RENEGOTIATING HISTORY: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE FAMILY IN POST-1989 GERMAN LITERATURE BY REGINE CRISER DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in German in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee Associate Professor Anke Pinkert, Chair Professor Peter A. Fritzsche Associate Professor Laurie R. Johnson Professor Carl Niekerk Associate Professor Yasemin Yildiz Abstract Scholars emphasize concepts of trauma and loss to describe literary responses to the collapse of socialism in 1989. In contrast, focusing on literary representations of family, this project reveals productive coping mechanisms developed in German literature after 1989. In artistic representation, family marks the site where the GDR’s dissolution and new post-1989 beginnings are negotiated. I draw on the concepts of agency, memory, and space to show how the historical transformation in 1989 affected existing family structures and how narrative family representations negotiate the historical meaning of 1989. Situated at the intersection of literature, cultural studies, and history, this project shows how family representations constitute a privileged site of post-socialist renewals. ii Für meine Eltern, Ingrid und Peter Kroh, deren Leitspruch “Die Familie ist immer das Wichtigste.” sich sowohl während als auch in dieser Arbeit bewahrheitet hat. iii Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have been supported by many people and institutions working on this study. I want to thank the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures as well as the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics at the University of Illinois and the Max Kade Foundation for providing generous founding over the past years, which has allowed me to focus exclusively on my research and writing for an extended period of time. I am grateful for the support of the members on my Dissertation Committee, whose early feedback guided this project in the right direction and whose input allowed my own ideas to flourish. I especially want to thank Yasemin Yildiz, whose comments on the first chapter were invaluable and enriched my argument. Laurie Johnson has been an enthusiastic supporter of my work since my first day in Illinois. Her insights on my work and her outlook on life have been truly inspiring. Most of all, I would like to thank Anke Pinkert. This dissertation would not have been possible without her. As a master of the Socratic Method, her precise questions have continuously challenged me to refine my thinking and writing. Over the past five years, she has been an inspiration as scholar, teacher, and Mensch and I will always be indebted to her for her intellectual and moral support during my scholarly and personal journey. In the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures I also want to thank my fellow Graduate Students, many of whom saw this project grow from research presentations and class discussions to a full-fledged dissertation. Here, I am especially grateful to Amanda Sheffer, who so kindly shared incredibly helpful insights and experiences from her dissertation writing process. Sören Priebe was an important interlocutor and our exchanges shaped this project, especially in its early stages. Kurt Hollender’s sedulous proof reading that he generously offered and performed under a lot of time pressure has greatly improved my academic prose. All mistakes that are left in the text are solely mine. I will never have enough words to thank Sarah Henneböhl for her friendship over the past five years. I would have not made it through the ups and downs of Graduate School without her by my side. Sarah, “Your heart is true, iv you’re a pal and a confidant.” I have also received a lot of moral support from the “other side of the ocean.” Siiri and Andreas Buck, Kathrin Roth, Ines Schubert, and Jenny Linek have been tireless cheerleaders ever since I have left Germany and I am very grateful for our many discussions about family within and often beyond the dissertation. In writing about family, I have had plenty of reasons to think about my own transatlantic family and I will never be able to thank them enough for all their monetary and especially moral support. My sister Beate has regularly provided much needed support through numerous mixed CDs. My parents, Ingrid and Peter, and my Oma Hanne-Lore in Germany have over the past five years religiously clipped every newspaper article even remotely related to my research topic. Despite the kilometers between us, they have made every effort to remain involved with every aspect of my life and for that I am incredibly grateful. I would not be who I am or where I am in my life without them. In America, Jane and Terry have offered their support so generously and this dissertation would have not been completed without Jane’s nearly infinite willingness to babysit her grandchild. Finally, there is my own little family, who grew basically alongside this dissertation and who has made my work so much more meaningful. I will forever be grateful for my husband Jason’s never-ending support. He has been not only an outstanding Research Assistant, but has also been there to keep me sane, keep me focused, and to accompany me every step on this at times crazy journey. And last but not least, there is Lea Marie, who truly is our sunshine and whose presence makes finishing this dissertation so much more special. v Table of Contents Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Unfamiliar Spaces........................................................................................................ 22 Worlds Apart: Marriages Under Pressure.......................................................................................28 Islands Instead of Bridges: East-West-Affairs ...............................................................................44 Between Refuge and Retreat: Family Substitutes ......................................................................... 58 A House is Not a Home: The Absence of Children....................................................................... 89 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................90 Chapter 2: Performing Agency.......................................................................................................94 Agency Through Hybrid Identities...............................................................................................102 The Absence of Agency................................................................................................................140 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................159 Chapter 3: Memory Contests ........................................................................................................163 Reflections of Memory: Stable Pasts Within Unstable Presents ..................................................174 Performance of Memory: Stable Frames for Unstable Pasts........................................................211 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................241 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................244 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................................252 vi Introduction During a visit to Dresden in December 1989, Helmut Kohl recalled the emotions upon the sudden opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9th that continued to define post-wall Germany immediately after the surprising end of its 40-year-long separation. He recounted: “Especially during these days, we in Germany feel like a German family again” (cited in Straughn 2007, p.110). Kohl’s statement is one of the numerous examples in post-1989 German society and culture of applying family metaphors to describe the historic event of the German unification. These metaphors range from the rhetoric about the “brothers and sisters” on the respective other side of the wall, which was already in use before 1989 (Brüns 197), to the numerous cartoons comparing the German unification to a marriage (Dueck 2001). While the sibling- metaphor attempts to masks the estrangement that developed between East and West Germans during 40 years of separation, the image of marriage already signals awareness of the distinct differences between the two partners involved as well as a critical attitude towards the assumed familial connectedness insinuated in the comparisons of East and West Germans to siblings who grew up apart from each other. The prevalence of family metaphors in the cultural and political imagination of the German unification suggests a “remarkable sticking power of a family ideal in an age in which non-familial relationships seem to be increasingly important” (Tincknell 2). Hence, this study approaches family as crucial representational construct in post-1989 literature to examine the meanings of historical change. As close readings and historical contextualization of selected post-1989 novels indicate, the family as social imaginary space is doubly charged: on the