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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
August 11, 2008
Date:___________________
Aine K. Zimmerman
I, _________________________________________________________,
hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD)
in:
German Studies
It is entitled:
Estranged Bedfellows: German-Jewish Love Stories in Contemporary
German Literature and Film
This work and its defense approved by:
Dr. Katharina Gerstenberger
Chair: _______________________________
Dr. Todd Herzog
_______________________________
Dr. Sara Friedrichsmeyer
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
Estranged Bedfellows:
German-Jewish Love Stories in Contemporary German Literature and Film
A dissertation submitted
to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies
at the University of Cincinnati
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
of the Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
in the Department of German Studies
of the College of Arts and Sciences
2008
by Aine K. Zimmerman
Master of Arts, University of Washington, 2000
Bachelor of Arts, University of Cincinnati, 1997
Committee Chair: Professor Katharina Gerstenberger
Abstract
This dissertation is a survey and analysis of German-Jewish love stories, defined as romantic
entanglements between Jewish and non-Jewish German characters, in German literature and film
from the 1980s to the 21st century. Breaking a long-standing taboo on German-Jewish
relationships since the Holocaust, there is a spate of such love stories from the late 1980s
onward. These works bring together members of these estranged groups to spin out the
consequences, and this project investigates them as case studies that imagine and comment on
German-Jewish relations today.
Post-Holocaust relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans have often been
described as a negative symbiosis. The works in Chapter One (Rubinsteins Versteigerung, “Aus
Dresden ein Brief,” Eine Liebe aus nichts, and Abschied von Jerusalem) reinforce this
description, as the German-Jewish couples are connected yet divided by the legacy of the
Holocaust. Similarly, Die Haut retten and “Die Beschneidung” (Chapter Two) reflect doubt
about the ability for Jews and non-Jewish Germans to connect, but introduce non-Jewish German
protagonists who disassociate themselves from Nazism and/or a negative German identity. The
films of Chapter Three (Comedian Harmonists, Aimeé & Jaguar, Viehjude Levi, Rosenstrasse)
seek to bridge the divide between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. They portray individual
German exceptions to Nazism through sympathetic female German partners romantically
involved with Jews. Works in Chapter Four (Das jüdische Begräbnis, Schalom meine Liebe,
Eduards Heimkehr) likewise disassociate German lovers from perpetration. These works suggest
that positive German-Jewish relationships are possible by finding exceptions to perpetration. In
Chapter Five, texts (“Harlem Holocaust,” “Finkelsteins Finger,” Deutsche Einheit) revolve
ii
around sexual encounters in which both partners manipulate the Holocaust legacy, indicating
unfinished business between the two groups. German and Jewish characters’ self-serving
behaviors alike are parodied, and this evenly balanced and satirical treatment shifts the focus
away from “good” or “guilty” characters toward criticism of the unproductive roles the
Holocaust legacy has spawned.
This dissertation traces the development of German-Jewish relationship from estranged
bedfellows to complicated companions after the Holocaust. It links these changes to gender and
normalization discourses, arguing that more “normalized” relations mainly occur between female
non-Jewish German and male Jewish characters.
iii
© Copyright 2008
Zimmerman, Aine K.
All rights reserved.
iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Katharina Gerstenberger, for her guidance, professionalism
and encouragement. Her help was invaluable at every step of the dissertation process, and her
comments and our conversations about my work always gave me the resources and mental boost
to take the project to the next level. I appreciate all of the time and hard work she invested in
helping me to become a better scholar.
Dr. Anke Biendarra has graciously balanced being a friend and a mentor since I was at the
University of Washington. She deserves special thanks for the extensive feedback she provided
on this project, as well as her personal support and perspective throughout the dissertation
process.
I would also like to thank Dr. Todd Herzog, in particular for his help formulating the subject of
my research during its beginning stages, and Dr. Sara Friedrichsmeyer for her willingness to
support this project as a member of my committee.
Colleagues at various conferences, as well as at Miami University and Allegheny College,
helped me to reflect on and refine my ideas, and while too numerous to mention, I am grateful to
them all. To Kimberly Hamlin and Val Gilman, thank you for your advice and encouragement
when it was most needed
I deeply appreciate the support my family and friends have shown me throughout the years I was
working on my dissertation. My partner, Zara Lawler, and my mother, Ginny Zimmerman, in
particular, both deserve particular thanks for their unending patience, unconditional love, and
willingness to listen (and proofread!). Their friendship means the world to me. Also, to my
father, brothers, sister-in-law Nikki and grandmother: thank you for your unfailing belief in me.
v
Table of Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................................... v
Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................................... vi
Introduction: Contemporary German-Jewish Love Stories in Context ......................................................... 1
German-Jewish Love Stories After Auschwitz........................................................................................... 1
The German-Jewish Love Affair: the Negative Symbiosis and Beyond ................................................... 11
The History of Jews and non-Jewish Germans in Germany after the Holocaust .................................... 17
Contemporary Literature in Context: the Debates of the 1980s and 1990s .......................................... 21
Legacy, Literature, and Generations ....................................................................................................... 25
Project Overview ..................................................................................................................................... 29
Chapter One: Sleeping with (the descendants of) the Enemy:................................................................... 36
Connected Yet Divided by the Holocaust Legacy........................................................................................ 36
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 36
Barbara Honigmann’s novel Eine Liebe aus nichts (1991) ...................................................................... 42
Anna Mitgutsch’s novel Abschied von Jerusalem (1995) ........................................................................ 48
Rafael Seligmann’s novel Rubinsteins Versteigerung (1989) .................................................................. 54
Maxim Biller’s short story “Aus Dresden ein Brief” from Land der Väter und Verräter (1994).............. 61
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 65
Chapter Two: Breaking Away From the Past: ............................................................................................. 70
The Individualization of German Identity ................................................................................................... 70
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 70
Irene Dische’s short story “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” (1989) ............................................................ 76
Bernhard Schlink’s short story “Die Beschneidung” from Liebesfluchten (2000) ................................... 79
Anja Tuckermann’s novel Die Haut retten (2000)................................................................................... 89
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 96
Chapter Three: Gendered Normalization: ................................................................................................ 103
The “Good” German Woman in Films of the 1990s and Beyond ............................................................. 103
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 103
Agnieszka Holland’s Hitlerjunge Salomon (1990) ................................................................................. 111
vi
Joseph Vilsmaier’s Comedian Harmonists (1997) ................................................................................. 114
Didi Danquart’s Viehjude Levi (1999) .................................................................................................... 120
Max Färberböck’s Aimée & Jaguar (1999) ............................................................................................ 124
Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosenstrasse (2003)...................................................................................... 129
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 135
Chapter Four: Positive Pasts and Unproblematic Presents: ..................................................................... 139
The New Normality in German-Jewish Love Stories ................................................................................. 139
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 139
Lothar Schöne’s novella Das jüdische Begräbnis (1996) ....................................................................... 142
Rafael Seligmann’s novel Schalom meine Liebe (1998) ........................................................................ 150
Peter Schneider’s novel Eduards Heimkehr (1999)............................................................................... 158
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 168
Chapter Five: ............................................................................................................................................. 172
Female German Bodies as Sites of Manipulation and “Reconciliation”: .................................................. 172
The Unfinished Business of the Past in 1990s Satire ................................................................................ 172
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 172
Maxim Biller’s short story “Harlem Holocaust” (1990)......................................................................... 177
Maxim Biller’s short story “Finkelsteins Finger” from Land der Väter und Verräter (1994) ................ 183
Joachim Lottmann’s novel Deutsche Einheit (1999) ............................................................................. 187
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 190
Conclusion: From (E)strange(d) Bedfellows to Complicated Companions ............................................... 194
Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................... 203
vii
Introduction: Contemporary German-Jewish Love Stories in Context
German-Jewish Love Stories After Auschwitz
In their introduction to the Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture
1096-1996 Sander Gilman and Jack Zipes note that more than half a century ago, the Holocaust
appeared to be the end of the “German-Jewish symbiosis”:
In 1945 it would have been unthinkable to write a book about the ‘Jewishness’ of
German writing or about Jewish writing in German. At that time, Jews did not want
anything to do with things German. Furthermore, it was commonly believed that
Germany had eliminated most if not all of its Jews and that its Jewish culture had been
annihilated. Certainly the Germans did not want to be reminded of what had happened to
the Jews and were even less inclined to welcome a revival of Jewish thinking and art in
German culture. It appeared that the ‘famous’ German-Jewish symbiosis had come to an
end. (xxi)
Yet they also find that “nothing could be further than the truth,” for Jews revived their
connection to “things German” by employing “the German language to salvage the humanist
tradition in Germany and to grasp their Jewishness in light of the Shoah. In this regard, the
Jewish contribution and connection to German culture has never been totally broken” (ibid). In
literature Jews found a forum for expressing themselves and reconnecting to German culture, and
grappling with their own Jewish identities in relation to the Holocaust. A number of recent books
speak to just such a Jewish contribution and connection to German culture within Germany:
Charlotte Kahn’s The Resurgence of Jewish Life in Germany, Sander Gilman’s and Karen
Remmler’s volume Reemerging Jewish Culture in Germany, Jeffrey Peck’s Being Jewish in the
New Germany, and Elena Lappin’s Jewish Voices, German Words. Thomas Nolden, in his book
Junge jüdische Literatur, corroborates that
1
Entgegen […] pessimistischen Einschätzungen ist seit dem Beginn der achtziger Jahre in
Deutschland und in Österreich eine höchst vielfältige jüdische Gegenwartskultur im
Entstehen, die von den Kindern der Vorkriegsgeneration, also den Vertretern der
sogenannten zweiten und dritten Generation, getragen wird. Ignatz Bubis, der Nachfolger
Galinskis im Zentralrat, kann so 1995 sagen, […] daß ‘es in diesem Land wieder eine
lebendige jüdische Gemeinschaft gibt, in der Menschen aufwachsen, die bereit sind
mitzumachen, Stellung zu nehmen zu dem, was um sie herum geschiet.’ (15)
In the 1980s, a second and third generation of Jews began to assert their presence in Germanspeaking countries, and some of them did this through their writing in German. 1 Many volumes
from a sociological, historical or psychological approach on the subject of this presence
explicitly or implicitly address how the descendants of survivors of Hitler’s regime can live in
the “land of the murderers” after the Shoah. Similarly, contemporary Jewish authors and
filmmakers working in the German language have created narratives that investigate what it
means to be a Jew in Germany after the Holocaust, as well as the extent to which a connection is
possible not only to German culture, but to their fellow German citizens.
1
The terms “first,” “second,” and “third” generation warrant explanation. In brief, the term “first generation” is used
to refer to Germans and Jews who lived through the war, and experienced the Nazi regime firsthand, whether as
perpetrators, bystanders, victims, or survivors. The “second generation” refers to their children, and “third
generation” to their grandchildren. In her book After Such Knowledge, Eva Hoffmann relates the following about the
term “second generation,” which is in wide use today: “Within the larger history of postwar responses to the
Holocaust, the direct descendants of survivors—the so-called second generation—form a particular subset and story.
The existence of the ‘second generation’ was probably announced in 1979 with the publication of Helen Epstein’s
seminal book Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors. […] for many of the
book’s subjects, the interviews were the first time they had looked at the post-Holocaust aspect of their stories as
something distinct and significant, or had articulated the impact of their parents’ histories on the parents themselves,
the family dynamics, or their own inner and outer lives. Since then, however, the ‘second generation’ has
crystallized into a recognized entity, and a self-conscious ‘identity.’ Children of survivors by now comprise a
defined, if hybrid, collectivity which holds international meetings and conferences and which has given rise to a
growing body of writing, ranging from highly personal to highly theoretical” (xi-xii). However, the term “second
generation” also refers to Germans who are the children of the perpetrator generation. Erin McGlothlin justifies her
use of the terms in her book Second Generation Holocaust Literature : Legacies of Survival and Perpetration,
writing: “My use of the designation second generation is based on the commonly used definition developed by the
literary critics Alan Berger and Efraim Sicher, who have borrowed the term from psychological and journalistic
studies of the children of survivors by Martin S. Bergmann and Milton E. Jucovy, Dan Bar-On (Fear and Hope,
Legacy of Silence, “An Encounter”), Aaron Haas, Robert M. Prince, Helen Epstein, and others. Berger defines the
term fairly narrowly, reserving it for writers who are actually “offspring of Jewish Holocaust survivors” (1).
However, elsewhere she makes it clear that the term includes both Germans and Jews, not just Jews as the quote
above suggests, and uses the shorthand of “children of victims” and “children of perpetrators” for the second
generation.
2
Given the enormously negative impact of the Holocaust on German-Jewish relations, it is
not surprising that for many years after this event, the subject of German-Jewish love was taboo
in German society, literature and film. 2 Love has been the topic of countless literary and
cinematic works detailing the trials and tribulations that lovers suffer, along with their ecstatic
highs and happily-ever-after endings. As Mary Cadogan writes in her survey of romantic
literature through the ages, “despite its myriad variations, the overwhelming flow of romantic
fiction is concerned with the establishment of love and trust between women and men. Its basic
theme is that of the traditional folk or fairy-tale–of boy meeting girl, of courtship and
overcoming obstacles, of living together–hopefully–happily ever after” (240). Cadogan concedes
that “[d]ictionary definitions of romance are so wide-ranging that to cover the field of the
romantic story could mean surveying practically the whole of English literature” (3) and the
same holds true of German literature. 3
This project narrows its focus on love’s “basic theme” to German-language literature and
film of the 1980s, 1990s and the 21st century, in order to specifically examine taboo-breaking
German-Jewish romantic relationships after the Holocaust. To what extent a German-Jewish
symbiosis exists—or is even desirable—post-1945 has been the subject of much debate, 4 but
certainly the genre of the love story lends itself as a metaphor for larger German-Jewish
relations. In many ways, Jews and non-Jewish Germans in the works analyzed in this dissertation
are estranged bedfellows: their intimate relationships contend with the inherited legacy of the
Holocaust, a legacy that has often divided “Germans” and “Jews” into opposing camps (just as it
2
In an international context, there are literary and cinematic treatments of the topic prior to works in German. To
name just a few: Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani’s Il Portiere di Notte (The Night Porter, 1974). Dominique
Valentin’s novel, Die Schickse, written in French but translated by Eva Moldenhauer in 1996.
3
For a survey of love stories in Western literature, see Virginia Brackett’s Classic Love and Romance Literature:
An Encyclopedia of Works, Characters, Authors and Themes.
4
This debate will be discussed in detail later in this chapter.
3
did during the actual historical event). 5 Yet the power of literary and cinematic German-Jewish
love stories lies in the fact that they bring together members of these estranged groups to spin out
the consequences and find points of connection. These texts and films share a crucial
commonality: the “obstacle” which their couples must “overcome” (to paraphrase Mary
Cadogan) is the legacy of Holocaust that threatens to completely overshadow them. While many
would rightly object to the idea that such an event could ever be overcome, these works
demonstrate the myriad ways in which the descendants of the victims and perpetrators of the
Holocaust grapple with its effects on their lives and relationships.
Frank Schicketanz, in his book Liebe nach dem Krieg: The Theme of Love in Post-war
German Fiction, notes that
Theodor Adorno’s dictum regarding the impossibility of poetry applies as well, or more so,
to have love as a theme of post-war literature. The wounds of hatred are so great, that a
romantic or pastoral view would seem like a cruel forgetting, or worse, a mockery of the
death and suffering of countless millions during Hitler’s years in power. Yet, a post-war
German literature did surface, one replete with poetry. This ‘Trümmerliteratur’ as it has been
5
Sander Gilman and Jack Zipes explain their objections to the terms “German” and “Jewish” as follows:
‘Jewish’ can be and has been understood at different times and with different emphasis as a religious or religiopolitical designation, a political affiliation, a linguistic grouping, an ethnic identity, and an ethnographic or
biological cohort or allele, as well as simply a term of praise or opprobrium. ‘German’ has an equally complex
history. Is it a political designation, a linguistic label for disparate and yet (in their own eyes) united groups of
speakers of a single language or group of mutually incomprehensible dialects? Is it an ethnicity or a superethnic
designation, or an ethnographic or biological cohort or allele? Does it limit itself to the ‘Germans,’ and if so, whose
Germans ? […] When we link such impossible-to-define terms, even greater problems arise. […] Static definitions
have been avoided, yet of course all definitions of ‘German,’ ‘Jew,’ and ‘writing’ are by definition static and
normative, as they need to be at each moment in the cultural history of Jews and Germans, German Jews, Jews in
Germany, and so forth, as the relationships change and refocus in various times and places” (xvii). Like Gilman and
Zipes, I do not wish to imply static definitions of the two groups or members thereof, yet at the same time the
partners in these literary and cinematic couples identify themselves and one another as members of a certain group.
At times invested in maintaining a separate group identity from their partner, at others, finding ways to link the two
identities, these characters themselves do employ such labels of “German” and “Jewish,” and to make this clear, I
will use the words in double quotes. However, in general, I will not use the expression “Germans and Jews” but
“Jewish and non-Jewish Germans” for the reasons Pol O’Dochartaigh gives in his volume Jews in German
Literature since 1945: German-Jewish Literature?: “the expression ‘Germans and Jews’ should be allowed to fall
into disuse, at least in a German cultural context. It is a phrase that suggests that the two concepts are mutually
exclusive, when, in fact, this is not now, nor has it ever been, the case since the first Jewish settlement in Germany.
[…] In Germany there are not ‘Germans and Jews’, but ‘Jews and non-Jews’ or ‘Jewish and non-Jewish Germans’”
(iii).
4
called, treated love as it did all matters, as an aftermath. […] love not only became a theme
again, but a ‘Selbstverstaendlichkeit.’ (1)
However, while the theme of love reemerged from the rubble, none of the works Schicketanz
surveys from the four decades following the war deal with German-Jewish love. What did not
become ‘selbstverständlich’ after the war, then, is love between German and Jewish characters. 6
It is not until a Jewish German literature begins to appear in the 1980s that the topic is dealt with
by a growing number of authors. 7 In his article “The Situation of Jews in Today’s Germany,”
Micha Brumlik observes that this emerging German literature by Jewish authors
includes thus far works of unpretentious autobiographical reflection (Broder and Lang
1979; Fleischmann 1980), short novels (Seligmann 1989), piercing short stories (Biller
1990), and ironic psychological studies of high literary merit (Dische 1990). […]
Although diverse in form, the themes are primarily the same and deal with overcoming
trauma, the experience of sexual and erotic tension with the non-Jewish environment, and
the question of what it means to live as a Jew in Germany today after the Holocaust. (910)
In his article, “Wahl- und Qualverwandtschaften: Liebesbeziehungen zwischen Juden und
Nichtjuden in der deutschen Nachkriegsliteratur,” Guy Stern likewise notes that “in den Werken
einer neuen, sich immer noch konstituierenden Gruppe deutschsprachiger jüdischer Schriftsteller
gerade die Erotik oft und explizit im Mittelpunkt steht” (308). As second generation Jewish
writers living in Germany come of age and begin to constitute a tangible presence in the 1980s
and 90s, they are faced with existing in the “land of the murderers” and being attracted to
descendants of the perpetrators, and this is reflected in their writing.
6
This subject was also somewhat taboo before the war, but it did exist. See Petra Ernst’s article “Christlich-jüdische
Liebesbeziehungen als Motiv in deutschsprachige Erzählliteratur zwischen 1870 und 1920” and Katja Garloff’s
article “Figures of Love in Romantic Antisemitism: Achim von Arnim.” Primary literature includes Georg
Hermann’s novel Jettchen Gebert, for example.
7
This is not to say that no portrayals of German-Jewish intimacy exist before this, but that there were not a spate of
them. For a brief anaylsis of a number of lesser known literary works with German-Jewish relationships, see Guy
Stern’s article “Wahl- und Qualverwandtschaften: Liebesbeziehungen zwischen Juden und Nichtjuden in der
deutschen Nachkriegsliteratur.” There are also a handful of films, such as Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten (1947)
and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Lili Marleen (1981), for example.
5
While scholars have taken an interest in the themes of autobiography, trauma and
memory in Jewish writing that Brumlik mentions, few have investigated the topic of sexual and
erotic tension in the literature between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. Stern’s aforementioned
article is an exception, and is a starting point of this project. He discusses a small number of
sexual encounters and minor relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, coming to
the conclusion that they
bestätigen die Feststellung vieler Historiker und Literaturgeschichtler, daß Genozid und
Holocaust eine kulterelle Wasserscheide zwischen deutschen […] Juden und Nichtjuden
zur Folge gehabt habe, die sich noch auf die jüdische Nachfolgegeneration auswirke.
(308-9)
But there has been no in-depth survey and analysis of the theme in contemporary Germanlanguage literature to test this conclusion further. This dissertation endeavors to fill that gap,
examining Stern’s assertion that such literary encounters reinforce the image of German-Jewish
relationships as negatively affected by the Holocaust. In fact, while literary and cinematic
intimate relationships do portray the undeniable rifts between Germans and Jews, some also
show their attempts, on an individual level, to close them.
German-Jewish love remained taboo until the late 1980s in German-language literature,
when two Jewish authors, Rafael Seligmann and Irene Dische, published texts containing
romantic relationships between gentile Germans and Jews. In the former’s novel, Rubinsteins
Versteigerung (1989), the eponymous German Jewish teenager embarks on a relationship with
Suse, a gentile German, only to discover that Suse’s father was in the SS, a fact that complicates
their present-day love. In the latter’s short story, “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” (1989), the
American Jew of the title violently consummates his relationship with his ‘Jewish’ love interest,
after discovering she is in fact a German posing as a Jew. These two texts introduce a few of the
challenging themes that arise in the larger corpus of works on German-Jewish intimate
6
relationships: how to deal with the familial Nazi past of the German partner, and Jews reinforce
the division between themselves and Germans in various ways. Frederick Lubich views
Seligmann’s text as
a German-Jewish founding text of the ‘return of the suppressed,’ that is, of
psychologically and politically suppressed traumas and taboos between Germans and
Jews after the Holocaust. With this novel, the ice, the icy silence about the ‘negative
symbiosis’ was broken. The German Jew became again visible, audible and even acerbic
– thus ending the stunned ‘muteness of postwar Germany's Jews’ which Seligmann had
defined as Hitler's ‘lasting triumph.’ (2)
Seligmann’s and Dische’s texts usher in two decades of what I term contemporary “GermanJewish love stories”: a spate of texts and films in which a romantic/intimate relationship between
a Jewish and a non-Jewish German character play a significant role in the plot and express the
challenges that Germans and Jews face in their relationships to one another. 8
However, it is not just Jewish authors writing in German who explode the post-1945
taboo on romantic relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. In addition to literature
and film by Jewish Germans such as Barbara Honigmann, Anna Mitgutsch, Maxim Biller, and
Lothar Schöne, this dissertation deals with works by Bernhard Schlink, Peter Schneider,
Margarethe von Trotta, Max Färberböck, Joseph Vilsmaier, Didi Danquart and Joachim
Lottmann. As the long list of names indicates, the topic of German-Jewish love has boomed in
8
Pia Thielmann’s formulations about black-white love were a starting point for my definition, in her study Hotbeds:
Black-White Love in Novels from the United States, Africa and the Caribbean. For my definition of “German-Jewish
love stories” I was influenced by her statement about her project: “this study features novels in which Black-white
love is either the main topic or impacts the content of the novel considerably” (20). She argues that “racism is at the
root of the difficulties interracial couples have been facing (in addition to those interpersonal or other difficulties any
couple may encounter)” (21), which helped solidify for me the idea that these are not ‘normal’ love stories in which
lovers contend with interpersonal difficulties, but ones in which the legacy of the past in relation to one another as
members of ‘opposite’ groups (thus exchanging her category of “racism” for “the Holocaust”). In another parallel,
she comes to the conclusion that many of her novels “do not offer hopeful visions for interracial relationships […] In
all novels, past and present history overshadows the relationships strongly and outweighs personal attachments to an
extents that it kills, or may kill, the relationship” (ibid).
7
the last two decades. This dissertation surveys German 9 literary and cinematic “German-Jewish
love stories” of the late 1980s to the 21st century, focusing on those works in which the legacy of
the Holocaust and the Nazi era impact the German-Jewish relationship. While their fictional
relationships occasionally address individual idiosyncrasies that hinder the relationship, they
foreground difficulties in relating that are related to the legacy of the past. In this way they bring
abstract historical concepts to a more manageable, personal level, providing insight into the ways
in which history affects individuals.
A number of works by journalists, psychologists and sociologists have investigated Jews’
position in a country associated with such negative baggage for them, as well as actual romantic
relationships between second generation Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. 10 Journalist Peter
Sichrovsky’s collection of interviews with young Germans, Jews and Austrians, Wir wissen nicht
9
This project does not address works by Austrian authors and filmmakers, although a survey and investigation of
their works would also be worthwhile. In her article on second generation Austrian authors, “Jüdische Identität in
der österreichischen Nachkriegsliteratur: Peter Henisch, Robert Schindel, Robert Menasse und Doron Rabinovici,”
Andrea Kunne also makes a connection between discussions in Austria concerning the Nazi past and Jewish
authors’ texts taking place during this same time: “Denn die seit Mitte der achtiger Jahre sich entwickelnde
Diskussion über Österreichs Mitverantwortung am Nationalsozialismus gab den jüdischen Autoren einen
intensivierten Impuls, die geschichtlichen Ereignisse in ihren Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart zu überdenken und
in das Leben ihrer Romangestalten eingehen zu lassen” (295). Kunne thus links discussions about the past with
Jewish authors’ treatment of this topic in their fictional works; I make a similar argument about German discussions
of the past and Jewish and gentile German authors. However, as I will later show, the German debates about the past
are tied to unification and normalization, and thus their national and cultural situation is different than Austria’s. For
this reason, I have chosen not to deal with Austrian texts in this project. Since Austria’s national identity has been
tied up in the idea that they were victims of Hitler’s aggression, there is a clear difference between the national
conceptions and ways of dealing with the past of the two countries. For example, Austria has had a different national
self image, as victims of the Nazi regime because of the Anschluss, despite the historical fact that many Austrians
celebrated Hitler’s army advancing into their country, and a different way of dealing with the past since the end of
the war (Kunne 273). See also Ingrid Spörk’s article: “1992: Robert Schindel’s novel Gebürtig continues the
development of Jewish writing in Austria after the Shoah.” However, there are a number of interesting texts that
deal with gentile Austrian-Jewish love stories, which does suggest that a similar boom in love stories has occurred in
Austrian literature. In my research, I have encountered the following texts with Austrian-Jewish love stories: Peter
Henisch’s Steins Paranoia (1988), Robert Schindel’s Gebürtig (1992), Doron Rabinovici’s Suche nach M (1997)
and Ohnehin (2004), For secondary literature addressing (at least in part) the Austrian-Jewish romantic relationship
in recent Austrian literature, see Andrea Kunne, “Jüdische Identität in der österreichischen Nachkriegsliteratur: Peter
Henisch, Robert Schindel, Robert Menasse und Doron Rabinovici,” as well as articles by Renate Posthofen and
Thomas Freeman. While beyond the scope of this project, it would be worth comparing whether these literary
romantic relationships between gentile and Jewish Austrians function in similar ways as those analyzed here.
10
There is factual evidence to support romantic relationships existing between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans; one
of the most telling being that the “Federal Republic has the highest rate of mixed marriages among Jewish
communities worldwide” (Brumlik 12).
8
was morgen wird, wir wissen wohl was gestern war, 11 was inspired by just such questions, as he
states in his introduction:
What does it mean for me as a Jew to live in Germany today? […] Who were the people
who returned? Who are the ones who want to stay here? […] How did the experiences of
the parents affect the children, my generation? How do they, the children of the
survivors, cope with the German and Austrian environment? How do the children of the
killers live together in the same country with the children of the victims? (3-4)
While his collection concentrates on individual interviews, Sichrovsky does include a dialogue
between a Jewish and non-Jewish couple, Robert and Erika. This couple reflects on the fact that
their courtship was wonderful, “[b]ut we couldn’t run fast enough; the past was bound to catch
up with us. There came a time when we began to talk about our parents” (81). The subject of
(grand-)parental pasts is a red thread as well throughout fictional German-Jewish love stories in
the 1980s, 90s and beyond, and is an important point of analysis for this project. A few lines
from Robert and Erika’s interview encapsulate the issues that many fictional characters likewise
struggle with:
Erika: What do you want me to do? Hate my parents? Should I kill my father for what he
did? […] Go and avenge yourself somewhere else, not with me.
Robert: And you ask me what my parents’ past has to do with me? The past was always
the present, can’t you understand that? It was always with us, not just in stories about the
past. (83-84)
Contemporary German fiction about German-Jewish love stories reflects similar issues, as nonJewish German characters grapple with how to deal with their familial perpetrator past, while
Jewish characters are constantly aware of the past being present, as a shadow looming over their
relationship to a non-Jew.
11
His book has been translated as Strangers in their Own Land and I cite here from the translation, as the work is
not readily available in German.
9
Lynn Rapaport’s sociological study, Jews in Germany after the Holocaust: memory,
identity, and Jewish-German relations, contains a chapter specifically on romantic
entanglements, entitled “Interethnic intimacy: the character of Jewish-German sex, love, and
intermarriage.” She concludes from her interviews with German-Jewish couples that “Jews
perceive Germans through the lens of the Holocaust” and that they “show how the JewishGerman binary code frames the development of Jewish-German relationships and ultimately
impedes Jewish-German readjustment.” In addition, she observes that “the Holocaust is a barrier
that stands in the way of Jewish-German love and friendship” (18). Rapaport’s interviews are
with German-Jewish couples living in Germany during the late 1980s, and to some extent, texts
set during the same time period come to similar conclusions. While scholars in other fields 12
have considered German-Jewish sexual, romantic and marital relationships a valid way to study
and assess relations between Germans and Jews after the Holocaust, relatively few literary
scholars have analyzed literary love relationships between the two. This study seeks to fill a gap
in present scholarship on German-Jewish love stories in contemporary German-language
literature and film, by examining the re-emergence of the genre over the last two decades, and
the ways in which it constructs and comments on German-Jewish relations today.
Unlike sociological or psychological studies of German-Jewish relationships, literary and
cinematic German-Jewish love stories create a space in which to imagine and negotiate the ways
in which Jewish and non-Jewish Germans define themselves against and through the other, and
the possibilities for their connection to one another after the Holocaust. What does it mean to be
While it does not specifically deal with intimate relationships between Germans and Jews, Charlotte Kahn’s recent
book of interviews Resurgence of Jewish Life in Germany, deals with Jews and non-Jews in Germany and their
attitudes toward one another and history. Dan Bar-On has also conducted numerous studies on relations between
Germans and Jews, including one on the ways in which storytelling brings the two together: Bridging the Gap:
Storytelling as a Way to Work Through Political and Collective Hostilities. He describes his project “To Reflect and
Trust,” aimed at second generation Germans and Jews, as: “First and foremost, self-help groups for people who wish
to come to terms with their past, who themselves are still searching and have no ready answers but are willing to
share experiences with the enemy” (16).
10
a Jew living in Germany after the Holocaust? How do Germans contend with the legacy of the
German past? How do Jewish and non-Jewish Germans relate in the generations after the war,
and in what ways does the legacy of the past come up and between them? To what extent can the
two connect, and is there any overlap between “German” and “Jewish”? By analyzing the
literary and cinematic struggles of German-Jewish couples, I trace the changing role of the
Holocaust in contemporary German-Jewish relations and the ways in which it has begun to shift
away from being the central and defining factor in the German-Jewish relationship.
The German-Jewish Love Affair: the Negative Symbiosis and Beyond
German-Jewish relations have frequently been described as a love affair, a love-hate relationship
or a symbiosis, with scholars invoking metaphors of sex or marriage in referring to the groups’
relations. To cite one recent example, Charlotte Kahn, in the introduction to her volume
Resurgence of Jewish Life in Germany, refers to the use of the term ‘love affair’ in the 19th
century to describe German-Jewish relations, but comments that today, “German interactions
with Jews are by no means a love affair” (x). She also invokes two other related terms: “After
two millennia of love-hate relationships, Jews and non-Jews in Germany now have another
opportunity to embark on a productive marriage of convenience” (xii). Since the texts and films
at hand take such metaphors of love and marriage literally, a short history of such terms for
Jewish and non-Jewish Germans’ interaction is appropriate here.
The phrase “German-Jewish symbiosis” has been applied to relations between Germans
and Jews since the Enlightenment, when intellectuals believed that the assimilation of Jews into
German culture would benefit both groups. This is the ‘positive’ view of the “symbiosis,” one
that suggests a mutually beneficial relationship between Germans and Jews. This corresponds to
11
the definition in the biological sciences, from which this term is derived, in which a symbiosis is
defined as an interaction between two organisms living together in more or less intimate
association or even the merging of two dissimilar organisms, to the benefit of one or both of the
organisms. Yet there has been much debate surrounding whether this symbiosis is positive for
Jews living in German-speaking countries—or even existed at all. While some refer to a
“German-Jewish love affair” or “symbiosis” prior to the Holocaust, in which Germans and Jews
enriched one another’s cultures harmoniously, Gershom Scholem refutes such an affirmative
view of the past. Commenting in 1962 on the relationship between Germans and Jews from the
time of Moses Mendelssohn to the Nazi era, Scholem stated that
die Liebesaffäre der Juden mit den Deutschen blieb, aufs Große gesehen, einseitig,
unerwidert und weckte im besten Falle etwas wie Rührung […] oder Dankbarkeit.
