleiner Schritt." "[. . .] all die toten Zivilisten—ob wir es nun Genozid nennen oder nicht—genauso tot sind wie die ermordeten Juden, Polen, Russen, Schwulen zu Hitlers Zeiten"

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ence, German Holocaust discourse had remained almost entirely nonvisual until unification. But with box office hits like Schindler's List, the— largely photographic—Wehrmacht exhibition, or the popularly successful television documentaries of Guido Knopp, Germans acquired an intense visual imaginary of the "Final Solution." 52 Indeed, even the decade's most successful book about the Holocaust, Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, provided readers with images, perhaps even at the expense of arguments. The American political scientist's popular appeal derived in part from his vivid, graphic, and empathetic language, which many nonhistorians in the audiences apparently favored over the almost clinical tone of much German-language Holocaust scholarship (see Dipper). In the Kosovo War, Fischer, Scharping, and their supporters drew on a visual imaginary with which they knew most Germans could already associate. Evoking "mountains of corpses" ("Leichenberge" [Scharping qtd. in Feldmeyer]) or "daily images of refugees' suffering" (Gerhard Schröder, Plenarprotokolle 2620) 53 meant evoking the already familiar "icons" of the Holocaust. The politicians merely created a link between the documentary footage on Nazi crimes and the everyday violence of genocides and civil wars Germans could witness on their TV screens. Yet images can distort reality as much as they can provoke empathy because they can decontextualize a historical event. Even Schindler's Ust and Knopp's documentaries mostly only alluded to but did not long dwell on what actually happened in the gas chambers and crematoria. And Goldhagen's "thick description" of the police battalions' atrocities, of the work camps, and of the death marches, or the Wehrmacht exhibit's display of victims publicly humiliated and mistreated by German soldiers, or lined up in front of shooting squads, provided compelling images of precisely those facets of the Shoah which it shares with other genocides, and not of the industrial killings in the extermination camps. In the case of Kosovo, language recalling these images amplified those of massacred or fleeing Albanians, which did indeed not differ significantly from the visual imagery German society had of Holocaust victims. Re-presenting the Holocaust in this way abandoned the singularity paradigm and brought up, for some at least, memories of flight and expulsion which made compassion possible. The pictures of the Kosovars' 52

T o put it differently, German Holocaust discourse had until then used the visual Holocaust experience as an illustration of messages delivered predominantly in a textual mode (e.g., in the coverage of the Auschwitz and Eichmann trials in the 1960s). In the 1990s, the visual in a sense emancipated itself from the textual and became a message in its own right. Instead of being contextualized, Holocaust imagery became the text itself instead of Holocaust memory. On Knopp, see Kansteiner; for a critical discussion of Schindler's Ust, see Eley and Grossmann; for an overall perspective, see Knoch.

53

"die täglichen Bilder vom Flüchtlingselend"

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plight created another (in many ways much more compelling) visual historical analogy for both supporters and opponents of the war, namely to the flight and expulsion of Germans from the eastern territories at the end of World War II. Against the opposition's "legalistic" reasoning, for example, Fischer asked, "Where are the rights of the murdered in the mass graves? Where do you keep the rights of the raped women? Where are the rights of the expelled?" (Plenarprotokolle 2638). 54 Gregor Gysi, speaking for the minority of socialists and left-wing Greens opposing the war, condemned the NATO attacks and the government's rhetoric of "Auschwitz" as "inappropriate" in the bundestag, but wondered nonetheless "why one needs to use other terms only to prove that German crimes are not unique, they also occur among others," for "the victorious powers, too, back then unfortunately decided—and you know how much suffering this entailed—on expulsions" (Plenarprotokolle 2637-38). 55 Newspaper commentary often seconded these sentiments, with long features on the history of expulsions (e.g., Simic; Schlögel; R. Müller; Surminski). The Kosovo War apparently made it possible to circumvent the proscriptions of established public discourse about the past and place genocide, expulsions, and other atrocities side by side. In the German context, this also meant to overcome the fine but important distinctions usually drawn between "pure" victims and "perpetrator-victims," so to speak. That Günter Grass, for example, now positively empathizes with these German victims, aptly illustrates this development. 56 Of course, German society had never not discussed its "own" losses, as Robert Moeller has correctly pointed out (War Stories·, "Sinking Ships" 165-73). Yet the dominance of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung paradigm during the 1980s and the 1990s apparendy gave many Germans the impression that such explorations of memory were either entirely unacceptable or at least constituted second-class mourning. Because Germans had committed the most heinous act of mass murder in history and because their national tradition and identity had somehow predestined them to this crime, they constantly needed to remember and work through this (and only this) past. Indeed, the crime demanded of them to prove their redemption by identifying with their victims' suffering; yet because at the 54 55

56

"Wo ist das Recht der Ermordeten in den Massengräbern? Wo ist bei Ihnen das Recht der vergewaltigten Frauen? Wo ist das Recht der Vertriebenen?" "unangemessen"; "Warum muß man denn noch andere Vokabeln benutzen, nur um zu beweisen: Deutsche Verbrechen sind nicht einmalig? Sie kommen auch bei anderen vor." "Auch die Siegermächte haben damals leider—Sie wissen, wieviel Leid das bedeutet hat— Vertreibungen beschlossen." See Grass, Im Krebsgang, and, for the wider context in historical perspective, Moeller, "Sinking Ships."

