Balancing self with the world and others: Angela Krauß`Romanticism

Balancing self with the world and others: Angela Krauß'
Romanticism and novel escape from the postmodern.
A thesis submitted to the
Graduate School
of the University of Cincinnati
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
in the department of German Studies
of the College of Arts and Sciences
by
Graham Hentschel
B.A. University of Cincinnati
June 2008
Committee Chair: Katharina Gerstenberger, Ph.D.
1
In this thesis I will examine Angela Krauß' post-Wende prose literature to show how she deals
with fragmentation stylistically and thematically, ultimately leaving her narrator and the reader
with a desire for balance. Stylistically, Krauß' work can be described as postmodern, but
thematically it is more informed by early Romantic and specifically the philosophy of Novalis.
Both the postmodern and Romantic writer embraces fragmentation in theory and artistic output,
but with differing perspectives and ultimate goals. The postmodernist revels in the chaos of
fragmentation as a sign of unavoidable diversity and the lack of utopian harmony. The
Romantic, particularly one in a Novalisian tradition, can use it to express yearning for unity and
the real possibility of transcendence. Krauß shows her Romantic take on the issue by creating
a narrator with an identity profoundly affected by the fragmented nature of the post-Wende and
postmodern culture in which she lives. She is in a perpetual state of searching for balance, first
between East and West and then, as the immediate tension of the Wende fades, within herself
and in love with other people. Though fleeting, the narrator's moments of transcendence over
fragmentation are presented in earnest as escape from postmodern culture.
The primary texts that I have chosen—Die Überfliegerin (1995), Weggeküßt (2002), and Wie
Weiter (2006)— write into each other. The texts trace a linear development from the sudden,
peaceful, yet earth shattering moments surrounding the fall of the wall, to the identity issues that
came with Westernization, and finally to finding a balanced identity in the 21st century. As these
texts unfold, so does the scope widen. In Die Überfliegerin, Krauß is in the midst of the Wende
and the East / West dynamic is a driving force behind action and travel between the two recently
brought together hemispheres. The narrator goes on a journey that is decidedly informed by the
german Romantic. Weggeküßt takes several steps forward in time and takes place about twelve
years after the Wende. The narrator takes a more passive, reflective approach in an
examination of herself in westernized Leipzig. She must reconnect to her surroundings by
finding balance between her own Romantic tendencies and the postmodern culture of the 21st
century. Wie Weiter takes place in the narrator's Leipzig apartment, which she never leaves
during the main plot, but rather spends two quiet hours thinking about the past, present, and
future. The narrator's memories of growing up in the GDR are centered on themes of love and
finding oneness in a relationship with others.
Angela Krauß is not championing a conservative movement by allowing her Romantic narrator
to live in the present, postmodern culture, but rather taking a more nuanced progressive stance.
To some degree, she questions the severity of postmodern culture and asks us to question how
much it has infiltrated the imaginations of the people and, further, which of those aspects are
worth combating.
2
Table of Contents
Introduction..….........................................................................................................................5-12
Die Überfliegerin
discovering self in a Romantic journey after the Wende........................................................12-26
Weggeküßt
relearning to connect to the world..........................................................................................26-40
Wie Weiter: love and
approaching transcendence and balancing self with others...................................................40-55
Conclusion
escaping postmodern.............................................................................................................56-59
Bibliography.................................................................................................................................60
3
4
In this thesis I will examine Angela Krauß' post-Wende prose literature to show how she
deals with fragmentation stylistically and thematically, ultimately leaving her narrator and the
reader with a desire for balance. Stylistically, Krauß's work can be described as postmodern, but
thematically it is more informed by early Romantic and specifically the philosophy of Novalis.
Both the postmodern and Romantic writer embraces fragmentation in theory and artistic output,
but with differing perspectives and ultimate goals. The postmodernist revels in the chaos of
fragmentation as a sign of unavoidable diversity and the lack of utopian harmony. The Romantic,
particularly one in a Novalisian tradition, can use it to express yearning for unity and the real
possibility of transcendence. Krauß shows her Romantic take on the issue by creating a narrator
with an identity profoundly affected by the fragmented nature of the post-Wende and postmodern
culture in which she lives. She is in a perpetual state of searching for balance, first between East
and West and then, as the immediate tension of the Wende fades, within herself and in love with
other people. Though fleeting, the narrator's moments of transcendence over fragmentation are
presented in earnest as escape from postmodern culture.
Angela Krauß was born in 1950 in Chemnitz and studied at the Johannes Becher
Literature Institute in Leipzig. She found success early in her writing career and has lived as a
free lance author since completing her studies in 1981. Krauß' first three major publications were
written in the GDR and therefore will not play a major role in my thesis. However, looking at
them briefly helps to trace the development of Krauß' signature style and hints at several major
themes that are central to her post-Wende texts.
5
Das Vergnügen (1984), a debut novel written in the third person, tells the story of
Felizitas Händschel, an aging factory worker in the GDR. Felizitas reflects on her life as the
people at her anniversary party conjure up memories. In a review of the work, Julie Klassen
describes Krauß as using “exquisite detail” to describe her surroundings and “leitmotivs by
which we recognize the individual voices” within a “polyphony” (Klassen 263). Krauß
continued to hone this approach and develops a style that tries to balance detailed mini-narratives
within a more sweeping narrative. Her second publication, Glashaus (1988), is a collection of
short stories, which continues what Astrid Köhler describes as precise form and rhythm in
language that brings forth the symbiosis of “Landschaft, Gerätewelt, und Lebenswelt” (Köhler
164). It is also with these stories that Krauß begins to lean toward experimental form. Der
Dienst (1990) is the only work that Krauß considers to be firmly based in autobiography and her
first full length first person narrative. On the immediate surface, the text has Krauß dealing with
her father, who died well before the book was published, and his service to the state. However, it
deals more deeply with her father's declining mental health and how it affected her mother and
childhood. Focusing on personal experience as opposed to political commentary is a trend that
continues in Krauß' work.
Before becoming a literary writer, Angela Krauß was a visual artist and it shows in her
highly visual literary style. To a certain degree, realistic spatial description is a product of her
training in the GDR, as she was surrounded by Socialist Realism. But Krauß has incorporated
her sense of space and description into a unique style. Especially in Weggeküßt and Wie Weiter,
Krauß employs what I describe as four dimensional pointillism: The language forms small,
6
scattered, and precise sketches of people, space, mood, and time that are designed to look
impressionistic. Her sentence structure may appear simple and is best described as laconic.
However, upon stepping back, one can see how Krauß' hand has organized her laconic sketches
to form a larger, more complex image. Krauß, especially in her latest works, intermingles her
narrators’ vignettes without regard for establishing linear time. Instead, the spatial descriptions
and the unfolding text slowly reveal a convoluted story. Finally, Krauß' textual images never
exist as complete: With each new text, new perspectives are added to clarify and sometimes
confound that which came before.1
With her brand of style, Krauß engages only the willing reader. She is not a bestselling
author, but she has received several prestigious literary awards and favorable reviews in Der
Freitag, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Süddeutsche Zeitung to name a few. People are
reading and it is not just academics. In fact, the academic work on Krauß is minimal but
growing. As a highly literary writer, Krauß has a lot to offer the academic community, and the
few who have worked with her texts have done so with considerable insight.
Julie Klassen has played a central role in bringing Angela Krauß to the attention of
Germanists in America. She has published numerous English language reviews of Krauß' works
in World Literature Today (Das Vergnügen in 1985; Glashaus in 1990; Der Dienst in 1992; Die
Überfliegerin in 1996; Sommer auf dem Eis in 1999), and conducted an in depth interview with
Krauß (the first to be published in English) for the 2009 edition of Women in German Yearbook.
1
See Eke for a focus on Angela Krauß' form in general. See Dittbeimer for a focus on how
she uses time.
7
Furthermore, The Coalition of Women in German, with whom Julie Klassen is involved, was
responsible for bringing Angela Krauß to their conferences twice. Once in the pivotal year of
1990, and again in 2008.
Astrid Köhler of Queen Mary, University of London devotes a chapter to Krauß in her
text Brückenschläge. DDR-Autoren vor und nach der Wiedervereinigung (2007). One of her
primary goals is to derail or at least redirect the effort to look at GDR writers explicitly as
commentators on socialist politics before and after the Wende. Instead, she proposes a focus on
“stofflicher, thematischer und erzähltechnischer Hinsicht, mit Blick auf Figuren, Handlungen,
Motive, intertextuelle Referenzen” (Köhler 14). For Köhler, the socio-political themes of the
chosen texts emerge only as one facet from the aesthetic literature. Köhler points to Krauß' texts
as one in which socio-political themes are inevitable, but not necessarily central. I further
maintain in the spirit of Köhler's thesis that there is more social than political commentary
emerging from Krauß' texts.
Paul Lützeler uses Die Überfliegerin to exemplify the postmodern novel as part of his
book Postmoderne und postkoloniale deutschsprachige Literatur (2005). In the book, Lützeler
neatly untangles the knot of postmodern literature and shows how the elements play out in
Krauß' text. Specifically, he points to: intertextuality, focus on the reader over the author,
pastiche, collage, and a focus on entropy or the impossibility of utopia (Lützeler 40-45). His
analysis of Die Überfliegerin on these bases is clear and convincing and most of these elements
will show up in my analysis as well. However, I would argue that they are only present as
setting. That is, the reader is meant to consider the issues that are current in postmodern culture
8
but follow the narrator on her search for a way out. That she believes in this possibility and that
her belief is ultimately not admonished by a skeptical author is distinctly not postmodern 2.
Monika Hohbein-Deegen recently published a book on travel and identity in East
Germany and included a section devoted to Angela Krauß' Die Überfliegerin. As the title
suggests, she focuses on how travel interacts with and shapes the fractured identity of the East
German narrator. Furthermore, Deegen addresses the issues brought up by Lützeler and Köhler
but looks at them with fresh eyes. One point of particular interest is found in a brief but clear link
made between this text and the Romantic, specifically referencing Novalis and his Famous Blaue
Blume, a symbol of earnest yearning for transcendence and finding unity of self in relationships
with others and the environment.
It is on the issue of the fragment end of Die Überfliegering that Lützeler and Deegen take
clearly opposing viewpoints. The text ends with a breakdown of narrative structure and the
reader is left hanging with the narrator in an ambiguous and surrealistic state. Lützeler calls it an
example of the postmodern tendency toward diaspora and the impossibility of utopia. Deegen
describes it as only the beginning of a Reise zum ich. Deegen not only picks up on how the text
itself indicates such an interpretation, but she also recognizes the importance of analyzing Krauß'
texts in groups.
2
The relationship between a skeptical author and his/her subject matter in postmodern
literature is explored by Lützeler himself and established as a key element of postmodern
literature in his book chapter “The Postmodern Novel.” Of course, he is careful not to directly
state that it is a mandatory element, but the relationship between the author and the work, even if
deliberately distant or ironic, is of the utmost importance when discussing postmodern literature.
