Jurek Becker: Aller Welt Freund. Roman

Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1982. 185 p

Ian Wallace, ed.: The Writer and Society in the GDR

Beverley: Hutton Press, 1984. 160 p., $6.40

George Buehler: The Death of Socialist Realism in the Novels of Christa Wolf

Frankfurt a.M. and Bern: Peter Lang, 1984. 208 p., $25.25

Postmemory and Implication: Susanne Fritz Revisits the Post/War Period in Wie kommt der Krieg ins Kind (2018)

After providing an introduction to German language family narratives of the past forty years and discussing the relevance of Michael Rothberg’s notion of the “Implicated Subject” for the study of these narratives, this article presents a detailed analysis of Susanne Fritz’s German-Polish family history Wie kommt der Krieg ins Kind (How does the war get into the child, 2018). Exemplifying the archival turn in postmemorial writings, the book draws on multiple sources and makes a compelling case for a broader public acknowledgment of the incarceration of German civilians (including the author’s mother) in post-war Polish labor camps, to this day a little-known aspect of German wartime suffering. The article examines on the one hand the intertwined nature of the mother’s wartime memories and the daughter’s postmemories and, on the other, questions of “implication” at the historical and the textual level (i.e., regarding the ancestors’ involvement in Nazi Germany and regarding the narrator’s positioning vis-à-vis her family history). The central challenge the narrative grapples with is how the suffering of Germans can be addressed within a larger perpetrator heritage. In its critical examination of archival materials and its multi-faceted examination of implication, the book makes a significant contribution to the collective memory of the (post-) war period as well as to the academic study of memory

Fostering Transnational, Multilingual Collaboration: The Berlin-based Artists' Initiative WeiterSchreiben.jetzt

The Berlin-based initiative Weiter Schreiben was founded in 2017 by the writer Annika Reich and responds to the daunting refugee situation in contemporary Europe by encouraging collaboration between established and displaced writers living in Germany. The initiative’s objective is to foster multidirectional networks instead of one-directional support.This article explores how the organizational features of Weiter Schreiben are directly tied to its successful fostering of transnational and multilingual communities. A discussion of the initiative’s journal, (Weiter Schreiben Magazin, June, 2019) illustrates that these communities emerge through the conversation about – and the production and reception of – creative writing and other artistic endeavors. Specifically, the journal’s emphasis on locations and memories links the work of displaced writers and visual artists hailing from a range of continents and countries. My main case study is the collaborative exchange between the Syrian poet Lina Atfah who escaped Syria in 2014 and the author Nino Haratischwili who was born in Georgia and moved to Germany in 2003. The multiple forms of proximity that emerge between these two writers underscore the utter inadequacy of thinking in categories of national literatures. Inspired by Ann Rigney’s work on transnational memory and the “conjunctures” Susan Stanford Friedman observes between “‘New’ World Literature and Migration Studies,” I conclude by pondering some of the broader implications of the Weiter Schreiben initiative for the role of creative writing in an increasingly interconnected world

La fuite et l’expulsion dans la littérature contemporaine. Réflexions méthodologiques à propos des notions de Heimat et d’espace

Dans un premier temps, cette contribution souligne la pertinence d’un recours aux théories de l’espace pour l’analyse des représentations littéraires de la Heimat. À l’aide d’une telle approche, on peut décrire de façon nuancée des représentations volontairement différentes de la Heimat, notamment dans le contexte de la fuite et de l’expulsion. En nous appuyant sur des analyses de textes, nous discuterons dans un deuxième temps les espaces de la « Heimat perdue » dans des romans de Horst Bien..