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same time the logic of crime and guilt established an irreconcilable difference between victims and perpetrators, such identification remained impossible (Barnouw 662; Assmann and Frevert 23). In other words, the logic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung precluded any possibility of accounting for change, constantly throwing Germans back onto the questions of guilt and responsibility which emerged from the collapse of the Third Reich (Assmann and Frevert 138-39; Weigel 249; Barnouw 663). Herein lies the reason why German discourses about the past again and again evoked the categories and degrees of guilt Karl Jaspers introduced into the German debate in Die Schuldfrage in 1946. Perhaps Die Schuldfrage became the "foundational moral-philosophical text of the old Federal Republic" (Diner, "Guilt" 308) because, even in refuting Allied claims of collective guilt and insisting on individual responsibility, it asserted the existence of a collective "We" which now needed to redefine its identity in a process of "cleansing" ("Reinigung") (Jaspers 25, 54, 80-82; see also Assmann and Frevert 127-28). Die Schuldfrage promised redemption from the legacy of the past (54), even as it contributed to establishing a discourse about an "unredeemable guilt" of surviving "when something like this [i.e., German crimes] has happened" (18).57 In a sense, the logic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung worked to perpetuate a somewhat bizarre and contorted form of an exclusive national identity, even as it advocated that the crimes it sought to atone for proscribed such an exclusive collective consciousness. As it asked Germans to confront the past individually, in "one's own conscience and [in] communication with a friend and neighbor, with a loving fellow human being interested in my soul" (17),58 it did not accept more than one, thus ritualized, answer and relegated all others to silence (Barnouw 667). 59 Consequently, as Mary Fulbrook has argued, the "absorption in constant professions of guilt, the state of permanent penance, almost prevented West Germans from admitting anyone else to their community of the agonized soul" (179). Working through the past on the terms of Vergangenheitsbewältigung held the Germans in the precarious state of national homogeneity and purity into which National Socialism and its defeat had thrown them.

57 58 59

"Daß ich noch lebe, wenn solches geschehen ist, legt sich als untilgbare Schuld auf mich." "das eigene Gewissen und die Kommunikation mit dem Freunde und dem Nächsten, dem liebenden, an meiner Seele interessierten Mitmenschen" The problem lay not so much in the ambivalence of Jaspers's text, but rather in the mechanisims of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which, following Adorno, developed as an "education [. . .] to critical self-reflection" dissimulated by a "critical intelligentsia" explicidy using techniques of indoctrination borrowed from the "culture industry" (Adorno, "Erziehung" 676; "Aufarbeitung" 569-71; Albrecht et al. 447).

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From this perspective, the controversy about Walser's speech and the images of the Kosovo War provoked a reliving of the German trauma of 1945. The war, on the one hand, actualized the memories of the destruction, suffering, and pain from which Vergangenheitsbewältigung emerged. The debate about the Sonntagsrede, on the other, renegotiated the terms and conditions of the project. Walser's critics argued that the use of the term "disgrace" instead of "guilt" underlined his desire to "forget," as opposed to Jaspers's willingness to remember (e.g., Bogdal and Brocke 119-20; Assmann and Frevert 95-96; Brumlik et al. 10). Yet the novelist's and the philosopher's arguments resemble one another more than it would seem. Jaspers spoke of guilt because he spoke of actual perpetrators; by the time Walser publicly negotiated his conscience, however, the majority of the population was not personally implicated in this sense any more.60 But perhaps they were witnessing a "sliding into the 'aesthetic,'" as Jaspers had already warned, which "in its abstraction detracts from the realization [of moral renewal] from the core of self-consciousness" and "create[s] in a new way a false collective sense of appreciation" (79-80).61 Arguing against the "monumentalization of the disgrace" and the "instrumentalization of the disgrace for present ends," Walser did not argue for a Schlußstrich. Instead, he actualized one of the basic tenets of Jaspers's suggestions for moral renewal: that coming to terms with the German crime of the Holocaust required an act of conscience, not a ritualized public profession of guilt.62 Indeed, even Klaus von Dohnanyi's "malicious" contention that German Jews, too, "should ask themselves whether they had behaved so much more courageously than most other Germans [. . .]"—preposterous as it must have seemed to a Holocaust survivor like Ignatz Bubis—was a pertinent question: If one could accept only one perspective on the Shoah and the Second World War—i.e., of a nation of perpetrators redeeming their crimes by preventing repetition and by compassionate identification with their victims, and with them alone—the victims' descendants would have to embrace the perpetrator perspective unless they wanted (again) to be excluded from the national community (see also Dohnanyi, "Wer" 186; 60

61

62

One could say that "guilt" (Schuld) and "disgrace" {Schande) reflect a temporal difference. The Duden-Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache defines "Schuld" as "the source of something unpleasant, evil, or of an accident," or a "certain behavior, certain deed with which someone breaks values, norms." Most importantly, it implies "the responsibility for it" (Duden 8: 3449) "Schande," on the other hand, is "something which greatly harms someone's reputation," or "a greatly lamentable, outrageous occurrence, condition, fact" (Duden 7: 3320). "das Entgleiten ins 'Ästhetische', das durch seine Unverbindlichkeit abzieht von der Verwirklichung aus dem Kern des Selbstseins des einzelnen"; "sich auf neuem Wege ein falsches kollektives Selbstwertgefuhl zu verschaffen" Compare Jaspers 49-50, with Walser 11 and 14.

