Victims and Perpetrators: 1933-1945

(Representing the Past in Post-Unification Culture

Edited by Laurel Cohen-Pfister Dagmar Wienroeder-Skinner

w DE G Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 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 NlKHIL SATHE "Ein Fressen für mein MG": The Problem of German Suffering in Uwe Timm's Λ?η Beispiel meines Bruders 49

RACHEL HALVERSON Mothers, Memories, and Mnemonics: Hanna Johansen's Lena and Judith Kuckart's Lenas 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 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 Victim- Perpetrator 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 Harding, 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 (Reconciliation: 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