9
In the existing scholarship, it is commonplace for Angela Krauß' texts to be analyzed as
pairs and trios, but there is no definitive grouping. Two scholars have created two different
trilogies. Ilse Nagelschmidt defines a Krauß trilogy as Das Vergnügen (1984), Der Dienst
(1989/90), and Die Überfliegerin (1995), while Barbara Mabee, places Die Überfliegerin,
Milliarden Neuer Sterne (1999), and Weggeküßt (2002) together. Köhler does not form a trilogy
but rather groups the texts in pairs: Die Überfliegerin with Milliarden Neuer Sterne and
Weggeküßt with Wie Weiter (2006) (Köhler 184). In fact, Köhler concludes that each text is
written into the next, with repeating characters and situations that can function as reference
models (Köhler 214).
The primary texts that I have chosen—Die Überfliegerin, Weggeküßt, and Wie Weiter—do
not necessarily act as a trilogy, but rather, to use Köhler's words, they write into each other. The
texts trace a linear development from the sudden, peaceful, yet earth shattering moments
surrounding the fall of the wall, to the identity issues that came with Westernization, and finally
to finding a balanced identity in the 21 st century. As these texts unfold, so does the scope widen.
In Die Überfliegerin, Krauß is in the midst of the Wende and the East / West dynamic is a driving
force behind action and travel between the two recently brought together hemispheres.
Weggeküßt takes several steps forward in time and takes place about twelve years after the
Wende. The narrator takes a more passive, reflective approach in an examination of her self in
westernized Leipzig. Her look inward shows the development of a character which is no longer
completely defined by her being from the former East, but rather by her coming to terms with
what happened when East met West. Wie Weiter takes place in the narrator's Leipzig apartment,
10
which she never leaves during the main plot, but rather spends two quiet hours thinking about the
past, present, and future. The issue of being from the former East is only relevant in the form of
one of her friends, who moves further East to Siberia to preserve the Communist past. Otherwise,
the narrator's memories of growing up in the GDR are centered on themes of love and finding
oneness and mindfulness as she feels split in the postmodern culture of the 21 st century. The
focus evolves from East/West tension to more generalized life experiences, like love 3.
Die Überfliegerin finds the narrator living in Leipzig shortly after the Wende and in a
frantic state as she prepares to leave the former GDR for the first time. She looks out her window
into the unknown, longing to get away, but she is trapped by the remains of a society that no
longer exists. She takes a trip to America that begins in Minnesota, makes a stop in Madison,
Wisconsin, and ends up in San Francisco. It is a gradual journey that begins in a progressive
midwest town and ends in the extreme of Western liberalism. The narrator feels changed by her
experiences and follows a growing urge to return east. In Moscow, the narrator meets her old
friend and pen pal Toma. She is immediately struck by the westernization that has already
occurred. There are a number of superficial parallels to her experiences in America, but rather
than trying to embrace them as she happily did in America, she is appalled. Everything that she
experienced seemed somehow not to fit and, once again in a frantic dash, she leaves Moscow
behind and heads back home to Leipzig.
3
Love is a key theme for Krauß. She has a published vorlesung in which she discusses
love and its relationship to literature. However, I believe the author's own vorlesung should not
act as a basis of understanding her texts, which speak for themselves, but rather exist as a useful
supplement added after a close reading of the text.
11
Weggeküßt picks up several years later, in the beginning of the new millennium, and
twelve years after the fall of the wall. Krauß' unnamed female narrator finds herself physically
settled back in Leipzig, but intellectually and emotionally concerned with her place in her
westernized East German city. From the inside of her favorite pastry shop, Sweetie, she watches
the people and the world go on around her and tries to deal with a feeling of being left behind.
No one and nothing, she feels, has waited for her. In this state she is unable to connect with
others. Finally, after reflection that occurs over most of the text, she decides to live in the
moment and pursue a man she met at the pastry shop.
Krauß' unnamed female narrator appears again in Wie Weiter several years later. The
entire present of the text takes place over a period of two hours on a Sunday morning. While
sitting in bed, she plays a game of Mikado, looks out the window into the zoo, observes her pet
tortoise Kastanorka, and ultimately tries to organize her grasp on the past, present, and future.
She does so by reflecting on her relationships with her three Liebesmenschen: Leo, Toma, and
Roman. Each represents a different way the narrator has tried to make connections with people
and how she views those connections. Ultimately she chooses to focus on one path in which she
finds transcendent unity, but relishes her opportunities to reflect on past possibilities.
DIE ÜBERFLIEGERIN: Discovering self in a Romantic journey after the Wende
Die Überfliegerin is written in three parts that form a sort of basic dialectic. The first two
sections present the thesis and antithesis as East identity and West identity. The third section
12
shows attempts at synthesis by focusing on how the two are being balanced. Though the Wende
lends historical and socio-political background to Krauß' dialectic, it is the everyday human
characters who are the true catalysts in the search for synthesis. The narrator, for example, travels
from the East to the West and back again, trying to make connections to people and places on
both sides. The observations and relationships that develop during the narrator's travels may
touch on the social and political issues of communism versus capitalism, but Krauß does not
want to establish a position either way. She is concerned with how the two opposing sides work
in everyday life and, ultimately, how the synthesis falls apart.
In section one, the narrator feels trapped in the East, engages her surroundings and how
they shape her identity. At around midnight, we find her in Leipzig sometime after the events of
1989/90. She is tearing wall paper off of the walls and dismantling furniture to be trashed:
“Plötzlich faßte ich mit zwei Fingern den Zipfel der Tapete unter der Zimmerdecke und riß sie
von oben nach unter herunter. Ich stieß das Fenster auf” (Überfliegerin 9). The first word of the
text, plötzlich, informs the reader that the narrator’s behavior is that of emotional urgency, not
radical redecorating. She stops at the window and looks out, “fliegen wäre schön” (Ü 9). She is
longing to get away, but feels held back by the memories connected to items she finds in her
apartment.
As the narrator turns her interest back to the wallpaper, she sees in it a symbol of the
GDR's fragility. “In einer hochsommerlichen Nacht reisse ich die Papiere von den Wänden, die
holzfreien, geglätteten, die saturierten und geprägten, die holzhaltigen der ersten
Verarbeitungsstufe, wunderbare Papiere aus Hadern und Lumpen, einer zähen Masse, wie sie in
13
den Mischtrommeln der Papierfabriken von Heidenau und Merseburg, Penig und Weissenborn,
Bitterfeld und Rosenthal zielstrebig um die eigene Achse schlingerte; sie lassen sich an einer
kleinen Unregelmäßigkeit mit zwei Fingern fassen und herunterziehen“(Ü 11).
The paper represents the GDR, which, after so many years, collapsed with little effort and an
outpouring of strong emotion. By grasping this paper and thinking about it in such a way, she is
connecting herself to the GDR and thus tearing away her own identity. By the end of the
destructive exercise, she is ready to go on a search for herself in the changing world.
Another similarly telling passage is found when the narrator interacts with her old green
couch (Ü 23). As soon as she sees it, she thinks of her grandmother’s coffin buried in the ground
and flashes back to a memory of the old woman sitting on the couch. Her grandmother, whose
generation experienced the beginning of the GDR, is now intimately linked to the piece of
furniture. Lützeler goes as far as to call the sofa “des Deutschen liebstes Möbelstück,” (Lützeler
52), rendering the connection between the narrator and the sofa even stronger. When the narrator
pushes the sofa on its back, she feels shamed and conflicted, but continues her project of
destruction (Krauß 23-24). The narrator's physical engagement with her home and furniture,
which represents the state and deep familial/cultural bonds, stresses her desires to break free
from these things. It is in these passages that the familial bond to the state is established in the
world of Krauß' texts,4 while highlighting the conflicted emotions that go along with trying to
destroy connections to the past.
4
She had already played with the idea with Der Dienst, but the relationship took a
profound change after the Wende.
14
Krauß hints at the error in the narrator's method of destroying the past with ominous
imagery. In the opening passages of the Die Überfliegerin, the narrator is careful to notice a crow
perched outside the window and over the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof. On one level, the black bird's
traditional connection to death and doom is at work. It indeed mirrors the tone in which the
narrator describes her apartment and city, both of which are doomed to fall apart, be torn apart,
or simply cease to exist. However, when Krauß uses such time tested imagery, she typically
builds on it or plays with the multiple dimensions of its meaning. In this case, the crow comes
only about five sentences after the narrator says “fliegen wäre schön” while looking up and away
from her apartment and the train station (Ü 9). The narrator is connecting herself to this bird: she
is inherently able to fly away since the wall came down and would like to do so, yet she remains
at rest over the crossroads of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof. Krauß is placing the negative
connotation specifically on the narrator's mood as she prepares her exit from former East
Germany, not on the experience of travel itself. The warning is against destroying ones home and
history in the process.
Frau Händsch, the ideal GDR citizen, is described as a matronly figure – with rosy
cheeks, a puppet-like smile, and a white hat – who worked in a government kitchen that fed the
maintenance men for the East German railroad. Her presence is not unpleasant from the start
and she is even helpful as she picks up the pile of wallpaper in the narrator’s room in order to
dispose of it. But Krauß is very careful to follow through with the slightly inhuman description,
which establishes a disconcerting aura. It turns out that behind the smiling helpful exterior,
Händsch is actually opportunistically taking advantage of fellow East Germans with her selling
15
of insurance. Furthermore, it is revealed that Frau Händsch's headwear is actually a medical
dressing from a recent wound. The narrator runs into Händsch's temple, causing her to inspect
the wound. She finds, to her surprise, a metal plate. In these scenes, Händsch's superficial nature
manifests itself in behavior and appearance, taking away a portion of her humanity. The reader is
to recognize this hollow character as a stand in for the GDR, but more importantly for how the
charged environment affected those within it.
The changes surrounding the Wende cause the narrator to reconsider how she had
identified herself; is she hollow like Händsch? The narrator is unwilling to accept the possibility
of such a fate and decides to go on a journey of discovery. The plot line of the coming journey
highlights some of the Romantic elements of the narrator's character. For one, she believes in
fulfillment and betterment via the experience of travel and strong yearning. Further, because the
reader often sees things through the eyes of the narrator, we know that the narrator focuses in on
the symbolic nature of her surroundings. This tendency is slowly revealed as one facet of the
figure's bond with nature, sensuality, and the bond between poetic and life.
The second section of Die Überfliegerin has a decidedly different style and tone, as it
artistically encapsulates the first moment of freedom. The section begins: „Fliegen ist schön.“ (Ü
53). This recalls the similar but subjunctive statement made in the first section. The narrator has
achieved her first goal, which was to get away from the environment that tormented her. As she
notices the well-used runway beneath her and breaks away from negative introspection, she
prepares to observe her new environment with openness.
16
Upon arrival in Minneapolis, the first of three destinations in the United States, the
narrator offers an important spatial description that, as Lützeler also points out (54-55), acts as a
foil to the apartment over Leipzig Hauptbahnhof. She approaches the home of her host family,
Julie and David, who own a wooded area filled with wild flora and fauna. Just as the narrator
noticed the crow sitting on the wire in Leipzig, surrounded by the grey infrastructure of the
former East, she sees a large blue bird flying free above her and the tree tops (Überfliegerin 59).
On the traditional level, the flying bird represents the narrators feeling of freedom and what she
imagines as the freedom of the west. Once again, she connects with the bird on a deeper level.
She no longer identifies with the black color, but rather the blue of the expansive sky. However,
though free and at greater ease, she is still observing from a great distance and has not come
down from the excitement of the moment.
