Dislocation and German Literature

Axel Goodbody, Pol O Dochartaigh, Dennis Tate, eds.. Dislocation and Reorientation: Exile, Division and the End of Communism in German Culture and Politics.. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 344 pp. $105.40, cloth, ISBN 978-90-420-2554-7. Reviewed by Donna Harsch Published on H-German (November, 2010) Commissioned by Benita Blessing (Oregon State University) This edited volume is a tribute to Ian Wallace, In their brief introduction, the editors note a scholar of German literature who founded the that authors define "dislocation" broadly in the GDR Monitor in 1979 and established the feld of volume. Contributors employ several methodolo‐ GDR studies in Great Britain. Wallace is known as gies to analyze dislocation from multiple perspec‐ well for his work on exile studies. It is, thus, ap‐ tives. Dislocation, here, encompasses both physi‐ propriate that contributions to this Festschrift re‐ cal and psychic displacement. Some contributors volve around the experience and meaning of exile focus on the consequences of physical exile or mi‐ and dislocation in recent German history. Its gration as experienced by émigrés in the 1930s, twenty-five essays focus on the massive disloca‐ refugees from Eastern Europe at the end of the tions associated with the turning points of 1933, war, and Germans who left the GDR for the Feder‐ 1945, and 1990. The subjects of the majority of al Republic of Germany (FRG) after 1949, while chapters are either (former) East Germans or Ger‐ others consider the social, economic, cultural, ide‐ man writers who lived at least part of their life in ological, or psychological shocks associated with, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The book in particular, the sudden transition to capitalism addresses the continuing attention of scholars in eastern Germany after 1990. The various au‐ and the lay public to "what remains" of the GDR. thors examine dislocation as both an individual Contributions to the volume will also interest stu‐ and a social phenomenon. Some contributions dents of Jewish and communist exile from Nazi concentrate on the travails of prominent exiled Germany. More generally, the book speaks to in‐ intellectuals, while others analyze the impact of terest in the interactions between loss, cultural dislocation on a social or institutional group. The memory, and the identities of people displaced by meanings of dislocation are (de-)constructed with war, politics, or economic change. the tools of literary analysis of fction and autobi‐ ography, on the one hand, and social-historical ex‐ H-Net Reviews amination of ordinary lives and societal trends, cial-historical chapters cover diverse topics: Ger‐ on the other. Two unifying themes of the volume, man expellees/refugees in the GDR; Sorbians in the editors explain, are the connection between the GDR and since; East German football fans be‐ ideological dislocation and "life in late capitalist fore and after 1990; East Germans who moved to society" and "the close relationship between cul‐ the FRG in 1989-90. The volume includes some es‐ tural displacement and the (re-)construction of says in German and some in English. cultural identity" (p. x). Ten contributions explore the theme of exile Although the book is multidisciplinary in ap‐ or return from exile. Peter Hutchinson argues proach, the majority of contributors are literary that the poetry written by Stefan Heym in the scholars, as one would expect from a book dedi‐ 1930s in France, Great Britain, the United States, cated to a Germanist. Most chapters look at dislo‐ and elsewhere created the foundation for his cation and, especially, exile from an individual postwar fction. Dennis Tate contends that Fred and/or literary perspective. Also included is a par‐ Wander's revised autobiography of 2006 cele‐ tial text about dislocation in eastern Germany: an brates the extreme dislocations of his life by excerpt from a longer work by the politically com‐ weaving the experience of terror and suffering mitted poet, dramatist, and essayist Volker Braun into a personal stance that is not only cheerful but (on whose poetry Ian Wallace did "pioneering increasingly serene. Deborah Vietor-Englaender work" [p. 33]). Seventeen of the essays focus on a and Gisela Holfter discuss the return from exile to well-known writer or artist or his or her work, in‐ (East) Germany of, respectively, Alfred Kantorow‐ cluding four contributions that interpret Volker icz and Ernst Lewy. Both scholars argue that the Braun's poetry. Also featured are the artist Kurt writers ran into difficulties establishing their ca‐ Schwitters and the writers Wolf Biermann, Ernst reers in the GDR of the High Stalinst era with its Bloch, Stefan Heym, Kurt Drawert, Franz Kafka, anti-Semitic undercurrents and politicized attacks Alfred Kantorowicz, Ernst Lewy, Thomas Mann, on formalism. Geoffrey V. David analyzes the nar‐ Ingo Schulze, Anna Seghers, Martin Walser, and rative significance of fctional German Jewish ex‐ Fred Wander. The range of approaches