Rhetoric of Ruin: 9/11 in German Literature, Film and Culture

A dissertation submitted to the

Graduate School

of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of German Studies

of the College of Arts and Sciences

by

Alexandra S. Hagen

M.A. University of South Carolina

May 2005

Committee Chair: Harold Herzog, PhD Abstract:

This dissertation project examines contemporary German cultural products that reference the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In particular, the omnipresent fear of terrorism, the United States’ political involvement in Iraq, the German dissent, as well as its depiction in mass media underscore the importance of the portrayal of 9/11 in contemporary German literature, film, and culture. Key to the analysis is the reflection of the relationship between reality and the political, cultural, and aesthetic representation of the terrorist attacks in German literature, film and media published between September 11, 2001 and the present. I argue that mass media serve as the driving force behind all representation and conclude that the simultaneous broadcasting of media images nullifies the geographical distance between local witnesses in New York City and contemporaries around the world. Rather than fictionally reconstructing 9/11, authors rely on the televised images as a source of information. Hence the immediacy of television supersedes literature as a locus of remembrance. The continuously ambivalent, 200-year long German-

American discourse provides a larger framework for the dissertation and its effort to understand representations of the attacks from outside the United States.

ii iii Acknowledgements

I encountered the notion of Amerika, the savior that came to Germany’s rescue in the immediate aftermath of World War II, from a very young age. Having listened to stories told by my maternal grandmother about how the U.S. saved Germany by giving away Hershey bars,

Butterfingers, and Baby Ruths, I imagined the United States to be some kind of Schlaraffenland, the land of milk and honey. Little did I know at the age of five, that this notion was only in my imagination. While growing up, I became fascinated with the impact the United States had on

German life and culture. Studying in the United States, however, allowed me to see this relationship from a different perspective. Two graduate courses, led by Dr. Agnes Mueller at the

University of South Carolina and by Dr. Todd Herzog at the University of Cincinnati, introduced me to an array of scholarship about the complex relationship between German and American culture from the late 19th century to early 21st century. These two courses sparked my interest in what later was to become my dissertation topic: how the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were represented in German literature, film and, culture.

Like many projects, this dissertation and the research conducted to write it would not have been completed if not for the generous financial support of the University of Cincinnati. The

Department of German Studies has generously supported my research from the very beginning when I traveled to McGill University to present my first paper at the conference

“Representations of North America in German Literature, Film and Culture“ in 2006. The Taft

Dissertation Fellowship as well as the University Research Council’s grant allowed me to expand my research and focus solely on my dissertation project. Travel grants awarded by the Taft

iv Research Center as well as by Graduate Student Government Association enabled me to present portions of this project at national and international academic conferences.

Beyond financial support, I have had the opportunity to work with a number of important mentors during my time at the University of South Carolina and at the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Lara Ducate was a valuable resource and always encouraging throughout the entire process.

My professors at the University of Cincinnati, especially Dr. Todd Herzog and Dr. Katharina

Gerstenberger (now at the University of Utah), a have been crucial to my success in academia so far and have offered me guidance and inspiration beyond any expectations. I am also beyond grateful that Dr. Even Torner and Dr. Valerie Weinstein have agreed to read my dissertation and serve on my committee. I thank them for the patience and tolerance. Also, many thanks to Dr.

Margaret Hansen and the Graduate School for allowing me to finish this project this academic year.

I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to my colleagues/friends, Deborah Page and Dr.

Todd Heidt, who have been eager to critically engage my scholarship, helped me when needing an energy boost or motivation, have collaborated on or are currently working with me on projects and panels, or all of the above.

Most importantly, I am grateful to my mom, Hildegard Hagen, whose support and love for me was ineffable. I am so sorry that you did not live long enough to experience my success which I owe to you. I love you so much!

v INTRODUCTION

A New Body of Literature

This dissertation examines German literary and filmic responses in the wake of the attacks of

September 11, 2001.1 The terrorist attacks are considered a national trauma to the United States, a global media event, and as such function as an caesura at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Particularly, the images of the falling towers and its news coverage have left an indelible mark and have spurred waves of fear that are still omnipresent today and are an inherent part of

Bilder des Terrors2 or a Bilderpolitik in Zeiten von Krieg und Terror.3 September 11 prompted a series of military invasions - the so-called “war on terror“4 - to Afghanistan and to Iraq, which have not been completely resolved and influence global politics to the present day. Still riddled with conflict, the attacks provide a nexus of fields of history, politics and visual studies. The date

9/11/01 effectively ended a time period that was characterized by the collapse of the confrontation between East and West and heralded a new era in the beginning of the twenty-first century which is characterized by globalization and its world-wide conflicts.

Responses in German literature and film are at the center of this project. All chosen texts have been published within the first ten years of the new millennium. Ever since the terrorist

1 The following terms, 9/11, Nine Eleven, and September 11 reference the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2011 and will be used henceforth interchangeably. The date serves as a collective cipher for the attacks. The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache even chose the date as their word of the year at the end of 2001. 2 See Beuthner/Buttler/Fröhlich/Weichert. Eds. Bilder des Terrors - Terror der Bilder? Krisenberichterstattung am und nach dem 11. September. 3 See Linda Hentschel. Ed. Bilderpolitik im Zeiten des Terrors. Medien, Macht und Geschlechterverhältnisse. 4 This term first used by former President G.W. Bush on 20 September 2001. This term has been used by the western media to describe the political, legal and conceptual struggle against organizations and regimes accused of supporting terrorism.

1 attacks of 9/11 with its media broadcast, fear and uncertainty have returned to public center stage. New political rhetoric as well as intensive domestic and international debates regarding security and public safety have dominated over the last 15 years. In order to record these cultural products which have been initiated by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and its global aftermath, this dissertation examines novels, novellas, essays and films, published between 2001-2010, and investigates common themes, motifs, and narrative strategies within these texts.

Current Research

Research regarding the topic of Nine Eleven can be found in many different disciplines. In the field of communication or media studies, researchers think of the terrorist attacks as a case of extreme “Krisenkommunikation“ (Bilder des Terrors - Terror der Bilder? 74) as well as a domestic and global media event. While in the field of political science, 9/11 is viewed as a phenomenon: a new form of transnational terrorism. It is also considered a new beginning in asymmetric warfare: a term which describes a conflict in which “the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional the weaker combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality.“5

Particularly, strategic image placement by terrorists and the uses of images within a society highly susceptible to them has become crucial to the interdisciplinary field of visual studies.6

5 See Robert Tomes, “Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare.“ 6 See Paul Gerhard, Bilder des Krieges - Krieg der Bilder. Die Visualisierung des modernen Krieges and Karen Engele, Seeing Ghosts. 9/11 and the Visual Imagination.

2 There are also German publications on the aesthetic representations on 9/11. All of these are anthologies and interdisciplinary by nature. Narrative des Entsetzens (2004), Nine Eleven:

Ästhetische Verarbeitungen des 11. September 2001 (2008) and 9/11 als eine kulturelle Zäsur

(2009) bring together attempts to investigate the topic from different viewpoints, i.e. literature, film, popular culture and visual arts. These essay collections examine mechanisms and strategies of 9/11’s cultural meaning and characterize the attacks primarily as a media event and a symbolic attack on the western world whose impact produced immediate discussions on this subject.

Furthermore, Heinz-Peter Preußler and Matteo Galli investigate aesthetic representations of 9/117 against the backdrop of Germany’s complex post-war history with domestic terrorism.

While there is a large number of publications, anthologies as well as monographs, that concern the aesthetic representation of Nine Eleven within American contemporary literature, most of this research uses trauma and memory studies as its basis.8 Within German Studies, there are only few essays in published anthologies that deal with Nine Eleven. These essays look at immediate literary responses from Germany, in forms of blogs, diaries, or journalistic essays.9 It was only in 2009 that the first monograph about German literary responses was published.

Christian de Simoni’s study „Es war aber win Angriff auf uns selbst.“ Betroffenheitsgesten in der Literatur nach 9/11 interprets literature about 9/11 as part of a larger hegemonic discourse

7 See Heinz-Peter Preußler and Matteo Galli, Mythos Terrorismus. Vom deutschen Herbst zum 11. September - Fakten, Fakes und Fiktionen. 8 See Ann Keniston, Literature after 9/11 and Stefanie Roth Medium und Ereignis. 9/11 im amerikanischen Film, Fernsehen und Roman. 9 See Werner Jung, “Terror und Literatur. Eine Misszelle.“ Narrative des Entsetzens. and Andrea Payk- Heilmann. “Der 11. September im (fiktionalen) Tagebuch.“ Nine Eleven. Ästhetische Verarbeitungen. and Jesko Bender. “Zum Denkmuster ‚Zäsur‘ im deutschen Terrorismus-Diskurs nach dem 11. September 2001 - Ulrich Peltzers Bryant Park.“ NachBilder der RAF

3 which primarily analyzes Nine Eleven as an attack on the western world. He focuses only on examining elements of shock and dismay, but disregards other approaches for interpretation.10

Outline

Firstly, all texts and films included in this project have been published in the first ten years of the new century. The project looks at narratives that are relevant to the topic of 9/11, the date specifically, and thematize any political, historical ramifications of 9/11 and its aftermath. For example, we see immediate reactions to the attacks from the blogosphere, journalistic essays or hybrid texts that have been already accepted into literary canon of 9/11: Else Buschheuer’s New

York Tagebuch (2001), Kathrin Röggla’s really ground zero (2001) and Ulrich Peltzer’s Bryant

Park (2002).

This dissertation goes a step further by including works that thematize a post-9/11 era.

Having been published four to five years after the attacks, these literary responses do not make

Nine Eleven central to their narrative, but show a literary complexity of the attacks and their global impact in a post-9/11 world, i.e. Die Habenichtse (2006), Thomas Hettche’s Woraus wir gemacht sind (2006), and Thomas Lehr’s September Fata Morgana (2010).

Regarding films, the first to be analyzed is September (2003) by Max Färberböck. It bridges the gap between immediate responses to 9/11 and a second wave of responses which are more distant and reflective to 9/11. Even though the film portrays four different lives in Germany on the day of September 11, 2001, it took the producers over a year to write, shoot and release the film. The two remaining films Fremder Freund (2004) and Schläfer (2005) deal with the

10 See Christian de Simoni, Es war aber ein Angriff auf uns selbst.“ Betroffenheitsgesten in der Literatur nach 9/11.

4 aftermath of 9/11 in German culture, for example showing character studies on xenophobia as well as examining the political implications of surveillance while 9/11 serves as a backdrop.

Secondly, all works are analyzed in chronological order. Thus we can see how literary responses progress in this first decade of the new millennium. It also allows us to uncover dominant themes and different narrative strategies within 9/11 literature. Because my analysis is chronological, this dissertation is comprised of two parts, rather than a series of chapters. The first part consists of literary responses that were published during or soon after 9/11, highlighting the authenticity and immediacy of the terrorist attacks. Each part is divided into subsections. The subsections in Part One examines personal accounts by German authors who were either present during the attacks in New York City, or were in Germany during the attacks, or wrote about the attacks within a year of the event. The first three subsections of Part Two discuss analyses of films that both thematize 9/11 and focus on a post-9/11 world in Germany. The last two subsections discuss narratives whose characters’ lives have been affected by the attacks and the aftermath both explicitly and implicitly. I argue that there are distinct and important differences among works about 9/11. Immediate literary responses to 9/11 focus on the event itself and on the personal responses of the authors. The more distanced responses, while not discussing the event itself, nonetheless use the attacks as backdrop or framework.

This project also takes on a function of “Kulturpoetik.“11 According to Basler’s notion, literary texts are inherent of a cultural archive (52). They not only mirror contemporary culture, but also take part in, transcribe and archive it. The texts examined here are thus an essential part of the public discourse on 9/11 and have to be integrated when ascribing or negotiating new

11 See Moritz Basler, Die kulturpoetische Funktion und das Archiv: eine literaturwissenschaftliche Text- Kontext-Theorie.

5 meanings. The continuing struggle to assign meaning to 9/11, in and outside the United States, led me to delve into the portrayal of 9/11 in contemporary German literature, film, and culture.

The struggle is reflected in a generational conflict between authors of postwar Germany and authors of a re-unified Germany. Not only do their views on the cultural and political implications of 9/11 within a global framework deviate, but also the choice of genre and narrative strategy differ from one another. Both groups of authors, however, identify mass media as the driving force behind all representation. They implicitly accuse the media of manipulating their audience by excessive broadcasting of the attacks and staging 9/11 as a spectacle. By playing with narratives, such as intertwining images or music with their texts, authors criticize the power of mass media and draw attention to how easy it is to succumb to it.

Part One addresses authors who attempt to directly capture and convey 9/11 and in the process face great difficulty translating their emotions into words. Immediate responses from

Germans reporting from New York City include texts mostly published online by non- professionals or non-literary persons. German freelance journalist Else Buschheuer’s online diary is such an example. By posting short, personal and yet descriptive accounts of the attacks on-site in Lower Manhattan, her online diary becomes a source of knowledge when all other modes of communication fail. Her transcripts are important because it gives the reader insight into an untainted perspective of the tragedy without the interference and manipulation of the American media.

6 Intellectual responses as well as shorter literary forms, i.e. works such as blogs, newspaper commentaries, brief personal reminiscences, essays, short stories and poetry12, were published shortly after the attacks. Often formally conventional, these texts bridge the gap between personal experience and political meaning. A generational conflict between post-war and a younger generation of writers of the re-unified Germany becomes evident. Not only do their discussions of the terrorist attacks’ anticipated cultural and political implications within a global framework deviate, but also the choice of genre and narrative strategy differ from one another.

Nine Eleven has also generated many hybrid forms, images and iconography in written texts, for example in the works of Austrian-born writer Katrin Röggla. Her collection of diary entries really ground zero 11. September und folgendes (2001) offers a unique and personal perspective of 9/11 by intermeshing text with photographs. Composed in New York City within one month after the attacks, she critically observes the New Yorkers’ reactions to and political reverberations of 9/11 from a foreign perspective – similar to Else Buschheuer’s online entries. All texts, however, touch on political issues critically – such as President George W. Bush’s influence on

New York City residents within a month of the event or the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

While texts of documentary character tend to be more conventional, fiction about 9/11 featured formal innovations – self-reflexive meta-narratives, disrupted temporality, multiple viewpoints, for instance Ulrich Peltzer’s novella Bryant Park (2002). The event of 9/11 is embedded in a complex layer of three meta-narratives: a narrative about (1) a German historian looking for ancestors in Manhattan, (2) a drug smuggling ring in Italy, and (3) a son and the relationship to

12 Ann Keniston and Jeanne Follansbee’s edited collection Literature after 9/11 presents similar findings with regard to US-centered literary responses to 9/11. Essays in this volume discuss novels such as Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005), and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007).

7 his terminally ill father. The attacks come into play when a forth narrative opens with a narrator named Ulrich, the author’s alter ego, in the last third of the novella. This novella marks the transition between the first phase and the second phase of publications. Later novels have tended to be more formally conservative, yet these more straightforward narratives grapple with more complex representational challenges, often combining exploration of characters living “in the shadow of no towers” – to borrow Art Spiegelman’s title – with dramatization of contested interpretations of 9/11.

The approach to the attacks has become more nuanced and refined in publications after

2003. It took several years for long prose to appear implying that the time of reflection is directly proportional to the length of genre. This is the reason why Part Two of this dissertation begins with a discussion of three films that narrate the event of 9/11 and its aftermath visually. Each film

–set in Germany– negotiates the German private with the public sphere: personal relationships vs. the political juggernaut regarding German-U.S. relations. The first film to be discussed,

September, chronicles the lives of four couples on the day of the attacks by exploring the theme of coming to terms with the attacks and its aftermath as witnesses from afar. Released one year later, the film Fremder Freund thematizes the intercultural friendship of two university students:

Chris and Yunes. The film explores the development of their friendship prior to 9/11, Yunes’ sudden disappearance, and the shocking realization that Yunes must be involved in the terrorist attacks. The third and last film, Schläfer, concerns itself with the repercussion of 9/11 within the

German border. The film, released four years after the attacks, shows the ambiguity between the state, law and the individual and thematizes a post-9/11 world under surveillance.

8 When perusing literary responses to 9/11, one can make out a gradual shift from immediate responses in the German contemporary literary landscape – mostly non-fiction works, such as personal accounts, statements or comments – to a more subtle tone in works of fiction that gradually introduce a new phase of German contemporary literature that is concerned with 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The attacks stand no longer in the center of the text; instead, they are embedded in the background of the narrative – simply represented as a historical event. Literary texts now reflect 9/11 more consciously and critically, making the novel the preferred literary genre. In my opinion, time serves as the crucial element that renders the necessary distance for authors to achieve a more considerate as well as a more critical eye with regard to 9/11. Shifts also occur in current events that may shape or change an author’s mind. On the day after the attacks – September 12, 2001 – it seemed that the world as we knew it ceased to exist. The

German media, renowned newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as well as daily tabloid

BILD unanimously ran the headline: “Es wird nichts mehr so sein, wie es einmal war!”

When looking closely at fictional narratives – in this case Ulrich Peltzer’s Bryant Park (2002), this phrase might have been still employed. But five years later, with the publication of literary works such as Katharina Hacker’s Die Habenichtse (2006), Thomas Hettche’s novel Woraus wir gemacht sind (2006) and Thomas Lehr’s September. Fata Morgana. (2010) – I argue, it is no longer valid. Here, the events of September 11 move to out of the limelight to the back stage, serve as a real point in history, which all fictitious narratives now refer to and are influenced by.

Aforementioned novels such as by Katharina Hacker, Thomas Hettche and Thomas Lehr experiment with narrative aesthetics as they attempt to give rational explanation. Fragmented, self-reflexive meta-narratives are infused with poetic language and paint a multi-faceted picture

9 of individual German and non-German fates who are faced with the global consequences of 9/11.

In contrast to the films, the literary texts are set in locations ranging from Berlin and London to

New York City and Baghdad.

As this short publication history highlights tensions between direct and indirect representations of 9/11, it also asks questions about the aesthetic representation. And as such, the following questions, broadly speaking, fall within the purview of this dissertation:

What does it mean to have witnessed and to remember an event that felt incomprehensible? Is it possible to speak in a voice that exceeds the personal or to launch a political critique in literature? What form can such a literature take, negotiating as it must between the event itself and the dictates of genre and tradition? Does a unique German perspective emerge when analyzing literary responses? How does this perspective influence the portrayal of the United

States with reference to the history of the German-American discourse? And what kind of role do mass media play in this scenario?

This project examines the ways that literature has participated in the larger cultural process of interpreting the events of September 11, 2001, while also revealing the difficulties when 9/11 is still so recent. The questions that organize this dissertation emerge from the literature itself; literary works focus on the meaning of 9/11 by employing representational strategies that emphasize the desire for (and the construction of) meaning, and that dramatizes the continuing resonance of 9/11 in the collective western world. This dissertation defines a new body of literature that reveals the instability as an event and the ways that literature contests the

9/11’s co-option for narrowly political ends. Because the literary works examined here engage self-reflexively with frameworks for interpreting 9/11 – as well as with attempts to represent the

10 events themselves – the project depicts a passage from raw experience to representation. In short, the works examined reveal the tension between the private experience and the necessarily social means for representing it. By defining literature broadly and by including a variety of different genres and authors, the project demonstrate the connection between literature and the narratives that have shaped public debate about the meaning of 9/11.

11 PART ONE

Writing in a State of Shock: German Intellectual and Literary Responses to 9/11

The World Trade Center, like any famous high rise, was both real and imaginary. Tourists visited and many people called the towers their workplace. it not only stood for American power and commerce, but also for capitalism generally. When the towers were destroyed on 9/11, these roles stayed the same, nevertheless their relation to each other was now different: the fact of the matter, its destruction was too much, yet it has been represented by many complex symbolic formations.

The comparing demands of utility and symbol have been particularly critical in the ongoing and contentious debates about the buildings and memorials to be erected at Ground

Zero. While struggling to find meaning, there is a notion to comfort the victims’ families as well as to grieve as a country. The question now is: can Nine Eleven be misinterpreted, politicized or distorted?

There is tension between “the symbolic suggestiveness of the twin towers and their destruction is central to numerous texts written in the wake of 9/11.”13 Texts are bound to 9/11 and its aftermath. Text and images recount the author’s physical and emotional responses on that day and afterward; but it also remains separate from this lived experience: authors explicitly interrogate the “facts” and “reality” of what happened and the texts’ distinctive visual and verbal repetitions insist on its statue as an imaginative representation of lived experience. Many of the texts to be discussed in this dissertation insist “on the space between the real and the imagined,

13 Keniston and Quinn note: “Most literary representations of 9/11 focus almost exclusively on events in New York City. The destruction of the Pentagon and the crash in Shanksville, PA, while suggestive to filmmakers, have not proven as interesting to writers” (1).

12 between image and trope, and between the private realm of memory and the public realm of history. Literature about 9/11 impels the audience to discover these spaces even as it forces them together; it consistently uses the literal to deconstruct the symbolic and vice versa. It offers a kind of partial, awkward bridge between life and language” (Keniston and Quinn 2). Charles

Lewis argues that literary works about 9/11 “works as a prosthesis, an awkward substitute for and an attempt to compensate for the unrepresentable absence effected by 9/11 itself” (249).

We have to raise questions about how we interpret and represent Nine Eleven, questions raised within and outside the United States on the “war on terror”. Not only did American perspectives on the attacks gradually evolve, the attacks have also triggered a new wave of criticism from outside the United States. This criticism is reflected in the a myriad of literary responses. It uncovers the manner in which different peoples and cultures comprehend a post-9/11 world in non-U.S. centric ways; thereby pointing toward possible reconfigurations of what this event means and how it may alter relations between groups and nations rendering 9/11 an event of true global proportions. Germany, in particular, is intrinsically linked to the attacks since discovering that the pilots have lived and studied in Germany prior the attacks. For instance, several intellectual, literary and filmic works in contemporary Germany were motivated by this causal relationship to aesthetically comprehend the attacks.

The War of Images

W. T. J. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, and the editor of the journal Critical Inquiry, states in his essay “The Remains of the Day

13 (2001) that “images are not just representations but also weapons of war.” Images have functioned as tactical weapons and aided in the conquering of enemies. The militaristic use of images is no different today. Images produced by the mass media serve as tactical weapons in modern warfare. With this in mind, Mitchell claims that the modern world, “in conjunction with media technologies,” has become a “military-entertainment complex.”14

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are such an image. The twin towers were symbols of modernity that were deliberately targeted to make the world vulnerable and spread fear in the

Western World through terrorizing images. Terrorists as well as national governments exploit these images in order to further their national security and military interests. At first, however, the images were intended to strike fear in the western world, especially in the United States.

Mitchell concludes, “real events are promptly rendered imaginary, fantasmatic; rumors abound

… and will be engraved in the collective consciousness for generations to come.” Not without reason did one of the most influential German musician of the twentieth century – and a notoriously controversial media commentator, Karlheinz Stockhausen, declare this act of terrorism “zu de[m] größte[n] Kunstwerk, das es je gegeben hat” (“Musiktexte” 77). According to Mitchell, Stockhausen’s statement was made too soon. People were still in mourning and unable to reflect on the truth of the observation. Nevertheless, Stockhausen reminded us with this proclamation “that there is an art of evil as well, and that it comes out of the human soul” (Mitchell “911: Criticism and Crisis” 572). If the collapse of the twin towers is indeed an art of evil, then who perpetrated this heinous act? The United States decided rather hastily to declare Osama bin Laden as the “enigmatic archdemon” (Mitchell) to prove to the world that the

14 See W. T. J. Mitchell, “The War on Images” https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0112/features/ remains-2.html

14 government is serious about retaliation. As a result, mass media has become a battleground for a war of images.

The war of images did not just concern the United States. According to David Simpson, media images of 9/11 (and later images of Abu Ghraib) can be identified as “potentially utopian” because they could have pushed people all around the world into “radically refiguring the relations of the homeland to the foreigner” (The Culture of Commemoration 169). It is important to recognize that the possibility of reconfiguration extends beyond the sphere of American intervention and influence to the wider world. Such a telescopic view allows the audience to consider how other nations outside the United States contend with 9/11 and its aftermath. By following Simpson’s argument and claiming that 9/11 holds an “utopian potential”, it is paramount to examine the attacks from outside the United States and to help shift perspectives to foreign global media that respond to an American-turned-global event.15

The image 9/11 is thus seen as an “aterritorial signifier but not one, however, that leaves territoriality itself behind” (Cilano 17). Specificity of location, in our case Germany, still matters greatly. The literary and visual narratives offer a unique comparison of different understandings of Heimat (homeland) and the foreign. For example, Fremder Freund (2003), directed by Elmar

Fischer, investigates both political and cultural constructions of home. Phrases such “Homeland

15 Cara Cilano’s collection From Solidarity to Schisms: 9/11 and After in Fiction and Film from Outside the US (2009) is an excellent source of essays that specifically investigate 9/11 from a foreigner’s perspective – places such as Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and India.

15 Security”16 (Pease “9/11: ‘When was American Studies after the New Americanists’?” boundary

75) produce “a sense of dislocation and construct a notion of Heimat based on fear and containment of the folk and the foreigner alike that is meant to pass as comfort, inviolability, and stability” (Kaplan “Homeland Insecurities” 88). Assuming the notion of an American Heimat is based on “fear and containment”, the United States can no longer be viewed as the ‘Land of the

Free’. As such, it is highly doubtful that America17 in the German imagination18 (Nolan) can be identified as a positive site for projections of political, cultural, and personal desire.

