Repräsentationen des Holocaust zur westdeutschen Erinnerungskultur seit 1979

Analyzes strategies of representation of the Holocaust on the basis of selected texts by five German writers. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is the most controversial among them. His script for the film "Hitler: Ein Film aus Deutschland" (1978) aims at an aesthetic depiction of Hitler and Nazism, in a mythical transfiguration which revives the fascination for National Socialism felt by former "Volksdeutsche". The dissentient, the victims of the Holocaust, have no voice. In her novels "Übergang" (1982) and "Judasschaf" (1985), Anne Duden focuses on her own trauma as a German having to come to terms with the past, while the suffering of the Jewish victims is omitted and knowledge of the Holocaust becomes part of a general history of catastrophe. Ulla Berkéwicz, whose grandmother was Jewish, traces, in her novel "Engel sind schwarz und weiss" (1992), the experience of a Hitler youth enthused by the cultic format of Nazism. However, when confronted with the order to murder Jews, he deserts, joins up with Jewish partisans, and falls in love with a Jewish woman. Bernhard Schlink's "Der Vorleser" (1995) depicts the protagonist's lack of empathy with victims of the Holocaust. Martin Walser's works cope with the topic of Auschwitz in a controversial way, at times almost antisemitic.