Introduction / Katja Garloff and Agnes Mueller -- Self-reflection in first- and second-generation authors. What is a German Jewish author? authorial self-fashioning in Maxim Biller, Esther Dischereit, and Barbara Honigmann / Katja Garloff -- (Non-Jewish) German constructions of (German) Jewish writing in the late work of Gunter Grass, Martin Walser, and Christa Wolf / Stuart Taberner -- Revenge, restitution, ressentiment: Edgar Hilsenrath's and Ruth Kluger's late writings as Holocaust metatestimony / Helen Finch -- Multiple identities and diversification of Holocaust memory. The German Jewish migrant novel after 1990: politics of memory and multidirectional writing / Jessica Ortner -- Beyond negative symbiosis: the displacement of Holocaust trauma and memory in Alina Bronksy's Scherbenpark and Olga Grjasnowa's Der russe iIst einer, der birken liebt / Elizabeth Loentz -- Memory without borders? migrant identity and the legacy of the Holocaust in Olga Grjasnowa's Der russe ist einer, der birken liebt / Jonathan Skolnik -- Multilingualism and Jewishness in Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther / Andree Michaelis-Konig -- New themes and directions in recent German Jewish literature. Actuality and historicity in Mirna Funk's Winternahe / Luisa Banki -- German psycho: the language of depression in Oliver Polak's Der judische patient / Caspar Battegay -- Religion and the Holocaust: Imre Kertesz, Benjamin Stein, and Kaddish for a friend / Agnes Mueller -- Coda: interviews with two contemporary German Jewish writers. Interview with Olga Grjasnowa / Katja Garloff and Agnes Mueller -- Interview with Mirna Funk / Katja Garloff and Agnes Mueller.
Summary:
The 1990 reunification of Germany gave rise to a new generation of writers who write in German, identify as both German and Jewish, and often also sustain cultural affiliations with places such as Russia, Azerbaijan, or Israel. This edited volume traces the development of this new literature into the present, offers fresh interpretations of individual works, and probes the very concept of "German Jewish literature." A central theme is the transformation of memory at a time when the Holocaust is moving into greater historical distance while the influx of new immigrant groups to Germany brings other past trauma into view. The volume's ten original essays by scholars from Europe and the U.S. reframe the debates about Holocaust memory and contemporary German culture. The concluding interviews with authors Mirna Funk and Olga Grjasnowa offer a glimpse into the future of German Jewish literature.
Series:
Dialogue and disjunction: studies in Jewish German literature, culture, and thought
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.