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Reich-Ranicki 322). Naturally, this logic proved untenable, not only because Bubis and other Jewish participants in the debate insisted on their particular "reading" of the past from the perspective of victims or their children and grandchildren (e.g., Dischereit; Seligmann; Korn, "Es ist Zeit"; "Zum Hinschauen verdammt"). Non-Jewish (and not necessarily only ethnically German) voices, too, now became more prominent, insisting that the perspective of the perpetrators and the uninvolved must necessarily take a different form of remembrance (see Raulff; Dell'Agli; Podszun; Ilsemann; and Klafke). As a consequence of the Walser debate and the Kosovo War, the importance of the Holocaust in debates about German identity, or rather, German identities, has receded. German memories of the twentiethcentury past are becoming more particularized, more fragmented. The current proliferation of rather sympathetic accounts of the plight of the civilian population during the Allied bombing raids or of the refugees fleeing the Red Army aptly reflects this. But unlike in the 1950s, when these themes also dominated public debates about history, current discourse does not overemphasize the perspective of Germans as victims at the expense of ignoring Germans as perpetrators (Moeller, "Sinking Ships" 180-81). One need thus not deplore this trend. It does not signify that Germany returns to an unreflected nationalism oblivious of the past. Rather, it reflects the manifold social and cultural changes the country has undergone in the decades since the end of World War II. The juncture at the end of the century marked the watershed where memory becomes history. More than five decades after the end of the Second World War, the eyewitnesses, the survivors, the victims and the perpetrators are passing away; the society they built from the devastation is becoming more heterogeneous, now encompassing children of children who have not only no temporal but also no ethnic and no cultural connection to their deeds, their sufferings, their memories. This is probably one of the most important aspects future research on German interactions with the past will need to address. As the country acknowledges (not just rhetorically but also legally) that it has become a multicultural society, it becomes paramount to overcome portraying it with "a certain provincialism and a quiet, but stubborn, white identity for Germans" (Wildenthal 9; see also Adelson; Georgi). Breaking through the circular logic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung seems like a good step in this direction. Walking through the field of steles between Pariser and Potsdamer Platz in Berlin today, one is, perhaps surprisingly, not confronted with an aesthetic pointing to either the perpetrators' or the victims' cultural traditions. The Holocaust Memorial remains curiously unspecific in locating the event it commemorates in any particular history. In this sense, it

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appears as merely another site of a globalized Holocaust memory, shaped by the expressive forms and languages of a global popular culture (see Huyssen; Levy and Sznaider). Yet the monument works—successfully, it seems—toward a very individual, particularized, and fragmented historical memory, which, although it seems to abstract from the historical event, facilitates a personal (r)approchement to the deed and its meaning(s)—by Germans, Jews, others. In this sense, it is precisely the degree of abstraction that makes it "work" and "Eve" in the center of contemporary Germany. It enshrines the Holocaust as a pivotal moment in the country's history, yet it does not privilege it over others, equally important to contemporary Germans' individual and collective identities. Although Germans have yet to come to terms with the past, they have perhaps at least come to terms with the stupefying dilemmas of Vergangenbeils-

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Brockmann, Stephen. "Martin Walser and the Presence of the German Past." German Quarterly 75.2 (2002): 127-43. Brumlik, Micha. "Vom Alptraum nationalen Glücks." die tagesi(eitung 15 Oct. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 49-51. —, Hajo Funke, and Lars Rensmann. Umkämpftes Vergessen: Walser-Debatte, HolocaustMahnmal und neuere deutsche Geschichtspolitik. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1999. Bubis, Ignatz. "Ich bleibe dabei: Ignatz Bubis antwortet Klaus von Dohnanyi." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 16 Nov. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 158. —. "Rede des Präsidenten des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland am 9. November 1998 in der Synagoge Rykerstraße in Berlin." Speech. Synagogue Rykerstraße, Berlin. 9 Nov. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 106-13. Childers, Thomas. "Facilis descensus averni est'·. The Allied Bombing of Germany and the Issue of German Suffering." Central European History 38.1 (2005): 75-105. Cohn-Bendit, Daniel. "Verfolgte Unschuld Walser." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 3 Jan. 1999. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 573-75. Confino, Alon. "Telling about Germany: Narratives of Memory and Culture." journal of Modern History 76.2 (2004): 389-416. Dell'Agli, Daniele. "Zwischen einander." die tages^eitung 5 Dec. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 350-59. Diner, Dan. "Europa, das ist der Rand: Völkerschicksale im Weltbürgerkrieg." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 6 May 1999: 52. —. "On Guilt Discourse and Other Narratives: Epistemological Observations regarding the Holocaust." History & Memory 9 (1997): 301-20. —. "Ein Schlüsselereignis: Die atlantische Gegenwartskultur setzt auf dem Balkan ein unübersehbares Signal." Die Zeit 10 June 1999: 45. Dipper, Christoph. "Warum werden deutsche Historiker nicht gelesen? Anmerkungen zur Goldhagen-Debatte." Geschichtsmssenschaft und Öffentlichkeit: Der Streit um Daniel J. Goldhagen. Ed. Johannes Heil and Rainer Erb. Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1998. 93-109. Dischereit, Esther. "Wie ich hinsehe: Warum Martin Walsers Geschichte eigentlich steinalt ist." Frankfurter Rundschau 3 Dec. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 333-36. Dohnanyi, Klaus von. "Eine Friedensrede: Martin Walsers notwendige Klage." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 14 Nov. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 146-50. —. "Wer das Wir zerbricht." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 20 Nov. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 186. Duden: Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in %ehn Bänden. 3rd ed. 10 vols. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1999. Duve, Freimut. "Körpersprache der Politik: Für Martin Walser—und das Mahnmal in Berlin." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 19 Nov. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 175-77. Eley, Geoff, and Atina Grossmann. "Watching Schindlers List Not the Last Word." New German Critique 71 (1997): 41-62. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. "Ein seltsamer Krieg: Zehn Auffälligkeiten." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 14 Apr. 1999: 49. Evers, Kai. "Monological versus Dialogical Remembrance: Gert Neumann's Novel Anschlag in the Context of the Walser-Bubis Controversy." Germanic Review 80.1 (2005): 7-27.

