Memory matters : generational responses to Germany's Nazi past in recent women's literature / Caroline Schaumann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schaumann, Caroline, 1969-

Series:

Interdisciplinary German cultural studies ; v. 4.

Interdisciplinary German cultural studies, 1861-8030 ; v. 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

German literature.

German literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Collective memory and literature.

Women and literature--Germany--History--20th century.

Women and literature.

National socialism in literature.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (360 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : W. de Gruyter, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Introduction

War Children and Child Survivors

Memories and Mourning: Christa Wolf s Patterns of Childhood

Trauma and Testimony: Ruth Klüger s weiter leben

The Children of Survivors and Bystanders

Barbara Honigmann s Belated Appropriation of her Jewish Heritage: From Roman von einem Kinde (Novel by a Child) to Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben (A Chapter of My Life)

Wibke Bruhns s Father-Portrait: My Father s Country: The Story of a German Family

The Grandchildren of Nazi Victims, Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Bystanders

Images and Imagination: Monika Maron s Pavel s Letters

Tanja Dückers s Sensual Historiography:Ž Himmelskörper (Celestial Bodies)

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [323]-345).

ISBN:

9786612196638

9781282196636

1282196634

9783110206593

3110206595

OCLC:

476197219