Dankbarkeit haben die Juden nicht selten gefunden, die Liebe, die sie gesucht haben, so
gut wie nie. (63)
Mendelssohn paints a picture of an unrequited love between Germans and Jews, in which the
latter was rejected by the former. In his article “The Negative German-Jewish Symbiosis,” Jack
Zipes summarizes Gerschom Scholem’s book, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis (1976), writing
that:
Scholem refuted the existence of a productive German-Jewish symbiosis that, many
intellectuals believe, played a vital role in the flowering of German culture, particularly
during the Weimar period. According to Scholem, the Jewish enthusiasm for German
culture was always one-sided and unreciprocated. The relationship between Germans and
Jews was ‘never anything else than a fiction’ that had disastrous results for the Jews
because it denied the possibility of emancipation. Scholem’s remarks have caused
considerable debate about the meaning of a German-Jewish symbiosis that has never
been resolved. (144)
The debate about such a symbiosis gained in intensity in the 1980s and 90s as historians
and literary scholars, among others, sought to describe relations between Germans and Jews after
12
the Holocaust. Any sense of a positive symbiosis seemed to have come to an end, as Atina
Großmann writes “von der Zerstörung normaler Verhältnisse zwischen den beiden Gruppen”
(“Questions” 170), and historian Dan Diner coins the phrase “negative symbiosis” in 1986 with
his essay of the same name. In it he explains that the problematic relationship between Germans
and Jews after 1945 “represents a systematic reversal of the ‘German-Jewish symbiosis’ so
optimistically anticipated by the Age of Enlightenment” (Lubich 1). Diner asserts that after the
Holocaust, Germans and Jews are bound together not by mutual affection, interest or exchange,
but rather by the negative event of the Holocaust and its legacy:
Seit Auschwitz […] kann tatsächlich von einer ‘deutsch-jüdischen’ Symbiose gesprochen
werden – freilich von einer negativen: für beide, für Deutsche wie für Juden, ist das
Ergebnis der Massenvernichtung zum Ausgangspunkt ihres Selbstverständnisses
geworden; eine Art gegensätzlicher Gemeinsamkeit – ob sie es wollen oder nicht. (9)
Paradoxically, the very event that they have in common, and which forms Germans’ and Jews’
identities, also divides them; Germans are part of the “Kollektiv der Täter” and Jews “das der
Opfer,” but members of both groups live “im Schatten von Auschwitz” (12). Diner believes this
holds true not just for the first generation but for successive ones: “Solch negative Symbiose,
von den Nazis konstituiert, wird auf Generationen hinaus das Verhältnis beider zu sich selbst,
vor allem aber zueinander, prägen” (9).
Other scholars have echoed this sentiment, referring to the “specter of the Shoah”
haunting Germans and Jews (Morris and Remmler), and to the “void” (Remmler, “Encounters”)
or “rift” (Behrens) between the two groups caused by the Holocaust. Erin McGlothin’s image of
a divide caused by the earthquake of the Holocaust essentially expresses the same idea, and like
Diner, she makes it clear that this chasm is not only between members of the first generation, but
the following generations as well:
13
the existential rupture caused by the earthquake not only separates the second generation
temporally from the parents’ past but divides the children of perpetrators from the
children of survivors as well, despite their parallel anxieties about their respective
legacies. The descendants of those who perpetrated and those who suffered the Holocaust
stand opposite one another and peer not only below, into the vast destruction of an
incomprehensible event, but across that chasm at one another as well. […] The children
of perpetrators and those of survivors are both linked and separated by the Holocaust;
they are structurally analogous to one another, but not identical. (229-230)
It has been common practice for Germanists to use Diner’s term when analyzing the GermanJewish relations (of all kinds) in literary works. 13 McGlothlin herself, for example, when writing
about Robert Schindel’s novel Gebürtig applies the term:
Schindel’s metaphor of the invisible glass wall that marks the encounters between
Austrian Jews and non-Jews is fitting for the ways in which the legacies of survival and
perpetration relate to each other, for in its illustration of the parallel perspectives of the
two groups, the essential divide of experience that separates them and the possibility of
mutual recognition, it exemplifies Dan Diner’s notion of a ‘negative symbiosis’ in which
Germans and Jews are both bound together and at the same time separated by their
common history. (230)
While the term negative symbiosis is often used to describe relations between Germans and Jews
after the Holocaust, my study will also examine the extent to which it remains a productive
category. Within the context of my corpus of contemporary German-Jewish love stories, are the
German and Jewish partners able to see one another as individuals, or only as members of
oppositional collectives? Are they connected yet divided by the Holocaust legacy, or does the
past play a different role in their interactions? Do these texts and films ever imagine more
positive ways for the German-Jewish couples to be connected? During the two decades that have
passed since Diner wrote of the negative symbiosis, German literature and film portray shifts in
German-Jewish relations that may not be accurately described by Diner’s concept.
13
For example, Helene Schruff uses it as a category of analysis in her book Wechselwirkungen, as does Thomas
Schruff in Junge jüdische Literatur, and Petra Fachinger, in her article “Hybridity, Intermarriage and the (Negative)
German-Jewish Symbiosis.”
14
Other scholars have called the German-Jewish symbiosis (positive or negative) into
question. Leslie Morris and Jack Zipes have taken issue with it in the preface to their volume on
the changing German-Jewish symbiosis, Unlikely History, stating that it may no longer be
relevant as “certainly, the relations between Germans and Jews since 1945 keep undergoing
major shifts” (xii). Instead, they conceptualize the relationship between Jews and Germans in the
postwar period as having changed “from what Gershom Scholem called a one-sided monologue
to a dialogue about guilt and working through guilt and a reevaluation of German culture” (xv).
Gert Mattenklott, however, raises the difficulty for Germans and Jews in talking to one another:
since the legacy of the Holocaust shunts Germans and Jews into two oppositional groups, it is
difficult for them to relate as individuals rather than representatives of “German” and “Jew.”
When the two meet:
Erinnerungen kommen zur Sprache, Kindheit, die Eltern, Familiengeschichte.
Schlagartig ist die Szene bereitet, auf der wir—freiwillig oder nicht—als Stellvertreter
stehen: er für seine Tradition, ich für meine. Wo beide sich überlagern, erstreckt sich ein
Drama, dessen Epilog wir soeben sprechen. Es zeigt sich am zögernden oder forciert
beiläufigen Reden, daß wir beide das Bewußtsein haben, nicht mehr nur für uns selbst
und miteinander zu sprechen. (133)
Some of the texts analyzed here reflect Mattenklott’s idea of “Befangenheit” in German-Jewish
couples’ conversations – and even a difficulty speaking with one another at all. But in other love
stories, the couples’ dialogues create exchanges that explore the kinds of conversations Zipes and
Morris envision. As Karen Remmler notes: “a dialogue between Germans and Jews often fails
face to face. Intertextual correspondences can substitute for such failed face-to-face encounters”
(“Encounters” 4). Texts “create space” for such encounters (ibid), and these fictional GermanJewish romantic relationships are rife with such correspondences between two lovers, and these
dialogues are in part the basis for my analyses. The ability to have such dialogues depends on the
15
partners’ awareness of the difficulties that may arise between them because of the legacy of the
past. Bernd Auerochs acknowledges Diner and Scholem’s comments as reflecting
die Schwierigkeiten, die das Verhältnis zwischen Deutschen und Juden heute umgeben;
Diner läßt sich wie Scholem von der Einsicht leiten, daß, sollte es jemals eine produktive
Beziehung zwischen Deutschen und Juden geben können, sie Klarheit auf beiden Seiten
über diese Schwierigkeiten vorausssetzt. (616)
In the majority of the works under discussion, both partners are aware of the difficulties between
them because of the past, and in their relationships they grapple with the issues related to it.
Referring to the relationship between Germans and Jews as a symbiosis, whether
negative or positive, has sparked an enormous amount of debate. Diner’s negative symbiosis
accurately describes the relationship between a number of German and Jewish characters in the
texts of this study in which the past connects yet divides them into oppositional categories; yet
others (especially the films of the 1990s) attempt to recreate a positive symbiosis on the
individual level of the German-Jewish couple. Novelist Katja Behrens’ idea of a shifting rift may
be most helpful in describing the movement between these different ends of the spectrum in
relating. Morris and Zipes cite Katja Behrens as:
affirm[ing] both the fragility and the persistence of the symbiosis as she noted the
instability of what she terms the ‘rift’ between German and Jew: ‘This rift between us,
the progeny of both sides, is an unstable thing. It isn’t always the same size. Sometimes it
closes and becomes a hairline crack, a fracture you can forget, and then it suddenly
yawns wide and becomes unbridgeable.’ (“Preface” xiii)
At some point in every one of these German-Jewish love stories, the past comes up, and the
couple must grapple with its legacy in their relationship and their own identities. The concept of
a shifting rift is the most apt: they negotiate the ways in which the Holocaust rift widens or
closes in their relationships. Whether or not the couple stays together, if that is even the goal of
their relationship, the ways in which they grapple with the Holocaust’s legacy in their own
identities makes these love stories so productive. They create the space for dialogue, interaction,
16
discussion and renegotiation – but also for manipulation and re-entrenchment of familiar roles.
Playing off of Morris’ and Zipes’ assertion that the relations between Germans and Jews since
1945 keep undergoing major shifts, this project aims to circumscribe these shifts along this
fissure line, through the lens of the German-Jewish love story.
The History of Jews and non-Jewish Germans in Germany after the Holocaust
As the contemporary love stories take place in the context of a post-Holocaust Germany and
world, it is vital to discuss the experiences of Jews and non-Jewish Germans from 1945 to the
present.
Despite the Nazi attempt at the total genocide of European Jewry during the 1930s and
40s, a fraction of Jews survived the Holocaust and formed the basis for today’s Jewish
community in Germany. Before Nazism, approximately half a million Jews lived in Germany;
under the Nazis, a third of them were killed. About 250,000 managed to escape, and the majority
of them who survived the war in exile decided to remain abroad, although a small number
returned to Germany after the war. Approximately a total of 15,000 German Jews survived the
concentration camps or survived outside of them in hiding or mixed marriages. These German
Jews were joined by approximately 200,000 “displaced persons” (DPs), eastern European Jewish
Holocaust survivors. (Bodemann, “Resurgence” 46). They came to Allied-occupied western
Germany after finding no place for themselves in Eastern Europe or after having been liberated
from camps in Germany. With the founding of Israel in 1948, most DPs left Germany; after
1949, only 10,000 to 15,000 remained (Brumlik 2-5). Thus, the first generation of Jews to settle
in Germany after the war were persons 1) who had survived either by living through the camps,
17
or in hiding or exile, and who still felt that Germany was their home despite the recent Nazi past,
or 2) without means to emigrate to Israel, the US or elsewhere (Gay 8). Although German Jews
and eastern European Jews were two very different groups, these members of the first generation
united to form the basis of a new Jewish community in Germany.
The first generation focused on surviving the post-war years, rebuilding a life, and to
some extent, maintaining silence about the war years in an attempt to forget and move on. Some
members of the first generation returned to Germany in order to deny Nazi victory of “judenfrei”
Germany, others made their decision to reside in Germany after the war out of a sense of Heimat,
and feeling deep ties to German language and culture, out of necessity, and/or out of sheer
exhaustion (Borneman 140-143). However, it was a decision many felt or hoped could be
reversed at any time, if necessary. Many Jews living in Germany “betrachteten sich als nur noch
vorübergehend anwesend und entwickelten das Syndrom des ‘auf gepackten Koffern Sitzens,’”
ready to leave at any time if anti-Semitic persecution were to begin again (Richarz 15).
Their children, the second generation, came of age by the 1980s, amid debates about how
and why to live in “the land of the murderers” and whether to ‘unpack the suitcases.’ In 1980,
second generation author Lea Fleischmann’s autobiographical text, Dies ist nicht mein Land:
Eine Jüdin verlässt Deutschland, chronicled her reasons for leaving Germany during this time. 14
Fleishmann’s work was the beginning of a literature engagement by second and third generations
of Jews about their identity in and in relation to Germany and Germans. Eva Hoffmann also
comments that Jews of second generation have to decide how they feel toward Germany and
Germans: “Germany, for many Jews of my generation, has significance perforce, whether we
14
Thomas Nolden emphasizes the importance of Fleischmann’s autobiography, “gab der nichtjüdischen
Gesellschaft der Bundesrepublik die Gelegenheit, sich aus dem prononciert aus der Position der ‘jüdischen
Nachkriegs-generation’ entworfenen Blickwinkel wahrzunehmen. Die Autorin hatte dabei die Frage, was jüdische
Identität im Deutschland der Nachkriegszeit bedeuten könne, nur negativ beantworten können: um als Jüdin leben
zu können, sah die Autorin sich gezwungen, Deutschland zu verlassen” (47).
18
will or not. There is a task to be accomplished in relation to it, of self-examination at least: […]
of deciding what our feelings about this part of the world are, and what we might want them
ideally […] to be” (110). Fleischmann is the exception rather than the rule, for the majority of
(first and) second generation Jews in Germany have stayed, and on some level, grappled with
what it means to live with the perpetrators and their descendants. 15
Many first generation Jewish survivors did not want to discuss their experiences during
the Holocaust or in exile, and focused on rebuilding their lives after the war. This was also the
case for non-Jewish Germans, who during the first decades after the war focused on rebuilding
the country, their lives, and the economy, not on confronting the crimes of the Nazi regime. As
Stuart Taberner relates about this time:
[t]heir primary concerns were food, […] shelter, and the whereabouts of their loved ones.
The women of Germany (there were few men around) set about rebuilding the cities (the
so-called Trümmerfrauen), and people concentrated on survival, avoiding trouble, and
access to the black market. (“Introduction” 15)
After the country was divided by the Wall, West Germans concentrated on putting the past
behind them and looking to the future, while East Germans began building a communist state
that subscribed to the idea that it was founded by those who had resisted Nazism as communists.
For this reason East Germans viewed themselves as not having to deal with the Nazi legacy, as
they had no ties to it (Peck “East Germany” 448). Officially, in the West, the national Nazi past
was dealt with under the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung – a term that now as then was
controversial:
15
For more on the history of Jews in Germany after the war, as well as questions of Jewish identity after the
Holocaust, see among others: Michael Brenner’s Nach dem Holocaust—Juden in Deutschland 1945-50; Dirk
Blasius and Dan Diner, Zerbrochene Geschichte—Leben und Selbstverständnis der Juden in Deutschland; Micha
Brumlik, et al., Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland seit 1945; Ignatz Bubis, Juden in Deutschland; Ruth Gay, Safe
Among the Germans: Liberated Jews after World War II; Michael Meyer and Michael Brenner, German-Jewish
History in Modern Times; Richard Chaim Schneider, Wir sind da! Die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von
1945 bis heute; Julius H. Schoeps, Leben im Land der Täter—Juden in Nachkriegsdeutschland.
19
The idea of ‘overcoming’ the past was present in the semi-official terminology of the
Adenauer era, specifically in the word ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’. This phrase too was
viewed with suspicion by many writers and intellectuals, who if anything preferred the
term ‘unbewältigte Vergangenheit’. (Parkes 87)
Theodor Adorno suggested the term Vergangenheitsbearbeitung as more open-ended, but as
Helmut Schmitz points out, it won out as the designation that
Germans have come to choose for any discourse on National Socialism. Not only does it
envisage a finality to the process addressed by it; its provenance from the field of
individual psychology suggests a successful integration of that which is to become to
terms with into a larger (personal) narrative. The same goes for the process of mourning
frequently alluded to in reference to the problems of addressing the past, especially with
reference to literary works. Despite the reservations about closure evoked by Schlant and
others, closure is exactly what is supposed to be achieved by mourning. (3)
Andrei Markovits and Beth Novek, in their comprehensive article on the ways in which West
Germany dealt (or did not deal) with the Holocaust, state that “a mature ‘Bewältigung der
Vergangenheit’ […] has never occurred in West Germany, because the initial response to the
Holocaust in 1945 was to repress and forget it rather than confront it in an honest and collective
manner” (401). Thus the GDR and BRD had very different ways of dealing with the Nazi era:
the former built its post-war identity upon communist resistance to fascism, while the latter
focused on the Vergangenheitsbewältigung and official policies and commemorations of
mourning and remembrance.
Related to the generational conflicts of the turbulent 1960s and 70s, second generation
non-Jewish West Germans begin to engage with their parents’ actions during the Nazi era.
Helmut Schmitz comments that
[i]t is by now an accepted fact that confrontation of the legacy of National Socialism
shifted onto the second post-war generation, due to parental silence on these matters. This
not only resulted in a belated addressing of the questions of guilt and responsibility, but
also burdened the present of the second generation with an impossible task of ‘coming to
terms’ with this heritage. (6)
20
During this era, second generation non-Jewish German authors’ Väterliteratur made the Nazi
legacy a literary topic. These authors “setzen sich fragend, kritisch, anklagend mit den Vätern
auseinander, […] mit deren Rolle in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, als Täter oder Mitläufer”
(Steinecke 138). 16 The American-made docudrama Holocaust that aired in early 1979 also
“pricked the conscience of many Germans and catalyzed a public debate on an unprecedented
scale” about the Nazi era and its crimes (Markovits, Novek 429).
Contemporary Literature in Context: the Debates of the 1980s and 1990s
Thus began an intensified period of debates about Jews in Germany and the normalization of
German national and cultural identity. As Sander Gilman and Jack Zipes note, second generation
Jews’ coming of age coincided with a German desire to normalize the past:
the first generation of Jews in Germany [to be born after the war] came of age and
Germans sought to ‘normalize’ their own history in the 1980s—that is, as they attempted
to make it seem that the Nazi past and the Shoah were not unique in the course of history.
Such ‘normalization’ made Jews feel more paranoid and provocative in their criticism
and writings about all things German. Some German Jews maintained that this trend
toward normalization, which led Jürgen Habermas to start the Historian’s Debate in 1986,
triggered a ‘new’ awareness among Jews, especially after 1984. (xxv-xxvi)
Normalization conjures the fear (especially for Jews, as Gilman and Zipes note) that the
Holocaust will be relativized into obscurity and forgotten, but also spurs Jews in Germany on to
a new sense of themselves. Dominick Lacapra summarizes the Historian’s Debate
(Historikerstreit), seeing
the crux of the debate on a popular level was the extent to which certain interpretive
procedures, notably the comparison of Nazi crimes with other modern genocidal
16
Steinecke also draws a parallel here to second generation Jews in Germany in the 1970s and 80s who experienced
a related conflict: they questioned their parents’ choice to stay or come back to Germany after the Shoah and live in
the “land of the murderers” (138).
21
phenomenon (particularly Stalin’s Gulag), tended to relativize, normalize, or even ‘airbrush’ Auschwitz in order to make it fade into larger historical contexts and out of
conscious focus, thereby helping to foreground acceptable continuities in German history
as a basis for an affirmative, pro-Western identity. (812)
The Historikerstreit is but one of a number of events that sparked Jewish awareness, and
increased visible Jewish participation in German society in the 1980s. Chancellor Kohl’s visit to
the Bitburg cemetery where he honored fallen German soldiers, among them members of the SS
and the Wehrmacht, as “German victims” of World War II, and Fassbinder’s anti-Semitic play
“Die Stadt, der Müll und der Tod” roused Jews in Germany to (re)examine the ways in which
Germany has dealt with their past, and what that meant for them living in contemporary
Germany. Micha Brumlik states that Jews in Germany developed a “sense of self-consciousness”
or “self-image” after 1985 because of such galvanizing events during this era. In addition:
the ‘historians’ debate’ and the debates regarding the possible establishment of a
memorial for all the dead of the Second World War—hence for Wehrmacht soldiers as
well as concentration camp victims—indicate once again that a forced reconciliation and
compulsive normalization have been intended by a West German government and circles
close to it since the mid-1980s. These attempts have resulted in a new self-consciousness
among Jews in the Federal Republic. These Jews have formed themselves into a selfconscious minority since the protests against Bitburg and the campaigns against the
public performance of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play “Die Stadt, der Müll und der
Tod” (Brumlik 1988a) as well as the lost battle over the remains of the former Frankfurt
ghetto (Best 1988). (Brumlik 11-12)
Not only did these Jewish protests work against such a normalizing of the past, they also caused
Germans to take notice of the Jewish presence in Germany:
Die Anwesenheit von Juden in Deutschland wurde erst von vielen wahrgenommen, als
diese sich als Gruppe starker artikulierten, was vor allem durch publizistische
Selbstdarstellungen geschah, aber auch durch Ereignisse wie den Protest gegen die in
Frankfurt 1985 geplante Aufführung des Fassbinder Stückes. (Richarz 15)
During the 1980s and into the 1990s these debates made Jewish and non-Jewish Germans more
aware of themselves and each other, as they began to publicly grapple with their shared, yet
divisive, history and identities.
22
With the unification of East and West Germany in 1989, new debates about the past
emerged. Helmut Schmitz believes that the wave of controversies since the 1990s suggests that
the debate over the place of National Socialism “within the cultural, historical and political selfdescription of Germany” is “far from over” (4). He views the disputes over the Berlin and
Vienna Holocaust memorials (the Mahnmal Debatte), Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s
Willing Executioners, Martin Walser’s speech on receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book
Trade and the ensuing Walser-Bubis-Debatte, as well as the traveling exhibition Verbrechen der
Wehrmacht as “reveal[ing] the 1990s as a site of conflicting memories rather than signifying a
successful integration into the past” (ibid). Similarly, Konrad Jarausch argues, the fall of the wall
and “the return of national unity unleashed another round of reconfiguring identities” and that the
“flashpoints of public debate” centered on the past, the Holocaust, and psychological and legal
definitions of natives and foreigners (10).
But even as these debates roused Jewish and non-Jewish Germans and stirred up
conflicting views and memories, some scholars see a subtle shift toward a more ‘normalized’
Germany and German identity after unification. Lacapra remarks on the link scholars have made
between the early debates about the Historikerstreit and unification:
It has been argued that the ultimate goal of the Historikerstreit […] and the debate over
the ‘failure of the intellectuals’ [about how to deal with reunification] is similar: One
wants to get away from a past that is considered either a burden or an embarrassment in
order to construct an alternative agenda for the future. While the attempt to overcome the
German past in the name of ‘normalization’ was not successful in the historian’s debate,
it may very well end up successful in its more removed and diluted form in the current
culture debate. (819)
The past has started to shift into the background, as there is a new focus on the future of a united
Germany and the feeling that a fresh start as a nation is possible. Stuart Parkes likewise
underscores German unity in 1990 as having
23
accelerated the process that began with the Historikerstreit: the reassessment of this
history in the light of the changed contemporary political situation. The idea of a German
Sonderweg culminating in National Socialism is increasingly rejected. As the Federal
Republic more and more becomes a ‘normal’ democratic state in fixed boundaries at the
heart of Europe, Germany’s history is now seen in a more European context. (88)
Thus both Parkes and Lacapra argue that unification has shifted Germany’s history into a
comparative and normalized arena.
The German-Jewish love stories of this project, written or filmed on the cusp of
unification as well as during the aforementioned public debates, must be read within these
contexts. Sander Gilman and Jack Zipes comment that for Jewish German authors of 1990s “the
major issue […] since 1990 has been defining—to Germans and to Jews themselves—what
Jewishness means in a post-Shoah context, and more specifically, in a changing Germany”
(“Introduction” xxx). Friederike Eigler, author of Gedächtnis und Geschichte in
Generationenromanen seit der Wende, positions the works of her study (generational novels of
the 1990s by non-Jewish Germans) in the context of an “anhaltenden Gedächtnisboom”:
Zum größeren Kontext der literarischen Analyse gehört die gesellschaftliche und
politische Situation im wiedervereinigten Deutschland. Die sich neu formierenden
Vorstellungen von ‘Germanness’ und nationaler Identität stehen im direkten
Zusammenhang mit Vorgängen, die der Historiker Konrad Jarausch als eine ‘dreifache
Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ bezeichnet hat. (10)
The partners in German-Jewish love stories written on the cusp of and after unification reflect on
“Germanness” and “Jewishness”: both Jewish and non-Jewish German authors are concerned
with “reconfiguring identities” as well as the role of the past in contemporary Germany. Giving
an overview of the literary landscape in the 1990s, Helmut Schmitz states that it is “marked not
least by a resurgence of the topic of National Socialism,” and that there is “a growing body of
writing, fictional, (auto)biographical and historical, that continues to problematize and address
the relations between the present and the past” (“Introduction” 4). The German-Jewish love
24
stories of this project can be considered a sub-genre within this growing body of texts and films,
contributing to the larger cultural discussions about post-Holocaust identities and normalization.
Legacy, Literature, and Generations
Before the 1980s, “die Beschäftigung mit der Shoah [and its legacy] spielte keine wesentliche
Rolle” in fiction by Jewish German authors, Harmut Steinecke writes in his article “Schreiben
von der Shoah” (135). Jewish writing about the Shoah by first generation Jews was primarily
comprised of eyewitness accounts (Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, among others) and
autobiography/survivor memoirs (Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben, for example); Steinecke remarks
that “Authentizität, […] das Werk der Älteren prägte” (ibid). With the emergence of the second
generation, Hartmut Steinecke notes a change in writing on the topic of the Shoah: “[i]n der
Geschichte des Schreibens über die Shoah beginnt ein neues Kapitel, als jüngere [jüdische]
Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller, die Shoah und Krieg nicht mehr selbst erlebt haben, sich
literarisch dieser Thematik zuwenden” (135). Eva Hoffmann comments on the differences
between works by the two generations:
As with the vast corpus of works produced by survivors, much of the secondgeneration’s writing is personal and autobiographical, but the contrasts between the two
bodies of literature are instructive. […] It is the realities of that experience that are the
brunt of survivors’ mostly realistic narratives. The second-generation texts are often
about memory. They foreground precisely the uncertainties of recollection, and the
difficulties of knowing the past. In the literature by children of survivors, intimate history
is not so much given as searched for, the processes of […] reconstructing broken stories
or constructing one’s identity, are often the driving concerns and the predominant themes.
(188)
While there were also some fictional works such as Jurek Becker’s Jakob der Lügner (1969)
about one man’s experience of life in the camps, there was little fiction about the Holocaust or
25
the Nazi era by non-Jewish German authors. Peter Weiss’ play Die Ermittlung (1965) dealt with
the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial of 1963-65 (and was based on actual transcripts), but overall the
Holocaust and Nazi legacy was not often thematized in German-language literature.
But that legacy became a topic in the literature of the late 1980s and 1990s by both Jewish
and non-Jewish German authors. In an article entitled “Literary Portrayals of National Socialism
in Post-Unification German Literature,” Bill Niven expresses modest surprise about the turn
toward this topic:
One might have expected the theme of National Socialism—potentially about as political a
theme as one could get—to be dropped from the literary agenda, especially now Germany
was united and the Nazi past in a certain sense ‘over.’ But the opposite is the case. […]
Indeed, some of the best works of German literature produced since 1990 have National
Socialism as their theme. The general legacy of Nazism […] has stubbornly refused to leave
the stage. I would even venture to suggest that there has been more literary interest in
National Socialism since unification than there was in the years immediately before. (14)
Specifically, writers and filmmakers of the second generation (and beyond) are turning to the
topic of the Nazi era and the Holocaust and their legacies:
Most of these writers discussed never experienced National Socialism. Inevitably, they
focus as much on the post-1945 generations and their grappling with the legacy of
National Socialism, as on National Socialism itself. This legacy, for second and third
generations, is often one of identity problems given the enormity of the crimes of
Nazism. The passage of time, the increasing readiness of Germany […] to face the past,
and the falling of political boundaries have created a climate in which these problems can
be confronted and often, overcome. (Niven, “Literary Portrayals” 28)
Niven’s reasons for the interest in the topic are convincing, yet it also seems that children and
grandchildren of the perpetrator and survivor generations may be particularly suited to examine
the past and its legacy. Marianne Hirsch, coming from the perspective of trauma studies and her
theories on post-memory, argues that “[p]erhaps it is only in subsequent generations that trauma
can be witnessed and worked through, by those who were not there to live it but who received its
effects, belatedly, through the narratives, actions and symptoms of the previous generation”
26
(240). Erin McGlothlin, in her study entitled Second Generation Holocaust Writing: Legacies of
Survival and Perpetration, also supports such a view:
although the rubble of the earthquake has since been cleared and the destroyed structures
largely rebuilt, the destruction continues to make itself known in powerful aftershocks
that reverberate even today, reminding us that the effects of an event of the sheer
magnitude of the Holocaust do not remain exclusively within the confines of the
generation that experienced it. Rather, as an exponentially growing body of imaginative
literature indicates, the aftermath of the Holocaust continues to resound powerfully in the
post-Holocaust world, marking the lives not only of those who experienced it personally,
but also of those to whom the legacy of the Shoah is bequeathed. (299)
The second generation is in a unique position to reflect upon the aftershocks, and writers and
filmmakers have taken up the task, as McGlothlin points out: “[s]econd generation literature
becomes the arena in which the creative imagining, rupture and repair of the Holocaust takes
place, the garment that the writer simultaneously rends and mends” (Second Generation 12).
Second generation Jewish and non-Jewish authors necessarily approach these topics from
different backgrounds: from the perspective of children of victims/survivors of the Holocaust,
and that of the children of perpetrators. McGlothin summarizes the difference between these two
perspectives in her aforementioned book: “For the children of survivors, the experience is one of
unintegrated trauma and rupture in familial continuity; for the children of perpetrators it is the
family’s unintegratable history of violation and brutality” (10). In the texts under discussion
here, these different perspectives are clear, and often the source of conflict in the relationship.
However, there is also overlap in the themes that second generation writers choose, as I will
demonstrate, and I group the works of this project by those themes, rather than by the authors’
identity. In her study of second generation Holocaust writing, McGlothlin divides her authors
into “Jews” 17 and “Germans” to underscore her argument that second generation Jewish and
17
Although within the category of “Jew” she allows for more diversity of the term, by including American Jewish
authors.
27
German authors deal with the Holocaust legacy in contrasting ways. While I agree that there are
many distinctions that must be made in order to honor each group’s history and the effects of that
history’s legacy, this project does not exclusively divide authors and filmmakers in this way. One
second generation Jewish writer, Eva Hoffmann, describes in her book After Such Knowledge:
Memory, History and the Legacy of the Holocaust not the separation but the connection she feels
as a Jew to Germans: “there was a historical horror between us; but we were distinctly not
enemies. Indeed, we were looking at the horror from a similar point of view—if from opposite
ends of the telescope” (109). Similarly, German-Jewish love stories bring together lovers, not
active enemies, from these ‘opposite ends of the telescope’ to look at the ‘horror between them’;
this is the fresh perspective that these works provide. Both Jewish and non-Jewish German
authors and filmmakers since the 1980s have turned to the genre of the German-Jewish love
story; since there are significant overlaps in the themes and approaches of their creative work,
dividing them into two categories on the basis of their identities would only reproduce the
expected schism, and reinforce monolithic, binary categories of “German” and “Jew.” Overall,
this project considers the ways in which this body of literature and film by second generation
(and later) authors shift away from such the distinct and oppositional categories of “German” and
“Jew.”
In their aforementioned books, Erin McGlothlin and Friederike Eigler both have recently
investigated second generation authors’ treatment of familial legacies regarding the Holocaust
and Nazi past. The former focuses on the second generation’s “attempt to imagine its parents’
past” and how this “results in narrative crisis in which narrative voice fractures, protagonists
multiply, temporality is suspended, and generic conventions are transgressed or radically
reshaped” (Second Generation 12); the latter investigates “auf welche Weise
28
Generationenromane die Erbschaften von Nationalsozialismus […] literarisch gestalten und
kommentieren” (10). Like McGlothlin and Eigler, I am interested in the ways in which the
second generation has responded to their legacies in literature (and film), but in particular
through their use of the German-Jewish love story. Some works imagine the (grand-)parents’
pasts, while some do not. The characters’ (grand)parental pasts are often topic in these texts,
insofar that the first generations’ roles of victim, perpetrator or exception to Nazism then
influence the ways in which the couple relates to one another as a member of a certain group.
Thus the partners in German-Jewish love stories often do not focus on imagining their parents’
past, but rather dealing with one another in the present of the narrative and grappling with the
effects the (familial and national) past has on their relationship. When the works do focus on the
details of the familial pasts, it appears to be a strategy for finding a way around the stumbling
block the past is to their relationship: films and texts by both Jewish and non-Jews imagine
German-Jewish cooperation and German exceptions to Nazism in the first generation. Like
Eigler, I examine the “Erinnerungspraktiken und Vergangenheitsentwürfe,” not “im Genre des
Generationsroman” (9), but in German-Jewish love stories that at times bridge the first, second
and third generations and imagine alternate, positive stories in contrast to the horrors of the
Holocaust.
Project Overview
The German-Jewish love stories of this project are grouped thematically into five chapters, and
in a basically chronological fashion. Chapter One, “Sleeping with (the descendants of) the
Enemy: Connected yet Divided by the Holocaust Legacy,” deals with the earliest set of texts.
29
Rafael Seligmann’s Rubinsteins Versteigerung (1989), Barbara Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus
nichts (1991), Maxim Biller’s short story “Aus Dresden ein Brief” (1994) from his collection
Land der Väter und Verräter, and Anna Mitgutsch’s novel Abschied von Jerusalem (1995) share
a common theme of Jewish protagonists who struggle with their identities in the “land of the
murderers” and being involved with descendants of perpetrators during the 1980s. These texts’
love stories provide the arena in which second generation Jews work out their identities and
relationship to Germany and Germans, mirroring Jews’ actual coming of age and political
struggles going on in Germany at the time.
