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Healing by Novels? Susanne Vees-Gulani. Trauma and Guilt: Literature of Wartime Bombing in Germany. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003. 217 pp. $105.30, cloth, ISBN 978-3-11-017808-1. Reviewed by Scott Denham Published on H-German (January, 2005) A great swell of public memory and remem‐ kind of impersonal monument was called for. The bering is on the move in Germany, a project with‐ ruins of the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin were and out plan, an almost concerted effort, it seems, to remain as much an unintended monument to the be done with the pain and damage and psychosis wartime bombings as the Kaiser-Wilhelm- that all came about in the war generally and Gedächtniskirche was an intended one. The ruins specifically in the traumatic bombings of German of the Frauenkirche in Dresden were left explicit‐ cities and German people. Cultures of memory ly as a memorial sign of the destruction and loss and memorializing about the trauma of the war of the bombing of February 13-14, 1945, and de‐ have had a place in the public sphere in Germany spite GDR attempts to interpret them as a warning for years, but the tendency has been to avoid the against western (capitalist) militarism, they topic of Germans as victims--for obvious reasons, seemed to have more meaning as a kind of provi‐ not least of all simple tact in the face of so many sional gravestone for the approximately 35,000 other non-German victims of German aggression (current best estimates) killed in the Dresden before and during World War II. It was seen by bombing. The restoration of that church is also many, both within Germany and certainly abroad, seen as an act of reconciliation, with a group of as bad form to mark German victimization or British citizens recently taking part in a ceremony even sometimes to mourn German death and loss: marking the completion of the restored dome. think of the international discomfort caused by Most bombed cities have some sort of memorial to the rhetoric of loss expressed during annual meet‐ those killed by Allied bombs in the war; most ings of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaften have plaques on important public buildings and and the Bund der Vertriebenen, or of the uproar churches with dates of construction, destruction, at Kohl and Reagan's visit to the military cemetery and reconstruction. But on the whole, this is a at Bitburg some twenty years ago now, for exam‐ silent kind of memory, and muted memorializa‐ ple. For German loss to be publicly marked in tion, presented, but not explicitly narrated. Even ways tactful and appropriate, it seems that some those publicly sponsored texts of mourning, the H-Net Reviews so-called Gedenkbücher, published widely in the mind, neither a novel nor a story, neither journal‐ years just after the war, are generally not much ism nor poetry, that could stand as a popular liter‐ more than a list of names of those killed and per‐ ary testimony to the airwar."[5] But then Hage haps "before" and "after" photographs of the city goes on to present dozens of examples of German destroyed. And local histories shied away from in‐ literary representations of the bombings, of Ger‐ dividual stories of suffering in the bombings, opt‐ man suffering, of cases that show Sebald's accusa‐ ing instead for lists and inventories. The Germans tion as hyperbole. There were literary treatments suffered, and their suffering was marked in vari‐ of the bombings, after all, but they were not read, ous intended and unintended ways, but where not received, not acknowledged. No one wanted were the stories of German suffering? to hear of the pain, the destruction, the death. The This, of course, is the by now infamous accu‐ trauma, though touched on by some authors, was sation put forth by W. G. Sebald in his 1997 Zurich too much, if not for words, then for readers. lectures, published to modest interest in German "Trauma" is a concept that often comes up in in 1999 and with notable resonance in English this context. There seems to be a common, as‐ posthumously in the New Yorker magazine--circu‐ sumed, or understood notion about "trauma," that lation over 900,000--in 2002 and in book form in it causes silence that can only be overcome by 2003.[1] The broad sweep of recent work on the some kind of testimony or witnessing or confes‐ bombing of Germany and on German suffering-- sion. Common sense or personal experience from Sebald to Joerg Friedrich, Günter Grass's might tell us this kind of sequence of events is Crabwalk, and war books by Hans Erich Nossack reasonable traumatic experience, then silence for and others--has been discussed already in these a long time, then witnessing (or testimony or pages in the H-German forum from November some kind of therapeutic situation--narration or 2003.