It is paramount to investigate the image of America in Germany’s immediate responses to the 9/11 attacks. Particularly, when news emerged that students of Arab decent who had previously studied and lived in Hamburg were exposed as the pilots or their helping hands. One day after the attacks, German newspapers unanimously ran the headline that stated, “Nothing will ever remain the same again!”19 This phrase heralded new, long lasting discussions within the

German intellectual community.

The notion of change is explored in various ways in literary and filmic texts. The written texts to be discussed in this section are analyzed according to time, location as well as genre. At first, I examine non-fictional responses. I discuss Else Buschheuer’s online diary, which was

16 Donald Pease makes explicit the ideological work that the phrase “Homeland Security” does: “The introduction of the signifier of the homeland to capture the experience of generalized trauma recalled themes from the national narrative that it significantly altered. The homeland was what the colonial settlers had abandoned in their quest for a newly found land. When it was figured within the Homeland Security Act, the homeland engendered an imaginary scenario wherein the national people were encouraged to consider themselves dislocated from their country of origin by foreign aggressors.” 75. 17 The term America in contrast to the United States is specifically used to underscore the tendency to render "America" a magical, utopian (or dystopian) space of desire and fantasy. 18Mary Nolan. “America in the German Imagination.” Ed. Heide Fehrenbach and Uta Poiger. Transactions, Transgressions and Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan. 19 On 12 September 2001 Bild as well as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung unanimously ran the headline “Es wird nichts mehr so sein, wie es war”. (Dieckmann, Frankenberger)

16 written on-site in Lower Manhattan before, during and shortly after the attacks. Furthermore, I turn to intellectual responses to 9/11 in Germany: first I discuss briefly magazine comments by

Günter Grass, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Walter Kempowski and Peter Schneider, followed by a detailed analysis of Durs Grünbein’s diary notes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published within one week after the attacks. I follow with a discussion of Max Goldt’s diary

Wenn man einen weißen Anzug anhat. Since Goldt’s diary was published as a collection

(“Tagebuch-Buch”) in June 2002, it is worth investigating why his notes were published only ten month later. I conclude with a discussion of Austrian-born writer Kathrin Röggla’s hybrid diary really ground zero 11. september und folgendes. Ulrich Peltzer’s novella Bryant Park is the last book to be discussed in this section. It is, however, one of the first publications (introduced at the

Frankfurt book fair as early as October 2001 and published in March 2002) written in long prose within the year of the attacks. This is why, this multi-layered narrative marks the transition between the two phases within the history of literature about 9/11.

17 Else Buschheuer: Experience vs. Reality

Else Buschheuer’s online diary provides a personal, yet detailed account of 11 September 2001.

At the time of the attacks, Buschheuer was residing in Lower Manhattan and witnessed the attacks first hand. Her comments prove to be most accessible, immediate and important since she was the first German journalist to publish her observations online, untainted, with out the intermediary of the mass media. By telling her audience of her observations and experiences, the online diary becomes a personal witness account that serves as a source of knowledge, which is non-existent in responses written in Germany. Austrian-born writer Katrin Röggla was also in

New York City during the attacks, chronicling the sequence of events. I will discuss her book really ground zero at a later time since her commentary was published only weeks later in

German newspapers, and finally as collection at the end of 2001.

Born in 1961 in the GDR, Else Buschheuer – a German freelance journalist, television anchor and author of popular fiction – moved to New York City in June 2001 in order to intern at the German-Jewish newspaper Aufbau. She decided to document her move to and her life in New

York City by writing an online diary for her followers. The author spends an abundant amount of time describing stereotypes. She elaborates on cross-cultural differences as well as tells funny anecdotes regarding her life in the Big Apple. Her account is defined by time before, during and after the attacks. There is nothing noteworthy to analyze until 11 September 2001 when she lets her readers know of the attacks.

At precisely 9:34am local time on 11 September 2001, she informs the reader what just happened outside. She, however, neither starts her entry in shock, nor writes about her witnessing the destruction. Buschheuer tells us that she was woken up by unusual noise: “Ich

18 möchte nur mal schnell anmerken, dass ich durch eines der Flugzeuge, die ins World Trade

Center reingeknallt sind (das zweite), wach geworden bin. Das zweite Flugzeug war größer und der Knall war lauter” (128). She lets the reader know how she experienced the attacks by listening involuntarily. She chooses words that represent sound, for instance “reinknallen”.

Furthermore, she notes that her auditory sense could distinguish clearly between permanent noise from the street and the planes crashing into the towers. She also heard people screaming. These various sounds made her leave the apartment and “see” for herself what was happening outside.

Only the last sentence of this first paragraph tells the reader about the end result: “In jeden verdammten Turm ist ein Flugzeug geknallt. Qualmend, durchlöchert, aber sie stehen”. The use of adjectives such as “beängstigend” and “verdammt” illustrates her emotional response to her witnessing the attacks.

Realizing that phone lines were down, Buschheuer immediately starts posting entries online at intervals of 5-20 minutes – simultaneous to the news feeds on television. She sets out to be an avid chronicler. Her texts represent a stream-of-consciousness-like manner: at one time breathlessly, then agitated the next. The postings prove to be an account of great vividness. The reader drifts into a world of considerable disturbance, trepidation and absolute mayhem and recollects the images for him/herself:

11.09.01 NY 9:52 Berlin 15.52 CRASH II

Eben ist noch ein Flugzeug ins Pentagon geknallt. Währenddessen geht in New York gar

nichts mehr. Telefonieren unmöglich, egal wohin. Die Börse, die Tunnel sind

geschlossen. Auf meiner Straße stehen Hunderte von Menschen, trinken ihren

19 Morgenkaffee aus dem Pappbecher, unterhalten sich leise und starren auf das furchtbar

qualmende World Trade Center.

11.09.01 NY 10:01 Berlin 16.01 ANGST

Entsetzliches Weheklagen auf der Straße. Einige Kaffeebecher sind runtergefallen. Ein

weiteres Gebäude ist explodiert, nein, zwei. Alles sehr nah. Erreiche per Telefon

niemanden. Traue mich nicht aus dem Haus, nix zu essen da.

[…]

11.09.01 NY 10:30 Berlin 16.30 DER ZWEITE TURM

ist zusammengefallen. Ich sitze hier und heute, die Erde ringsum bebt, draußen weinen

auch alle. Das World Trade Center gibt es nicht mehr.

[…]

11.09.01 NY 10:41 Berlin 16.41

Ist das Krieg?

(Buschheuer 130-38)

Buschheuer contrasts trivial information, such as descriptions of coffee cups or the lack of food at home, with descriptive images of the catastrophe implying that she cannot reflect on the attacks correctly. She reiterates the event by using the same words repeatedly, such as “fallen”,

“knallen” or “qualmend”. Her personal memories have to be written over again and again in order to be meaningful. She also adds a photograph when posting on her website: view of a street, the burning towers in the background. Later on, the reader sees another picture of the same street without the towers and thereby simultaneously reads her account and visualizes the

20 attacks. The image functions as a substitute for words. By transmitting the message that the towers have collapsed, the author is momentarily at a loss for words. Instead of attempting to describe the image, Buschheuer inserts the photograph for her followers on the internet. She inexplicably archives her experiences in order to recollect the exact moment during the attacks.

The added photos function as proof that the event experienced in fact was real and not imagined.

When viewing her entries and later the transcripts that were published in a book in 2002 by the German publisher Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Buschheuer’s sympathetic followers stood out. They answered frequently to her postings on the website, turning it into an interactive exchange of emotional responses: a direct and unique experiment. Her elliptical language emphasizes her coming to terms with the traumatic experience.

Buschheuer’s text is the only German text that was written and published simultaneously on 9/11. Since she experienced the attack in New York City, she does not have the necessary distance to observe, comment on or interpret objectively the attacks. Her diary entries reflect personal and emotional experiences, rather than a plain witness account. On that note,

Buschheuer was so shaken and upset by the attacks that she could not leave New York City. She was planning to return to Germany in October 2001 to host the ARD Kulturweltspiegel. Due to her absence, the ARD decided to let her go.

Interestingly, the only topic that Buschheuer did not discuss in detail is the political aspect. It seems that the author is more concerned with the intense feelings the towers’ destruction evoked. She acknowledges a speech given by Bush in passing perceiving it as a normal response of a government under attack. The lack of passing judgment sets her commentary apart from Röggla’s really ground zero since each of them wrote about their

21 experiences while residing in New York City. Contrary to Röggla’s narrative, there is no mentioning of blame or accusation contrary to responses that were published shortly after 9/11.

22 Günter Grass and ‘the Usual Suspects’

In the following weeks after 9/11, many columnists and newspaper journalists publicly discussed how to judge responses of German intellectuals to the terrorist attacks, and how to evaluate their comments with regard to the presence of many experts and scholars in the media around the world.20 Essays and comments by the ‘usual suspects’ German intellectuals or novelists such as

Günter Grass21 (born 1927 and died 2015), Hans Magnus Enzensberger22 (born 1929), Walter

Kempowski23 (born 1929 and died 2007), or Peter Schneider24 (born 1940) were in the center of discussion. Grass and Enzensberger belong to the first generation of postwar writers who participated in gatherings of Die Gruppe 47. Walter Kempowski also belonged to that same generation, yet he has never received as much fame and attention as Grass or Enzensberger.

Kempowski became mostly known for his (autobiographical) series of novels Deutsche Chronik published in 9 volumes (1999) and the monumental Das Echolot (1993-2005), a collage of autobiographical reports, letters and other documents by contemporaries of World War II. His selection of sources and information is personal, easy to follow and yet accessible for the general population that his work became generally accepted. This is why his work is particularly

20 See Jan Ross, “Arbeit am neuen Weltbild” Die Zeit 31 Oct 2001, and/or Cordt Schnibben “Stehen die Türme noch? Warum Weltanschauung nach dem 11. September für Intellektuelle ein schweres Geschäft geworden ist.” Der Spiegel 19 Nov 2001. 21 See Günter Grass, “Der Westen muss sich endlich fragen, was er falsch gemacht hat” published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 27 Oct 2001. 22 See Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Die Wiederkehr des Menschenopfers. Der Angriff kam nicht von außen und nicht aus dem Islam.” published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 18 Sept 2001. 23 See Walter Kempowski, “Aufzeichnungen.” published in Der Spiegel 41 7 Oct 2001. 24 See Peter Schneider, “Verschon mein Haus, zünd andere an. Nur wer das Böse anerkennt, wird es auch bekämpfen.” Die Woche 28 Sept 2001.

23 interesting within the framework of 9/11 because his preferred genre is the diary, some scholars think of him as the most important chronicler in postwar Germany.

Peter Schneider became a political activist in the 1960s and was a spokesperson for the German student movement in Berlin in 1968. Due to his involvement in the student protests, the state of

Berlin refused to employ him as a teacher five years later. He became a novelist instead. Many of his works deal with the fate of members of his generation. Other works deal with the situation of

Berlin before and after the fall of the wall25. As such, they possess a certain moral authority.

German journalists were eager to read and discuss their opinions and perspectives.

In addition to his literary persona, Nobel Prize laureate – or “the self-appointed conscience of the nation” (Neaman 70) – Günter Grass was one of leading cultural authorities in the German-speaking world. His oeuvre has been interspersed with cultural and political commentary for the last fifty years, beginning with Die Blechtrommel (1959), with his admission of belonging to the “Waffen-SS” in his first installment Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006), the second installment “Die Box” (2008), and presently with the third and probably last installment

“Grimms Wörter” (2010) of his autobiographical trilogy. In his essay “Der Westen muss sich endlich fragen, was er falsch gemacht hat” (FAZ 27 Oct 2001) he discusses 9/11 in a socio- political context. He establishes a binary dichotomy between the Western World, predominantly the United States, and the Orient with its Muslim religion and belief system. Grass’ analysis consists of arguments that must not be ignored when researching America in the German imagination:

25 Works such as Lenz (1973) capture the feelings of those disappointed by the failure of the utopian student revolt. Der Mauerspringer (1982) and Eduards Heimkehr (1999) depict life in Berlin before and after the German reunification.

24 At first, he addresses is “why do they (the terrorists) hate us (the West) so much?” From the very beginning, he places blame on the Western world. He states that the “rhetoric of the aggressor,” meaning the United States, “increasingly resembles that of his enemy.” He also asks about how Germans should protect themselves assuming the United States would react to Nine

Eleven and that Germany would be targeted by Al-Qaida. Grass’ responses to those questions leads to dialogue about 9/11 that focuses less on attacks and more on the criticism of Western culture and American society. Grass also suggests and reiterates kinds of alternatives to war that were proposed in the larger public discourse. He points out, for example, that one article mentioned sending the police to pick up the militants. He concludes, “with German guarantees of a fair trial, he would likely agree to surrender peacefully.” Hans-Ulrich Jörges states that “[t]he

Pentagon, for some inexplicable reason, has ignored all these rational suggestions.”26

The author reminds the German government not to react hastily when it comes to forming international political alliances. The statement was prompted by political officials to comment on the attacks and its immediate aftermath. Friedrich Merz, CDU minority leader at that time, was standing with the Americans, because “we all would not be sitting in this Bundestag, had not fifty years ago the Americans shown solidarity with us.” SPD majority leader, Peter Struck, said that “we are all Americans […] and together with the American people we will do everything possible to put an end to these demonic powers.”27 In a later publication, however, Grass mentions Susan Sonntag’s commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung on 15 September

26 See Hans-Ulrich Jörges, “Wege aus dem Krieg.” 26 Oct 2001 27 All of the following statements were quoted from Das Parlament 39 21 Sept 2001

25 2001. He implicitly agrees with her remark that whatever one says about the suicide pilots, they did not behave cowardly compared to the United States and their involvement in previous wars.28

Three weeks later – when the bill of new security laws (das Anti-Terror-Gesetz, formally known as Sicherheitspaket I) was to be discussed – the minister of the interior Otto Schily criticized certain intellectual circles for making anti-American comments. Günter Grass, naturally, felt himself to be the target of Schily’s criticism.29 Grass develops his political dissent against the United States in his essay “The U.S. Betrays Its Core Values” which was published in the Los Angeles Times in April 2003 – shortly after the invasion of Iraq. He repeatedly blames the American government for their misuse of power and democratic values. According to Grass, the world is witnessing “moral decline of the world’s only superpower.” Anti-Americanism has inundated Germany and the rest of Europe. Yet Grass is proudly pro-American when it comes to the United States protesting against injustices, against “restrictions of the freedom of expression, and against information control reminiscent of the practices of totalitarian states.” It is clear that the predominant anti-Americanism in Europe is fueled by the Bush administration, according to

Grass.

When discussing the misuse of power and democratic values in the German-American context, the burden of the atrocities of World War II comes to mind. Although the United States was one of the Allied Forces in World War II, the U.S. have been ascribed the role of the liberator in the German imagination since 1945. This can be seen in the Americanization of

28 Susan Sonntag was Berlin watching CNN when the planes hit the twin towers on September 11. She criticized American politicians in her article. The text was not picked up any of the newspapers in the United States but her text was reprinted in many media outlets across Europe. 29 See Günter Grass, “Rückfall im Stil des kalten Krieges” Welt am Sonntag 21 October 21 2001

26 Germany during the 1950s and 60s.30 With the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the concomitant fall of the Berlin Wall, German-American relations have shifted with the result of not participating in the bombing of Iraq. Grass is proud of the rejection of this preemptive war he calls “adolescent behavior.”

Grass does not evaluate the situation objectively. He rather argues against the United

States and for Germany’s decision not to deploy. He does not attempt to provide the reader with a solution to the problem, he rather warns the U.S. government not to make rash decisions. But the author claims that the ideal image of America31 has been permanently destroyed and can hardly recover. Similar to Grass’ plea, W. J. T. Mitchell argues in his essay “911: Criticism and Crisis” that “the flood of images overwhelms language to the extent that the event itself is unnamable.”

The war of images destroys the image of the United States around the world.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s short piece “Die Wiederkehr des Menschenopfers. Der

Angriff kam nicht von außen und nicht aus dem Islam” was also published by the Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung. His commentary was deemed dark and grim as he considered the lifestyle of the Western world with distance and displeasure: “Für einen Moment ist die Welt, wie sie war, bei vollem Lauf in sich zusammengesackt, als die Türme von Manhattan, die beiden

Schwurfinger des Geldes, mit einem fürchterlichen Schlag abgehackt wurden.” His response sounds rather poetic – almost aphoristic compared to Grass’ essays. Enzensberger interprets the symbolic chopping as a punishment. The airplanes function as a sharp knife or axe that stop capitalism from stealing. He continues, “Die kuriose Mängelrüge, der Islam habe seit langem

30 See Frank Trommler and Elliot Shore, The German-American Encounter and Gerd Gemunden Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization, and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination. 31 See Mary Nolan, “America in the German Imagination.” Transactions, Transgressions and Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan.

27 keine neuen Ideen hervorgebracht, entspricht einem Zeitgefühl, das vor Innovationen taumelt und die Macht der Tiefenzeit nicht mehr kennt. Die Blindheit der Glaubenskrieger und die metaphysische Blindheit der westlichen Intelligenz scheinen einander auf verhängnisvolle Weise zu bedingen.“32

He bluntly criticizes the Western world for being blind: blinded by arrogance of not anticipating, of underestimating the blind hatred by the terrorists geared towards the West. Instead of placing blame on the United States specifically, he sees the Western world, including Germany, as the culprit.

The event of 11 September 2001 and the following days seem a real gift for Walter

Kempowski. It has been his life-long job to collect information, chronicle and to archive important dates and events so it is only natural to include his notes in the special issue 41 of Der

Spiegel on 7 October 2001, “Die Bilder sind übermächtig, Schweigen ist vielleicht die adäquateste Kommentarform, doch in Ausnahmesituationen misstrauen Fernsehjournalisten dem

Vorteil ihres Mediums, hin und wieder ohne Worte auszukommen. Dennoch ist das Undenkbare eingetreten. Die Welt wird von nun an eine andere sein. Eine neue Zeitrechnung! Wieder mal.”

On 9/11, Walter Kempowski lies on his bed, scribbling down what he sees on television, and is angry about the exchange between information and emotion on television. He is very clinical when he calls 9/11 “eine Ausnahmesituation”, precise when he criticizes the media coverage, and surprisingly composed when he realizes the destruction. Ususally, his descriptions are more detailed, for example in Alkor (2001), Kempowski’s published diary of the crucial year 1989.

The exclamation “Eine neue Zeitrechnung!” tells the reader that the author is in accord with

32 See Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Die Wiederkehr des Menschenopfers. Der Angriff kam nicht von außen und nicht aus dem Islam.” published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 18 Sept 2001.

28 every person this event has signaled a new beginning. His addition “Wieder mal.” implies that

Kempowski may have experienced a similar situation before and is wary of jumping to conclusions. While journalists try to figure out what to make of the unprecedented images and the unreal outcome of 9/11, he is in bed and writes down what he perceives. He has chronicled and archived events for about 50 years, so it is only natural that he documents his accounts mostly without any judgment. On the next day, 12 September 2001, his notes paint a slightly different, more personal and affecting picture:

[…] Ganz schlimm, die Flugzeuge lassen mich nicht los. Den ganzen Tag benommen

um den Fernseher herumgeschlichen. Die Suche nach den Urhebern ist ja müßig. Das

Fanal ist es, was immer haften bleiben wird. Eine solche Tat mit einem so naiv-klaren

Ziel wird es zwar nicht die Welt verändern, aber als babylonisches Ereignis dauern. Ich

kann nicht Zeitung lesen, nicht schreiben, nichts...

His only source seems to be the television. Images from the media permeate into his consciousness. The mass media has numbed his senses: he is unable to read, sleep. The author only walks around the television set, the source of all evil. Kempowski “[ist] geschlichen” like a beaten animal, still he cannot avoid the screen. The terrorist attacks have infected him at his core although the incubation period was longer that expected. Kempowski’s notes are similar to Durs

Grünbein’s recollection which is discussed later in this section.

Peter Schneider does not write as metaphorically as Enzensberger. In his essay, published in Die Woche on September 29, 2001 “Verschon mein Haus, zünd andere an. Nur wer das Böse anerkennt, wird es auch bekämpfen,” Schneider is the least subjective compared to Grass and

Enzensberger. His evaluation of Germany’s reaction to the attacks seems coherent and well

29 reasoned. He identifies a sudden urge for blame and accountability that substitutes the perception of reality. According to Schneider, the immediate loss of words will soon fade because people in general, “versuchen das Unbegreifliche zu bannen, indem man ihm einen handlichen Namen gibt und den bewährten Formeln der politischen Herleitung einpasst” (80).

He also locates the possibility of a “Feindbild” that could be generated if the German government did not align with the Americans. Yet he is convinced – like Grass – that Germany needs to take a step back and re-evaluate the “uneingeschränkte Solidarität gegenüber

Amerika” (82). He directs the reader’s attention to the reactions whenever the United States planned attacks on foreign soil. It is apparent that U.S. military employment has always elicited waves of anti-Americanism. He attempts to find a suitable definition: “Dieser Hass [auf

Amerika] hat seine Wurzel eben nicht in erlittenem Unrecht, sondern in einer Erfahrung der

Befreiung” (83). The act of liberation is opposed to America’s role of the liberator. Germany feels liberated from the American oppressor.

These three examples by well-known literary figures of moral authority essentially summarize points made by many German intellectuals in response to 9/11. The authors discuss the immediate reaction in a socio-political context. The texts deal with Germany’s political response to the attacks, which is contextualized by the history of the German-American

(political) relationship since the end of World War II.

30 9/11 in (fictional) diaries of Durs Grünbein and Max Goldt

While essays and commentaries by authors such as Günter Grass, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Peter Schneider were in the center of heated discussions, responses by a younger generation of authors were overlooked and identified as the author’s own displeasure of the situation or linked to the German Spaßgesellschaft33 by all the major German newspaper feuilletons such as

Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, or Der Tagesspiegel.

I chose two authors whose works exemplify critical responses to the terrorist attacks and whose responses could not be more different: Durs Grünbein (born 1962), maybe the most successful contemporary post in Germany and Max Goldt (born 1958) who is known for his satirical work in Die Titanic,34 and his writing has been mostly ignored by the feuilletons.

Moreover, they both chose the diary as a genre. We also have to ask ourselves why Grünbein and

Goldt chose to narrate their experiences in this literary form, and how the narrative and poetic form explores the aesthetic and intellectual treatment. The diary then opens a gateway for immediacy and subjectivity. It also allows a sudden change of perspective as well as unbalanced and arbitrary interpretation and judgment. Furthermore, this literary genre uncovers,

“künstlerische Aussagen ohne Zwang zur Gesamtkomposition” (Börner Tagebuch 34) thereby emphasizing the fragmentary. By concentrating on details, the author shifts the emphasis of the event, “vom Zeitzusammenhang auf den Augenblick” and simultaneously dissolves “die

Synopsis des Geschehens in eine Unzahl von Teilansichten”(65-6). The diary proves to be the appropriate literary genre for an author who “keinen festen Standpunkt einnehmen kann und

33 See Thomas Tuma, “Totlachen? Oder totschweigen? Zur Debatte über das Ende der Spaßgesellschaft.” Der Spiegel 1 Oct 2001. 34 Die Titanic is a German monthly satire magazine, an equivalent to The Onion published in the United States.

31 will” (67). Now we have to see how both authors document their own experiences and in what why they distinguish between the fine line of reality and fiction in the diary as their preferred literary genre.

Durs Grünbein: Aus einer Welt, die keine Feuerpause kennt

I start off my analysis with Durs Grünbein, a well-known contemporary poet in Germany. Born in the GDR, he first studied theater in Berlin. After the reunification of Germany, he extensively traveled the world: Europe, South East Asia, and the United States. With his increasing status as

Gegenwartslyriker – winning ten literary prizes such as the prestigious Georg-Büchner-Preis and the Berlin Literaturpreis from 1992 up until now, he held writer-in-residence positions at New

York University and Dartmouth College. His published texts include poetry that deals with the body, antiquity, and mythology as well as theoretical essays and translations. His notes on 9/11 appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the week following the attacks.

Am Nachmittag schalte ich ahnungslos gegen Viertel nach drei das Fernsehgerät

an, und kann meinen Augen nicht trauen. Auf CNN zeigen sie live, wie im Süden

Manhattans im vormittäglichen Sonnenschein die beiden Türme des berühmten World

Trade Center wie zwei gewaltige Schlote rauchen. Minuten später sackt nach

mehreren Explosionen zuerst der eine, dann der andere Turm in sich zusammen.

(FAZ 19 Sept 2001)

The paragraph introduces Grünbein’s immediate reaction in response to the terrorist attacks. He describes his physical response as follows: “Über tausende Kilometer überträgt sich augenblicklich ein Gefühl von Panik. Die Knie werden weich, ich muss mich setzen und merke,

32 wie der Körper in einen merkwürdigen Erregungszustand gerät.” He feels the geographical distance and is emotional to the weather “an diesem Nachmittag” in rainy Berlin and “dem vormittäglichen Sonnenschein” in Lower Manhattan. Not only his mental, but also his physical state reacts to collapse of the towers. The author feels “den Phantomschmerz bis in die Zähne.”