While they share this theme, there are also clear gender differences in the ways in which
the male and female protagonist deal with their romantic involvements and identities. The
earliest text, Rubinsteins Versteigerung, breaks the taboo on a romantic relationship between
children of survivors and perpetrators, as the novel portrays a teenage romance between the
eponymous Jewish character and his gentile German girlfriend Suse. The issue of the past
quickly surfaces here, when Suse reveals that her father was in the SS. In Maxim Biller’s short
story “Aus Dresden ein Brief” the Jewish protagonist also grapples with the fact that his nonJewish German lover’s father was a perpetrator. For both Jewish male protagonists, this
revelation of a perpetrator father makes it impossible for them to continue to be involved with
their German partners. However, their relationship with a non-Jew functions as a way to work
out their identities as Jews in the “land of the murderers” – although they ultimately leave their
non-Jewish partners for Jewish ones, choosing to ally themselves with Jewish rather than any
form of German identity. While the male Jewish protagonists are able to speak with their female
non-Jewish German partners about the past, the same is not true for the female protagonists. In
Eine Liebe aus nichts and Abschied von Jerusalem, both female protagonists want to be able to
30
talk about the past with their German partners, but they refuse. Their silence weighs on the
protagonists, and they try out relationships to Jewish men, but are also unsatisfied with that
connection. In the end, they choose to be alone and in between countries, choosing a more fluid
and undefined identity than the male protagonists of Biller’s and Seligmann’s texts.
Like their male Jewish counterparts, these female protagonists are struggling with their
identities as Jews in Germany, and they define themselves against and through their relationship
to their German partners. Love triangles and the possibility of a child play an important role for
the majority of these protagonists, as a way to try out allying themselves with certain national
and cultural identities and futures. This first group of literary love stories tests the possibilities
and limits of connections between the descendants of perpetrators and victims, and shows them
choosing identities and allegiances. Diner’s negative symbiosis aptly describes these
relationships in which the couples are connected yet divided by the past; all conclude that a
positive German-Jewish relationship is not feasible.
While the texts of Chapter One broke the taboo on German-Jewish love, the love stories
of Chapter Two explore the prohibition on disengaging contemporary German identity from Nazi
perpetration. In Irene Dische’s short story “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” (1989) a German
woman poses as Jewish in an attempt to distance herself from the Nazi past, but when her Jewish
partner finds out, he punishes her and reinforces the division between “Germans” and “Jews”
also found in Chapter One. Dische’s text serves as a bridge between the texts of the last chapter
and the two of this one, Bernhard Schlink’s short story “Die Beschneidung” (2000) and Anja
Tuckermann’s novel Die Haut retten (2000), for like the German character in Dische’s short
story, these German characters also attempt to disassociate themselves from Nazism and/or a
negative German identity in a range of ways. The non-Jewish German protagonists of Schlink’s
31
and Tuckermann’s texts desire to break down the strict divisions between themselves and their
Jewish lovers that they see as the legacy of the past. They struggle with their German identities
being defined by the Nazi past and German perpetration.
These texts speak to a German insistence that the past should not be able to cast its
shadow on the present, which coincides with the debates about normalization going on at the
time of the narratives (and the works’ publication dates). Yet their dialogues create difficulties
rather than understanding, and the protagonists choose different ways of distancing themselves
from the perpetrator legacy in the hopes that this will make their relationship to their Jewish
partner more feasible. The German characters desire to move past the Holocaust legacy and
relate as individuals, rather than Germans associated with perpetration, but their Jewish partners
are unable or unwilling to see them in this way. While the endings of both texts are ambiguous,
both strongly suggest that these relationships also end. Petra Fachinger, in her article “Hybridity,
Intermarriage and the (Negative) German-Jewish Symbiosis,” asserts that in fictional texts, “the
success or failure of marriages and romantic relationships between Austrian/German Jews and
their non-Jewish counterparts mirrors belief in or doubt about the possibility of a constructive
dialogue between Jews and non-Jews” (2). Both the texts of Chapter One and Two certainly
reflect doubt about such productive dialogue and the ability for Jews and non-Jewish Germans to
connect across the rift caused by the Holocaust.
The films of Chapter Three, “Gendered Normalization: The “good” German Woman in
Films of the 1990s and Beyond,” however, seek to bridge the divide between Jewish and nonJewish Germans. Joseph Vilsmaier’s Comedian Harmonists (1997), Max Färberbock’s Aimée
und Jaguar (1999), Didi Danquart’s Viehjude Levi (1999) and Margarethe von Trotta’s
Rosenstrasse (2003) go back in time to the Nazi era in an attempt to circumvent the negative
32
symbiosis before it begins, depicting “good” German exceptions to first generation perpetration.
Through their German-Jewish love stories, all four films portray individual German exceptions
to Nazism and anti-Semitism through sympathetic female German partners romantically
involved with Jews. The women are set apart as the exception to their anti-Semitic surroundings
as they (attempt to) help their Jewish partners survive Nazi persecution. As Bill Niven argues
about the film Aimée und Jaguar, such love relationships portray “symbioses” that “are inspiring
for a German audience and readership because they suggest an alternative reality, at least at an
interpersonal level, to that of Auschwitz, and create a bridge of continuity for the German-Jewish
relationship across atrocities” (25). Like other so-called “heritage films” made during this time,
they aim to construct “a collective memory of the German past that is no longer encumbered by
guilt and that allows Germans to take a more positive approach to their national identity”
(Berghahn “Screen Memories” 295). In this way, these 1990s films reflect the desire to
normalize Germany’s identity that intensified after 1989 and unification.
The texts of Chapter Four, “Positive Pasts and Unproblematic Presents: The New
Normality in German-Jewish Love Stories,” continue the theme of “good” Germans. Texts from
the latter part of the 1990s—Lothar Schöne’s Das jüdische Begräbnis (1996), Rafael
Seligmann’s novel Schalom meine Liebe (1998) and Peter Schneider’s novel Eduards Heimkehr
(1999)— also disassociate German lovers from perpetration. Indicating yet another step toward
unburdening Germans from the guilt of the past, these texts break with the “gendered normality”
of Chapter Three by portraying sympathetic male non-Jewish partners. In double German-Jewish
love stories, these texts imagine positive family models of German-Jewish love in earlier
generations that pave the way for second and third generation German-Jewish love stories in
which the German partner’s familial connection to perpetration is significantly downplayed.
33
Both of these factors shift the Holocaust’s significance for the German-Jewish relationship:
while it is certainly still a factor in the couples’ relationships, it no longer has the power to cause
a rift that divides them. Across the gender, generations, and the Holocaust divide, these texts’
“happy” relationships break the taboo on positive connections between Jewish and non-Jewish
Germans in Germany after Auschwitz.
While the German-Jewish love stories of Chapter Four create the impression that the
Holocaust no longer plays such a divisive role between Jews and non-Jews in contemporary
Germany, their positive portrayals are joined by a number of satirical texts from throughout that
decade that indicate there is still unfinished business between the two groups. The problematic
interactions in Maxim Biller’s short stories “Harlem Holocaust” (1990) and “Finkelsteins
Finger” (1994) and Joachim Lottmann’s novel Deutsche Einheit: ein historischer Roman aus
dem Jahr 1995 (1999) revolve around sexual encounters in which both Jewish and non-Jewish
German characters manipulate the Holocaust legacy. In Chapter Five, it is in particular sexual
trysts between gentile German women and Jewish men that serve as the sites of their
manipulation of one another and staged “reconciliations” of the post-Holocaust German-Jewish
relationship.
Although intimate relations are certainly a component in many of the other GermanJewish love stories, these texts’ overt sexual encounters are a breach of the usual depiction of
German-Jewish relations; their satirical style breaks another taboo. German and Jewish
characters’ self-serving behaviors alike are parodied, and this evenly balanced treatment shifts
the focus away from “good” or “guilty” characters on either side, and toward criticism of
unproductive roles the Holocaust legacy has spawned. In Biller’s and Lottmann’s satirical texts,
there is a greater flexibility in depicting Jewish and non-Jewish German interactions, which
34
indicates a broadening of the discussion and a new approach, both stylistically and content-wise,
to German-Jewish relations. Although at first glance these unsympathetic characters and negative
interactions would seem to indicate otherwise, they in fact are an indication of a kind of
normalization in the larger German-Jewish relationship.
35
Chapter One: Sleeping with (the descendants of) the Enemy:
Connected Yet Divided by the Holocaust Legacy
Introduction
Commenting on relations between Germans and Jews after the Holocaust, second generation
Jewish German author Barbara Honigmann writes that “die Deutschen und die Juden sind in
Auschwitz ein Paar geworden, das auch der Tod nicht mehr trennt” (Damals 59). After the
Holocaust, “German” equaled perpetrator and “Jew,” victim, and these roles depend on each
other and the context of Auschwitz for meaning. Their roles bound them together, and created a
couple—although one that shared a very negative kind of bond. Honigmann’s word choice
suggests the metaphor of an intimate connection between Germans and Jews after Auschwitz.
She plays with the connotation of the word “Paar”: while the cognate, “pair” is neutral, the
translation “couple” alludes to members of these two groups as partners in a romantic
relationship. Futhermore, by stating that this couple cannot even be parted by death not only
echoes marriage vows’ phrasing “until death do us part,” it also shows the extent to which
Honigmann imagines this negative bond as unbreakable. This also suggests that the relationship
between Germans and Jews established in Auschwitz continues into the next generation, even
after the death of the first generation.
Similar to Barbara Honigmann’s metaphor of a “Paar,” Dan Diner conceptualizes postHolocaust relations between Germans and Jews as a symbiosis. Their relationship is symbiotic
because after the Holocaust, both Germans and Jews derive their identity from the shared
36
historical horror of Auschwitz, as Diner states: “für beide, für Deutsche wie für Juden, ist das
Ergebnis der Massenvernichtung zum Ausgangspunkt ihres Selbstverständnisses geworden” (9).
Diner recognizes that such a connection is by definition negative, for what Jews and Germans
share also divides them into oppositional groups; he refers to this paradox as “eine Art
gegensätzlicher Gemeinsamkeit – ob sie es wollen oder nicht” (9). He thus views the relations
between Germans and Jews after Auschwitz as a ‘negative symbiosis’ in which they are
connected yet divided by the Holocaust legacy.
While German-Jewish love stories existed pre-1933, this topic had been absent from
German language literature since the Holocaust. However, in 1989 Rafael Seligmann’s novel
Rubinsteins Versteigerung signals its return, and the following decades see a proliferation of the
topic in literature and film. In general, analyzing these fictional relationships sheds light on the
effect of the Holocaust on contemporary German-Jewish relationships, and the possibility of
German-Jewish connection and future. In this chapter, specifically, such relationships illuminate
second generation Jews’ struggle to live in the “land of the murderers” and relate to the children
of perpetrators that are their peers.
Barbara Honigmann takes her own metaphor literally in her short novel, Eine Liebe aus
nichts (1991), creating a fictional German-Jewish love story in which a second generation Jewish
protagonist struggles with the negative, Holocaust-related bond between her and her non-Jewish
German lover. The other works of this chapter also focus on Germans and Jews as a part of a
(romantic) couple after Auschwitz. In addition to Honigmann, authors such as Rafael Seligmann,
Maxim Biller and Anna Mitgutsch bring together Jewish and non-Jewish Germans in a number
of different amorous constellations; their second generation Jewish protagonists explore—
through their intimate relationships with a non-Jewish German—both their general negative
37
bond to Germans as a group via the Holocaust, as well as the possibility of a (more positive)
connection to an individual German after Auschwitz.
Although these second generation characters are not victims or perpetrators themselves,
they are part of what Diner termed the “Kollektiv der Täter und Opfer” by virtue of their
parentage (Diner 12); in these individual romantic relationships they confront this legacy and
their group membership. As these texts make clear, the past reaches into the present, and the
second generation, like the first, lives “im Schatten von Auschwitz” (ibid). In my analysis of
these texts I will trace how the Holocaust legacy comes between them, placing them on opposite
sides of the divide, and eventually making it impossible for them to be together. Yet at the same
time, the Holocaust past and the roles it brings with it are, paradoxically, the main point of
connection between them.
Helene Schruff, in her book Wechselwirkungen: Deutsch-Jüdische Identität in
erzählender Prosa der ‘Zweiten Generation’, investigates to what extent Diner’s concept is
applicable to second generation fictional characters. In her analysis of works by some of the
above authors, she considers “inwieweit die ‘Ergebnisse der Massenvernichtung’ auch für die
nachgeborene Generation noch bewusstseinsstiftend sind” (168). She finds that Diner’s negative
symbiosis still applies in the second generation because for the majority of the characters, the
Holocaust is central to their sense of identity. She also concludes, in her chapter on romantic
relationships between Germans and Jews titled “Die Goyim,” that the negative symbiosis is
detrimental to such relationships: “Wenn es […] zur gemeinsamen Bezugnahme auf Auschwitz
kommt, so wirkt sie sich immer destruktiv auf die Beziehungen zwischen den jüdischen und
nichtjüdischen Protagonisten auf” (200). Schruff’s observations are the foundation for this
chapter, as I build here on her assertion about the infeasiblity of German-Jewish love because of
38
the Holocaust legacy. In the four texts here—the previously mentioned novel by Seligmann,
Rubinsteins Versteigerung (1989), and Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus nichts (1991), as well as
Biller’s short story “Aus Dresden ein Brief” (1994) from his collection Land der Väter und
Verräter, and Mitgutsch’s novel Abschied von Jerusalem (1995)—the German-Jewish romantic
relationships crack under the weight of the Holocaust past. The failure or success of such
relationships takes on a symbolic meaning against the backdrop of the past, for these
relationships represent Jews’ and non-Jewish Germans’ ability to connect with one another after
Auschwitz (Schruff 185). When the relationships break up because of the past, it indicates that
this past still outweighs any attempts to relate as individuals rather than members of the
oppositional groups. My analyses in this chapter trace these fictional German-Jewish couples’
attempts to relate to one another across the Holocaust chasm which both separates them even as
they also is the shared starting point for their (oppositional) identities.
This chapter deepens the discussion on German-Jewish romantic relations to include the
themes of silence/dialogue, alternate relationships, 18 and gender. For these texts then, the
negative symbiosis as an accurate description of the German-Jewish relationship: when the topic
of the Holocaust inevitably surfaces in each relationship, it is both a point of connection and
division for the couple. The Jewish protagonists are confronted with their non-Jewish German
partners’ connections to perpetration through family members, and ultimately realize they cannot
deal with having such an intimate connection to perpetration through their partner. Sleeping with
the (descendants of the) “enemy” is too great a taboo to bear sustained repetition. Similarly, all
of the Jewish protagonists cannot imagine a future with a non-Jewish German, as evidenced by
18
Alternate relationships, as I term them, refer to a second, Jewish partner, with whom the Jewish German
protagonist is involved. This Jewish partner represents the opposite of the protagonist’s non-Jewish German lover,
and provides a way for the protagonist to ally him or herself more with a “Jewish” identity and future, as opposed to
a “German” one.
39
their musings on the impossibility of procreating with a German. After experimenting with such
an intimate relationship with a non-Jewish German, the Jewish German protagonists turn to an
alternate lover who is Jewish. These alternate points of identification are significant in particular
for the male Jewish protagonists. By the end of Biller and Seligmann’s texts, their male Jewish
protagonists accept a future with a fellow Jewish German, allying themselves with a more Jewish
identity within Germany. Honigmann and Mitgutsch’s female Jewish protagonists on the other
hand opt to be alone and in between countries, choosing a more fluid and undefinied identity.
This gender split is also significant in terms of the protagonists’ ability to speak to their
non-Jewish German partners about issues related to the Holocaust. In the introduction to their
volume Unlikely History, Leslie Morris and Jack Zipes assert that the relationship between Jews
and Germans in the postwar period has changed “from what Gershom Scholem called a onesided monologue [on the part of Jews] to a dialogue [between Germans and Jews] about guilt and
working through guilt and a reevaluation of German culture” (xv). The idea of such productive
dialogue is optimistic, and because these love stories bring together German and Jewish
characters, they would seem ideal arenas in which to have such fruitful discussions. However, in
these texts neither silence nor dialogue makes the German-Jewish relationship feasible. In
Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus nichts and Mitgutsch’s Abschied von Jerusalem, the female
protagonists are confronted with their German partner’s inability and/or unwillingness to talk
about a past that is so central to the issues they are facing as Jews in Germany. In contrast, the
male protagonists of Seligmann’s Rubinsteins Versteigerung and Biller’s “Aus Dresden ein
Brief” are able to talk to their German partners about the past, and even about these partners’
own familial connection to perpetration; however, the ability to speak about the legacy of the
Holocaust neither helps these couples to deal with the problems associated with the past, nor to
40
relate to one another in more positive ways. Their conversations may bring clarity to the
difficulties they face, but ultimately only reinforce the differences between them.
The four texts examined in this chapter, written on the cusp of unification and
immediately after, provide a starting point for the analysis of German-Jewish love stories in
contemporary German language literature. They represent a Schwellenmoment, where second
generation Jews grapple with unpacking their suitcases, finding a place in “the land of the
murderers” and attempting to connect with German descendants of perpetrators. Eva Hoffmann,
in her book After Such Knowledge, notes that “as with the vast corpus of works produced by
survivors, much of the [Jewish] second- generation’s writing is personal and autobiographical”
and that in their texts, “the processes of constructing one’s identity [is] often [a] driving concern
and predominant theme” (188). It is possible that these authors’ protagonists are reflections of
their own struggles, 19 and certainly their texts wrestle with Jewish identity and how to relate to
the majority “perpetrator” culture as a descendant of a persecuted group. Neither victims nor
perpetrators themselves, these second generation non-Jewish and Jewish German characters
nevertheless are faced with the legacy of the Holocaust and its meaning for their identities and
relationship to one another. Their relationships reflect larger issues about the role of the past in
contemporary Germany, identity and German-Jewish relations. These literary love stories
function as a way to test the possibilities and limits of connections between the descendants of
perpetrators and victims, and to choose their allegiances.
19
As Ritchie Robertson points out, Rafael Seligmann describes the experience of writing his novel Rubinsteins
Versteigerung, as “that of overcoming his own hatred of Germans” (187); see Seligmann’s text Mit beschränkter
Hoffnung, p. 152ff for more on the subject.
41
Barbara Honigmann’s novel Eine Liebe aus nichts (1991)
Barbara Honigmann was born in 1949 in East Germany, where her German-Jewish parents
returned in 1947 after spending the war in exile. 20 She has been a freelance writer since 1975,
published twelve books, and has won a number of literary prizes, including the Kleist Prize in
2000. 21 Like her unnamed female protagonist in Eine Liebe aus nichts, she has also worked in
the theater, and left the GDR in the early 80s to live in France. 22
Scholars writing about Eine Liebe aus nichts have mainly focused on the second
generation Jewish female identity of the narrator, 23 her connection to the GDR 24 and the issue of
Holocaust representation and memory. 25 While some scholars do deal with her relationship to
her father, 26 the German-Jewish love relationship has been peripheral to discussions of
Honigmann’s novel. Yet the latter relationship is significant: it is the central, titular relationship
of the novel, and it comments on German-Jewish relations after the Holocaust as marked by the
20
For more on Honigmann’s biography and an overview of her works, see: Karin Elisabeth Grundler-Whitacre’s
dissertation ‘Islands in a Sea of Exile’: The Life and Works of Writer and Painter Barbara Honigmann, as well as
Ludwig Harig’s article “Aufbruch in ein neues Leben: Der Weg der Schriftstellerin Barbara Honigmann,” Erin
McGlothlin’s “Writing by Germany’s Jewish Minority,” Hartmut Steinecke’s “Schreiben von der Shoah in der
deutsch-jüdischen Literatur der ‘zweiten Generation’” and Guy Stern’s “Barbara Honigmann: A Preliminary
Assessment.”
21
For more on her reception, see Petra S. Fiero’s article “‘Manchmal fühle ich mich ein wenig enteignet’: Barbara
Honigmann’s Auseinandersetzung mit der Rezeption ihrer Werke.”
22
According to Karen Remmler, Honigmann moved to France “in search of a more viable Jewish community, which
she found in Strasbourg” (“Honigmann” 582).
23
See Christina Guenther’s article on exile and the construction of identity in Honigmann’s works, ““Exile and the
Construction of Identity in Barbara Honigmann’s Trilogy of Diaspora” and Karen Remmler’s article on the role of
gender in the protagonist’s identity, “En-gendering Bodies of Memory. Tracing the Genealogy of Identity in the
Work of Esther Dischereit, Barbara Honigmann and Irene Dische.”
24
See Peter Weise’s dissertation on German-Jewish literature in the GDR, Schalom, Genosse Schriftsteller!:
German-Jewish Literature in the German Democratic Republic, as well as Uta Klaedtke’s article on GDR authors
and identity, “Erinnern und erfinden: DDR-Autorinnen und ‘jüdische Identität’ (Hedda Zinner, Monika Maron,
Barbara Honigmann).”
25
See articles on the issue of Holocaust representation and memory in Eine Liebe aus nichts by Esther V. Schneider
Handshin, “History in Memory: Problems of Literary Representation of the Holocaust in the Writing of Ingeborg
Bachmann, Barbara Honigmann and Ruth Schweikert”; Brigitte Rossbacher, “The Topography of Mourning in
Barbara Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus nichts”;“Epitaphic Remembrance: Representing a Catastrophic Past in Second
Generation Texts” by Jutta Maria Gsoels-Lorensen.
26
Renate Chédin, in her article “Nationalität und Identität. Identität und Sprache bei Lea Fleischmann, Jane E.
Gilbert und Barbara Honigmann,” and Thomas Nolden, in his book Junge jüdische Literatur (112ff), deal with the
father-daughter aspect but do not mention the love relationships in the novel.
42
negative symbiosis and silence. The unnamed German-Jewish female narrator and her nonJewish German lover Alfried are connected not only by their love for one another, but by the past
that the latter refuses to acknowledge. As predicted by the Diner’s concepts, the past connects
them negatively, separating them into members of opposite groups. Alfried’s unwillingness to
speak about the past drives a wedge between them, and in general, silence characterizes their
relationship.
As previously mentioned, Honigmann believes that Germans and Jews became a couple
as a result of Auschwitz, echoing Diner’s statement that the two are related through “eine Art
gegensätzlicher Gemeinsamkeit – ob sie es wollen oder nicht” (9). The narrator’s comment about
the relationship between her and Alfried reads like textbook example of this inescapable negative
bond: “Denn wie gegen meinen Willen liebte ich ihn [Alfried] ja, und diese Liebe ist mir oft wie
ein Zusammenhang oder gar Zusammenhalt vorgekommen, aus dem wir nicht heraus können”
(46). Throughout the novel, the narrator struggles with her identity as a Jew in Germany after the
war, and with her relationship to her German lover. Her conflicted relationship with Alfried
reflects her unsettled feelings toward Germany.
The narrator never wanted to love a German, but the fact that she does creates a
productive tension. By being involved with a German, the Jewish character reflects on the
Holocaust past as well as the oppositional roles it puts them in. She is unable to say his name
because it sounds “so German,” and relates to him as member of the category “German” as
equated with “murderer”:
Von Anfang an habe ich Alfrieds Namen gehaßt, ich konnte ihn nicht über die Lippen
bringen, weil er so germanisch klang und weil ich keinen Germanen lieben wollte, denn
ich konnte, wollte und durfte den Germanen nicht verzeihen, was sie den Juden angetan
hatten. Weil die Germanen Mörder gewesen waren, konnte ich Alfrieds Namen nicht
aussprechen und habe Liebster und Geliebter gesagt. (46)
43
The first generation murderers make it impossible for the narrator to see her German lover as
simply the individual “Alfried” – and yet she wants to call him something, wants to be able to
connect with him, and so addresses him with terms of endearment. This reflects the paradox of
the negative symbiosis. In addition, their love for one another binds them together in a more
positive way, but is not able to break the narrator’s association between her individual German
partner and his group membership. The fact that both the narrator and her lover are unnamed (the
narrator is never given a name by Honigmann, and Alfried’s name is unutterable) emphasizes
their lack of individuality, and their membership in their opposing groups.
The Holocaust not only causes them to relate as member of opposing groups, it also
makes it difficult for them to speak to one another at all. The Jewish narrator is grappling with
her family’s history of exile during the war as well as her identity as a Jew in Germany after the
Holocaust, and she wants to be able to talk to Alfried about these issues in her life. However,
Alfried refuses to address the subject:
Er vermied jedes Gespräch über unser Herkommen, unsere Gleichheit oder Ungleichheit,
er wollte die Wirklichkeit meines Lebens nicht sehen, die ich nicht gewählt hatte, aber
die doch so schwer wog und deren innere Wahrheit offensichtlich und verborgen zugleich
war, auch für mich selbst. Vielleicht hatte auch er ein schwieriges Herkommen, aber wir
schwiegen über alles, als ob da nichts wäre; eine Anspielung war schon zuviel und jede
Frage eine Zumutung. Vielleicht war es die Furcht von einem Mißverstehen oder die
Unfähigkeit, den anderen zu erkennen […]. (46)
Alfried’s silence becomes a wedge between them, and contributes to the ultimate infeasibility of
their relationship. Helene Schruff discusses this text under the heading of “der schweigsame
Germane” and points out the difficulty of Alfried’s silence on the topic of the past’s legacy:
“Während sie [die Erzählerin] sich in Gedanken über diese problematischen Verbindung
verzehrt, schweigt Alfried beharrlich über das, was sie eint und gleichzeitig trennt, er verweigert
den gemeinsamen Bezug auf Auschwitz” (198).
44
The less they speak to one another, the more obvious it becomes they are avoiding talking
about the past. They are both unable to fully look at one another, and see the other for who they
are. The narrator comments:
Je weniger wir über alles sprachen, desto deutlicher kam es hervor. Dabei haben wir uns
nie richtig angesehen, nur verstohlen und verschämt von der Seite und von weitem, nie
wirklich ins Gesicht, wie aus Angst nach einer schrecklichen Nacht, einer Bluthochzeit,
am hellichten Tag danach. (46-47)
The metaphor of the “Bluthochzeit” underscores the idea of a connection (wedding) that has
taken a violent, negative turn (bloody), echoing the term “negative symbiosis.” While the term
refers to an actual historical pogrom, 27 the fact that the narrator refers to the difficulty of looking
at one another the morning after a massacre also conjures up the association of facing one
another as German and Jew after the Holocaust.
This German-Jewish couple is unable to see one another as individuals, and cannot speak
about the past and its legacy in their lives and relationship. In general, their relationship is
characterized by silence. 28 They write each other letters, even (or especially) when the other is
home, and they gesticulate, reduced to movements rather than words:
Und immer haben wir uns Briefe geschrieben, vielmehr kleine Zettel, die wir uns
gegenseitig durch die Tür schoben, nicht wie andere Leute, wenn keiner da war, sondern
gerade, wenn der andere zu Hause war, denn so verbargen wir uns voreinander. Wir
sagten nie, ich liebe dich, und nie, ich liebe dich auch. Wir gestikulierten nur, und die
Gesten konnte man immer auch anders verstehen. Vor allem eben: kein Wort. Eine
schwerverständliche Pantomime. (43-44)
27
According to Meyer’s Lexikon, the word’s etymology is traced to an actual historical event, the St.
Bartholomew’s Massacre which took place in 1572, also referred to as the “Pariser Bluthochzeit.” During Henry
IV’s wedding to Margaretes de Valois, thousands of Huguenots were massacred by Roman Catholics for religious
and political reasons.
28
So much so that the narrator even fantasizes about breaking into Alfried’s apartment in order to force him to
confront her and engage with her verbally: “Im Inneren seiner Wohnung wollte ich alles durchstöbern, durchwühlen,
herausreißen und einen Zettel dalassen, ICH WAR DA, um das auferlegte Schweigen mit Gewalt zu brechen, oder
besser noch mich mitten in das Chaos setzen, nachdem ich alles herausgerissen und auf die Erde geworfen hätte, und
warten, bis er zurückkäme und mich fände. Was er da gesagt hätte” (45).
45
The origin of their inability to communicate is Alfried’s unwillingness to speak about the past
and their parents. Schruff convincingly argues that Alfried’s refusal to acknowledge their shared
legacy of the past causes the relationship to die (198), but their inability to speak about the past
does not make it disappear, rather it only intensifies its negative bond between them.
The narrator concludes that her relationship with Alfried is the “love made of nothing” of
the title, and is one without a future. She has a recurring nightmare that she and Alfried have a
misshapen child together: “Ich sah das Kind aber in Alpträumen, wie es nur lose aus einzelnen
Teilen gefügt war, die nicht zusammenhielten, und wie es dann auseinanderfiel und zerbrach und
nichtaufrecht bleiben konnte” (46). Todd Herzog comments that this nightmare represents “the
narrator’s fear of a union of Alfried's Germanness and her Jewishness” and that
the impossibility of reconciling German and Jewish identities is here written across the
body of the hybrid child, who comes to the narrator in nightmares as a monstrously
fragmented Mischling […] Hybridity, both cultural and biological, turns out to be a
hopelessly intractable negation. (10)
Similarly, Helene Schruff views this ‘child’ as impossible for similar reasons: “Diese mögliche
Synthese des Widerspruchs zwischen ihrem Verstand und ihren Gefühlen und damit auch eine
Überwindung der Distanz zwischen einer jüdischen und einer nichtjüdischen Figur ist in dieser
Geschichte noch nicht mal in Träumen realisierbar” (198). The Jewish protagonist, although in
love with a German man, cannot imagine a future for them, as symbolized by the child. Their
romantic involvement has provided the space for her to reflect on her relationship to a German
after the Holocaust, and to test out being closer to a descendant of “murderers” but ultimately,
she cannot form a lasting connection to the country, Germany, or to a member of German second
generation.
She tries out another allegiance through a relationship that allies her with her Jewish exile
heritage. After she moves to Paris, she meets an American Jew named Jean-Marc with whom she
46
begins a romantic relationship. None of the secondary literature mentions him, but he is a
significant character because he is Alfried’s opposite, and this alternate relationship, as I term it,
provides a contrasting point of identification for the narrator. In stark contrast to Alfried, 29 JeanMarc discusses the very things the narrator was unable to talk to Alfried about:
Meistens sprachen wir von unserer Herkunft, von unseren Eltern, woher sie kamen und
wie sie vor den Nazis geflüchtet waren. Ihre Emigrationsrouten und Erlebnisse in den
fremden Ländern waren wie Mythen unserer Kindheit und unseres Lebens überhaupt, wie
die Irrfahrten des Odysseus; Legenden, tausendmal erzählt. Jetzt wiederholten wir sie uns
gegenseitig, sangen sie fast im Chor, wie verschiedene Strophe ein und desselben Liedes.
(55)
They not only share similar Jewish family backgrounds, but are able to speak openly about these
pasts. The only thing Jean-Marc cannot understand is “wie Juden es über sich bringen könnten,
in Deutschland zu leben, nach allem, was ihnen dort geschehen war” (56), and he attempts to
convince her to move to the U.S. with him. She is surprised to find herself defending Germany,
and thus acknowledging her tie to that country. The narrator herself compares Alfried and JeanMarc, and the alternative (and Jewish) world that the latter represents:
Sosehr, wie sich Alfried damals von mir zurückgezogen hatte, so sehr versuchte jetzt
Jean-Marc, mich ganz auf seine Seite zu ziehen, und es war verführerisch, mich von ihm
einfach in seine Welt hinüberziehen zu lassen. Er wollte mich überreden, mit ihm nach
New York zu kommen, er wisse ja, daß ich das wolle, und obwohl es stimmte, konnte ich
nicht so weit gehen. (56-57)
In his article “Hybrids and Mischlinge: Translating Anglo-American Cultural Theory into
German,” Todd Herzog notes that “Alfried becomes a symbol for Germany and Germanness,
which the narrator simultaneously hates and loves, desires and pulls away from, yet cannot
escape” (10). Yet while she cannot entirely escape him, she also is compelled to experiment with
a different allegiance through Jean-Marc, to Jewishness and the U.S. He offers her the chance to
29
Alfried and Jean-Marc, as well as the narrator’s interactions with them, are also characterized in other contrasting
ways. Just one example of this is the fact that she almost always meets Alfried at night or in the shadows of a dim
theater, whereas her encounters with Jean-Marc take place in daylight.
47
move to New York with him, but she decides against it. Ultimately, she chooses neither partner
nor country: the novel ends with her on a train, in between France and Germany, alone.
Through two romantic liaisons, one with a German and one with a Jew, the female
narrator tests her connection to these two different (and oppositional) allegiances. The narrator
desires to be close to Alfried, yet also perceives him not as an individual but as a member of the
“Kollektiv der Täter.” Alfried’s silence about the past and his refusal to understand her
connection to it deals their relationship its death blow; in these ways they are bound together by
the negative event of the Holocaust coloring their relationship. While her relationship to an
American Jew is just the opposite—they share a similar personal bond to the Holocaust and can
talk about their parents’ fate at the hands of the Nazis—it brings her to the realization that she
does have a bond with Germany as well. Although through Jean-Marc she experiences a
connection to Jewish identity and another second generation Jew’s experience, she cannot
wholeheartedly ally herself with his position. Rather than choose one binary over the other
(Jewish over German), the unnamed narrator ends the novel alone, in a liminal space, with no
declared allegiance to a particular identity, country or relationship.
Anna Mitgutsch’s novel Abschied von Jerusalem (1995)
Like Barbara Honigmann and her novel’s protagonist, Anna Mitgutsch shares some similarities
with her own novel’s protagonist. Mitgutsch (b. 1948) is an Austrian writer who converted from
Roman Catholicism to Judaism as an adult, mainly because of her Jewish ancestry, in particular
through her grandmother. She lived for a time in Israel, and was part of a kibbutz there.