[2] Here, though, is Sebald's statement, by story-telling), then a kind of healing through the way of review: "There was a tacit agreement, process of narration itself, or perhaps also equally binding on everyone, that the true state of through the understanding and sympathy of the material and moral ruin in which the country addressee, the listener or reader. We think we found itself was not to be described. The darkest know, presumptuously, somehow, that individuals aspects of the fnal act of destruction, as experi‐ can "cure" trauma by talking or writing about it. enced by the great majority of the German popu‐ And then we often jump from the individual expe‐ lation, remained under a kind of taboo like a rience to the collective: if talking about one's per‐ shameful family secret, a secret that perhaps sonal trauma can lead to a cure for an individual, could note even be privately acknowledged."[3] then a popular novel about trauma by an impor‐ This statement was not challenged in the English- tant public fgure must also lead to a cure for the speaking world, and even in Germany was gener‐ society, or so goes the logic. But things are of ally taken to be an accurate assessment of the sit‐ course much more complicated than this. uation, in German literature at least, with respect In her new study of trauma and guilt in the to portraying the air war.[4] Volker Hage, a liter‐ novels about the wartime bombing of Germany, ary expert at the Spiegel magazine who has be‐ Susanne Vees-Gulani seeks to bring some rigor come the best-known journalistic authority on the into our understanding of trauma, storytelling, airwar, granted that Sebald was right: "I was con‐ and public and private notions of the facility of vinced by these ideas at the time ... I agreed in the narration to lead to understanding, "mastery," or main with the notion that the representation of psychosocial health. She does this in the context the air war in German literature had played no of close readings of several novels about the significant role" and further, "no text comes to 2 H-Net Reviews wartime bombing of Germany, taking as her start‐ vate; novels are public. Stories about trauma writ‐ ing point not only a discussion of Sebald's concept ten by victims of trauma are inherently different of the taboo, but also a thorough review of how from those written by those further from the trau‐ postwar German society has confronted the Nazi matic experience (witnesses, bystanders, or mere‐ and wartime past. In this task she is most success‐ ly those with creative imaginations). Public texts-- ful, for she not only provides readers with a thor‐ novels, mainly, in this case--become part of a "net‐ ough, measured, and up-to-date review of the work of social, political, and moral currents that public discussions of the allied bombings, she also define both society and its culture and will be situates the all-too-often casual use of the term evaluated in accordance with their values and "trauma" in discussions of literature within the ac‐ opinions" (p. 36). That is, readers will judge the le‐ tual medical and psychiatric usage of the term. gitimacy of a text that helps generate empathy She answers the question "what is trauma." with its traumatized characters. When the trau‐ The work of James Pennebaker has shown matized are victims (of the Holocaust, child abuse, that in clinical situations, story telling can help rape), the author faces "the difficult task and heal people suffering from various effects of trau‐ heavy burden of creating the trauma in a way ma.[6] Vees-Gulani surveys his work and that of that is accessible to the audience and accurately others in a concise chapter that defines post-trau‐ conveys the horror of the experience, but the au‐ matic stress disorder (PTSD), which became offi‐ thor can feel relatively safe from being accused of cially recognized in diagnostic manuals in 1980, trying to rewrite history" (p. 36) Here I think of and explains the recent literary-critical interest in Cynthia Ozick's story "The Shawl" as a good exam‐ trauma, both in medical literature and in fction. ple. But what about the case at hand, namely Ger‐ She then begins to make some cautious connec‐ man novels about the trauma suffered by Ger‐ tions. She points out that "the process writers mans in the wartime bombings or German vic‐ have to go through in order to create a story of tims? The trauma of the bombings, as Sebald sug‐ the trauma can be compared to the ones de‐ gested, was experienced by a vast majority of Ger‐ scribed in cognitive PTSD models" (p.
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