There is also a juxtaposition of characters between Leipzig and Minnesota. David has
been a thoughtful person of action since he was a little kid. The narrator describes the house he
built as being constructed by a man, “dessen große biegsame Hände geübt waren, Gedanken in
Rede zu Formen […] Die Rede in die Tat umzusetzen, war für ihn eine Kleinigkeit.”(Ü 62)
Furthermore, David works for Amnesty International by writing letters to tyrants in the Middle
East on behalf of prisoners. When juxtaposed with someone like Frau Händsch from the first
section, we see a dramatic and telling difference in values. On one side, David represents the
freedom of his country by showing how one can purchase land, imagine a personalized house,
and build it or have it built. Frau Händsch has lived her whole life in what the narrator describes
rather bleakly in terms of social mobility. On the other hand, when it comes to helping others
17
with your work, what is more effective, making them food or writing a letter on their behalf? In
Krauß' text, there should be no direct answer, but rather emphasis is on the question itself. One
character's good deeds do not necessarily become less good because they were done under or
even in the name of a bad system. Intent is what matters and to understand intent under a foreign
system without judgement, Krauß would suggest we step out of our own and examine both.
To be sure that her intentions are not lost Krauß holds up a mirror. Julie, a schoolteacher,
has some visiting students who offer their knowledge of the GDR. 5 Billie and Jackie speak with
what the narrator describes as the air of a young teacher, no doubt referring to a specific, freshly
educated confidence. Jackie seems to think that there were hardly any cars in the GDR, but Billie
corrects her: “Doch, sie haben welche![...] Aber ganz kleine”(Ü 68). The narrator describes
Julie's tone as “ein wenig lehrerinnenhaft”(Ü 68). Billie's response: the countryside was so small
that one could only a drive a short distance before running into the wall, “in jede
Himmelsrichtung drei Stunden”(Ü 69). Then, according to Billie, the driver would get out, walk
around a while, look at the bloodhounds pace at the wall, and get back into the small car. How
does he know this? Well, his grandfather, who built Chryslers in Detroit, told him so. Billie also
heard the tiny cars were made of paper. The conversation becomes even more ridiculous as the
children propose that the cars were smaller because the people in the GDR were smaller. There is
a discussion following, still between the children, of the genetical possibilities for people of the
5
In Die Gesamtliebe, Krauß says that kids do not understand irony. She plays with this
notion here.
18
GDR to evolve in such a way. Finally, one insists that NASA needs to be involved, offers to
share his cornflakes, and draws the rest away from the discussion to play.
Krauß deliberately puts these words into the mouths of children. For one, it softens the
critique of the West's–the readership's–understanding of the East. She is showing the reader that,
just as the West was not as glamorous as it initially seemed to many from the socialist East, the
East could certainly not be as the West initially thought. But even more, it shows how a
breakdown in communication can occur between generations. That is, a grandparent might say
jokingly that a Trabi is made of paper, but the cultural understanding and experience that informs
the joke is lost on the kid. Here, with these two scenes, we are dealing with competing
stereotypes that push toward synthesis and better understanding because it forces the view of a
distant, less biased observer.
The narrator moves on to stay with Lilly in Madison, Wisconsin. Lilly works with maps
in the university library and attempts to guide the narrator further west, saying that there is little
to see in the Midwest, namely St. Louis, outside of a few grain silos. At this implication,
Lützeler, who, as many of his readers will know, lives in St. Louis, points out correctly that there
is indeed more to see than a few silos. So what is the meaning of such a misleading guide for the
narrator? Because to track too deeply the historical westward journey of others, as one would do
in St. Louis– “the gateway to the west”– would be a detour for the narrator. She is not forging her
own way but catching up with the West and finding her place in the new world after 1989.
Therefore she must go straight to the most Western and stereotypically liberal cutting edge of
19
American diversity: San Francisco, a place where she can release her identity and try on some
others.
In San Francisco, the narrator has a deeply Romantic-symbolic experience at the Golden
Gate Bridge that leads to the climax of her Westernizing experience and carries forward Krauß'
characterization of her narrator as a Romantic. Until this point, the narrator has been passive
considering the frantic energy of the first section. One could describe the writing in the second
section as reminiscent of new literary journalism: the narrator describes what is going on around
her, is a passive participant, and adds the occasional flair of emotion with literary devices. This
changes after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. She started in the morning and “kam Mittertags
am anderen Ende an” (Ü 81). Then, at a “passenden Moment” she turned around and walked
back. Upon return, the weather became more tumultuous, not a storm, but rapidly changing. With
Krauß' detailed descriptions, one can easily picture the narrator standing at the edge of the west,
looking forward onto the clouds and icy fog that surround the peaks of buildings and the spires
of the bridge—she is, even if briefly, part of a modern day painting by Caspar David Friedrich.
She lets go of herself and experiences a moment of transcendence. However, because this
moment is fleeting, she returns slightly transformed but still in search of herself.
Another indicator of her transformation is heard in a comment made by Lilly in a phone
conversation with the narrator. Before hanging up, she says: “Wenn du ein Mann wärst, würde
ich sagen: Du gibst mir das Gefühl, deine erste Frau zu sein” (Ü 83). Lilly can hear in the
narrator's voice the need to move on while acknowledging a fading familiarity. The issue of
gender does not end here, as the final scene in the second section takes place in a second hand
20
clothing store where the narrator tries on clothing with Amy, her San Francisco friend. The trying
on of different clothing is a continuation of what her entire American trip has been. She has shed
her familiar garments and tried on those that define her idea of the West. This is, however, more
than putting on a pair of Levis jeans while listening to western music. She goes as deep as to
consider gender roles: when traveling through town, the narrator takes note of the transgender
atmosphere in San Francisco and is fascinated by it. Despite these radical differences, or perhaps
because of them, she felt as though she was “ein Teil einer Vielheit, von der [sie] nicht geahnt
hatte.” (Ü 85) She looks at the varied bunch of second hand clothing and sees a connection to her
recent existential realizations—the world is her clothing store and with the Wende, she can try on
any lifestyle she wants (Ü 85).
The narrator, however, is not long contented with her surroundings. As she plays with her
own understanding of who she is and develops in strange, almost mythically described
surroundings, she begins to feel drawn back home. This is a very Romantic plot line that will
continue into the third section. Like a traveling character from a Ludwig Tieck story, the narrator
will return to find an altered homeland.
The third section finds the narrator on a journey east to visit Russia, the GDR's
ideological mother-country. On the plane, another passenger suggests that it will be dangerous
for the narrator to live there as an American. She responds: “Ich bin kein Amerikaner” and drifts
off to sleep (Ü 93). This represents a severe problem for the narrator and the East in general.
After going west, freeing her identity to be more malleable, and choosing a newer, western
21
lifestyle, the narrator becomes homesick. The problem lies in that she still identifies herself with
the East, a place that has virtually disappeared.
The narrator dreams of home for the first time on the plane to Moscow (Ü 93). “Es war
ein seltsamer Traum, ohne Einzelheiten. Alle Einzelheiten waren aus ihm verbannt. Geblieben
war, was die Einzelheiten verbunden hatte, eine bestimmte Temperatur” (Ü 93). The narrator,
during her trip to America, has forgotten some of the sharper edges of her homeland that made
her want to dismantle it in the first place. Now all she remembers is the warm, sentimental
feeling for a past that is incomplete. While she sleeps, she is described as curling up in the fetal
position, signaling both her inner frailty and desire to revisit a more innocent time in her life. The
narrator describes her dream as “ohne Bilder. Es war ein Traum von Flüssigkeiten, die
ausschließlich die Eigenschaft hatten: 37 Grad Celsius. Also leicht erhöhte Temperatur, wie sie
bereits durch Erregung entstehen kann” (Ü 93). She is looking forward to her return East but is
unsure of how it will turn out. Her impression of home is, at this point, fluid.
Upon arrival, the narrator is met with enthusiasm by her old pen-pal, Toma, and Toma's
boyfriend Sascha. But the description of the meeting is marked by the narrator's discomfort in
the “new” East. She had never met Sascha and forgot that Toma had written about him. “Ich
hatte es vergessen. Es war verknotet in mein früheres Leben, das in Amerika in ein Loch gefallen
war. Seitdem flog ich durch die Welt..., von Osten nach Westen, solange nach Westen, bis der
Westen plötzlich wieder Osten war” (Ü 96). After dreaming of coming East and facing the life
she left behind, she is not quite sure how do deal with it when she is actually there. She, once
again, is fixated on action and wants to see the sights, like courtyards and beautiful markets in
22
the capital of Russia (Ü 104), but is continuously held back by the stereotypically capitalistic
desires of her recently westernized friends. The narrator's current state of mind does not allow
her to fit in. She has, like her Russian friends, been affected by the west; however, unlike her
friends, she is ready to revisit the east of her past.
Much of the discomfort the narrator feels is conveyed by the Russian characters being
overly contented with the new, westernized mother-country and they act as a foil to the still
adjusting narrator. She, for example, is picked up from the airport in a chauffeured Chrysler, an
American status symbol that reminds the reader of the children's car discussion in the second
section. The Russians have taken on to the Western lifestyle with less trouble than the narrator,
whose metamorphoses required travel and deep introspection. Such a disparity in coping with the
situation highlights the unsettling complacency that the narrator sees in her old friends and how
they react to Western culture. In one passage Toma and some girlfriends express interest in going
to stand in a line for hours in order to exchange money (Ü 104-105). Exchanging money, of
course, was a necessity, but one that is directly connected to capitalist westernization. The
narrator, as she said, would much prefer to visit courtyards and beautiful markets, but the others
are reluctant to comply. Though Toma is smiling with her friends, the narrator notes that she has
a face “eines Menschen, der nur körperlich anwesend ist und auf fadenscheinige Weise
hellwach” (Ü 105). The narrator is clearly concerned by what she considers to be a false front.
Her friends appear to be enthusiastic about the new western identity, but they are internally
exhausted and hollow. These characters have not experienced the second stage and are now stuck
in the aftermath of an overly forced transition.
23
In his article, Lützeler points out that the narrator's thoughts and the descriptions of her
surroundings are reminiscent of her home in Leipzig, a turn to backward reflection that is not
present in the first section (Lützeler 58). Though this is true, the thought is not brought to
fruition. It is not simply that she reflects on Leipzig, but also that her experiences in America are
reflected by the things she notices around her. There are many times, for example, that she puts a
descriptive emphasis on nature. The trees, like at the playground or in the urban courtyards, are
described as “kleine Wälder” (Ü 103) or “wie in einem Wald” (Ü 101). Likewise, she notices the
trees first when she looks out the window of her room: “Das Zimmer lag in der obersten Etage;
die höchsten Bäume im Hof streiften mit ihren Wipfeln das Fensterbrett” (Ü 100). This is a hint
of deeper reflections that need to take place: She had opened herself to identity transformation,
but is now stuck between east and west, the known and the unknown, and longs for both.
The end of the third section and the novel highlight what Lützeler describes as entropy.
