1Memory Studies as Conceptual Framework for the Study of Forced Migration

The field of memory studies straddles multiple disciplines and includes a wide range of approaches and terminologies. Regarding the subject matter of this contribution – literary representations of forced migration – two strands of scholarship are most pertinent: studies of collective and communicative memory, as well as the role of remediation, informed by the work of Aleida Assmann and Astrid Erll respectively; and approaches that are closely linked with the study of the Holocaust and its lasting effects across generations and cultures, informed by the work of Marianne Hirsch and Michael Rothberg, among others.

A good example for the prominent role of memory studies for recent scholarship on flight and expulsion is a handbook published in 2015 by Schöningh. As suggested by the title, Die Erinnerung an Flucht und Vertreibung. Ein Handbuch der Medien und Praktiken, it provides succinct information on a large range of ‘media’ and ‘practices’ related to flight and expulsion. Since this handbook exemplifies the larger trend in scholarship outlined above, I will comment on the approach it takes in more detail. At the most fundamental level, the handbook’s main title, Die Erinnerung an Flucht und Vertreibung, is noteworthy. Despite its problematic history, the term ‘Flucht und Vertreibung’ (flight and expulsion) continues to be widely used in German public and academic discourses as shorthand for a broad and heterogeneous set of historical events.65 Using the term as part of the title – and then commenting on its meaning and usage at the very beginning of the introduction (Scholz et al. 2015, 9) – exemplifies the handbook’s overall approach: it takes on popular topoi, representations, and practices associated with flight and expulsion and subjects them to nuanced analyses.

In the introduction, the editors Stephan Scholz, Maren Röger, and Bill Niven also elaborate on the second part of the title, Ein Handbuch der Medien und Praktiken, especially on the central role of the media of memory, including memorials, TV series, oral and written accounts, photography, among others. Drawing on Erll’s work, they underscore the constitutive role of mediation, that is, the insight that any particular medium does not only transmit or preserve the memory of a given event or phenomenon but co-constructs its very meaning and thus shapes its reception (Scholz et al. 2015, 10). Examples are images of the flight from East Prussia in the winter of 1945 that have attained iconic status: long treks of mostly women and children crossing the frozen Haff by foot or on overloaded wagons pulled by horses. As Beata Halicka notes in her contribution to the Handbook, these images were widely circulated in documentaries and docu-fictions and have thus shaped the public imagination and collective memory of the flight – even though the overall conditions and extreme hardship suffered by those who fled from East Prussia66 are not representative of the flight from most other regions (2015, 96–97).

Beyond this role of specific media, the editors discuss what they call, with reference to Astrid Erll and Patrick Schmidt, the “Plurimedialität” (“plurimediality”) of cultural memory, that is, the insight that different media interact with one another, shaping, reinforcing, or complicating particular memory discourses (Scholz et al. 2015, 12). An example is the powerful impact of Günter Grass’s novel Im Krebsgang (Crabwalk) from 2002. The public attention resulted in part from the prominence and liberal outlook of its author, a political stance that was at the time perceived as precluding an engagement with ‘flight and expulsion’ (topics that instead were associated with the political right). But the public persona of Grass only partially explains the attention the novel received. As mentioned in the introduction to the Handbook, the book’s success was prepared by TV-documentaries on flight and expulsion in the preceding year; its impact was then amplified and shaped by multiple reviews in Der Spiegel, among other popular news media, as well as by subsequent publications on the historical events portrayed in the novel. Ironically, the multiple media that reinforced one another and contributed to the novel’s prominence were also responsible for erasing their own role, that is, the ‘plurimediality’ that helped create its success. Instead of looking at the surging public interest in ‘German wartime suffering’ as the result of a confluence of political and cultural factors, intertwined with ongoing mediation and remediation, the author Grass was singled out and credited with breaking a taboo regarding the representation of the flight. To this day his novel is mentioned as the first to address these events, even though other writers, including Walter Kempowski and Hans-Ulrich Treichel, had done so prior to Günter Grass.

In light of the meta-critical objectives outlined above, this contribution focuses primarily on literature’s response to and participation in changing discourses on flight and expulsion. Literature, itself a powerful medium of memory, often references communicative and collective memory as part of the plot and its narrative organization. Grass’s Im Krebsgang is a case in point. The novel is structured around diverging post/memories of three generations: the war generation (Tulla Prokriefke and “der Alte,” alter ego of the author), the postwar generation that grew up in the shadow of the war (Tulla’s son Paul, the narrator), and the subsequent generation (Paul’s son Konny and Wolfgang who poses as a Jew and is ultimately killed by Konny). The historical events that make up the traumatic core of the novel (the Soviet attack of the ship Gustloff in January 1945 and the drowning of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children next to some members of the military) are narrated in a highly mediated fashion, that is, via references to a feature film about the sinking of the Gustloff and multiple textual sources. Ironically, the accounts of Tulla, eyewitness and survivor, are presented as unreliable. As Aleida Assmann maintains in her insightful comments, the novel thus marks the traumatic experience of the Gustloff sinking as a void (“Leerstelle;” 2006, 198).

As the example of Im Krebsgang illustrates, literary representations provide in sights into the subjective, human responses to the violent history of WWII and its aftermath. Furthermore, literature opens up opportunities for exploring multiple individual and generational perspectives not only on the events themselves but also on their continued effects across several generations. Lastly, literature provides discursive spaces for the critical reflection on these memories and postmemories. For instance, Im Krebsgang draws attention to the mediated and constructed character of all memories.

