Appropriated Memory

The Creation of a German Post-Memorial Literature
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80374-703-3
Verlag: Peter Lang

Buch, Englisch, Band 23, 262 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 385 g

Reihe: Cultural Memories

This book offers a survey of post-World War II German-language post-memorial writing. An analysis of the books by Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Wolfgang Koeppen exposes the difficult path of German writing about the Holocaust. Koeppen’s unauthorized appropriation of Jakob Littner’s survivor memoir serves as the frame for this study, exposing the differences between perpetrator and victim perspectives. The various attempts by the current generation of authors to bridge this divide reflect the renewed interest and changed attitudes towards the Holocaust that emerged in Germany after Reunification. Included in this volume are W. G. Sebald’s imaginary dialogue between a victim and a perpetrator, Ursula Krechel’s exploration of Jewish life in Shanghai from a Jewish perspective, Iris Hanika’s presentation of the distraught mindset of a member of Germany’s second perpetrator generation, and Kevin Vennemann’s narrative about a Jewish child in the midst of a Polish massacre.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zachau, Reinhard

Über Autor(innen)

Reinhard Zachau is Professor Emeritus at the University of the South. He has published a number of books, on Stefan Heym, Hans Fallada, Heinrich Böll, Berlin’s Modernism, and on German film. Appropriated Memory originated in the extensive media coverage that the author’s discovery of Jakob Littner’s Holocaust survivor memoir in 2000 received.