Likewise, her protagonist Hildegard converts to Judaism, in part to express her connection to her
48
Jewish grandmother, and changes her name to Dvorah. To date, Mitgutsch has written eight
novels, which reflect on the themes of identity, outsiders, memory and the Holocaust by turns,
and received literary prizes for her work, including the prize of the Austrian Federal Ministry of
Literature and Art (Ossar 859). In her novel, Abschied von Jerusalem, Mitgutsch relates the
difficulties between Hildegard/Dvorah and Alwin, her gentile husband, both before and after
they travel to Israel together. None of the secondary literature has dealt with the relationship
between Dvorah and Alwin; instead, articles have focused on the protagonist’s search for her
identity and Heimat or on the portrayal of the city of Jerusalem. 30 However, their relationship
offers critical insights into the protagonist’s identity as a Jew in Austria after the Holocaust.
Their relationship is complicated by the Holocaust’s legacy because it places them in two
separate groups, and it fails in part because of her husband’s unwillingness to understand her
perspective; again, this couple is both divided and connected by the past.
Despite their initial attraction and connection, Alwin’s unwillingness to understand his
wife’s struggle with the legacy of the past quickly becomes apparent. In the beginning of their
relationship, Dvorah understands her husband well. She feels that “wir waren uns vertraut, ich
erriet seine Gedanken, bevor er sie noch aussprach, jeden Schatten, jede Regung in seinem
Gesicht konnte ich bis zu ihrem Ursprung verfolgen” (134). However, when they visit his
hometown, Dvorah has an experience at a blacksmith’s shop that illustrates her connection to the
past and Alwin’s uncomprehension of its significance:
Einmal stiegen wir bei einer alten Schmiede aus, traten neugierig in eine fremde Welt,
eine andere Zeit, und während Alwin sich mit dem Schmied unterhielt, beide ganz mit
der Gegenwart beschäftigt, betrachtete ich das fast faltenlose Gesicht des Achtzigjährigen
30
For research on the former subject, see Donald G. Daviau’s article “Anna Mitgutsch’s Abschied von Jerusalem: A
Search for Identity” and Maria Luise Caputo-Mayr’s article “Anna Mitgutsch: Abschied von Jerusalem: Die Frau
zwischen Tradition und Multikulturalismus.” For an article about the latter subject, see Margaret Stone’s article
Anna Mitgutsch’s Abschied von Jerusalem: An Austrian Writer’s Presentation of a Divided City.”
49
im staubigen Licht, das durch die blinde Fensterscheibe fiel, schaute auf einen
blankgeschliffenen Hammer in seinen Händen. Und plötzlich sah ich einen
Vierzigjährigen mit einem Beil in den Händen zu einer anderen Zeit, und die
unbegründete Angst, die Alwin nicht kannte, das Grauen, das er für hysterische
Übertreibung hielt, trieb einen Keil zwischen uns, der uns im Lauf der Zeit entzweite.
(135)
This wedge between them gradually causes their estrangement. When a friend later asks her why
her marriage failed, Dvorah comments: “Am Ende […] müsse man an einem Goi nur ein wenig
kratzen, dann komme der Antisemit zum Vorschein” (138). Although at one time in love with
Alwin, by the end she is only able to see him only as her opposite: a goy, a non-Jew, an antiSemite. As in Eine Liebe aus nichts, the female Jewish protagonist sees her non-Jewish partner
as unsympathetic and uncomprehending of her position as a Jew after the Holocaust, and on the
opposite side of the Holocaust chasm.
Their relationship takes a turn for the worse after a trip to Israel together, and they
increasingly have difficulties speaking to one another. Dvorah had always wanted to visit Israel
because of her Jewish heritage, and she immediately feels at home there. Alwin, however, feels
progressively more estranged. Their distinctly different experiences there are a cause of
resentment between them, as the narrator comments: “wir nahmen es einander übel, jeder
beliebige Satz genügte, daß wir einander mißverstanden und verbissen schwiegen” (156).
Communication breaks down further when, while debating Israeli-Palestinian politics, they find
themselves again on opposite sides. The reader learns that Alwin’s father was a Nazi and that in
an attempt to escape his association with perpetration through his family, Alwin takes the side of
the Palestinian “victims”:
wegen dieses Vaters stand er auf der Seite der Täter und mußte ihn dafür hassen, durfte
ihn nicht lieben, nicht einmal verstehen. Nur das Unrecht der Juden in Palästina, dem
Land, das sie sich widerrechtlich angeeignet hätten, konnte ihn von seinem niemals
eingestandenen, bedrückend gegenwärtigen Schuldgefühl erlösen. Indem er auf der Seite
ihrer Opfer kämpfte, wurde er selber Opfer. Und ich [Dvorah] stand auf der Seite der
50
Unterdrücker […] ich solle zugeben, daß das, was hier geschähe, rassistisch sei,
faschistisch. […] vielleicht genoß er es bloß, ein einziges Mal die Seiten zu vertauschen
und hassen zu dürfen, ohne sich zu schämen. (156-7)
Dvorah points out the hypocrisy of his position, saying “Du hast kein Recht, dich so aufzuspielen
[…] denk an deine Herkunft” (158); Alwin gets angry, regarding her balefully and refusing to
speak to her. These references to the past lead to silence between them, and they are clearly on
opposite sides of a divide caused by the past’s legacy. After this, Dvorah states, silence reigns:
“Nicht einmal für das gemeinsame Erlebte hatten wir eine gemeinsame Sprache, wir hatten
überhaupt keine Sprache mehr miteinander, nur mißverstandene, zurückgewiesene Wörter”
(160).
Both Honigmann and Mitgutsch’s female Jewish protagonists are confronted with their
non-Jewish partners’ difficulty in talking about the past that connects them. Helene Schruff
observes that such silence is destructive:
Das Schweigen in der nachgeborenen Generation, wo es nicht mehr um individuelle
Schuld und erlittenes Leid geht, wirkt sich auf die zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen
destruktiv aus und kann hier wie in den anderen Texten symbolisch gesehen werden für
den Umgang der Deutschen und Juden miteinander nach 1945. (Schruff 198)
Indeed, both relationships suffer because of this silence, and the partners are on opposite sides of
the Holocaust divide, relating as members of oppositional groups. Gert Mattenklott, in his book
Juden in Deutschland, a collection of interviews with Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, raises the
difficulty of the two talking to one another, even when they are not actual victims or
perpetrators:
Die hier vorgestellt werden, sind keine Opfer, ich bin kein Täter. Es ist dennoch kein
normales Verhältnis zwischen uns. Gelegentlich entsteht zwar der Anschein, wenn wir über
irgend etwas Alltägliches sprechen, eine gemeinsame Mahlzeit haben oder uns als Kollegen
verabreden. Aber sobald zur Sprache kommt, was einen Bezug auf Jüdisches oder zur
Geschichte hat, verfliegt dieser Anschein. Normal ist die Befangenheit. Denn in der Sprache
ist diese Geschichte ja allgegenwärtig. (133)
51
Honigmann’s and Mitgutsch’s female Jewish protagonists want to talk about the past, but both of
their German partners suffer from this normal inhibition or difficulty in talking about the past.
For Honigmann’s protagonist, Alfried’s inability to discuss the Holocaust legacy contributes to
their breakup. Dvorah and her husband are able to have some conversations with her husband, as
in the above example, but the fact that she then puts him in his place by mentioning his familial
Nazi past cuts off any kind of exchange between them, and their relationship is marked by
hesitant conversations, misunderstands and ultimately, silence. Dvorah feels that Alwin does not
understand her perspective as a Jew after the Holocaust, but she also is only comfortable when
he stays in his expected role as a guilty descendant of perpetrators who bears the weight of the
past.
Alwin leaves Israel, but Dvorah remains, and begins a relationship with a young man,
Sivan, whom she believes to be an Armenian Jew. Like the female Jewish character in
Honigmann’s novel, Mitgutsch’s protagonist also tries out a stronger allegiance to Jewish
identity through a partner she meets in another country. Sivan and Dvorah are similar to another
in other ways as well, as Dagmar Lorenz observes: “In her encounter with Sivan, Dvorah meets
another individual as uprooted as herself, although due to different political circumstances. Like
her, he has no country, no language, and no name on which to base a permanent identity” (249).
When it becomes clear, however, that Sivan had been hiding his true identity, that he is a
Palestinian Arab terrorist, Dvorah decides to return to Austria. Here too, the protagonist is alone
at the novel’s end, traveling back toward the country she left; like Honigmann’s unnamed
protagonist, Dvorah is in between identities and countries at the novel’s end. She is stopped by
Israeli security officers, so that they can interrogate her about her relationship with Sivan and her
possible connection to his terrorist acts. Lorenz comments: “Isolated in an interrogation room
52
while waiting to be questioned by Israeli security officers, Mitgutsch’s protagonist […]
symbolizes the cultural and linguistic deterritorialization of the descendants of European Jews in
the post-Holocaust era” (244). While this is a convincing interpretation, the ending also
represents a move away from the binaries of non-Jew/Jew and Austrian/Isreali and toward a
more open-ended identity, not allied with a particular side. While Dvorah is able to see Alwin as
an individual when they first meet, they become entrenched in their oppositional roles. By going
to Israel and trying out a different relationship and allegiance, Dvorah continues to grapple with
what it means to be a post-Holocaust Jew, and tries to find or create an identity less rigidly
defined by the past. The fact that she ends the novel in between countries may not only indicate
that she does not have a place where she belongs, but that she is still trying out allegiances and
grappling with her identity. This is a crucial distinction, as the latter leaves open the possibility
for a more flexible understanding of post-Holocaust Jewish identity.
The male German Jewish protagonists of the following two works engage in more
frequent and productive discussions with their gentile German partners in Germany. As Karen
Remmler notes: “a dialogue between Germans and Jews often fails face to face [but] intertextual
correspondences can substitute for such failed face-to-face encounters” (“Encounters” 4). In
Seligmann’s and Biller’s texts these intertexual correspondences in the German-Jewish couple
explore the legacy of the past for both partners. However, their conversations about the past are
not capable of bridging their oppositional roles related to the Holocaust legacy. In Seligmann’s
novel Rubinsteins Versteigerung and Biller’s short story “Aus Dresden ein Brief” the male
Jewish protagonists are able to talk to their female non-Jewish partners about the past—
specifically their fathers’ perpetration during the Nazi regime. Bernd Auerochs has speculated
that if there ever were to be a ‘productive relationship’ between Germans and Jews, it would
53
necessitate ‘clarity on both sides’ about the difficulties that they face with one another (616). The
German-Jewish couples of Seligmann’s and Biller’s texts seem to exemplify such clarity: they
are aware of the difficulties related to the past, and are able to discuss them. These relationships
are productive in the sense that they are capable of dialogue where before there was only silence
and misunderstandings in the previous texts.
However, the German-Jewish couples who are able to speak about the past do not fare
much better than those who were silent on the topic in the previous two texts. The members of
these couples nonetheless end up on opposite sides by the end of the texts. Mattenklott observes
that when Jews and Germans do speak to one another
Erinnerungen kommen zur Sprache, Kindheit, die Eltern, Familiengeschichte.
Schlagartig ist die Szene bereitet, auf der wir—freiwillig oder nicht—als Stellvertreter
stehen: er für seine Tradition, ich für meine. Wo beide sich überlagern, erstreckt sich ein
Drama, dessen Epilog wir soeben sprechen. Es zeigt sich am zögernden oder forciert
beiläufigen Reden, daß wir beide das Bewußtsein haben, nicht mehr nur für uns selbst
und miteinander zu sprechen. (133)
This is exactly what happens in Seligmann and Biller’s texts: when the German-Jewish couples
talk about topics such as parents and family histories, the legacy of the past makes them
“Stellvertreter,” representatives of one side of the Holocaust divide. While the male Jewish
protagonists try to see their partners as individuals, their cultural and historical contexts then take
precedence over their individual feelings, and those contexts force them apart from their German
partner.
Rafael Seligmann’s novel Rubinsteins Versteigerung (1989)
54
Rafael Seligmann was born in Israel in 1947 to German-Jewish parents who had emigrated there
because of the Nazis. When Seligmann was ten years old his family returned to Germany,
settling in Munich, where Rubinsteins Versteigerung also takes place. This novel, Seligmann’s
first, is told from the point of view of Jonathan Rubinstein, a twenty-one year old Abiturient who
is struggling with his place in Germany as a Jew, and trying desperately to lose his virginity.
Jonathan is angry: at his parents for coming back to the “land of the murderers” as he repeatedly
refers to Germany, and for forcing him to live there. Harmut Steinecke, writing about second
generation Jewish authors’ parental characters, states that “Die Eltern stehen in vielen Fällen von
vornherein unter [dem] Vorwurf: dass […] sie in Deutschland geblieben bzw. dorthin
zurückgegangen sind” (247). Through a romantic relationship with a non-Jewish German woman
Suse, he gains both the sexual experience he seeks as well as comes to terms with his identity
and position as a Jew in Germany. But their relationship also reflects the extent to which the
Holocaust legacy casts its pall over them both and makes it impossible for them to remain
together; they are connected ultimately only through its negative impact on both their lives.
In his article on Rubinsteins Versteigerung as a family novel, Ritchie Robertson relates
Seligmann’s difficulty in publishing this novel, as well as its controversial reception.
Seligmann’s novel was rejected by numerous publishing houses who protested that the novel
contained too much sex and was too anti-Semitic. Although Seligmann began his writing career
as a journalist, and was already well-established in that field when he sought a publisher for
Rubinsteins Versteigerung, he was ultimately unable to find a publisher; he eventually bore the
cost of publishing the text himself. Once on the market, the Allgemeine jüdische Wochenzeitung
attacked his novel and accused Seligmann of “Nestbeschmutzung”; others intimated that
Seligmann was catering to non-Jews by presenting Jews in a bad light (Robertson 184).
55
The author himself calls this novel the first “fiktive Dokument über das Fühlen und
Denken der deutschen Nachkriegsjuden” (Mit beschränkter Hoffnung 146), and literary critics
have commented on its insight into a second generation Jewish male identity in Germany after
the Holocaust. Sander L. Gilman, in his article “Male Sexuality and Contemporary Jewish
Literature in Germany,” finds that it presents the “complexities of dealing with an identity
formed by the history of the Shoah but without any personal memory or experience of these
events” (227), which is typical for the second generation. Gilman thinks that “the question of
male sexuality and the representation of the male Jewish body” are central to the text, and that it
“focuses on the perceived or real difference of the Jewish body and the internalization of that
difference in the structuring of the male protagonist’s sense of insecurity” (228). Thomas
Nolden, in his book Junge jüdische Literatur, also comments on Rubinstein’s sexuality, reading
his relationship with Suse as rebellion against his mother:
der Bruch mit der Haltung der Eltern [wird] immer wieder im Bereich der Sexualität
versucht: entgegen dem ständigen Drängen der Mutter gibt Jonathan seinen Gefühlen für
nichtjüdische Frauen freien Lauf. Die Hoffnung, so aus der Ghetto empfundenen
Existenz herauszufinden scheitert aber schließlich an der nationalsozialistischen
Vergangenheit der Eltern von Jonathans nichtjüdischer Freundin. (53)
While I agree that Jonathan in part dates a German in order to anger his mother, I do not believe
his relationship with her can solely be explained by “loyalty conflicts” as Nolden terms it. This
German-Jewish love story is not simply a comment on intergenerational Jewish tensions, but
rather a way to probe the ways in which the Holocaust affects two members of the second
generation, Jonathan and Suse.
56
Other critics have often remarked on the novel’s style, comparing it to Philip Roth’s
novel Portnoy’s Complaint, 31 addressing Seligmann’s exaggerated and provocative prose.
Jeffrey Peck asserts that Seligmann’s hyperbole is an “ironic attempt to redress the imbalance
that exists for Jews” (95). Similarly, Eva Reichmann defends Seligmann’s style, writing:
Man hat Seligmann vorgeworfen, aus der Verunglimpfung jüdischer Personen Kapital zu
schlagen und so Antisemitismus Vorschub zu leisten. Meines Erachtens geht es
Seligmann jedoch darum, durch eine Überzeichnung der Verhältnisse den Weg zu ebnen
für einen normalen Umgang zwischen Deutschen und Juden in der Zukunft. (246)
What most critics have overlooked about Rubinsteins Versteigerung is how Jonathan’s
relationship with Suse reflects and influences his struggle to find his place in the “land of the
murderers.” Helene Schruff, however, points out how this relationship allows him to see
Germans in general in a new light. For the first half of the novel, he sees Germans as guilty,
referring to them collectively as “SS-Mörder” and “Scheißdeutsche.” But by meeting Suse he is
able to have another perspective on Germans:
Seine kollektiven Haßgefühle gegenüber den Deutschen ändern sich erst, nachdem er sich
in eine nichtjüdische Frau verliebt hat. Er erkennt zum erstenmal, daß es auch Deutsche
gibt, für deren Bewußtseinsbildung die Verbrechen der Nationalsozialisten von
Bedeutung sind […] Diese individuelle Auseinandersetzung mit einer jungen Deutschen
ermöglicht ihm zum erstenmal, einen anderen Standpunkt einzunehmen, und dadurch
erweitert sich sein Wahrnehmungshorizont. (175)
Jonathan accepts, through his relationship with Suse, that he lives among the murderers, yet he
does not have to hate all of them, because he can see Germans as individuals now, rather than
just members of a group called “murderers”: “Solange du hier bist, lebst du zwangsläufig unter
Mördern. Da hilft auf die Dauer auch kein Hass. […] Wie kann ich jetzt überhaupt weiterhassen
– ich liebe doch eine Deutsche!” (177).
31
Almost every critc mentions the similarities to Roth. For just one example, see Ritchie Robertson, “Rafael
Seligmann’s Rubinsteins Versteigerung as German-Jewish Family Novel before and after the Holocaust,” who
begins his article stating: “Rafael Seligmann is Germany’s answer to Philip Roth” (179).
57
Although he is willing to see Suse as an individual, Suse comprehends that the
Holocaust’s legacy of dividing Germans and Jews into oppositional groups does not make an
exception for their relationship. When she reveals that her father was in the SS, Jonathan insists
that she can remain separate from that familial legacy, exclaiming “Aber das hat doch nichts mit
dir zu tun!” (184). In his book German Literature of the 1990s, Stuart Taberner writes that
Jonathan’s “efforts to establish a relationship with a non-Jewish girl fails, both because his
parents disapprove and on account of his own circumspection” (180), but this is a slight
misreading of the text. While it is accurate that parental disapproval plays an important role on
both sides of the families, it is not Jonathan who is cautious about the relationship, but rather
Suse. It is Suse who recognizes the impact that her family history has on their relationship, which
Jonathan initially refuses to see:
Und ob es etwas mit mir zu tun hat. Ich bin seine Tochter. Das wird dich mit der Zeit
verrückt machen. Sieh dich an, wie blass du geworden bist. So muss es jedem von euch
ergehen, wenn er es erfährt. Auch Herr Frankfurter, der dir so imponiert. Der kann grosse
Sprüche von Vergebung und Versöhnung von sich geben. Aber wenn sein Sohn mit der
Tochter eines SS-Mannes befreundet ware, würde er wahrscheinlich nicht anders
reagieren als deine Mutter gestern. (184)
For the first time, Suse refers to Rubinstein as “euch,” a Jew who is part of a larger group.
Rubinstein attempts to keep the relationship on an individual level, reiterating: “Aber du warst
nicht in der SS!” While he is intent on relating as individuals, Suse insists that the Holocaust past
makes it possible only to relate as members of a group, not as individuals. Their exchange
continues, with Rubinstein vowing that they can overcome their parents’ objections and
influence, and Suse maintaining a pragmatic stance. Suse brings up the difficulties they would
encounter with their families if they were continue to date. He pleads with her, again insisting on
their individuality, saying: “Suse, es geht doch um uns, nicht um unsere Eltern. Wir haben uns
doch lieb, oder?” (185)
58
But Suse knows that their love cannot conquer the past and their parents. She says that
she and Rubinstein do love one another, but that she would not be able to withstand the fight
against her father and his mother: “Ich könnte diesen Kampf einfach nicht durchhalten. […]
Stell dir vor, wenn ich jetzt noch Druck von meiner Familie bekäme, an der ich ziemlich stark
hänge. Ich würde aufgeben, ich kenne mich” (185). When Rubinstein says that he will fight with
her, she gives a long justification of why this relationship cannot ever work, that neither of them
are strong enough to withstand the familial pressures or the legacy of the past:
Du? Dass ich nicht lache! Das geht über deine Kräfte! Du bist von deiner Mutter
abhängiger, als du es dir selbst eingestehst. […] Wenn deine Mutter mit ihrer
unerschöpflichen Energie Tag für Tag gegen mich kämpft, wirst du sehr schnell
kapitulieren. Dieser Frau bist du nicht gewachsen. […] Du bist deiner Mutter nicht
gewachsen. Du bist von ihr abhängig, glaub es mir. […] Ich weiss, dass ich es nicht
aushalten würde, dauernd von deiner Mutter – und wahrscheinlich auch von meinen
Eltern – fertiggemacht zu werden. […] Ich bin zu schwach für euch, auch für dich. Das
ist mir spätestens durch dieses Gespräch klargeworden. […] [Es] würde dann doch alles
scheitern – an unseren Eltern und an der Vergangenheit. (186-187)
Suse points out that their familial pressures, and significantly, the past, are the death blows to
their relationship. It is only after much debate with Suse on the topic of the role of the past in
their current relationship that Rubinstein ultimately accepts she is right. Yet the fact that she
must convince him is significant because it shows the extent to which a Jewish character wants
to be with German, despite the past—and a very real past that looms in the form of his lover’s SS
father. Acknowledging and talking about their problems related to the past does not ease them, it
only brings them out into the open where they then definitively end the relationship.
Helene Schruff corroborates that the past as the main stumbling block in Suse and
Jonathan’s relationship:
Weil Susanne eine Deutsche mit Gewissen ist, kam sie überhaupt nur als Freundin für
Jonathan in Frage. Aber gerade das Wissen über die Shoah macht eine unbelastete
Beziehung zwischen ihnen unmöglich. Jonathan und Suse vergewissern sich nicht (nur)
die Bezugnahme auf Auschwitz ihrer Identitäten als Jude und Deutsche im Sinne von
59
Dan Diners These der ‘negativen Symbiose’, aber die gegensätzliche Berufung auf die
Vergangenheit läßt eine gemeinsame Zukunft nicht zu. (187)
The negative symbiosis makes a future with Suse impossible; instead, Jonathan expects that his
future will be with a Jewish woman. Before he met Suse, he bemoaned the fact that “wenn ich in
Deutschland bleibe, schlafe ich eines Tage mit der Tochter eines solchen Mörders. Vielleicht
heirate ich sie sogar, bekomme Kinder mit ihr: einen kleinen Adolf Rubinstein etwa” (70-71).
This negative view of a German-Jewish future and the impossibility of a child that combines
Jewish and German identities is similar to Honigmann’s nightmare about her and Alfried’s
misshapen child. Jonathan’s sarcastic vision of a German-Jewish child does not come to pass; in
the beginning he can only mock such an idea, but by the end he has realized that even though he
has loved an individual German, there is no German-Jewish future possible between members of
groups with such a fraught history.
Ultimately, because of his relationship with Suse, Rubinstein is able to let go of his hate,
and, with resignation, to find his place in German society. In the novel’s conclusion he comes to
the following realization:
Jahrelang waren der Deutschenhaß und mein unruhiger Schmock meine unerschöpflichen
Energiequellen. Israel und eine Geliebte sollten mich erlösen. Da tauchen Suse und
Frankfurter auf, nehmen mir meinen Haß und meine Begierde. Prompt raubt mir Esel
Suse. Wofür ich gelebt habe, ist dahin – Israel und Suse. Mir bleiben Deutschland und
Esel [his nickname for his mother]. (188)
His love for Suse is able to take away his hate for Germans, but it cannot overcome his parents’
(especially his mother’s) influence on his life and the legacy of the past. The loss of Suse forces
him to realize that what remain for him are Germany and his mother, with the latter representing
his Jewish heritage, and he expects that he will marry a Jewish woman just as his father did. Yet
through his relationship with Suse, he comes to a different relationship to Germany and Germans
by the end of the novel. Out of this realization come the last lines of the novel, in which a
60
distraught Rubinstein chokes out: “Ich bin ein deutscher Jude!” 32 Ritchie Robertson reads these
lines as a statement of Jonathan’s identity which “he cannot escape from, [and that] read like a
howl of pain, a hopeless admission of defeat” (187), while Jeffrey Peck interprets the last line as
stating that “he is a third identity made of both simultaneously, [and] this declaration at the end
of the novel seems to stop him” (97). While I agree that Jonathan is hardly cheered by the
thought of this mixed identity, it is only because of his relationship with Suse that he is able to
even somewhat integrate “Germanness” into his newly complex, ‘third’ identity. In this sense,
his relationship with Suse brings him closer to Germans and Germany in general, but his despair
arises from the tension that still exists between the two groups/identities—the same tension that
forced him and Suse apart.
Maxim Biller’s short story “Aus Dresden ein Brief” from Land der Väter und Verräter
(1994)
Like Rafael Seligmann, Maxim Biller immigrated to Germany as a child and grew up in Munich.
Born to Russian Jewish parents in 1960 in Prague, Biller emigrated from Czechoslovakia with
his family to West Germany in 1970. He is a freelance writer who has worked as a journalist as
well as published novels and short stories (Eke 155). The latter have appeared in the collections
Wenn ich einmal reich und tot bin (1990), Land der Väter und Verräter (1994), Deutschbuch
(2001) and Liebe heute (2007). Stuart Taberner has commented that Biller’s biting satires and
political engagement have earned him a reputation as a controversial German-Jewish writer
(“Esra” 236).
32
It is of course interesting to note that this is the last line of the novel; the text does not then attempt to depict how
this realization affects Jonathan Rubinstein’s life in Germany.
61
Maxim Biller’s short story “Aus Dresden ein Brief” focuses on the intimate relationship
between an unnamed Jewish German protagonist and his gentile German lover Ida. Similar to the
relationship in Seligmann’s novel, both of the partner’s identities are based on the Holocaust
past, and while able to discuss this legacy, they remain on opposite sides of the Holocaust divide.
This time, though, the second generation Jewish protagonist enacts revenge on the first
generation perpetrator, and ends the story with a Jewish partner and child, thus actively choosing
to be on the “opposite side” and emphasize his Jewishness. There is little scholarship on this
particular story by Biller, and in most secondary literature it is mentioned only in summary, 33 but
it is an important text on a common theme of German-Jewish relations in Biller’s work, and as
such, deserves closer analysis.
Like Jonathan and Suse, the unnamed male Jewish German protagonist and his gentile
German lover Ida are able to talk about the German past, and in particular, her familial
connection to perpetration. The protagonist at first believes that Ida is Jewish like him, for she is
well-known as a German-Jewish author and daughter of survivor parents, and he says: “wir
fanden wie zwei alte Freunde zueinander” (286). Ida, however, is in actuality the daughter of an
infamous Nazi physician who performed atrocious experiments on concentration camp inmates,
and who concealed his true identity behind that of a “Jewish survivor” after the war in order to
avoid punishment. She feels she cannot keep this secret from her first Jewish lover, the
protagonist, and reveals her “große[s] Geheimnis gleich zu Beginn, noch vor dem ersten Kuß
und der ersten Umarmung” (ibid). Yet her revelation of familial perpetration does not cause her
33
See Karen Remmler’s article “The ‘Third Generation’ of Jewish-German Writers after the Shoah Emerges in
Germany and Austria,” Manuel Köppen’s article “Auschwitz im Blick der zweiten Generation. Tendenzen der
Gegenwartsprosa (Biller, Grossmann, Schindel)” and Hartmut Steinecke’s article “Schreiben von der Shoah in der
deutsch-jüdischen Literatur der ‘zweiten Generation,’” for example.
62
lover to recoil in horror: he states, “ich liebte sie nun noch mehr, obwohl mir das gar nicht
gefiel” (287).
Thus it at first seems that the Holocaust past can be acknowledged, but will not separate
them into members of oppositional groups. They share laughs over how the past connects them:
“sie führen kichernd Gespräche über jenes Band, […] das sich angeblich zwischen den Kindern
der Opfer und Täter als eine Art selbstgeknüpfte, geliebte Fessel spannt” (291). And while
“Daddy,” Ida’s father, is present in their fantasies during lovemaking, he and the Nazi past he
represents does not at first seem to divide them, but rather to connect them further: “als wir in
dieser Nacht miteinander zum ersten Mal schliefen, nannte sie mich Daddy, und ich stellte mir
dazu, im stillen, die allerschönsten, die allerperversesten Dinge vor” (288). However, afterwards,
the protagonist has his first doubts about Ida:
Als Ida fertig war, streichelte ich ihr Gesicht und fuhr mit den Händen durch ihre dichten
blonden Haare, und dann löschte ich das Licht, ich drückte von hinten meinen nackten
Bauch an ihren nackten Po und Rücken, und dies war er also gewesen, der allererste
Moment, in dem ich dachte, daß ich jemanden wie sie einfach nicht lieben kann. (294)
Here he emphasizes her blonde hair, a stereotypically German trait, underlining that it is her
“Germanness” and all that it represents that he cannot love. Once they consummate their
relationship, the protagonist realizes he cannot be this close to a German with a direct connection
to perpetration. The sex act jolts him to this realization: while it may be pleasurable to
experiment with an intimate connection to a non-Jewish German, the connection is not
sustainable—rather, it is a perverted fantasy. Linda Feldman states the “narrative treatment of
carnal relations reveals a cleft between German and Jewish” (139). Helene Schruff concurs,
noting that “[i]hre Verbindung scheitert schließlich an dem “Ergebnis der Massenvernichtung”;
für eine jüdisch-nichtjüdische Beziehung ist in Deutschland und in dieser Generation die Zeit
noch nicht gekommen” (192). Again, we see the negative symbiosis at work: for the Jewish
63
protagonist, it becomes clear that they are indeed members in two different groups, bound by the
past, and unable to connect in a positive way because of it.
After they break up, the Jewish protagonist distances himself further from his close
relationship to the German Ida in two ways: by revealing her father’s deception and by becoming
involved with a Jewish German woman. Because he leaks her and her father’s identities and
information to the public and the police, her father is caught, tried and jailed. The protagonist
makes it clear he did not intend to help Ida in any way:
Daß ich nun die Wahrheit über sie ausspreche, den Mythos einer glorreich zurückgehrten
Emigrantentochter zerstöre […] hat nicht etwa damit zu tun, daß ich Ida zumindest
posthum 34 aus dem Gefängnis ihrer Kindheit befreien möchte – ich habe es, ganz ehrlich,
allein auf ihren Dracula von Vater abgesehen. (288)
He uses the secret Ida revealed to him in an intimate moment to exact revenge on her father, a
first generation perpetrator, thereby reinforcing the divide between Germans and Jews. The short
story ends with his relationship to a ‘real’ Jew, the German Jew Ilana from Frankfurt, as opposed
to his relationship with the German Ida who merely posed as one. In a passage that is reminiscent
of him lying next to Ida after sex, the protagonist states: “ich legte mich nackt neben die nackte
Ilana, ich küßte ihren echten originaljüdischen Bauch, der mir schon bald mein erstes echtes
originaljüdisches Kind gebären sollte” (290). His sarcastic repetition of the word
“originaljüdisch” can be read as a jab at Ida, who was not “actually Jewish” but instead only
pretended this identity, an accomplice in her father’s cover-up of his perpetration. In stark
contrast to the German Ida is the Jewish Ilana, with whom he chooses to make his Jewish future
and continued Jewish identity in Germany.
34
Ida has already met with her own poetic justice, although not at the hands of the Jewish protagonist: ironically,
she is killed by neo-Nazis after one of her readings, before her actual German identity was revealed.
64
Although it at first seems it will not, the past ultimately divides the German-Jewish
couple of Biller’s short story. Taking this a step further, the Jewish protagonist is compelled to
bring the past to light and take revenge on his former lover’s Nazi father. By the end, the Jewish
protagonist allies himself with a Jewish partner and future, in opposition to his initial relationship
with a non-Jewish German, Ida. Although he and Ida were able to talk about the past, their
dialogue does not make their relationship feasible; the Jewish protagonist is eventually too
disturbed by Ida’s familial connection to perpetration and once again, the past segregates the
Jewish and non-Jewish German characters into oppositional sides.
Conclusion
For the first time since the Holocaust, the texts of this chapter imagine second generation Jewish
and non-Jewish German characters in romantic relationships with one another. These second
generation Jewish German authors approach the subject of the past and its legacy by placing
Jewish protagonists in a close love relationship to a gentile German, and spinning out the
consequences of the Holocaust legacy on personal and intimate encounters between members of
the two cultural groups. Karen Remmler and Leslie Morris claim in their introduction to the 2002
volume Contemporary Jewish Writing in Germany: An Anthology that “any volume on Jewish
writing in Germany published more than a half-century after the Third Reich will inevitably raise
the specter of the Shoah and its impact on present-day life in Germany” (1), and certainly these
works’ relationships are haunted by that specter. While they bring together members of these
oppositional groups, these love stories ultimately reinforce the Holocaust rift between Germans
and Jews. Both the Jewish and the non-Jewish German characters’ identities are based on the
Holocaust, and that same past eventually breaks them apart. In this way, German-Jewish couples
65
are both connected and divided by the past, and their relationships are exemplary of Diner’s
concept of the negative symbiosis. In the context of their romantic relations, there is a desire to
connect across this divide, and at times the couples are even able to talk about the difficult past.