The narrator hurriedly leaves Russia due to the possibility of an arranged marriage and
presumably heads home to Leipzig. Upon realizing that complacency in such a place was not
right for her, she grabbed her “Reisegepäck aus San Francisco, flog die Treppen abwärts, riß den
Wagenschlag auf und befahl: zum Flughafen!”(Ü 123). Her determination and direction has two
sides. The narrator shows strength and confidence in who she has become since her trip to
America, as her suitcase from San Francisco, a symbol of travel and the west, is the first thing
she takes. But, and perhaps more importantly, she is still running away from something, she has
not gotten the angst out of her system. From here to the end, the narrative breaks down into
surrealistic imagery. She is moving very fast, ridding in a car that goes bounding though the
24
streets until it literally bores a hole into the future, while the “Lenker lachte und schrie, daß eine
Ausländerin doch eben ganz anders gewöhnt ist zu fahren, ein ganz anderes Leben [...] Wir
Russen hängen nicht so am Leben!”(Ü 124) Finally, the car becomes a “Fluggerät” and the
narrator is flying over Germany. In the last passages, she says with renewed vigor: “Ich will nicht
sterben! Schrie ich da mit glasklarem, beobachtendem Geist, mit einer ganz neuen Art von
Begeisterung” (Ü 124). Immediately following is the final sentence, ending the text as abruptly
as it began “Achtung! brüllte Semjon, wir landen!” (Ü 124).
In three sections, the narrator has established a desire for a post-Wende balance that
cannot yet be achieved. With her observations, travels, and interactions, she outlines the
disparate misconceptions that exist between east and west as having a profound impact on how
those from the former-East identify themselves. The narrator ends up in a sort of limbo with little
definition. She longs for her western experiences and perhaps even wants to be defined by them,
but she cannot find peace with her self as an East German. It is from this point of fragmentation
that the narrator will try to piece together her own identity in the next work.
Die Überfliegerin has a more Romantic than postmodern take on fragmentation because
of the narrator's characterization, the set up of the journey, and ultimately how the postmodern
elements are presented. The narrator hones in on natural symbolism and searches for meaning in
everything around her. Her journey of discovery follows a path favored by Romantics in how it
unfolds, but also in how transcendence is obtainable, even if not always attained. Krauß,
however, is not yet to be defined in such a way. She is almost using this text to test herself and
her readers. She is trying out the Romantic character in the postmodern culture. When left on its
25
own, this text can certainly be read to indicate that postmodern culture has won over. But I don't
think Krauß is ready to concede, as her text expresses a lamenting over postmodern culture. She
would like her narrator to find a way to live within her postmodern environment and still
embrace some Romantic ideals.
WEGGEKÜßT: relearning to connect to the world
Krauß presents the reader with a finely crafted, yet deliberately disorganized web of the
narrator's observations and experiences. The web-like structure makes this text one of Krauß'
more demanding. It is common for the narrator to reference characters in passing whether or not
they have been fully introduced. For example, when considering “die Stimmen der Tiere” during
a visit to the Zoo in the second chapter, she thinks: “Ich weiß nicht, warum Tine mich verlassen
hat. Einst waren wir unzertrennlich. Damals habe ich nicht über sie nachgedacht, auch nicht über
mich. Wir beherrschten alles, Wiese, Wald, Garten, Mauer. Vielleicht habe ich überhaupt nicht
nachgedacht. Unzertrennlich waren wir” (Weggeküßt 25). This marks the first mention of Tine,
who does not appear again until page 50. Finally, Tine is completely characterized in the pages
around 77. The slow trickle of information forces the reader to engage the text and the narrator
by actively using the book, continuously questioning, and flipping backward as often as forward.
This simulates the mental state of the narrator, who is struggling with little structure to piece
things together by recalling memories while trying to make sense of the present.
The narrator feels detached from the world around her and she desires oneness within it.
This mood is set in the opening scene, in which she says that “etwas geschehen war” and that her
“[Umwelt] war verändert” (W 9). As long as the narrator can remember, the world around her–
26
the animals at the Zoo, her clothes, her mirror, her chair–waited for her; but suddenly “hatten sie
damit aufgehört” (W 9). The narrator's detachment from the world is directly related to her belief
that the world has moved on without her, leaving her to live in a “fremden Gegend” (W 36), the
same limbo present in the end of Die Überfliegerin.
The apartment is only described in the opening pages, but it establishes the mood in
contrast to Die Überfliegerin. “Kürzlich,” the text begins, “wachte ich auf und merkte, noch im
Liegen, daß etwas geschehen war” (W 9). Compare this with the first line of Die Überfliegerin:
“Plötzlich faßte ich mit zwei Fingern den Zipfel der Tapete unter der Zimmerdecke und riß sie
von oben nach untern herunter” (Ü 9). Krauß sets up this text to be a more passive reflection.
Kürzlich as opposed to plötzlich, for example, is decidedly less urgent, which places the narrator
further away from the immediate action of the Wende. Moreover, the verb aufwachen has a more
open, progressive, and passive connotation than fassen. The description of the apartment further
serves to establish that the change experienced by the narrator is not exactly tangible. There is no
apartment to dismantle (a la Die Überfliegerin), no physical barrier to be breached. Her room is
undisturbed: her dresser, the mirror, and a chair with clothes on it are in there usual places around
her bed (W 9). Krauß introduces right away the mirror, which will serve as a leitmotiv to
underline moments of self reflection and reflection on surroundings. Furthermore, she stresses
the relative physical inactivity of the narrator in this text by focusing on the chair.
Krauß really begins to play with the reader’s relationship to the narrator, who comes
across as neurotic. As soon as she leaves the apartment, despite her feeling left behind, she is met
with people who seem to be happily awaiting her: “Auf dem kurzen Weg zum Frühstück bei
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Sweetie lacht man mir schon entgegen und will mich küssen” (W 10). The narrator says she
cannot react because she needs “eine gewisse Zeit am Morgen, um zu begreifen, wo ich bin, und
noch länger, um zu ahnen, warum” (W 10). These people who want a kiss, she says, are always
wide awake and full of desire—the opposite of the narrator. They seem to never let her alone and
she expresses irritation. But, she admits, “allen Ernstes: die Küsse erwecken mich. Nicht jede ist
so leicht zu haben wie ich. Ich trete zum Frühstück aus dem Haus und will verführt werden” (W
10). With such a characterization, Krauß invites the reader to take a particularly distant and
analytical stance.
The narrator says she does not know what she wants, but Krauß indicates to the reader
that it is right in front of her. She is drawn to the physical, sensuous, and emotional, but is unable
to embrace it in her current state. The problem is not that the world will not wait for her, but
rather that she will not catch up to the world. The narrator believes the world has left her behind
while Krauß suggests that it is the narrator who has not tried to catch up with the world. Krauß
explores this question with the reader by focusing on how the narrator interacts with her
environment and other people. In fact, she places the narrator into two main locations with which
she must situate herself: Sweetie pastry shop and the local zoo. An analysis of these places helps
establish what issues the narrator is dealing with in her world and help further the question of
how a Romantically inclined character fits into postmodern culture.
Sweetie acts as the stage on which the issues of being from the former-East after the socalled Wiedervereinigung are played out in the East, only artifacts of the GDR remain. The Zoo
is where the narrator is able to become detached from the changing world and take a closer look
28
at her basic nature through a child's eyes. When she engages people and places within these
environments, she is acting out her struggles and leaving them open to be interpreted by herself
and the reader.
The pastry shop is within walking distance of the narrator's apartment and is primary
location in this text. Inside, mirrors take up much of the wall space to the point of making it
appear bigger and more full than it is (W 13). The narrator does much of her observing by
looking at peoples' reflections, avoiding direct contact. The shop existed under the family name
“Goldschmitter Konditorei” for generations before the name was changed around 1990. This
location reflects the narrator's feeling of being somewhat of a relic—having a history that is all
but wiped away and made relevant only through superficial renaming and restructuring. From
inside Sweetie, she looks out the window and reflects on the world: “meine Stunde war
gekommen, als es fortan weder Ost noch West gab und das ganze endlich wieder eine Kugel war,
[…], also ohne Anfang und Ende”(W 11). She expands her descriptions of unification in general
to be a sort of circle-of-life, naturally existing harmony. “Von Natur aus sollten wir uns im
Grenzenlosen bewegen wie die Vögel in der Luft und uns fühlen wie die Fische im Wasser”(W
11). The irony of becoming “grenzenlos” again is not lost on the narrator, however, as she notes
that the process was not a return to an existence “wie vor fünf Jahrhunderten vorausgesagt” (W
11).
Though the narrator spends most of her time at Sweetie, she finds solace in the Zoo at
least once per year, or whenever she does not understand something in her life (W 23). She
carefully notes that the sign is at least fifty years old, “steht ganz verloren,” has only “drei
29
Buchstaben: Zoo,” and “enthält keine weiteren Hinweise” (W 21). Her descriptions also signal a
reflection on the simplicity and naiveté of childhood: “Wer hier drinnen versteht, ist Experte.
Alle anderen wachsen zurück zum Kind. Wir wissen nicht viel mehr von den exotischen Tieren,
als uns einst im Bilderbuch aus Hartpapier gezeigt wurde” (W 24). The quantity of visits have
been on the rise: “In den achtziger Jahren kehrte es hartnäckig als Aufgabe wieder, in den
Neunzigern hat es zugenommen, und seit dem Großen Jahreswechsel tritt es immer häufiger auf”
(W 23). One must ask first, why is this place a solace for the narrator and second if it is
positively portrayed by Krauß. Naivete seems to be the solace and Krauß is painting a picture of
a rather backward person so far.
Krauß' narrator once again takes on the role of observer. She takes note of people, places,
and things as a cinematic means of interpreting the world around her. When watching a couple at
Sweetie, for example, she uses cinematic language, letting the film run for a while and creating
scenes (W 38-39). The reader is invited to engage what the narrator has observed and interpreted
for us, not simply accept it as truth. In fact, the narrator states that her interpretations are not
always accurate (W 39). In the following paragraphs, I will examine how the narrator interacts
with characters at Sweetie and the Zoo. For the most part, Krauß is nuanced about which
characters are there to be sympathized with; she offers the narrators perspective, but with
distance, and continually adds little details that can change ones opinion.
Nette is the primary employee at Sweetie and represents the stereotypical superficiality of
the capitalist, western working climate, which differs from the Goldschmitter family, who owned
the pastry shop before it was called Sweetie. The Goldschmitters welcomed customers genuinely
30
“wie in der Mitte ihres Wohnzimmers” (W 30). Nette, on the other hand, comes off as
overbearing, setting herself up to be in the face of the customer (W 30). The narrator describes
her as having attentive “Hantierungen” that disrupt the narrator's life (W 31). Furthermore, when
the narrator tries to describe a man she had met there the previous day, Nette responds with
overly sweet irony, smiling “als hätte ich ihr gestern alles über mich erzählt” (W 47). This is a
way for her to maintain her happy saleswoman facade and avoid developing a deeper
relationship with her regular customers. Her facade, however, at least according to the narrator,
is not true to whoever Nette really is, which is never made clear. The narrator catches a glimpse
of Nette before the shop opens as she cleans with blank expression, but “sie wurde wach” as
soon as someone “die volle Halogenbeleuchtung eingeschalten hatte” (W 43). Just as she turns
on her saleswoman front at the beginning of the day, so she turns it off at the end of the day when
her husband arrives: “Ohne Übergang verwandelt sie sich in die Ehefrau ihres Mannes” and they
become unapproachable, like a “Reisegruppe” (W 55).
