“Die geschriebene Version wollte geschrieben werden, die vielen anderen wollten es nicht” The portrayal of Nazi perpetrators in German novels since 1990 and the role of historiographic metafiction Kylie Giblett Department of Germanic Studies Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Sydney A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This is to certify that, to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purpose. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Signed: Name: Kylie Giblett Date: 13 May 2016 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks go to: Professor Yixu Lü – for her wisdom, kindness, guidance and constructive criticism throughout the PhD process. Dr Andrea Bandhauer – for being such an inspirational teacher that I felt compelled to continue my studies in German. Bernhard Schlink, Ulla Hahn, Tanja Dückers and Marcel Beyer – for providing the raw materials. Erling & Merete Nielsen – for their example of lifelong study and for providing me with a home in Germany, despite being Danes. David & Rosalie Morphett – for their constant support from my very first day. Elizabeth – for being an angel and putting up with “Mum’s thesis” for most of her life thus far. Ray – for his constant love, encouragement and support, and for making it possible for me to undertake this project. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION 1 1. Historical background 4 2. Literary background 19 3. Choice of texts 27 4. Postmemory and historiographic metafiction 32 II. BERNHARD SCHLINK – DER VORLESER 44 1. Introduction 44 2. Perpetrator or victim? 46 2.1 Review of secondary literature 46 2.2 Hanna as a victim? – the justice system 50 2.3 Hanna as a victim? – illiteracy 62 2.4 Hanna as a perpetrator – Hanna’s own voice 76 2.5 Hanna as a perpetrator – the Jewish survivor 80 2.6 Hanna as a perpetrator – Väterliteratur 83 3. Reading Der Vorleser as historiographic metafiction 95 3.1 Explicit thematisation of historiographical criticism 97 3.2 Use of metafictional elements to thematise historiographical critiques 100 3.3 The effect of historiographic metafiction on the portrayal of Hanna – a cause of controversy? 108 4. Conclusion 112 III. ULLA HAHN – UNSCHARFE BILDER 114 1. Introduction 114 2. Musbach – perpetrator or victim? 121 2.1 Musbach’s self-portrait 121 2.1.1 Musterschüler der Vergangenheitsbewältigung? 121 2.1.2 Strategies of self-exculpation – identification with the resistance and distancing from the “real” Nazis 124 2.1.3 Strategies of self-exculpation – fear of reprisals 128 2.1.4 Strategies of self-exculpation – relativisation and other excuses 131 2.1.5 The trope of German victimhood 133 2.1.6 The purpose of Musbach’s narrative 136 2.2 Counter-narratives 141 2.2.1 Katja as a corrective to Musbach 141 2.2.2 The role of minor characters in the Thesenroman 146 2.3 “Zweikampf zwischen Tochter und Vater” – Väterliteratur reprise 149 2.3.1 Oedipal overtones 151 2.3.2 Intergenerational power play 155 2.3.3 Unrealised potential for consensus 161 2.3.4 Katja’s triumph over Musbach 166 3. Reading Unscharfe Bilder as historiographic metafiction and its effect on the portrayal of Musbach 168 3.1 Explicit thematisation of historiographical criticism – the narrativity of history 168 3.2 Historical source material – implications of limitations and multiplicity 172 3.3 Effect of historiographic metafiction on the portrayal of Musbach 182 4. Conclusion 184 IV. TANJA DÜCKERS – HIMMELSKÖRPER 188 1. Introduction 188 2. Jo and Mäxchen – perpetrators or victims? 194 2.1 Family conversations 194 2.2 “Germans as victims” – Jo and Mäxchen’s self-portrayal 196 2.3 Undermining Jo and Mäxchen’s “Germans as victims” narrative 204 2.3.1 Jo and Mäxchen incriminate themselves 204 2.3.2 Incriminating physical evidenceI 208 2.3.3 Renate as a corrective – continuing the patterns of Väterliteratur 212 3. Freia – a third generation approach 220 3.1 Germans as perpetrators or victims? – the third generation view 220 3.2 Integrating the perpetrators – the third generation approach 228 4. Himmelskörper as historiographic metafiction 238 4.1 The narrativity of history and the third generation approach 238 4.2 Questioning historical sources – how can we know the “truth” about the past? 242 4.2.1 Eyewitness accounts 242 4.2.2 Photographs 245 4.2.3 Memorial locations 247 4.3 Implications of historiographic metafiction for the portrayal of the perpetrators – comparison with Der Vorleser and Unscharfe Bilder 250 5. Conclusion 254 V. MARCEL BEYER – FLUGHUNDE 257 1. Introduction 257 2. Karnau – portrayal of a perpetrator 260 2.1 The reception of the novel, the intention of the author, and the Täterperspektive 260 2.2 Karnau’s crimes 267 2.3 Karnau – sympathetic human or psychopathic monster? 269 2.3.1 The absence of victimhood 269 2.3.2 Humanising Karnau? 