However, this is not sufficient to bridge the divide, and their identities remain tied to
oppositional groups, existing on either side of the Holocaust chasm. Yet, as Schruff points out, it
is hardly new for love stories to address the difficulties in a relationship:
Die Thematisierung von scheiternden Liebesbeziehungen oder die Feststellung, daß die
Liebenden nicht miteinander und nicht ohne einander leben können, ist in der
zeitgenössischen fiktionalen Literature weder neu noch besonders originell. Vor dem
Hintergrund der nationalsozialistischen Massenmorde, die vor der Geburt der Protagonisten
stattgefunden haben, erhalten die an sich banalen Ereignisse von Trennung und Versöhnung
in einer deutsch-jüdischen Liebesbeziehung allerdings eine starke symbolische Kraft für das
Verhältnis zwischen Juden und Nichtjuden in Deutschland nach 1945. (185)
Honigmann, Mitgutsch, Seligmann and Biller’s problematic German-Jewish love stories must be
read against the historical backdrop of genocide, making them symbolic comments on the
infeasiblity of German-Jewish connection after Auschwitz. The relationships function as a way
for these Jewish protagonists to form their identities as Jews in the “land of the murderers” and
test out possible closer connection to the country and non-Jewish Germans who are (at least
always potentially) descendants of perpetrators. While these texts unanimously conclude such a
close relationship cannot be sustained, their German-Jewish relationships are beginning steps
toward connections between members of the two groups.
These texts are also united by issues of silence and dialogue as well as alternate
relationships. Here, however, a gender difference must be noted. Male and female Jewish
protagonists in these texts who are romantically involved with non-Jewish Germans run aground
for different reasons, even if all the reasons are ultimately related to the Holocaust legacy. The
male characters confront their female German partner’s familial past, in the form of a Nazi
66
perpetrator father; the female characters, on the other hand, confront their male German partner’s
unwillingness to speak about the past. 35 In texts with a Jewish male protagonist, dialogue with
the female German partner about the past is possible, but it is not able to bridge the chasm
caused by the Holocaust. In his book, German Literature of the 1990s and Beyond:
Normalization and the Berlin Republic, Stuart Taberner surveys a variety of (romantic and
platonic) relationships between Germans and Jews, and “starts from the premise that Germany
can never be truly ‘normal’ until Jewish and non-Jewish Germans are able to address each other
and their shared past in a manner that promotes understanding, avoids stereotypes–on both sides–
and does not elide historical injustices” (xxii). While dialogue does not solve the couples’
problems related to the past, Seligmann and Biller’s texts represent such a step toward
Taberner’s idea of ‘normality,’ for their Jewish and non-Jewish German lovers are able to
dialogue in this way.
However, texts with Jewish male protagonists end with their (present or future) alliance
to Jewish German women, while Jewish female protagonists are alone at the novels’ conclusions.
This gender split may be due to the fact that Jewishness is passed down matrilineally, and so if a
male Jew had children with a non-Jew, then their offspring would not technically be Jewish;
given the diminished numbers of Jews due to the Holocaust, it may be too great a taboo to bring
non-Jewish children into the world, even fictional ones. Seligmann and Biller’s endings suggest
that there are still two “sides” to which Germans and Jews each belong, with little sustainable
crossover. Biller’s protagonist chooses an “originaljüdisch” partner and their child; Seligmann’s
character Jonathan Rubinstein resigns himself to future marriage to a fellow Jew, and the only
35
It is well-documented that silence, on the public as well as private level, has been a German response to the
Holocaust. In addition, Ernestine Schlant has documented the silence of writers after the war on the topic of
Auschwitz and its horrors in her book The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust.
67
mixing of the two identities occurs in his proclamation about himself that he is a “deutscher
Jude.” Neither protagonist is able to imagine a German-Jewish future with a non-Jewish German
partner.
While Honigmann and Mitgutsch’s texts also do not present any such symbolic future,
one can read their open-ended final pages as a step away from oppositional, binary distinctions
of “German” and “Jew.” Neither female protagonist chooses to be allied with one binary side or
the other through a partner; they are in liminal spaces, on a train or in an airport, in between
countries, identities and alliances. In discussing Honigmann’s body of work, Karen Remmler
sees a progression of “disengagement from the ‘negative symbiosis’ between Germans and
Jews” and believes that this “disengagement is not a sign of escape, per se, but rather an attempt
to fashion a positive Jewish identity that is neither solely mired in German Jewish relations nor
determined by the memory of the Holocaust” (“Engendering” 584). One can read the endings of
both Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus nichts and Mitgutsch’s Abschied von Jerusalem as such
disengagements, and as a move away from polarized identities based on the Holocaust legacy in
order to create an open space for new identities yet to be determined.
All four texts discussed in this chapter imagine and explore issues of German-Jewish
relations on an intimate, individual level, although they also all conclude that oppositional group
membership and the past outweigh individual affections. While the relationships in these texts
ultimately ‘fail’ when faced with the Holocaust past, the texts themselves do not: they represent
an effort of imagination on the part of the authors and their readers to step across the Holocaust
chasm. It is this effort of imagination, this breaking of the silence, which set the stage for the
further developments in the genre of the German-Jewish love story discussed in the following
chapters.
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In Chapter Two, I consider these issues from the other “side”: two contemporary texts by
German authors with non-Jewish German protagonists experiment with finding a way out of the
negative symbiosis. The protagonists of the next chapter attempt to disengage their identities
from inherited familial perpetration and a “German” identity that places them in an oppositional
group to their Jewish partner. These second generation German characters desire to put the past
behind them, and be seen as individuals by their Jewish partners.
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Chapter Two: Breaking Away From the Past:
The Individualization of German Identity
Introduction
In the love stories of Chapter One, Jewish German protagonists grappled with their relationship
to “the land of the murderers” and to second generation Germans, the children of perpetrators.
The female Jewish protagonists ended in liminal spaces, between countries, possibly opening up
the space for new identities not so rigidly determined by the Holocaust’s legacy. The main texts
of this chapter, Bernhard Schlink’s short story “Die Beschneidung” (2000) from his collection
Liebesfluchten and Anja Tuckermann’s novel Die Haut retten (2000), focus on German-Jewish
love stories from the “other side”: from the perspective of non-Jewish German protagonists and
their ways of contending with their inheritance of the past. 36 The non-Jewish German partners of
Chapter One were silent about the past, or felt ashamed of it but resigned to its legacy; the
German protagonists of this chapter instead are struggling against being defined by the Nazi past
and German perpetration. Although the negative symbiosis again plays a central and detrimental
role in these romantic relationships, the German protagonists seek to distance themselves from
its relegation of “Germans” and “Jews” into oppositional groups. They walk a fine line,
acknowledging the past, including their own familial connections to perpetration, yet also
36
I do not separate texts with Jewish and non-Jewish German protagonists into different chapters with the intention
of essentializing these identities or reinforcing binary notions of “Germans” and “Jews” in opposition to one
another. Rather, throughout this dissertation I group works according to themes, and the texts of Chapter One and
Two are categorized together because of their commonalities in content. The groupings in these two chapters reflect
the fact that these texts themselves are wrestling with “Germans” and “Jews” as oppositional categories. As these
categories become more flexible in the texts of following chapters, there is an increased integration of texts by and
about both non-Jewish and Jewish Germans.
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wanting to move break away from the negative German identity it ascribes to them. While the
texts of Chapter One broke the taboo on German-Jewish love, the love stories of this chapter
explore the prohibition on distancing German identity from Nazism and perpetration.
My analysis begins with Irene Dische’s short story “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” (1989)
from her collection Fromme Lügen, in order to compare her German character’s adoption of a
Jewish identity with Biller’s and Tuckermann’s German partners attempts to disassociate
themselves from Nazism and/or a negative German identity. In Dische’s text, Margeret, a gentile
German, posing as a Jew, taking on the outward appearances of Jewish identity such as dyeing
her blond hair black, using Yiddish expressions, and wearing a Star of David. Similarly, in
Bernhard Schlink’s short story “Die Beschneidung,” Andi takes on the outer marker of
Jewishness, the circumcision of the title, in an attempt to distance himself from his German
identity and, he hopes, change over to the “Jewish side.” In Anja Tuckermann’s novel Die Haut
retten, the non-Jewish German Karla takes a somewhat different approach: at the request of her
Jewish partner, she first searches for a Jewish grandmother in her family tree that would ‘make’
her Jewish and thus more acceptable to him. However, she then rejects this idea of going over to
the other ‘side’, and challenges her partner to accept her and a Nazi family history. She wants to
be loved for herself, despite the fact she is a German. While the first text shows a German
character who tries to switch “sides” in order to escape the connection between her identity and
the Nazi past, the other two indicate a move toward a German identity that acknowledges ties to
perpetration but is not wholly defined by it.
Dische’s text serves here to introduce the theme of separating German identity from the
past. Though all three texts contain a romantic relationship between a German and Jewish
character, the German-Jewish relationship functions differently in Dische’s earlier text than in
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the love stories of Schlink’s and Tuckermann’s later texts. In Dische’s tale, Margeret takes on
this Jewish identity before meeting Charles Allen and when he discovers her deception, she is
punished for it; the budding relationship between the two sours and Charles savagely reinforces
the division between them as “German” and “Jew.” In this sense, Dische’s text is similar to the
works of Chapter One, also set during the 80s or earlier, in which there is an attempt at closeness
with a non-Jewish German that is ultimately rejected as impossible. Schlink’s and Tuckermann’s
texts on the other hand, set during the 1990s, (and both published in the new millennium) allow
for more exploration of the ‘sides’: the German protagonists’ frustration with the divide between
them as Germans and their Jewish partners, as well as their own experimentation with new kinds
of German identity.
Written a decade after Dische’s work and set during the 1990s, Bernhard Schlink’s short
story “Die Beschneidung” (2000) and Anja Tuckermann’s novel Die Haut retten (2000) must be
read in the context of debates about normalization. Normalization “became the uncontested
buzzword of the 1990s” (Taberner Literature of the 1990s xiv), and in brief, the debates have
focused on whether Germany can and/or should become a ‘normal’ nation, whose difficult past
is integrated into a larger narrative, rather than one whose Nazi past marks it as ‘abnormal’
compared to other nations. Schlink’s and Tuckermann’s German-Jewish love stories provide the
arena for their German protagonists’ struggle with being associated with perpetration and
Nazism by their Jewish partners, wanting to be seen as ‘normal’ individuals rather than as
‘Germans’ who are equated with Nazism.
In these two texts, the love story functions as positive justification for wanting to
disassociate from the past, a move that was previously taboo in German society. Schlink’s and
Tuckermann’s novels frame their German protagonists’ motivations as sympathetic, for they
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struggle to be seen as individuals, and not to be held captive by an inherited past and negative
German identity. In her book After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the
Holocaust, Eva Hoffmann has pointed out about the difficult problem of inherited guilt and roles
for younger Germans: “On the one hand, it is possible to understand the young Germans who
refuse to take on the mantle of an awful history, or assume […] guilt for deeds their grandparents
committed in a crazed world long ago. What is Hitler to them or they to Hitler?” (130). After
meeting their Jewish partners, Schlink’s and Tuckermann’s non-Jewish German protagonists
attempt to distance themselves from the Nazi past; they want to be closer to their partner and
believe this will only be possible if they can find some way to become less polarized in their
roles of “German” and “Jew.”
Yet the topics of National Socialism and familial perpetration by no means disappear in
their texts. In her introduction to her study Gedächtnis und Geschichte in Generationenromanen
seit der Wende, Friederike Eigler analyzes generational novels of the 1990s by non-Jewish
Germans in the context of an “anhaltenden Gedächtnisboom” in unified Germany in which “die
sich neu formierenden Vorstellungen von ‘Germanness’ und nationaler Identität stehen im
direkten Zusammenhang mit Vorgängen, die der Historiker Konrad Jarausch als eine ‘dreifache
Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ bezeichnet hat” (10). Set during the 1990s, Schlink’s and
Tuckermann’s German-Jewish love stories must be read in this context as well, for while theyare
concerned with confronting the past, they are also involved in the “reconfiguring of identities”
unleashed by unification (Jarausch 10). Part of this reconfiguring involves questioning the extent
to which German identity should be defined by the Nazi past, and so these texts reflect and
interact with both the debates about normalization and German identity after unification. Similar
to contemporary historians who do not “seek to absolve Germany from its historical guilt,” but
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rather “attempt to historicize an era which had major repercussions on the development of
[German society]” (Berger 218), these protagonists want to acknowledge the past while drawing
a line under it and historicizing it in order to lessen its effect on their lives and identities.
Jeffrey Peck observes that “reunification becomes the overwhelming metaphor for the
mirage that closure [about the past] has taken place,” stating that “the war and the postwar
situation were for many Germans […] now concluded because Germany was reunited” (288).
Schlink’s and Tuckermann’s post-unification German protagonists show a desire for just such
closure about the past. While aware of the past, these second and third generation protagonists
seek to move beyond their connection to it. But at the same time, their clumsy attempts to
become closer to their partner position them as victims to be pitied; they feel that their Jewish
partners will not allow them to bridge the gap between them. Stuart Taberner has questioned
whether non-Jewish German authors
can write about Jews, give voice to Jewish characters, or describe Jewish fates without
exploiting them as a means of underpinning a form of German ‘normality’ which either
excises German perpetration from German history or sentimentalizes, even commodifies,
Jewish suffering. (171)
By writing Jewish characters into these love stories, Schlink and Tuckermann exploit them as a
way to portray Germans as sympathetic and ‘normal’ for wanting to not be connected to
perpetration: at least in part, they want to be disconnected from perpetration so that their
relationships with their Jewish partners will be sustainable. In addition, their texts strike a
delicate balance between confronting and excising history: while couples speak about their
families’ pasts and the German partners’ connection to perpetration, the German protagonists
also wish to excise a negative connection to it in their second and third generation identities. As
gentile German authors, Tuckermann and Schlink strive to create sensitive gentile German
characters, interested in their Jewish partners’ background and culture, who want to be able to
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stay connected to their Jewish partners – yet who blame the Jewish partners for making this
difficult or impossible, for not being able to see the German partners as individuals or appreciate
their efforts to bridge the chasm.
Giving an overview of the literary landscape in the 1990s, Helmut Schmitz commented
that it is “marked not least by a resurgence of the topic of National Socialism,” and that there is
“a growing body of writing, fictional, (auto)biographical and historical, that continues to
problematize and address the relations between the present and the past” (4). Through GermanJewish love stories, Schlink’s, Tuckermann’s and Dische’s texts all address the topic of the Nazi
era as well as the relationship between the present and the past. I will begin by showing how
Irene Dische’s short story “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” introduces the themes of disassociating
German identity from the past and Germans as victims, while continuing the theme of the
separation of “Germans” and “Jews” into opposing categories. Then, in my analysis of the other
two works, I will trace the ways in which National Socialism and the presence of the past surface
in the couples’ relationships, dividing them via their negative symbiosis roles. I will also address
the characterization of the German protagonists as liberal and sympathetic partners, who try to
learn about their Jewish lovers’ background and culture, but are rebuffed; because they perceive
themselves as mistreated by their Jewish partners, they frame themselves as victims. Finally, I
will show how the German protagonists wish to be seen as “normal” individuals, not as
“Germans” overshadowed by the negative past, and who rebel against their association with the
past in different ways. In his book German Literature of the 1990s, Taberner writes that
deliberations about normality are the contemporary manifestations of the enduring debate about
the “feasibility, desirability, and structure of a German identity after Auschwitz” (xxi), and these
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fictional German-Jewish romantic relationships contribute to the larger discussion about how to
define German identity after the Holocaust.
Irene Dische’s short story “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” (1989)
Irene Dische is an American-born author who was raised Catholic in the U.S., but is of GermanJewish descent. She converted to Judaism and moved to Germany in the 1980s, where she still
resides. The short story “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” (1989) was translated from the English
text “The Jewess” from her collection Pious Lies, but she now writes and publishes primarily in
German.
“Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen” bridges themes from Chapter One and this chapter. Like
the texts in Chapter One, the protagonist Charles Allen—an adult child of first generation
German-Jewish survivors—is struggling to define his relationship to Germany and his Jewish
identity through a romantic relationship with a German woman named Margeret. Written by a
Jewish author and told from the Jewish protagonist’s point of view, the short story ultimately
reinforces Germans and Jews as on opposite sides of the negative symbiosis. Charles Allen was
raised in the U.S. by German Jewish émigrés who fled Germany during the Nazi rise to power;
after the war, his father returns to Germany because he misses his Heimat, leaving his son
Charles and his wife behind. Charles travels to Germany after his father’s death in the 1980s in
order to claim his inheritance, but with many mixed feelings about his relationship to his father,
his own Jewishness and the “land of the murderers.” When he meets Esther, who appears to be a
German Jew, running the shop his father left to him, he becomes interested in her. His romantic
interest is fueled in part by the fact that he admires her strong Jewish identity and he hopes that
by associating with her he can shore up his own shaky sense of Jewish self. After it is revealed
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that “Esther” was in fact born Margeret and is the daughter of an SS father, however, Charles
Allen’s feelings toward Esther/Margaret change and he violently rapes her.
By raping her, Charles punishes Esther/Margeret for trying to change ‘sides’ in the
German-Jewish schism after the war, and reinforces essentialist identities of “German” and
“Jew.” As Todd Herzog points out
Dische’s story wants to be a play of stories and identities that destabilizes essentialist
notions, emphasizing the fantastical, constructed nature of hybridity […] [However]
ultimately this story turns on polar identities: there is a Jew and a German, a male and a
female identity – you can dress one up as the other, but the ‘real’ body underneath is
exposed in the end. (13)
The ending thus reasserts the divide between German and Jewish identities post-Holocaust. In
her 2002 article on Dische’s short story, Susan Anderson posits that Charles rapes
Esther/Margeret out of anger at himself for having been so easily deceived by her appropriated
Jewishness:
Horrified when he discovers Esther's deception about her past, especially because he has
accepted her perverted performance of Jewishness as a demonstration of his own
‘nature,’ Charles rapes her. […] His realization that his passions have been directed
toward an illusion of an identity unleashes his repressed desires in a destructive manner.
(5)
Charles wants no crossover between German and Jewish identities, and can only tolerate a clear
division between the two. Like other Jewish partners in the relationships of this chapter, Charles
has the power to enforce what side his German partner is on. In addition, the ending reinforces a
negative symbiosis between Germans and Jews: their connection, here symbolized by the sexual
act, can only be negative, as the sex act is a rape, an act of violence and not affection.
Though this violent playing out of the negative symbiosis might seem to tie Dische’s
story to the texts of Chapter One, I include it here because it breaks new ground by creating a
second generation German character that is trying to escape the perpetrator past by taking on a
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Jewish and victim identity. Dische seems to justify Esther/Margeret’s adoption of a Jewish
persona by making her the victim of violent Nazi parents. Diana Orendi reads her as a typical
Dische heroine, “a painstakingly self- constructed control freak” (123), who acts and lives as a
Jewess as a way of “rejecting her given identity as the daughter of a Nazi lawyer” (124). Susan
Anderson’s analysis of Esther’s motivation is similar: “Esther’s exaggeration of, and obsession
with, Jewishness seem to overcompensate for the crimes of her Nazi father” and she takes on “an
oppositional Germanness” through Jewishness because it “runs counter to the non-Jewish
German identity […] [she] abhors” (5). She wants to distance herself from her father, as well as
her mother, who beat her as a child, knocking out all of her teeth (which resulted in the scar on
her lip and her need for false teeth, two characteristics of her appearance that are emphasized
throughout the story). Dische’s short story paints Margeret as a victim of brutal first generation
parents, who takes on a Jewish identity in order to escape her violent familial—and Nazi—past.
While the character of Margeret on the one hand is sympathetic, her deception is
punished by the American Jewish protagonist. Yet the choice of rape as her punishment, rather
than public denouncement or legal action for example, adds an extra layer to Esther/Margeret’s
disassociation from perpetration. She is clearly not a perpetrator, but rather a victim of a sexual
crime. 37 Thus at the same time that her identity appropriation is punished, the punishment
transforms Margeret into an actual victim of sexual assault. Similar to the dynamic created in the
next two texts under discussion here, Dische’s text creates a German character that is not wholly
sympathetic in the ways she challenges her connection to perpetration, but who on the other is a
victim at the mercy of the Jewish partner. The character Margeret is thus significant as a
37
She is also characterized as the victim of Nazi parents, which is a common argument in the genre of
Väterliteratur, where the son views himself as the victim of his Nazi father.
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beginning exploration of both the disassociation of German identity from Nazism and a German
adoption of the victim position in a literary German-Jewish relationship.
Bernhard Schlink’s short story “Die Beschneidung” from Liebesfluchten (2000)
Bernhard Schlink (b. 1944) is a second generation, gentile German author most well-known for
his best-selling novel Der Vorleser (1995), 38 in part due to the fact that the English translation
was featured as an Oprah Book Club selection in 1999. He is also a lawyer and legal scholar and
has also published a series of crime novels, for which he received his first literary prizes,
although the majority of his awards have been for Der Vorleser. The focus of this analysis, “Die
Beschneidung,” is from his collection of short stories, Liebesfluchten (2000), and has been
translated into English as “The Circumcision” in the volume Flights of Love (2001). This story in
particular has garnered the most critical attention both in popular reviews and scholarly criticism.
In an overview of Schlink’s works, Janet Witalec notes Schlink’s interest in “the dark
legacy of the Holocaust among ‘second generation’ Germans” and that his recent collection of
short stories, Liebesfluchten (2000), “similarly explores the complex moral and psychological
tensions that shape German self-identity and national consciousness after the horrors of the Nazi
era” (1). Jeffrey Adams likewise comments that this collection focuses on characters which are
“caught in the tangles of Eros, but also ensnared by the complexities of their social and historical
situations,” but by placing them in “relation to social reality and the political past,” Schlink
ensures that his characters do not “devolve into kitsch” (147). Andreas Nentwichs disagrees,
38
Most secondary literature on Bernhard Schlink focuses on Der Vorleser. To date, there is only one academic
article on Liebesfluchten, which will be discussed later in this section; all other available literature on this collection
of short stories is in the form of reviews.
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remarking in his review for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung that the “Bodensatz von Klischees” are
one of the reasons the stories in this collection come across as overly constructed and
unbelievable. In general, Liebesfluchten has received mixed critical assessments, as Witalec
summarizes:
While some critics have approved of Schlink’s minimalist style and his investigations
into the influence of modern German history on individual lives and relationships, others
have found his stories to be emotionally insubstantial, unconvincing, and artlessly
didactic. (3)
In my assessment, the most compelling aspect of “Die Beschneidung” is indeed the ways in
which Schlink plays out the effects of Holocaust legacy in individual lives and relationships,
most notably the German protagonist Andi’s life. He convincingly portrays Andi’s grappling
with feeling trapped in a German identity that he did not choose and wants to dissociate himself
from. He is successful in capturing what Andreas Nentwichs calls “das Für und Wider in
Konflikten” (ibid), for example in his depiction of Andi and his Jewish girlfriend’s
misunderstandings and the unintentional ways they hurt one another related to the past’s legacy.
More problematic, however, is the short story’s ending and the ways in which Schlink positions
Andi as a victim of the past and of Sarah.
“Die Beschneidung” focuses on the love relationship between the second generation
gentile German Andi and his Jewish American girlfriend Sarah, the daughter of Holocaust
survivors. They fall in love in New York City, Sarah’s hometown, where Andi is on an academic
grant. They meet one another’s families and shortly thereafter begin to discuss and eventually
argue about “German” and “Jewish” characteristics, stereotypes and identities. After Sarah visits
Germany with Andi, meeting his father and questioning him about his activities during the war
as a soldier, their relationship begins its downward spiral. Andi increasingly feels that their
German and Jewish identities divide them, and decides to be circumcised, in order to “become
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Jewish” and bridge the distance between them—however, he fails to discuss this plan with Sarah.
A surgeon friend performs the surgery without any complications, but Andi’s circumcision does
not have the desired effect on Sarah or their relationship. After making love for the first time
since his secret operation, Sarah fails to notice his physical alteration, and he is disappointed that
she does not recognize the sacrifice he made for her. While the ending is left open, it seems
likely that Andi and Sarah break up.
Throughout the story, Andi struggles with the legacy of the German past in terms of its
effect on their relationship and his identity. As with the couples in Chapter One, the past comes
up and between Andi and Sarah, complicating their efforts to see one another as individuals and
understand one another’s family and cultural backgrounds. The past first arises as a topic of
conversation when Andi meets Sarah’s extended family. Yet unlike the relationships in
Rubinsteins Versteigerung and “Aus Dresden ein Brief,” conflicts with the partners’ families and
specific family histories do not break apart this couple. At a Bat Mitzvah party, one of Sarah’s
uncles who lived through the camps questions Andi about his father’s actions during the war.
Andi knows little about this, except that his father was a soldier, and says as much. During a
conversation with Sarah’s sister, Andi learns that she takes issue with Sarah and Andi’s
relationship not because he is a German, but because he is a gentile, and she believes that their
children of mixed marriages rarely are raised in the Jewish faith. While these encounters make
Andi uncomfortable, no one in Sarah’s family outright protests them dating on the grounds that
he is a German.
When Sarah later meets Andi’s family when she travels with him to Germany, the couple
is again confronted with the Holocaust past via Andi’s family. While her encounter with his
father is similarly uncomfortable, Andi’s familial connection to perpetration does not cause
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Sarah to end their relationship, as in other earlier texts. At a family dinner, Sarah questions
Andi’s father about his actions as a soldier during the Nazi era, but feels she did not get the
whole truth from him: “Er hat mir mit seinem Blick gesagt, dass er auf meine Fragen jedesmal
eine Antwort haben, mich mit meinem Mißtrauen jedesmal ins Unrecht setzen, mir aber nichts
sagen wird” (222). Although likely that his father was more than just a soldier following orders
as he claims, Sarah separates Andi and his father, and states that “solange du nicht schaust wie
dein Vater, soll er schauen, wie er will” (ibid). This is a break with the past that has not been
allowed previously, and a significant shift: the Jewish character does not break up with the
German partner after such an encounter with the first generation of perpetrators. Sarah does not
hold Andi accountable for his father, but only asks that he prove himself different than that
generation and its wrongdoing. At this juncture, this text allows the German second generation
not to have to carry the sins of the fathers on its shoulders, and presents the past as something
that may not have to overshadow the present. In this way, it appears to advocate for second
generation Germans being allowed to be “normal,” part of a “normal” nation, whose difficult
past is integrated into a larger narrative, rather than one whose Nazi past marks it (or its later
generations of non-Jewish German citizens) as “abnormal” compared to other nations. In
addition, it also at first depicts the Jewish partner as understanding of her gentile German’s
background and connection to perpetration.
Despite the fact that interactions with the two families are less problematic than expected,
other problems related to the legacy of the past surface for the couple. Andi feels boxed in by a
negative German identity. He feels that Sarah and her family perceive him as a member of the
group ‘German’ and ‘Nazi’ rather than as an individual. Despite a generally conflict-free
experience with her family, Andi does feel they treated him in a prejudiced manner: “Vor allem
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begegnet ihr mir mit Vorurteilen. Ihr wißt schon alles über die Deutschen, also wißt ihr alles über
mich. Also müßt ihr euch auch nicht mehr für mich interessieren” (236). Sarah defends her
family by bringing up the Holocaust past, implying that she and her relatives have earned the
right to be able to make such generalizations because they have met ‘enough’ Germans to know:
“Genug, und zu denen, die wir gerne kennengelernt haben, kommen die, die wir lieber nicht
kennengelernt hätten, aber kennenlernen mußten” (ibid). This is the beginning of Andi’s
victimhood: he feels Sarah’s Jewish survivor family regards him as ‘one of them,’ rather than as
an individual.
More importantly, however, Andi feels that Sarah herself cannot see him in any way
other than, first and foremost, a German connected to the Nazi past. Their fights increase, and are
solely focused on topics related to the past. In another fight, when Andi jokes about the
unmended holes in Sarah’s clothing, she replies: “Du hast es mit der Ordnung […] Tina [eine
gemeinsame Freundin] würde sagen, das ist der Nazi in dir” (239). This response irritates Andi,
who is reaching his breaking point regarding such comments. Sarah sees this kind of labeling
pragmatically and says he should be used to it by now: “Daß es die Leute, die dir begegnen,
beschäftigt, daß du ein Deutscher bist, daß sie sich fragen, wie deutsch du bist, was das Deutsche
in dir ist und ob es schlimm ist–das ist dir doch nicht neu” (ibid). She tries to reassure him by
saying she loves him ‘even though he is German’ but this only heightens the conflict, because he
turns the tables on her, saying that if he said he loved her even though she was Jewish: “Fändest
du das nicht antisemitischen Schwachsinn? Und warum ist es schwer zu verstehen, daß ich
antideutsche Vorurteile ebenso schwachsinnig finde?” (240). This argument comes to a head in
the following exchange, when she feels forced to explain what he has to do with the Holocaust:
Sarah: ‘Was du mit dem Holocaust zu tun hast? Du bist Deutscher, das hast du mit dem
Holocaust zu tun. Und das beschäftigt die Leute, auch wenn sie zu höflich sind, es dir zu
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zeigen. […] und außerdem denken sie, daß sie es dir nicht zeigen müssen, weil du es
selbst weißt.’
Andi: ‘Ich weiß nicht, ob ich damit zurechtkomme, gemocht oder geliebt zu werden,
obwohl ich Deutscher bin. […] du magst es nicht verstehen, aber ich bin verwirrt, daß ich
nicht als der genommen werde, der ich bin, sondern als ein Abstraktum, ein Konstrukt,
das Geschöpf eines Vorurteils.’ (241)
The crux of their problems is that Andi cannot come to terms with the fact that German identity
is inextricably linked to the Holocaust, and that he is perceived always first (by Sarah and other
Jews) as a German connected to perpetration rather than as an individual.
But both Andi and Sarah make attempts to understand one another’s culture and
background better, and Sarah stresses the importance of dialogue about their differences. She
believes that it is impossible to not think about someone’s background and that she and her
friends and family are always trying to come to terms with “was die Deutschen gemacht haben”
(242). She believes that they have to ask themselves “was daran typisch deutsch ist und was
davon in diesem und in jenem Deutschen und auch in dir [Andi] steckt. Aber sie nageln dich
nicht darauf fest” (ibid). Nonetheless, Andi does feel pigeonholed by this treatment, and so
Sarah agrees that she will try to see things more from his point of view: “Ich will versuchen,
dich weniger vor dem Hintergrund meiner Kultur zu sehen, vor dem deine Äußerungen
manchmal … […] irritierend wirkend, sondern mehr vor deinem Hintergrund. Und ich will
deinen Hintergrund besser kennenlernen” (ibid). They each make an effort to find out more
about each other’s culture—among other things, he attends synagogue with her, and she goes to
church with him and attends Goethe Institute lectures. Sarah also stresses that it is important they
always talk to one another: “Wir kommen aus zwei verschiedenen Kulturen, wir sprechen zwei
verschiedene Sprachen, […] wir leben in zwei verschiedenen Welten – wenn wir aufhören,
miteinander zu reden, treiben wir auseinander” (213). This is another significant shift in the
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German-Jewish relationship in this text: they are both trying to better understand the other’s
position, in order to find a way to stay together.
Andi, however, feels that they reach an impasse where discussion no longer helps their
relationship, and he wants instead to erase the differences between them. Like Margeret/Esther in
Dische’s text, he wants to switch sides in order to distance himself from the problematic past;
however, unlike Margeret, he does so only because he hopes it will solve the problems between
him and his Jewish lover. As the number of touchy subjects multiplies, Andi feels increasingly
estranged from Sarah: “Über die Familie zu reden war heikel, über Deutschland, über Israel, über
die Deutschen und die Juden. So schnitt er seine Liebe immer kleiner zu” (237). He is not
convinced that dialogue is enough, and believes that he has to switch to her ‘side’. Andi engages
in an internal monologue about how to deal with cultural differences between himself and Sarah,
and the limits of acceptance:
Gibt es nur ein Entweder-Oder? […] Entweder Deutscher oder Amerikaner, Christ oder
Jude? […] erträgt man letztendlich nur seinesgleichen? Natürlich kommt man mit
Unterschieden zurecht, und wahrscheinlich kommt man ohne sie überhaupt nicht aus.
Aber müssen sie nicht einen gewissen Rahmen wahren? Kann es gutgehen, wenn wir uns
in unserer Verschiedenheit grundsätzlich in Fragen stellen? (229)
Shocked by his own thoughts about only being able to tolerate (“ertragen”) one’s own kind, he
worries that he is a racist: “Man erträgt nur seinesgleichen – ist das nicht Rassismus oder
Chauvinismus oder religiöser Fanatismus?” (230). He continues to mull over how to avoid being
a racist or fanatic. He knows that Germans and Americans, Jews and Christians get along all over
the world but then wonders
ob sie einander vielleicht nur ertragen, weil die einen oder die anderen aufgeben,
was sie sind. Weil […] die Deutschen wie die Amerikaner oder die Juden wie die
Christen [werden]. Fängt da erst der Rassismus oder religiöser Fanatismus an, wo man zu
dieser Aufgabe nicht bereit ist? Wo ich nicht bereit bin, für Sarah ein Amerikaner und
Jude zu werden? (230).
85
His line of reasoning indicates that he believes that in order for different cultures to get along,
one has to surrender to the other. He seems trapped in a worldview in which identities conquer
one another, rather than of the mindset that members of different nationalities and religions can
coexist in a diverse world. Terrified of being a racist, perhaps because this would ally him with
racist Nazi beliefs, he is invested in being open and tolerant. He sincerely wants to find a way to
reconnect with Sarah, and justifies his desire to become circumcised, saying: “Ich liebe die Frau,
und sie liebt mich, und mit unseren verschiedenen Welten kommen wir nicht zurecht. So
wechsele ich eben aus meiner Welt in ihre” (246).