Soon thereafter, television images of the collapse are broadcast in a loop. Grünbein reacts by putting everything that happened in chronological order: “Die Zwillingstürme, heißt es, sind im Abstand von nur 18 Minuten gerammt worden” and “ein weiteres Flugzeug hat sich, man traut seinen Ohren nicht, in einen Flügel des Pentagon gebohrt.” “Zur gleichen Zeit werden das weiße Haus, das Capitol, das State Department und andere wichtige Bundesbehörden evakuiert,” while “in Pennsylvania, unweit von Pittsburgh, ein viertes entführtes Flugzeug in einem

Waldstück abstürzt.” Yet he does not succeed in describing the event that reflects reality. This unprecedented event removes itself from any classification.

The images of destruction remind him of analogies, such as well-known images of the destruction of Coventry or Dresden. He also makes use of mythical creatures to describe the event: “Irgendein giftiger Zwerg hat den Riesen Amerika an der Gurgel gepackt.” The dwarf as a small creature represents the terrorists’ insidiousness whereas the United States are being depicted as huge and strong – also insensitive, plump and awkward. Mythical creatures, moreover, represent perspectives that are not accessible to normal human beings. As such, it shows the attacks are impossible to comprehend.

The next day, he begins another attempt to find an adequate explanation of 9/11. He mentions accounts of people who were told, “Don’t look back” by New York City policemen.

And with good reason, Grünbein suspects, “denn Ninive versank, und wie im biblischen

33 Gleichnis Lots Weib zur Salzsäure erstarrte, wäre es jenen ergangen, die sich im Augenblick der

Gefahr umgedreht hätten. So lähmend ware der Anblick gewesen, daß sie versteinert von der

Ascheflut überrollt worden wären.” A closer look reveals that Grünbein’s biblical metaphor is rather peculiar. The city Ninive did not sink, but Sodom35. It seems that well-versed Grünbein – who frequently plays with metaphors and allegories – tries to avoid New York’s association with

Sodom. He is thereby neither able to determine categories such as cause and effect, nor is able to see 9/11 as a justified punishment for the Western World.

On September 14, Grünbein starts reflecting on possibilities of literature with reference to the changing state of the world. The attack and its aftermath mark “das Ende einer schönen

Epoche”. These words come from Russian-American poet Joseph Bronsky who uses the euphemism in his 1977 poem. Grünbein thinks this cycle of poems can been as a document of

“vorauseilender Rückschau” – yet, at the same time, one should be wary of the mentioning of prophecies made by numerous authors in the media: “… und nun werden in den Zeitungen die ollen Kamellen der Prophetie hervorgekramt.”

Grünbein doubts whether it is feasible to aesthetically treat 9/11 by means of literature. In the past few days, the author used various sources indiscriminately in order to establish a relation between the attacks and reality. Grünbein admits in the course of his introspection, most texts will only be re-interpreted. The public welcomes any constructed interpretation. Any texts,

Grünbein concludes, “sind in der Nacht des Entsetzens grau.”

35 See Genesis 19

34 Five days after the attacks, with a seeming distance, Grünbein makes an attempt to generalize 9/11. He refers to and re-interprets “das Unbehagen der Kultur” – Sigmund Freud’s essay about the tensions between man and civilization:

Das allgemeine Unbehagen in der Kultur schlägt um sich, indem es vom Rückfall in

die Barbarei die Erlösung von einem diffusen Alpdruck erhofft. Mörderischer

Aktionismus soll von der Zivilisationsangst befreien. Religiöser Fundamentalismus und

ideologischer Totalitarismus stürzten die Gesellschaften in einen Strudel, aus dem es für

den Einzelnen kein Entrinnen mehr gibt. Der Zweck allen Terrors, gleich welcher

Herkunft und Zielsetzung, ist die Übertragung der Urangst von Körper zu Körper.36

Grünbein’s re-interpretation of Freud’s essay37 can be construed as a warning. The conflict between religious fundamentalism and ideological totalitarianism will bring down society if laws of civilization are not enforced. Terror itself is classified as a primitive instinct and is inherent – indifferent to its origin and objective. Grünbein notes, “[Terror] ist die Übertragung der Urangst von Körper zu Körper” claiming terror to be contagious if we do not take necessary precautions.

The author pessimistically concludes at the end of his personal notes that “in einer zivilisierten

Welt gibt es eben kein Innehalten,” implying 9/11 will not have a continuous effect on civilization: “weder im Nachrichtengeschäft, noch im Sinngebungsbetrieb von Literatur und

Universität und erst recht nicht im Aktienhandel.”

36 Sigmund Freud, “Das Unbehagen der Kultur.” 1930. Das Unbehagen der Kultur und andere kulturtheoretische Schriften. 4th ed. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Verlag, 1994. 34. 37 Freud's theory is based on the notion that humans have certain characteristic instincts that are immutable. Most notable are the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authoritative figures and towards sexual competitors – both of which obstruct the gratification of a person's instincts.

35 Durs Grünbein ends his attempts to find appropriate metaphors and to apply a higher standard. Furthermore, he concentrates on locating personal consequences of the attacks – emphasizing subjective patterns of interpretation. He concludes that the war generation must have been reminded of the bombings of World War II. For example, the family of Grünbein’s wife opened up about the bombing of Dortmund for the first time in the wake of 9/11:

“Ausgelöst von den Fernsehbildern aus New York stehe jetzt alles wieder vor Augen, als sei es erst gestern passiert.”

The author’s published notes show all in all a certain effort to comprehend the attacks at its core. Grünbein’s account offers room for interpretation – his reservations, fears, and doubts are carefully scrutinized. The diary as the preferred literary genre enables him to write down his thoughts and interpretations everyday anew. This approach shows inconsistency and ruptures that suggest authenticity and appear to be dysfunctional and destructive. His metaphors, analogies, and biblical motifs are an attempt to organize them in common structures of narration and aesthetics, thereby rendering 9/11 tangible.

Max Goldt: A Short Story

Max Goldt, known for his satirical take on German society in the magazine TITANIC, composed his literary responses to 9/11 also in form of a diary. Goldt chose to publish the texts as a collection in form of a book Wenn man einen weißen Anzug anhat in June 2002 – about ten months after the terrorist attacks.

Ein aufregender Radiomann telefonierte mit einer aufgeregten Korrespondentin. Nein,

kein Unfall, es scheine ganz so, als ob das Flugzeug, übrigens ein großes und kein

36 kleines, da absichtlich hineingeflogen sei. Ich ging rüber ins Wohnzimmer und stellte den

Fernseher an. Auf den ersten drei Programmplätzen. ARD, ZDF und dem Berliner

Dritten, gab es noch den normalen Programmablauf. Auf Programmplatz vier, belegt mit

BBC, gab es schon die entsprechenden Bilder. (32)

While Grünbein – blissfully ignorant – switches on the television set, Goldt uses the radio as his preferred source of information. When he finds out what happened in New York, he moves to the living room in order to find the appropriate images. Both authors learn of the catastrophe in

Berlin by means of foreign mass media – Grünbein watches CNN, Goldt BBC. Compared to

Grünbein, Max Goldt starts with a retrospective view – unusual for a diary entry – of September

11, 2001: “Ja, wo war ich als es geschah, wo war ich, als ich’s erfuhr?” The publication date in

June 2002 illustrates that Goldt did not write his immediate thoughts down. Nonetheless, he describes in detail what he was doing, “als es passierte:” “Als ich mich zur Zubereitung eines

Gemüsesalates in die Küche begab, habe ich es aus dem Radio erfahren (12).”

Goldt’s detailed account of his daily chores is rather conspicuously contrasted to his fragmentary report of 9/11. He sees images of the destruction on television but does not give a detailed explanation. The author, moreover, uses the pronoun “it” (es) whenever he mentions 9/11. In the above-mentioned quote, he speaks of an airplane “ein großes und kein kleines” (12). The airplanes that targeted Washington and Pennsylvania are not mentioned. The understanding of the text is, however, not disrupted. Effortlessly, the reader can fill in the fragmentary gaps – similar to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 which Goldt references with repetitive

“wo war ich, wo war ich denn” at the beginning of the book at a collective media event.

37 Goldt also writes that he could not be alone with the broadcast images, yet he does not give a detailed explanation why. This is the reason why he decided to call a friend telling him to switch on the television “schalte sofort BBC oder CNN oder so was ein” (13). Grünbein uses the phone as well – using communication by eliciting a confirmation of the event than the simple reason of not wanting to be alone. The event seemed already real and tangible for Goldt. He only tells his friend simply that there is no need of explanation, his friend “soll das Ding da anmachen” (13) then he will see ‘it’ anyway. He finally reports that he could not enter the kitchen (where the source of information – the radio – was located) even though incredibly thirsty. He seems unable to get something to drink for two whole hours. Ironically, only the press conference of the chancellor of Germany could liberate him – his emotions shifting from numbness to disenchantment. When seeing the chancellor on television, Goldt felt a sudden “Ernüchterung.”

He notes: “Er sagte dass, was er halt zu sagen pflegt, wenn Terroristen in Hochhäuser hineinfliegen” (14). Goldt’s rationalism is an indicator for his well-known ironic commentary. It proves a certain temporal distance to 9/11 as it is highly doubtful that Goldt would have opened up about his disapproval of such political commentary at the day of the attacks. His two-hour long consumption of television coverage of the event ends with an interview with Bavarian minister Edmund Stoiber. Only at this time, Goldt seems to hear “nichts wird so sein, wie es war” (20) for the first time. At first, Goldt does not mention this topical expression - yet, at a late time, he is compelled to ironically comment on Stoiber’s statement on the turn of events. Goldt avoids discussing the attacks by commenting only on the flow superfluous political commentary.

He highlights the self-importance of politics along with the high-handedness of the media

38 through irony as his main stylistic device. The author implicitly criticizes the media coverage and the lack of substantial news.

He follows with a detailed account of his inability to do anything productively: opening and closing drawers, continues to step on “den Treter vom Trittmülleimer” (15) while he “leicht weggetreten, dem Panther von Rilke recht ähnlich, eine nicht angemessene Zeit lang durch die

Wohnung gewandert sei” (15). Instead of emphasizing on a clinical description of a sequence of events, the comparison between Goldt and the panther in Rilke’s famous poem generates special status. Not the bars of the cage, as Rilke’s poem states, but the images of 9/11 on television seem to distort the view of the world that lies behind. This notion, similar to Grünbein’s position, though more subtle, indicates the author’s inability to comprehend the attacks as reality as well as the failure to recognize the consequences of the tragedy. Goldt discontinues to reflect on the implications. Instead, he carries on with detailed, but uninteresting descriptions of his daily life.

After confirming his trip with his friends to Southern Germany on the next day, he went into the kitchen, switched on the radio and heard that Berlin was in a state of limbo. The author, of course, had to see for himself, so he decided to go out and investigate whether 9/11 has affected anyone in Berlin. He contends that, “Autos donnern umher, Menschen saßen in Cafes, quakten munter in ihre Telefone und erledigten gestern ihre Einkäufe. Von Stille keine

Spur” (19). This scene gives him room to play with language. While walking around in Berlin, he feels cold. Contemplating whether to buy a “Übergangsjacke” (19) for his upcoming trip with friends, Goldt forms word associations. He thought of “das Wort Übergangsjacke, das ja an diesem Wendepunkt, zu einer Zeit, wie heute, in der nichts wie zuvor sein würde, eine ganze neue Bedeutung erlangte. Aber ich habe beschlossen eine alte Strickjacke auf die Reise

39 mitzunehmen” (21). Goldt plays two levels of narration: his actual behavior on the day of 9/11 and his recollection of it, indicating that chronicling the events happened at a later date.

Furthermore, he illustrates in a fastidious manner that the predicted changes did not set in – implying that meaning will be ascribed to things on short notice, but it can’t be validated in the long run. When he returns to his home, he avoids the living room since he does not want to succumb to the television, “selbst wenn ich ihn nicht anstelle: Die bösen Sachen sind ja trotzdem drin” (25). The attacks, formerly addressed as a simple ‘it’, are now called “böse Sachen” – words a child might use. The expression “böse Sachen” could appear in a fairy tale wishing for a happy ending or in a nightmare with the hope of waking up. Instead of utilizing different media outlets that evening, Goldt spent his time “ohne Info in der Küche” doing “debilen Steuerkram.”

He enjoyed the bottle of wine he bought in Berlin earlier, “doch ist [ihm] von der Lebensfreude

[…] die Schaumkrone heruntergeblasen worden” (26).

The following notes bear the title “Zugfahrt.” While Goldt writes in the past tense when reflecting on 9/11, he chooses the present tense for the train ride. By changing tenses, Goldts descriptions now resemble immediate diary entries. Temporal adverbs, such as “heute” und

“gestern” strengthen the argument. In his earlier notes, Goldt adheres to keeping the chronological sequence of events in most passages. In the notes on 12 September 2001, the author discontinues this narrative strategy. He explicitly rejects the possibility of suggesting he wrote the following passage ten month ago. At first, he writes that he will not read “die

Zeitungen von heute.”

“Man kann sie sich ja denken. Der Kenntnisstand des Fernsehens von gestern, garantiert

mit reichlich Kommentaren von Schriftstellern und Schauspielern, die sich nach

40 irgendwelchen Ereignissen immer gleich einen Zettel mit Formulierungen schreiben und

den neben das Telefon legen in der Hoffnung, sie werden von den Medien angerufen

(45).”

With this statement, Goldt overestimates the reaction of said literary personas and actors considerably. His sympathies go out to “jenen eitlen Kommentarwichsmaschinen des

öffentlichen Lebens” (46) who desperately waited for a phone call on the evening of 9/11. Goldt contemplates about “wie sich so einer fühlen müsse” when no one calls after the collapse of the twin towers. This is the first time that Goldt literally refers to the attacks. The use of the verb

“eingestürzt” does without any conclusion. At the same time, the author indicates that will not comment on the attacks, or make any assumptions about the United States’ reaction in the public eye.

The topic of 9/11 and the subsequent discussion of it do find their way into Goldt’s notes when he overhears a group of high school students discussing the attacks on the train. The male students “machen öde Witze über die gestrigen Ereignisse […], so etwa in der Art: Schade, dass unser Klassenlehrer nicht im dem Hochhaus war, worauf die weiblichen sagen: Oh Daniel, du bist voll krank, da sind Menschen gestorben, verstehst du: Menschen.” When Goldt feels the need “den Schülern auf den Kopf zu hauen,” he moves up to first class. When paraphrasing the students’ exchange, the attacks change to yesterday’s events and the WTC is plainly termed high- rise. It is evident from this passage that the author has problems addressing the issue and is unable to adequately describe the event. It seems to be at a loss for words. When he meets his friends, they all mutually agree not to discuss “wie furchtbar das alles in Amerika ist und ob jetzt wohl der dritte Weltkrieg ausbricht.” The vow of silence is added to his voluntary abstinence of

41 the media: the attacks are now termed as “das alles in Amerika”, and the mentioning of World

War III introduces plausible consequences to 9/11 for the first time, but not without Goldt’s ironic manner of style.

One of Goldt’s traveling companions is from New York. He mentions to the author that he did not know anyone working in the WTC, and that all of his friends in New York are safe.

Goldt is surprised that his friend has actually spoken to his family in New York. The author felt misinformed by the media since he thought the phone lines were disconnected. The rational distance is highly apparent. His remarks about the attacks are ostentatious, matter-of-fact, and at times laconic, never serious or emotional.

In the evening when all three have dinner at a restaurant, Goldt perceives the other dinner guests not as affected by the tragedy. They seem happy and gregarious, calling them “donnernde

Lachsalven”. This is contrasted with a later scene when Goldt coincidentally watches the news on television. He recognizes that German television gives the impression of Germany “das völlig in Pietät erstarrt ist.” Goldt establishes a clear discrepancy between his observation at dinner and the broadcast images on German television. This perception reminds him of GDR television which was also committed to some sort of “Wunschdenken.” He concludes that German media reports are unable to portray the attacks as well as fail to represent Germany’s reaction to the terrorist attacks adequately.

The day 13 September 2001 is titled “Schweigen and Schreien”. Goldt touches on the discussion on terrorist attacks very briefly. Due to lack of a partner in dialogue he had to follow

“die staatlich verordnete Schweigeminute” at any rate, the author comments ironically. After having returned to Berlin, Goldt addresses the problem of an appropriate construction of

42 predicate adjectives in “Adjektive und Eklats” on 15 September 2001. During the last three days of media abstinence, the author felt encouraged to buy a newspaper. He is made aware that Susan

Sontag “neben manch anderen” has criticized the public discussion of the attacks being an act of cowardice.38 Goldt agrees completely with Sontag. “Da hat sie natürlich Recht. Schon

Ladendiebstahl erfordert Mut. Wieviel Mut braucht es denn erst, ein Flugzeug zu entführen und es gegen ein Gebäude zu steuern. Mann kann froh sein, dass die meisten Menschen zu feige sind, um so etwas zu tun.” In the following passage, Goldt turns to an article about Karlheinz

Stockhausen who classified the terrorist attacks “als das größte Kunstwerk, das es überhaupt gibt für den ganzen Kosmos. The subsequent reaction by the “Hamburger Kulturbehörde” to cancel

Stockhausen’s four concerts sees Goldt as “phantasielos verkrampft.” It is doubtful, the author laments, to pretend to be shocked when an artist “in dessen Schädel bekannterweise ein Hirn […] aus der Kategorie ‘Das etwas andere Gehirn’ glüht” und “in dessen Werk das Feuer, ja sogar der

Weltenbrand eine zentrale Rolle spielt.”39

It is hard to come to a conclusion with regard to Goldt’s “short story”. The author seems to use the events of 9/11 as a starting point for a sequence of thoughts that reminds the reader of the genre diary formally at best. On second thought, however, when looking closely at the text, his notes prove to be exemplary with regard to writing about 9/11 without commenting on and speculating about historical facts, background information and possible repercussions of the attacks. 9/11 functions as a fine line for the experienced columnist. His narrative techniques and ironic style are not compromised – this is why the reader has to ask himself whether Goldt’s

38 See Susan Sontag, “Feige waren die Mörder nicht. Amerika unter Schock: Die falsche Einstimmigkeit der Kommentare.” FAZ 15 September 2001. 39 See Julia Spinola, “Teufelswerk. Stockhausen zu Stockhausen.” FAZ 21 September 2001.

43 diary deals with reality by using appropriate aesthetic means. His displeasure – in form of a polemic and ironic undertone – is geared towards intellectuals and artists who do not recognize the fine line, who are never at a loss for far-reaching explanations during a time of crisis, and who produce commentary without interruption. His sideswipes are directed at “eitle

Kommentarwichsmaschinen.” Goldt does not expect profound statements as well as politically relevant comments from artists, literary personas and intellectuals. This can be seen is his short response to Susan Sontag’s essay as well as in his train of thoughts regarding Karlheinz

Stockhausen. In an imaginary interview with Stockhausen, Goldt suggests that artists should avoid political commentary, so that they only generate discussions about their aesthetic work.

Goldt’s book is therefore not a refusal to comment, but a genuine attempt to aesthetically comprehend 9/11. The terrorists attacks are not ignored, they are just absent from the discussion.

By starting a travel diary on the day of the terrorist attacks, the author demonstratively avoids personal attempts to overcome as well as political analyses that deal with 9/11. If he mentions locations, such as New York City or Washington, D.C. his language always stays factual, so that he is able to write about his own reaction and behavior without passing judgment or commentary.

By staying true to his narrative technique, his notes benefit from the time elapsed between the attacks and the presumed time of writing the book.

When summarizing both texts, it is apparent that both authors take an intense look at and deal with the attacks of 9/11 in detail. Renowned authors, intellectuals and publicists treated 9/11 in a historical, socio-political context explicitly. In contrast, authors of a younger generation, such as Durs Grünbein or Max Goldt ponder questions concerning aesthetics and narration.

Grünbein demonstrates an emotional and physical response to the terrorist attacks that is due to

44 the immediacy of this writing. He did publish his account in the feuilleton section of the

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, his skeptic and introspective notes on 9/11 did not correspond well with the predominant discourses. Max Goldt, however, attempts to show a clear emotional distance in his response to 9/11. He published his (fictional) diary almost one year later after 9/11

– and not coincidentally. Grünbein’s and Goldt’s responses diverge from each other; nonetheless, they illustrate a noteworthy aesthetic sensitivity.

45 Hybrid Narratives: Kathrin Röggla‘s really ground zero and Ulrich Peltzer‘s Bryant Park

Kathrin Röggla’s really ground zero. 11. september und folgendes is the last book to be discussed in this cluster. Born in 1971, she is the youngest of the authors, and the only Austrian- born whose work is examined here. Apart from this documentary account, she has published novels, radio plays, texts written for the theatre as well as short theoretical essays. Her works show hybridity. She often mixes and meshes genres to generate a hybrid literary form that has yet to be examined. Christine Ivanovic states in her article in Kultur und Gespenster, Röggla

“arbeitet laut eigenen Angaben häufig medienübergreifend, mit dokumentarischen Verfahren, den

Mitteln der Komik und Ironie, experimentell und sprachkritisch sowie mit der Mündlichkeit der

Schrift” (107). In her response to 9/11 really ground zero, Röggla includes images – photographs specifically – that illustrate what, in her opinion, cannot be described in words. She implies that a catastrophe, such as 9/11, cannot be fully comprehended in words. In order to understand the event, the reader needs to witness the event by looking at the images.

At the time of the terrorist attack, she was awarded the literary prize of the Der Deutsche

Literaturfond and lived closely to the World Trade Center Buildings in Lower Manhattan in

Bleeker Street, not far from Else Buschheuer, for that matter. Some excerpts of Röggla’s texts in really ground zero were originally published in die taz, in falter as well as Der Tagesspiegel during the week after September 11. Later on, the texts were published as a collection in the

Fischer Verlag in 2002.

She starts off her book by commenting on her chronological diary entries as

“Orientierungstexte” (6). She sets out to describe New York City from a foreign perspective, depicting American responses as well as reactions to the attacks of 9/11. She makes attempts to

46 give random Americans a voice, so they have the opportunity to make a personal statement. For example, two Americans, Lisa and Michael tell Röggla about the patriotic use of the flag: “Oh, how beautiful it looks here in Manhattan… the flags are flying” (really ground zero 26).

Later on, she reflects on the political life, political rhetoric as well as “Inszenierung der amerikanischen Politik in den Medien.” According to Ivanovic, Röggla attempts “weiterhin

Muster amerikanischer Wirklichkeit sichtbar zu machen” (5). The author herself comments in her text,

zunächst stand ich vor der frage, was ich damit mache, mit diesem haufen von

authentizität, mit diesem scheinbaren aufgehen in einem ereignis, in diesem zu großen

bild, in das man plötzlich wie eingezogen ist oder eingezogen wurde und in das man doch

nicht paßt, weil es zu groß ist. und das einen deswegen verletzt. verletzt in mehrerer

hinsicht. sicher, ich habe nur körperlichen schaden davongetragen, eben das zeug

eingeatmet habe, dieser gestank und der lärm und die schlaflosigkeit. dann hat sich die

situation schon auseinander bewegt. auf einmal war nicht mehr sicher: wo fängt die

persönliche hysterie an, wo die kollektive und wo ist eine reale gefahr da. das konnte man

nicht mehr auseinanderhalten, das wird auch nicht entscheidbar sein für eine lange zeit.

(really ground zero 108)

Comparing Kathrin Rögglas really ground zero to the immediate responses mentioned before, her notes do not mention the scene of the collapsing towers; moreover, they attempt to register the implications of the catastrophe on New Yorkers or Americans in general. Her analysis of the situation is an attempt to consciously open up new avenues to face this situation.

47 Ingo Arend writes in his review of a “Protokoll des Irrlaufs an der Nahtstelle zwischen Fiktion und Realität” (Freitag 23). Kathrin Röggla’s use of small letters throughout the text (and throughout her oevre), suggests that these notes are a very personal document about one’s own vulnerability. The depiction of horror and collective hysteria does not add up, because the so- called,

euphemistisches geschehen, was doch weitaus zu groß zu sein scheint, um es

irgendwie Integrieren zu können in eine vorhandene erlebnistruktur. [...] ich werde auch

bald zu den leuten gehören, die wahllos losfotografieren - doch jedem seine strategie,

damit klarzukommen, moralische urteile auf dieser ebene scheinen heute disfunktional.

da ist auch sofort die angst vor einem >>krieg<<, paranoide vorstellungen, die man hier

im augenblick mit vielen menschen teilen kann. [...] gespräche, die man führt um seine

wahrnehmung wieder einzubinden, sich einer realität zu versichern in kleinen

kommunikativen gesten voller redundanzen und wiederholungen. trotzdem wird das

geschehene dafür nicht weitaus zu groß sein, es fehlen auch die politischen und

historischen kategorien, es in einem größeren zusammenhang zu beschreiben und zu

situieren. (really ground zero 7-8)

Nevertheless, she never refrains from voicing her own political opinion about

“medienamerika” and “geheimamerika” (13) during George W. Bush’s administration. Through all the display of America’s patriotism, the author registers in astonishment how deeply America has been hurt as well as much of this sentiment mirrors Bush’s speeches that is “aufgeladen von einer mischung aus alttestamentarischem denken und trotzigem, ja fast kindlich anmutendem

48 chauvinismus” (20). She also notices a constant exchange of political and religious language in most all areas of public discourse. Terms such as “evil” or “darkness” and “walking on holy ground” show orchestrated, repetitive diction of governmental policies. At that time, Americans equated foreign policy to a war against an invisible enemy. She states, “wen der krieg geführt werden soll, das weiß man aber [im September 2001] nicht so genau” (27).