274 2.3.3 The Nazi scientist 280 2.3.4 The psychopath 287 2.3.5 Karnau’s psychopathy and the murder of the Goebbels children 295 3. Reading Flughunde as historiographic metafiction 303 3.1 Der Verfremdungseffekt 304 3.2 Blurring the lines between fact and fiction and the problems of representation 307 3.3 Problems with historical sources 311 4. Conclusion 319 VI. CONCLUSION 323 BIBLIOGRAPHY 329 I. INTRODUCTION “Die geschriebene Version wollte geschrieben werden, die vielen anderen wollten es nicht”1. When German fiction authors have written about their country’s Nazi past after the caesura of 1990, which “version” of that past have they chosen to write? The reunification of Germany in 1990 set in train a number of dramatic changes in Germany’s political, social and cultural landscape which necessitated a reconstitution of German national identity, including a reassessment of the newly unified nation’s approach to its common Third Reich heritage. Have these developments altered German literary approaches to that heritage? Which “version” of the Nazi past have post-1990 fiction authors chosen to tell? These are the primary questions I will explore in this thesis. In order to examine this topic, I propose to use the perpetrator/victim dichotomy which has formed a such an important focus of German discussions about the Nazi past from 1945 onwards as a key to determining the attitudes to that past expressed in post-1990 German literature because the post-1990 reassessment of the Nazi past has tended to manifest itself in the form of contests between competing conceptions of Germans as either perpetrators or victims. This continues a pattern which may be observed in German discussions about the Third Reich from 1945, in which literature has played an essential part both as a reflector of and contributor to the public discourse on this subject. This continuing importance of the perpetrator/victim dichotomy in German public discourse of the post-1990 period shows that it 1 Schlink, Bernhard Der Vorleser Zurich: Diogenes, 1997 (first published 1995) at 205 – 206. 1 remains relevant as a means of understanding contemporary attitudes to the Nazi past and its place in German identity and suggests that it will prove to be a useful key to answering questions about attitudes to the Nazi past in post- 1990 German literature. Does post-1990 literature portray Germans involved in the Third Reich as perpetrators or victims? Is this portrayal different from the presentation of the perpetrator/victim dichotomy in literature prior to 1990? Does the portrayal of Germans as perpetrators or victims in literature mirror trends in public discourse after 1990? Are the attitudes to the past expressed in literature affected by factors unrelated to unification, particularly generational changes in German society? In this thesis, I will seek to answer these questions by conducting a detailed textual analysis of the portrayal of Germans as perpetrators or victims in the following German literary texts published after 1990: • Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink; • Unscharfe Bilder by Ulla Hahn2; • Himmelskörper by Tanja Dückers3; and • Flughunde by Marcel Beyer4.5 2 Hahn, Ulla Unscharfe Bilder Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005 (first published 2003). 3 Dückers, Tanja Himmelskörper Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005 (first published 2003). 4 Beyer, Marcel Flughunde Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996 (first published 1995). 5 For brevity and ease of reference, citations from these four novels will be provided in the following format throughout this thesis: Der Vorleser = (DV [page number]); Unscharfe Bilder = (UB [page number]); Himmelskörper = (HK [page number]); and Flughunde = (FH [page number]). 2 In doing so, I acknowledge that the categories of “perpetrator” and “victim” are, in reality, not always clear-cut and that both terms may encompass grey areas of greater complexity. Not all “perpetrators” are war criminals in the judicial sense, and not all “victims” are on a par with the victims of the Holocaust. Perpetrators may also be victims and vice versa. In this thesis, my use of the perpetrator/victim dichotomy will be as a device of convenience for the purpose of analysing the approach taken to the Nazi past in the selected texts. In order to assess the portrayal of Germans as perpetrators or victims in post- 1990 German literature in more detail, I will also analyse the selected texts as historiographic metafiction. Historiographic metafiction thematises critiques of historiography which suggest that the objective “truth” about the past cannot be known, and in doing so has the potential to destabilise the basis on which we judge guilt or innocence and characterise someone as a perpetrator or a victim.