Like Dische’s female German character, Andi takes on the outer marker of Jewishness in
order to disassociate himself from his German identity. He chooses the surface change of
circumcision, “the most obvious sign of difference, sign of political or group identity, racial
marker” of Jewish male identity (Gilman “Male Sexuality” 219). He conceives of this as a
sacrifice, but also as the most expeditious way to escape the legacy of the past. He is so blinded
by his either/or perception of German-Jewish relations that he cannot see how the differences
between him and Sarah could be positive, as his surgeon friend points out:
Vielleicht liebt sie deine Vorhaut. Vielleicht teilt sie deine komische Theorie nicht und
will mit dir leben, weil du nicht gleich, sondern anders bist. Vielleicht nimmt sie’s nicht
so ernst wie du, wenn ihr streitet. Vielleicht mag sie’s. […] Irritiert dich nicht, daß die
Entscheidung, mit der du die Theorie anwendest, eine Lüge ist? […] Du willst für Sarah
ein Jude werden, aber um das, was es braucht, ein Jude zu werden, willst du dich drum
herum mogeln. (248)
Rather than continuing to discuss their differences and problems with Sarah, or even to actually
convert to Judaism, Andi stays on the surface of the issues. He never discusses his decision with
Sarah, assuming simply that she holds his same belief that people can change their national and
religious affiliations easily: “Deutsche werden Amerikaner, Protestanten werden Katholiken […]
So, wie ich Christ bin, ohne Glauben und ohne Gebete, kann ich auch Jude sein. Ich meditiere in
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der Kirche, aber warum soll ich nicht ebenso wie in der Kirche in der Synagoge meditieren?”
(246-247).
When his circumcision does not have the desired effect—in fact, Sarah notices no
difference at all—Andi adopts a victim position. He is angry that Sarah does not recognize his
sacrifice for their relationship, and feels lost and out of sorts. He feels in between worlds, neither
fully German but also not Jewish, and not belonging in New York nor his hometown of
Frankfurt, and blames her for this. For Taberner, Andi’s “‘sacrifice’ merely reinforces old
stereotypes: the guileless German who falls prey to the seductive exoticism of the Jewess”
(Literature of the 1990s 170). But the result of falling prey to Sarah is not simply that he is
seduced, but that he is victimized: in Andi’s eyes, Sarah holds the power to recognize his effort,
to welcome him over to the Jewish side, but denies him this comfort. Sarah holds the power to
view him as an individual who can and has changed, and when she doesn’t notice this essential
difference about him, it is as if she is not seeing him at all, only the group “German.”
The crisis of the text is that Andi is caught in the negative symbiosis, and is looking for a
way out. He sees himself as trapped on one side of the Holocaust chasm, and wants to be seen as
a “normal” individual rather than as “German” that is equated with Nazism and perpetration.
When he becomes convinced that Sarah (among others) will never see him as an individual, he
tries to change sides instead and become Jewish, but even that decision ultimately reinforces the
binary trap of negative symbiosis he and Sarah are in. Stuart Taberner reads Schlink’s text as a
satirization of “sentimentalized philo-Semitism” (ibid), a send-up of the belief that by swinging
to the other extreme, harmonious German-Jewish relations could be achieved. Paranoid about
being anti-Semitic or racist, Andi catapults himself to the other end of the spectrum, in a move
87
that mirrors the official German policy of philo-Semitism after the war. 39 While his attempt is a
clumsy failure, Andi is nonetheless a somewhat sympathetic character motivated by love for his
Jewish partner and a desire to bridge the gap between them. The story can also be read as a
satirization of the impasse that the negative symbiosis leads to, and which leaves Germans and
Jews on opposite sides with no way across.
Despite the fact that Andi and Sarah likely break up at the end of the story, their romantic
relationship portrays a closer relationship between German and Jewish characters than seen thus
far. In contrast to the earlier texts of Chapter One, they meet one another’s families and confront
their personal connections to the Holocaust past, make attempts at understanding each other’s
different backgrounds, and dialogue about the past. Admirable in his desire to connect with
Sarah and to bridge their differences, but pitiful in his misguided effort to do so, Andi is a nonJewish German protagonist of the 1990s trying distance himself from the negative past in order
to remain part of a German-Jewish relationship. Andi wants to be seen as an individual and
‘normal’ (i.e. not associated with the negative past), but when he believes he never will be
regarded in this way, he attempts to change his allegiance to the “Jewish side” through
circumcision. Schlink’s love story “Die Beschneidung” presents more positive but still fraught,
complicated interactions of a German-Jewish couple, as well the ultimate infeasibility of
attempting to change sides in the negative symbiosis. The couple in Anja Tuckermann’s novel
confronts similar issues, but her non-Jewish German protagonist makes a very different decision
about how to distance herself from the negative German identity related to the past.
39
Conceived of as the opposite of (Nazi policies of) anti-Semitism, as ‘love’ (‘philo-’) and respect for things Jewish,
philo-Semitism was supposed to prevent history from repeating itself. For more on the policy of philo-Semitism
after the war in Germany, see Frank Stern’s book, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and
Philosemitism in Postwar Germany.
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Anja Tuckermann’s novel Die Haut retten (2000)
Born in Bavaria, German writer Anja Tuckermann (b. 1961) grew up in Kreuzberg, a
predominantly Turkish neighborhood in Berlin, where her novel Die Haut retten (2000), takes
place. She published her first book, Mooskopf, in 1988, and since then has written poetry, novels,
short stories and plays. Tuckermann is primarily known for her prize-winning books for children,
such as her most well-known work, Muscha: Ein Sinti-Kind im Dritten Reich (2005) which won
the Deutscher Jugendliteratur Preis in 2006. Her literature for adults, on the other hand, has
received little critical attention and her novel Die Haut retten is no exception. 40 However, it
shares the theme of many of her other works, which is the “Auseinandersetzung mit dem
‘Anders’-Sein oder mit dem ‘Anders’-Gesehenwerden,” as the website for the Internationales
Literaturfestival Berlin states on its author page about Tuckermann. In the German-Jewish
relationship of this novel, she addresses the aftereffects of National Socialism on interactions
between Karla, a third generation non-Jewish German, and Joschi, her American Jewish
boyfriend, and the ways in which they see each other as the Other.
The story begins with Joschi having left for New York to visit his parents and to decide
whether he can continue to live in Germany and be together with Karla. As an adult child of
survivors, Joschi is conflicted about living in Germany and dating a German woman, and rarely
misses an opportunity to let Karla know this. At first he places most of his reluctance about being
with her on his parents, saying that as survivors they object to him dating a German woman, but
later he recapitulates, admitting that his parents have come to terms with their relationship and
40
I was unable to locate any literary reviews for this novel. Petra Fachinger’s article “Hybridity, Intermarriage and
the (Negative) German-Jewish Symbiosis” is the only academic texts to discuss it, and her article’s bibliography
does not include any secondary literature on Die Haut retten.
89
are happy as long as he is. Nonetheless, their relationship suffers under the weight of the past.
Told from Karla’s perspective, the reader learns that she is tired of Joschi labeling her “German”
in opposition to his Jewishness, and that she does not feel she should be held responsible for first
generation Germans’ acts of perpetration during the Holocaust. By living in Kreuzberg and being
the mother of a Turkish-German son from a previous liaison, Karla is characterized as open to
other cultures and respectful of diversity. Joschi rebuffs her repeated efforts to learn more about
Judaism and his cultural heritage, which angers her; she wants him to recognize her as being
different from close-minded, racist Germans of the past as well as to see her as an individual, not
as linked with the negative German identity. Although Joschi returns to Germany at the end of
the novel to announce that he has had a change of heart, and has come to the conclusion that he
can be with Karla despite the fact that she is German, he nonetheless wants her to search for a
Jewish grandmother in her family tree. At first Karla is willing, wanting to take this escape route
out of German group membership and change over to the Jewish side, but then changes her
mind, revealing instead that her search unearthed a grandfather who was a documented Nazi
party member. 41 The novel ends with her putting Joschi’s newly regained love for her to the test
with this revelation, but leaves his reply unknown and the ending open.
Like the German-Jewish couple in Schlink’s short story, Karla and Joschi struggle with
the role of the Holocaust past in their relationship, which is fraught and circumscribed by
polarities. The non-Jewish German protagonist Karla, like Andi, does not wish to be boxed in by
the German past, and wants to be seen as an individual. Also like Andi, she walks a fine line: she
does not deny the past, even bringing up her own familial connection to possible perpetration,
but still does not want to be defined by it. Among all of these similarities, there is a gender
41
It is unclear whether Karla fabricates such a relative or actually finds proof of such a grandfather. Petra Fachinger
believes she invents him in order to test Joschi (162); this seems most likely, but the text never explicity clarifies
whether the grandfather was a Nazi party member.
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difference worth noting: Karla has the option of lessening her connection to perpetration through
the Jewish grandmother Joschi suggests she try to locate in her family tree. However, unlike both
Margeret and Andi, she does not turn away from her German identity and take on a token Jewish
identity, and instead insists that she be accepted by Joschi as a non-Jewish German with a
connection to perpetration. This is a bold step in a different direction, reconfiguring German
identity if not as positive, then at least not as something to be ashamed of. Tuckermann’s novel
forthrightly calls into question the power of the perpetrator past to negatively affect later
generations of Germans in their identity, reflecting the debates about Germany as a “normal”
nation whose past is integrated into its national history. It paints a picture of a culturally
sensitive German woman who is the “victim” of her Jewish lover’s refusal to see her as an
individual rather than a “German,” but also challenges this power he wields over her.
The past comes up and between Karla and Joschi from the beginning of their relationship.
Joschi often brings up his Jewishness and Karla’s gentile Germanness and frames them
negatively, in opposition to one another. He associates her German identity and his Jewishness
with roles that come from the Nazi era: “Es gibt einen Unterschied zwischen dir und mir. […]
Ich denke darüber nach, ob ich heute die Zeichen früh genug erkenne, um das Land rechtzeitig
zu verlassen. Du denkst darüber nach, ob du Widerstand leisten oder mitmachen würdest” (8384). When she asks him if he will shave his beard, he replies: “Die gojischen Frauen scheinen
immer Schwierigkeiten mit dem Bart zu haben.” This statement enrages her, for she feels that
“immer mußte er ihr sagen, daß sie anders war und nicht zu ihm gehörte” (53). While she
understands that he has issues with Germany and Germans, she tires of being the object of his
generalized contempt and anger with her nation and its past: “sie war nie nur Karla, die an ihrem
Verhalten gemessen wurde, sie war immer auch die Deutsche. Und die waren für Joschi eben
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schwierig” (84). She even wonders if they would have anything to talk about if they weren’t
discussing group issues: “Was für Themen hätten wir wohl, wenn wir nicht darüber sprechen
müßten, wie die Deutschen sind und wie die anderen” (24-25). For her part, she would tell him
about different people that she saw when she was out and about in Berlin, and they are all
individuals: the older, faded beauty who sits at a café surrounded by her admirers, for example.
This underscores the fact that she would focus not on others’ nationality or culture, but their
unique characteristics as individuals.
Her anger grows throughout the novel, and she argues for Joschi to see her as an
individual, not as a “German.” When Joschi asks what it is like for Karla to be with someone
who is Jewish, she replies that she is tired of having to think in terms of “German” and “Jew”—
and also of him putting them in these categories: “Ich will nicht jeden Tag wissen, daß ich
Deutsche bin. Ich denke nicht jeden Tag darüber nach. […] Ich denke immer, du willst weg von
diesem Land, weil du mich nicht willst. Weil du nicht zu sehr an einer deutschen Frau nicht
hängen willst” (50). During another argument, in which Joschi makes critical remarks about “the
Germans” and then apologizes, saying he doesn’t want to offend her, Karla counters, asking
what the annoying (German) individuals have to do with her; she makes it clear that “es war ihr
eine Last, jeden Tag an ihre Nationalität erinnert zu werden” (75).
She also is annoyed with his views on the German past. He believes in collective guilt,
and that all Germans are guilty because of the Holocaust and responsible for making amends and
learning from their history. He says that since he is not German, it is not his responsibility to deal
with the past or feel shame because of it: “Ich bin nicht deutsch, ich muß mich nicht mit der
deutschen Geschichte auseinandersetzen […] Ich muß mich nicht schämen” (86). Karla is
incensed by this comment and when she replies that she isn’t ashamed, Joschi makes it clear that
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he nonetheless sees her as a member of the guilty German collective: “Aber du gehörst zu
diesem Volk, zischte Joschi. Du bist auch verantwortlich, wiedergutzumachen, was geschehen
ist. […] Du bist mitverantwortlich, daß so was nicht noch einmal geschieht” (87). She angrily
responds by questioning if individual actions should be the way to make up for the past: “Ich?
Wiedergutmachen? Wie denn? Soll ich dir Honig um den Bart schmieren und dir jeden Morgen
Kaffee kochen, weil die Juden besseren Menschen sind als die Deutschen?” (87). She is tired of
his moral speeches about how the Germans should learn from their past, and doesn’t believe it
does any good to single them out among nations. When he brings up the subject of the
xenophobic attacks that were occurring during the early 1990s on foreign asylum seekers, she
anticipates his coming speech, and cuts him off, refuting that people ever learn from history:
Jetzt kommen noch die Lehren der Geschichte, die Mahnung und die besondere
Verantwortung der Deutschen. […] Wenn es überhaupt möglich ist, daß jemand aus der
Vergangenheit lernt, dann gilt das für alle Menschen. Auch in Frankreich oder Holland
oder sonstwo. Aber ich glaube nicht, daß die Menschen aus der Geschichte lernen. Nicht
in dem Sinn, daß eine Verfolgung von Gruppen nicht mehr stattfinden wird. (80-81)
Karla wants to be seen as an individual, and wants the German past to be relativized and
historicized into a larger European narrative. In short, she does not want its legacy to continue in
her individual, personal relationship with a Jewish man, and she wants the past to be normalized.
Karla is sympathetically portrayed as liberal and open to other cultures, while Joschi is
portrayed as insensitively rebuffing her well-intentioned efforts to learn about his Jewishness.
Joschi dislikes it when she tries to find out about his culture: “Er mochte es nicht, wenn sie sich
mit jüdischer Kultur beschäftigte. Wenn Karla Fragen zu seiner Kindheit, der Familie, über
Bräuche hatte, antwortete er oft: Das verstehst du sowieso nicht, oder: Davon weißt du sowieso
nichts” (66). He often remarks that she cannot understand anything Jewish, saying “dir ist das
sowieso alles fremd,” and she agrees, but only because she views him as so intent on denying her
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access to his culture and traditions: “Ja, weil du immer so tust, als wäre es ein großes Geheimnis
und ich zu doof, irgendwas zu kapieren” (69). He thinks of his Jewishness as “eben mein Bereich
[…] das ist mein anderes Leben, die Seite von mir, die du gar nicht kennst” (ibid), and seems
determined to keep it this way. Petra Fachinger comments that Tuckermann’s novel “constructs
Karla as a likeable character” and that
she genuinely loves Joschi, she is a good mother, and her behavior is ‘politically correct.’
The fact that, from her marriage to a Turkish German, she has a child who has a Turkish
first name and bears his father’s surname characterizes her as open-minded and as
embracing difference. She is also sensitive to injustice and makes an effort to learn as
much as possible about Judaism. (12)
All of these good qualities do little to sway Joschi’s view of Karla, for he can only see her as a
German connected to the Nazi past, but they paint a picture of her as making every possible
effort to make things work with him.
Karla almost attempts a kind of surface switch to Jewishness like Andi undertakes in
“Die Beschneidung,” but then abruptly veers from this course, offering a surprising new take on
German-Jewish relations. After Joschi returns to Germany and shows a renewed interested in
their relationship, Karla researches her family tree at his behest, hoping to find a Jewish relative
that would bring her closer to Joschi’s Jewishness. She is desperate to find a way to find a
compromise that will make it possible for her to be herself and have Joschi to love her:
Karla war zu allem bereit […] Sie suchte in den Lebensdaten der weiteren
Verwandtschaft, bei den Geschwistern der Urgroßeltern, sie gierte danach, eine jüdische
Spur zu finden. Dann könnte sie so sein, wie sie war, und Joschi hätte nicht das Gefühl,
sich mit ihr vertan zu haben. (111)
She is happy when her research yields the finding that her family tree is “lauter Lücken”:
Ein Gefühl der Freude zischte Karla in den Kopf: Na, dann gibt es ja tatsächlich noch
Hoffnung. Im nächsten Moment sackte das Blut wieder ab. Selbst wenn sie eine jüdische
Urgroßmutter gehabt hätte, würde sie Joschi niemals davon erzählen. Sie schämte sich,
daß sie sich hatte hinreißen lassen, überhaupt zu suchen. (112)
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However, Karla abruptly decides that she cannot take on a token Jewish identity through a dead
relative, and instead challenges Joschi’s association of her with a negative German identity.
Instead of trying to switch the ‘other’ side, to the Jewish side as Andi attempted, Karla
asserts her German identity and a connection to perpetration, and insists on being accepted for it.
The novel has an open ending, in which both Karla and Joschi question one another about the
past and its role in their relationship. The following exchange concludes the novel, during which
Karla’s tone becomes increasingly challenging:
Joschi: Ich liebe dich – und – ich wünsche mir eine Familie.
Karla: Und da fragst du zuerst nach meinen Großeltern?
Joschi schweigt. Karla ist erstarrt. […] Mein Großvater war Mitglied der NSDAP, sagt
Karla.
Joschi: Seit wann weißt du das?
Liebst du mich doch nicht mehr? Fragt sie. (138-139)
While she at first considers disassociating herself from a negative German identity by finding a
Jewish relative, Karla ends the novel by testing Joschi with a familial connection to perpetration.
Although she has the way out of the impasse that Andi was searching for, by virtue of her
gender, she refuses it, and instead calls into question why a Jewish man can’t love her because of
a past that is not in her control. In this way she is not trying to deny the past, but rather
attempting to uncouple contemporary German identity from its negative legacy. However, by
challenging her Jewish partner in this way, she goes beyond normalizing German identity, and
takes a step toward inverting the victim/perpetrator model by positioning herself as a victim of
his (likely) rejection because of the past.
Petra Fachinger comments on this novel’s ending:
Either Karla is testing his love for her in the hope that it will be strong enough to
overcome even this obstacle, or she realizes that he will not be able to live with this
revelation and uses it to ‘punish’ him for his undecidedness. The message of Die Haut
retten is that the (negative) German-Jewish symbiosis makes it impossible for Jews and
Germans to have a satisfying life together. (162-163)
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Once again, the negative symbiosis separates German and Jewish lovers: they are connected yet
divided by the Holocaust’s legacy. But like Joschi, Karla is characterized as in the right, for she
is culturally sensitive and aware of the German past, and desires to stay together with her partner.
She calls into question the effect the legacy of the past should be allowed to have on her present
day relationship with a Jew. Her character breaks new ground by attempting to break out of the
stigma attached to being German because of the linkage between perpetration and German
identity, and wanting to be accepted for who she is as an (open-minded, accepting) individual,
regardless of the past. On the one hand a sympathetic character, on the other hand Karla and the
text’s ending are highly problematic, as they position Germans as potential ‘victims’ of Jewish
partners who hold the power to decide whether the German-Jewish relationship is feasible given
the legacy of the Holocaust.
Conclusion
The texts of Chapter Two continue the experimentation with German-Jewish connections and
identities post-Holocaust and also post-unification. When viewed from the other, German ‘side,’
fictional German-Jewish love stories continue to reflect the negative symbiosis: like the texts of
Chapter One from the Jewish perspective, these couples are also connected yet divided by the
Holocaust legacy. The major shift is that the non-Jewish German characters of this chapter try to
disassociate themselves from an inherited, negative German identity. Dische’s text “Eine Jüdin
für Charles Allen” makes it clear that in the 1980s, the negative symbiosis is still the defining
metaphor for German-Jewish relations: there are clear sides, and there can only be a negative
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point of connection between the two. The gentile German protagonists in Schlink’s and
Tuckermann’s texts, while able to confront their own connections to perpetration, want neither to
be negatively defined nor to separated from their partners by it. They desire a new kind of
German identity, a normalized identity in which the past can be acknowledged but then
historicized. Set during the 1990s, these texts reflect and interact with the debates about
normalization and German identity after unification; they reconfigure Germans as liberal, openminded, and aware of the past, which should entitle them to being seen as “normal” individuals,
unburdened by their inherited legacy and able to be in a love relationship with a Jew. Yet while
Schlink’s and Tuckermann’s German protagonists make attempts at breaking out of the negative
symbiosis, and out of the polarized roles of “German” and “Jew” in their personal GermanJewish relationships, for the majority of the texts, they continuously struggle with these
dynamics. Their open-ended conclusions leave some room to imagine that these German-Jewish
relationships in fact could end “happily,” but these texts themselves ultimately do not portray
such a positive German-Jewish connection.
In his article “Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Auschwitz: The Fading of the Therapeutic
Approach,” Frank Trommler explains that the seminal work by Margarete and Alexander
Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern, suggested that if Germans could mourn the events of
World War II, then they could get some closure on the Nazi era (150). These texts take steps
toward mourning (the legacy of) the war, 42 and express the German characters’ longing for
42
As discussed in Chapter One, the Holocaust has long been considered an inherited trauma for the children and
grandchildren of Jewish survivors, and clearly and rightfully so. But perhaps there is a parallel for later generations
of Germans with the Nazi legacy: they experience the loss of a positive national identity, and need to grieve that
loss. In fact, their approaches to dealing with the legacy of the past exhibit different stages of grief that Elizabeth
Kübler-Ross first outlined in 1969 in her influential work, On Death and Dying. In response to a traumatic event
(the death of a loved one, for example, but also any kind of loss), Kübler-Ross observed that people generally
moved through various stages in their grief: denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance (7). Dische’s
character of Esther/Margeret represents the denial phase of grief: she disassociates herself completely from her
German family and identity; Andi bargains with Sarah, trying to be seen as an individual rather than a “German”
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closure about the past. Addressing Martin Walser’s now infamous Peace Prize speech at the
1998 Frankfurt Book Fair, Trommler explains that Walser was bitter that his efforts had not led
to redemption:
Walser complained about the fact that Auschwitz was still ‘instrumentalized’ as ‘a
permanent exhibit of our shame.’ His frustration might not have been so pointed if he had
not engaged earlier with such intensity in the topics of guilt and moral indifference.
Having done in the 1960s more than most German writers of his generation to admonish
his audience to face Auschwitz, Walser seems to have vented, with equal energies, his
frustration about the fact that his plight has not led to redemption. There has been an
assumption that Germans of the second generation can ‘repair.’ Many had an unwritten
agenda for redemption, if not of the parents and the country then at least of themselves. In
the 1990s it became clear that there is no restitution of an earlier normality, or a closure
concerning the encounter with Auschwitz. (ibid)
Similarly, Schlink’s and Tuckermann’s German protagonists are frustrated that facing the past
and being open-minded has not led to redemption. These later generation characters operate
under the assumption that they can repair their personal relationships with their Jewish lovers,
and redeem themselves as Germans in doing so. However, there is no closure or no normality, as
their problematic German-Jewish romantic relationships indicate. Nonetheless their texts are an
indication of the German desire for such closure and normalization of German identity and
German-Jewish relations and their attempts at reconfiguring their identities as less influenced by
the Nazi past.
Yet related to their strategies of disassociating their identities with the past, all three texts
also invert the victim/perpetrator dynamic by sympathetically portraying the German partner as a
“victim” of both the Jewish partner and the Holocaust past or legacy. As Ruth Wittlinger
summarizes:
connected to Nazi perpetration, and also tries to deny his Germanness by being circumcised; Karla is willing to
bargain at first, and try to find a Jewish grandmother, but in the end, angrily challenges her loss of a positive
German identity.
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Whereas the early post-war period was characterized by a remembering of German
victimhood, the period from the 1960s onwards is traditionally seen as having
concentrated on German perpetrators. Since the latter half of the 1990s—gaining
momentum with the beginning of the new millennium—the victim theme has re-emerged.
(63)
These texts all indicate a re-emergence of the theme of Germans as victims, but also that in
literature it emerges as early as 1989, with Irene Dische’s “Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen.” Her
German character Margeret is significant as a beginning exploration of both the disassociation of
German identity from Nazism and a German adoption of the victim position in a literary
German-Jewish relationship. Margeret’s attempt to become Jewish is punished and the ending
clearly puts “Germans” and “Jews” on opposite sides. The potential romantic relationship is
squelched by Margeret’s identity deception, the Jewish identity she adopted before ever meeting
Charles. Schlink and Tuckermann create more clear-cut love stories, in which sensitive and
liberal gentile German characters try to stay connected to their Jewish partners by attempting to
change their German identities. Here love stories function as the positive motivation for wanting
to shed a negative German identity connected with perpetration, while never denying the
Holocaust or first generation German perpetration. Yet as positive as this motivation may be for
wanting to move beyond the past, these non-Jewish German protagonists blame their Jewish
partners for making it impossible to uncouple themselves from the legacy of the past. They
impugn their Jewish partners for not seeing them as “normal” individuals or appreciating their
efforts to bridge the Holocaust chasm.
With the rape of her female German character, Dische’s text introduces the theme of
Germans as victims of their Jewish partners. Although it makes her a “real” victim, Margeret’s
rape can also be understood as punishment for her deceptive adoption of the Jewish persona
“Esther,” whereas in the later two texts, both German protagonists are positioned as unfairly
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treated by their Jewish partners. Andi and Karla are “good,” liberal Germans whose Jewish
partners refuse to recognize their individuality and their efforts at understanding Jewishness, and
deny them relief from their inherited past and negative German identity. In this way, these
authors questionably portray their gentile German protagonists as “victims” of their Jewish
partners and a past they did not choose. Most often when the discourse on German victims is
invoked, it refers to Germans “rediscovering themselves as victims of the Second World War”
during the 1990s (Berger 210). 43 Recent topics in literature and history have focused on first
generation Germans as the “double victims” of the Allied bombings and of the “demon of Hitler”
who led ordinary Germans astray, among others (Berger 213). 44 However, the literary texts of
this chapter focus on the recent decades and contemporary Germans’ difficulties in the present
because of the past, and how they feel at the mercy of their Jewish partner. Stefan Berger, in his
article “On Taboos, Traumas and Other Myths: Why the Debate about German Victims of the
Second World War is not a Historians’ Controversy,” writes that in the 1990s and beyond there
is the sense that “Germany had earned the right [to talk about German victimhood] precisely
because it was so successful in working through the National Socialist past” (218). Schlink’s and
Tuckermann’s German protagonists take this a step further, asserting victim identities precisely
because they view themselves as open-minded, liberal Germans who are aware of the Nazi past
and its legacy, and are willing to talk about it, even their own connections to it.
These German characters show a desire to move beyond the Holocaust as the only
determinant of their German identity, but their gender plays a role in their ability to do so. While
Margeret can pass for Jewish for a good portion of the story through modifications to her
43
As Ruth Wittlinger argues, however, the concept of Germans seeing themselves as victims has existed since
immediately following the war. For a history of the theme of Germans as victims since the 1950s, see her article,
“Taboo or Tradition? The ‘Germans as Victims’ Theme in the Federal Republic until the mid-1990s” in the volume
Germans as Victims.
44
See also the debates about W.G. Sebald’s works and Günter Grass’s novella Im Krebsgang, for example.
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physical appearance, Andi’s circumcision does nothing to help him change “sides.” Karla has a
similar flexibility as Margeret, for if she could find a Jewish grandmother, she could adopt a
(partially) Jewish identity. Like the love stories of Chapter One, the female German characters
have more flexibility regarding their identity than the male German, with Margeret and Karla
able to play with their identities along German and Jewish continuums in a way that Andi is not.
The possibility of German women disassociating themselves with the perpetrator past becomes
even stronger in the works of the next two chapters. I speculate on why and how this theme
emerges further in German-Jewish love stories in my analyses of the films in Chapter Three.
German-Jewish romantic relationships are once again the arena in which to break taboos
and test out identities and possibilities of German-Jewish connection after the Holocaust, but
these non-Jewish German authors do so more cautiously, using “America” as buffer. While the
Jewish authors of Chapter One broke a long-standing taboo on German-Jewish love after the
Holocaust, portraying romantic relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans in “the
land of the murderers,” non-Jewish German authors Schlink and Tuckermann appear to shy away
from involving their protagonists with German Jewish partners, giving them instead American
Jewish partners. Andi’s and Karla’s Jewish partners Sarah and Joschi are both Americans who
travel to Germany at some point, but were neither raised nor intend to reside there; “America”
and “American” function as a buffer between “Germans” and “Jews,” making it possible for
members of these divided groups to interact with one another, but with lowered stakes than if the
relationship were between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans in Germany. Later, in Chapter Four’s
anaylsis of Peter Schneider’s Eduards Heimkehr, the possibility of the title character’s Jewish
American wife moving to Berlin with him causes problems in their relationship; the question of
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whether an American Jew can reside in Germany after the Holocaust with the gentile German
partner will be answered in that chapter.
As not one non-Jewish German author or filmmaker in this dissertation’s survey creates a
love story between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans set in Germany, 45 this appears to be a
remaining taboo in the arena of German-Jewish relations. By having non-Jewish German
protagonists involved with American Jews, Schlink and Tuckermann skirt the issue of relations
between Germans and Jews who live in the “land of the murderers” after the Holocaust, and
perhaps can slip more easily into the role of victims themselves. But because both Sarah and
Joschi are second generation Jews, the children of survivors who fled to America because of the
Nazis, the love stories still function as a way to explore relationships to the past’s legacy and its
effect on the German-Jewish relationship.
The films of Chapter Three go back in time to the Nazi era in an attempt to circumvent
the negative symbiosis before it begins, depicting “good” German exceptions to first generation
perpetration. In this way, they continue the theme of endeavoring to uncouple German identity
from Nazism in order to create a more positive German identity. Yet in doing so, they also
problematically flirt with a similar depiction of gentile German partners as victims.
45
I call this a remaining taboo because to date there is not one non-Jewish German author or filmmaker in the
survey of this dissertation that creates a love relationship between a non-Jewish German protagonist and a Jewish
German character during the present day. The gentile German filmmakers of Chapter Three go back in time,
depicting such relationships only during the Holocaust; Peter Schneider’s novel Eduards Heimkehr, dealt with in
Chapter Four, has his titular German protagonist married to a second generation American Jew, who comes to Berlin
with him after unification. Any gentile German protagonists are always involved with American Jews in these texts.
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Chapter Three: Gendered Normalization:
The “Good” German Woman in Films of the 1990s and Beyond
Introduction
Part of what Daniela Berghahn has called “a virtual memory boom on the silver screen during
the 1990s” (Hollywood 59), cinematic German-Jewish love stories produced during the last few
decades explore the possibility of the German-Jewish connection, 46 but in contrast to the texts of
Chapters One and Two, return to the first generation setting of Nazi Germany. These
contemporary films predominantly center on a sympathetic gentile German women intimately
involved with Jewish Germans being persecuted by the Nazis, in order to portray “good”
German exceptions to the anti-Semitism of the time. Told from the point of view of a young
Jewish teenager, Agnieszka Holland’s Hitlerjunge Salomon (1990), the earliest of the films
investigated in this chapter, stands out as one of the few contemporary films to present a Jewish
46
Unlike German language literature, which did not thematize German-Jewish love relationships until the late
1980s, German cinema addressed the topic early on. A comprehensive examination of these films is beyond the
scope of this dissertation’s focus on contemporary German literature and film, but these early films are nonetheless
worth mentioning here. In her article “Post-1990 Screen Memories: How East and West German Cinema
Remembers the Third Reich and the Holocaust,” Daniela Berghahn notes that “German film history provides
numerous earlier examples of German-Jewish solidarity and love. Famous West German productions include
Helmut Käutner’s In jenen Tagen (1947) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Lili Marleen (1981). The best-known
DEFA films which depict German-Jewish solidarity as romantic love are Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten (1947),
Konrad Wolf’s Sterne (1959) and Siegfried Kühn’s Die Schauspielerin (1987) (304). For a further discussion of East
and West German films about the Nazi past, see Daniela Berghahn, Hollywood behind the Wall: The Cinema of East
Germany; Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History; Sabine Hake, German National Cinema; Anton
Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film; Barbara Kosta, Recasting Autobiography: Women’s
Counterfictions in Contemporary German Literature and Film; Susan Linville, Feminism, Film and Fascism; Eric
Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory and Film in Postwar Germany.
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experience and perspective under Nazism. After adopting a German identity in order to survive
in Nazi Germany, the title character Salomon (Solly) falls in love with a member of the Bund
Deutscher Mädchen named Leni. Although they both want to be physically intimate, he cannot
take that risk of revealing his true identity (by exposing his circumcision) and they break up. The
romantic relationship between Solly and Leni satirizes Nazi ideas about the supposedly
oppositional natures of Germans and Jews, but also underscores the hostile and dangerous
environment Nazism created for German-Jewish connection.
In contrast, films such as Joseph Vilsmaier’s Comedian Harmonists (1997), Max
Färberböck’s Aimée und Jaguar (1999), Didi Danquart’s Viehjude Levi (1999) and Margarethe
von Trotta’s Rosenstrasse (2003) celebrate depictions of German-Jewish love and solidarity
against Nazism. These films are part of a larger group of films that Lutz Koepnick has termed
heritage films, defined as German-language motion pictures from the 1990s onward that offer
audiences “sweeping historical melodramas that reproduce the national past, including that of the
Nazi period, as a source of nostalgic pleasures and positive identifications” (“Amerika” 193).
