Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Spring 5-15-2015 The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative and a Literary Language for Loss Corey Lee Twitchell Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Part of the German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Twitchell, Corey Lee, "The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative and a Literary Language for Loss" (2015). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 474. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/474 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Examination Committee: Erin McGlothlin, Chair Jennifer Kapczynski Caroline Kita Tabea Linhard Paul Michael Lützeler The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative and a Literary Language for Loss by Corey L. Twitchell A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2015 St. Louis, Missouri © 2015, Corey L. Twitchell TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………...iii Abstract of the Dissertation ………………………………………………………………….…..vi Introduction The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative and a Literary Language for Loss ……….1 Chapter 1 Imagining Jewish Agency Through the Lens of a Yiddish Literary Past: The Poetics of Movement in Edgar Hilsenrath’s Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr ………………………….......27 Chapter 2 Max Has A Screw Loose: The Dialogic, Narration and the Articulation of a Post-Perpetrator Identity in Edgar Hilsenrath’s Der Nazi und der Friseur ………………….……………………67 Chapter 3 Memorializing Lost Voices, Mediating Memory: Yiddish and Dialogicity in Fred Wander’s Der siebente Brunnen ………………………………………………………………………….113 Chapter 4 An Elegy for Ashkenaz: Yiddish, Radio, and the Dialogic in Jurek Becker’s Jakob der Lügner ………………………………………………………………………………161 Conclusion Narrative Voice and Regulating Rhetoric ……………………………………………………...206 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………215 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To borrow an idea that I propose in this manuscript, the prospect of acknowledging everyone who has contributed so graciously and generously to the creation of this project leaves me with the worry that my words of thanks will be an “almost lost story,” leaving too many names unregistered in my attempt to distill the many conversations, the culmination of which the following pages represents. But narration must always negotiate the narrated and the disnarrated. I will do my best here to express my gratitude in some small way for the many great kindnesses shown me over the past couple of years. Firstly, I would like to thank the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis for its intellectual and financial support during my graduate studies and the composition of this dissertation. I would like to thank all of my dissertation committee members for their feedback, kindness and patience, especially with re-scheduling of my defense date. I would like to thank Caroline Kita and Tabea Linhard for their collegiality and support. I owe special thanks to Paul Michael Lützeler for his tireless encouragement throughout this entire process, from helping me shape my initial idea to reading and providing invaluable feedback as I have progressed through the composition of each chapter, and Jennifer Kapczynski for her insightful and incisive feedback, for nurturing me intellectually as a graduate student, and for treating me as a budding scholar who will one day be a peer. Last but not least, I owe Erin McGlothlin an immeasurable debt of gratitude—without her none of this would have been possible. I cannot thank her enough for reading my work with a tireless eye and providing utterly honest criticism, for helping me to identify my intellectual blind spots and to work through them, for her invaluable mentorship and dialogue, and for supporting my interest in Yiddish and iii suggesting that I participate along with her in what turned out to be quite possibly the world’s weirdest summer Yiddish course. It has been a wild and exciting ride, and I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with and learn from her. Thank you, Erin. In addition, my development as a scholar and teacher would has been encouraged and enlivened by several amazing people whom I am very lucky to have worked with in the past. I would like to thank Lynne Tatlock for her professional insight and mentoring. And I must thank Hester Baer for guiding me in the direction of German Studies in the first place and introducing me to the kind of intellectual collaboration that I endeavor to continue throughout my career. I would also like to thank the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) for its support of research year at the Universität Potsdam, where I had the good fortune to be introduced to Jewish Studies in a German academic context and to discuss earlier versions of my first chapter with Christoph Schulte. I would also like to thank the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis for its generosity in granting me the privilege to share an office there with fellow graduate students. I would like to thank Barbara Liebmann and Kathy Jesson-Pierson at the Center for their sunny dispositions and endless supply of snacks and coffee. Empress Sanders is a delightful human being who has never failed to cheer me with a joke or a smile. My hustling and bustling in and out of Ridgeley would not have been nearly as enjoyable without her. I have also been fortunate to work alongside some amazing people whose intellectual tenacity and good humor have made them ideal peers and colleagues. I must thank Necia Chronister, Suzuko Knott, Greg Knott, and Maggie Stanley Majors, for being here with me every step of the way. I offer very special thanks to Ervin Malakaj and Melanie Adley for being my interlocutors in matters both professional and personal. They are an endless joy and a delight. iv None of this, from start to finish, would have been possible without my friends and family. I would like to thank Susan Scott Pegues for her friendship, support, and advice since the time we had the great fortune to be assigned seats next to one another in a high school science class when we were fourteen. Few know me like Susan does. She has been a better friend to me than I will ever be able to be to her. My parents Gary and Dee Twitchell are delightful, amazing people who inspire me every single day. I cannot thank them enough for everything they have ever done for me, big and small. When I told them that I wanted to pursue a Ph.D., they did not even bat an eye. Their encouragement, love, and support have meant the world to me. I thank my brother Scott Twitchell and his wife Ashley Twitchell for being cool people that I love knowing. Serving as their impromptu wedding emcee, with a microphone in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other, is one of my favorite memories. And finally, I would like to thank my partner and co-critter Matthew W. Erhard. He met me when I was just getting into the thick of this dissertation project, witnessed the crazy tumult of an aspiring academic, but still stayed. He is gracious, kind, patient, gentle, and compassionate. I have no idea how I got so lucky. He has put up with so much these past few years, but if we can survive my completion of the dissertation, we can weather any storm. I love you, my ocelot. Corey L. Twitchell Washington University in St. Louis May 2015 v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative and a Literary Language for Loss by Corey L. Twitchell Doctor of Philosophy in Germanic Languages and Literatures Washington University in St. Louis, 2015 Professor Erin McGlothlin, Chair This dissertation investigates how a constellation of German Jewish post-Holocaust novels confronts the paradox of recovering and recuperating lost stories of Holocaust victims. I analyze how works by Edgar Hilsenrath, Jurek Becker, and Fred Wander reveal a preoccupation with the innumerable stories and testimonies of the individuals who did not survive the Nazi Judeocide to contribute to the archive of experience. These novels gesture toward an epistemological alternative to this loss: they consider possibilities for recovering the unarchivable. These German Jewish authors employ a particular cluster of varied narrative strategies: the dialogic, linguistic and cultural elements of Eastern European Jewish culture, and a literary trope I term the “almost lost story,” as components of a narrative practice that allows the novels’ narrators—and by extension, the readers—to imagine a discursive space for this disnarrated testimony, or “anti- archive.” This study uncovers the extent to which post-Holocaust German Jewish literature is underpinned by a conception of Ashkenaz that encompasses both German Jewish and Eastern European Jewish culture and thought. My dissertation shows that the problems of trauma, loss, memory, and memorialization in post-1945 German Jewish fiction are above all problems of narrativity. vi Introduction: The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative and a Literary Language for Loss 1 “This is also a way—perhaps the only way—to listen to what is unsaid.” --Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz1 Tynset German Jewish author and visual artist Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s 1965 novel Tynset features an anonymous, melancholy insomniac narrating-I that relates his search for nocturnal diversion by thumbing through a stack of nighttime reading options, none of which prove to be sufficiently soporific to lull him to sleep.