found in iles who are protagonists in novels by the post‐ the contributions is wide. Some scholars illumi‐ colonial Anglophone writers Anita Desai, Christo‐ nate exile and displacement in a writer's life or pher Hope, and Vikram Seth. In each case, David publications from a theoretical and aesthetic argues, the novel relates the struggle against viewpoint. Others, including the chapters on Bier‐ Nazism to anticolonial conflicts and the struggle mann, Lewy, Schulze, Walser, and Wander, offer against apartheid. (for the historian!) straightforward interpreta‐ As noted above, fve contributions are dedi‐ tions which emphasize the social or political con‐ cated to the work of Volker Braun. The excerpt text and wider cultural implications of his life or from Braun's 2008 Machwerk oder Das Schicht‐ work. The latter contributions give insight into ev‐ buch des Flick von Lauchhammer portrays work‐ eryday experiences of dislocation as refracted ers' dislocation in an open-cast mining district of through a writer's eye. Also bridging the divide the former GDR. The piece highlights local distress between a literary and social-historical perspec‐ over the post-communist dismantling of mining tive are Daniel Azuélos's contribution on the reac‐ industries but it also criticizes the GDR's preced‐ tion of the German-language exile press to the as‐ ing demolition of villages in order to create vast sassination attempt of 20 July 1944, Dieter Segert's lignite minefields in the Niederlausitz and slyly piece on reform communists in 1989-90, and hints at the gendered and ethnic biases of the Roger Woods's essay on three East German auto‐ protesting workers. In just a few pages, Braun si‐ biographies written after 1990. The explicitly so‐ 2 H-Net Reviews multaneously reinforces and undermines the sig‐ Of the essays that bridge literary and social nificance of a capitalist displacement by showing analysis, I recommend especially Christine that it occurred in the wake of a socialist disloca‐ Cosentino's chapter on Ingo Schulze's book of tion and alongside cultural barrier-building. My short stories, Handy: Dreizehn Geschichten in al‐ understanding of this excerpt was enhanced by ter Manier (2007). Cosentino argues that Schulze's the interpretations of Braun's poetry offered by tales can be read as ironic explorations of the am‐ Anna Chiarloni, Axel Goodbody, Karen Leeder, bivalences and ambiguities of eastern German and Gerd Labroisse. In particular, I was im‐ identity formation provoked by the process of ne‐ pressed by Goodbody's perceptive reading of gotiating the new world of capitalism. Her evoca‐ Braun's difficult poem, "Bodenloser Satz" (written tive interpretation of his stories inspired me to in 1988, published in late 1989). Goodbody's inter‐ read them (a strong endorsement of a literary pretation emphasizes Braun's disillusionment analysis in my view). Also intriguing is Stuart with (socialist) industrial modernity and his con‐ Parkes's claim that the theme of social and eco‐ viction that East Germans lost their "Heimat" in nomic dislocation runs through many of Martin the process of industrializing it. Walser's novels, countering Walser's reputation as The excerpt from Machwerk relates directly a Heimat-centered writer. to the social-historical essay "Dislocation and re‐ Although he presents a convincing argument, orientation in the Sorbian community Parkes's essay stretches the concept of dislocation (1945-2008)." Its author, Peter Barker, returns to in a direction far from the wrenching exile and the villages in the Lausitz destroyed during the extreme displacement associated with the expansion of open-cast mining. Their inhabitants caesuras of 1933, 1945, and 1990. And, of course, were Sorbs, that is, the remaining representatives these massive dislocations differed in obvious and of Slavonic tribes that moved west of the Oder subtle ways from each other. While all three turn‐ 1,500 years ago. Many former villagers moved to ing points caused serious suffering to millions of cities and to jobs in new industries, even as they Germans (and non-Germans!), the dislocations continued to cultivate a separate linguistic and re‐ forced by Nazism and the Second World War were ligious identity. Barker discusses this and others all-encompassing, not to speak of life-threatening ways in which Sorbian cultural autonomy was of‐ and, indeed, murderous, in contrast to the diffi‐ ficially protected but socially undermined in the cult but not catastrophic consequences of the end GDR. Especially interesting are his remarks on of communism in East Germany. I wish the edi‐ tensions in the 1950s between Sorbs, who sufered tors had provided a longer introduction or an epi‐ so many dislocations over the centuries, and Ger‐ logue that drew the volume's many and disparate man refugees from Silesia and the Sudetenland, essays into conversation with each other toward who were in the process of adapting to a major the aim of understanding the significance of indi‐ dislocation of their own.

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