While acknowledging the antagonistic, anti-Semitic setting of Nazi Germany, these films use it
as the melodramatic backdrop against which the German-Jewish love story is set–and against
which the sympathetic German lovers stand out even more strongly providing ‘positive
identifications’ for German viewers. Notably, in all of the cinematic deptictions of GermanJewish love stories from this era of film, the German partner is always a woman. In the
following close readings of these films, I will trace the two main ways in which these women are
characterized as “good” Germans: they are set apart as the exception to their anti-Semitic
surroundings and they (attempt to) help their Jewish partners survive Nazi persecution.
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The German-Jewish love stories of the previous two chapters showcase the ways in
which the Holocaust reverberates in romantic relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish
partners in the years following the Holocaust. These texts emphasize the difficulties second and
third generation German and Jewish couples face due to the German past, as well as their
attempts to bridge the contemporary chasm created by it; the couples are bound together by the
so-called “negative symbiosis.” The films of Chapter Three go back in time to the Nazi era in an
attempt to prevent the negative symbiosis before it begins, depicting “good” German exceptions
to first generation perpetration. Through their German-Jewish love stories, all four later films
portray individual German exceptions to Nazism and anti-Semitism through sympathetic female
German partners romantically involved with Jews. In the texts of Chapter Two in particular, the
German protagonists’ acknowledgement of the Nazi past and their own connection to
perpetration by virtue of being German was balanced by their desire to be seen as individuals, in
order to distance themselves from the divisive Nazi legacy. The love stories of heritage films
take a similar approach: their Nazi-era settings recognize the historical traumas that occurred, but
by returning to the first generation and finding individual exceptions to Nazism, they endeavor to
prevent the negative symbiosis from occurring in the first place. As Lutz Koepnick argues,
heritage films “reorder the past” by glorifying “successful moments of German-Jewish
cooperation prior to or even during the Nazi period” and so “seek to elude Diner’s negative
symbiosis” (“Reframing” 66).
Thus these cinematic German-Jewish love stories continue the theme of disassociating
individual German characters from Nazism and so create a more positive and “normalized”
German identity. The return to the past is crucial here, though, for as Stuart Taberner argues,
“[t]he desire to freeze time before the destruction of the German-Jewish symbiosis may well
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equate to a wish to ‘normalize’ German history” (“Wie kannst” 230). These films are all
produced after unification, and reflect the desire to normalize Germany’s identity that intensified
after 1989. As Berghahn notes:
West German screen memories 47 of the Third Reich after unification […]
reflect many aspects of the normalisation discourse that has dominated the public sphere
since the 1980s. This discourse was precipitated by unification, when notions of the
German Sonderweg and exceptionalism were readily replaced by the inviting
prospect of a return to normal nationhood and a German national
identity unencumbered and unburdened by a Nazi past. The unburdening
led to an intensified reappraisal of National Socialism and the Holocaust
and, on screen, to a fascination with the past that was re-imagined rather
than remembered. (“Screen Memories” 299)
As the past returns, re-imagined, to the silver screen, it becomes the site of a positive
reinterpretation of the German role during the Nazi era. Love stories in particular play a crucial
role in these “post-memory films which re-imagine the past in such a way that they convert ‘bad
history into a good story’ ” (Berghahn, “Screen Memories” 301-2); German-Jewish love stories’
“good” German exceptions to Nazism allow for positive identification with the past. Koepnick
also sees these films’ “re-viewing of the national past” as playing a special role in constructing a
more normalized German identity after unification since
they solicit a new kind of German consensus for the emerging Berlin Republic. To be
sure, the German heritage film should not be understood as the product of some sinister
intentionality or coherent program. Recent heritage films participate in what Eric
Rentschler has called postunification cinema’s drive for consensus. Many of the films
[…] reclaim sites of German-Jewish reciprocity against the grain of historical traumas. In
47
In her article “Post-1990 Screen Memories: How East and West German Cinema Remembers the Third Reich and
the Holocaust,” Daniela Berghahn explains why East German cinema after unification does not return to the past in
the way West German productions do: the latter “subscribe to the normalisation discourse, [while] East German
screen memories are eager to challenge the hitherto state-ordained anti-fascist interpretation of the past” and in the
early 1990s, East German film-makers – in so far as they kept making films at all – “were more interested in coming
to terms with a more recent past, the legacy of the GDR’s totalitarian regime” (308). She argues that “after
unification the normalization discourse, which developed in the Federal Republic during the 1980s, gained
ideological hegemony, and the memory contest in German cinema was won by the West” (ibid), and thus there are
not the same kind of heritage films or German-Jewish love stories to be found in East German filmmakers’ oeuvres.
For a further discussion of the differences between East and West German cinema after unification, see Berghahn,
Hollywood behind the Wall: the Cinema of East Germany.
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many of these films what remains of the past is not the disconcerting memory of trauma,
but rather the image of intuitive understanding, harmonious community, and ethnic
consensus. (51-2)
Through such images of German-Jewish understanding, love and ‘ethnic consensus,’ heritage
films align themselves with Berghahn’s definition of normalization: “the aim of constructing a
collective memory of the German past that is no longer encumbered by guilt and that allows
Germans to take a more positive approach to their national identity” (“Screen Memories” 295).
Specifically, the heritage films with German-Jewish love stories under discussion here use
sympathetic female German partners to give rise to a more ‘normalized’ German identity.
Many scholars have noted the trend since the 1990s to return to the subject of the Nazi
era. Paul Cooke notes that at first the success of films like Lola rennt (Tom Tykwer, 1998)
seemed to indicate that the topic of National Socialism was no longer of interest, but films like
Nirgendwo in Afrika (Caroline Link, 2001) and Der Untergang (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
indicate otherwise: if anything, National Socialism’s legacy “seems to be on the increase” (76).
Daniela Berghahn corroborates this idea:
Many people anticipated that German reunification would result in a new era of
forgetfulness and that a line would be drawn once and for all under the darkest chapter of
German history – the Third Reich and the Holocaust. But in fact the very opposite was
the case. The restoration of the German nation after more than four decades of division
placed National Socialism and the Holocaust at the centre of the quest for a new
and shared German identity. (“Screen Memories” 294)
But even before the 2001 release of Nirgendwo in Afrika, there are a number of films that return
to the Nazi era in German cinema of the 1990s. In addition to the aforementioned films, these
are: Mutters Courage (Michael Verhoeven, 1995), Gespräch mit dem Biest (Armin MuellerStahl, 1997), Meschugge (Dani Levy, 1998), Nichts als die Wahrheit (Roland Richter, 1999),
Gloomy Sunday—Ein Lied von Leben und Tod (Rolf Schübel, 1999), Leo und Claire (2001) and
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The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002). 48 In her book Hollywood behind the Wall, Daniela
Berghahn identifies a “third wave of films concerned with the past” that was “sparked by the
revived debate around Germany’s shared historical legacy in the wake of reunification” (62).
Berghahn writes that the three thematic concerns of these films are: 1) fictive encounters in
which the perpetrators are lent a voice 2) family sagas investigating whether guilt runs in
German families beyond the first generation and 3) films about anti-Semitism, “a theme which
has received unprecedented attention since the 1990s” (ibid). The films discussed in this chapter
fall within the third group, comprising a subgroup of such films that focus on German-Jewish
romantic relationships.
Both Lutz Koepnick and Sabine Hake point out the theme of German-Jewish love stories
in post-unification cinema. In his article “Reframing the Past: Heritage Cinema and Holocaust in
the 1990s,” Koepnick sees German filmmakers as exploring both the Nazi past and the history of
Jews in 20th century Germany through the “crucible of melodramatic intensities” in the
“triumphant images of German-Jewish love and cooperation” (49); romantic love between
Jewish and non-Jewish German helps to provide “a new image of German-Jewish consensus
detached from any traumatic memory of the Shoah” (59). Sabine Hake, in a forthcoming article
on Der Untergang, sees Comedian Harmonists, Aimée & Jaguar (1999), Leo und Claire (2001),
Nirgendwo in Afrika (2001), and Rosenstrasse (2003), as films which all “rely on GermanJewish love stories to redeem the past through the loving sacrifices of German women on behalf
of their Jewish partners” (17). 49 Yet although both note the trend, neither Koepnick nor Hake
explore the specific depictions of German-Jewish romantic relationships in these films. In
48
I include The Pianist here because it is a German-French-British-Polish co-production.
However, this list is inaccurate. Only the three films I deal with here actually contain love stories between a
gentile and a Jewish German. In Nirgendwo in Afrika the relationship is the marriage of two German Jews; in Leo
und Claire it is likewise, although the main character, a German Jewish man, is accused of having a relationship
with a gentile German, which may have led to the confusion.
49
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addition, Hake makes note of the fact that it is German women who play a key role in cinematic
German-Jewish romantic relationships, but her article does not explore it further.
However, it is precisely this observation that deserves further attention, for in all of the
heritage films with German-Jewish love stories, namely Hitlerjunge Salomon (1990), Comedian
Harmonists (1997), Aimée und Jaguar (1999), Viehjude Levi (1999) and Rosenstrasse (2003), it
is striking that the German partner is female. In her book Second Generation Holocaust
Literature, Erin McGlothlin points out that there has been a tendency for scholars to characterize
“non-Jewish German women under Nazi rule as unwitting and powerless victims who stood
outside Nazi society and were therefore unable to persecute others” (179). While she also is
careful to note that this is not based in fact (180), this same bias is at work in these films. As
women historically have been less associated with Nazism, 50 it would make sense to utilize the
“less guilty” members of German society when desiring to ease the guilt associated with the past
to normalize German identity. Thus these films create as sense of what I term a gendered
normalization. Discussing a much earlier film, Anna Parkinson has also commented on the
“problem of the uneasy and largely unexplored relationship between gender and guilt in the
discussions” of Helma Sanders-Brahm’s Deutschland, bleiche Mutter (1980), noting that
[t]he explicit premise of this film is that the roles of the Täter and the Opfer are divided
also along the lines of gender difference, with maleness being aligned with aggression
and destruction, and femaleness being literally whitewashed as an innocence
fundamentally violated by the perpetration of males. (157)
To a large degree the roles of victim and perpetrator are also split along gender lines in these
heritage films’ love stories: female German partners are portrayed as innocent victims, while
male Germans are depicted as Nazi perpetrators or as Mitläufer. Furthermore, there is a
50
Note for example that in not one of the literary texts thus far has the question been asked of a German partner:
“what did your (grand)mother do during the war?” Similarly, the very name of the genre Väterliteratur of the 1960s
and 70s indicates the second generation’s confrontation with their fathers about their role and culpability during the
Nazi era.
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conflation of German women’s and Jews’ suffering and victimhood at the hands of the (male)
Nazis. In this way, these films also break—in a gendered way— the previous taboo on portrayals
of German suffering that have become more acceptable since unification. 51
In Agnieszka Holland’s Hitlerjunge Salomon, produced immediately on the heels of
unification, the German-Jewish romantic relationship does not yet hold up a supportive and
philo-Semitic German female partner as an exception to Nazism. The German-Jewish love
stories of later heritage films such as Comedian Harmonists, Aimée & Jaguar, Viehjude Levi and
Rosenstrasse, however, provide female exceptions to the image of Germans as perpetrators
during the Nazi era. The following analyses will outline the ways in which German women
partners are set apart as the exception to their anti-Semitic surroundings, how they (attempt to)
help their Jewish partners survive Nazi persecution, and how they suffer along with (and because
of) their connection to Jewishness. Observing that such examples of German-Jewish symbiosis
have become a vital feature of post-unification German culture, Bill Niven comments that
one reason for the success of Klemperer’s diaries—recently televised in an ARD
television series—was surely the heartwarming loyalty between Klemperer and his
German wife. The film Aimée & Jaguar (1997) describes a lesbian love relationship
between a German Jew and a German. […] Such symbioses are inspiring for a German
audience and readership because they suggest an alternative reality, at least at an
interpersonal level, to that of Auschwitz, and create a bridge of continuity for the
German-Jewish relationship across atrocities. (“Literary Portrayals” 25)
This is both the appeal and the function of the cinematic love stories from the mid-1990s onward
under discussion here: through “good” female German partners, they portray an unbroken
connection between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans despite Nazism, and in doing so
rehabilitate the idea of a positive symbiosis between the two that normalizes the German past.
51
See Ruth Wittlinger’s article “Taboo or Tradition? The ‘Germans as Victims’ Theme in the Federal Republic until
the mid-1990s,” for an overview of the theme of German victimhood and suffering since 1945.
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However, these close connections at times also create an ‘alternate reality’ that problematically
conflates of German and Jewish suffering during the Nazi era. Like the texts of Chapter Two,
these films also problematically flirt with depicting the gentile German partners as victims.
Agnieszka Holland’s Hitlerjunge Salomon (1990)
The first film after unification to depict a romantic relationship between a German and a Jew, the
critically acclaimed 52 Hitlerjunge Salomon, depicts the desire for German-Jewish connection, but
like the texts of Chapter One, ultimately concludes it is impossible because of Nazism. Based on
the true story of Solomon (Solly) Perel, a Jewish teenager who posed as Aryan to survive in Nazi
Germany, this film falls within the traditions of the picaresque, the coming-of-age narrative, and
the Jewish survivor’s memoir. Susan Linville’s article “Europa, Europa!: A Test Case for
German National Cinema,” speaks to the film’s use of these genres’ conventions, but is mostly
concerned with how Agnieszka Holland’s film stretches the bounds of “German” cinema. She
argues that due to this film’s Franco-German production and direction by Holland (a Polish-born,
Paris-based, half-Jewish filmmaker) the Commission of German Film Functionaries rejected it as
a “German” film: “in effect, lacking pure German bloodlines, [Hitlerjunge Salomon] came to be
seen as the product and expression of a kind of cultural miscegenation and […] this view of the
film contributed to its rejection from the official corpus of German national cinema” (40-41).
Linville’s provocative statement invites a comparison between Nazi and contemporary Germany;
52
The film, marketed internationally as Europa, Europa!, was nominated for an Academy Award, and won a
Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, as well as the same commendation by a number of smaller American awards
such as the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle Award.
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this is ironic, because one of the reasons “the responsible government authority refused to
nominate the much acclaimed film Europa, Europa! (Hitlerjunge Salomon) for an Academy
Award [was] because it did not want Germany to be represented by such a vivid film about that
era” (Olick 562-3). Indeed, this film does not present Germans of that time in a favorable light,
especially in the main romantic relationship between Solly and Leni, a fervent Nazi, and so
stands in stark contrast to later 1990s films’ positive depictions of German-Jewish love.
For most of the film, the plot concentrates on Solly’s many maneuvers to avoid being
discovered as a Jew and sent to the camps. While attending a Hitler Youth training school, he
meets a young woman named Leni attending the Bund Deutscher Mädchen facility nearby. Leni
and he fall in love, but he cannot have sex with her without revealing the fact that he is
circumcised and thus Jewish. It is for this reason—and not any of her vocal anti-Semitic remarks
or beliefs—that they cannot be together, for to reveal his secret identity would surely cause his
death. He is so in love with her (and perhaps also so deeply involved in his own deception of
posing as Aryan) that he overlooks her racism. Solly’s attraction to Leni depicts the Jewish
desire for a German-Jewish connection during the Nazi era. The fact that Leni is also attracted to
him suggests that the separation of Germans and Jews into oppositional groups by the Nazis is
artificial—there is no ‘natural’ dislike between members of the two. 53
On the whole, Leni is an unsympathetic German partner, yet she is also painted in part as
a victim of her circumstances. When Solly learns that Leni’s loss of her father through his death
on the front is a reason she has turned to Nazism for solace, he better comprehends her
53
The same could be said of another German-Jewish encounter in the film that underscores the absurdity of the two
being oppositional in Nazi rhetoric. Solly is seduced by his female German escort on the train on his way to the
Hitler Youth training school. She is attracted to him because his looks remind her of “her Führer,” so much so that
she cries out “Mein Führer!” in ecstasy during their brief sexual encounter. This not only mocks the fact that Hitler
did not look as Aryan as the ideal he held up, but also that Germans and Jews felt (even if unwittingly) an attraction
to one another.
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fanaticism. Invoking the popular trope of the love triangle (which also surfaces in Aimée &
Jaguar and Viehjude Levi), the film has Leni, hurt by Solly’s refusal to sleep with her, become
sexually involved with his best friend who is “more Aryan looking” in order to produce a child
for the Führer. When Leni’s mother reveals this to Solly, as well as guesses that he is Jewish (but
does not turn him in), they both “mourn the loss of Leni to fanaticism” (Linville 46). Leni is
hardly a positive character, but this scene reminds us that she is, at least in part, a victim of her
youth, the political climate, and the loss of the men she loves.
Not surprisingly, however, a relationship between a convinced Nazi and a Jew is
ultimately impossible and one-sided (as Solly’s girlfriend Leni never knows that he is Jewish).
The love story in Hitlerjunge Salomon depicts a desire for German-Jewish connection, but
differs from later cinematic German-Jewish love stories in two major ways: it focuses on the
Jewish perspective of the Nazi era, and presents unfavorable pictures of Germans intimately
involved with a Jew. Leni, the main female German partner, is at best a mixed character; this
film flirts with portraying a “good” German exception to Nazism through the minor character of
her mother instead. While the film shows the Jewish desire for romantic connection with a
German—and satirizes unknowing Germans’ own attraction to Jews—Nazism ultimately makes
such a relationship impossible. Ending with the actual (aged) Solomon Perel singing a song in
Hebrew about brotherhood, the viewer learns that he immigrated to Israel with his one surviving
family member at the end of the war, and has lived his life there; this ending is typical of a postwar Jewish attitude that Jews belong in Israel, away from Germany and Germans. It is not until
Joseph Vilsmaier’s Comedian Harmonists (1997) that a female non-Jewish German character
stands by her Jewish German lover during Nazism, beginning the model of female “good”
Germans suffering with their Jewish partners during this time.
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Joseph Vilsmaier’s Comedian Harmonists (1997)
Comedian Harmonists is the first of the four late 1990s and early 21st century films that
presents the viewer with a positive romantic relationship between Germans and Jews despite
Nazism. The film follows major and minor German-Jewish romantic relationships, as well as
charting the musical group’s meteoric rise to fame. Harry Frommerman is the founder and a
Jewish member of the internationally famous, male singing group of the title, who falls in love
with Erna, a young gentile German student who works part-time at a music store he frequents.
Their relationship introduces a positive gentile German character in love with a German-Jewish
protagonist: Erna fights anti-Semitism, and is a victim of the Nazis when she is beaten by them
for her relationship with Harry and for working at a Jewish store. While Harry and Erna
experience difficulties in their relationship both due to personal differences as well as Nazism,
she is ultimately shown to be an exception to the German Mitläufer and Nazis around her.
Through the love triangle between her, Harry and Robert Biberti, a gentile member of the
Comedian Harmonists, she has the option of choosing a safe life with a fellow gentile German,
but instead in the end chooses Harry. By following Harry to America, Erna is a vital part of
presenting a picture of a positive German-Jewish symbiosis which cannot be broken apart, even
if it must take place outside of Germany. At the same time, this ending makes a move toward
conflating German and Jewish suffering under the Nazis.
Both the musical group of the film’s title, as well as the film itself was immensely
popular. 54 Gertraud Steiner attributes this to the fact that it revives “witzige und zweideutig-
54
It won six German Film Awards, including Best Feature and Best Director, as well as Bavarian and European
Film Awards.
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schräge Schlager” from the 1920s and 30s and is a classic rags-to-riches story. She also
comments that:
[d]ie wohl wesentlichste Dimension des Films ist die Sichtbarmachung der Grauzonen,
weg von der sonst bei diesem Thema so beliebten Weiß. Es wird die Zerrissenheit, die
plötzlich durch die politischen eindeutigen Lösungen und Umstände von außen in das
Ensemble hineingetragen wird, deutlich gezeigt. (223)
As Steiner points out, this film is compelling because it offers a nuanced portrayal of the
characters and their difficulty in dealing with the effects of Nazi policies on their singing group.
However, it should be noted that it also deals with the effects of anti-Semitism and Nazism on
their personal lives, and in particular, the way the members struggle with these gray areas in the
German-Jewish love relationships, something that neither Steiner nor any other scholars have
examined thus far in depth. 55
Like in Hitlerjunge Salomon, a male Jewish protagonist, Harry Frommermann carries the
action in this German-Austrian co-production, but his non-Jewish German partner, Erna, an
exceptional and victimized woman, has gained in prominence compared to Leni’s role. Their
relationship, as well as two other minor German-Jewish ones, functions as a way to point out the
importance of not separating one another into oppositional categories of “German” and “Jew”
during a time when the regime was doing just that. Unlike in Solly and Leni’s relationship, Erna
is aware of her lover’s Jewishness, and their relationship is able to survive the outside pressures
of Nazism in Germany at the time. The love stories support the idea of seeing one another as
individuals, and by going back in time to such individual exceptions, this film is able to show
(historical and “true”) German exceptions to anti-Semitism and Nazism. These exceptions,
however, are gendered, and are found only in positive German female characters as the romantic
partners of Jewish men. It is only exceptional German women who make a positive and enduring
55
For additional secondary literature on this film, see Lutz Koepnick’s article “‘Honor Your German Masters’:
History, Memory and National Identity in Joseph Vilsmaier’s Comedian Harmonists.”
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German-Jewish relationship possible in this context, and thus Comedian Harmonists presents the
viewer with a gendered normalization of the German past.
Before the viewer even sees Erna for the first time, Harry introduces her as exceptional, a
characterization that her actions throughout the film bear out. An initial film scene shows Harry
Frommermann in a Jewish cemetery talking to his mother at her grave about the gentile German
woman he is in love with: “Mammele, sie ist nicht irgendeine Schickse, sie ist etwas besonderes.
Ich werde sie heiraten.” In a scene immediately following, Erna lives up to this description as
something ‘special’ and takes a stand against Hans, a former admirer and brownshirt who
confronts her about her involvement with Harry one day at a public pool. Hans expresses his
jealous displeasure to Erna through his anti-Semitic comments: “Ein deutsches Mädl, und gibt
sich mit solchen Kerlen ab. Womöglich ist er auch noch Jude.” Her response is to
demonstratively kiss Harry in front of Hans, which inflames both Hans’ jealousy and his antiSemitism; while this act is an expression of her affection for Harry, it also quite prominently
underscores Erna’s political opposition to Nazi anti-Semitism and love for Harry regardless of
his Jewishness.
Erna’s opposition to the Nazis causes her to become a victim of Nazi abuse. Erna’s
actions at the pool are a dangerous form of protest which leads to Hans’ retaliation via
subsequent phone and letter threats for her to stop associating with Jews. When she does not, he
and other Nazi thugs ransack the music store (owned by Jewish Germans) where she works and
rough her up. Bloodied and in shock, Erna looks to Harry to defend her. However, for the first
time, Nazism comes between her and Harry–literally so, as Hans steps in front of Harry when he
arrives on the scene and holds a knife to his throat when he makes a move to intervene on Erna’s
behalf. Instead of being helped by Harry, it is Robert Biberti, a gentile German member of the
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Harmonists who has been vying for her affection, who steps in and begins fighting the Nazi
attackers. When they finally scatter, Erna feels forsaken by Harry, and leaves with Robert to go
live with him. She goes with Robert not because of Nazi threat, but because she feels like Harry
abandoned her and wouldn’t stick up for her/help her the way she put herself at risk rebutting
anti-Semitic comments. Harry, for his part, is ashamed of his lack of courage, but at the same
time, feels helpless to have acted differently, and projects his anger onto Erna, whom he views as
having abandoned him because things became difficult politically.
Harry’s wrongful assumption about Erna’s reasons for leaving him is exposed in an
encounter with a foil character, Erwin, who is shown to be a cowardly German in contrast to
Erna. Erwin, a non-Jewish German is already married to Ursula, a Jewish German, at the
beginning of the movie. (One other member of the Comedian Harmonists is also part of a
German-Jewish love constellation: Roman, a Jewish man, is involved with Mary, a gentile
German who converts to Judaism to marry him.) When Harry finds out that Erwin has filed for
divorce from his German Jewish wife Ursula, Harry calls him to task for this decision. Erwin
claims that he has done so “wegen unüberbrückbarer Gegensätze” and not because he feared
repercussions for being in a so-called Mischehe. Harry remarks to Erwin that it is a funny
coincidence to him that non-Jews leave their Jewish partners when things get difficult because of
the Nazis–“Erna mich, und du Ursula.” The following bitter exchange ensues:
Harry: ‘Sogenannte rassische Merkmale sind in diesem Land tatsächlich unüberbrückbare
Gegensätze.’
Erwin: ‘Sowas soll es geben, unter Juden, unter Ariern, zwischen Juden und Ariern
überall.’
Erwin tries to claim that his divorce has to do with personal differences between him and his
wife, not with their ‘oppositional’ group identities under the Nazis, but neither Harry nor any of
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his other Jewish colleagues believe him. (Their disbelief is further supported by the fact that the
only prior scene involving Erwin and Ursula is a happy, domestic one.)
As it is clear that they there are no interpersonal reasons for his divorce, Erwin’s
cowardice and flimsy excuse are roundly condemned. Roman then intervenes, chastising Harry
for comparing Erna and Erwin. The film has already shown problems in Erna and Harry’s
relationship that are unrelated to Nazi politics, 56 and Roman further underscores this by
objecting to Harry’s insinuation that Erna left him for political reasons. He exposes Erna’s
goodness in contrast to Erwin’s cowardice. She is exonerated, and again made (through the
validity of a Jewish character who is with a German woman), the exception, the “good” German
who does not base relationship decisions on her partner’s Jewishness.
The gentile German character Erwin is depicted as a cowardly Mitläufer, whereas the
other German characters, both female, ultimately remain loyal to their Jewish partners. Mary is
at the opposite end of the spectrum of Erwin: when her Jewish partner Roman asks her to marry
him, but in the same breath informs her that he is a practicing religious Jew, she agrees to
convert out of love for him. Their Jewish wedding ceremony is one of the high points of the film.
Erna and Harry are reunited at the end of the film, when she realizes that they belong together,
and that no misunderstanding should come between them. They are reunited by ‘their’ song,
which also foreshadows the necessity of leaving Germany in order to be happy together. At the
Comedian Harmonists’ farewell concert, Harry dedicates the following lyrics to her:
‘Irgendwo auf der Welt gibt’s ein bisschen Seligkeit
und ich träum’ davon schon lange, lange Zeit
wenn ich wüsst’, wo das ist
ging ich in die Welt hinein
56
For example, they disagree about a number of personal issues unrelated to Nazism: when to get married, whether
Harry should financially support Erna during her studies, Harry’s intense focus on the music group to the exclusion
of Erna.
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denn ich möcht’ einmal so recht von Herzen glücklich sein.’
In response, Erna begins to cry, and the next day, she appears at the train station to join Harry,
along with Mary and Roman who are leaving together as well. 57 Erna takes leave of Robert,
explaining simply: “Ich gehöre zu Harry.” Ending with this image of two German-Jewish
couples, the film underscores a continued connection between the two, despite the Nazism of
their homeland and Erna’s option to have stayed behind to live a ‘normal’ life with Robert. As
von Moltke comments on Erna’s choice to go into exile with the Jewish performer, spurning her
non-Jewish admirer: “Love it appears, conquers all—including exile” (105).
Yet this positive ending problematically conflates Jewish and non- Jewish German
suffering, emphasizing that members of both groups shared a similar fate of exile under the
Nazis. Undeniably, the vast majority of non-Jewish Germans did not suffer the same fates as
Jews under the Nazis, and experience exile, material losses, and extermination in concentration
camps. As Koepnick remarks, heritage films present Jews and non-Jews as “sharing a common
past which can be reclaimed by filmmakers” (“Reframing” 66), and portrays Nazi Germany as
“pursuing a destructive assault of public history on the private fabrics of multicultural friendship,
romantic love […] and artistic cooperation 58—an assault which was equally traumatic for Jews
and non-Jews” (74-5). Yet the assertion that heritage films conflate German and Jewish suffering
is tempered by the fact that the suffering portrayed is gendered: it is only German women
connected to Jewish partners who are also victims of Nazism. Erna and Mary, in contrast to
Erwin, prove exceptions to the Nazism around them by standing by their Jewish partners. These
57
For an analysis of the camera shots and angles used in this final scene, see Koepnick, “Reframing the Past:
Heritage Cinema and the Holocaust in the 1990s,” 71-2.
58
The film’s epilogue informs the viewer that the musical group the Comedian Harmonists broke up due to Nazi
bans on Jewish performers, and that even though the German members attempted to regroup and continue, they
never reached their earlier success. Yet while German-Jewish relations may not have continued on a cultural level,
they were sustained through individual German-Jewish love relationships, and if not in Germany, then abroad: the
final words on the screen inform viewers that Mary and Roman had a happy life in America and were together until
Roman died at age 98.
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German women’s philo-Semitism and fidelity preserve the German-Jewish connection, a bond
that Nazism and the Holocaust do not sever.
Didi Danquart’s Viehjude Levi (1999)
In his article “Heimat and History: Viehjud Levi,” Johannes von Moltke groups the film with
such “popular fare” as Comedian Harmonists and Aimee & Jaguar that “participated in German
film’s return to history after the 1980s” (99). Daniela Berghahn also likens it to Comedian
Harmonists, for “celebrat[ing] moments of German-Jewish solidarity” (“Screen Memories” 302),
through the romantic relationship between the non-Jewish German character Lisbeth and the
Jewish German cattle dealer Levi. 59 Like the preceding film, it focuses on a Jewish man’s fate in
the 1930s, at the beginning of Nazi rule, and shows how his gentile German partner stands up
against anti-Semitism and supports him in a hostile environment. A love triangle between Levi,
Lisbeth and her non-Jewish boyfriend Paul Braxmeier functions like that of the Comedian
Harmonists: the non-Jewish German woman chooses a Jewish partner over her ‘safer’ option of
a non-Jew, thus preserving the German-Jewish connection. Along with her defense of Levi
against the Nazis in town, this decision characterizes Lisbeth as a “good” German character who
is supportive of her Jewish partner and who attempts to keep a positive German-Jewish
connection alive despite Nazism.
The film is based on Thomas Strittmatter’s fragmentary 1982 play, based on actual
people and events, but Danquart made one major, significant change to the original: he added the
love story. As von Moltke comments on this adjustment: “One might well argue that Danquart’s
59
The two actors who played Lisbeth and Levi were also nominated for outstanding individual acting achievement
at the German Film Awards; the film itself won the Caligari Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and the
Mayor’s Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
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film recasts Strittmatter’s historical parable about anti-Semitism as a historically situated love
story in which rural anti-Semitism plays an important but decidedly reduced role” (86-7). In
doing so, he shifts the focus to the love story and to the redeeming possibility of continued
German-Jewish connection despite Nazism. That focus is apparent from the opening scene in
which Levi is coming to town to ask for Lisbeth’s hand in marriage. At first her parents seem
amenable to the idea, but when Nazism comes to town in the form of an anti-Semitic railroad
engineer named Köhler and his crew, their feelings change. 60 Lisbeth struggles to understand her
parents’ (as well as the other townspeople’s) newly hostile attitudes toward Levi, but she
questions the Köhler’s racism and stands up for Levi in the climactic final scene.
At the beginning of the plot, Lisbeth is involved with Paul, but once Levi comes to town
on his business trip, her affections shift to Levi. He brings her a present of lipstick, and begins
courting her, picking her up after work in his car to drive her home, where they share a kiss and
an unspoken understanding of their shared interest in marriage. Their courtship, however, is
interrupted by the changes happening in the town. Her mother throws out the lipstick, for the
reason that Lisbeth is a “Catholic girl,” emphasizing to her that she should not be interested in a
Jewish man; Lisbeth uncomprehendingly says: “Ich hab’ gedacht, du magst Levi? Ich versteh
euch nicht!” Her father sells a cow he had promised to Levi to the engineer instead, also
changing his loyalties. As her familial allies fall away, Lisbeth stands alone in her defense of
Jews in general and Levi in particular; she is singled out as a positive exception among the other
townsfolk, her own parents included.
60
For a discussion of the film in the tradition of the genre of Heimatfilme, see von Moltke’s article, “Heimat and
History: Viehjud Levi,” in which he convincingly argues that Viehjude Levi is one of the few films to “engage with
the tradition of the Heimatfilm for the purpose of investigating anti-Semitism in the historical setting of fascist
Germany” (93). The film turns the normal Heimatfilm technique of Heimat as a safe place with a clear
insider/outsider divide on its head, he argues, because in this film, “the threat doesn’t come from the ‘outside’ but
shows Black Forest town as a “fertile breeding ground for fascism” (99).
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The local restaurant and pub, the social hub of town, is the site of Lisbeth’s two
confrontations with anti-Semitism. She works there as a waitress, and one evening, when she
brings Köhler his dinner, she asks him to pay so that she can finish out her shift. He then
rhetorically asks everyone there, pointing at himself, if he is a Jew, implying that Lisbeth is
suggesting he cannot be trusted to pay for his food. She angrily replies: “Was haben Sie denn
überhaupt gegen die Juden?” When Köhler says with mock innocence, “Habe ich ‘was falsches
gesagt?” the camera pans the restaurant, to the unresponsive faces of the other (male)
townspeople; their silence is their complicity with the engineer’s intimidation tactics, and
Lisbeth is singled out as the lone (female) voice questioning the anti-Semitic hatred that has
overtaken the town.