Röggla describes behavioral patterns that are typical for Americans: commenting on the bearer of the U.S. flag, describing the Hippies supporting peace at Union Square, party people with their immigration stories, people who support biological weapons, women with cell phones, photographers and last but not least “ein eigenartiges amerikanisches phänomen, den ritus des verkehrsregelns” (8). She stops commenting on stereotypes as soon as she realizes that stereotypes are “kleine, kommunikative gesten voller redundanzen” (8), or empty, panic-stricken gestures that attempt to find normalcy in these chaotic times.

Röggla’s theme is not so much a live coverage of the events on 9/11 but her perception of reality that is thrown out of joint:

der katastrophentourismus wird erst morgen einsetzen, es kommt ja einem nicht

einfach der gedanke, dahin zu gehen, zu >>ground zero<< , >>really ground zero<<,

dieser mischung aus todeszone, nuclear fallout area und mondlandschaft, die im

fernsehen nicht abbildbar zu sein scheint. sie wirkt überbelichtet, seltsam flächig, denn

dieses bräunliche weiß schluckt alle kontraste, kassiert die räumliche tiefe, zementiert das

bild in monochromie. (9)

Röggla’s report of the aftermath of 9/11 in Manhattan is infused with her own commentary and imagery. She attempts to illustrate in what way she sees Manhattan. She states that the images

49 she perceives cannot be broadcast on television – only images by people who have witnessed the attack and its aftermath can fully depict the current situation – hence the intermeshing of text and of photographs.

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves whether and in what way Americans, Germans, human beings in general deal with the physical as well as traumatic damage. Röggla illustrates this with the usage of pronouns. The pronoun “sie” and the “I” of the narrator are transformed to the collective personal pronoun “man”:

der zweite tower explodiert, es ist nicht das laute bild, welches das gefühl auslöst, dass

>>das da<< wirklich stattfindet, sondern das relativ leise geräusch. ton- und bildschiene

fallen entschieden auseinander in ihrer psychischen wirkung und wieder ist es die

cineastische metapher, die man in den gesprächen zwischen den herumstehenden

menschen bemüht. Man findet sich in gruppen zusammen vor kleinen geschäften, vor die

tv-geräte positioniert wurden, in einer gefasstheit, die schon etwas deplaziert wirkt (9).

In the end, the author’s report is (with regard to her analysis of political behavior in the United

States) a critical self-reflection of an Austrian visitor that appears to be helpless, traumatized and deprived of feeling safe and secure. It is also noteworthy to look at Röggla’s text from a media standpoint. Her account is permeated with direct references to the media, making the reader aware of what Andrea Köhler calls “die mediale Geläufigkeit des Schreibens” (234). By enumeration of events and repetition of words, clauses and sentences, Röggla’s language illustrates metaphorical running. This is construed as Röggla does not pause or reflect, “sie nimmt sich keine Zeit zum atmen” (235).

50 Media is referenced and utilized to distinguish between different forms of writing and reality encountered in really ground zero. The author makes use of filmic narration techniques: her text forms the framework when “das zu große Bild des Ereignisses” (Röggla 8) is ajar like a hole. We do not stare into “the howling ground” (DeLillo 10), but into a square in which information, censure, paranoia as well as hysteria is broadcast in a loop. This is reflected in her language. Röggla writes, “ es ist die informationsgestörtheit, die sich durch einen durchbewegt” (22). The too big a picture is bigger than reality, bigger than life itself in order to grasp it. Röggla’s role is to describe her experience and thereby re-integrate the picture: “>das da< findet wirklich statt, ein ereignis, das doch weitaus zu groß zu sein scheint, um es irgendwie integrieren zu können in eine vorhandene erlebnisstruktur” (24).

Her text is a paradox of a literary work under the influence of the media: “ ja, da unten sehe ich mich stehen, wie ich für einen augenblick nicht mehr in meinem wirklichen leben vorhanden bin, denn ich sehe nicht nur mich ich sehe auch einen film, der heißt: >you can really see it melting< das verrät mir die junge frau aus dem 22nd floor mit tonloser stimme und meint damit den tower

(30).

She literally puts the “I” not only in a real life situation, but also in a movie theatre. This seeming authenticity is moved many times, the “I” oscillating between reality and fiction. Consequently, authenticity loses its meaning. The movie is showing and there is no difference whether Röggla saves filtered media reality on her computer or writes about people that just witnessed the disaster. Her small lettering brings this event to a trivial level: she reproduces this form of

“informationsgestörtheit” that the reader both expects and buys from Amerika – portraying the

51 country as a conglomerate that simulates a catastrophe as well as showing the melting process between myth, medium and message.

In Katrin Röggla’s essay “das häßliche gespräch. Anmerkungen zu einer ästhetik des literarischen gesprächs,” which was publisched in Akzente in 2005, she reflects on the space between reality and personal experience, between the use of old and new media, between – what

Ivanovic calls “Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit, zwischen textueller und audio-visueller

Representationen” (“Bewegliche Katastrophe, stagnierende Bilder” 109). Particularly, Röggla reflects on the space between perception and recording, and statement and the reproduction of it, rendering criteria for “einer ästhetik einer gesprächsführung”, linking it to a discourse of power and placing it opposite “der ästhetik des hässlichen gesprächs”. The latter aims at saving the authenticity as well as the subjectivity of the speaker where mass communication requires unopposed participation as well as permanent consent. Röggla argues that,

hält man sich all diese sehr unterschiedlichen formen und gesten, die institutionen

und kontexte vor augen, aus denen und mit denen das öffentliche und veröffentliche

gespräch hervorgebracht wurde bzw. in denen es oszillieren kann, wird evident: es kann

eigentlich nur misslingen. Sofern es dem begriff der verständigung und des freien

austausches entspricht, in korrespondenz zu der vorstellung idealer kommunikation.

unterschiedliche interessen, positionen, machtgesten, sprechräume, traditionen, sowie

unterschiedliche vorstellungen vom charakter des gesprächs müssten eigentlich

permanent, kurzschlüsse, kurz: eine bewegliche katastrophe erzeugen. (252)

And Röggla then concludes,

52 ist das maß der missverständinisse, der abstände, dem kommunikativen abgrund, der sich

zwischen menschen bewegt, nicht jenseits des materials, sondern in den diskursen, die

ihre eigenen verwerfungen haben, ihre eigenen diskontinuitäten, risse. deren verknittung

und glattstreichung waren immer herrschaftsgesten, gegen die es was zu setzen gilt. Ich

war immer eine freundin des stotterns. (259)

The author utilizes the word “Katastrophe” with regard to the failure of the dialogue (Gespräch) in a way that has never been used in aesthetics or rhetoric respectively. Thus the word

“Katastrophe” appears as a “Signum notwendigen Scheiterns des Gesprächs, das sich aus lauter

Missverständnissen nicht in die weniger ästhetisch als massenkommunikativ gewünschte Form fügen kann; andererseits stellt sie als >>bewegliche Katastrophe<< gerade die Bedingung jenes

>>hässlichen Gesprächs<< dar (Ivanovic 110). Thus the >>bewegliche Katastrophe<< appears under shock within an ongoing dialogue. According to Röggla’s aesthetic essay, shock can be created by hearing one’s own voice. In really ground zero Röggla reiterates the reproduction of past events: the incommensurability of the attacks on 9/11, the real catastrophe which is not allowed to turn to a symbol just yet, and can only be endured through movement while talking.

When comparing the genre dialogue to the text really ground zero, it appears that both genres have similar traits: the problem of differentiating between perception and reproduction, the transfer of past events, working with the language as well as the medial transfer of the message. In New York, Röggla learned of the disconnecting of a subjective perception from a collective, staged media reality. I argue that the author experienced 9/11 as a crisis that made her unable to perceive her own reality. This also goes along with the shattered image of Amerika in

53 the German imagination. The utopian hope, a shelter from harm and persecution that Germans have imagined of Amerika for centuries, has been destroyed by the terrorist attacks.

To regain its status as an invincible superpower, the United States started “eine globale inszenierung medienamerikas” (really ground zero 13) to put it in Röggla’s terms. Soon after the attacks, the United States received sympathizing gestures of politicians around the world. Not only within the framework of sadness and dismay, but also the enormous presence of the media changed the individual’s perception of reality into a media frenzy that closed the gap between the

United States and the world. This media discourse replaced the individual’s authentic perception.

Ivanovic calls this process “crossfading” (“Die Gloambifizierung schreitet voran” 229).

Originally a technique in television – an image or sound fades out while different image or sound simultaneously fades in – Ivanovic associates this term with regard to 9/11 as an overlay of the

‘local’ experience in New York with ‘global’ accessible media. Because of this, the ‘real’ location of the event appears to be less real; moreover, a web of different realities is generated that forms through constant broadcasts, comments and statements by the media. The adverb really in

Röggla’s title emphasizes the complex problem of perceiving reality.

Röggla’s really ground zero is a complex work with regard to hybridity. Not only does the author include images to make the reader witness and experience 9/11, she also makes the media to one of her protagonists in her collection of texts. She realizes the presence of the media distorts the individual’s reality and concludes that the terrorist attacks would have not generated so much attention if it were not for the media. Stereotypes would not have been created and distributed by means of the media, echoing W. T. J. Mitchell notion of war on images. Media is the battlefield and the individual – the receiver of these images – is consequently the victim.

54 Ulrich Peltzer’s Bryant Park: Temporary Loss of Language

Ulrich Peltzer’s novella Bryant Park (2002) marks the transition between the immediate responses to 9/11 and the second more nuanced and conservative phase. The novella is also the first longer work of prose that was published within a year of the attacks. This publication first attracted attention when introduced at the Frankfurt book fair in October 2001. There, four weeks after the attacks, it seemed rather difficult to promote the narratives of (especially) a younger generation of German writers whose texts concentrate on a passionate and carefree contemporary

German culture. As Volker Hage reports in Der Spiegel: “Niemand erwartet von der Literatur

Rezepte oder Prognosen, und dennoch stoßen selbst Bücher, die lange vor dem 11. September geschrieben wurden, nun auf eine andere Erwartungshaltung” (Buchmesse im Schatten des

Terrors Spiegel 41 225). Nevertheless, for constructing a highly sophisticated level of narration as well the apparent influence of 9/11 that permeates through the last chapter in the novella,

Peltzer was awarded the Bremer Literaturpreis for Bryant Park in 2003.

Peltzer is known for his novels about Berlin. As literary critics have been waiting for the great Berlin novel, Peltzer’s Stefan Martinez (1995) proved to be an adequate contender. Set in

Berlin, Peltzer tells a story of Stefan Martinez’ family in three generations. Immigration to

Germany, living in the melting pot Berlin just before 1989, and the subsequent feeling of homelessness are themes of this “Großstadtroman”. Nevertheless his novella Bryant Park distinguishes itself from his previous novels. The narrative features formal innovations: self- reflexive meta-narratives, disrupted temporality, multiple viewpoints. These characteristics are a common denominator when looking at the entire, global history of literature of 9/11. Frederic

Beigbeder’s novel Windows on the World (2004) and Johnathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud

55 and Incredibly Close (2005) exhibit similar narrative traits as stated in Ann Keniston and Jeanne

Follansbee’s edited collection Literature after 9/11.

In this novella, Ulrich Peltzer chooses a segment of a city (exemplified in his previous novel Stefan Martinez (1995)) such as in metropolitan New York in order to narrate a manageable part of the city, specifically the area of Manhattan, Bryant Park, and its surrounding neighborhood. The novella consists of three narratives: first the reader follows a genealogist in

New York; the second narrative thread tells the story of a drug deal planned in a Berlin movie theater that ultimately leads to Italy; the third narrative consists of only fragments that tell a story of a son and his dying father.

The first narrative begins in New York at Bryant Park. The first sentences are fragmented, describing the surrounding of the adjacent Public Library on Fifth Avenue, very much like an opening of a movie. Appealing to the reader’s aural senses, the narrator meticulously notices different noises on chaotic 40th street, people opening their lunch boxes, shouting at a construction site in the early afternoon in the city.

Later, the reader is formally introduced to the first person narrator, a young German author named Stefan who travels to New York to carry out genealogical research and look at immigration biographies at Bryant Park’s Public Library. This search is barely important, as the narrator is more interested in depicting the hustle and bustle of Manhattan city-life. Stefan, the narrator, depicts life in an ever-chaotic metropolis, rapidly changing topics, reiterating broadcast news about some or other accidents and catastrophes in the city that seem unnatural and ominous. The narrative style can be compared to zapping through channels on television, news repeating themselves, the inability to choose from a wide array of information and entertainment,

56 never knowing what is next to come. Fact and fiction are meshed together, impossible to tell apart. New York City becomes a metaphor for the broken identity of the modern human being.

The narrator comments,

Irgendwo in der sechsunddreißigsten Straße sei ein Gerüst eingestürzt, wird

gesagt, nein, ein Lastenaufzug, seitlich eingeknickt, so daß die Gefahr bestehe, daß

Tonnen von Stahl, die ganze Einrüstung des Gebäudes zusammenbreche, alle Anwohner

müssen evakuiert werden – behauptet mit Nachdruck (eine prall gefüllte Tüte von Macy’s

in der Hand) einer am Fuß Stehenden, sonst könne das Gleiche wie letztens geschehen,

ob man sich nicht erinnere,

Beständig wiederholt im lokalen Fernsehen die Aufnahme eines Krans, der das ebene

Dach einer Seniorenresidenz durchschlagen hatte [...] dann aufs Neue in flimmernden

Pixel, nein, gelbliches Gestänge, das schräg in der Luft zu hängen schien, als die Kamera

es abtastete, über die verkreuzte, mehrfach gestauchten Stahlsprossen fuhr, bis schließlich

der Krater, ein ausgefranstes Loch mit zerfetzten Armierungseisen, wo vorher die

Betondecke des Raumes gewesen war. (8-9).

The first narrative is interrupted by the second narrative. The reader is presented with a narrative in reverse chronological order, and distinguished by italic print. This narrative tells the story of a drug deal planned in a Berlin movie theater, a deal that ultimately leads to Naples, Italy and failure. This second narrative resembles the story of a similar drug deal in Stefan Martinez, especially since some of the characters have the same names. The third narrative, taking up the smallest amount of space, consists of only fragments that tell a story of a son and his dying

57 father. This narrative is also printed in italics. These three narratives are not set apart from each other spatially but rather run through each other – fading in and out. Here is an example:

[…] obwohl Eduardo – beantwortete Nils eine meiner Fragen – der allgemeinen

Ansicht nach ein korrekter Typ sei, Brigitte sei bereits öfter privat mit ihm unten gewesen

und habe nur Gutes berichtet, gute Erfahrungen (nicht ewig über eine Geschichte

nachsinnen, sonst verhakt sich alles in Spekulation, wird man gefesselt durch das eigene

ein Flugzeug sich in Schlaufen verengende Denken, notorische Fürs und Widers am

nachtblauen Himmel schnell hintereinander aufblitzend rote und weiße Punkte,

Positionslichter, die sich geräuschlos von Westen nach Osten bewegen, zum Kennedy-

Flughafen hin Abwägungen, juristische Zweifel, als stünde man angeklagt vor den

Schranken eines Gerichts wie feierlich das aussieht einmal haben wir zusammen am

Telefon eine Beschwerde formuliert: sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, adressiert an die

Rentenkasse, die persönliche Fehlzeiten in ihren Schreiben und Summationen

erbarmungslos auflistet, einem keinen Platz zum Luftholen lassend, die Bedingungen in

ihren verwinkelten Zeitmaßen zu erläutern. Das Vergangene und Zukunftsaussichten,

Gesundheitschecks über den Köpfen der Zuschauer schwebend wie einen mysteriöse

elektronische Erscheinung man darf sich nicht in irgendwelchen Haarspaltereien

verlieren, Wortmeldungen am teuer erworbenen Computer, mein Gott, Vater, es

interessiert mich wirklich nicht, was du auf deiner Festplatte falsch zu laufen hast). Ohne

Kommentar dreht Nils plötzlich den Geschwindigkeitsregler auf null. (88-89)

58 This is a particularly long and complex, but nevertheless typical example. It is also the only passage when all three threads of narration come so close together. The narratives are merely distinguishable: either by punctuation – brackets between the italic print switching between narrative two and three – or by context, e. g. Luftholen, Gesundheitsschecks, and by protagonists of each narrative. Character names such as Nils and Brigitte are mentioned for narrative two. The reader also recognizes the first and longest narrative thread by location, here for instance the Kennedy Airport in New York.

Most of the time, the three narrative threads are not written together so closely. We can call them fade-ins and fade-outs utilizing the language of film criticism. They do not always come so quickly, but nevertheless the style of the text is apparent in this paragraph, especially since all three threads of the entire narration are present here in this passage. What such a complex interlocking of narratives signifies, one answer might be that this interlocking could be read as the description of a consciousness recalling several stories in different situations, in which case it would be a single memory that is speaking. There are instances in the novella that might suggest only one overall narrator. However, the artificial nature of these fade-ins, evident in the consistency with which the three narrative threads appear, it is a clear indication that this is not a representation of an individual consciousness, but rather a cross-over of stories not necessarily connected –a model of the simultaneity of possible narratives. Furthermore, the abundance of present participles (aufblitzend, lassend, schwebend) suggests synchronous narratives, plots that may happen simultaneously. Each of the narratives is not really created by a subject; rather the narratives themselves emanate from a space at the intersection of these various

59 fictions: “Was übrig bleibt, sind Geschichten, jemand, der sie erzählt, erst das, dann jenes, wie es einem in die Gedanken kommt” (165).

The previous narrative construction is suddenly expanded by a fourth narrative towards the end of the novella. A caesura signaled by a majuscule and a large gap in the text occurs and the reader is introduced to a first-person narrator named Ulrich (134). Ulrich recounts how he experienced 9/11 in Berlin, how a female friend told him what had happened, how he could hardly believe the news reports, and how, concerned for the safety of his female friend and roommate who live in New York, he tries but fails to reach them via telephone. These two people are called Katrin and Katja. Over the course of several pages Ulrich reports on the pictures that are broadcast on every television channel in Germany, probably all over the world. The following paragraph demonstrates the narrative technique:

[B]izarr die beiden wie überdimensionale Schornsteine qualmende Stelen,

das Pentagon gleicht einer brennenden Torte, aus der man ein Stück herausgebrochen hat,

Hubschrauber, Feuerwehrwagen, Jeeps,

oh my god, oh my god, schreit eine Frau im Innern der Bilder des Fernsehgeräts,

due to heavy calling your call cannot be completed at this time,

der Südturm fällt in sich zusammen, Schnitt, dann der andere,

als hätten sie Poren – aber das sind die geborsteten Fenster –, die verdrehte

schwarzgrau hochsteigende Dampfsäulen ausschwitzen, dazwischen winken kleine

Menschenfiguren mit Tüchern und Kleidung um Hilfe, springen einfach in die Tiefe, ich

schalte weg, das ertrage ich nicht zu sehen… (137).

60 The immediacy of his writing brings to mind the previously discussed newspaper and online entries. Peltzer strives to depict the representation of reality and introduces a new narrative level to a text he is temporarily unable to complete. By interrupting the original three narratives with a narrative of a real-life event, the author deliberately chooses to blur the border between narratives that could possibly happen and a narrative of an event that actually happened.

Furthermore, in order to authenticate his fourth narrative even more, the author feels the need to incorporate fragmentary correspondence of his New York friend Kathrin. Indeed Kathrin Röggla and Ulrich Peltzer corresponded in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

When contrasting Röggla’s personal account to Peltzer’s, his knowledge is second-hand.

He is powerless against “eines Ereignisses ohne Vergleich” (144). This is why he observes and describes the powerlessness and the helplessness and his astonishment. The horror at the ineffable purely stays on the human side without ever commenting on a political agenda or attempting for find an explanation. According to Ingo Arend in his review of Bryant Park, the events of September 11, “streifen ihn hart, aber nur tangential. Und sie taugen nicht nur als

Horrorkulisse”. The catastrophic events that cannot be described manifest itself in the fading in an out of the narrator(s). The sight of people jumping from windows in the World Trade Center is unbearable for the author. It states a problem that recedes from national understanding, for even at these points of individual suffering what is happening proves to be irrational in its fateful contingency. But the suffering of individuals raises precisely the already mentioned question of narration.

In the intersection between “real life and “fictional” stories, it is not just the former that preserves itself in the latter: rather in the telling of stories, it opens up possibilities – in our case

61 for the author – to overcome this event: In the fourth narrative, Ulrich subsequently deals with his fear for his friends who escaped the catastrophe, works through a love story that continues and reflects on his work, which must be brought to an end, as any other project. In Peltzer’s words,

und vorher wäre die Erzählung auch nicht zu Ende, als bräuchte sie, die den

Anschlag unterbrochen hat wie man beim Lesen eine Seite verschlägt, die man auf

Anhieb nicht wiederfindet, noch genauso viele Tage um bis zu ihrem Schlusspunkt

sich fortzusetzen, jener Stelle […], an der sie unweigerlich abbräche, weil das

Folgende in einem anderen Zusammenhang gehörte (ein anderes Buch mit einer

anderen Geschichte, als sich kreuzende Spuren aus seiner bestimmten Vergangenheit

und einer bestimmten Gegenwart, im Kopf herumvagabundierendes Material, Fetzen

von Bildern, Empfindungen […]. (145-146)

This is how Peltzer reflects the necessary caesura caused by 9/11, a break that could not have been avoided, since Peltzer’s ambition is the adequate representation of reality. What does this mean? Peltzer is willing to suspend the continuation of the previous three narratives and to accept the risk posed to the narration by a foreign body, to open his fiction up to a political event which, in its horror and omnipresence, demands the analysis of background more than narration

– unless one were to attempt, as Kathrin Röggla has done, to narrate in a kind of mixed form that

I have previously discussed.

Incorporating this fourth narrative thereby offers him a kind of consolation, an outlet to process and overcome the fear, horror and distress. He is able to continue and to conclude the novella. When opening his text to the present, the author does not just narrate current events; rather, he reflects, even narrates about narration itself, about hopes and responsibilities associated

62 with the present, as well as with the future, with the possibility to continue as the final words of the novella once again makes clear: “Tritt man einen Schritt vor, sieht man die Scheibe den eigenen Umriss, eine grünlich bestrahlte Figur, die eine dünne Nylonjacke unter den Arm geklemmt, hat sie wahrscheinlich Papiere drin. Was denn sonst? Irgendwelche Blätter, Kopien,

Geschichten. Ein erster Satz aus dem Nichts” (172).

The word “Satz” in the last sentence refers not only to the grammatical meaning of the word but also to a movement, a leap. What does Peltzer attempt to establish here? Is this a picture of the present, realistic and full of detail, told in precise language, with a complex narrative structure, circling around the model of consciousness? The novella transcends these elements in insisting on hope, on a future, which does not simply resolve into literature but which, inasmuch as literature is committed to political utopia, also preserves the future of literature.

In the center of narration and in the middle of the book, there is an open-air movie screening that occurs at Bryant Park. A variety of interested people have gathered here in between all the high rise buildings to see the classic movie version of Moby Dick: “Man fühlt sich winzig in diesem Kessel, als persönlich absolut zu vernachlässigendes Wesen, belanglos, indessen man zugleich verspürt, Teil einer größeren Gestalt, Glied eines anderen und mächtigeren Körpers zu sein, in dessen Fülle man vergeht (und das ist schön und erhebend)” (91).

In the face of these movie images, a community comes into being where differences do not count and solidarity of humanity shines forth. There, equality is presented for a brief moment. This artistic as well as artificial solidarity is contrasted to the television news images and the despair they cause the world. It is also opposed to a penetrating realism of television

63 news images of people in the towers, falling men and the simultaneous hysteria expressed in television caption. I argue that these images threaten the integrity of narration. The terrorist attacks have disturbed the author’s narration. Peltzer was compelled to stop, pause and break away from the previous narration. Nevertheless, the author (successfully) integrated the caesura in his text. He continues his writing, insisting on the possibility of a human community in which the sense of equality might bring more happiness.

Interim Conclusion - Zwischenfazit

“Das einzige, was einen in diesem Zusammenhang >befriedigte<, auch wenn es das

falsche Wort ist, war das Fernsehen […]. Es gab einem das Gefühl der Live-Übertragung,

das war ja das Verrückte. Wie sich die Ereignisse auf dem Bildschirm dauernd

wiederholten – geradezu mantrisch.”40

With many different literary attempts to bring the surface of technical images near the event and the victims, literature about 9/11 exemplifies a problem within the framework of aesthetics and narratology. Before coming to terms with a collective tragedy, it is important to

find a point of entry to the event itself that is forced, but at the same time revoked. In the case of literature about 9/11, the attacks rather manifest themselves in images, than in language. How do literary texts about 9/11 reflect the images that the reader has already been confronted with?