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Feldmeyer, Karl. "Das Unbehagen des Sozialdemokraten." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 25 Mar. 1999: 2. Fischer, Joschka. '"Nie wieder Krieg, aber auch nie wieder Auschwitz': Auszüge aus der Rede von Joschka Fischer auf dem Sonderparteitag der Grünen." Süddeutsche Zeitung 14 May 1999: 13. —. "'Serbien gehört zu Europa': Ein Zeit-Ge.sprach mit Außenminister Joschka Fischer über den Balkankrieg." Die Zeit 15 Apr. 1999: 3 Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22-27. Frei, Norbert. 1945 und wir. Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen. München: Beck, 2005. Frevert, Ute. "Geschichtsvergessenheit und Geschichtsversessenheit revisited: Der jüngste Erinnerungsboom in der Kritik." Aus Politik, und Zeitgeschichte B/40-41 (2003): 6-13. Fulbrook, Mary. German National Identity after the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity, 1999. "Geistige Brandstiftung. Bubis wendet sich gegen Walser." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 13 Oct. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 34-35. Georgi, Viola B. "Jugendliche aus Einwandererfamilien und die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus." Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B/40-41 (2003): 40-46. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. "Eine 'deutsche Lösung' für den Balkan." Süddeutsche Zeitung 30 Apr. 1999: 17. —. Hitler's WillingExecutioners. New York: Knopf, 1996. Götz, Thomas. "Ein heiterer Nachmittag im Holocaust-Mahnmal: Touristen und Berliner entdecken unbefangen eine neue Attraktion—Beobachtungen am Pfingstwochenende." Berliner Zeitung 17 May 2005: 19. Grass, Günter. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. —. "Kurze Rede eines vaterlandslosen Gesellen." Die Zeit 9 Feb. 1990: 61. Habermas, Jürgen. "Bestialität und Humanität: Ein Krieg an der Grenze zwischen Recht und Moral." Die Zeit 29 Apr. 1999: 1, 6-7. —. "A Kind of Setdement of Damages (Apologetic Tendencies)." New German Critique 44 (1988): 25-39. —. "Der Zeigefinger: Die Deutschen und ihr Denkmal." Die Zeit 1 Apr. 1999: 2-4 Harpprecht, Klaus. "Wen meint Martin Walser?" Die Zeit 15 Oct. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 51-53. Hartmann, Kathrin. "Sprung über das Abstrakte: Über die allmähliche Annäherung der Besucher des Holocaust-Denkmals an die unermessliche Weite des Stelenfelds." Frankfurter Rundschau 4 June 2005: 3. Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas. "Germany's Anti-Hider Coalition in Kosovo." Mediterranean Quarterly 21.3 (2001): 31-46. Herzog, Roman. "Rede des Bundespräsidenten bei der Gedenkveranstaltung aus Anlaß des 60. Jahrestages der Synagogenzerstörung am 9./10. November 1938 ('Reichskristallnacht')." 9 Nov. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 113-18. —. "Sich der Geschichte nicht in Schande, sondern in Würde stellen: Rede zum Gedenktag der Befreiung des Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 28 Jan. 1999. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 596604. Holocaust. Dir. Marvin Chomsky. NBC, 1978.