Scholarship, informed by memory studies, has in the past few decades refined its approach to and assessment of literary texts that engage with aspects of memory and postmemory. Considering the emergence of memory studies in the US it would be difficult to underestimate the connection to the study of the Holocaust and its effects. Importantly, it was the convergence of memory studies with Holocaust studies that has produced new insights into the functioning and long-term effects of trauma and memory both in the individual and in the collective realms. The concept of “postmemory” as developed by Marianne Hirsch and the notion of “multidirectional memory” as proposed by Michael Rothberg are two cases in point. Recognizing the broad effects of the Holocaust at the individual and familial level (Hirsch) – roughly corresponding with Assmann’s “communicative memory” – and at the collective level (Rothberg), these and other scholars have developed new approaches for the study of memory and trauma.

Arguably advances in memory studies in conjunction with Holocaust studies have also changed the ways in which we examine the legacies of other violent histories, including the forced migration of millions of Germans at the end of the war. It is this shift and the insights this theoretical framework affords that will be explored in the remainder of this section.

The concepts of ‘postmemory’ and ‘transgenerational trauma’ originated in the context of the study of documents and art by Holocaust survivors and their descendants. According to Hirsch, who first introduced the term in a 1992 article on Art Spiegelman’s Maus (Mouse),

‘Postmemory’ describes the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before – to experiences they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory’s connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. (Hirsch 2012, 5)

The references to “imaginative investment […] and creation” point to the significance of literature (as well as graphic novels, photography, film, multi-media installations, and other artistic approaches) for representing and working through postmemorial constellations. In her recent monograph, Hirsch explicitly acknowledges the broad significance of postmemorial constellations. Responding to the growing field of memory studies in The Generation of Postmemory (Hirsch 2012), she sees her own work now as part of efforts among scholars to establish “connective” approaches to memory and considers her analysis of post-Holocaust art “in dialogue with numerous other contexts of traumatic transfer that can be understood as postmemory” (Hirsch 2012, 18). Among many other phenomena, she lists American slavery, the Vietnam War, the Dirty War in Argentina, and Communist terror as examples for sites where the notion of “postmemory” has become an important explanatory vehicle (Hirsch 2012, 19).

Regarding scholarship on the ‘German past,’ one can observe a broader use of concepts and approaches developed in Holocaust studies as well. For instance, in an article titled “Flucht und Vertreibung and the Difficult Work of Memory,” Linda Warley (2013) explores how experiences not one’s own can form part of one’s identity. Combining aspects from her own family history with academic discourse on memory and life writing, she links her mother’s individual story not only to the historical events of forced migration but also to her own identity formation. Reflecting on the usefulness of memory studies for understanding the transgenerational effects of forced migration, Warley draws on Hirsch’s work on “postmemory.” Yet in a surprising move, she introduces the notion of “acquired memory” (Warley 2013, 329) in explicit juxtaposition to Hirsch’s term. By employing a new term she might try to dispel here any suggestion that transgenerational effects of the Holocaust are comparable to those of German wartime suffering.

Warley’s use of this terminology raises the larger question of the relationship between the Holocaust and forced migration in collective memory as well as in academic discourse. While this is not the place to explore this complex constellation in any detail, suffice is to say that some scholars are highly critical of attempts to see both the Holocaust and forced migration in global contexts of ethnic cleansing.67 Eva and Hans Henning Hahn have provocatively referred to the “Holocaustization of the memory of flight and expulsion” that results in dehistorizing flight and expulsion and absolving Germans of responsibility for the Holocaust and National Socialism (2008). They identify these revisionist trends not only in historiography but also in collective memory discourses shaping German national identity.68 While Hahn and Hahn raise important concerns regarding historiographical research on the forced migration of Germans in the context of nationalism and ethnic cleansing, their competitive approach to memories of violent histories risks ignoring the benefits of transnational scholarship on forced migration.69 Briefly put, transnational approaches do not preclude historical contextualization, as the work of Michael Schwartz and Jan Maria Piskorski illustrates (Schwartz 2013; Piskorski 2013).

Returning to the issue of methodology and terminology, Warley’s adoption of a new term reminds us to take extra care when employing theoretical concepts like ‘postmemory’ in new scholarly contexts like forced migration. Arguably, the borrowing of theoretical concepts is a process of translation, that is, an interactive and dynamic process that affects both a particular field of research and the respective concept or approach.70 From this vantage point, Warley’s adoption of the term ‘acquired memory’ (related to but not identical to ‘postmemory’) is as relevant as the employment of the term ‘postmemory’ in interaction with new areas of research. In both cases, a meta-critical awareness of the contextual origins of specific concepts is important as it counteracts the uncritical appropriation (or naïve translation) of theoretical terms.

An excellent example for broadening the scholarship on postmemorial constellations in such a self-reflective manner is Gabriele Schwab’s monograph Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (2010). Building on the work of Marianne Hirsch, Judith Butler, and Michael Rothberg, she argues convincingly for including effects of violent histories on descendants not only of victims but also of perpetrators while being mindful not to equate one group with the other. In her study, Schwab maintains that in order for the next generation, i.e., descendants of perpetrators, to move forward, mentally and socially, they need to begin the work of delayed mourning and address the effects of transgenerational trauma.71 According to her line of argument they have to find their own voice – and autobiographical or literary writings play a significant role in this process. While Schwab focuses primarily on trauma connected to the discovery of the parent generation’s responsibility for the Holocaust and war crimes, she also mentions violence and trauma experienced by this same parent generation during intense air raids at the end of the war. The task of the postwar generations to pursue “delayed mourning” (i.e., mourning that was often aborted by the war generation, Schwab 2010, 103) would then extend to both groups of victims – to victims of Nazi Germany and to “German” victims of air raids and expulsions. This constellation is complicated by the fact that the latter group may have condoned Nazi ideology or participated in the victimization of the first group. But precisely these complicating factors can be addressed in works of fiction: literature provides the space to explore complex character constellations that do not neatly fit into victim-perpetrator binaries.

