First Century German Literature and Film

Abstract Title of Document: AMERICAN BLACKNESS AND VERGANGENHEITSBEWÄLTIGUNG IN TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY GERMAN LITERATURE AND FILM Christina Wall, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed by: Professor Elke P. Frederiksen, Department of Germanic Studies This study represents a unique examination of the convergence of constructs of Blackness and racism in twenty-first century novels and films by white Germans and Austrians in order to demonstrate how these texts broaden discourses of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The increased prominence of minority voices demanding recognition of their national identity within Nazi successor states has transformed white German perceptions of “Germanness” and of these nations’ relationships to their turbulent pasts. I analyze how authors and directors employ constructs of Blackness within fictional texts to interrogate the dynamics of historical and contemporary racisms. Acknowledging that discourses of ‘race’ are taboo, I analyze how authors and directors avoid this forbidden discourse by drawing comparisons between constructs of American Blackness and German and Austrian historical encounters with ‘race’. This study employs cultural studies’ understanding of ‘race’ and Blackness as constructs created across discourses. Following the example of Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark (1992), my textual analyses show how these constructs create a “playground for the imagination” in which authors confront modern German racism. My study begins with a brief history of German-African American encounters, emphasizing the role American Blackness played during pivotal moments of German national identity formation. The subsequent chapters are divided thematically, each one comprised of textual analyses that explore discourses integral to Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The third chapter examines articulations of violence and racism in two films, Oskar Roehler’s Lulu & Jimi (2008) and Michael Schorr’s Schultze gets the blues (2008), to explore possibilities of familial reconciliation despite historical guilt. The fourth chapter compares the Besatzungskinder protagonists of two novels, Peter Henisch’s Schwarzer Peter (2000) and Larissa Boehning’s Lichte Stoffe (2007), with the (auto)biographies of actual Besatzungskinder Ika Hügel-Marshall and Bärbel Kampmann, exposing the modern discursive taboo of ‘race’ as a silence stemming from historical guilt. The final chapter demonstrates the evolution of German conceptualizations of historical guilt through the analyses of Christa Wolf’s novel Stadt der Engel (2010) and Armin Völckers’s film Leroy (2007). American Blackness and Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Twenty-first Century German Literature and Film By Christina Noelle Wall Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor Elke P. Frederiksen, Chair Professor Peter Beicken Professor Gabriele Strauch Professor Hester Baer Professor Zita Nunes © Copyright by Christina Noelle Wall 2014 Acknowledgements This study would not be possible without the tireless effort of my adviser Dr. Elke Frederiksen, whom I cannot thank enough for her patience and assistance. Nor would it have come to fruition without the support of my parents, Regis and Jean Betsch, my husband, Kristopher Wall, and the friendship of Katherine Stiner. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………….. ii Table of Contents ………………………....…………………………………..... iii Introduction and Significance of Work ………………………....…………… 1 Significance and Scope of Work ………………………....…………………. 9 Materials and Structure ………………………....…………………………... 14 Chapter 1: Methodology and Literature Review …………………………….. 20 Cultural Studies and the Construct of ‘Race’ ...……………………………... 20 Black German Studies: The Emergence of a New Discipline ………………. 27 Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Coming to Terms with …..….………………... 36 Unmasterable Pasts Collective Memory: Vergangenheitsbewältigung and ……………………… 49 Cultural Studies in the Twenty-first Century Chapter 2: Conflicting Constructs of Blackness ...…………………………... 57 Between Physiology and Aesthetics: The Enlightenment Notion of Race … 58 Immigration, Travelogues, and Constructs of Black Slavery ……………… 62 German Colonialism ...……………………………………………………… 66 Eugenics: A German-American Dialogue ……………….……..…………… 69 ‘Mischehe’ and German Southwest Africa ………………………………….. 72 “Die Schwarze Schmach am Rhein” and the Rheinland Bastarde................ 75 Blackness and the Third Reich ……………………………………………… 79 Besatzungskinder and the African American Civil Rights Movement ……… 83 From Audre Lorde to May Ayim: Afro-German Voices Speak Out ………... 88 Chapter 3: Between Righteous Rebels and Saintly Martyrs: …...…………... 