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Huyssen, Andreas. "Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia." Public Culture 12.1 (2000): 21-38. Hyde-Price, Adrian. "Germany and the Kosovo War: Still a Civilian Power?" German Politics 10.1 (2001): 19-34. Ilsemann, Mareike. "Die Elfjährigen und die SS." Die Zeit 10 Dec. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 394-97. Jarausch, Konrad H., and Michael Geyer. Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. Jaspers, Karl. Die Schuldfrage: Zur politischen Haftung Deutschlands. 1946. München: Piper, 1987. Joffe, Josef. "Erinnerung als Staatsräson." Süddeutsche Zeitung 12 Dec. 1998: 4. Kansteiner, Wulf. "Entertaining Catastrophe: The Reinvention of the Holocaust in the Television of the Federal Republic of Germany." New German Critique 90 (2003): 135-62. Kauders, Anthony D. "History as Censure: 'Repression' and 'Philo-Semitism' in Postwar Germany." History & Memory 15.1 (2003): 97-122. Klafke, Kati-Gesa. "Also doch Erbsünde?" Der Spiegel 28 Dec. 1998: 148-49. Klotz, Johannes, and Gerd Wiegel, eds. Geistige Brandstiftung? Die Walser-Bubis-Debatte. Berlin: Aufbau, 2001. Knoch, Habbo. Die Tat als Bild: Fotografien des Holocaust in der deutschen Erinnerungskultur. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2001. Konräd, György. "Der Rückfall in den Anfang dieses Jahrhunderts: Von Mitteleuropa aus gesehen—wer aber gab der Nato das Recht zum Angriff." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 30 Apr. 1999: 41. Korn, Salomon. "Es ist Zeit: Die andere Seite des Walser-Bubis-Streits." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1 Dec. 1998. Rpt. in Schirrmacher. 304-07. —. "Holocaust-Gedenken: Ein deutsches Dilemma." Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. B/3-4 (1997): 23-30. Koshar, Rudy. From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. Kraushaar, Wolfgang. 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zäsur. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2000. Levy, Daniel, and Nathan Sznaider. "Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory." European Journal of Soaal Theory 5.1 (2002): 87-106. Lohr, Hans Christian. "Die Großmachtdiplomatie kehrt zurück: Der Balkan, die Kosovo-Krise und die lange Tradition äußerer Einwirkung." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 28 Apr. 1999: 10. Maier, Charles. The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1988. Moeller, Robert G. "Sinking Ships, the Lost Heimat and Broken Taboos: Günter Grass and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany." Contemporary European History 12.2 (2003): 147-81. —. War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal 'Republic of Germany. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001.

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Notes on Contributors Charlotte Atmster is Associate Professor of German and Chair of the German Department at Gettysburg College. Her teaching and research interests include women and Nazism, Holocaust studies, women and gender studies, and film studies. Aleida Assmann is Professor for English and Literary Studies at the University of Constance. She has been a guest professor in the USA at Rice University (October 2000), Princeton University (Spring 2001), and Yale University (Spring 2002, 2003 and 2005). Her research areas are the history of reading, the historical anthropology of the media, and the theory and history of cultural memory. Publications include Die Legitimität der Fiktion (1980), Arbeit am nationalen Gedächtnis: Eine kur\e Geschichte der deutschen Bildungsidee (1993), Zeit und Tradition (1999), Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (1999), and together with Ute Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit—Geschichtsversessenheit: Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945 (1999). Daniel P. Becker is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative History at Brandeis University. He is currendy writing a dissertation on colonial memory, geopolitical thinking, and decolonization in Germany from the Weimar Republic to the early postwar period. Aside from this project, his research interests encompass gender history, historical memory, and the history and theory of historiography. Laurel Cohen-Pfister is an Assistant Professor at Gettysburg College, where she teaches German language, literature, and cultural studies. Her research interests lie in the literary representation of war, memory, and autobiography. She has published articles on various topics of twentiethcentury German literature and cultural studies, including GDR literature and the representation of German wartime suffering in the culture of post-unification. Thomas C. Fox is Professor of German at the University of Alabama, where he is a former department chair. His research interests include East

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German studies and Holocaust studies. His most recent books are: A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (co-edited, 2005); Stated Memory: East Germany and the Holocaust (1999); and Border Crossings: An Introduction to East German Prose (1993). Valentina Glajar is Assistant Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages at Texas State University, San Marcos. She is the author of The German Legay in East Central Europe (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), co-editor of Vampirettes, Wretches, and Amazons: Western Representations of East European Women (East European Monographs Vol. 664; New York: Columbia UP, 2004), and co-translator of Herta Müller's novel Traveling on One Teg (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1998). Volker Hage is the literary editor of Spiegel magazine. He has been a guest professor at universities in the United States and in Germany. He has written and edited numerous books on contemporary German literature. Recent publications include Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Mein Leben. Auswahlband für die Schule (2005, ed.); Zeugen der Zerstörung: Die Uteraten und der Luftkrieg (2003); Hamburg 1943. lJterarische Zeugnisse %um Feuersturm (2003, ed.); Dieter Forte: Schweigen oder sprechen (2002, ed.); Auf den Spuren der Dichtung: Reisen berühmten Schauplätzen der Literatur (1997); Propheten im eigenen Tand: Auf der Suche nach der deutschen JJteratur (1999). His books on tape are Friedrich Schiller. Der Atem der Freiheit (2005), and Eine Liebe firs Leben: Thomas Mann und Travemünde (2002). Rachel J. Halverson is an Associate Professor of German in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Washington State University where she teaches German culture, film, language, and literature. She received her M.A. (1985) and Ph.D. (1989) from the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in postwar German literature and culture and has published on the Historikerstreit, and the works by Jurek Becker, Thomas Brussig, Günter de Bruyn, Christoph Hein, Wolfgang Hilbig, Siegfried Lenz, and Stephan Krawczyk. She is co-editor of the books Β erlin. The Symphony Continues: Orchestrating Architectural, Social and Artistic Change in Germany's New Capital (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Verlag, 2004) and Textual Responses to German Unification: Processing Historical and Social Change in Literature and Film (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001). Pawel Lutomski has a Ph.D. in German Studies, as well as a J.D. He is a lecturer in the International Relations and International Policy Studies