Schwab’s study marks a significant shift in theorizing postmemory. Based on the analysis of literary and autobiographical texts, she refines our understanding of the dynamics of transgenerational trauma and delayed mourning as it applies not only to descendants of victims (Holocaust survivors) but also to those of perpetrators or those who occupied more complex positions on the victim-perpetrator spectrum. But unlike Schwab, who sees literature primarily through a psychoanalytical lens and an interest in trauma, my own emphasis is on the relationship between individual and collective memory discourses and on the creative and multi-voiced dimension of literature. In short, the novels discussed in the subsequent sections of this contribution are relevant for but not limited to working through transgenerational hauntings.72 Other important dimensions that intersect with these psychological processes include intertextual references, the role of re/mediation, and the use of irony, parody, and other distancing devices. Furthermore, as Anne Fuchs and Mary Cosgrove have pointed out, the imaginative dimension of postmemories may also result in the misrepresentation or sentimentalization of history, potentially sidestepping questions of power relations, guilt, and responsibility (Fuchs and Cosgrove 2006, 11–12). This critical perspective assumes special significance when it comes to literary representations of German wartime suffering as this focus inherently raises the question of historical contextualization.

To illustrate how the analysis of literary representations of flight and expulsion benefits from theories of postmemory and how, conversely, the genre of the novel enhances our understanding of the functioning of post/memory, I now turn to two novels. A close look at Walter Kempowski’s Mark und Bein (Bone and Marrow) from 1992 is followed by a brief discussion of Ulrike Draesner’s 2014 novel Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt (Seven Leaps From the Edge of the World): two distinct literary responses to the historical events of forced migration and their effects on subsequent generations. Taken together, these novels span more than two decades and show how authors of different generations address memories and postmemories of flight and expulsion. Walter Kempowski, born 1929, is one of very few authors of the war generation who addressed the long-term effects of flight and expulsion in his creative work. He did so at a time when these historical events were still largely associated with the political right. More than 20 years later, Ulrike Draesner, an author of the subsequent generation (born in 1962) explores the changing responses to and memories of these events across four different generations and two different nationalities, Germans and Poles. In contrast to Kempowski, whose novel predates the “obsessive” public and scholarly attention to memory (Huyssen 2003, 3), Draesner draws on insights of memory studies, including the very concepts of ‘postmemory’ and ‘transgenerational trauma.’ In short, these novels throw into relief not only the changing memory scapes from which they emerged but also the academic discourses they either predate (Kempowski) or incorporate (Draesner).

2Literature and Post/Memory Within a National Paradigm

Large parts of Walter Kempowski’s novel Mark und Bein read like a satire of West Germany’s attempts to come to terms with the ‘German past.’ The novel was published in 1992, a decade earlier than Im Krebsgang (Crabwalk). Both novels examine the lingering effects of the past, including National Socialism, the Holocaust, and flight and expulsion, on subsequent generations. But while Im Krebsgang takes place at the turn of the millennium, Kempowski’s novel portrays German society in the 1980s with special attention to Germans born after the war. Perhaps the best example of Kempowski’s satirical take on dominant public attitudes towards the past is chapter 13, which portrays tourists at the Marienburg/Majbork. This major historical landmark and medieval remnant of the German presence in the East is located close to Gdansk in Poland; the use of both the German and the Polish name points to the complexity of this “lieu de mémoire” (Nora) or site of memory. The chapter illustrates how this multi-layered site of memory is instrumentalized by two groups of tourists: students from the leftist Rosa Luxemburg High School and members of a Landsmannschaft, an expellee association representing the political right. By portraying the groups’ diverging responses to the Majbork tour guide, the novel highlights engrained ideological positions: those who are determined to see Germans merely as perpetrators and those who continue to believe in German cultural superiority vis-a-vis the East. Both perspectives come across as highly problematic.

This chapter stands out in its parody of West German memory contests, but throughout the novel, lingering stereotypes about Poles and the East are juxtaposed with official pronouncements regarding Germany’s responsibility for the War – a contrast that calls into question the sincerity of these assertions. Furthermore, many characters recognize German guilt but at the same time lack interest in those who were affected by the violent past. This attitude extends to both Germany’s victims and German victims. Regarding the latter, the novel underscores that an engagement with German wartime suffering was deemed politically inappropriate. For instance, the main protagonist (Jonathan Fabrizius) refrains from reading a book documenting the expulsions73 on the subway because he fears to be perceived as a “Kalter Krieger,” a Cold-War warrior who challenges the postwar borders (Kempowski 1992, 57).

Jonathan Fabrizius, who lacks regular employment but leads a comfortable life in Hamburg, might be seen as a caricature of a particular segment of the educated West German middle class. Yet he is also the most fully developed character whose generational position is central to the plot and the novel’s larger significance. Jonathan’s birth during the flight in 1945 coincides with the end of the war but his life is marked by traumatic events of the war,74 specifically his mother’s death during childbirth and his father’s death at the collapsing Eastern front. This constellation marks the protagonist as prototypical member of the “second” generation or, as Hirsch has termed it, the “postgeneration”: growing up in postwar West Germany, Jonathan’s familial origin combines both guilt (via his soldier father)75 and suffering (via his mother’s death during the flight). While the protagonist initially shares the dominant dispassionate attitude towards the past, the novel chronicles his increasing personal involvement with his parents’ fate, a shift that is tied to his travel to Poland.