Many authors have different access strategies: imitation, absence, ekphrasis. Katrin Röggla’s first

40 See Thomas Meinecke. “Glamour und Abgrund. Ein Interview.“ Frankfurter Rundschau 20 September 2001. 19.

64 sentence in really ground zero claims reality twice in order to mark its affect as well as to lay claim to her own experience, “Jetzt also hab ich ein leben. ein wirkliches” (7). Although she was one of the few that witnessed the collapse of the towers in Manhattan, the ‘real’ experience she perceives is immediately absorbed by a filmic paradigm – 9/11 as a cineastic metaphor that starts to proliferate from the moment the catastrophe happened: “ja, da untern sehe ich mich stehen, wie ich für einen augenblick nicht mehr in meinem wirklichen leben vorhanden bin, denn ich sehe nicht nur mich, ich sehe auch einen film. der film heißt >you can really see it melting<” (7).

The shocking experience of the ‘real’ is destroyed by the superiority of the technical images.

Nevertheless, it was not until a phone call from Germany when she learned of the catastrophe that has happened in close distance to her residence. As a result, there is no difference in the distance between the actual catastrophe and the witness and the distance between the simultaneous visual representation of the catastrophe and the viewer. Everyone keeps the same distance to the events of 9/11 in New York City and Washington D.C.

Instead of aesthetically comprehending the impossible proximity or presence of the event, all literary responses to 9/11 discussed in the section above utilize and follow the images that are broadcast on television since the sequence of events on 9/11 (crash, collapse). The location of the catastrophe has been transferred from Lower Manhattan to the television screen. Literature, consequently, is no longer able to function “als ein Erinnerungsort”. In Peltzer’s Bryant Park, the sequence of events is illustrated with a transcript of images on television:

Es sind auf allen Kanälen plötzlich Bilder zu sehen, die man nicht glaubt, gigantische

Staubwolken, einstürzende Wolkenkratzer, Boeing-Flugzeuge, die in Hochhäuser rasen,

in Panik wegrennende Menschen, wie von einer klebrigen, weißen Puderschicht bedeckte

oder bestäubte Rettungskräfte […]

65 das Pentagon brennt,

wie Puppen segeln Verzweifelte, die sich aus den Fenstern gestürzt haben,

knallen im Flug gegen die Fassade,

rotschwarz leuchtende Feuerbälle aus Kerosin,

das eine Flugzeug durchbricht das Gebäude wie nichts, Stahlteile und Betonbrocken

wirbeln durch die Luft,

es stürzt alles zusammen […]. (135)

This ekphrasis of technical images imitates the (German) television broadcast of 9/11 where a series of moments have become a sensational event for a global audience. At the same time, the mediological process of transcribing images41 generates a doubling in words, and a new perspective may result from that. A new starting point of narration is created where the observer cannot hide behind the images any longer. The narration does not depict 9/11 as hypothetical victims might have personally experienced it. Moreover, the text chronicles 9/11 how the attacks have been ingrained into the collective mind. The narration archives like emails or instant messaging in Else Buschheuer’s online diary:

16:31 Arabische Flugzeuge haben das World Trade Center zerstört. Ein

drittes flog in

16:32 Wollen sie mich verarschen?

16:33 Das Pentagon. Sprachlos.

16:35 Finden Sie das komisch?

16:37 Schalten Sie das Radio ein!

41 See Michael Meyen, Mediennutzung. 45

66 16:44 Sind Sie da?

17:10 Herbst. Die Türme! Sehe TV, bin im Hotel!

The transcribed visual images and the immediate responses demonstrate an irreversible rhythm of time between the crash, countdown and collapse of the towers.

The quoted transcript of television images in the novella Bryant Park coincidentally disrupts a multi-layered narrative because of an unprecedented event that has had such a monumental influence on the author Ulrich Peltzer. In fact, the claim “nichts mehr wird so sein, wie es vorher war” is the most quoted topoi within the literature of 9/11. All literary responses to 9/11 orient themselves to a new time line: before, during, and after the planes. This caesura also influences the narrative form. Before 9/11, Else Buschheuer’s diary was just another account of an eccentric foreign journalist living in New York City. Only after the attacks, her notes became an important resource for a comparison of the before and after. Ulrich Peltzer’s novella also breaks formally with its multi-layered narrative. By introducing a fourth narrative that thematizes 9/11, the global event also becomes a central event to the plot Claudia Kramatschek paraphrases this notion:

“Anders gesagt: Das Ereignis außerhalb des Textes wird zum Ereignis, das dem Text widerfährt

– indem es den bisherigen Erzählverlauf storniert […]. Der Anschlag hat die Erzählung, bevor sie zu einem >Schlusspunkt< gelangt, unterbrochen […] wie man beim Lesen eine Seit verschlägt, die man auf Anhieb nicht wieder findet” (Haltsuche 171).

Interpreting the body of literature about 9/11, one expects the possibility of narrating, illustrating, and/or commenting on the event of 9/11. When Max Goldt writes “wir konnten es schon nicht mehr hören” in his fictional diary Wenn man einen weißen Anzug anhat, the reader

67 may realize that this expectation is futile. After Goldt’s ironic commentary on former opposition leader and now chancellor Angela Merkel and Bavarian minister Edmund Stoiber, expectations of a serious discussion should be brought to a halt. In addition to the ironic portrayal of his daily in September 2001, Goldt rather chronicles his daily life than to actively contribute to any discussions about 9/11. He deliberately avoids all encounters with the media. He, moreover, criticizes self-important intellectuals, artists and actors for interfering in the (German) public discourse. The question now is how does Goldt utilize the media images when he, in fact, abstains from mass media altogether before, during and after 9/11? By refraining from the use of mass media as a source, the author creates space for the reader to reflect on the purpose and the manipulation of the media. Max Goldt’s literary response is not overuse of media, such as texts that perpetuate the unnecessary blabber in newspaper feuilletons or television, but the silence and absence of it.

68 PART TWO

Will things ever be the same again? Responses to 9/11 from 2003 to 2010

“In our fear of the real, of anything that is too real, we have created a gigantic simulator.

We prefer the virtual to the catastrophe of the real, of which film and television is the

universal mirror.” (Baudrilliard 405)

In the first days after 9/11, many intellectuals felt the need to cure their mental and/or physical paralysis induced by the attacks. According to Andreas Jahn-Sudmann, not every attempt for

“[den] unabwendbaren Wettkampf einer Überbietungslogik um die intellektuelle

Diskursherrschaft dem bildhaften Schrecken eine sprachliche Rationalisierung entgegenzustellen,” (118) was successful. One of the most influential German composers of the

20th century and a notoriously controversial media commentator, Karlheinz Stockhausen, declared this act of terrorism “zu de[m] größte[n] Kunstwerk, das es je gegeben hat” (77). Žižek comes to the same conclusion in his essay “Welcome to the Desert of the Real!” He argues that

America is a fantasy staged by the juggernaut Hollywood. According to Žižek, the unthinkable event 9/11 was “the object of fantasy”- in a way, America got what it fantasized about, and this was the greatest surprise (387).

In his book Der Knall. 11. September, das Verschwinden der Realität und ein

Kriegsmodell, Klaus Theweleit argues that intellectual comments of high-ranking contemporary philosophers and critical theorists such as Jean Baudrillard or Slavoj Žižek consequently uncover certain inadequacies concerning their ad hoc interpretations of the event. Theweleit’s account of

69 the seeming dialogue of the first few hours, or “Geschwätz” as the author termed it, suggests that more time should have been allotted before rendering intellectual and/or aesthetic interpretations on the subject. Criticism we have previously seen in writings of Max Goldt and Durs Grünbein.

It is evident that coming to terms with 9/11 not only occurred at high speed in various forms of media outlets, but also writings alone were not sufficient to reflect on the event. Artists felt the need to express their thought processes visually, I turn to visual representations of 9/11 and its

(aesthetic) reflection of it on television and on the silver screen.

There is no denying the fact that the terrorist attacks were an unprecedented event. People that were confronted with these televised images of the attacks, however, seemed uncomfortably familiar with the notion of violence, panic, and chaos on television. What is more, the continuous repetition of images of the plane crash and the subsequent destruction appeared more cinematic than real at the time. Interestingly enough, even filmmakers thought – at least for a few seconds

– that this event was not real.42 Georg Seeßlen describes this process as “Entwirklichung der

Realität” (7). The images gave the impression of a déjà-vu by showing scenarios of which the spectator is already aware. “[Entwirklicht] wurden die Abbilder dieser realen Ereignisse auch dadurch, dass sie als neue, aktuelle, nahezu in Echtzeit verbreitete Bilder auf ein populäres

Bildinventar abspielten, dessen Teil sie jetzt selbst zu werden schienen (Pabst 313). The reality was depicted so unprofessionally at the time that the spectators would not want to believe it.

Assuming a culture communicates non-verbally by visual means, media renders reality comprehensible. More particularly, the cinema is a site that absorbs, evaluates, criticizes, and

42 Wim Wenders was interviewed on the subject and replied, “Ich habe zuerst gedacht, es handle sich um eine Computeranimation, und habe erst nach ganz langer Zeit begriffen, dass das nicht so war.” See: Wim Wenders, “Feldzug der Zärtlichkeit. Über Zukunft und Verantwortung des Kinos. Ein Gespräch mit Wim Wenders.”

70 archives aesthetic reflections of reality. Films, in general, make cultural narratives accessible to the spectator and feed him or her with ample descriptions and explanations of specific value systems. In every way, films furnish the world with visual demonstrations. And this visual material functions as an archive of significant world representations that serves the spectator’s cultural reconstructions with meaning.

In the second part of my dissertation, I resume my chronological analysis of works that represent 9/11 aesthetically. More particularly, this part examines narratives that have been published at least one year after the attacks and concludes with Thomas Lehr’s latest publication

Fata Morgana (2010), a novel that concerns a post-9/11 worldview. In the beginning of the second part, however, I focus on visual representations of 9/11 and analyze three films that contextualize 9/11 its history, and its aftermath, specifically from a German standpoint: at first

September (2002) by Max Färberböck, followed by Fremder Freund (2003) by Elmar Fischer, and lastly Schläfer (2005) by Benjamin Heisenberg.

September chronicles the lives of four couples on the day of the attacks by exploring the theme of coming to terms with the attacks and its aftermath as witnesses from afar. Released one year later, Fremder Freund thematizes the intercultural friendship of two university students:

Chris and Yunes. The film explores the development of their friendship prior to 9/11, Yunes’ sudden disappearance, and the shocking realization that Yunes might be involved in the terrorist attacks. Schläfer concerns itself with the repercussion of 9/11 within the German border. The film, released four years after the attacks, shows the ambiguity between the state, law and the individual. Films that design fictitious plots around 9/11, and not fictionalize the event itself have one common denominator: they depict the event from afar. The plot is not about the attacks; it is

71 more about the witness account of the attacks as seen on television. This distance between the witness and the event itself creates an outsider’s perspective. Pabst refers to it as a “Standpunkt der Nicht-Involviertheit in die Ereignisse konstruiert werden, um Involviertheit dann erst durch den Verlauf des jeweiligen Handlungsgeschehens herzuleiten” (315).

When comparing images of the terrorist attacks to filmic scenarios43 that describe cataclysmic events44, whether fictional or real, film, in general, occupies a central position with regard to the creative product. With the infinite loops of images on the television on 9/11 and days after, Seeßlen and Metz postulate that filmic images of catastrophes have lost their innocence. The mass media played the terrorists’ involuntary accomplice when pushing the button “Record” on their digital cameras when the first plane hit the tower at exactly 8.45 AM

(EST) on 11 September 2001.45 Nevertheless, only films produced in the United States depicted stories that were closely and emotionally linked to the attacks: evoking compassion and empathy

- characteristics that were heavily associated with Hollywood.

There are indeed some examples from Hollywood that have skillfully employed the ideas. For example, the terrorists specifically utilized the media in the blockbuster The Siege, released in 1998. With the attacks so closely intertwined with Hollywood’s notion of illusion, consequently, the Californian dream factory immediately underwent noticeable changes after the attacks. Producers and filmmakers reacted drastically to current film productions involving

43 Another noteworthy film is 11'09''01 – an international compilation of episodic short films, headed by French director Alain Brigand. He called upon filmmakers around the world to deliver an artistic and politically driven response to the attacks utilizing film as the “global medium” (Kerr). 44 See Georg Seeßlen and Markus Metz, Krieg der Bilder - Bilder des Krieges. 19. 45 The manner in which terrorists instrumentalized the media is also of interest. Hollywood still films elaborate and costly action scenes with more than one camera in the age of digital film. One could suggest that terrorists may have imitated Hollywood entirely. For further information, see Carsten Brosda and Christian Schichta’s publication on media instrumentalization during war.

72 action, strong violence and the subject of terrorism. Scripts such as Men in Black II (2002) were rewritten; already filmed scenes from Spider-Man (2002) were cut, and soon-to-be-released films such as Collateral Damage (2002) or Big Trouble (2002), with controversial content were rescheduled indefinitely.

73 The Loss of the Real? Max Färberbock’s September (2003)

Max Färberbock’s contribution September (2003) presents first and foremost an early and rough perspective on the attacks of 9/11. The German perspective matters because Germany immediately played a key role when students of Arab decent – who had previously studied and lived in Hamburg, Germany – were exposed as the pilots or their helping hands.

In the film, the event itself is not in the center of the plot, although the spectator is continuously presented with images on the living room television set. Instead, the film focuses on how Germans came to terms with the attacks and its aftermath from afar: Where were they when the attacks happened? How did they learn about the attacks? Who did the attacks affect and in what way did they work through it? What kind of emotions emanate from the attacks? The main issue addressed in this film is how the global war of terror encroaches upon the private life of an individual or a nuclear family. Max Färberbock46 himself comments on the triggering moment when deciding to make a film about 11 September 2001:

Der Auslöser selbst war eine private Begegnung, wo ich einen Bekannten

verabschiedet habe, und gefragt habe, was der 11. September für ihn bedeutete. Erst nach

zwei Minuten peinlicher Stille sagte er, er werde seine Ehe retten. Diese Äußerung zum

einen und diese Stille zum anderen war Zeichen, dass in den Wochen nach dem 11.

September eine Art Stillstand in der Gesellschaft passierte. In diesem Stillstand habe ich

ein extrem zerrissenes und ein sehr waches Leben bei den Menschen in meiner

Umgebung beobachtet […]. (September, Interview mit dem Regisseur)

46 Max Färberböck, born in 1950, is one of Germany’s critically acclaimed film directors. With a degree from the Deutsche Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen, he worked for institutions such as the Hamburger Schauspielhaus and the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen before directing feature films. His most successful international film to date is Aimée & Jaguar (1999). See: Presseheft zu ‘September’. 2003.

74 German films have gained popularity by scrutinizing private life and relationships, usually set in a comic fashion – the so-called “deutsche Beziehungskomödie”. It is therefore not surprising that

Färberbock utilizes this established genre and setting for his film. The main characters are four couples that originate from different milieus; their relationships illustrate how they perceived and mastered the attacks.

On 11 September 2001, the spectator meets the couple Philipp (Justus von Dohnanyi) and

Julia (Catharina Schuchmann). Married for a decade as well as parents to two young children, they find themselves amidst a marriage crisis when the planes hit the WTC. Next, we are introduced to Helmer (Jörg Schüttauf) who works for the Hamburg police department SEK47 as a team leader. He seems to be an overzealous civil servant who immediately wants to contribute to the fight against terror. He is obsessed with finding the perpetrators that have been living in

Hamburg. His troubled teenage son as well as his hospitalized wife seem only a distraction to him. Then, there is the young, narcissistic journalist Felix Baumberger (Moritz Rinke) who neglects his girlfriend due to his fixation to produce a sophisticated newspaper article that properly conveys emotions that emanate from the attacks. Ironically, his editor rejects the article’s publication. At last, there is the Pakistani migrant Ashraf (Rene Ifrah) who works at a local pizza joint with his pregnant German girlfriend Lena (Nina Proll). They represent the continuously fighting, interethnic couple whose problematic relationship results from their cultural/religious – and seemingly insurmountable – differences against the background of 9/11.

47 SEK stands for “Sondereinsatzkomando”. The SEK is the equivalent of the American S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons and Tactics) – an elite unit with the police force that specializes in hostage rescues and counter-terrorism operations.

75 The attacks don’t stand in the foreground in these illustrated conflicts, but are not secondary under any circumstances. The question of dealing with the terrorist attacks surfaces in the majority of scenes. Parallel to Färberböck’s triggering moment, Philipp bluntly asks Julia:

“Wie hältst du es mit dem 11. September?” Julia, confused by her impending divorce and shaken up by this event, sits down and cries. For example, Lena calls upon her Pakistani boyfriend to admit to the victims’ sufferings in the face of his seeming apathy towards the terrorist attacks. If he is indeed apathetic, he might be a terrorist, a so-called “sleeper cell”, similar to the ones held accountable for the attack in New York City or Washington, D.C.

He refuses to answer her accusations. Their heated discussion escalates into such an argument that she eventually throws him out of their shared apartment. Ultimately, they reunite because of

Ashraf’s desire of assimilation. Lena and Ashraf’s personal opinions on politics and religion, however, stand in the way. Phillip, too, wishes to reconcile with his wife in the wake of 9/11. By listening to his girlfriend’s plain comments, the young journalist, the professed role model of the film, changes into a brave idealist who not only expresses his interest in solidarity, but also heavily criticizes the politics of the United States in front of his newspaper editor. This scene proves to be highly ironic because it is the media’s responsibility to critically and objectively evaluate political events. Consequently, the link between all couples is a collective feeling of uncertainty, distress, and confusion, triggered by the 9/11 attacks and now deeply embedded in private lives. In the end, the spectator is left with no classic resolution regarding the individual story lines.

The continuing conflicts these couples face in light of the attacks transfer anxiety and restlessness to the spectator. Nevertheless, this hardly seems enough compensation for the lack of

76 a substantially atmospheric plot. Adding extravagant and costly scenes, aesthetic shots, split screens and slow motion images to shots of German everyday life, neither helps nor strengthens the film – although the producers did take the production seriously. They hired more than one scriptwriter of a younger and “hipper” generation to share work and responsibility equally. On the other hand, Manfred Hermes rightly points out that it is remarkable,

[…], dass auch diesem jüngeren Personal die gleichen Beziehungsstandards,

sozialen Möblierungen und Posen einfielen, die der deutsche Film der letzten Jahre

bereits in großer Anzahl produziert hat. Diese Unfähigkeit, über gesellschaftliche

Realitäten, Interessen oder auch nur über „Erwerbsarbeit” anders als in banalisierter Form

zu sprechen, läßt sich aber nicht immer als bloß handwerkliche Unzulänglichkeit oder

künstlerisches Scheitern abtun. Sicher ist dieser Film auch das: gescheitert. Allerdings

individualisiert das Etikett „Scheitern”, das September allseits angehängt wird, was im

Grunde ein strukturelles Defizit des deutschen Films ist – zeigt sich in diesem Bereich

doch besonders deutlich, inwieweit die Mittelklasse die Zügel in der Hand hält und an

welcher Stelle sie mit ihren Haltungen, Vorlieben und Selbstbildern die filmische

Erzählkultur in Deutschland prägt. (65)

The so-called „Krise des Erzählens” – which Manfred Hermes so pointedly fleshes out – is shown in the depiction of different ethnic groups. During Lena’s Lamaze class, Ashraf imagines singing and dancing with pregnant white women, himself transformed into a “Musical-

Harem-Cowboy” from Bollywood. He suddenly rouses himself from his daydream back to reality when the instructor inquires about the women’s (mental) health regarding the terrorist

77 attacks. An assimilated Turkish husband makes use of this small circle of concerned citizens and instigates an argument about deeply religious Muslims. Ashraf feels implicated and immediately threatens to hit him. Although the aforementioned dream scene is supposed to be humorously underscored, it does not change the fact that in the Western world a dark skinned or Muslim male connotes aggression and behavior driven by physical urges that are directed at an innocent white female. Ashrafs’ actions in the film make his girlfriend and the spectator suspicious: While everyone is still shocked and horror-stricken, Ashraf looks forward to his “besten Umsatz aller

Zeiten” in his pizza joint. Moreover, when talking to his brother Omar on the phone just after the planes hit the towers, his speech and actions do not even indicate any distress or shock.

The spectator is not only confronted with the collective chaos which is broadcast via television, but more importantly, the film also emphasizes the real fear one encounters people down the street, in a stay-at-home mom or even in a company manager. The depiction of this hysteria culminates in a scene depicting a parent-teacher-conference. During the course of this meeting, agitated parents ask the principal whether the school is prepared for a terrorist attack: they demand disaster drills every week, as well as individual water canisters for every child in the school in case of an attack. This meeting of concerned and brave parents bears resemblance to the Mob when one of the attending parents demands the bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan.48 In that instant, the principal asks whether one should bomb Israel as well because he is a Jew. One father replies – slightly ironically: “Wieso? Israel sind doch unsere Freunde, oder?” With regard

48 This demand is a mirror of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s speech (shown few scenes earlier) which shows solidarity to the Americans – He also promises military support, but limited access of the German Bundeswehr. Schröder is not keen on carrying out someone else’s experiments although this is not necessary due America’s prudent military policy. Later in the film, we see G.W. Bush, however, arguing for unlimited solidarity: you are either for or against the United States.

78 to a previous comment, in which a mother describes the decontamination from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons through showers, parents allude to the ominous association of

Germany and showers – implicitly linking Jewish suffering in Germany to atrocities that are about to happen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Max Färberbock not only shows panic-stricken hysteria of people who are under the delusion of the next major catastrophe, but also catastrophe-obsessed characters such as SEK team leader Helmer. He literally lives for his job. He continuously comments on the event with following sentences: “Alle blasen in gleiche Horn. Das ist doch mal was!” or “So Scheiße kann die Welt gar nicht sein, dass man sich nicht auch was Gutes rausziehen kann.” His enthusiasm for this catastrophe and the anticipated hunt for the terrorists suddenly comes to a halt when his defiant son, who shows increasing admiration for the terrorists, takes Helmer’s 1964 corvette stingray without permission and crashes into a parked car. Helmer attempts to empathize with the terrorists due to his neglected son’s desperation. His fawning behavior shows when he meets his

African-American FBI counterpart for a tour of Hamburg’s art museum. During their vivid discussion, Helmer proposes the power of faith of the terrorists to the American who in turn puts him in his place:

JOHN: Before the attacks, no one ever bought an American flag. But you know,

sometimes, it takes a national disaster for people to be patriotic.

HELMER: But your country is so great. Since I was a boy, I wanted to be there.

JOHN: Das ist sehr nett. Vielen Dank.

HELMER: What we want is peace, and we will get it. Let me show you something.

[Pulls out his wallet, shows John a photograph of himself] That’s I…, S.W.A.T.,

79 New Jersey, two years ago. I wanted to go back, they wouldn’t let me. That’s okay, I am happy here. Am liebsten würd’ ich da runter gehen, nach Afganistan and fight them… face to face. I am so angry, John. So many people… I can identify with you… all of you.

JOHN: Thank you, Helmer.

HELMER: Frieden und Freiheit, die Leute tun so als wenn das selbstverständlich wär. Du bist Polizist, interessiert keinen Schwanz. Und jetzt, die absolute

Heldenquote. Die Leute sind ganz wild nach Uniformen. Wir sind wie Bush… von 45 Prozent auf 95. Und wem verdanken wir das? Bin Laden. Dem größten

Wichser unter aller Sonne.

JOHN: I did not have time to think about it.

HELMER: John, you and me are the same. What they did to you, they did to me.

We are not born for everyday life. We are born to fight… like this Mohammed

Atta. I really thought about them, you know, the pilots. Of course, I hate them, but they know what they are fighting for. They believe in something.

JOHN: Helmer, stop it!

HELMER: What?

JOHN: STOP IT!

HELMER: Have I offended you? You don’t feel well? You want me to go… It’s okay… I go. John, it’s okay… I go.

JOHN: Thanks. [They shake hands.]

(September 1:20:16 – 1:23:05)

80 The intertwining of the historical sphere and the private sphere is deeply rooted German perspective. Max Färberböck’s film particularly illustrates how big catastrophes infiltrate, ignite, and/or influence the small crises of private life. By interlinking the scenes of the characters’ private lives with mass media images imprinted on the spectator’s mind, the filmmaker attempts to create an uninterrupted, continuous flow that has the purpose of generating a recurring collective experience. The sound and noise in the background underscore this notion of the collective. After all, the visual construct of the attacks naturally coincides with the acoustic world of this event. Not only the crying and the collapse of the towers – the spectator should already be aware of them – but the sound of the anchorwoman, the politicians, the interviews should provide stimulation. It is a vital part of the whole picture according to an interview with the director (Färberböck Spiegel Online).49

Färberböck does ultimately not succeed in convincing the spectator that the protagonists undergo a change in character due to the attacks. It is rather difficult to interpret the collective experience when the characters already possess too many idiosyncrasies that have long manifested themselves before the attacks. Their problems stem from failure to adapt to a new globalized world, rather than from the 9/11 attacks. The director himself comprehends the attacks as the climax of developments, such as globalization: “Vielleicht wussten wir, dass vieles in unserer globalisierten Welt nicht mehr stimmt, aber direkt erfahren und am eigenen Leben gespürt haben wir es erst am 11. September und den Wochen danach” (Presseheft 4).

