Limits of Understanding: Generational Identities in Recent German Memory Literature

Chapters in this book

1. i-vi i
2. Acknowledgements vii
3. Table of Contents ix
4. Introduction
5. History and the Memory of Suffering: Rethinking 1933–1945 3
6. Transgenerational Memory
7. Limits of Understanding: Generational Identities in Recent German Memory Literature 29
8. “Ein Fressen für mein MG”: The Problem of German Suffering in Uwe Timm’s. Am Beispiel meines Bruders 49
9. Mothers, Memories, and Mnemonics: Hanna Johansen’s Lena and Judith Kuckart’s Lenas Liebe 72
10. Air War and German Literature
11. To Write or Remain Silent? The Portrayal of the Air War in German Literature 91
12. The Language of Trauma: Dieter Forte’s Memories of the Air War 114
13. Writing Dresden Across the Generations 136
14. Jewish Victimization: Silence and Remembrance
15. Breaking the Taboo: Barbara Honigmann’s Narrative Quest for a German-Jewish (Family) History 157
16. Α World Turned Upside Down: Role Reversals in the Victim-Perpetrator Complex in Christoph Ransmayr’s Morbus Kitahara 178
17. The “Different” Holocaust Memorial in Berlin’s Bayerisches Viertel: Personal and Collective Remembrance Thematizing Perpetrator/Victim Relationships 197
18. Transnational Reconciliation
19. Victims and Perpetrators: Representations of the German-Czech Conflict in Texts by Peter Härtling, Pavel Kohout, and Jörg Bernig 225
20. Acknowledging Each Other as Victims: An Unmet Challenge in the Process of Polish-German Reconciliation 241
21. Attempts at (Re)Conciliation: Polish-German Relations in Literary Texts by Stefan Chwin, Pawel Huelle, and Olga Tokarczuk 262
22. Historical Consciousness and the German Present
23. The Collateral Damage of Enlightenment: How Grandchildren Understand the History of National Socialist Crimes and Their Grandfathers’ Past 285
24. The Haunted Screen (Again): The Historical Unconscious of Contemporary German Thrillers 296
25. Rape, War, and Outrage: Changing Perceptions on German Victimhood in the Period of Post-unification 316
26. Coming to Terms with Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Walser’s Sonntagsrede, the Kosovo War, and the Transformation of German Historical Consciousness 337
27. Notes on Contributors 363
28. Index of Names 369