An example of Jonathan’s initial attitude towards his past is the seemingly casual manner in which he comments on the loss of his parents at the end of the war: “‘Meine Eltern hab ich nicht gekannt’, sagte er oft gleichmütig, meinen Vater hat es auf der Frischen Nehrung erwischt, und meine Mutter ist bei meiner Geburt draufgegangen, in Ostpreussen, 1945”76 (Kempowski 1992, 21). The protagonist’s indifference (“Gleichmut”) informs his word choice: for instance, he uses “draufgegangen,” a colloquial term for dying (to kick the bucket) to refer to his mother’s death during childbirth – i.e., the birth of the protagonist – on her flight from East Prussia. In this context, the notion of “Leidensvorsprung” is mentioned, a sarcastic reference to the “edge in suffering” that Jonathan gains from the tragic death of his parents. This term, mentioned several times in the novel (Kempowski 1992, 21, 32, 56), underscores not only the character’s apparent lack of affect regarding the fate of his parents but also Jonathan’s instrumentalization of his victim status.

Despite this professed indifference, the narrative indicates that Jonathan suffers from the traumatic events that preceded his life. The most obvious sign is that he has a recurring vision of his dead mother whose body is placed in front of a church by her brother (Jonathan’s uncle who later raised his orphaned nephew Jonathan) during the flight. This image recurs multiple times early on in the narrative, mirroring the persistent intrusion of traumatic experiences. Recalling Hirsch’s definition of “postmemory,” Jonathan “‘remembers’ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors” among which he grew up; the haunting vision of his mother suggests that his uncle’s experiences were transmitted to him “so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right” (Hirsch 2012, 5).

At one point, the narrative comes close to providing a definition of “postmemory” avant la lettre. When Jonathan accepts a journalistic assignment that involves extended travel through the former East Prussian region of contemporary Poland, he decides against seeking advice from his uncle: “Ihm brauchte der Onkel nichts von Ostpreußen zu erzählen, er wußte alles, auch das, was er ihm nicht erzählt hatte”77 (Kempowski 1992, 59). This comment suggests that the protagonist is shaped not only by the uncle’s memories and anecdotes but also by what was communicated to him implicitly and through other media of collective memory, including the documentation mentioned earlier. Both, explicit and implicit dimensions are central to the concept of ‘postmemory’ and contribute to its powerful effects on the postgeneration.78

The novel highlights the extent to which postmemories emerge from multiple forms of mediation and remediation. Jonathan’s anticipation of the trip and his observations during the trip are a case in point. These passages are saturated with iconic images, clichés, anecdotes, and snippets of historical information, crowding out his interest in the (Polish) presence. Put differently, Jonathan is so preoccupied with his postmemories that his travel to the East does not result in any serious engagement with contemporary Poland. Instead the visit to specific places conjures up images and stories of the past, acquired via multiple sources and media.79 From the vantage point of Kempowski’s novel, postmemories can thus be conceptualized as a particular kind of remediation of familial memories mixed with collective memories of German-Polish history.

Against this backdrop, the encounter with his parents’ sites of burial or death takes on special significance in the narrative. During his travel through Poland, Jonathan suddenly and inexplicably realizes that he has reached Rosenau (the novel only references the German name), the place of his mother’s burial. This encounter with a traumatic place of the past is marked by a shift in narrative style. He intuitively identifies the unmarked gravesite even though he only knows about it through his uncle’s memories: “[E]r starrte auf eine Stelle an der Mauer, und er wusste: Dort liegt sie”80 (Kempowski 1992, 202). In stark contrast to the indifference with which the protagonist had repeatedly commented on his parents’ death, the visit of his mother’s place of burial overwhelms and temporarily immobilizes him. Significantly, this is one of the rare passages narrated without distancing devices;81 instead the immediacy of the experience – and Jonathan’s inability to communicate his state of mind – is highlighted (Kempowski 1992, 202–203). When he is about to leave the cemetery, a fellow traveler’s question about his father finally triggers a visible emotional response in Jonathan, as well as vivid memories of his father and the overall desperate situation at the end of the war and, beyond that, of humankind.

Unlike the remainder of the novel, which underscores the highly mediated nature of the protagonist’s travel to the East, the encounter with his mother’s gravesite and, shortly thereafter, with the presumed place of his father’s death, are marked by immediacy.82 These central passages also help to explain the novel’s title Mark und Bein (Marrow and Bone). Readers are more likely to relate Jonathan’s psychosomatic response to the colloquial saying “es geht durch Mark und Bein” (“to be shaken to the core”) than to the biblical passage from which the saying originates.83 In sum, both content and style point to the unprocessed nature of Jonathan’s postmemories as well as to the role of place as a powerful trigger for the raw emotions attached to them.

Overall, the 1992 novel illustrates a particular dynamic between memory and space that has since been explored in the study of memory and postmemory. As Hirsch points out in her reading of stories of return after dispossession and displacement: “Return to place literally loosens the defensive walls against the sorrow of loss that refugees build up over decades and that they pass on to their children” (2012, 207). Kempowski’s novel is a case in point: Jonathan’s encounter with the presumed places of his parents’ death turns the distant past temporarily into the present.

Building on Hirsch, in their introduction to Germany, Poland and Postmemorial Relations (2012) Kristin Kopp and Joanna Niżyńska have coined the term “post-memorial space.” The concept captures the powerful effect particular locations may have on members of the postgeneration who only know about them in a highly mediated fashion, that is, via stories, images, and memories that, strictly speaking, are not their own.