Part of the narrator's problem with Nette is that she does not fit her notion of what a
Konditorin should be, that is, she is not “vom Fach” (W 30). Unlike the previous owners, Nette
represents the narrator's new, fast-paced, westernized world. But the narrator takes the old versus
new comparison to an unreasonable level when she tells Nette that she does not fit in because of
her lack of dimples on her elbows—which the previous Konditorin had (W 48). Such rash
judgement presents the narrator as one who reacts harshly to change. Radical changes clearly
make the narrator uncomfortable, but not because of some panoptic conservatism or distaste for
oscillating personal interests. We learn, in fact, that she was moved by progressive political
31
demonstrations before the wall came down. For example, she enters a church and identifies
herself as an individual “inmitten der Menschenmenge” by falling on her knees and praying “um
Wandlung” because she had thought about the young man “ auf dem Danziger Werfttor” (W 59) 6.
As for oscillating back and forth in ones convictions, the narrator remembers her parents
“Meine Mutter trat seinerzeit mit Rücksicht auf den Sozialismus und meinen Vater aus der
Kirche aus, trat jedoch vor meiner Geburt wieder ein und ließ mir die heilige Taufe geben […]
Ich war stets stolz auf meine Mutter, die den Mut zu diesem Hakenschlag besaß” (W 58-59). The
narrator is, like her parents, prone to contradicting herself to the point of double standard. For
example, the narrator maintains that she deliberately avoids questions that could lead one to
judge their own life (W 66), yet she asks Nette “Weißt du überhaupt, wie deine Vorgängerin
aussah? […] Du paßt nicht hierher, das ist alles falsch” (W 49). Contradictions like these show
that the narrator is flawed in a human way; the character is more nuanced than one who simply
judges the world that left her behind. Furthermore, these contradictions help establish a narrative
distance. Again, the reader is expected to question the narrator's judgements, considering each
situation as both isolated and part of the larger web of the text.
Mark is the only American in the text and embodies more purely the ideals to which
Nette conforms, broadening the scope from the Wende in Germany to the postmodern symptoms
of the globe. The narrator notes: “Im Mund des Amerikaners klang das künstliche Wort natürlich,
er hatte kein anderes” (W 42). He asks her “sofort” which “Beruf” she practices (W 41). The
6
Though not directly mentioned, Krauß is referencing the anti-communist strike in 1980
that gave birth to the first non -communist union in the USSR. Kemp-Welch, A. The Birth of
Solidarity: the Gdańsk Negotiations, 1980. New York: St. Martin's, 1983. Print.
32
narrator responds uncomfortably that she is taking computer classes in
“Kommunikationwissenschaft” (W 41). He jumps on the response, taking it as an opportunity to
pontificate. He maintains that “Vernetzung durch Kommunikation ist jetzt alles,” Mark insists on
looking to the “Zukunft: Die Zeit der Ideologien war also zu Ende, die modernen Menschen, also
wir, hatten Gefühl und Verwirrung hinter sich gelassen. Unser Dasein würde von nun an
fließend, chaotisch, lebendig und frei sein und nicht mehr an Orte gebunden” (W 42). The
narrator is uncomfortable with her Kommunikationswissenschaft classes because they are
connected to a world that is “nicht mehr an Orte gebunden” (W 42).
The scene with Mark is a direct response to postmodernism and shows a glimpse of
Krauß' voice. This is one of the first situations in Weggeküßt in which the narrator is so clearly
written as sympathetic and another so unsympathetic. Mark is not characterized with nuance, but
rather as a loud mouth who rapidly spits the buzzwords of postmodern culture. The narrator is
here more fully realized in that the reader understands better what she is trying to avoid.
However, her distaste for the 21st century postmodernism has disallowed her from connecting
with people like Nette, who, as we see when she leaves work, is not completely wrapped up in
Mark's world. Krauß is critical of the extreme postmodern perspectives, because they, like Mark,
overwhelm the legitimate Romantic tendencies of the narrator.
One of these tendencies is the desire to find transcendence through loving relationships.
Though she is unable to initiate such a relationship in the present of the text, she has had them in
the past. Krauß introduces these as memories that help establish the character and how she
behaved with others before being bogged down by the realities of postmodern culture.
33
Memories of past lovers shows that what works for the narrator, whether she likes it or
not, is to develop relationships with people who complete her in their differences. If she looks at
life cinematically, Jerzy was her leading man–she compares him to Gerard Philipe, the prolific
French actor (W 33). Often, memories of Jerzy emerge while the narrator is reflecting on other
relationships. To cite one example, while talking to a Frenchman named Jean, she requests of
him “rasch, französisch weiterzusprechen. Davon versteh[t] [sie] kein Wort. [Sie] sah ihn dabei
an und dachte an Jerzy” (W 38). Jean obliged and, while listening, the narrator fancied that she
had understood Jerzy every time he had switched to French. This thought, she says, “beruhigt
mich für eine Weile” (W 38). Jerzy, according to the narrator, “beherrschte mehrere Sprachen
fließend, um sich mühelos in der Welt zu bewegen” (W 33). In other words, he is able to live in
the world that the narrator becomes progressively reluctant to join, the world that “ganze endlich
wieder eine Kugel war, […], also ohne Anfang und Ende”(W 11).
Jerzy, however, has his share of faults and demons. The narrator recognizes, for example,
that he is an alcoholic on at least two occasions (W 33 & 55) and that he is suicidal (W 58). After
three noted attempts (jumping out of a window, drinking shaving lotion, and slitting his wrists),
Jerzy succeeds in ending his own life (W 58). In sum, the narrator does not know what to do
with Jerzy or what what she should take from him (if anything at all). Over-thinking is a fault in
this case. While Jerzy actively engages the world despite his addictions and depression, the
narrator cautiously and frustratedly felt stuck. However, before Jerzy died, her being stuck
seemed more a state of mind. It showed a Romantic sense of longing and existence. But she
needed an opposite to avoid stagnation in thought.
34
The narrator tells a story about a couple she met in a church upon whom she tellingly
projects her relationship with Jerzy. The connection is implied rather than directly stated, as the
account appears directly upon remembering Jerzy's church funeral (W 58-61). “Damals in der
Kirche betete ein blondes Mädchen neben mir, ihr Liebster möge aufhören mit dem Trinken,” the
narrator says (W 60). The connection is immediate via the alcoholic loved one. “Dann besorgte
sie ihm nach der Messe an einem Kiosk hinter der Kirche eine Flasche”—the girl is enabling the
behavior she knows to be destructive. Here, the narrator is expressing her guilt, feeling as though
she let Jerzy, her own beloved, spiral downward toward suicide. The praying woman, “eine
polnische Madonna” who loved “Meister Eckhardt und sein wunderbares Deutsch,” approaches
the narrator and says: “Gehugnis, welch ein Wort!” (W 61). The narrator empathizes with the
woman's attention to minute details. Furthermore, it is an obscure detail that carries behind it a
small but not insignificant thread through German literary history. As stated, it is a word used by
Meister Eckhardt, a medieval German theologian and mystic. So here the narrator establishes
herself as one who is interested in spirituality, aesthetics, tradition, and perhaps even a bit of
elitism—none of which really fit postmodern culture.
The mail carrier appears in short passages at various times, but is introduced at the
beginning as “eine vertraute Figur aus dem alltägliche Leben” (W 12). However, as the narrator
implies, it is the position title, not the person, who she has come to expect. “Diesen hier hatte ich
aber noch nie gesehen” (W 12). She describes him as a seventeen year old working for the
summer who goes about his business “mit dem Blick am Boden,” without even a glance to
acknowledge the people on his route (W 12). Later, he is described as one, “der alles zählt, was
35
ihm begegnete: Bäume, Masten, Pfeiler, Pfosten, Autos, Autos, die fahren, Autos, die stehen,
nach Größe, nach Farben, nach Anzahl der Türen, nach Herstellungsland, nach Herkunftsort,
dann Werbeflächen, nach Größe, nach Anzahl der abgebildeten Personen, nach Geschlecht,
Portät oder Ganzfigur, nach Ausdruck, lachend, lächelnd, einladend lächelnd, überascht,
lächelnd, erstaunt lächelnd, erstaunt lächelnd, komplizenhaft lächelnd, dann Schuhpaare in
Schaufenstern, Taschen in Schaufenstern, Gepäcktaschen, Aktentaschen, Brieftaschen,
Teigtaschen, Maultaschen, alles kann gezählt werden” (W 52-53). The mail carrier, like the
narrator, is certainly observant, as this lengthy list shows. But he observes quite differently. As
the mail carrier organizes that which he sees in a mechanical list form, the narrator prefers more
nuanced narrative.
With no grounding from another individual, the narrator's focus on sensuality, emotion,
and the possibility of symbolism in fact and fiction offers is insufficient when trying to
communicate to others. For example, in first chapter the narrator engages an unnamed suited
man sitting next to her at Sweetie. She tries to read his newspaper through the mirror, but the
news does not really interest her as much as the man. Still, she remains focused on the
newspaper “um nicht indiskret zu wirken” (W 14). The man is described as good looking,
wearing a nice suit, and smelling like a bouquet of sample perfumes. When he notices that he is
being observed, he hands over his newspaper and smiles at the narrator. She immediately unloads
an incoherent barrage of what seems to be a story about a man and traveling to Boston and the
Czech Republic. Despite her manic monologue, her neighbor nods his head politely. The narrator
is unable to communicate because she gets stuck in irrelevant or misplaces details. During the
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rant, however, she slips him an envelope saying, “Hier steht alles drin” (W 16). She recognizes
her inability and not only sees that the man is bored by her (she asks him what she can do to be
more interesting) but offers her story in written form to supplement her verbal communication.
Though she is clearly enamored with the suited man, she claims: “er sieht gut aus, mehr
will niemand über ihn wissen. Auch ich nicht” (W 15). The narrator is expressing her judgement
that the world is only concerned with superficial aestheticism, but she admits to not wanting to
know him either. Her admission is revealing in two ways. One: her judgement of others is
paradoxical and thereby stresses narrative distance; that is, we can't completely trust the
narrator's perception. Two: she is not comfortable enough with herself to pursue a new deeper
relationship. She can make out other people and objects clearly through the mirror, but when she
looks at herself, her “Gestalt erscheint […] unscharf” ( W 15). Just like her figure in the mirror,
she knows what she needs, but cannot see it clearly.
The narrator offers a chapter-long glimpse into her childhood that fleshes out what the
narrator associates with youth and, therefore, what she laments as being lost in her current world.
She tells of a well worn brick wall that is connected to a house and runs along a garden, creating
a corner, in which a rose bush grows. Her childhood friend and neighbor, Tine, is always with her
older brother Rainer. Tine and her brother often play on the wall and act as if they are the rulers
over their own territory, beating up on those who enter it. Though the narrator was never struck
by Tine, she still froze with fear upon entering the forbidden zone. Finally, one day, she builds up
the courage to climb the wall and play like Tine and her brother in a climactic release of tension
(W 77-81).