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365

Program at Stanford. His subject areas are international law and international relations, forced migrations, and German-Polish relations. He is a coeditor of a volume entided Population Resettlements in International Conflict: A Comparative Study (forthcoming with Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield). James Martin received his Ph.D. in 2004 from Georgetown University. He is an Assistant Professor of German Studies at Washington College in Maryland. His research and teaching explore issues of alterity, illness and dystopia in contemporary Austrian literature. He also examines colonial texts by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German authors in reference to contemporary discussions of race and globalism. Brad Prager is an Associate Professor of German in the Department of German and Russian Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He teaches German literature, culture, and film and is the author of a book on visual studies and German Romanticism entided Aesthetic Vision and German Romanticism: Writing Images (Camden House, 2006). He is presently completing a book on the work of Werner Herzog, which is forthcoming from Wallflower Press. He has published work in numerous scholarly articles on film, drama, and German literature. Michael Ritterson is an Associate Professor of German at Gettysburg College specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and culture, particularly the works of Wilhelm Raabe, and in current German fiction and poetry. He has written on Raabe, Theodor Fontane, Kurt Tucholsky, and Brigitte Struzyk. His translations of poems by Angela Krauß have appeared in International Poetry Review, and of non-fiction by several writers on the Website Utrix.de. His translation of Raabe's Das Odfeld (The Odin Field, Camden House, 2001) was runner-up for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize. Nikhil Sathe is an Assistant Professor of German at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. His dissertation project (Ohio State University, 2003) examined the critique of the tourism industry in post-1945 Austrian literature. His current research continues to focus on Austrian literature, film, and culture, as well as on post-1945 German-language literature and film, and language pedagogy. Elke Segelcke is an Associate Professor of German at Illinois State University in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her current areas of research include literature, intellectual history, urban

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culture, and women dramatists in Weimar Germany. She also researches German post-unification and intercultural literature in the context of the current debates over national and European cultural identities. She has published a book-length study on Heinrich Manns Beitrag %ur Justi^kritik der Moderne (Bonn: Bouvier, 1989), as well as numerous articles on Heinrich and Thomas Mann, literary modernity, and post-unification literature. Margit Μ. Sinka (Ph.D., University of North Carolina) is Professor of German and Head of the German Section at Clemson University. She teaches the nineteenth-century novella, Austrian and German modernism, twentieth-century drama, German film, visual culture, and post-1945 German culture. She has presented and published on medieval German epics, medieval mysticism, nineteenth-century literature, genre studies (the German Novelle and Kurzgeschichte), pedagogy, twentieth century prose, the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin studies, and on Weimar and post-1945 German film. Susanne Vees-Gulani is an Assistant Professor of German at Case Western Reserve University. Her research interests include literary and cultural responses to World War II and medicine and science in literature. She is the author of Trauma and Guilt: L,iterature of Wartime Bombing in Germany (Walter de Gruyter 2003), and articles on trauma in literature, German postwar rebuilding, W. G. Sebald, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tom Stoppard. Harald Welzer is head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Rearch at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in Essen. He teaches social psychology at the Universities of Hannover and Witten-Herdecke. His areas of research and teaching are memory, political psychology, group violence, and research methods. Recent publications include Täter: Wie aus gan^ normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden (2005); "Opa war kein Na%i": Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis, co-authored with S. Moller and K. Tschuggnall (2002); Das kommunikative Gedächtnis: Eine Theorie der Erinnerung (2002); and Όas soziale Gedächtnis: Geschichte, Erinnerung, Tradierung (2001, ed.). Dagmar Wienroeder-Skinner is an Associate Professor of German in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Saint Joseph's University, where she teaches German culture, film, literature, and language. Her publications include pre- and post-unification German literature and film, European intercultural and literary issues, and language

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367

methodology. She presents regularly at national and international conferences. She is the recipient o f a 2002 SJU excellence-in-teaching award and has received grants from Saint Joseph's University, the Goethe Institute (1995, 2001), and the National Endowment o f the Humanities (2000).

Index of Names Adorno, Theodor 6, 13, 91-93, 95-99, 297, 312, 339, 353n59 Aichinger, Ilse 94 Aly, Götz 205nl0, 320 Anonyma 319, 326, 330, 332 Assmann, Aleida 4, 11-12, 29, 68, 159, 160, 161, 169n51, 170, 175, 199, 277, 338, 339n5, 340, 342nl6, 346, 347n39, 353, 354 Assmann, Jan 277 Augstein, Rudolf 343 Bachmann, Ingeborg 93 Bachmann, Klaus 245, 255n29 Baring, Arnulf 8n21 Bartoszewski, Wladyslaw 246, 255 Bartov, Omer 5, 186nl6, 193, 309, 338 Beevor, Antony 319, 332-33 Benigni, Roberto 72 Benjamin, Walter 117-8, 126,128-29,149, 166, 203, 206 Bemig, Jörg 17, 225, 228, 236-38 Biermann, Wolf 101-2, 109 Biller, Maxim 164 Bisky, Jens 326n25, 328-29 Bolecka, Anna 263n3 Boll, Heinrich 93, 99 Borodziej, Wlodzimierz 243n2, 244n5, 245, 246, 265nl3, 277n45 Brakoniecki, Kazimierz 262n2, 264 Brandes, Detlef 225n2 Brandt, Willi 248 Braun, Volker 14, 138-39, 142-44, 146-49, 151 Brockmann, Stephen 73n3, 343 Broder, Henryk 199n3, 209n20 Browning, Christopher 58, 303, 309-10 Bruhns, Wibke 290 Brumlik, Micha 340, 342nl6, 345, 354 Bubis, Ignatz 8, 53, 341, 342-43, 354-55 Buras, Piotr 249nl3, 251, 254 Buttgereit, Jörg 300, 307 Chwin, Stefan 18, 262, 263n5, 265-70, 277 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel 251, 345