‘Space’ is understood here in the literal terms of material surroundings, but these surroundings are, in turn, understood as the source of a sense of inhabiting history; post-memorial space thus carries the potential of exerting a powerful effect on its inhabitants. Their experiences may range from living in a house left behind by German expellees, to touring through a village recounted in one’s grandfather’s memoirs, to passing through Kraków’s train station on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz. The affective charge of encountering a historical legacy in its sheer materiality may, however, not always be as direct as one expects; the imaginary qualities of postmemory enter our experience of space as well. (Kopp and Niżyńska 2012, 19)

This definition of postmemorial space goes beyond Hirsch’s account on the role of place84 in two important ways: it explicitly includes examples of postmemorial sites related to flight and expulsion, thereby further expanding the methodological reach of the notion of ‘postmemory’ beyond Holocaust studies. At the same time, Kopp and Niżyńska also introduce an element of caution regarding postmemory’s “imaginary” qualities, recalling Fuchs’s critique of the concept. As they explain with reference to the contribution by Erica Lehrer, “Holocaust tourism” to former concentration camps has resulted in the association of the Holocaust not with Germany but with Poland, the location of Auschwitz, among some visitors. Lehrer thus points to the “necessity of resisting pure affect” in the context of postmemorial constellations (Kopp and Niżyńska 2012, 20). In sum, the volume Germany, Poland and Postmemorial Relations in general and the notion of “postmemorial space” in particular are examples of how approaches and theoretical terms developed primarily in Holocaust studies are productively employed in broader historical and cultural contexts, and how these concepts in turn have been shaped by these new contexts.

To return for a moment to Kempowski’s novel, the personal and socio-political situation that constitutes its backdrop does not provide any corrective to the ‘pure affect’ triggered by Jonathan’s visit of postmemorial places. His trip neither results in a more sustained exploration of the (family) past nor of his own life. Instead, the novel emphasizes on the one hand Jonathan’s overpowering sense of past suffering and guilt85 and, on the other, his friends’ lack of empathy and interest. When nobody wants to hear his ‘story’ upon his return to Hamburg, Jonathan muses: “Wem sollte er nun von seinen ostpreußischen Tagen erzählen? Von seinen Vergangenheitserlebnissen, dass es nicht ungefährlich ist, sich mit Sachen zu beschäftigen, die man besser ad acta legt”86 (Kempowski 1992, 237). The wording of this passage underscores the dynamics of postmemories within the larger socio-political situation in the (West) Germany of the 1980s: the fact that the protagonist speaks “von seinen ostpreußischen Tagen” (“from his East Prussian days”) and “Vergangenheitserlebnissen” (“experiences in the past”) confirms that his trip was not one to contemporary Poland but to postmemorial experiences and places located in a past that was not his own. “Dass es nicht ungefährlich ist” (“That it is not without danger”) references the traumatic character of these postmemories, exemplified in the recurring image of his dead mother and his strong response at her gravesite. Furthermore, the comment “die man besser ad acta legt” (“that one should rather put aside”) suggests that he intends to discontinue the ‘dangerous’ engagement with his family past, a plan that seems in direct response to the lack of interested interlocutors (“Wem sollte er nun […] erzählen?” [“Whom should he tell now?”]).

Such a reading is further supported by Schwab’s study Haunting Legacies, discussed earlier. Intratextually, the novel narrates the main protagonist’s faltering attempt to engage with the effects of a painful past. If he fails to find “a voice,”87 it is in no small part the result of a situation in which nobody is willing to listen. The novel thus ends with the prospect that the ‘dangerous’ issues related to the protagonist’s and, by extension, to Germany’s past will be put aside (“ad acta legen”) – curtailing not only a better understanding of his family history, but also pointing more generally to a troubled identity formation of the post-war generation.88 Read in the context of West Germany in the 1980s, the pervasive disinterest in German wartime suffering that the novel foregrounds suggests that at a collective level victims of flight and expulsion were not considered “grievable lives” (Butler).89

From today’s perspective, Kempowski’s novel throws into relief the dramatic changes in public discourse and in scholarship on flight and expulsion over the past two decades. Through content and narrative style, Mark und Bein presents dominant memory discourses prior to unification in a highly critical manner by foregrounding a pervasive sense of numbness. West German society is portrayed as displaying a general awareness of but no real engagement with the Nazi past, and as lacking any interest in the fate of expellees and the lingering effects on the next generation. Instead, the novel suggests that public recognition of German wartime suffering was considered politically inappropriate, especially among the educated middle-class.90 While this latter critique was traditionally associated with the political right, Kempowski places the lack of engagement with German wartime suffering in the larger socio-political context of German guilt and coming to terms with the Nazi past. The novel maintains that, contrary to official pronouncements, this process was also still at its beginning.

Furthermore, Mark und Bein is one of the first novels to explore transgenerational hauntings of flight and expulsion including the powerful impact of postmemorial places.

It is no small irony that the political and social constellation portrayed within the novel was mirrored in the novel’s reception when it was published in 1992. From today’s perspective it is astounding that critics paid hardly any attention to the postmemorial constellation the novel captures so aptly. Instead, several reviewers adopt a condescending tone and reduce the plot to a “nostalgic pilgrimage into to the past” (Ross 1992)91 while others mimic the author’s sarcastic style in their comments on the novel.92 Overall, the response in the media and the scant scholarship on the novel illustrates that the conceptual and socio-political context for recognizing and critically commenting on these dynamics was largely missing in the early 1990s.93

As my reading of the novel has shown, drawing on memory studies, and in particular on the concept of ‘postmemory’ that was initially developed in the context of Holocaust studies, enables us to make sense of the novel in new and productive ways. The troubled origin of the protagonist – symptomatic of postwar German society – contributes to a complex postmemorial constellation: the transgenerational effects of German wartime suffering are linked with the question of (German) guilt. At the same time, the multi-voiced literary dimension of the novel – combined with the specific historical constellations it references – challenges us to critically reflect on the very notion of ‘postmemory.’ In the novel, postmemories are inseparable from multiple layers of mediation and remediation all of which contribute to a highly subjective notion of the past with repercussions for the present. By highlighting the continued influence of national stereotypes and a general lack of engagement with contemporary Poland and its people, the novel points to the dangers when such a preoccupation with the past remains closed off from empathy and from scrutiny.94 From a meta-critical perspective the novel also reminds us of the cultural biases and blinders that postmemories might unwittingly transport. Mark und Bein is a first invitation for this kind of critical engagement.