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The wall is the central image of the childhood narrative. “Die Mauer war immer da,” the
narrator explains, “sie war gleichwertig mit dem Garten, der Straße, der Mutter, dem Vater, dem
Bett, dem Essen” (W 80). It was everywhere and stable, but needed to be “beherrscht.” Once
mastered, however, the wall did not disappear, it became part of the child's world. To some
degree, the wall of her childhood is symbolically connected to the Iron Curtain between East and
West. By holding on to this memory, the narrator humanizes the former East and establishes her
place within it. The wall, as it represents borders in general, is that which the narrator laments in
contemporary life. She misses having an obstacle to overcome. This nostalgia, however, in no
way indicates a longing for a rebuilt wall but rather acknowledges that overcoming the wall was
a defining moment in life before the Wende.
There are many kinds of barriers and Krauß works with these nuances in her depiction of
animals. The Zoo, where the narrator goes for solace when she “etwas nicht verstehen kann”
(23), shows the negative connotations of boundaries. The Elcheneber's “ganzer Anblick läßt
erschrecken,” and “Manche laufen vor kribbelnder Erwartung rastlos auf und ab” (W 22). The
narrator's description of the pacing spectacled bear is Krauß' voice reminding us of Rilke's
Panther. The bear “bietet doch einen Anblick der Rastlosigkeit, er eilt einer bestimmten Stelle zu,
wo ihm jedesmal einfällt, daß er an einer anderen etwas vergessen hat, worauf er kehrtmachte,
um es zu holen. Ist er am Ziel, fällt ihm ein, er hat dort, woher er kam, wieder etwas vergessen”
(W 22-23). Like Rilke's panther, whose pads have been softened since his confinement from
nature and whose pupils only capture brief images before they are forgotten, the bear has been
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profoundly affected by barriers. The narrator, in this new light, goes to the Zoo to be reminded of
the profound affect of unnatural containment.
But everything is a matter of perspective with Krauß and the sympathy toward caged
animals is the narrator's own and is to be examined with distance. The narrator does not know
how to scientifically judge if an animal is restless or scared. For all we know, the spectacled bear
or the panther were pacing because they were looking for a way out to attack the observer. The
narrator suggests such a perspective early in the text while she reflects on the dissolution of the
East/West dichotomy (W 11). Her symbolic use of animal and natural imagery is turned
sarcastically when she continues: “Die Fische! Lachen sie heimlich, während sie dahintreibend
die Weltmeere wechseln?[...] Gleiten sie einfach mit der Strömung, glücklich?” (W 11). The
narrator feels more lost when she thinks of free swimming fish than when she sees caged
animals, which she identifies as part of a sad but profoundly human narrative.
Perhaps the most important instances in which a sense is attached to a mini-narrative are
those that involve the suited man. In the beginning of the text, the narrator encounters a man to
whom she gives and envelope before he dashes away. The reader does not know what is in the
envelope other than: “Hier steht alles drin” (W 16). She is mysteriously drawn to him again at
the end of the text, when the narrator is walking to meet Mark at a hotel. She ended up seeing a
man “in geschäftsmäßiger Kleidung,” followed him for about “zehn Minuten lang,” and chased
after him “gedankenlos” until he turned around. It takes the narrator (and the reader) a second to
realize it is the same man from the beginning. He produces the envelope, the contents of which
are still vague, and they decide to meet later at the Zoo. Once there, they have a brief exchange,
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the narrator takes the envelope, and tosses it into the Lion's den, taking the words from the young
confident Tine: “Keine Angst” (105). She is setting aside her fears and letting go of that which
she had thought explains everything. She has, over the course of the text, identified that her
inability to even approach a relationship (what she desires from the beginning) was rooted in her
own insecurities and it was not just the world that left her behind. From here, because she starts
to see her ability to fit into the world around her without conforming to it, the narrator is
prepared to find balance by connecting to other people.
WIE WEITER and love: approaching transcendence and balancing self with others
As briefly discussed in the introduction, love is an important, encompassing, and broadly
defined force in Krauß' world; in Wie Weiter, love is used as a backdrop in the narrator’s search
for balance. She maintains (or works to maintain) three completely separate loving relationships
with each of her three Liebesmenschen—Leo, Toma, and Roman. The Liebesmenschen know
about each other, but are too scattered to have ever met: Leo has settled in the United States,
Toma in Siberia, and Roman in Leipzig. The only way that these characters could ever come
together would be if the narrator introduced them. She is uncomfortable with the idea because
each of her loved ones brings out a different aspect of her personality. At the present, she is able
to fluidly exist in a deeply fragmented identity. If she were to bring all three people together, she
fears compromising her ability to privately move between them. The narrator is still afraid to
make a connection with someone. However, within herself, she brings the three Liebesmenschen
40
together as she reflects on a Sunday morning. It is through her examination of relationships that
the narrator starts to find balance in herself and with her surroundings.
While the narrator is working on coming to her own conclusion, Krauß invites the reader
to take a step back and make a judgement on behalf of the narrator. Just as the narrator's stories
with Leo, Toma, and Roman unfold in segments, so does her longer history with love. This
parallel mini-narrative, which describes the narrator’s earliest relationships with classmates and
her mother, establishes more deeply who the narrator is in love and acts as a form for comparison
to the narrator's current relationships.
When the narrator was a young girl, she went on a class Wandertag. When she came to a
stream, someone took her in his arms, and lifted her over the stream. She could not speak, but it
somehow felt natural. She was neither “verwundert noch gestört.” As he lifted her over the
stream, she only noticed his blonde hair and that he had “Schultern” underneath his
“Norwegerpullover.” On the following day and every day since, she has dreamt of being lifted
over the stream. But her memories of the young man are coupled with “die Schönste der
Frauen,” who would call his name, singing “in seiner fremden Sprache.” The narrator, though
she did not know it at the time, had met her “Rivalin.” (WW 58-59)
Upon returning home, the narrator's mother asked how the trip was. “Jemand hat mich
über den Bach gehoben,” she answered, but could not tell who. What was she to say, she asked
herself? “Sein Haar hat meine Wange gestreift? Oder: Sein Haar und seine Schulter waren eine
Höhle, in der mein Kopf lag. Oder: Die Höhle roch so gut. Oder: Er war stark, denn ich war auf
einmal ganz schwer?” After a period of silence, her mother let the issue go unspoken. However,
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whenever they came across a person named Roman, the narrator and her mother exchanged
knowing glances (WW 60). This establishes the non-verbal and loving relationship based on
understanding between the narrator and her mother.
The narrator did not know exactly what was happening at the time because, as she says,
in order to understand something fully, one must wait until it has passed. Seven years old is
certainly young for the development of any kind of sexual desire, but the experience had an
impact on how the narrator would come to judge her potential male companions. She interpreted,
with hindsight, that this first Roman in her life represented her first glimpse of love. But because
it was too early to ascribe to hormonal changes, puberty, and sexual awareness, the story has
more to say about the character's present love ideal than a biological moment.
Later, the narrator met the Fleischersjunge. He was fat, like his mother, who served the
school girl narrator a slice of Jagdwurst every Friday. That was the closest thing to a connection
the two ever had. When school was let out for a break, the narrator would wait by the boy's
classroom but try to avoid eye contact while he roughhoused with the other boys (WW 61-62).
This shows the narrator developing a sense of shy play with love: she shows interest in passive
aggressive ways. But it also indicates further the narrator's focus on her own inability to actively
communicate with people she wants to love and thereby augments the character development in
Weggeküßt.
Then there was the Banknachbarin when the narrator was about to turn thirteen years old.
She did not object to the narrator's move to the seat next to her, but just shrugged her shoulders
“schnippisch” (WW 65). The narrator remembers her as having beautiful legs, skin, forearms,
42
and being the best at sports. Furthermore, they wore the same hairstyle and the same shoes. The
narrator wanted to be close to her. But she had chosen a seat between the girl and Alain Delion,
who had loved the narrator's new neighbor since the “dritten Klasse” (WW 65). She tried to
block him from making eye contact with her neighbor because, as the narrator remembers, “Sie
gehörte mir” (WW 66). Her memories here are concerned with using space to block
communication when it is not to her liking. Making a wall between the wanted and the unwanted
is her natural approach to dilemmas, which is the basis for her various struggles in all three texts.
Otherwise, the narrator did not date. She tells us instead of her love of literature and
books. Her grandfather brought books home to her and she read five per week (WW 75). While
everyone else had found someone to date, the narrator waited for someone, “mit dem [sie] beim
Gehen über [ihre] Bücher reden konnte.” (WW 76). She wanted to find someone that would let
her forget “Roman und den Augenblick” in which he lifted her over the stream (WW 76). Once,
a man invited her to go on a walk and told her beforehand that he would not bore her with
“Stummheit” or excerpts from the “Technikus,” a popular science publication geared toward
GDR youth. Instead, he would share his knowledge of world literature, which he maintained was
greater than the narrator's. She ultimately remembers the date with little passion (WW 76-78).
By the time she went on a walk with the confident and literate man, she had not yet gone so far
as “einen Mann unverhohlen zu betrachten” (WW 77). The man is very precise in his
pontification, citing page numbers, passages, and analyses on “Julien”'s relationship to
“Madame” (presumably referring to Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir). But the narrator does not
seem interested; for each paragraph of speech by her “Begleiter,” there is a paragraph of the
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narrator's thoughts, which focus on the “weißes Strandkleid” her mother made, “der Seewind,”
and a “junge Marineoffiziere” (WW 77-78). Eventually, just as Julien is about to knock on
“Madames Schlafgemach,” the narrator forgets her date and heads off to meet a sailor. The
narrator, though she finally has found a man who wanted to fulfill her expressed desires, is
drawn to one who, because of duty, would not even be present for weeks at a time. The reader
sees that the narrator may be initially drawn to those with similar interest to her own, but
ultimately she goes for the opposite in search of someone that will help her find completion.
To look at a platonic loving relationship, Krauß often has her narrator think of her mother.
The narrator fondly remembers how her mother handled her maturation and interest in boys and
girls. Her mother understood the narrator from an early age. She knew how quickly “dem
Unerklärlichen die Kraft entrinnt, wenn es an Respekt fehlt”; She let her in peace when she could
not say the name of the person who helped her over the stream and she never called to remind
the narrator that she awaited an answer (WW 61). “Eine Frau muß wissen, wie weit sie gehen
kann” her mother said when the narrator turned thirteen. She waited for more explanation, but
her mother “sagte nichts weiter” (WW 59).
When the narrator was sixteen, her mother began the same sentence without finishing,
just as she had at thirteen. This time, the narrator asked for advice. The narrator had reached the
age “des ersten Wäschekaufs.” “Mit unschuldigem Eifer wählte ich die Halbschalen in Schwarz”
to this day, the narrator says, she thinks her mother “insgeheim darauf gehofft hatte” that her
daughter remained silent about the situation because of the “Selbstverständlichkeit” with which
she payed paid the high bill. (WW 75)
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The narrator loves her mother, though she claims she will never understand “woher sie
wirklich stammt” (WW 84). She knows only that her mother comes from an earlier time of war
and recognizes the influence of surviving such an event. Her mother instills hope by relating a
message rooted in survival: “ein Weg findet sich immer, sonst wären wir doch alle längst
ausgestorben” (WW 84). It is with such hopeful mentality that she sits down every Sunday
morning, an admitted relic of her mother's religious practices, and reflects deeply on her life as a
means of finding the right way in her search for love and balance. In Wie Weiter, the options are
presented via the Liebesmenschen Leo, Toma, and Roman.
