Silence and Acts of Memory

A Postwar Discourse on Literature, History, Anna Seghers, and Women in the Third Reich

Birgit Maier-Katkin

2007
214 pages
ISBN 1611482690

This book explores silence and memory in Germany's ongoing discourse about the Nazi past. It examines the ways in which exile literature and critical thought by Anna Seghers joins postwar discourse and current historical research to formulate an acceptable memory of private life during the Third Reich. Seghers' work is particularly relevant in light of the postwar rift between private and public memory discourse. Her texts The Seventh Cross, "The Excursion of the Dead Girls," and especially her depictions of female figures offer a rare in-depth examination of ordinary life under Hitler. From exile, Seghers reveals hidden voices and personal experience with the Nazi regime that linger in the silenced voids of history. Silence and Acts of Memory reconnects private and public discourse about traumatic events of the Nazi past; the book contributes valuable insights to the current discourse about the continuing formative process of German national identity.

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Reviews
"The topic of this book is timely and by no means relevant only for literary scholarship, given wide-reaching debates in recent decades on issues of silence, culpability, and complicity (whether active or passive) of civilian Germans during Hitler's reign. The arguments presented here contribute to a growing understanding of how the humanities, in particular literary studies and works of art themselves, can further historical inquiry in a way that other types of documentation simply cannot."
--Jennifer Marston William, Purdue University (Monatshefte, 100. 3, 2008)

"I believe that this well-written and well-researched volume will be of interest not just to scholars of Seghers's work (although they will profit from it) but also to students of history, psychology, and memory and to all those wrestling with a sense of personal responsibilty for the many problematic historical events currently taking place in our global environment. In fact, this book seems to me more important as a contribution to our thinking about human rights and individual responsibilities than as a study of a major German woman writer. By using the experience of the generations that struggled with its involvement in the Nazi era and by analyzing the complications for the generations that followed their resolute silence on the topic, Maier-Katkin can focus on a model far enough removed in time to give us critical distance but uncomfortably close enough in the behavior of individual people in a public discourse of propaganda to make her readers genuinely think through their own political positions. This book is well worth reading and pondering."
--Kathleen L. Komar, University of California at Los Angeles (Pacific Coast Philology: Journal of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Vol. 43, 2008)

"In her compelling study of Anna Seghers' exile works...Maier-Katkin analyzes the potency of Seghers' literary images, representation and discourse from the retrospective of the twenty-first century...It successfully explores the silenced voids and hidden memories in [Seghers'] two works and reveals the multifaceted nuances of historical experience. Maier-Katkin's endeavor opens and provides refreshing perspectives for literary and historical discussion of ordinary people's experiences during the Nazi period."
- Arens, Hiltrud. German Studies Review 2010: 218-220.

About the author:

Birgit Maier-Katkin is an Associate Professor of German at Florida State University.

Distributed by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group