3Literature and Post/Memory: Toward a Transnational Paradigm

In the post-war period and through the early 1990s, literary accounts of flight and expulsion, Kempowski’s 1992 novel chiefly among them, were largely ahead of public discourse and of scholarship. By contrast, contemporary literary and scholarly discourses are frequently intertwined, drawing on one another and yielding new insights. Memory studies now serves as one of the main conceptual frameworks for literature and scholarship on forced migration.

Put differently, authors of the second and third generations who did not experience the war and forced migration first-hand, have continued the creative memory work that Kempowski – via his main character in Mark und Bein – breaks off at the end of the novel.95 Significantly, some of these younger authors, including Tanja Dückers, Olaf Müller, Jörg Bernig, Sabrina Janesch, and Ulrike Draesner, address post/memories of lost homes, trauma, and guilt no longer in an exclusively German context. Instead, they also engage with aspects of Eastern European history, most frequently with Polish history.96

If Kempowski’s 1992 novel represents an early literary account of the transgenerational effects of forced migration, Draesner’s 2014 novel Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt (Seven Leaps from the Edge of the World) illustrates how similar issues are addressed more than two decades later by an author of the postwar generation. Two interrelated aspects of Draesner’s novel exemplify current literary and scholarly trends: Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt challenges an exclusively national approach to the histories of forced migration. And it draws, at times explicitly, on memory studies, especially on the notion of ‘postmemory’ and the role of re/mediation.

In her comprehensive 550-page novel, Draesner reworks aspects of her own family history and combines this ‘German’ tale of the flight from Silesia with the (fictional) story of a Polish family that, due to the westward expansion of the Soviet Union, also lost their home and was forced to resettle in what became Polish Silesia. The novel is organized around first person accounts of four generations of Polish and German characters: the two generations who experienced the war and forced migration first-hand (parents and children), and two post-war generations: those who were born in the 1960s and their children, born around 1990. The title, Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt, references members of the two older generations – some German, some Polish – who were forced to “leap” from their respective homeland. Structured as a multi-voiced narrative, the novel frequently presents the reader with different perspectives on the same time period or event.

In stark contrast to Kempowski’s self-absorbed protagonist who barely acknowledges contemporary Poland during his travels, some of Draesner’s protagonists engage with one another across different national backgrounds. Regarding the representation of forced migration, the novel incorporates the histories and memories of Poles and of Germans not in a competitive but rather in a multidirectional manner as discussed by Rothberg. He developed his approach in the context of the globalization of Holocaust discourses; yet his notion of memory as “multidirectional,” that is, “as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing, as productive and not privative” is useful for other contexts as well (Rothberg 2009, 3, 28). In regard to Draesner’s novel, the notion of ‘multidirectional memory’ is helpful for a consideration of its multi-voiced organization and overall impact. The focus on multi-dimensionality pertains to the plot, e.g., characters ‘borrow’ or ‘cross-reference’ each other’s memories. But it also involves the narrative structure, that is, the placement of German and Polish voices next to one another. This organization has the effect that histories and memories which most readers are used to viewing from a national perspective gain new significance within a transnational context. At the most basic level this means that German readers are likely to relate the memories of Poles who were forced to leave the Eastern territories of Poland (due to the expansion of the Soviet Union) to those of German expellees. Collective ‘German’ memories are refracted via ‘Polish’ memories.97

Sieben Sprünge also includes convergences across national lines regarding traumatic flight experiences. An example is when the Polish character Halka, who is forced to resettle in Silesia, witnesses the rape of several German women by Soviet soldiers. Halka describes herself in hindsight as a person who turned away and told herself “es sind nur Deutsche, und das stimmte, es waren nur Deutsche, doch Frauen waren sie auch, wie ich” (Draesner 2014, 474).98 Through internal focalization, intensified by a shift to the first person, this episode highlights Halka’s ambivalent response: her distancing from the enemy (“nur Deutsche;” “only Germans”) while empathizing with the women who are subjected to sexualized violence. At the level of literary representation, this passage can serve as an example of multidirectional memory. The narrative breaks open a purely national perspective on this act of violence without glossing over differences that result from opposing positions in the war (“sie waren nur Deutsche, doch Frauen waren sie auch, wie ich;” “they were only Germans, but they were also women, just like me;” my translation).

Yet there are limitations to the novel’s transnational approach and, by implication, to the role of multi-directional memories. In an effort to highlight similar human conditions of Germans and Poles during the experience of forced migration, Sieben Sprünge hardly mentions significant differences in the historical circumstances and events that preceded the respective resettlements, specifically Nazi Germany’s brutal occupation of parts of Poland (which included forced population movements) and the systematic crimes committed by the German army against the Polish population during the war. Of course, a novel cannot be held to the same standards as a historiographical study. Sieben Sprünge is in many other ways quite successful in challenging a single national perspective, but I mention these aspects because they relate to some larger concerns: the kind of shortcomings that Traba and Zurek identify in German public discourses as well as in some scholarship on forced migration (Traba and Zurek 2011); the difficulties of developing substantive transnational approaches; finally, they raise questions about the very concept of ‘multi-directional memory.’ Even if one agrees with Rothberg that memories of violent histories often draw on one another in a productive manner, at the level of political discourse and critical analysis it might sometimes be necessary to insist on the competitive nature of particular memories. In the case of Draesner’s novel this means keeping in mind the vastly diverging historical contexts that remain beyond the purview of the narrative but that constitute the backdrop to ‘shared’ experiences.