Leo and the narrator met in New York around the turn of the century (WW 20) and spent
three days together. On the first day, the day they met, she stood on the observation deck of one
of the World Trade Center buildings, which “schwankten sie ihrer nahenden Zukunft entgegen”
(WW 20). Using her senses to take in the moment, the narrator loses herself in the white fog
below, imagining herself as being on a “Rand,” from which she is able to see both sides of the
world. At this moment, Leo comes in next to her and their eyes meet (WW 20-21). This scene
establishes that the narrator met Leo in a space that reflects her desire to bridge gaps and seek
balance in her life. That the towers were to fall is telling of the relationship’s ultimate stability.
The next day, Leo takes the narrator to a bustling Village coffee shop full of university
people and intellectuals sitting amongst bright white furniture and engaging each other before
afternoon lectures and classes. She has brought with her a black backpack full of little trinkets,
which she offers as tokens of friendship to her new acquaintances. Upon leaving the cafe, the
narrator notices that her bag and purse is missing and begins to weep openly. Leo reacts by
45
calling the consulate and the bank to report the thefts and ends up embracing the narrator,
consoling her by talking about his own experiences of being robbed (WW 98-101). Leo takes the
narrator in his arms and, like the first Roman, emotionally carries her.
On the third day, Leo takes the narrator to the Apollo theatre in Harlem, where they
appear to be the only white members of audience. She is surprised by how she feels and what she
sees. She says she left her conspicuousness behind, something she had tried to build up before
entering her new surroundings. The narrator, overwhelmed, decides to get some fresh air and
begins crying again. One old overweight black man asks her why she was crying. She says that
she was robbed and the man distances himself from her before turning back with a little
“Kinderspielzeug,”(WW 103) telling her to take it and play with it in order to forget. What
happened, he says, “sei nichts Böses, sondern das Leben, weiter nichts” (WW 104). This, on the
symbolically significant third day, marks a successful moment of connection between very
different people based on verbal communication and the establishment of empathy. True to a
trend started in Die Überfliegerin, the moment of clarity is connected to the naiveté of children
through the gifted toy.
In three days, Leo excites the narrator’s deepest desires for active pursuit of balance and
sets himself up as the next in the narrator's line of loved ones. She associates their initial contact
literally with being lifted above the border between two observable worlds, like Roman lifting
her over the stream. At the cafe, Leo, like the date on the promenade, impresses upon her
intellectual side but Leo does not ignore her need for a comforting embrace. At the Apollo, the
narrator infiltrates a concentrated gathering of an unfamiliar minority group, where she finds
46
humane sympathy that transcends racial and cultural borders (WW 103-104). All of these
elements indicate how the narrator's search for balance has come to a search for interpersonal
relationships and love.
After their three days together, Leo and the narrator maintain their relationship via
telephone. She usually calls him when she feels overwhelmed by the world and cannot sleep.
They have deep philosophical conversations laced with endearing humor and reflections on the
past. For the narrator, her relationship with Leo is defined by an unyielding comfort in talking
candidly about herself. She lets Leo call her “baby,” the only man, “von dem ich mir diese
Anrede gefallen lasse, sie ist mir nicht peinlich” (WW 10). Consequently, their conversations
reveal much about the narrator. She is capable of letting her guard down and engaging in long
and fruitful conversations. Ironically, considering her focus on space and physicality, the narrator
is furthest away from the one person she can talk to.
In one conversation, she expresses concern over her lack of ability to imagine the future
(WW 27-28). Leo deems this an impossible task because, even though history repeats itself, if
something is really new, it “kann also gar nicht aus dem Kopf kommen” (WW 29). The narrator
retorts, pointing out that Leo emigrated to the United States during the Third Reich, avoiding the
holocaust. Leo starts to agree, but then explains that his ability to act as he did was a product of
an inability to imagine the horrors that were to come: “Wir haben alles gesehen, aber das
Vorstellen war gelähmt. Das Gehirn scheint sich dem Schrecken zu versperren, es will keine
Energie darauf verwenden, sich den Schrecken auszumalen” (WW 28). The narrator shows here
her interest in connecting the future and the past, but she is frustrated with her inability to do so.
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Leo's advice, on the other hand, is always to live in the present and create one's own
narrative. He says: “wer nicht weiterweiß, sollte eine beliebige kleine Handlung vollziehen. Sie
verändert die Situation” (WW 40). The new situation makes possible a new “Betrachtung” and
calls for new “Entscheidungen,” “also erneut eine kleine Handlung, die wiederum eine neue
Situation schafft, die zu unvorhergesehener Entscheidung zwingt.” And so continues the
proposed process in “kleinen Schritten” (WW 40). Leo is essentially offering mindfulness as a
means of bringing two disparate points together.
Despite her proclaimed love for Leo, the reader is asked to take a step back and see why
the relationship does not fully work. For the narrator, space and being a part of space is key. Leo
is not part of the narrator's space. Furthermore, they share an intellectual and emotional bond that
guides the narrator to consider new perspectives and situations, but the two figures are
fundamentally different in how they desire to organize and understand their own lives. Though
the narrator benefits from her conversations with Leo, she ultimately wants the past and future to
be equally present in her developing narrative. Unlike Leo who lives in the now, she is looking
for a grand image of life, in which intellect, emotion, art, and culture interact and become whole
only in their relationship to the past. Leo is connected to all of these elements but they do not
necessarily interact at once in his world.
Toma and the narrator have known each other since before the fall of the wall. They met
“vor zwei Jahrzehnten” (WW 19). “Mich traf ein Blick aus schwarzen tatarischen Augen.
Spöttisch erwartungsvoll, ob ich der ungewöhnlichen, Schritt für Schritt heranrückenden
Präsentation, dieser unmittelbaren Zukunft gewachsen sei.” (WW 20) Since the Wende, Toma
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lives a nomadic life on the former soviet tundra (WW 11). They rarely see each other and do not
talk on the phone. Rather, they communicate via the occasional letter. Of the few times they have
seen each other since 1989/90, Toma only once visits the narrator.
Toma's visit to Germany revolved around a Niederbayer, with whom she developed a
strange relationship and awkward marriage, a mini-narrative that helps establish her love ideal.
She considered it of great importance to trace his language back to German, a difficult task that
ultimately failed. “Der Bayer verstand gar nichts,” she says, and her “entschiedene Intelligenz”
found no “Gegenkraft” with the Niederbayer, but rather an infatuated amazement. They roared
together, “als hätten sie keine andere Sprache” (WW 31). Though presented as a simple minded
man, the Niederbayer felt the relationship falling apart while Toma was obliviously trying to fix
it. Ultimately, his feelings proved correct when Toma gave up and left him. Toma's approach to
relationships shows her as sharing some of the narrator’s issues, such as an inability to find a
balanced relationship.
Despite her lack of success in love, Toma feels comfortable offering marriage advice to
the narrator. She says: go ahead and get married, even multiple times. For Toma, marriage is a
“Zeichen, ein Symbol, eine Geste. [Heirate] bedeutet: mit dir könnte ich es mir vorstellen.” After
years, it means: “Mit dir konnte ich es mir damals vorstellen” (WW 56). Perhaps it would be
better, she thinks, if marriage was a game like in childhood: “Wenn wir das Eheleben noch
spielen könnten, ließe es sich noch ganz anders als Idee mit Leben erfüllen” (WW 56). The
narrator shows no indication of being influenced by Toma's beliefs, but she displays the same
tendencies. For her, love and relationships are also a game in which she is the rule-maker. The
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narrator’s inability to see herself in Toma indicates further her trouble with accurate self
reflection.
Toma also presents a theory on love, against which the narrator takes a clear position.
Toma says “Liebe sei mit nichts zu verwechseln” (WW 79). She suggests that it is not
necessarily informed by other factors and even if it is, understanding love on a deeper level is not
of interest and of little use. But the narrator maintains that environment can mold love into
having multiple facets and manifestations. In Germany, she says, love is not like in Siberia or
Africa. In Germany, love is “nicht so leicht auszumachen,” it can “nachgedacht werden”(WW
79). According to the narrator, one encounters three to seven “Liebesarten” on any given day,
but they go unnoticed or are confused as “Sinnestäuschung, eine Eßstörung oder einen
Gedächtnisverlust” (WW 79). Toma wants to believe that the Liebesarten to which the narrator
refers are all essentially the same, but the narrator suggests that each one belongs to yet another
“Gattung” (WW 79).
The narrator's belief in a great variety of Liebesarten is another indicator that she is
informed by Romantic ideals, despite looking suspiciously postmodern. She recognizes the
fragmented and complex nature of love, but does not imply that it is a natural state. To the
narrator, different forms of love are directly connected to places with man-made borders:
Germany, Siberia, and Africa. Removed from context, one could argue that, if the narrator does
in fact want to transcend this fragmentation, she would find issue with these man-made borders.
After all, as a woman from the former-East, her life was profoundly affected by man-made
barriers, why wouldn't she want to break them down? Krauß characterization, however, does not
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follow this interpretation. From her memories as a child climbing a wall with her friends, to the
moment she took off from Leipzig, the narrator defines herself by breaking down barriers. But
we see with Nette and Mark how uncomfortable she is with the globalization of postmodern
culture. She is uncomfortable because the speed of the culture takes away her individual need to
break down barriers—she just has to join in. Ironically, she needs barriers in order to let her
Romantic nature of longing remain active.
When the narrator visits Toma, the issue of love is replaced by Toma's obsessive
connection to the soviet past. Toma says herself that she lives in the past. After picking up the
narrator, she says “es war mal was ganz Neues,” “wir werden in die Geschichte eingehen” (WW
35). Toma even goes as far as to believe that westernization is a fad that will eventually fail in
light of a sort of revived soviet east. The narrator cannot and does not accept such a narrow view
and expresses concern for her old friend. When looking into the snow, the narrator closes her
eyes to think of Toma, who is keeping an eye on Siberia, “die letzten Reservate der Geschichte”
(WW 108). She begs for Toma to let it go but she maintains: The Incan empire “nahm sich der
Tropenwald,” and communism “nimmt sich der Schnee. Das Eis konserviert alles” (WW 109). In
Siberia “kann Stalin nicht entkommen und der erste Mensch im All nicht verlorengehen” (WW
109). Toma says, whoever may come back West in a hundred years, she will find “keine Spuren
mehr” (WW 109). In this exchange, the narrator has taken the role of advisor for one of the only
times. She does not realize, though, that her advice to let it go applies to her own overly
complicated existence.
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The narrator holds on to her relationship with Toma, but with an appropriately light grip.
Toma is a connection to the narrator's past that she does not want to lose, but she is acutely aware
that Toma has a skewed perspective. In a pivotal yet fleeting moment, the narrator describes an
image from a time she visited Red Square. Lenin's embalmed body, she says, was the first dead
person she encountered. She goes further, saying “Er schien weder tot noch lebendig, er war
längst ein Kunstwerk” (WW 36). It is at this moment that she symbolically recognizes the former
East as a hollow and now collapsed idea, inflated only by a desire to preserve. Furthermore, her
describing the embalmed body as art suggests that the fallen state of the soviet east is actually
something that is to be preserved, its value being in part that it is gone forever.