Czechowski, Heinz 14, 142-44, 146,147, 148, 149, 151 de Bruyn, Günter 101 Diner, Dan 161nl4, 340, 346, 349, 353 Dische, Irene 164 Dischereit, Esther 164, 355 Dohnanyi, Klaus von 341, 343, 354 Dückers, Tanja 252n21, 276 Edelman, Marek 255 Eichinger, Bernd 296, 298n5 Einstein, Albert 203, 206 Eisenmann, Peter 198, 337 Eisner, Lotte 300, 302, 303, 312 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus 93, 100, 104, 318, 326, 328-29, 349n47 Eschel, Amir 150, 151, 192n26, 193 Fest,Joachim 297 Filip, Ota 225n3, 228 Fischer, Joschka 49-50, 54, 226n8, 347-49, 350, 351, 352 Forte, Dieter 14,102-3, 107-8, 114-134 Franzen, Günter 50, 53, 58, 59, 67, 107 Frei, Norbert 4, 5n7, 6, 159, 160, 201, 217, 326n27, 331, 339 Freud, Sigmund 33nl0, 44, 190, 301 Frevert, Ute 4, 84, 159, 161, 169, 170, 175, 338, 339n5, 340, 342nl6, 346, 347n39, 353, 354 Friedrich,Jörg 3, 14, 52, 61n31, 62, 115, 136,137, 250, 290, 327 Frisch, Max 39-40 Frommer, Benjamin 226, 232n21, 232n22, 235n25 Fuller, Samuel 305 Giordano, Ralph 249, 251 Glotz, Peter 226n8, 249, 251 Goldhagen, Daniel (onah 53, 72 , 211n23, 303, 350, 351 ' Grass, Günter 3,11, 34-37, 42, 51, 52, 54, 73, 93, 94, 99,108, 226n8, 249, 250, 251, 270n27, 276, 290, 301, 305, 327, 340, 342, 352 Groehler, Olaf 100,137n3

370

Index of Names

Grossmann, Atina 316, 317n3, 318n8, 321, 322, 323n23, 327n31, 328n35, 351n52 Grünbein, Durs 14, 104-5, 111, 137, 14445, 147-151 Gysi, Gregor 352 Habermas, Jürgen 8n21, 338, 339, 342, 344, 345, 346, 348n43, 349 Hage, Volker 3n3, 13-14, 91, 115n2, 121nl7 Hahn, Ulla 67 Haider, Jörg 178, 180n4 Hajnicz, Artur 244n5, 246 Halbwachs, Maurice 12, 37-42, 46, 47 Harig, Ludwig 100-1 Härtling, Peter 17, 225, 228, 230-31, 23738 Havel, Vaclav 226, 230 Heer, Hannes 5-6, 7 Hein, Christoph 54 Heinemann, Elizabeth 316n2, 318n8, 331 Heißenbüttel, Helmut 95-96 Herzog, Roman 212, 345, 346, 348n43 Herzog, Werner 312 Hüberg, Raul 295, 311 Hilbig, Wolfgang 103-4 Hirsch, Helga 201, 250 Hirschbiegel, Oliver 3, 20, 296, 297, 299, 307-12 Hochhuth, Rolf 96-99 Honigmann, Barbara 15,157-76 Hrebejk, Jan 228, 238n29 Huelle, Pawel 18, 262, 263n5, 265-66, 27072, 277 Hupka, Herbert 250 Hutcheon, Linda 181 Huyssen, Andreas 138, 204n9, 206nl4, 229, 230, 236, 356 Jäckel, Eberhard 205nl2 Jarausch, Konrad 8n21, 344n24 Jaspers, Karl 296, 353-54 Jeismann, Michael 38nl7, 318 Johansen, Hanna 13, 72-79, 80, 84-85 Kaczynski, Lech 253 Kaiser, Katharina 199-208, 210-12, 215-17 Kanew, Jeff 58n26 Kempowski, Walter 99, 107, 249nl3, 329 Kipphardt, Heinar 9 6 n l 9 Klier, Freya 319 Kluge, Alexander 109, 118-9, 128, 131 Knopp, Guido 3, 291, 351 Koepnick, Lutz 298