49 See Max Färberböck, “Ich saß in einer Raumkapsel.”

81 Xenophobia and Terrorism: Fremder Freund (2004)

Elmar Fischer’s debut film Fremder Freund (2004) is the second film produced in

Germany that presents a multi-faceted visual narrative about 9/11. It not only addresses the issue of violence, terrorism and religion, but also is concerned with traditional moral values such as friendship, love and trust. It also addresses cultural similarities and differences. While September provides a superficial nexus between the collective and the individual experience of 9/11,

Fremder Freund concentrates first and foremost on the friendship between two young men attempting to overcome obstacles of cultural differences: racial discrimination, alienation, and diverging perspectives on traditional gender roles and lifestyles in the East and West, respectively.

To make this thematic constellation all the more dynamic and complex, the story is set against the background of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The plot is inspired by reports on the terrorists connected to Mohammed Atta50 who lived and studied in Hamburg during the 1990s. The focus on 9/11 and its impact on cultural change are central to the film.

Suspicion immediately increases when neither people nor actions fit a certain stereotypical pattern.

The film tells the story of two friends: Yunes (Navid Akhavan), a university engineering student originally from Yemen, and Chris (Antonio Wannek) from Germany. In March 2000, they first meet in a Turkish grocery store while Yunes is looking for a place to live. Shortly after,

50 He was an Egyptian student at the Technische Universtät Hamburg. Together with four fellow Arab students, he formed the so-called Hamburg Cell. In the late 90s, the group became known associates with al-Qaeda and he was one of the ringleaders planning the terrorist attacks and the pilot of American Airlines flight 11 – the first plane to hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. See Stefan Aust, 11. September. Geschichte eines Terrorangriffs. 34-40.

82 Yunes moves with Chris into a plain, newly developed apartment complex in a Berlin suburb. A deep friendship between the two young men develops – soon familiar with each other’s thoughts, wishes and dreams. They have a genuine interest in each other’s life and treat each other with respect: Chris helps Yunes to build up his confidence to ask out a fellow student at his university, a young woman named Nora (Mavie Hörbiger). By writing her romantic poetry and behaving chivalrously, Yunes eventually wins her over. When a friend comes by the apartment, either drunk or high on drugs, Yunes cares for him like a big brother. Generally, they spend their time happy and carefree with Chris’ girlfriend Julia (Mina Tander) and Nora – until Yunes finds out about Nora kissing another man. Deeply hurt, furious as well as proud, he will not reconcile.

After the break-up, Yunes gradually seems more reserved from Chris and their friendship. He devotes more time to his Muslim beliefs by joining the Islam club at the university.

In the beginning of 2001, Chris and Julia go on a month-long vacation to Yemen, following Yunes’ recommendation. Upon their return, they hardly recognize Yunes. He has grown a full beard and now leads the life of a deeply religious Muslim, critically opposed to the lifestyle of the Western world. Chris tries to understand Yunes’ thoughts, but the newly religious man rejects all of this attempts. After a controversial argument about his religion and their friendship, Yunes finds himself deeply conflicted and in a desperate state. His emotions are so overwhelming that he starts crying and eventually shaves off his beard. Sometime later, Yunes leaves for an internship in Pakistan. He plans on joining two of his Arabic friends from university. A few months later, he returns to Berlin visibly stronger and more confident. Racist remarks on the street that would have made him only mad a few months earlier, he simply dismisses with a shrug. On 6 September 2001, the evening of Chris’ birthday celebrations,

83 everything seems fine. The next day, however, Yunes has unexpectedly disappeared without telling anyone. Very upset and worried, Chris starts an unfruitful search for his friend.

On 11 September 2001, Julia tells Chris to switch on the television. While watching the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, they reluctantly begin to associate Yunes’ leaving with the attacks. After listening to the news broadcast over the next days, Yunes’ sudden change in behavior and leaving become even more suspicious to Chris and Julia. Becoming increasingly desperate to find out what has happened to his friend, Chris discovers that his roommates’ friends from Pakistan are long dead - one of whom was a proclaimed suicide bomber in Palestine. By admitting to Yunes’ involvement in the terrorist attacks, Chris starts questioning his ability to judge his character as well as his relationship to his best friend.

In order to uncover and break up the multiple layers of the visual narrative, the spectator is guided by the question “Wie nah kann man sich sein, ohne fremd zu bleiben?” Former journalist, television producer-turned-director, Elmar Fischer51, uses the following statement to convey his thoughts and ideas in the film: “Alles könnte anders sein, als man denkt” (Interview) which is reminiscent to the headline both the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and BILD used on

12 September 2001: “Nichts wird so sein, wie es einmal war.”

The first scenes in Fremder Freund set the narrative framework: seemingly innocent amateur shots of hand-held digital cameras monitoring Lower Manhattan streets on the morning of 9/11, images of people frantically running around, chaos in the streets, clouds of smoke – as if

51 Elmar Fischer, born in 1968, has a degree from the German journalism school in Munich. He has worked for various media outlets, including German newspapers such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, Münchner Abendzeitung, and functioned as a producer for television programs for adolescents. His series was shown at the Munich film festival in 2002. He was also awarded the FIRST STEPS award for best debut in feature film for Fremder Freund in 2003. See Presseheft zu ‘Fremder Freund’. 4.

84 the spectator of the film was right in the middle of this. Background noise – one might expect such heavy noise, screaming, crying and clamor – do not match the images we see. Instead, the images are accompanied by instrumental music, evoking and foreshadowing distress, melancholy, and sadness. Then, a voice-over begins. In the next shot we are introduced to the person speaking: Chris stares into the camera, allegedly addressing his friend, “Ich weiß nicht, was du machst! Ich weiß nicht, was du tust! Ich habe einen schrecklichen Verdacht, für den ich mich schäme. Wir sind… waren doch Freunde, waren wir das? Würde ich dann daran denken zur

Polizei zu gehen?” (Fremder Freund 2:40 – 3:20). The spectator immediately associates Chris’ friend with the attacks, and involuntarily identifies with the increasing feeling of suspicion.

Nevertheless, Yunes remains innocent until proven guilty. The second scene provides the audience with a flashback: two drunken young men, Chris and Yunes, sit in a crashed car. Chris was driving with a suspended license. Yunes offers to change seats with him when they hear the police approaching. Thus, Yunes presents Chris with the ultimate proof of friendship.

The spectator does not yet know, that Yunes and Chris have been best friends but share different cultural values that have put their friendship to a test. So when Chris sees Yunes taking his place in the car on the eve of his birthday on 6 September 2001, he is convinced that they have resolved their problems and have returned to their normal friendship. The next day, however, nothing is the same. Yunes has disappeared without a trace, without saying goodbye – not wanting to be found. When the terrorist attacks happen only a few days later, Chris cannot refrain from assuming the worst – that his best friend has been involved in the terrorist attacks.

Overall, the audience is faced with two extraordinarily convoluted narratives. The first starts with the disappearance of Yunes, following with the depiction of Chris’ and Julia’s

85 experience of the 9/11 attacks and Yunes’ possible involvement up until Chris’ breakdown. The second narrative supplies the history of their mutual friendship. Both stories are to a large extent chronologically narrated – heavily intertwined so that the plot amounts to a suspenseful non- linear narrative. In flashbacks, the dramatization follows Chris and Julia’s quest for hidden answers in their mutual friendship with Yunes regarding his disappearance. The film is, therefore, entirely narrated from Chris’ point of view. In order to separate the two narratives, black screens as well as date and time references highlight the break. When jumping scenes within the chronological plot, a voiceover carries on into the black screen thereby generating continuity.

The consistent interlinking with regard to both the fictional content (the friendship of

Yunes and Chris), and to the historical facts (the terrorist attacks), and the use of audio-visual narrative techniques underscore the film’s documentary character. The authenticity and audacity of the film are reminiscent of Dogme 9552 - a Danish avant-garde film movement of late 1990s.

In their manifesto “The Vow of Chastity” from 1995, Danish filmmakers “swear” to liberate themselves from technical considerations; for instance, superficial action, special lighting as well as props and sets must not be utilized. Consequently, directors should feel liberated and perceive their self-restricted limitations as inspiration. Fremder Freund makes uses of this manifesto most of the time. The vow’s first rule “shooting must be done on location” is employed when “Fischer und seine Crew [in Berlin-Reinickendorf] eine Entsprechung zur Wohnung und Wohngegend der

52 Dogme 95, an avant-garde film moment, started when filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg signed their manifesto and “The Vow of Chastity” in 1995. Danish directors Kristian Levring and Soren Krah-Jacobsen followed. The group gained international appeal partly because of its accessibility. It was suggested that one is able to make a recognized film without being dependent on commissions or huge Hollywood budgets, depending on European government subsidies and television stations instead. The movement has also been criticized for being a disguised attempt to gain media attention.

86 realen Terroristen in der Marienstraße in Hamburg-Harburg [fanden]” (Presseheft 6). Fischer did not use a studio for shooting any of the scenes.

Secondly, the film was shot with a digital video camera. Not only is digital video production considerably cheaper than shooting on celluloid, but the lightweight of the camera as well as its small size allow more mobility. Moreover, the film was mostly shot with a hand-held device, repeating Dogme 95: “The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or mobility attainable in the hand is permitted” (The Vow of Chastity). Even when using a tripod while shooting Fremder Freund, the frames are still shaky.

Regarding cinematography, director of photography Florian Emmerich predominantly follows the central action of a frame with close-ups of the protagonists’ faces. He thereby creates intensity and vividness within and lets the spectator identify with the characters as if they were in it. If the scene is emotionally and physically charged, Emmerich frequently uses zooming and panning techniques. The editing works similarly: the higher the dynamic of the scene, the higher the frequency of editing. The camera only employs long or medium long shots when Yunes argues with Chris, Nora or Raid. Although the film is narrated from Chris’ point of view, his subjective perspective is only employed twice through the camera frame, when Chris feels dizzy/ dazed: the first time when Yunes wakes him up in the middle of the night, and the second time when Chris drives while intoxicated and crashes into a bicycle stand.

Fischer utilizes only natural light, also remnant of the Dogme 95 manifesto. The use of natural light renders the film cool and prosaic, even colorless at times. At night, warm colors dominate in the frame, originating from candlelight and colored lamps. This warmth is reflected in the mood of the characters: for example, all four friends sit together around the kitchen table

87 sharing familiar stories. When their mood changes to one of discontent, the light sets a cool and unfriendly tone.

Another scene depicts Julia watching the planes crashing into the World Trade Center and urging Chris to go to the police about their suspicions regarding Yunes. The spectator is confronted with almost no light at all: only the flickering of the television set. The film gains authenticity when using less effects. The film seems unpretentious, rather like a home video. The most outstanding scenes that refute the latter argument are two prominent freeze frames (4:45,

40:50) in which the suspicion against Yunes increases. These frames function as a portent – as a reminder to the spectator to be attentive.

Sounds in Fremder Freund were recorded on-scene and not additionally mixed in the studio. Many dialogues are difficult to understand because of filming outside – thus enhancing the film’s documentary character. The treatment of music, however, is in opposition to the documentary style. Pointedly, the music underscores the atmosphere of each scene and influences the spectators’ emotions. The characters listen to many popular songs and lounge music that were added later in the cutting room, perceivable in the party scene. Here, all other sounds are substituted by the music, and the editing follows the rhythm of it. The score of the film has three musical motifs that create a recognizable link between continuing scenes that may be broken up by the narrative. The melancholic instrumental score that opens and ends the film stands for Chris’ desperation. The vibrant guitar piece depicts the cheerful and carefree atmosphere in scenes at the beach and during the soccer game. The third score illustrates the suspense and emanating danger of the impending disaster, used in connection to the frozen frames.

88 The treatment of 9/11 in the film deserves special attention. While September deals with the direct aftermath of 9/11 – the attacks represent an involuntary protagonist of the film –

Fremder Freund relegates the attacks to the background. The film makes use of the images of death and destruction that were globally broadcast through the mass media. The audience is directly confronted with the attacks only at the beginning of the film. We see Lower Manhattan in clouds of smoke, the burning towers and people covered in ashes: images easily recognizable and associated with 9/11. The images, however, are shown in slow motion, thus seeming ghostly and eerie at the same time. The sequence depicts the attacks with a certain poetic aestheticism, reminiscent of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s famous comparison between the attacks and a

‘Gesamtkunstwerk.’

Later on, when Julia tells Chris about planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the spectator observes a close-up of the characters’ shocked faces watching the broadcast from behind the television set. This way, the audience is, in this scene, never confronted with the images on the television, only with the audio of the broadcast, therefore solely concentrating on

Chris and Julia’s reaction to the attacks as well as to their growing suspicion towards Yunes. We also hear a radio program that informs Chris, Julia, and the spectator of raids at Arab apartments

– noticing the government’s immediate involvement. Later we see students read about commemorative ceremonies throughout Germany. Nonetheless, the central theme of Fremder

Freund is friendship. The film presents the spectator with an intercultural friendship that raises questions regarding racial discrimination and alienation that results in violent acts – an ever- present topic in a unified Germany.

89 The main protagonist Yunes grew up and attended a German school in Yemen. He moved to Germany to finish his Abitur. He seems assimilated: he eats pork, drinks regularly and loves soccer. He studies process engineering in part to be able to use his degree to help in developing countries. His flat mate Chris is very open towards Yunes and genuinely interested in his culture.

He listens to Arab music and even travels to Yemen with his girlfriend Julia. Despite the couple’s efforts, cultural problems arise. Their own culture has an important effect on their behavior, on certain perspectives or values. The discrepancy between Germany and France is noticeably smaller than between Germany and Yemen. Even for assimilated foreigners such as

Yunes, integration does not always run smoothly.

Their diverging perspectives are most apparent in the treatment of women. The notion of traditional gender roles has gradually been dissolved in the Western world since the 1960s. The liberation movement of women in Muslim countries has not yet taken place despite intensive efforts of prominent feminists (Kamguian “The Liberation of Women in the Middle East”). In these countries women are viewed as subordinates to men, and receive appreciation only through wife and motherhood. When Yunes is initially interested in Nora, he starts courting her with chivalry and romantic poetry – almost too traditional for women today. When he interrupted

Chris’ weekend with Julia, Yunes apologizes by buying Julia flowers. She is naturally flattered and urges Chris to treat her the same. Yet Chris does not despise women who may behave inappropriately. When Yunes sees Nora kissing another man, his opinion of her is shattered once and for all.

While Chris was initially upset and worried by his friend’s disappearance, his concerns turn into feelings of uncertainty and doubt. When reviewing Yunes’ changing behavior, Chris

90 observes Yunes’ actions as suddenly suspicious: violent outbursts, intolerance, the becoming of an orthodox Muslim, his constant criticism of the West, the internship in Pakistan, and finally, his befriending of a suicide bomber. Yunes’ disappointment of Nora, however, marks a definite change in Yunes’ behavior. The notion of the modern woman turns into a concept of an enemy.

Chris attempts to overcome his feelings of distrust by searching for the alleged truth. He only realizes then how little he knows of his best friend.

Fremder Freund is a film that shows two young students dealing with ups and downs of their mutual friendship in an age where one’s course of life and the development of one’s own personality are still wide open. Yunes’ fundamental change in character can be interpreted as an intensive quest for self-discovery. Due to the film’s open ending - the spectator is still in doubt of

Yunes’ involvement with the terrorists – it can be argued that Yunes’ disappearance was the result of his inner conflict between two cultures, an act ultimately preventing him from a role in the

9/11 conspiracy. Chris also undergoes a painful experience robbing him of his naivety and trustfulness towards forming new friendships and even his open-mindedness towards new cultures that he will not forget his whole life. While Max Färberbock’s September just scratches the surface of themes such as violence, discrimination and love, Elmar Fischer’s Fremder Freund is thoughtful in regards to themes, narrative and structure. The film plays with stereotypes of social convention and addresses important issues our global world has to face.

91 The Ambiguity of Terrorism: Benjamin Heisenberg’s Schläfer (2005)

Since 2001, the attacks as well as the consequences of subsequent domestic and international policies for individuals and everyday lives, have found their way into a range of feature films.

These include American films staging the day itself such as Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center

(2006) to works of unlawful incarceration, extradition and torture of Arabs and Muslims such as

Gavin Hood’s Rendition (2007), film explorations of the roots of terrorism such as Joseph

Castelo’s The War Within (2005).53 In their exploration of violence and terror, these films have largely established clear boundaries between terrorizer and terrorized. They cast terror as external to what defines the United States as a system so that even a film like Rendition, which pictures the US government-sanctioned kidnapping of a permanent resident of Arab decent to a secret prison in Egypt for torture, contains terror in a few people who are defeated through civic courage of one American CIA officer.

Benjamin Heisenberg’s Schläfer (2005), however, differs from these dichotomous and individualized frameworks by consistently pointing to the ambiguities of terror. The film, which was part of the official film selection at the Cannes Film Festival under the category “Un Certain

Regard,” represents terror with the paradox that is encapsulated as a concept that refers as much to the anxiety felt as to the anxiety induced. Even if we understand terror as intense fear only, this fear rests on ambiguity. Terror, in this definition, is based on an anticipation of pain in the widest and most personal sense of what constitutes pain, an anticipation that is arbitrary and unpredictable as to when and how pain may or may not be inflicted.

53 The link between film representations and the September attacks in films that address more broadly conceived issues such as the culture of fear and vigilantism is, for instance, explored by Johnathan Markovitz in “Reel Terror Post 9/11.” 201-25.

92 Schläfer explores the link between terror and ambiguity at the nexus of a post-9/11 fear of

Islamist militant violence, policing of Arabs and Muslims, and state informant culture. The film positions terror not as an external threat but a force with the system itself that viewers are implicated in. By providing background to policing and security practices in post-9/11 Germany, where Schläfer is set, it is illustrated how the film deploys ambiguity in order to construct one of the main characters, Farid Madani (Mehdi Nebbou), a scientist of Algerian decent, as a

‘potential’ Islamist militant. The film mobilizes the spectator’s assumptions about Arabs and

Muslims as a possible threat to expose these assumptions as complicit with questionable and oppressive state security measures.

While Schläfer’s understanding of terror as an ambiguous and internal force is translatable into other national and transnational arenas, including the United States, the film situates 9/11 an its aftermath in a specifically German context. The German government, with

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as spokesperson, was quick to frame the event “not only as an attack against the United States but a declaration of war against the entire civilized world” that

Germany sees itself a part of.54 The attacks resonated with Germans all the more, after it became known that the pilots and al-Qaeda operatives had resided and studied in Hamburg, Germany. In response to the attacks and efforts to apprehend the conspirators, the German government passed

Security Packet I and II, which allowed for greater state intrusion into the privacy of citizens and residents. Measures reintroduced police profiling practices, which had been controversially deployed against the far left in the 1970s and 80s, and eased restrictions on the deportation of suspects residing in Germany.

54 See Hendrik Meyer, Terror und Innere Sicherheit: Wandel und Kontinuität staatlicher Terrorismusbekämpfung. 49.

93 The profiling practices point to how the political climate after 9/11 has made state intrusion political feasible. While privacy laws are still under constitutional protection, privacy rights continue to be under attack. After a legal complaint was filed with the German Superior

Court against the most recent post-9/11 legislative act, the so-called BKA-law, which took effect on January 1, 2009, may be short-lived. The law increases capacities of Germany’s

Bundeskriminalamt and lifts some of the previous restrictions on surveillance of phone calls and computer data in criminal investigations.55 Critics have charged that the law legalizes the surveillance without concrete grounds – a practice that the film effectively problematizes.

In Heisenberg’s film the consequences of security policies for privacy are presented in interplay with the threat of a terrorist strike and terrorist affiliations that are implicit in the film title and premise of the film’s opening scene. The title Schläfer refers to a sleeper cell of one or more undetected Islamist militants. The title instills a frame of fear and suspicion against characters and their actions in its reference to religious and political radicalism. Sleepers, still dormant in conspiratorial cells, wait for their moment to strike. The spectator observes everything through a prism of paranoia and distrust against Muslims. The film thereby establishes preset structures that mark parameters for the spectator’s ability to know the character and situations.

Schläfer opens with a scene in the park, where Ms. Wasser of the German secret service works on persuading scientist Johannes Merveldt (Bastian Trost) to become a state informant and report on his colleague of Arab decent Farid Madani. Their conversations in what is clearly a first encounter unfolds as follows:

55 See Michael Naumann. “Jeder ist verdächtig” Die Zeit 23 April 2009 and Heribert Prantl “Gegen den Sicherheitsstaat” Die Süddeutsche Zeitung 23 April 2009

94 JOHANNES: Why do you observe him [Madani]?

WASSER: Uh, let’s not discuss this now, otherwise you will be biased.

JOHANNES: I already am.

WASSER: No, no, no. The person can very well be completely harmless. And if

you consider him so, convince us.

Johannes asks Wasser for concrete answers to why the secret service is interested in Farid.

Wasser, however, remains ambiguous about the investigation. By not addressing concrete motives for why Farid is observed under the premise that Johannes would be prejudiced, she constructs any practices, beliefs, and interests Farid holds as potential national security threat, only to clarify that theses practices, beliefs, and interests may after all be completely harmless.

She, in other words, implies that Farid’s entire life must be scrutinized although neither Johannes nor the spectator know what to look for. If this moment constructs Farid as suspicious, what constitutes his suspiciousness rests entirely on Johannes and the spectator’s unanchored preconceptions about and prejudice against Farid’s identity as a single male Arab and Muslim scientist in Germany.

The spectator is set up to evaluate Farid’s every action as those of a potential sleeper, without knowing what constitutes relevant information. Alongside Johannes the spectator is given clues that simultaneously speak for and against Farid. In one scene the camera rests on

Farid’s face as he destroys his colleagues’ avatars in the virtual war zone of the Vietcong computer game. Over a glass of wine, Farid later explains to Johannes that the game “Vietcong is no ego shooter. It is a strategic game. The strategy determines the outcome. It is like urban

95 warfare.” To emphasize this point about the strategic nature of the game, Farid draws a game plan onto a piece of paper. One may wonder why Farid is so serious about the game – Vietcong – that has clear anti-American and anti-capitalist overtones and ask how informed he is about urban warfare and to what end. At the same time, however, his colleagues share his passion for

Vietcong or they would not play with him in the first place. In the conversation with Johannes,

Farid is completely open about how the game – a possible simulation of actual urban warfare – is won. His openness assuages the spectator’s initial suspicion aroused about him. In the meantime both Johannes and Farid enjoy an alcoholic drink. This poses the question whether Farid’s choice of beverage is an embrace of secularism, a signal against his potential involvement with

Islamists. And then again, what does the consumption of alcohol really signify if there is evidence that at least one of the key conspirators of 9/11, long after his radicalization and his trip to a training camp in Afghanistan, enjoyed his occasional beer with friends at the aviation school in Florida?56 Spectators, in short, observe and assess Farid’s ideas and actions with the knowledge that he is kept under surveillance by the secret service for information on terrorist threats. Individually taken, all of his ideas and actions are ambiguous in that they offer no interpretative certainty about Farid’s character or intentions. Taken together, they likewise do not form any cohesive image of Farid as a threat. The opening scene as much as the film’s title, however, make impending violence likely, even while it is uncertain when, how, and why this may occur. Cast as a potential suspect, Farid thus at first adds to the film’s overall terror that the ambiguous clues, which speak nothing concrete, feed.

56 This is in reference to the hijacker-pilot of United flight 93, Ziad Jarrah, who according to his flight instructor in Florida, Arne Kruithof, drank alcohol in moderation. See Jere Longman, Among the Heros: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew who Fought Back 92.

96 The terror of terrorism with its inherent reliance on ambiguity, as these film moments assert, has no system or profile that spectators can rely on. The film exposes the premise of a stable terrorist profile as shortsighted. While these limits coincide less with efforts of German authorities to expand police profiling to all European Union members, despite the fact that the grid search has produced no results in the fight against terrorism, they match current critical surveillance theories. Kristie Ball, for example, specifies four elements relevant to thinking about surveillance, including ‘re-presentation,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘manipulation,’ and ‘intermediary,’ all of which address the inherent data depending on the context. She illustrates how different cultural and historical frameworks that investigators bring to the data – and intelligence like all information needs to be interpreted – shape the results as much as the particularities and limits of specific technologies that produce the data in the first place.57 This ambiguity paired with an acknowledgement that surveilling practices have become omnipresent has shifted the focus of surveillance scholars to issues of government practices that pay attention how states produce and use information to regulate people and ideas.58

It is this link between surveillance and government practices that Heisenberg’s film is concerned with, when it ultimately identifies state practices involving monitoring and profiling of people as a form of terror and a greater menace to personal well-being than terrorist activities committed by non-state actors. The film alludes to the state’s public intrusiveness into the privacy of citizens and residents first in the park scene, where Wasser and Johannes meet. The film opens, in fact, with a shot inside the park – focused on trees and grass and then on a girl playing ball. This

57 See Kristie Bell, “Organization, Surveillance and the Body: Towards a Politics of Resistance.” 296-317. 58 See Kevin Haggerty, “Tear Down the Walls: On Demolishing the Panopticon.” 23-45.