The narrator never actually verbalizes her love for Toma. When given the opportunity,
she explains that love goes through a metamorphoses in a moment of “Erklärung, sie nimmt
Haltung an” (WW 70). “Erklärte Liebe” confronts a person as a “Wesen” that has been called but
“nicht geschaffen” (WW 70). When one proclaims love, the triumph “hält nur kurz” (WW 70).
Like a butterfly in a greenhouse, the narrator says, “unbegreiflichsten Lieben” will land on your
head if one “nur lange genug den Mund halten kann” (WW 70). The narrator is willing this part
of her past to live on by deliberately avoiding confronting it. Furthermore, the use of written over
spoken word is at the heart of the relationship, as Toma relies on typed letters.
Toma continues to view the world in black and white terms, disallowing her to find
balance or even perceive balance as a reasonable goal. Preserving history and holding onto ideals
completely outside of reason are what define Toma. Furthermore, like Leo, Toma is not a
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sufficient part of the narrator's space. For these reasons, the narrator does not find harmony in
their relationship alone.
The narrator's third Liebesmensch is Roman, with whom the narrator shares an apartment.
He is asleep during the entire present of the text, lying in bed next to the narrator. She describes
him as dreaming dreams of epic stories and heroic adventure. “Ich sehe ihm nur im Schlaf an,
daß es ein großes Heldenepos ist, durch das sein Nachtlebensweg führt, steinig, gefährlich und
jahrein, jahraus immer weiter” (WW 9). She goes further, suggesting he is hunting wild animals
as part of his own “Entwicklungsroman” (WW 9).
Roman was at the front lines during the events of the Wende and protested peacefully as
one in a crowd of many and it changed his character. At the time, his voice was his weapon as he
chanted slogans of progress and change. However, after the fall of the wall, speaking loses its
power for him. “Das Sprechen,” the narrator says on Roman's behalf, was all around in
celebrations, but stopped and moved in concentric circles, “um uns zu erklären, was mit uns
geschehen war” (WW 44). With this, Roman literally “sprach nicht mehr, er lehnte es ab zu
sprechen” (WW 44). “Die Freiheit des Wortes” Roman quoted from a banner, “ich nehme sie
mir” (WW 44).
Despite his not speaking (and to some degree because of it), the narrator continues to
develop a relationship with Roman as she comes to terms with his new behavior. In the months
after he stopped talking, the narrator gets the impression that Roman had lost “Achtsamkeit” and
“Zartheit”(WW 93) like in a “Wärmestrom,” in which he changed all the “Sagbare” and
“Unsagbare” (WW 94). Getting to know the silent Roman was not easy for the narrator because,
53
as she says, “Wortzauber ist es, der mich vor allem anderen erobert” (WW 70). But this is the
narrator falsely interpreting her own character. So far, her only balanced relationship was one
without the need for words. When she observes his interactions with animals, which by default
exist outside of shared language, she realizes that he has not lost his mindfulness and tenderness,
but rather they are expressed without words.
One instance of Roman's non-verbal communication skills is with Kastanorka, the
narrator's pet tortoise. She has had the typically long lived animal since childhood and holds it is
high regard. One day, the narrator notices how Roman “stumme Zwiesprache mit der Schildkröte
hielt” (WW 105). He does not move his “zarte Kehle” while caressing the tortoises shell. To the
narrator it seems as though “er sich mit ihrem andeutungslosen Schweigen [verbinde ],” as if he
was trying to free himself from “die kraftzehrenden Selbstbeherrschung” that enabled him “den
Siegern das Wort zu überlassen” (WW 106). He touched Kastanorka's shell, “unter dem sie ihre
vollendete Kampfkunst verbarg; die gepanzerte Zartheit” (WW 106). Furthermore, this
relationship shows that the narrator sees an enviable balance within this character’s disposition,
he is strong yet tender.
The narrator and Roman also had a cat named Popolo and Roman was particularly close
to the cat. While it took several weeks for the cat to stop biting the narrator, it bonded with
Roman immediately. When the cat went missing, Roman searched around the building, inside
and out, but it was nowhere to be found. When Popolo finally came back rugged and thin,
Roman pampered him with a thorough bath and the next morning he smelled “fast so frisch wie
eine junge Hauskatze” (WW 113). The cat eventually dies, but Roman's attitude toward the
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prodigal cat has an important impact on the narrator's ability to relate to him. She is able to see
his caring passively, as she is not the direct recipient.
Roman is connected to the narrators past, present, and future; he embodies Krauß' ideal of
love as Unsagbar; he shares a name with the narrator's first love; he is deeply connected to
literature and narrative by way of his name, the circumstances of his meeting the narrator, and
the nature of his epic dreams. Like Krauß' view of literature versus music and visual arts, Roman
may not seem as perfectly suited to saying the unsayable as Leo. However, it is precisely because
the narrator has to work to love, understand, and be one with Roman that their relationship is
able to work. Krauß closes the text with an image of the narrator's and Roman's fingers
intertwined as he begins to awaken, followed by a direct poetic address to the reader.
Du!
Du, Du, hier bin ich.
Du weißt es.
Wenn nicht: hier bin ich. Ich meine Dich!
Mehr oder weniger unsichtbar sind alle, die wir eigentlich meinen.
Alles Sichtbare ist ein Versprechen.
Das Begrenzte wiest weist auf das Weite hin.
Jeder Faßbare vertritt Dich.
Hier bin ich.
Ich meine Dich. (WW 117)
Krauß directly invites the reader to thoughtfully acknowledge the art of literature, just as the
narrator has acknowledged Roman, as a relationship that helps one find moments of
transcendence while existing in a postmodern world culture.
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CONCLUSION: escaping postmodern – Romantic search for self, connection with the
surrounding world, and finding the loved one who completes.
Ultimately, these texts work together to show how a character deals with fragmentation in
a postmodern world culture. She is caught in the middle of the Wende and finds that when
barriers are broken, gaps still exist. She seems to remain in that gap for some time, trying to pull
together the inevitable westernization and the east that she wishes she could revisit. Once that
gap starts to close, another barrier arises: it turns out she is unable to communicate with people
because she feels left behind after having spent so much energy on trying to deal with the Wende.
Just as she decides to make the leap and learn how to communicate, she realizes that she has had
no idea what she really wanted. By reflecting on relationships and her youth, she decides to focus
on a dream that existed before, during, and after the fall of the wall; that is, to find oneness in a
loving relationship. It is with this goal that she is finally able to connect her past, present, and
future.
The way out is only temporary, like the narrators defining moments in Minnesota, at the
Golden Gate bridge, at the Zoo when she meets the business man, standing on top of the World
Trade Center, and when she holds Roman's hand as he awakens from his dreams—but they are
there. There are two particularly telling moments in which Krauß' narrative voice comes through
and guides the reader toward the suggested way out. She is definitely considering the state of the
world in general, whether it be political, social, or anything else. There is no denying that the 20 th
and 21st century culture is a culture filled with postmodern buzzwords like breaking down
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barriers and globalization. We are to qualify this state as a matter of extremes. Nette has been
touched by and changed her behavior according to the times. Though portrayed as negative by
the narrator, the reader gets a sense as the plot develops that Nette does what she needs to do and
moves on, without sacrificing her identity. Krauß does not not condemn her for that. Mark,
however, is also the only character to be depicted without sympathy or mercy and the only one
who tries to preach his beliefs about globalization, interconnectedness, and mass communication,
all of which lead to the destruction of Krauß' version of Romantic yearning. Krauß is
condemning this attitude because it does not leave room for her developing narrator and her
story, one which she wants to succeed. As we know, the narrator does grow to be more mature
within her surroundings, but retains her Romantic ideals.
It is no surprise that love and the unsayable become increasingly important themes in
Krauß' texts. She extensively outlines her views on the subjects and how they relate to her
literary approach in Die Gesamtliebe und die Einzelliebe: Frankfurter Poetikvorlesung (2004).
She talks about the “Chemie” that exists not between two people, but between a reader and a
piece of literature. The first sentence, she says, is the first impression and establishes the tone of
the relationship (Die Gesamtliebe 9). Then the form develops, and the book becomes an
extension of the reader, inviting him to examine his inner and outer worlds. But for Krauß, love
and literature are both processes that begin with “die Orientierungslosigkeit” and “Schweben im
Ungestalteten” (Die Gesamtliebe 11). Falling in love and reading literature require rigorous
engagement of the unknown before one finds balance and oneness. This is at the heart of the
texts described above.
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Ironically, Krauß sees the artistic literary text as limited. Its reliance on words undermines
her notion that “Was wirklich ist in uns, bleibt unsagbar” (Die Gesamtliebe 22).
“Am Unsagbarsten vielleicht,” Krauß suggests: “die Liebe” (Die Gesamtliebe 31). She further
defines love as existing “aus unserer Sehnsucht nach Vollkommenheit, Ganzheit, Schönheit”
(Die Gesamtliebe 41). In other words, she says, we love that which completes us. In this regard,
the limitations of the written word become its greatest asset. The author and reader must engage
with texts in search of that which cannot be said, thereby reflecting Krauß' tendency toward the
early Romantic appreciation of fragmentation as pieces which are meant to come together: art
and life must work as one.
Krauß uses an aesthetic that could fit the postmodern, but mostly favors the Romantic.
She utilizes fragmentation, but it is with an eye toward the idealistic. As Lützeler indicates, the
end of Die Überfliegerin reads as if it breaks down into diaspora. However, in the course of that
text, the narrator experiences moments of real transcendence. Furthermore, the two texts that
follow break off at transcendent moments, thereby highlighting them. As Lützeler also points
out, Krauß wants to remain in the background, supposedly placing the reader above herself.
However, she does so to facilitate a Romantic end, not a postmodern one. Krauß places literature
and art above herself and the reader as something to reach toward with a longing for
transcendence.
As the narrator becomes more comfortable with who she is, she seeks out a loving
relationship with others. She finds that her own ideal partner is one who is opposite but
complimentary. We know from her memories and experiences that the narrator loves the written
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word and the idea of intellectually stimulating conversation. But to be with someone like her in
this way – i.e. Leo or the boy who quoted literature on a date – never works out. We know that
the narrator struggles to connect to the past. But to be with someone like that – i.e. Toma – is not
fulfilling for the narrator. She needs to be with someone who helps keep her from stagnating in
her own self reflection, like Jerzy did before he died. Roman completes her in the ethereal
Romantic sense. His silent action compliments her wordy, philosophical inaction. Yet, they come
together on the basis of tenderness in their connection to the natural world. However, she is
clearly stuck in the postmodern culture of post-Wende Germany and globalization in general; this
contrast between character and environment is key no matter which direction one takes these
texts. Krauß tests the plausibility of a Romantic surviving in such a world. All things considered,
it is not only plausible but a potential way out.
Angela Krauß is not championing a conservative movement by allowing her Romantic
narrator to live in the present, postmodern culture, but rather taking a more nuanced progressive
stance. To some degree, she questions the severity of postmodern culture and asks us to question
how much it has infiltrated the imaginations of the people and, further, which of those aspects
are worth combating.
59
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