Transnational Travel in Post-1989 German Literature
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MEMORY ON THE MOVE: TRANSNATIONAL TRAVEL IN POST-1989 GERMAN LITERATURE BY LAUREN MICHELLE HANSEN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in German in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Anke Pinkert, Chair Associate Professor Yasemin Yildiz Professor Michael Rothberg Professor Harriet Murav Associate Professor George Gasyna ii Abstract Contemporary German literature after 1989 has become increasingly transnational and transcultural, given its numerous portrayals of travel, particularly in exploring traumatic family pasts. The transitional years of 1989/90, known as the Wende , have arguably resulted in greater mobility and Germans’ turn to the future as a unified country. However, authors of the second generation, or those born at the end of or just after WWII, are going back in historical time, as they revisit the war and post-war periods via modes of travel in their post-1989 literary works. The sweeping changes across Germany and Europe after 1989, the public debates about how to remember WWII and the more recent divided German past, and the gradual passing away of the first generation who survived WWII explain the surfeit of memory literature and novels that examine family memory. Using Marianne Hirsch’s notion of postmemory, I argue in this dissertation that second-generation authors employ modes of travel in their post-1989 works in order to negotiate critical empathy to parents’ traumatic pasts and revisit intergenerational conflicts of the Cold War period. Critical empathy here means emotional proximity and an attempt to understand parents’ traumatic wartime experiences while maintaining critical distance in order to avoid over-identification or an overly emotionalized investigation of the family past. Critical empathy is negotiated through the authors’ depictions of geographical proximity and distance to places pertinent to the family past. I trace how critical empathy unfolds across and beyond German borders in Barbara Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus Nichts (1991), Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe (1999), Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s Anatolin (2008), and Eugen Ruge’s In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts (2011). Given the over forty-year division between East and West Germany, two differing trajectories for dealing with atrocities of the Second World War had to be reconciled. The initial euphoria of reunification and its renewed engagements with the past ultimately delegitimized the GDR, folding it into a Western historical narrative of triumph in which capitalism defeated communism. In the meantime, however, many scholars have countered this hegemonic view with more nuance that takes into account the antifascist state’s problems, yet exposes its complexity and texture as a legitimate cultural and political project. Moreover, the celebratory narrative and tone of reunification at large is countered with what scholars see as a profound loss, disappointment, and disorientation in works of art after the GDR disappeared. That is, rather than necessarily longing for its return, artists and writers have invited reflection on the effects of a vanished framework for interpreting history and the world. The authors explored in this dissertation each negotiate in their own ways and to varying degrees the role that the formerly divided Germany plays in their respective portrayals of family pasts that are constituted by multiple spatial displacements. The larger stakes of this dissertation therefore lie in the new possibilities for GDR memory and postmemory that emerge in the process of negotiating critical empathy through travel in contemporary German literature. Itinerant engagements with the GDR past in these texts published around the turn of the twenty-first century enable attunements to present vulnerabilities that transcend Germany and German culture alone. Furthermore, protagonists in transit negotiate non-traumatic ties to traumatic family pasts. I therefore show how the open- ended, itinerant literary works investigated here allow reflection on the (GDR, war, or family) past beyond modes of trauma and loss to perhaps move contemporary German culture out of the post-1989 era and open it up to complex transnational and transcultural constellations of the twenty-first century. iii Acknowledgements A huge thank you to my adviser and mentor Professor Anke Pinkert who from the beginning of my graduate school career believed in me, pushed me to perform at my intellectual best, and truly inspired me in her scholarly and pedagogical work and, more importantly, as a compassionate human being. She has taught me what it means to be not only a Germanist, but also a humanist. I also greatly appreciate the support from my dissertation committee members: Yasemin Yildiz, Michael Rothberg, Harriet Murav, and George Gasyna. Your mentorship and training has been crucial in helping me form the foundation of my project. Thank you to Professor Mara Wade for your encouragement and professional advice throughout my graduate school career. I am also indebted to my fellow graduate student colleagues and friends for their tremendous support over the years: Alexandra, Regine, Renata, Zach, Jeff, Kelli, Sara, Sarah, Johannes, Lujun, and Monet. Last but certainly not least, I would not have been able to persevere without my personal pillars of support throughout graduate school. I am forever grateful to my family, Nick, and Amanda for your unwaivering belief in me and in my goals. iv Table of Contents Introduction …….…………………………………………………………...1 Memory on the Move: Transnational and Transcultural Frameworks..5 Why Family? ....................................................................................... 8 Why Post-1989?: Study Methodology and Contributions ............... 16 Roadmap: Chapter Overview ........................................................... 29 Chapter One: Being in vs. Writing into Exile—Postmemory in Barbara Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus Nichts (A Love Made Out of Nothing) (1991) ………………………………………………………………………. 33 Introduction………………………………………………………….33 Overview of novel’s plot and structure …………………………….. 40 Crisis of Identity: The German-Jewish Communist in Post-War East Berlin…...............................................................................................44 Crisis of Patriarchy: Ephemerality and Marginalization of the Father- Daughter Relationship in the Theater ................................................ 56 Narrative Expansion Outward and Westward from the GDR into Paris……….. ..................................................................................... 62 Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 78 Chapter Two: Political and Familial Tensions across German-Polish Borders in Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe (Paul’s Letters) (1999) ...................... 81 1.5 and 2 nd Generation: Negotiating Proximity and Distance ............ 86 Narrative and Photographic Focalization .......................................... 94 Narrative Collage .................................................................... 95 Photographic Focalization ..................................................... 101 Fluid Identities in Poland...................................................................117 Concluding Remarks ....................................................................... 124 Chapter Three: The Poetics of the Search in Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s Anatolin (2008) ...............................................................................…………………126 Germans as Victims: from pre-1989 margins and divisions to post-1989 discursive center ............................................................................... 129 Remembrance of German Flight and Expulsion from post-1945 into the post-1989 era ................................................................................... 131 Treichel’s Post-1989 Literary Engagement with Flight and Expulsion…………………………………………………………...133 Self-Reflection in Anatolin .............................................................. 136 The Poetics of the Search for a Family Narrative ........................... 138 v Intergenerational continuities and developments ............................ 145 Traveling to Poland.......................................................................... 150 Concluding Remarks ....................................................................... 157 Chapter Four: Finding a Future for the GDR in German Contemporary Literature in Eugen Ruge’s In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts (In Times of Fading Light) (2011) ......................................................…………………161 Introduction: Where are we?..............................................................161 Remarks on the Novel’s Structure ................................................... 168 Where time stands still: The GDR Home...………………………...170 New Beginnings: The Past Repurposed ........................................... 179 “Mexico Lindo” ...................................................................... 184 The photograph and the house .............................................. 188 Finitude, the Future, and the Father’s Folder .................................. 196 Concluding Remarks ........................................................................ 205 Epilogue ....................................................................................................