92 Imagined Black America and White German Generational Reconciliation Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Third Generation ................................... 93 Forgiving Father: Black American Rebellion in …………………………….. 97 Oskar Roehler’s Lulu & Jimi (2008) Songs from Abroad: Finding Saxony-Anhalt in Black Louisiana in ………... 123 Michael Schorr’s Schultze gets the blues (2003) Conclusion: Locating Racism Before and After the Third Reich …………… 140 Chapter 4: Visible Secrets: Besatzungskinder, American Blackness, ……….. 143 and Family Secrets Secrets only Skin Deep: Choosing Identity in the (Auto)biographies ………. 144 of Black German Besatzungskinder Grandmother’s Confessions: German Blackness as German Victimhood …. 158 in Larissa Boehning’s Lichte Stoffe (2007) Danger, Silence, and Racism in Peter Henisch’s Schwarzer Peter (2000) ..... 173 Conclusion: What Secrets Reveal …………………………………………… 189 Chapter 5: Who Bears the Burden of ‘Race’?: ‘White Guilt’ .……………… 192 and Black Experiences German Shame, ‘White Guilt’ and Vergangenheitsbewältigung ………….... 193 Reprogramming White Supremacists in Armin Völcker’s Leroy (2007)……. 197 iii Personal Shame and ‘White Guilt’ in Christa Wolf’s ……………………… 219 Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud (2010) Conclusion: Assuaging ‘White Guilt’………….…………………………… 236 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………… 240 Bibilography …………………………………………………………………… 247 iv Introduction and Significance of Work This study interrogates the confluence of constructs of Blackness and expressions of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in twenty-first century film and literature by Black and white Germans and Austrians. Applying the most recent theoretical work of Black German and memory studies, my study is unique for its recognition of modern literary and cinematic engagements with ‘race’—specifically, Blackness—as participating in discourses concerning coming to terms with traumatic events throughout German and Austrian history. Despite the overwhelming significance ‘race’ had during the Third Reich, a paucity of scholarship on the relationship between contemporary articulations of racism, or anti-racism, and the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung persists. Practitioners of memory studies often leave questions of ‘race’ completely unaddressed, and activists and scholars who interrogate modern racism will frequently connect it to Germany’s colonial and National Socialist pasts without acknowledging that its continuation into contemporary society may be related to historical discourses of guilt and culpability. The following study will finally bridge these studies of ‘race’ and Vergangenheitsbewältigung by analyzing the convergence of constructs of Blackness and racism in twenty-first century novels and films by white and Black Germans and Austrians to demonstrate how these texts broaden discourses of Vergangenheitsbewältigung to include events before and after the Holocaust. Interest in this study was sparked by autobiographies by Afro-German1 authors, whose works have significantly increased in the past two decades. Particularly powerful 1 In this study, I use the terms Afro-German and Black German interchangeably, because, despite debates about these terms, they are both self-applied terminologies. When speaking of Afro- or Black Germans, I 1 are the experiences of racism noted by the authors, their effect on Black German identity, and the denial of that racism by white Germans. Many notable scholars have analyzed the relationship of Blackness, Germanness, and Afro-German identity2 or chronicled the Afro-German struggle to reclaim a German heritage,3 but few have studied how these emergent Black German voices have affected contemporary white, hegemonic constructs of Germanness. Acknowledging that these experiential texts are seldom limited to personal explorations of identity but set out to dismantle racist structures within German society, an exploration of the effects of Black German voices on constellations of Germanness and ‘race’ is long overdue. Particularly intrepid —and indispensable for the development of this study—is Noah Sow’s book Deutschland Schwarz Weiß. Der alltägliche Rassismus (2008). She opens her work with the bold statement, “Doch in Deutschland passiert gerade etwas sehr Interessantes: Der Zugang zu einem bestimmten Gebiet des Allgemeinwissens wird von der Mehrheit »aktiv« nicht genutzt… Deutschland ist rückständig, was den Umgang mit Rassismus betrifft” (11). Sow’s book, an open interrogation of contemporary German racism from the point of view of a Black German, begins by asserting the topic is follow Fatima El-Tayeb’s practice of “strategic essentialism,” which applies these terms in reference to those Germans of African heritage whose primary socialization

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