Finally, a few comments on the role of postmemories in Sieben Sprünge. At the plot level, the novel’s transnational dimension extends to postmemorial constellations. For instance, one of the Polish characters (Boris) is an expert on transgenerational effects of the war, including forced migration. The German character Simone, like Boris a member of the postgeneration, is attracted to him because they share generational experiences and sensibilities across national lines. Beyond these explicit references, and a somewhat contrived German-Polish romance that emerges from this encounter, some of the most compelling parts of the novel revolve around the memories of one particular character with the name Emil. Physically and mentally handicapped, Emil barely survives Nazi racial policies but then disappears during the flight from Silesia at the end of the war. The novel’s narrative composition and language highlight the unclear circumstances of his death. For instance, the reader learns about Emil up to the time of his disappearance primarily through the diverging memories of several other characters. Only at the very end do we hear Emil’s own voice. In a fragmented yet lyrical style he speaks from a liminal space in the past, anticipating the loss of his home and his life and ending in a farewell (“ich wünsch euch Glück;” “I wish you good luck”). The fragmented language of the epilogue defies any attempt to turn his account into a coherent narrative. By not providing closure to the story of Emil, the novel alludes to the historical events, that is, the fate of countless expellees who disappeared and perished during the flight.

In the context of this fictional retelling of a traumatic past, the memories of Emil’s parents and his brother, characters who survived the flight, approximate the work of mourning for Emil. From an extradiegetic perspective, the entire novel and especially the poetic epilogue, illustrate the author’s own attempt of working through postmemories of flight and expulsion.99 Sieben Sprünge can thus be considered an example of “delayed mourning” (Schwab 2010, 103) that Draesner performs in lieu of the generations that experienced the war and the flight first-hand. This contrasts sharply with Kempowski’s novel where an exploration of the past and the process of mourning are cut short. Draesner incorporates insights into post/memory not only into the novel’s plot but also into multiple paratexts (essays, interviews, introductions, among others), some of which are accessible on a carefully designed website accompanying the book publication. Der-siebte-sprung.de serves multiple functions: it provides access to multiple documents and sources that contributed to the writing of the novel, including recordings of the author’s trips to Wroclaw and her interviews with Poles;100 under the rubric “Selber Erzählen” (“Narrate yourself”), it invites readers’ responses and contributions; and the website provides space for metaliterary reflections. For instance, a “Lexikon der reisenden Wörter” (Lexicon of traveling words) includes historical and theoretical terms as well as some words in Silesian dialect and in Polish, all of which played a role in writing the novel.101 Entries that draw on memory studies and often include quotations and references to pertinent scholarship include “postmemory,” “Kriegskind” (“child of war”), “Schweigen” (“silence”), among many others. Overall, the der-siebte-sprung.de functions not only as the introduction to the novel but also as its continuation. (In fact, Draesner has described the website as the novel’s last chapter.) The website builds a bridge between the fictional realm of the novel and a virtual space that allows for commentary, reflection, and dialogue. Taken together, the novel and the website counteract the closed-off space within which Jonathan – the protagonist in Kempowski’s novel – grapples with post/memories of flight and expulsion in relative isolation.102 By including voices of different generational and national backgrounds, Draesner’s novel and website cut open this insolated memory space. And even if one recognizes that a lot more remains to be done to achieve a truly transnational perspective, the novel and website begin to transcend a narrow focus on national memories and traumas by considering Polish perspectives on forced migration.

To conclude, the vastly different literary approaches of Kempowski and Draesner throw into relief significant changes in literary and scholarly discourses on forced migration over the past two and a half decades. The main character of Kempowski’s novel is stuck between collective memories of German guilt on the one hand and unprocessed postmemories regarding his parent’s death at the end of the war on the other. Predating developments in memory studies, Mark und Bein addresses the roles of transgenerational memories and of postmemorial spaces. Draesner’s novel, by contrast, clearly draws on aspects of memory studies and works creatively with and through postmemories. Furthermore, the author uses remediation – via the website der-siebte-sprung.de – to open up the generic space of the novel.103 She does so by incorporating interactive features and by providing multiple entry points to the subject matter of the novel. Considering the integration of Polish characters and aspects of Polish history, Sieben Sprünge indicates a shift towards a growing transnational orientation in both German literature and scholarship on forced migration.

References

Aly, Götz. “Auschwitz und die Politik der Vertreibung.” Zwangsmigration in Europa. Zur wissenschaftlichen und politischen Auseinandersetzung um die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Eds. Bernd Faulenbach and Andreas Helle. Essen: Klartext, 2005. 35–44.

Assmann, Aleida. Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik. Munich: Beck, 2006.

Bachmann-Medick, Doris. “The Translational Turn.” Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture. Trans. Adam Blauhaut. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. 175–210.

Beer, Mathias. Flucht und Vertreibung der Deutschen. Voraussetzungen, Verlauf, Folgen. Munich: Beck, 2011a.

Beer, Mathias. “Review of Hahn, Eva, and Hahn, Hans Henning: Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern. Legenden, Mythos, Geschichte.” H-Soz-Kult, 03 June 2011b. <https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-15114> [accessed: 06 March 2016].

Berger, Karina. Heimat, Loss and Identity: Flight and Expulsion in German Literature from the 1950s to the Present. Oxford/Bern: Lang, 2014.

Bernig, Jörg. Niemandszeit. Roman. Munich: DVA, 2002.

Breuer, Lars. Kommunikative Erinnerung in Deutschland und Polen. Täter- und Opferbilder in Gesprächen über den Zweiten Weltkrieg. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2015.

Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London/New York: Verso, 2004.

Draesner, Ulrike. Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt. 2013– , <https://der-siebte-sprung.de/rendez-vous-7tersprung/> [accessed: 08 March 2016].

Draesner, Ulrike. Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt. Roman. Munich: Luchterhand, 2014.

Dückers, Tanja. Himmelskörper. Roman. Berlin: Aufbau, 2003.