Köhler, Barbara 144, 145-46, 147, 149, 150 Kohout, Pawel 17, 225, 228, 232-38 Kolakowski, Leszek 255 Könczöl, Barbara 5n7, 21 Korn, Salomon 209-10, 340, 355 Kranz, Jerzy 245, 254 Krzeminski, Adam 249nl5, 254-55 Kuckart, Judith 13, 72-73, 79-85 Kunert, Günter 101 Kurcz, Zbigniew 2 6 4 n l 2 Kwasniewski, Aleksander 271 LaCapra, Dominick 182, 191 Lamping, Dieter 164 Ledig, Gert 107 Leggewie, Klaus 33, 39 Lern, Stanislaw 255 Lemberg, Hans 243n2, 245, 277n45 Lenz, Siegfried 99, 276 Levi, Primo 58n25, 194 Liebman, Stuart 318n8, 320, 324 Liskowacki, Artur Daniel 263n5 Mannheim, Karl 30-31 Marek, Kurt W. 326, 328, 330 Maron, Monika 103, 108n67, 170, 173 McCormick, Richard 321, 324-25 Meckel, Markus 249nl5, 2 5 0 n l 8 Medicus, Thomas 67 Merkel, Angela 226n8 Meyer, Erik 33, 39 Michelson, Annette 318n8, 320, 324 Michnik, Adam 249nl5, 275n36, 278 Mickel, Karl 141-42, 144, 146,149, 150, 151 Milgram, Stanley 309 Milosevic, Slobodan 347-48, 350 Mitscherlich, Alexander 127 Mitscherlich, Margarete 127 Moeller, Robert 6nl6, 7, 10, 21, 23, 338, 339n4, 352, 355 Moller, Sabine 19, 76, 85, 285 Monikovä, Libuse 228 Morsch, Günter 160n9 Müller, Olaf 276 Naimark, Norman 226, 234n24, 235n26, 243, 265nl2 Naumann, Klaus 5, 6nl6, 318n7 Naumann, Michael 345n28 Nietzsche, Friedrich 32, 34-35 Niven, BiU 8, 9, 53, 72, 338nl Nolan, Mary 4-5, 338 Orlowski, Hubert 190, 245, 246, 263, 264n9, 265nl5, 2 6 6 n l 8

Index of Names Panitz, Eberhard 107, 140-41 Pausewang, Gudrun 228 Pedretti, Erica 228 Pickford, Henry 199, 200, 207nl6, 212 Pinder, Wilhelm 30 Piskorski, Jan 246n7, 247n9, 256n32 Proust, 38, 41 Ransmayr, Christoph 16, 104,178-94 Raulff, Ulrich 4, 52, 5 4 n l l , 65n42, 67n53, 327, 355 Reichel, Peter 5, 201 Rosh, Lea 205nl2, 208-9 Ruzowitzky, Stefan 20, 297, 301 Saager, Uwe 200, 212 Sander, Heike 316, 318-27, 331n46, 332 Santner, Eric 184, 324 Sarrauthe, Nathalie 96 Schacht, Ulrich 342nl6 Scharping, Rudolf 347, 348, 351 Schäuble, Wolfgang 347 Schily, Otto 250 Schindel, Robert 164 Schlink, Bernhard 6n9 Schmid, Thomas 22 Schnock, Frieder 197n2, 199, 200-1, 212, 215 Schoenbaum, David 7 n l 9 Schoeps, Julius 251 Schröder, Gerhard 8, 226n8, 253n24, 253n25, 255, 256, 347, 351 Schwan, Gesine 278 Schwentke, Robert 20, 297, 302nl2, 3034, 307 Sebald, W. G. 13-14, 44, 52, 61, 64n38, 105-9, 114-20, 126,128,151, 167-68 Seelich, Nadja 228 Seibt, Ferdinand 225, 2 3 1 n l 9 Seligman, Rafael 164, 209, 210, 355 Seydewitz, Max 137n3, 139, 141,142nl9, 151 Spiegel, Paul 210, 212 Spielberg, Steven 72, 211n23 Stanek, Tomas 225n2, 234n24 Stasiuk, Andrzej 263n3 Steinbach, Erika 226n8, 248-50, 252n23, 253n25, 255 Stern, Fritz 7, 278 Stern, Guy 157n2, 158n3, 159, 164n29, 165, 168 Stevens, George 305 Stih, Renate 197n2,199, 200-1, 212, 215 Struck, Peter 347, 348 Szaruga, Leszek 263n5

371

Taberner, Stuart 7, 8n21, 9n25, 51, 53, 54, 231, 342nl6 Ther, Philipp 226, 245n6 Tieisch, Ilse 228 Timm, Uwe 11-13, 42-43, 45-46, 49-69 Tokarczuk, Olga 18, 262, 263n6, 265, 27275, 277 Traba, Robert 245n6, 246, 263n4, 264nl0, 265nl5 Tragelehn, B. K. 143, 144 Treichel, Hans-Ulrich 54 Tschuggnall, Karoline 19, 76, 85, 285 Urban, Thomas 264nl2 Vlacil, Frantisek 237n28 Wackwitz, Stephan 33nl0, 67 Wagner, Richard 22, 329-30, 333 Waldheim, Kurt 178,180n4 Walesa, Lech 262nl, 271 Walser, Martin 8, 20, 40-42, 46, 47, 53, 93, 94, 99, 297, 337-38, 340-45, 348, 350, 354, 355 Waniek, Henryk 263n6 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich 2 6 4 n l 2 Weidauer, Walter 137-39, 141nl4, 151 Weigel, Sigrid 3 5 n l l , 340, 353 Weinberger, Gabriele 161 Weiss, Peter 96 Weizsäcker, Richard von 3 n l , 161, 226 Welzer, Harald 19, 39, 51, 53, 5 4 n l l , 6768, 76, 85, 201, 285, 326n27, 327 Wenders, Wim 296-99, 302 Wiedmer, Caroline 197n, 200n6, 214 Wittstock, Uwe 329n36, 330 Wolff-Poweska, Anna 244, 254 Woycicki, Kazimierz 252n23, 254 Wüstefeld, Michael 144, 145, 149n53 Young, James 198, 199, 208, 212 Zeller, Michael 276n44 Zimbardo, Philip 308, 309 Zimmering, Max 140, 141, 151 Zucker, Renee 327, 330