97 glimpse onto nothing and no one in particular captures the idea of the everyday as banal, which is enhanced by the screaming voices of playing children, who are in the park but not part of what the spectator sees in the frame. The sound of the children as background noise continues even after Johannes and Wasser enter the frame and walk close enough to the camera that the spectator overhears their conversation. The choice of the public park as the initial meeting place highlights the private lives of people who are potentially endangered by terrorism that does not distinguish between the civilian and military branches of a society. The park, however, also points to the state’s entanglement with its citizens’ private lives. The state, embodied by Wasser, is present at banal and clearly harmless activities like children at play and is, as we later see, thoroughly informed about its people’s private lives.

The park scene alone already hints at the significance of the everyday to the film’s exploration of terror. That the everyday and private area are key to the film’s framework of terror is, however, not only emphasized through the setting of public spaces like the park but also highlighted through consistent representations of routines in a number of recurrent settings, which include a gym, the laboratory and a go-cart race track. The scene where Farid plays the videogame with his colleagues is such a scene that is matched with others, including some, where Johannes plays computer games alone at his home. His preferences for virtual car races that are not group efforts but solitary pleasures characterize Johannes, in juxtaposition to Farid, as an ambitious loner with an eye on the fast lane to success. Computer gaming serves not only as a reference point for a comparison of Johannes and Farid’s characters. It also illustrates how terror rests not necessarily in extraordinary moments but lurks within the structure of the everyday. In the scene where Johannes, Farid and their colleagues play Vietcong, Farid outdoes

98 all of them. During a break, his computer on which he saved the game and valuable research goes missing while four other colleagues are present in the room. His colleagues react to the vanishing of his computer with such calm of mind that what appears to be theft could easily be interpreted as a prank. The possibility of a prank is later dispelled when Farid tells Johannes that he has become subject to the grid search profiling. He then comments, “what happened with my computer was no coincidence.” The circumstances surrounding the disappearance are initially as ambiguous as Farid beliefs and practices upon which Wasser casts suspicion in the opening scene. As the film progresses, the stolen computer emerges as a target of one of the many questionable strategies that the state employs in its fight for stability and security. These strategies include, in this case, theft, since the authorities do not properly identify themselves, as they are required to do. Terror, as theses scenes set in recurrent habitual spaces point to, resides in the sum of all small acts that together make it a persistent force to be reckoned with. The theft of the computer alone does not terrify but as a pattern that points to a recurrent transgression of the law that protects the right of citizens and residents.

Implicit in Farid’s statement that his computer’s disappearance was no coincidence is that, while he strongly suspects the police as culprit, he lacks complete proof. The film makes it clear that the state knows about its citizens and residents but is unclear about what actions are state-sponsored. What the state knows for what purpose thereby remains ambiguous. This ambiguity about state power, in turn, induces terror. This dynamic is further highlighted in a scene where Johannes and Wasser meet for the second time. In this scene, Johannes angrily confronts Wasser with a stack of letters and notes, stating that these were unlawfully opened. The agent denies the involvement by stating condescendingly: “We get your phone bills from the

99 Telekom, Mr. Merveldt. This must have been someone else, as obvious as this was done.”

Johannes letters are ripped open, which Wasser does not view as befitting state practices. She thereby implies that the state leaves no traces when monitoring persons of interest. The comment also suggests that even if the state did not open his letters, he may still be observed. And the state could likewise have opened his letters, not to investigate Johannes, but to make its presence known. The answer to the question of who opened his letters is lastly irrelevant to the question of whether the state observes him, just as Farid’s choices and actions simultaneously speak for and against him as a threat.

Close to the end of the film Farid tells Johannes that he has become subject to police interrogation, not because he committed any legal transgressions but because he fits the sleeper profile created by the state that pre-marks him as guilty. He describes how the secret service has contacted people from all walks of his life, including Professor Behringer, who oversees the laboratory thy work in. Farid mentions, “they have all kinds of documents about me, old passports, student IDs – they know everything about my parents, where I studied. They even called my ex-girlfriends and Behringer. His comments suggest that disperse data, when compiled in a cohesive whole, serves to confirm Farid as a threat. Wasser tells Johannes at a later encounter that the secret service “requires simply the truth.” With her emphasis on “simply” and

“truth” she implies that intelligence is straightforward, measurable, and objective, a notion that the film itself and surveillance theories debunk.

The film scenes and passages which I have referenced demonstrate how Schläfer identifies terror above all in state practices that pervade the entire social fabric and individuals’ everyday lives. It is banal actions and average people that contribute to terror as a paradigm that

100 structures social relationships and everyday routine. The film’s version of terror as a force within the system emphasizes the ethical responsibilities each one of us shoulders vis-à-vis a politic of terror, paranoia, and fear that shape post-9/11 interactions. The ethical imperative resonates with earlier films from the New German Cinema of the late 1960s and 70s and early 1980a that put social violence, state terror, and terrorism committed by non-state actors into perspective. In

Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1975) the state as represented through police detectives cooperates with the press in a smear campaign against Katharina Blum who is suspected to be a sympathizer of leftist terrorism. The powerlessness Katharina experiences in the face of state power mirrors Farid’s inability to stop the forces that are in place to find him guilty. The ways in which Farid’s everyday life choices take on new meaning through the sleeper prism resonates with how the state and press paint

Katharina as terrorist sympathizer by willfully interpreting her alleged sexual practices as an indication of her questionable character. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher (1969) highlights how social control is exercised through gossip and social expectations. It is these formal mechanisms that the state mobilizes in Schläfer, for instance, when Wasser willingly shares information – gossip about Farid’s girlfriend Beate with Johannes.

To conclude, I would like to emphasize that Schläfer modifies the skepticism about state power voiced by New German Cinema for a post-9/11 framework, where the relationship of terror and ambiguity oftentimes problematically draws from contemporary discourses on immigration, the social integration of migrants, and Islam. In light of the range of films that mobilize simplistic theories of terror, Schläfer’s more complex perspectives is instructive in that

101 it reminds us of what stakes are involved when politics of security overshadow fundamental ethics.

102 Terrorism, Guilt, Disillusionment: Katharina Hacker’s Die Habenichtse (2006)

When perusing literary responses to 9/11, one can make out a gradual shift from immediate responses in the German contemporary literary landscape – mostly non-fiction works, such as personal accounts, statements or comments – to a more subtle tone in works of fiction that gradually introduce a new phase of German contemporary literature that is concerned with 9/11 and the war in Iraq. In my opinion, time serves as the crucial element that renders the necessary distance for authors to achieve a more considerate as well as a more critical eye with regard to

9/11. Shifts also occur in current events that may shape or change an author’s mind. On the day after the attacks – September 12, 2001 – it seemed that the world as we knew it ceased to exist.

The German media, renowned newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as well as daily tabloid BILD unanimously ran the headline: “Es wird nichts mehr so sein, wie es einmal war!”

When looking closely at fictional narratives – in this case Ulrich Peltzer’s Bryant Park (2002), this phrase might have been still employed. But five years later, with the publication of literary works such as Katharina Hacker’s Die Habenichtse (2006) and Thomas Lehr’s September. Fata

Morgana. (2010) – I argue, it is no longer valid. Here, the events of September 11 move to out of the limelight to the back stage, serve as a real point in history, which all fictitious narratives now refer to and are influenced by.

The novel to be discussed here that offers a distanced and more objective view on the

9/11 subject is Katharina Hacker’s Die Habenichtse. Her previous novels, such as Morpheus oder Der Schnabelschuh (1998), Der Bademeister (2000) or Eine Art Liebe (2003) were very well received by the German literary critics, yet Die Habenichtse, when it was published in 2006, the book caused quite a stir at the Frankfurt book fair – five years after Peltzer’s Bryant Park.

103 The novel can be located at the intersection of discussions within the recurring theme of the self- centered, unfeeling, politically disengaged thirtysomethings; questions of personal responsibility in the face of politics, history and memory and the revival of German literature, for which

Hacker was awarded the German book prize, the German equivalent of the Pulitzer or Man

Booker Prize for best contemporary German novel. This award was introduced in 2005 and it intends to draw attention beyond national borders to authors writing in German, to reading and to the keynote medium of the book.

Die Habenichtse paints a gloomy picture of a group of people in their thirties and their inability to communicate and to make decisions despite having a stable and secure life. Jakob and Isabelle, the novel’s protagonists, meet at a party the day after the terrorist attacks. Having had a crush on Isabelle for several years, Jakob cuts his business trip to New York City short to be with her at the party. His colleague Robert, however, dies in a business meeting in the World

Trade Center on 9/11. Jakob and Isabelle start going out and a year later they marry. After moving to London to work for a law firm that deals with restitution cases, Jakob and Isabelle drift apart into their own worlds respectively. Jakob becomes obsessed with his homosexual boss

Mr. Bentham, a Jewish man in his seventies that was brought to England on a “Kindertransport” in 1938. Isabelle becomes equally entangled in the life of drug dealer Jim and an abused neighbor’s child Sara.

The narrator spends a great deal sketching their environment to give the reader insight into all the characters; yet within the text there is no real communication between them, although the narrators shifts perspectives between them, at times for a paragraph or two. The author also does not use quotation marks; the narrative appears dynamic and fluent, yet this proves to be a

104 hindrance for the reader who has to get used to the author’s narrative technique. Instead of finding a coherent plot, the reader is exposed to a mosaic of narratives that he/she must piece together. Thus the author is creating a contemporary reality that can only be experienced sensuously by accepting and being engaged in a present that is ingrained with a past. Events in the past – may they be personal or historical incidents – have shaped the characters’ lives so that they are unable to overcome obstacles to their personal development. Although the reader is presented with various subplots, the characters yet seem passive. All of them, in one way or the other, move in circles, but not really ahead as one would expect for young urban professionals in their thirties. Only at the very end, the characters start to realize that they must take charge of their life in order to move forward. Hacker, however, does not grant the reader with a happy ending. After a violent and disturbing scene of domestic violence, in which Jim uses Sara in a desperate attempt to make Isabelle feel fear, empathy and responsibility – anything – Isabelle seems to finally accept her interconnectedness with the people around her. Her timid gesture to save Sara, the child from next door, from her abusive father in no way makes up for Isabelle’s previous negligence, but seems a step in the right direction.

The novel attempts to deal with the terrorist attacks in a more distant and formally conscious way. The attacks are utilized as an historic event that shapes the characters’ lives. 9/11 serves as necessary concomitant circumstances that influence the characters lives tremendously.

It takes on a rather passive role. There are only a few instances, where the reader is presented with a active reflection about 9/11 of a character. In the following passage, the narrator lets Jakob

– subconsciously feeling responsible for Robert’s death and for taking Robert’s job in London – reflect on his personal connection to the terrorist attacks:

105 [Jakob] dachte an den 11. September vor anderthalb Jahren, an seine hilflose

Aufregung, die mit New York nichts zu tun hatte, an Bushs Rede, nichts, wie es war.

Nichts hatte sich verändert. Es gab Schläfer, es hatte den Afghanistan-Krieg gegeben, es

gab zerstörte Häuser, verbrannte Menschen, hastig beerdigte Tote und in den

unwegsamen Bergen weiter Taliban- oder Al-Qaida-Kämpfer, Namen und Dinge, die für

sie hier nicht mehr bedeuteten als die Verwicklungen und Dramen einer Fernsehserie,

über die alle sprachen, wie sie über Big Brother gesprochen hatten. Und jetzt sprachen sie

alle über den Krieg im Irak. Wie viele Tote hatte es im letzten Irak-Kriege gegeben?

Zigtausend, Jakob erinnerte sich an die Panikläufe in Freiburg, die allen Ernstes anfingen,

Konserven, warme Denken zu horten und Lichterketten veranstalteten gegen den Krieg,

während auf Israel Raketen abgeschossen wurden. Der 11. September war inzwischen

nichts als die Scheidelinie zwischen einem phantasierten, unbeschwerten Vorher und dem

ängstlichen, aggressiven Gejammer, das sich immer weiter ausbreitete. Nur für Roberts

Eltern, dachte Jakob, hatte sich alles geändert, und für ihn selbst. Er hatte Isabelle

gefunden, er würde nach London gehen. (93)

Moreover, this passage can also be interpreted as one of the few instances when the narrator comments on the indifference towards politics, history and life in general of contemporary German society. His behavior contrasts sharply with that of more mature friend

Hans, for example. Hans brings to their New Year’s festivities a petition for the fair treatment of prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. Andras, a Hungarian living in Germany, refers repeatedly to Bush’s speech after 9/11.

106 It is also no coincidence that immediately before this quoted passage, Jakob finds out that

Andras is Jewish. Here, the reader sees Jakob as an embarrassed and an ignorant young man while handling this sensitive topic. He retreats to his thoughts where he is safe to reflect about an act of atrocity such as 9/11. Assuming that the dialogue about Jews in Germany triggered Jakob’s contemplation about the terrorist attack, Hacker links the terrorist attacks to the German atrocities of the World War II.

In general, Jakob’s character resembles a young, carefree German professional that appears to not feel responsible for any atrocities committed by the Germans during World War II, yet shies away from talking openly about Germany’s role in the war. He decidedly chose the profession of the law, retrospectively seeing himself as “Historiker einer als gerecht gedachten

Geschichte” (146). Jakob is fascinated by Bentham, his boss at the London law firm, a jew who emigrated from Germany in the late 1930s. When talking to Bentham, Jakob talks about “die

Traurigkeit und das Entsetzen, dass es keinen Ort gibt, der unberührt geblieben ist von der

Wahrheit, der Kälte” (146). It dawns on him that the historical chain of causation was not fate, but “Politik, Handlung, Wille” (144). He must realize that his image of restitution does not hold up. He has to learn that history cannot be re-assembled when one is robbed of one’s memories.

When thinking of Theodor Fontane’s Stechlin, it dawns on him that restitution “war eine Farce, wo es letztlich nicht um Orte, sondern um verlorene Lebens- und Erinnerungszeit ging, um die

Erinnerung, die einem vorenthalten oder genommen war” (187). Of course Jacob can not know this, because he has never been in this situation before, not any one had taken anything from him before that was so vitally important to a person’s development.

107 By creating a setting with the terrorist attacks in the reader’s mind, the author deliberately calls upon the German reader to consciously reflect on Germany’s history and to draw parallels between the impact of the holocaust as well as the repercussions that have resulted from the traumatic event of 11 September 2001.

“Es wird nichts mehr so sein, wie es einmal war!” is also in part utilized in Hacker’s novel. It is emphasized by italic print in the above-mentioned quote. The state of fear and shock that was evoked by this statement has long disappeared – what remains, is the frustration and the bitterness. Texts that were published within a year of the attacks depict immediate reality and active discussion about the current situation of the Western World. Whereas literary works written after 2003 make use of a rational and subtle critique: Germany’s indifference to and the

United States’ aggressive course of action against the war on terror. While Peltzer’s novella still aspires change and utopian hope, Katharina Hacker’s novel, in turn, fails to materialize hope and change by using 9/11 as a portent that precipitated not one but many forms of terror and violence.

108 Germans in Post-9/11 USA: Thomas Hettche’s Woraus wir gemacht sind (2006)

In June 2005, Thomas Hettche, along with three other authors59, published a poetic manifesto “Was soll der Roman?“ in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit. The group asks for,

“die zwar umbequeme, aber aufregende Gegenwart zum zentralen Ort des Erzählens und des

Erzählten werden zu lassen und sie so zu transzendieren,“ and asserts that postmodern narratives are, “eine verkappte Äußerungsform der Moralisten.“ This declaration about new ethics and aesthetics with regard to the contemporary novel as a genre concludes in a proclamation of a so- called “relevant realism.“60 We are introduced to the first case of a relevant realism when Hettche publishes his novel Woraus wir gemacht sind in 2006. This postmodern mix of American myths and a literary genre combines innovative form and contemporary criticism, but also thematizes the cultural ambivalence that the United States emanates in a time when the crisis of transatlantic relationships is at its height.

The novel Woraus wir gemacht sind tells the story of a German writer and biographer

Niklas Kalf who travels to New York City with his pregnant wife Liz in September 2002. He plans to research the life and work of jewish immigrant and physicist Eugen Meerkatz. When Liz is kidnapped on the eve of the first anniversary of 9/11, Niklas set out to find her and thereby embarks on a road trip through the real and imaginary topography of the United States. In order to get his wife back safely, Niklas has to find Eugen Meerkatz’ secret. He finds clues in Marfa,

Texas and in Palm Springs, California. The narrative is an interplay between different genres: parts of the narrative resemble a crime novel with elements of a thriller. It is structured similar to

59 Following authors signed the poetic manifesto: Thomas Hettche, Martin R. Dean, Matthias Politycki and Michael Schuhmann which was published in Die Zeit on June 23, 2005. 60 See Thomas Hettche, “Was soll der Roman?“

109 a road movie, parts of it borrowed from Western, and Science Fiction. Also, the character of criminal Daphne Abdela who also appeared in Hettche’s previous novel Der Fall Arborgast from

2001, is based on authentic murder case. In contrast to Hettche’s previous novel where this authentic case from the 1950s was central to the plot, Daphne Abdela is only at best a supporting character here. While the novel interchanges genres frequently, the reader recognizes many different images of the United States drawn from literature, film and popular culture. Book critic

Ulrich Greiner calls it, “phantasmagorisches Reigen der Bilder.“61

Hettche’s narrative employs images of the United States typical of travel. Niklas Kalf concerns himself American myths and European interpretations of the New World while traveling from the East Coast via Texas to the West Coast. When Niklas and Liz arrive in New

York City in the beginning of the novel, the author quotes Bertolt Brecht. With this quote, a comparison to Ancient Rome is established: “und dann war auch schon das Eiland Manhattan, wie es bei Brecht heißt, hinter den hohen Mauern seiner Türme atemberaubend schnell emporgewachsen, so unermesslich hoch und abweisend fremd wie nur je die Aurelianische

Mauer um Rom (13).“

Comparing the architecture of New York City to the antique city wall around Ancient

Rome equates Ancient Rome with the United States and thus evokes the notion of the empire while Brecht’s poem62 points to New York City as an imaginary, dream-like metropolis. One can

61 See Ulrich Greiner’s review of Woraus wir gemacht sind in Die Zeit on October 5, 2006.

62 See Brecht’s poem “Von Armen B.B.“ It reads: “Wir sind gesessen ein leichtes Geschlechte/In Häusern, die für unzerstörbar galten/so haben wir gebaut die langen Gehäuse des Eiland/Manhattan/Und die dünnen Antennen, die das Atlantische Meer/unterhalten.“

110 argue that Hettche’s analogy references the hegemonic power of the United States given the controversial foreign politics of the United States after the attacks of 9/11.

The narrative introduces the notion of imperialism with regard to space when the text establishes a geographical border between the center and periphery. Kalf leaves New York City, the center of the empire, and travels to Marfa, a small provincial town in South Texas near the

Mexican border. Hettche himself visited the town in 2002 and published an essay on Marfa’s cultural scene initiated by renowned sculptor Donald Judd.63 Marfa is also linked to the myth of the Frontier since the town was settled near the rail tracks in the late 19th century. Frederick

Jackson Turner discussed the notion of the Frontier in his influential essay “The significance of the Frontier in American History:“64

The Frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The

wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes

of travels, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe.

It strips off the garment of civilization and arrays him in hunting shirt and the moccasin.

[…] Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the Old Europe,

not simply the development of Germanic germs, any more than the first phenomenon was

a case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact is, that here is a new product that is

American. (33-34)

As laid out by Turner, the notion of border represents expansion. Aleida Assmann calls the myth of the Frontier an inherent part of American identity which can be seen in the hegemonic

63 See Hettche’s Fahrtenbuch. 157-168. 64 See Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner 31-60.

111 behavior of the U.S. relations to foreign countries in the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Protagonist Niklas Kalf undergoes a process of alienation while staying in Marfa, “Ich bin ja nicht mehr jung, dachte er plötzlich. Sein ganzes Leben in Deutschland schien ihm unendlich fern. Mit heißem Neid erkannte er, daß er auch hier hätte geboren werden können, im Zentrum der Welt (98). His alienation, however, does not lead to Americanization, a process which has happened to him naturally while growing up West Germany, but to a resigned reflection of current changes between new and old world, “wir sind die ersten, überlegte er, die es nicht mehr hierher zieht. All die Emigranten haben hier noch ihr Glück gesucht, im Herzen des Imperiums.

Doch der Sog ist vorüber, dachte Kalf (124).

The relationship between the United States and Europa has been tense due to U.S. foreign policy after September 11, 2001 which following scene illustrates:

Der Redetext wurde über zwei Telepromter beidseitig des Pults eingespielt.

Keinen Moment ließ Bush die Delegierten aus den Augen, sein Blick schweifte wie der

eines wachsamen Tieres von links nach rechts und wieder zurück. Wie die gelben Augen

eines Wolfs, dachte Kalf. […] >We must stand up for our security, and for the permanent

rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United State of America

will make that stand.< Der Präsident machte eine Pause und zog seinen kleinen Mund

zusammen wie zu einem gehauchten Kuss. Krieg umgab ihn wie Unsterblichkeit. (26)

The author uses a montage of authentic documentation and an analogy to an animal, a wolf specifically, to ridicule the American President G.W. Bush. The comparison evokes a prominent passage to Thomas Hobbes theoretical text Leviathan, in which he claimed that man is wolf to man. In the context of the first anniversary of 9/11 and the President’s speech, G.W. Bush holds

112 two positions: He is the executive branch of the government as well as Commander-in-Chief.

Horst Bredekamp utilizes Hobbs political vocabulary when “ die mediate Urszene des 11.

September als Anti-Leviathan“ or “Sicherheitsbestimmungen über das Verhältnis zwischen Staat und bürgerlichen Grundrechten“ is constructed and discussed.65 This critique of President Bush can be interpreted as a imperial presidency in the wake of 9/11.66 The term goes back to the U.S. historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who describes excessive force of power of the Executive branch, which can be claimed for the legitimization of torture during Bush's presidency.

Towards the end of the novel, our protagonist Niklas Kalf travels from Marfa, Texas to

California. His destination is Pacific Palisades, an affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles. This is also the legendary place where German (exiled) intellectuals gathered during the Second World

War, so-called “Weimar under Palmen.“67 Kalf visits Eugen Meerkatz’ widow who resides at 520

Paseo Miramar, also known as Villa Aurora in real life, Lion and Martha Feuchtwanger’s mansion during the Second World War and known meeting place of exiled artists and intellectuals. Nowadays Villa Aurora houses three to four German writers-in-residence per year.

Thomas Hettche was also a recipient of this writing fellowship in 2002.68 Kalf’s journey ends in downtown Los Angeles, a place which Hettche calls “Ort, an dem Los Angeles tatsächlich

Amerika ist“ (Fahrtenbuch 176). He finds his wife and his newborn son in a former silent film movie theater, thus referencing the myth of old Hollywood. The birth of his son at the end of the

65 See Horst Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbs, der Leviathan. Das Urbild des modernen Staats und seine Gegenbilder (1651-2001). 158 66 Bernd Greiner, a politcial scientist, references Bush’s ‘imperial presidency’ in his book Der Tag, die Angst, die Folgen numerous times. 67 See Silke Schulenberg. Pacific Palisades. Wege deutschsprachiger Schriftsteller ins kalifornische Exil 1932-1941. 68See Hettche’s Fahrtenbuch. 169-178.

113 novel signals the notion of natality and can be interpreted as a possible future or a new beginning regarding the traumatized German-American transatlantic relationship after 2003.

Woraus wir gemacht sind is an prime example of the traditional genre of the so-called

Amerikaroman in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The novel depicted different images that are associated with the notion of Amerika: the Frontier myth, the settlement history,

European immigrants, a place of exile for intellectuals during the Second World War, and last but not least, the discussion of “the war on terror“ as a political ramification in the wake of Nine

Eleven. The notion of imperialism and overuse of power is also emphasized. It suggests arrogance that can be misinterpreted abroad. In addition to that, the novel thematizes the literary motive of dreams: when Niklas and Liz arrive in New York City, there are in “einer Jetblase aus

Traum und Halbschlaf“ (11). We find many dream metaphors (22, 66), dream sceneries (155,

160, 234, 282) and most importantly the notion of the American Dream as the pursuit of happiness. By referencing Hollywood, we are reminded of term Traumfabrik or dream factory where we find projections of wishful thinking; therefore, it can be argued that Amerika functions as a template of dreams. The ending of the novel could also be interpreted as a dream, an opportunity for a new transatlantic partnership.

114 The Best and the Worst of Two Worlds: Thomas Lehr’s September. Fata Morgana. (2010)

The last piece of literature I would like to discuss is Thomas Lehr’s latest novel September. Fata

Morgana. (2010), a fragmented, self-reflexive narrative infused with poetic language, paints a multi-faceted picture of not only individual German, but also non-German fates who are faced with the terrorist attack and its global consequences of 9/11.