Eigler, Friederike. Heimat, Space, Narrative: Toward a Transnational Approach to Flight and Expulsion. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014.

Erll, Astrid, and Ann Rigney, eds. Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2009.

Fuchs, Anne, and Mary Cosgrove. “Germany’s Memory Contests and the Management of the Past.” German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse Since 1990. Eds. Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove, and Georg Grote. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006. 1–21.

Goertz, Heinrich. “Polenfahrt in Luxuslimousine.” Tagesspiegel 23 February 1992.

Grass, Günter. Im Krebsgang. Roman. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002.

Hahn, Eva, and Hans Henning Hahn. “Die ‘Holocaustisierung des Flucht- und Vertreibungsdiskurses.’ Historischer Revisionismus oder alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen?” Deutsch-Tschechische Nachrichten. Dossier Nr. 8. May 2008.

Hahn, Eva, and Hans Henning Hahn. Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern. Legenden, Mythos, Geschichte. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010.

Halicka, Beata. “Erinnerungskultur.” Die Erinnerung an Flucht und Vertreibung. Ein Handbuch der Medien und Praktiken. Eds. Stephan Scholz, Maren Röger, and Bill Niven. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2015. 89–99.

Hempel, Dirk. Walter Kempowski. Eine bürgerliche Biographie. Munich: Random House, 2004.

Hirsch, Marianne. “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory.” Discourse 15.2 (Winter 1992–93): 3–29.

Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Janesch, Sabrina. Katzenberge. Roman. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2010.

Jaroszewski, Marek. “Danzig und Ostpreußen in Walter Kempowskis ‘Mark und Bein.’” 1000 Jahre Danzig in der deutschen Literatur. Gdańsk: Institut Filologii Germańskiej, 1998. 233–247.

Kelletat, Andreas. “Von der Täter- zur Opfernation? Die Rückkehr des Themas ‘Flucht und Vertreibung’ in den deutschen Vergangenheitsdiskursen bei Grass und anderen.” Triangulum. Germanistisches Jahrbuch für Estland, Lettland und Litauen 2003/2004. Eds. Silvija Pavidis and Thomas Taterka. Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts Press, 2005. 132–147.

Kempowski, Walter. Mark und Bein. Roman. Munich: Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1992.

Kempowski, Walter. Alles Umsonst. Roman. Munich: Knaus, 2006.

Kopp, Kristin, and Joanna Niżyńska. “Introduction: Between Entitlement and Reconciliation: Germany and Poland’s Postmemory after 1989.” Germany, Poland, and Postmemorial Relations: In Search of a Livable Past. Eds. Kristin Kopp and Joanna Niżyńska. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 1–24.

Kramberg, K.H. “Ein Narr am Rande der Tragödie. Mit Walter Kempowski auf Ostpreußen-Fahrt.” Süddeutsche Zeitung 02/03 May 1992.

Lange, Simon. Der Erinnerungsdiskurs um Flucht und Vertreibung in Deutschland seit 1989/90. Vertriebenenverbände, Öffentlichkeit und die Suche nach einer ‘normalen’ Identität für die ‘Berliner Republik.’ Dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 2015.

Möller, Kirsten. Geschlechterbilder im Vertreibungsdiskurs: Auseinandersetzungen in Literatur, Film und Theater nach 1945 in Deutschland und Polen. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2016.

Müller, Olaf. Schlesisches Wetter. Roman. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2003.

Naimark, Norman M. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Niven, Bill. Representations of Flight and Expulsion in East German Prose Works. Woodbridge: Camden House, 2014.

Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire.” Representations (1989): 7–24.

Piskorski, Jan M. Die Verjagten. Flucht und Vertreibung im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts. Trans. Peter Oliver Loew. Munich: Siedler, 2013.

Röger, Maren. Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung. Mediale Erinnerungen und Debatten in Deutschland und Polen seit 1989. Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2011.

Röger, Maren. „Ereignis- und Erinnerungsgeschichte von ‘Flucht und Vertreibung:’ Ein Literaturbericht.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 62.1 (2014): 49–64.

Ross, Werner. “Umsonst. Walter Kempowski in Polen.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 25 April 1992.

Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Schacht, Ulrich. “Eine Episode aus deutsch-deutscher Vergangenheit um einen melancholischen Anti-Helden. Am Ende ein Windstoß verblaßter Bilder.” Welt am Sonntag. 02 February 1992.

Scholz, Stephan, Maren Röger, and Bill Niven, eds. Die Erinnerung an Flucht und Vertreibung. Ein Handbuch der Medien und Praktiken. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2015.

Schwab, Gabriele. Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Schwartz, Michael. Ethnische ‘Säuberungen’ in der Moderne. Globale Wechselwirkungen nationalistischer und rassistischer Gewaltpolitik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

Stickler, Matthias. Jenseits von Aufrechnung und Verdrängung. Neue Forschungen zu Flucht, Vertreibung und Vertriebenenintegration. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2014.

Sywenky, Irene. “Representations of German-Polish Border Regions in Contemporary Polish Fiction: Space, Memory, Identity.” German Politics and Society 31.4 (2013): 59–84.

Traba, Robert, and Robert Zurek. “‘Expulsion’ or ‘Forced Resettlement’? The Polish-German Dispute about Notions and Memory.” Breakthrough and Challenges: 20 Years of the Polish-German Treaty on Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Relations. Ed. Witold M. Góralski. Warsaw: Elipsa, 2011. 363–401.

Traba, Robert, and Hans Henning Hahn. Deutsch-Polnische Erinnerungsorte. Vol. 4: Reflexionen . Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013.

Treichel, Hans-Ulrich. Der Verlorene. Roman. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998.

Warley, Linda. “Flucht und Vertreibung and the Difficult Work of Memory.” Life Writing 10.3 (2013): 329–350.