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Neophilologus (2007) 91:687699
DOI 10.1007/s11061-007-9045-0
Christine Cosentino
Received: 8 November 2005 / Accepted: 12 January 2006 / Published online: 13 September 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract For over half a century, German discussions of the Third Reich in literature have focused primarily on crimes committed by the Nazis, on the Holocaust, and on the Germans endorsement of the regime or passivity toward it. There was generally a noticeable silence in literature about the Germans own suffering during aerial bombings. Finally, in 1997, the writer W.G. Sebald began an investigation and public debate about the causes of this collective act of forgetting. It is noteworthy that in recent timestimes of new global warsa number of German authors, among them Volker Braun, Dieter Forte, Kurt Bartsch and Helga Schtz, have decided to address their trauma as a vital part of their postwar identity. They were children during the war and therefore beyond moral and historical responsibility. Their literary works show a convincing fusion of narrative perspectives: an innocent childs view of the war with the critical reections of the older writer. Nowhere are there attempts to portray the Germans as victims or to blur the line between perpetrators and victims. With acute historical awareness of the horrors of war, the authors of the recent autobiographical messages are driven solely by one overpowering motivation: never again.
Zum literarischen Thema der achendeckenden Luftangriffe auf deutsche Stadte und des Bombentraumas melden sich immer wieder neue Stimmen. Im Vorfeld der Jahrtausendwende und in allerletzter Zeit waren es auffallend Autoren aus der letzten Generation, Autoren also mit historisch unbelastetem Blick, die zur Zeit des Zweiten Weltkrieges Kinder waren. Dieter Forte (Jahrgang 1935) fabt es in einem Gesprach mit Uwe Wittstock entsprechend: Heute haben wir die letzte
C. Cosentino (&)
Foreign Language Department, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ 08102, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Der Krieg, ein Kinderspiel: Romane mit Kinderperspektive im Kontext der Luftkriegsdebatte
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688 C. Cosentino
Gelegenheit mit Menschen, die dabei waren, ber dieses Thema zu reden (Wittstock 2002). Werke von Autoren wie Forte selbst, Helga Schtz, Kurt Bartsch oder Volker Braun waren Beispiele fr einen solchen Zugang zu dem komplexen Thema. Kaum berraschend fungieren dann auch Kinder in erzahltechnisch unterschiedlicher Form als Protagonisten in diesen neueren oder neuen autobiographisch gepragten...