Thomas Lehr, born in 1957 as a post war child, first studied biochemical engineering in Berlin and worked as a computer programmer at the FU Berlin before becoming a novelist. His first critically acclaimed novel Nabokovs Katze (1999) deals with an old 68er protagonist Georg who attends to a relationship with an 20-year older woman Camille in an erotic-obsessive fashion. On many occasions, Lehr mentions that the novel was semi-biographical. Since then, he has become interested in interdisciplinary topics, for example combining science and philosophy in his novel

42.69

Lehr then moved on to a more current and controversial topic: a fictional analysis of a post-9/11 world. According to an interview with Deutschlandradio, Lehr was very distraught by the terrorist attacks and dealt with his shock by collecting material on the subject, which later extended to gathering information on the Iraq war. He asked Islamic scholars Stefan Weidner and

Angelika Neuwirth to assist him and give him advice and reading material. Later on, he visited

Syria and Jordan. In his travel diary, he explained that he only visited Baghdad since it was too

69 Published in 2007, this novel 42 concerns a group of scientists visiting CERN (the European Center for Nuclear Research) in Geneva. After visiting the laboratories, the scientists step out of the building only to realize that time has stopped. They are trapped in the 42nd second at 12:47pm on one summer day in August - yet their personal time seems to run as nothing has happened. It was the first time that one of Lehr’s works was short-listed for the German Bookprize in 2007.

115 dangerous in rural areas.70 The most important source of inspiration was his friendship with the great Iraqi writer Fadhil al-Azzawi. When Lehr was done collecting and discussing recent events with his friends, he decided to put his information into a novel.

For the first time, Germany is official tied to 9/11. By discussing unexpected loss and overcoming grief of a German-American in the United States, the novel explicitly constructs a narrative of German victimhood.71 At the same time, readers are also presented with a non-

German, Iraqi perspective on the repercussions of 9/11 and the consequent war in Iraq. The author Thomas Lehr lends a voice to four narrators: (1) Tariq, a Paris-educated physician who has practiced medicine for over thirty years; (2) Muna, Tariq‘s daughter who is killed in a terrorist attack alongside her mother on a Baghdad market square in 2004; (3) Martin, a German

Studies professor living in Massachusetts who was previously married to Amanda and his now divorced; (4) Martin’s daughter Sabrina who gets killed alongside her mother during the plane attack of 9/11 in the World Trade Center when she visiting her mother Amanda‘s workplace.

Both Martin and Tariq are confronted with terrorist attacks: Martin loses his daughter and his ex- wife on 9/11. Tariq loses his wife and daughter in a bomb attack in Baghdad. Although they never know of each other, their lives are intrinsically linked by sharing the same fate of losing members of their families. Both men also make attempts to come to terms with their fates by reflecting on the events instead of resorting to violence. Their education let both men on opposite sides reflect on the respective attacks rather than turn into blind fundamentalists. Sabrina‘s father

70 See Thomas Lehr, “Ausbussen, Toilettieren, Einbussen: Tagebuch einer sentimentalen Pauschalreise durch Jordanien und Syrien im Frühjahr 2008." Sprache im technischen Zeitalter. 409-27. 71 Else Buschheuer commented during her live blogging sessions on 9/11, she would function as a German victim since she was a German residing in New York at the moment. She said people should feel free to mourn her traumatic experience. New York Tagebuch. 205.

116 Martin, a literary scholar, is plunged into a crisis by 9/11, analyzing what triggered these attacks and why it happened. In conversation with Seymour, Amanda’s second husband, and his own desperate thoughts, Martin imagines the hate-driven “boys” who murdered his daughter, ex-wife and thousands of others. He looks for solutions, attempts to shed light on the turbulent history of

American-Iraqi relations, spends time researching the history and culture of Islamism, but finds no sufficient answers – other than that he has “no right to hate”.

Tariq has a clearer but more cynical view of life than his daughter Muna. He treats his patients as best he can under the conditions of the UN embargo and later counts up the victims of

Saddam Hussein and the American bombings. Tariq’s narrative reveals an Iraqi society

“berberised” by the war and its consequences – families huddled together, looting and kidnapping – although he had hoped the American occupation would bring improvements.

Thomas Lehr abandons almost all punctuation and lets his characters tell their stories in by reliving positive and traumatic moments, digressing, weaving in their own poems and literary quotes, such as by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. Yet the strong rhythm of the author’s narration perfectly matches his four narrators’ desperate state of mind. It is by adopting these four very different perspectives that Thomas Lehr lends his book its dialogue qualities. “Only through expanding our own narrow mental confines and cultural perspectives do we have a chance for dialogue,” Lehr said in an interview with online magazine

Schau ins Blau in 2010. “The moral of the book is taking the other view. I want to give the reader the feeling of what it might be like to be on the other side.”72 The author presents the reader with two individual fates and points to same cultural roots of the two opposite worlds: the ancient city

72 See Thomas Lehr, “Embedded Poet - Thomas Lehr im Gespräch mit Schau ins Blau.“ Interview by Aura Heydenreich. Schau Ins Blau 10.2 23 Oct 2010.

117 of Babylon, located in the fertile plain between the rivers of Euphrates and Tigris in ancient

Mesopotamia. By presenting these two worlds in dialogue with each other, the reader is presented with two sides of opposite cultures. The author’s intent is simple: only though dialogue, respect and acknowledgment of the Other, one finds self-knowledge.

By looking closely at the title, the reader can deduce that this narrative thematizes the relationship between the Occident and the Orient. Numerous metaphors of mirrors can be found throughout the text. For example, the voice of Tariq start with a reference to a mirror:

Schnippe an das Glas es genügt um

auf die andere Seite zu kommen die feine Spiegelfläche löst sich auf

und findet

umgekehrt

wieder zusammen wie aus tanzenden Scherben im Inneren des

Gegenblicks der langsam zu sich kommt. (22)

The mirror here does not function as a visual medium, but rather as portal or passage between narratives of two different worlds. It does not function as identification, but attempts to render images of “ west-östliche Spiegelung“ (24). The text interweaves textual references with stylistic combinations with regard to this cultural dichotomy. The references to Goethe’s poetry collection

West-östlicher Divan, collections of stories by Persian poet Hafis and Iraqi contemporary poetry are of particular interest in this context. Book critic Helmut Böttiger calls it “die moderne, assoziativ wechselnde westliche Perspektive mit dem rhapsodische-märchenhaften orientalischen

118 Erzählen.“73

The combination of different narrative strategies supports a specialty of the text because of the lack of punctuation. The missing punctuation forces the reader to focus on the text itself and to pay attention to the he poetic function of language. The narrative is divided into four narrators: Martin, Tariq, Muna and Sabrina. They each narrate in sub-sections using a combination if narrative strategies, such as inner monologue, stream of consciousness, memories and lyrical passages. There is evidence of three important symbols which can be found in the titles of the three chapters: ship, tower and paradise. These images appear in different contexts and text passages throughout the novel.

The first chapter Das Schiff introduces the main characters and ends with the terrorist attacks of

9/11. The ship functions as a symbol of new beginnings, youth, and freedom for both daughters.

Especially for Muna, who has grown up during the regime of Saddam Hussein, the symbol of the ship adds an utopian function:

ich wünsche mir ein Schiff

unser Schiff

Schwester wie die Arche Noah oder das große Segelschiff von Utnapischtim das der

Sintflut entrann der Feuerwelle der Gewalt entrinnen mit allen verstümmelten unter-

ernährten ausgemergelten todkranken Kindern die wir auf weißen sauberen kühlen Betten

hinauffliegen in das Land das es

noch nirgendwo gegeben hat oder etwas doch (63)74

73 See Helmut Böttiger, “Babel. Thomas Lehre erstaunlicher Roman ‚September‘ überspannt Orient and Okzident. Süddeutsche Zeitung 16 Aug 2010. 74 All quotes from are taken from the book as they appear in the original, this includes the poetic structure, gaps in lines, capitalization of certain words, etc.

119 This passage links the biblical motif of Noah’s Ark and the Flood taken from the Gilgamesh epic, oldest literary text of the world. The reference to Gilgamesh evokes a connection to the rivers of

Euphrates and Tigris in ancient Mesopotamia, the seat of old Syrian and Sunni high cultures.

These cultures invented cuneiform script and built architectural master works of art, such as the

Ishtar Gate and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient

World. In the narrating present, however, life in Iraq is described as life-threatening due to the

UN embargo after the Second Gulf War. There is no basic health care available, so that Muna imagines a ship transporting the necessary good for medical treatment. The ship reoccurs as a motif in the novel in different contexts. For example, there is the aircraft carrier where G.W.

Bush let the public know about the taking of Baghdad on May 1, 2003 (360), the legend of the

Mayflower (38) and the manufacturing of the “Resolute Desk“ from wood of a British ship at the end of the 19th century.

The reader finds out about the fathers’ respective lives which we are told in flashbacks.

Martin's life story consists of divorce, alcoholism and midlife crisis whereas Tariq’s life gives the reader insides into the history of Iraq starting in the 1970s. Tariq, who left Iraq for Paris in order to study medicine in 1967, comes back in 1974 as a young doctor full of hope after experiencing the student revolutions of 1968 in France, “[der Irak] würde sich rezivilisieren weil es die älteste der Zivilisationen schon in sich trug und das Rad und die Schrift erfunden hatte“ (52). Tariq experiences the rise of Saddam Hussein, his totalitarian regime, the First and Second Gulf War as well as life under the UN embargo. Tarik and his wife Farida, his daughters Jasmine and Muna, and his son Sami suffer under the terror of the regime, the consolidation of constitutional powers,

120 indoctrination and propaganda. Tariq's and Muna’s accounts describe everyday life in detail until the chapter ends with the the terrorist attacks of 9/11 from Tariq’s perspective:

ich sehe

durch die Scheiben eines Restaurants in der Jordan-Straße

von links nach rechts zuckende Schrift wild gestikulierende TV-Reporter

die Feuer- und Trümmer Wolke die aus Wolkenkratzern hervorquillt wie blühendes

Mark aus den Stängeln einer Blume hinter dem Glas eines Bildschirms auf der

Theke eines Restaurants am Nisur-Platz ein Wolkenkratzer ein zweiter brennender

Turm ich sehe durch das Fenster wie

in den geöffneten Schädel eines Irren

es ist das World Trade Center beide Türme brennen und ich wende mich ab

für eine Sekunde als könnte ich es ausblenden. (138-39)

The framing here is twofold: Tariq views the news coverage of the attacks in the television through the window of the restaurant. It emphasizes the visual perspectives and broadcast processes of 9/11 images. Yet his description of the TV images are culturally coded. The narrator uses the metaphor of the broken flower that would only be known to someone from Iraq. The argument that literature is no longer able to function “als ein Erinnerungsort” has therefore been amended. While location of the catastrophe is still transferred from New York City to the television screen, the individual interpretation may depend on in which culture the spectator lives or which the language he or she speaks. This culturally-coded interpretation can only happen, I argue, because of the distance in time to the attack which allows time for research and reflection.

121 After Tariq’s description of the the terrorist attacks, Martin memories follow. He spends the day at this desk in his house in Amherst, a small college town 150 miles north of New York. He only hears about the death of his daughter Sabrina and his ex-wife in the afternoon when Seymour,

Amanda’s new husband, calls him. He turns on the television:

DER FERNSEHAPPARAT

ich bin da ist es

da

ich

(werde es niemals

berühren können ich)

stehe

auf dem gläsernen fliegenden Teppich zweihundert Meter hoch in der Luft über

Downtown Manhattan vor dem Oberkörper eines CNN-Reporters (101)

The text passage, written in the present tense, signifies the immediacy of the event and the speechlessness due to the TV images which function as a gap in the text. Fragmented syntax and lack of an image description show Martin’s shock and dismay. Only through the eyes of the news reporter, does Martin realize what has happened. He uses the concept of a “gläsernen fliegenden

Teppich:“

es wird nur Zeit sich

zu spalten mein Bruder etwas von uns muss über Dingen stehen über dem gläsernen

122 Teppich über dem zerkochten zerrissenen zerstörten Herz es wird jetzt unerbittlich

klar der in der Höhe des 80. Stockwerks aus einem klaffenden Schlitz qualmende

Nordturm

BREAKING NEWS

AMERICA UNDER ATTACK

TERRORISTS CRASH HIJACKED AIRLINES CNN

INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER LIVE (142)

Paradoxically, the image of the flying carpet as a protective screen makes 9/11 real because of the reference to the burning north tower. Reoccurring fragmented syntax, disassociated headlines show no coherent narration and signify the enduring shock. Because Seymour tells Martin how he witnessed the attacks in Manhattan (143), Martin can recollect and distance himself, so that is able to speak coherently again. Seymour’s witness account of 9/11 functions as an additional perspective for the reader.

The second chapter Die Türme is set in 2002. Meanwhile Martin moved from Amherst to

Manhattan for his sabbatical. The individual grief he experiences is embedded in the national mourning process of the United States, a process that is more or less guided by the government’s collective patriotism and the longing for revenge75 or retaliation against the perpetrators. Martin lets his grief guide by agreeing with the U.S. government to bomb Afghanistan and to bring down the Taliban regime, “mich stören die Bomben nicht im Geringsten ich wollte nur eine erbarmungslose (nein: effektive) Verbrecherjagd (184).“ He can, however, move away and let go

75 This notion of revenge is can be viewed a biblical or Christian motif and thus it could be argued that is is inherent to the myth of the Frontier and the belief of manifest destiny of the 19th century.

123 of from the psychological process of turning grief into anger in time:

aber man hat kein Recht auf Hass es gibt kein Recht es ist nur

so leicht so natürlich so widerlich

menschlich

mache eine Milliarde Muslime für einige hunderte Wahnsinnige verantwortlich ich

habe es nicht vor und ich kann doch nicht verhindern ganze Länder zu verachten

wegen ihrer Rückständigkeit ihrer Aggressivität ihrer wirtschaftlichen Erbärmlichkeit

ihrer Unfähigkeit für die Gesundheit die Bildung und den Wohlstand ihrer Bewohnender

ausreichend zu sorgen

tagelang

dann wieder Angst der Überdruss die Müdigkeit

das drückende schlechte Gewissen der Ölfresser-Nationen […]

die alte arabische Kultur interessierte mich wenig als ich anfing über Goethe und

Marianne zu lesen nur die Architektur und die rätselhafte Schritt die ich schon immer

hatte entziffern wollen und einige Gedichte vielleicht oder die Märchen aus

Tausendundeiner Nacht die Sabrina so gerne las

WESHALB HASSEN SIE UNS

SIE die hasserfüllten Terroristen WIR die zivilisierte Menschheit

das einfache Bild auf allen Kanälen aber wie sieht das zutreffende aus (200-02)

Martin attempts to comprehend the political reasons and what motivated the terrorists to commit such an atrocity. He starts to ask questions about the relationship between these two opposite

124 worlds: examines history, politics and the economy. Being a scholar of Goethe, Martin uses

Goethe’s inquisitive nature about Islam as a template. Goethe’s autobiographical text Kampagne in Frankreich which describes his participation in the Austro-Prussian war against France, serves as an indication for Martin that Goethe’s oeuvre influences the current relationship between literature and war (413). He designates Goethe as an “embedded poet,“ (413) a modification of the term embedded journalist who is a war news correspondent embedded in a military unit.

Martin begins to research the Arab world, countries of Islam, the perpetrators of 9/11, the history of Afghanistan and the oil industry. By using his research as an outlet and including the attacks of 9/11 in a larger discourse of wars and political conflicts, he can peacefully grief for his daughter. This notion is symbolized in the towers (201). The towers turns into a symbol of political strategies of power. People lose track of the mechanisms of political power, yet they have to deal with their actions and consequences.

In contrast to the title, the third and final chapter Paradies depicts the life of Tariq and

Muna during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2004 “OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM“ (351). The beginning intertwines two perspectives from opposite worlds: so if one of the two perspectives is experienced on location, the second is always medially received and transcribed by the other.

First, the reader is exposed to Martin’s idea of the invasion:

Krieg als Fortsetzung des Computerspiels mit verheerenden Mitteln ein

blitzartiges Zerfleischen der Angriffs- und Verteidigungsorgane des Gegners durchdacht

von intellektuell wirkenden und auch tatsächliche promovierten jungenhaften Generälen

digitalen Technikern des Todes die in Qatar in einer Wüsten-Zeltstadt ihr Central

Command unterhielten. (352)

125 The literary depiction of the Iraq War in this novel thematizes the mediatization of modern war, in which media serve as military and news correspondent at the same time,76 a notion that

Mitchell states in his essay “The Remains of the Day“(2001). Images have functioned as tactical weapons and aided in the conquering of enemies. The militaristic use of images is no different today. Images produced by the mass media serve as tactical weapons in modern warfare. With this in mind, Mitchell claims that the modern world, “in conjunction with media technologies,” has become a “military-entertainment complex.”77

The relationship between war and literature is therefore essential to the novel and central to my investigation of cultural products set in post-9/11 Germany. The term “embedded poet“ which is suggested here in the novel incorporates the interplay between literature and war. For instance, the novel uses the images78 of tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003 as well as his arrest on December 13, 2003 near the river Tigris as a prime example of said interplay. The novel is able to convert these images and transform them into a narrative.

The conditions of life in Baghdad are less than ideal, so Tariq moves his family to a cottage located on the outskirts of the city. Tariq and Muna follow the media coverage of the war, but more so suffer from the bombing in real life, “wir wiegten uns mit geschlossenen Augen stundenlang im Dunkeln wir krallten uns am Flimmern des Bildschirm fest während die

Hauswände bebten“ (371).

With the Iraq War as a literary motive describing the U.S. military invasion and its

76 See Beuthner/Buttler/Fröhlich/Weichert. Eds. Bilder des Terrors - Terror der Bilder? Krisenberichterstattung am und nach dem 11. September 103 77 See W. T. J. Mitchell, “The War on Images” https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0112/features/ remains-2.html 78 These key images are an inherent part of the public WTC image archive.

126 coalition troops in March 2003 and its official ending in August 2010, September. Fata Morgana. thematizes the ongoing and open-ended world-political ramifications of the attacks on September

11, 2001. Despite the sudden fall of Baghdad and the subsequent overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and the newly established elections when U.S. occupation ended, the conditions in Iraq are still precarious and unstable. It is apparent that Iraq’s recent conflict-laden history with three consecutive wars and a decade-long dictatorship has not been dealt with.79 The country faces current civil-war like conditions, tensions between certain ethnic and religious groups, permanent threats of suicide attackers and bombings.

The novel describes how the end of the dictatorship and with the start of the occupation the living conditions of Tariq’s family more and more deteriorate. Mona has to drop out of university because of the fear of daily bombings and kidnapping threats. She can only stay at home and work at home alongside her mother. At the same time, her brother Sami becomes radicalized since witnessing the murder of his neighbor. He watches Al-Qaida videos online and joins fundamentalist groups. When he kills Muna’s friend Nabil because of his ethnicity, war has finally encroached upon the family. When Tariq’s medical practice is ransacked and destroyed,

Tariq is desperate:

der ganze

Auswurf von Gewalt

den wir täglich sehen scheint mir so nur wie ein Sichtbarere ein vulkanisches

Durchbrechen des unterirdischen Hasses dessen Lava seit drei Jahrzehnten

unter der Kruste brodelt aber so leicht ist es nicht im Moment scheint alles doch um

79 See Thomas Lehr, “Ausbussen, Toilettieren, Einbussen: Tagebuch einer sentimentalen Pauschalreise durch Jordanien und Syrien im Frühjahr 2008." Sprache im technischen Zeitalter. 409-27.

127 so viel schlimmer geworden zu sein als es war es ist nur leicht zu sehen […] dass

jedes Land innerlich verrottet das seine Gefängnisse zu Kerkern und seine Wärter zu

Folterknechten macht die

orangefarbenen Overalls von Guantanamo

jener

mit Elektroschockkabeln verdrahtete Kapuzenmann auf der Kiste die

nackten Menschenpyramiden

von Abu-Ghraib

werden sich ins Mark der so genannten freien Welt graben wie das Emblem der

brennenden Türme (381)

Tarik's reflections reference the iconic image of the burning towers of the World Trade Center, the iconic protests of the hooded man, the prisoners of Guantánamo and the the politics of iconoclasm since 2001. Former hidden acts of violence in Iraq are contrasted to the explicitly visual images of violence of the Iraq War. Furthermore, Tariq’s bitterness results from the realization that the West did not offer its help when the Hussein’s totalitarian regime ended in contract to Tariq’s expectations. He is more than disappointed in Western politics as they betray their and Tariq’s own ideals of democracy and human rights, as witnessed in the Abu Ghraib’s and Guantanamo’s abuse and torture of prisoners and detainees.

128 September. Fata Morgana. as a German contemporary novel that grapples with Nine

Eleven and the Iraq War and as such addresses in a larger sense notions of trauma, violence and war in the beginning of the twenty-first century. The novel offers a genuine literary language that transforms politics into literature. By criticizing the fictional character of President G.W. Bush and the Iraq War, the novel seeks to position itself within the genre of a political novel whose literary language is contrasted to language used in political and journalistic discourses. The text, whose material was superbly researched and is narrated in an intensive poetic language, creates an indirect program for embedded poeticism as an informed literary narration of aesthetic character about the present time. In an interview on the occasion of Osama Bin Laden’s death,

Thomas Lehr takes the concept of the “embedded poet“ seriously when he suggests to famous

American author Thomas Pynchon that the topic of his next book should be a thriller surrounding the killing of said militant and founder of al-Qaeda.80

80 See Daniel Haas, “Es ist gut, wenn starke Symbole fallen. Ein Gespräch mit dem Schriftsteller Thomas Lehr.“ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2 May 2011.

129 CONCLUSION

The New Normal

“Many things are over. The narrative ends in the rubble, and it is left to us to

create the counter-narrative.“ Don DeLillo

At the end of a long investigation of various texts and films that concentrate on 9/11, it fair to say that the body of 9/11 literature has been completed. The timespan for publications has been roughly between 2001 and 2010. I consider Thomas Lehr’s September. Fata Morgana. the last substantial work that dealt with the discourse of Nine Eleven and its aftermath. Current events, however, especially global politics, are still influenced by the repercussions of 9/11. Not for nothing do we live in a post-9/11 era. Rarely does a month go by, when there has not been a terrorist attack in some form. As long as terrorism happens, authors will see to it that it is referenced in contemporary writings. Authors will not necessarily thematize 9/11, but they will always recall and use the attacks as a backdrop or a point of departure.

Germany is not unfamiliar when it comes to dealing with terrorism. This form of terrorism is classified or used to be know as homegrown terrorism in the 1970s. German literature has produced many forms of literary responses to the German terrorist group Red Army

Faction. This form of terrorism, however, was domestic. This current type of terrorism that has permeated the Western world since September 11, 2001 does not know borders. The attacks have put a global community in shock, because we did not expect such an attack, let alone an attack on American soil. Therefore immediate literary responses concentrated on what Inge Stefan and

130 Alexandra Tacke call “Aufmerksamkeitsterror 2001“81 and produced what I call narratives of rupture: new forms of narration, experimented on style and created hybrid texts that focus on an interplay between words and images. No one made the connection to compare 9/11 to discourses of RAF literature yet. 9/11 prompted “das Ende der Spassgesellschaft“82 of the 1990s. Germany in the years between 1990 and 2000 was concerned primarily with the aftermath of reunification and in the process of negotiating “competing versions of a new German ‚normality’“ (Taberner) which, as literary scholars have shown, is reflected in the literature of those years. After

2007/2008 scholars vehemently discuss of Islamic terrorism and domestic terrorism of the RAF.

Particularly, the theme of “innere Sicherheit“83 overlaps in both RAF and Al-Qaida discourses.

The idea of homeland security is a inherent part of a post 9/11-world. The film Schläfer, for example, highlights the political and public paranoia and distrust against muslims. Transnational terrorism, the ongoing conflict between the West and Islam, the fear of the unknown will be central to German literature in the twenty-first century. Transnational migrants, as well as many non-ethnic Germans and newly German residents will continue to change the face of the country.

Instead of fanning anti-immigration sentiments by declaring multiculturalism to be dead, it would be better to promote a more open society and actually live the politics of integration.

The phrase “Es wird nichts mehr so sein wie es vorher war!“ which display the shock and dismay on September 12, 2001, has become the new normal. Literary reactions to 9/11 published after 2005 - I call them narratives of continuity - have become nuanced and refined. The distance

81 See Inge Stephan and Alexandra Tacke, Eds. NachBilder der RAF. Einleitung. 18. 82 See Anke Biendarra, Germans Going Global: Contemporary Literature and Cultural Globalization. Coda. 190. 83 See Inge Stephan and Alexandra Tacke, Eds. NachBilder der RAF. Einleitung. 13.

131 in time made it possible. One the one hand, authors Katharina Hacker’s and Thomas Hettche’s characters attempt to figure out how to co-exist individually in this post-9/11 era. Characters from both novels can be described as the self-centered, unfeeling, politically disengaged thirty somethings. 9/11 merely serves as a real point in history. One the other hand, September. Fata

Morgana. functions as an instrument to come to terms with the trauma of 9/11 and its aftermath.

Thomas Lehr had seven years to research material, to comment on and interweave contemporary issues into the novel, such as dealing with grief on a personal level and addressing the political larger political discourse from two opposite viewpoints. From a psychological standpoint, the author Thomas Lehr “hat sich freigeschrieben.“84

German language authors will continue to reflect these larger developments and contribute through their literary texts what an essay or a newspaper article cannot, namely create moments of intensity, surprise, alienation and beauty through aesthetic form.

84See Daniel Haas, “Es ist gut, wenn starke Symbole fallen. Ein Gespräch mit dem Schriftsteller Thomas Lehr.“ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2 May 2011.

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