In the climactic ending, Lisbeth is again the only non-Jewish German who takes a stand,
this time specifically for Levi. When Levi comes into the restaurant, Lisbeth, cognizant of the
inhospitable atmosphere, warns him, saying “Ich habe Angst um dich.” He looks only at her,
compliments her lovely lips 61 (she is, in an act of parental defiance that takes on symbolic
importance, wearing the lipstick Levi gave her), and tells her she is the only one for him. The
mood becomes increasingly hostile, when one of the engineer’s men says that “the Jew” should
sing: Levi is dragged to his feet, manhandled and forced to sing. When Lisbeth tells them to stop,
and asks what Levi ever did to them, she is mocked by the engineer who asks, “Was sagt die
Frau Levi?” Levi continues to be tormented, and then Paul comes in and threateningly puts an ax
through the middle of the table Levi had been sitting at. Standing up to her former boyfriend, her
father, and all the other male townspeople and engineering crew, Lisbeth takes a gun out of a
drawer and fires it at the ceiling. She points it at Paul, then the engineer, as the camera pans the
61
Levi’s comment about her “lovely lips” as well as the lipstick she is defiantly wearing underscores her femininity
and sexuality, as well as her ability to speak out against the anti-Semitism.
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restaurant just as in her previous scene of resistance. No one speaks except for Lisbeth, who tells
Levi: “Geh, geh endlich.” She realizes that without the support of anyone else in the town, all she
can do is help him escape this hostile situation.
In Strittmatter’s play, and in the life of the historical figure of Levi that his text was based
on, there is no such ‘happy’ ending: Levi is killed by the townspeople. Johannes von Moltke
remarks that both Strimmatter’s and Danquart’s versions of Viehjud Levi
engage consciously with German history, and they need to be judged in relation to an
ongoing cultural discourse on the Nazi past and its aesthetic representation. […] They
also respond to markedly different constellations within ongoing discourses (in 1981 and
1999) on the representation of the Nazi past. Separated by almost twenty years,
Strittmatter’s play and Danquart’s film may have something to tell us about the shifting
discursive functions of theater, cinema, and culture in the Federal Republic both before
and after unification. (87)
What has changed is the desire to depict German resistance to Nazism and a sustained GermanJewish connection, which occurs through the figure of a non-Jewish German female partner
involved with a Jew. As von Moltke argues, heritage films such as this one and the Comedian
Harmonists make
all-out efforts to mend the irrecuperable rupture in the ‘German-Jewish symbiosis’
brought about by fascism. […] romantic love arguably functions in these melodramas as
the ‘model for understanding the dynamics of history,’ and of German-Jewish relations in
particular. In this view, the heritage film contributes to the transmutation of historical
trauma with its emphasis on ruptured temporalities into transgenerational continuities
whose representation often takes the form of love stories. (100)
However, despite the fact that Lisbeth and Levi cannot remain together, the overall impact of the
film is one of an exceptional German-Jewish connection. While von Moltke interprets Lisbeth
and Levi’s forced separation quite negatively, stating that the film “can only end by severing
whatever tie held the precarious ‘symbiosis’ together—including those ties that remain the most
important ones in these melodramas, the ties […] of heterosexual love” (105), I disagree. The
final scene links Lisbeth and Levi, ending with an image of German-Jewish connection despite
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the fascism around them. The climatic event in the restaurant ends with a cropped shot of
Lisbeth’s sad eyes surrounded by blackness, and then cuts to the fading taillights of Levi’s
vehicle as he drives away into the dark; these two closing, parallel images connect the two
characters even as Levi is forced to leave town. At the same time, the film acknowledges that
Lisbeth and Levi will not share the same fate in the following years under Nazism, and thus
remains “a sober account of the exclusionary logic of fascist community” (von Moltke 103)
without completely conflating German and Jewish suffering.
Max Färberböck’s Aimée & Jaguar (1999)
Unlike Viehjude Levi, Färberböck’s film “encourages German audiences to delight in selfcongratulatory fantasies of historical reconciliation” (Koepnick “Reframing” 65) through its
German-Jewish love story between Lilly Wust (Aimée) and Felice Schragenheim (Jaguar).
Almost a decade after Hitlerjunge Salomon, Aimée & Jaguar picks up where it left off: Lilly,
like Leni, is initially a convinced Nazi, but disassociates herself from those beliefs when she
finds out that the woman she loves, Felice, is Jewish and active in the resistance. Like the
previous two films this feature is based on a true story, and the screenplay was heavily
influenced by Erika Fischer’s biography of the love affair, Aimée und Jaguar, as well as Lilly
Wust’s autobiography. Their “improbable love affair” (von Moltke 105) and the film’s
subscription to “the familiar and convenient notion that love conquers all” (Kehr 15) only
heighten the melodrama surrounding this film’s portrayal of German-Jewish connection during
the war. These criticisms overlook the fact that Lilly and Felice’s relationship is in part made
possible by both women’s ability to interact as individuals and lesbians, rather than “Nazis” or
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“victims.” But in the end, the film focuses more on the pain that results from Lilly’s
vulnerability, thus privileging German over Jewish suffering.
At first there is little indication that the female German partner Lilly is an exception to
her anti-Semitic surroundings— it would seem that Felice is the only exemplary character, given
her ability as a hunted Jew to forgive Lilly’s Nazism. Lilly begins the movie making remarks
such as “an jeder Bombe sind die Juden schuld.” She falls in love with Felice before she knows
that she is a Jew, and before she even fully comprehends that she is falling in love with a woman.
Her own coming-out both transforms her into a sympathetic “good” German partner and places
her outside of the realm of the Nazism and heterosexuality that had defined her, into the realm of
a shared lesbian and ‘outsider’ identity. Felice sees beyond Lilly’s initial identity as a Nazi
sympathizer. She staunchly rejects the category of “victim” for herself in an earlier
relationship, 62 and refuses to put Lilly in the “Nazi” category, defending Lilly to friends in the
resistance by saying that “sie ist nicht besser und nicht schlechter als jede von uns.” For Stuart
Taberner, Lilly epitomizes an “ordinary German” who is the “product of historical circumstances
that she’s too weak to resist,” and interprets the fact that Felice defends her in this manner as an
indication that “ordinary Germans [are] forgiven, or at least excused, by the very people they
persecuted” (“Wie kannst” 233). Although it is problematic that a Jewish character appears to
forgive a German for her anti-Semitic beliefs, Lilly’s own lesbianism creates an “outsider”
identity that she exchanges for her original “insider” Nazi (and heterosexual) identity—an
additional strategy that the film employs to whitewash her original xenophobia.
62
Prior to her relationship with Lilly, Felice is briefly involved with a young gentile German woman named Ilse, a
member of the resistance who has been hiding her. Felice ends the relationship because she does not like that Ilse
puts her into a victim position. When Ilse expects her to be grateful for her hiding her, she tells Ilse: “Mach mich
nicht zu einem Opfer!” and breaks off their affair.
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The film’s exceptional love story is made possible by the Jewish partner’s ability to look
past Lilly’s Nazism, as well as Lilly’s own coming out as a lesbian. While scholars have
examined the theme of lesbianism in the film, none have specifically looked at its relationship to
the German-Jewish love story. Katrin Sieg has touched upon Lilly’s lesbianism in the context of
comparing the film and the book upon which it is based, 63 and Julia Erhart has considered the
importance of lesbian characters in the political and historical aspect of the resistance during the
Nazi era, 64 but none have considered the fact that Lilly’s coming out makes it possible for her to
be with a Jew. This is not just a “stylish homosexuality” prevalent in many 1990s films
(Taberner, “Philosemitism” 358), but an important factor in the two being able to connect across
enemy lines and the primary way in which Lilly becomes an exception to her Nazi surroundings.
A pivotal scene in their relationship has them both reveal their Otherness and bond across
their differences through their shared lesbianism. Their moments of truth occur when Lilly
admits her attraction to Felice, and Felice tells Lilly that she is Jewish. The scene begins with
Lilly’s confrontation of Felice, screaming at her “Was machst du mit mir?” She is angry that
Felice has disappeared for a number of days, and she is confused and distraught by the fact that
she cares, a sign of her attraction to her. Felice’s response is to reveal that she is Jewish,
explaining that she had to go into hiding and could not see Lilly for this reason. Lilly is taken
aback, and asks: “Wie kannst du mich lieben?” In this question, she acknowledges the gulf
between them, with her as a Nazi German, and Felice as a Jew. Clearly Lilly is shocked that
Felice could love her despite their differences. But this question could also have a double
meaning: ‘how can you love me when we are both women?’ They both embrace, and what unites
them is their individual feelings for one another as two women. The fact that Lilly is able to
63
64
See Katrin Sieg’s article, “Sexual Desire and Social Transformation in Aimée & Jaguar.”
See Julia Erhart’s article, “From Nazi Whore to Good German Mother: Revisiting Resistance in Holocaust Film.”
126
respond positively reinforces not only her willingness to love a Jew, but to embrace her own
‘otherness’ as a lesbian. In a move more (melo)dramatic than any thus far, Lilly transforms from
a Nazi to a “good” German who loves a Jew, and who becomes an exception not only to her antiSemitic environment but to the heterosexual norm.
Rightly so, many scholars have taken issue with this scene for the way it positions Lilly
as a victim in need of rescue by Felice. Johannes von Moltke finds that the exchange
puts the onus on the Jewish woman. It is Felice who must offer reconciliation and heal
Lilly’s narcissistic wound by responding to her desire to be loved. […] the general tone
of the scene […] ultimately positions Lilly, not Felice, as the victim in need of
consolation and reassurance that the Jew will not leave. (102)
Stuart Taberner reads the scene similarly, noting that Felice forgives Lilly, who is
“representative of all those Germans too weak, or too selfish, to care about their Jewish
neighbors” and in doing so, “confirms the mutual need existing between Germans and Jews,
reestablish[ing] the supposedly natural state of affairs that Hitler’s persecution appears to have
destroyed” (“Wie kannst” 234-5). Also questionable is Lilly’s naïve assumption that her gay
identity gains her entry into the circle of the persecuted Jewish (and lesbian) women in the
resistance. Shortly after consummating her relationship with Felice, she attends a meeting of the
resistance, and tells them she is “one of them now,” meaning a fellow lesbian. They, however,
feel no such solidarity with her, for if her husband decides to divorce her, they recognize that
they could be called to trial as witnesses to Lilly and Felice’s relationship, and then their hidden
Jewish identities would be exposed in the court proceedings. Lilly represents a danger to their
safety, but she is unaware of the implications of her conflation of lesbian and Jewish identities.
She over-identifies with Jewish lesbians in the resistance, who are much more at risk than she of
being the victims of Nazi violence. However, this is only brought up in this brief scene, and
otherwise goes unquestioned.
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Lilly evolves into a German who is willing to change her life and identity to be with her
Jewish lover. She hides Felice in her home, shares her ration stamps with her and helps to create
a world in which the two of them escape. 65 When the Gestapo discovers her there, Lilly begs
them in vain not to take Felice. The camera lingers on a wrenching image of Lilly curled on the
floor of her apartment in the fetal position, crying and screaming in protest and disbelief. Felice
never appears onscreen again as time passes, and the film’s focus shifts to Lilly, who is framed
as a victim of the Nazis because they have taken her love away from her. In coming out and
being in a romantic relationship with Felice, Lilly is happy for the first time, and since the Nazis
destroy their relationship, they also destroy Lilly’s happiness. Stuart Taberner points out that
“[t]he remainder of the narrative treats not Felice’s fate as a Jew, but Lilly’s efforts to come to
terms with her loss” and there is no depiction of Felice’s suffering in the concentration camp or
of how she dies (Literature of 1990s 175).
After Felice is deported, Lilly fights to have her released from the camp, mostly through
a letter-writing campaign and trying to persuade Nazis who were former lovers to help release
Felice. The final scenes of the movie show Lilly in the 1990s in a retirement community,
reflecting on whether she could have saved Felice some other way, and continuing to mourn the
loss of the love of her life. As Aimée und Jaguar is the sole film under discussion in which the
Jewish character dies in the Holocaust, it is not surprising that it is the only one that deals with
the German partner’s feelings of guilt about the past. What is surprising is that it is another
“good” minor German character, Ilse, who helps assuage Lilly’s guilt. When Ilse and Lilly meet
again half a decade later in the retirement home, it is Ilse who reassures Lilly she could not have
65
For a study of the ways in which the film’s cinematography creates a sense of their insular world, and constructs a
“radical distinction between an autonomous private space and the public space of history” (324), see John
Davidson’s article “A Story of Faces and Intimate Spaces: Form and History in Max Färberböck’s Aimée &
Jaguar.”
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done more than she did to try to save Felice. This film’s love story downplays German guilt
about, and their role in, the genocide of Jews during the 1930s and 40s.
While the actual relationship between Lilly and Felice does not survive the Holocaust
because Felice perishes in the camps, the German-Jewish connection remains intact because
Lilly carries her love and Felice’s memory into the present (“eine Liebe größer als der Tod” of
the film’s subtitle). In this way she is also a “good” German who helps make the German-Jewish
relationship possible despite the Holocaust. The film glorifies the image of German-Jewish love
and reconciliation, contributing to a normalized picture of relations between Germans and Jews
by constructing “a memory of the past that is no longer encumbered by guilt, principally because
the relationship between Germans and Jews is re-imagined as one of solidarity” (Berghahn
“Screen Memories” 295).
Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosenstrasse (2003)
A cursory comparison of the marketing for Aimée & Jaguar and Rosenstrasse reveals an
increased emphasis on the female German partner in the love story. The DVD cover of Aimée &
Jaguar, for example, shows Felice and Lilly dancing together, while Rosenstrasse’s displays
Lena, the “Aryan” looking non-Jewish German wife who fights to free her Jewish husband from
the holding center in the eponymous street. In the former, there is equal emphasis on the two
women, as they are dance partners; in the latter, Lena and the setting of her struggle on her
husband’s behalf are the focus, but the Jewish partner of the love story is absent. More than any
other film thus far, von Trotta’s film focuses on the female German partner’s exceptional loyalty,
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heroism and suffering, which later make her able to heal the wounds of the past for both a first
and a second generation Jewish woman.
Like the other films, this feature revolves around the unbroken connection between
Jewish and non-Jewish Germans during the Nazi era, made possible by the “good” female
German partner. In the main German-Jewish love story in Rosenstrasse, Lena von Eschenbach, a
gentile German woman, and Fabian Fischer, a German-Jewish musician, fall in love in the 1930s
while playing duets together. Lena is again a positive gentile German character; she is never a
Nazi sympathizer like Lilly, but like Erna in Comedian Harmonists, Lena falls in love with her
Jewish husband as Hitler is rising to power, and stands by him during this difficult political era.
When Fabian is incarcerated in the Rosenstrasse holding center because he is a Jew in a “mixedrace marriage,” and may be sent to a concentration camp, Lena’s love for him motivates her to
fight for his release. Every day outside the center, Lena and other wives of mixed marriages
gather to stand in protest, which eventually results in their husbands being released. Daniela
Berghahn summarizes the film as “one of several recent German films that celebrate rare
moments of German-Jewish solidarity and that invite contemporary audiences to identify
emotionally with the suffering of Jews and Germans” (“Screen Memories” 303-4).
But it should not be overlooked that this film invites the viewer to identify primarily with
the suffering of German women. This film champions an example of a rare historical situation in
which a handful of Jewish Germans were saved from Nazi extermination by “good” German
wives, emphasizing these women’s loyalty and love in contrast to the gentile German husbands
of incarcerated Jewish women in the Rosenstrasse center. German women here are again
privileged as exceptions to the Nazism and (male) Mitläufer around them. Lena in particular is
contrasted with the husband of Miriam, a Jewish German woman whose daughter Lena is
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looking after while she is being held. When it is revealed that Miriam’s gentile German husband
has divorced her rather than fight to have her released, Lena stands out even more strongly as a
“good” German who not only stands by her husband, but also helps the Jew Miriam by looking
after her young daughter Ruth. The character of Miriam’s husband echoes Erwin in Comedian
Harmonists, the gentile German who divorces his Jewish wife under Nazi political pressure. In
both films, this action is roundly condemned, and gentile German women are held up as faithful
and loving German exceptions to the Mitläufer and Nazis around them.
The movie emphasizes Lena’s fidelity, her struggle to free her Jewish husband, and not
insignificantly, her own personal suffering as a result of her connection to a Jewish partner.
Although we see in flashbacks Lena and Fabian’s musical performances together, as well as their
courtship and marriage, the majority of the film centers on Lena’s life after Fabian’s arrest. He
receives very little screen time, and Lena takes center stage as the main victim of the Nazis.
When the Nurnberg Laws are enacted, she and her husband are forbidden from performing
together as a musical duo, and their previously comfortable lifestyle vanishes. After he is
detained in the Rosenstrasse, she loses the small income he had brought in doing menial jobs and
descends into poverty. Nazi officials, as well as her anti-Semitic father, encourage her, subtly
and directly, to divorce her husband and enjoy the increased privileges that accompany her
aristocratic and “Aryan” background. Like Lisbeth in Viehjude Levi she also must contend with
familial as well as Nazi pressure to abandon her Jewish partner. She stands by her husband and
her marriage, but the consequences of her resistance are clearly portrayed: poverty, separation
from her husband, desperation about his release.
At one point Lena becomes so desperate to rejoin her husband, she symbolically attempts
to take on his fate, by sewing on a yellow star in order to pose as Jewish to gain entry to the
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holding center. She is willing to be sent to a concentration camp with him in order to preserve
their connection. She fails to gain access, but in other scenes Lena and the other women of the
Rosenstrasse protests risk their lives to stand in solidarity with their husbands: several drive-by
shootings and soldiers threatening them with machine guns do not scare them away. Ultimately,
however, their protests are successful, they are reunited with their husbands, and the film “makes
the case for German-Jewish reconciliation, […] by focusing on a triumphant moment of GermanJewish solidarity that runs counter to the dominant narrative of German anti-Semitism”
(Berghahn, “Screen Memories” 306).
Through its frame story, the film makes an even broader case for understanding and
connection between gentile and Jews. While the majority of the film is a flashback to the Nazi
era, the setting of the frame story is 1990s New York and Berlin. Lena cared for young Ruth
until it was clear her mother would not be coming back from the camps, and then Ruth was sent
to New York to live with relatives. Now Ruth’s adult daughter Hannah, an American-born
second generation Jew, is struggling to deal with her mother’s protests to her upcoming marriage
to a gentile man. When Ruth intimates to Hannah that her protests about her fiancé are related to
her past and the Holocaust (but that she is unable to speak about it 66), Hannah goes to Berlin to
track down Lena. She hopes that Lena will be able to enlighten her about her mother’s past. Lena
discloses to Hannah that Ruth’s gentile German father divorced her Jewish mother, abandoning
her to her death in the camps, and that Ruth has forever held this against her gentile father.
66
It is a well-documented phenomenon that first generation survivors often are silent about their past and their
experiences in Nazi Germany. It is also not uncommon for the second and third generations to deal with the legacy
of this silence, and desire to find out about their first generation relatives’ experiences during the war.
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Hannah finally understands that this betrayal by her grandfather has caused her own mother, in
the present day, to transfer her suspicion of gentile men to Hannah’s non-Jewish fiancé Luis. 67
This frame story serves a double function, as Stuart Taberner comments:
Ruth’s life story can finally be excavated, it seems, in tandem with the story of German
decency. The conventional insistence on German perpetration can now give way to a
more complex, differentiated picture. […] Her [Ruth’s] faith in assimilation has been
restored, thanks to the German woman, Lena. (“Philo-Semitism” 365-367)
Lena, in sharp contrast to non-Jewish German men, was faithful to her Jewish partner and
behaved decently during the Nazi era, which makes her notable as an exception to the German
cowardice and perpetration of the times. Her actions allow her and her marriage to stand as a
shining example of an unbroken gentile-Jewish German connection during a dark period of
German-Jewish relations, which allow a first generation Jewish character, Ruth, to make peace
with the past.
The “good” first generation German woman is also able to put a second generation Jew’s
fears about gentile-Jewish connection to rest—and to defend the actions of some German men
during the that era. While meeting with Lena in Berlin, Hannah’s normally positive feelings for
her gentile fiancé Luis become conflicted: she becomes easily angered with him, and asks him
such questions as “Would you hide me?” (if there were another Holocaust). During the
conversation in which Lena reveals Ruth’s father’s abandonment of his Jewish wife, Hannah
expresses disgust at her grandfather’s choice, referring to him as a “schrecklicher Mann.” Lena,
however, defends him, by emphasizing these men’s terror of being deported along with their
Jewish wives, and that they were not “schrecklich” but simply “schwach.” When Hannah points
out that Lena did not get a divorce, again contrasting a German woman’s loyalty to German
67
Interestingly, there does not seem to be this same concern about gentile women, because Hannah’s brother
married a non-Jewish woman without protest from his mother. One can presume that this is because young Ruth
observed gentile (German) women in her immediate surroundings as faithful and supportive of their Jewish
husbands during the Nazi era.
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men’s complicity, Lena counters that many German men feared losing their careers—hardly a
logical argument, as Lena lost her career because of her association with her Jewish husband.
Nonetheless, this conversation with Lena appears to allay Hannah’s present-day suspicions about
marrying a gentile man, for the film ends with her and Luis’s nuptials.
As a “good” German beyond reproach, Lena can take the unique position of explaining
other Germans’ actions during the war, such as Ruth’s cowardly father’s, and reconcile two
generations of Jewish characters with negative aspects of the (gentile) German past. Through
Lena’s fidelity to her Jewish partner during the Nazi era, as well as her ability to reconcile later
generations with the German past, the gentile-Jewish connection remains intact in the present
day. Through the other ‘women of the Rosenstrasse’ (the picture’s English title), von Trotta’s
film swells the ranks of such “good” Germans keeping the German-Jewish symbiosis alive, and
increases number of exceptions to the characterization of Germans as Mitläufer or Nazis during
this time. As Stuart Taberner observes, “the more cheering message to emerge may be that the
German-Jewish symbiosis was only ‘temporarily’ interrupted by Nazism,” pointing out that
[h]ad the film gone on to depict the fates of the many thousands of Berlin Jews on whose
behalf no-one intervened, it would have been forced to confront the participation of an
infinitely greater number of ‘ordinary’ Germans in the minutiae of mass murder. As it
stands, Auschwitz may be regarded as an awful aberration, and Nazism, those twelve
years of ‘madness’, as decidedly ‘un-German’. (“Philo-Semitism” 367)
Like the other three heritage films discussed, Rosenstrasse re-visions Nazism not only as “unGerman” but as “un-female.” In this way, they contribute to a gendered normalization of the
past.
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Conclusion
German films dealing with the Nazi past are often referred to as “Nazi-retro” or “heritage” films.
Robert and Carol Reimer, authors of Nazi-Retro Film: How German Narrative Cinema
Remembers the Past, coined the former term, and define it as follows:
Like the French term mode retro from which it is adapted, Nazi-retro carries a faintly
negative connotation: these films have a morbid fascination for a time and place that
scarred a nation’s psyche […] The term implies exploitation and trivialization for
commercial purposes of the suffering caused by fascism. Furthermore, it points to the
nostalgic allure of the past for those who lived through it and for the post-war generations
who did not. It suggests history shot through a coloured lens, showing the period not as it
was but as the audience would like to remember it. (1)
Reimer and Reimer are not alone in suggesting that there is a desire to remember the past
differently and more positively. Lutz Koepnick, in originating his term “heritage cinema,” argues
that recent popular memory films about the Third Reich “actively reinterpret the past according
to a changing view of history, memory, gender, and ethnicity within the bounds of what we must
understand as a self-confident mode of European popular filmmaking” (“Reframing” 74). While
the Reimers see these films as exploiting the past, Koepnick turns this idea on its head, seeing
the films’ reinterpretation of the past as European self-confidence, but both agree that these
popular memory films seek to represent the past in a more positive light.
Agnieszka Holland’s 1990 film Hitlerjunge Salomon, for example, does this by “reimagin[ing] the trauma of Jewish suffering as Greuelmärchen with a happy ending” (Berghahn,
“Screen Memories” 302), rather than through its German-Jewish love story subplot. Later postunification films like Comedian Harmonists, Viehjude Levi, Aimée & Jaguar and Rosenstrasse,
however, view the German past through the colored lenses of German-Jewish love stories and in
particular associate the female German lovers with positive roles as helpmates and defenders of
their Jewish partners. By returning to the time in which Nazism threatened to destroy the socalled German-Jewish symbiosis, these films depict exceptional instances in which that
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connection persisted despite the political-historical odds. These love stories function as a way to
insert “good” Germans into the history of the Nazi era, and by making these exceptional
Germans women, they explore a gendered reinterpretation of “German” that distances it from the
labels “perpetrator” and “Nazi” that have been the legacy of the German past. In contrast to Leni,
the on-screen images of Erna, Lisbeth, Lilly and Lena supporting and defending their Jewish
German partners disrupt the perception of Germans as perpetrators, which in turn imagines a
more positive and “normalized” German identity.
The films discussed here are all based on actual events. Berghahn acknowledges that they
“lay claim to authenticity” but at the same time, their “aesthetic and narrative strategies […]
deflect from the trauma of past suffering” and so “take great liberties with the past” (“Screen
Memories 300). In particular, these films conflate German and Jewish fates during the Third
Reich, by showing both partners suffering under Nazism, and increasingly downplay the Jewish
partners’ suffering while focusing in on the German partners’. This is especially noticeable in
Aimée & Jaguar and Rosenstrasse, two films whose frame stories are set during the 1990s, and
which include a present-day laying to rest of the past. In the former, a fellow “good” German,
Ilse, helps Lilly allay her guilt about Felice’s death, and in the latter, Lena is able to help two
generations of Jewish women come to terms with (male) gentile German abandonment in their
family history. In addition, the representative of the Jewish second generation in Rosenstrasse,
Ruth’s daughter Hannah, learns about her mother’s own past from “the vantage point of a good
German who made large personal sacrifices to save the life of her Jewish husband and that of
Ruth—but it is the memory of a German none the less” (Berghahn, “Screen Memories” 305).
As Stuart Taberner observes, these films “run the risk of making it possible to reconcile the
German past without Jews (“Philosemitism” 370). And while all four films necessitate a Jewish
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partner to demonstrate the German lover’s philo-Semitism, their increasing focus on the German
character at the expense of their Jewish partner’s narrative also raises the question: are Jews no
longer necessary to tell the stories of this time? Have Germans become the more important
victims of Nazism?
Helmut Schmitz may provide some insight. He asserts that
The Holocaust represents a stumbling block to the return to a ‘normal’ German identity
insofar as the radical discontinuity of Auschwitz cannot be meaningfully integrated into a
national narrative […] Or rather, Auschwitz can only be integrated by sidestepping its
disruptive force or by downgrading the victim-centered viewpoint that has dominated
Holocaust discourse in favor of a focus on the German experience. The desire of some to
break with a victim-centered memory and to relegitimize the German experience can be
detected in virtually all public debates on the subject of National Socialism since the mid1980s, from the Historikerstreit to the discussions of the New Right immediately after
unification and the 1998 Walser-Bubis affair, to the arguments throughout the 1990s
regarding the exhibition Crimes of the German Wehrmacht 1941-1945. […] The common
denominator [of these debates] is the containment of the Holocaust for the purpose of
normalizing the German people’s relationship with the Nazi past. (“Reconciliation” 152)
The cinematic love stories of Comedian Harmonists, Viehjude Levi, Aimée & Jaguar and
Rosenstrasse—all produced in the context of the debates Schmitz mentions—attempt, to varying
degrees, to contain the Holocaust’s effects on German-Jewish relations and thus on the national
narrative. They reinforce images of German-Jewish connection that the Holocaust cannot
destroy, through the German-Jewish couples going into exile together (Comedian Harmonists);
parallel final images that link them to one another (Viehjude Levi); a love that is greater than
death (Aimée & Jaguar); or through the reunited spouses in a mixed marriage (Rosenstrasse). By
downplaying Jewish suffering and focusing on the German experience, they break away from a
Jewish victim-centered perspective, and move toward German suffering under Nazism, albeit
along with and because of their Jewish partner. As Lutz Koepnick explains, one of the reasons
for “the sudden presence of German-Jewish themes on postunification screens” is because
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Holocaust survivors are beginning to pass away (“Reframing” 57). 68 Since “organic memory of
the Holocaust has become precarious, German cinema now turns into a primary site of
transmitting memory between generations who have never lived through actual events” (ibid),
which makes it imperative to assess what kind of memory this cinema is passing down. My
analyses of four post-unification German heritage films’ love stories indicate that while Jews are
still part of the narrative, the focus has shifted to German—female—suffering during the Nazi
era.
First generation German male partners appear to be taboo in contemporary cinematic
treatments of German-Jewish love. Literary treatments of the topic around this same time,
however, do not shy away from referencing gentile German men involved with Jewish women,
nor from depicting happy German-Jewish romantic relationships, the likes of which had not seen
before in the earlier texts of Chapters One and Two. Although the texts of the next chapter do not
actively return to the Nazi era to focus on first generation love stories, as in Rosenstrasse earlier
generations’ German-Jewish love paves the way for more positive unions between Jews and nonJewish Germans.
68
The other reasons, according to Koepnick, are twofold and also explain the rise of the new German heritage films
in the course of the 1990s: 1) changes in subsidy policies provided funding for films with big production values and
there was a “rediscovery of film as a marketable product” and 2) “the resurgence of Jewish culture in postwall
Germany as a ‘minor culture,’ as well as what Michal Bodemann has called the dawn of ‘a culture, an industry, or
even an epidemic of commemorating in Germany today.’ Similar to the countless memorials that now occupy public
space, late 1990s German heritage films evince an interest in ‘things Jewish’ typical for certain segments of German
postwall culture” (“Reframing” 56-57).
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Chapter Four: Positive Pasts and Unproblematic Presents:
The New Normality in German-Jewish Love Stories
Introduction
The German language films of Chapter Three introduced the most positive German-Jewish
romantic relationships to date: non-Jewish German women helped their Jewish partners during
the Holocaust, presenting a picture of unbroken connection despite the anti-Semitism around the
couple. In effect, these cinematic love stories of the 1990s go back in time to circumvent the
negative symbiosis, at least in these exceptional cases, and normalize German identity and
German-Jewish relations by easing the guilt associated with the Holocaust. This “gendered
normality” (as I have termed it) in the first generation contrasts greatly with the literature of
Chapter One and Two, which detailed the ways in which the Holocaust legacy loomed over
second and third generation relationships between non-Jewish Germans and Jews. As already
discussed in those chapters, the Holocaust plays a central—and negative—role in romantic
relationships in Seligmann’s Rubinsteins Versteigerung, Biller’s “Aus Dresden ein Brief,”
Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus nichts, Mitgutsch’s Abschied von Jerusalem, Tuckermann’s Die
Haut retten and Schlink’s “Die Beschneidung.” To varying degrees, the Jewish and non-Jewish
German characters in these works all struggle with issues related to the German past: personal
and familial objections to being with a German related to a Nazi perpetrator, the challenge of
being members of oppositional groups, and grappling with their own identities as descendants of
the victims or the perpetrators. The Holocaust clearly divides them and makes their relationships
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difficult to the point of infeasibility, yet it is also the point around which their connection
revolves, in a dynamic aptly described by Dan Diner’s negative symbiosis.
Another set of texts, all from the mid to late 1990s, indicate a break with both the gender
role for “good” Germans of the films and the centrality of the Holocaust in German-Jewish
relationships. Lothar Schöne’s novella Das jüdische Begräbnis (1996), Rafael Seligmann’s novel
Schalom meine Liebe (1998), and Peter Schneider’s novel, Eduards Heimkehr (1999) introduce
German-Jewish love stories that underscore the ability of Germans and Jews to connect across
and beyond the Holocaust rift. For the first time, in Schöne’s novella and Schneider’s novel,
there are “good” German men of the first generation who stand by their Jewish partners during
the Nazi era. In addition, these literary texts continue where the films left off: they chronicle not
only German-Jewish love during the Holocaust, but immediately thereafter and into the next
generations. Each text contains a double love story: the first goes back in time to tell the tale of a
positive German-Jewish couple related to the protagonists, and then moves into the present to
chronicle the protagonists’ contemporary romantic relationship. Across the divide of gender,
generations, and the Holocaust these texts’ “happy” relationships break the taboo on positive
connections between Germans and Jews in Germany after Auschwitz.
As I will argue, these love stories from the 1930s and 1940s pave the way for the
protagonists’ contemporary German-Jewish relationships by providing models of love and trust
between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. In this way they create a bridge that spans the
Holocaust divide and prevents the rift of the past from opening up between the members of the
contemporary couple. Like the films of the last chapter, the three texts of this chapter thus further
normalize German-Jewish relations after the Holocaust. Stuart Taberner, in the introduction to
his book German Literature of the 1990s and Beyond: Normalization and the Berlin Republic,
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states that his chapter examining the literary German-Jewish symbiosis “starts from the premise
that Germany can never be truly ‘normal’ until Jewish and non-Jewish Germans are able to
address each other and their shared past in a manner that promotes understanding, avoids
stereotypes–on both sides–and does not elide historical injustices” (xxii). These texts present just
such Jewish and non-Jewish German interactions, with characters that talk about the past in
sensitive and constructive ways and who relate to one another as individuals and not stereotypes.
In addition, in contrast to texts like Schlink’s “Die Beschneidung” and films such as Aimée &
Jaguar and Rosenstrasse, the German partners are not positioned as victims (of their Jewish
partners or Nazis) in such a way as to elide German and Jewish suffering. In short, in this set of
texts the Holocaust shifts away from its previously pivotal role and relations between Germans
and Jews become “normal.”
The analyses of this chapter will trace the ways in which this set of texts contrasts to the
texts where the negative symbiosis held sway, in order to show the shifts in the Holocaust’s
legacy for German-Jewish relations. Major stumbling blocks such as familial objection to the
relationship and German partners associated with perpetration are no longer present. German
partners in all generations are presented as trustworthy and sensitive, willing to engage with the
past and their Jewish partners. Previously polarized and oppositional “German” and “Jewish”
identities become more flexible and linked to one another in the relationships and the partners
themselves. While the film chapter focused on female protagonists, this chapter focuses on male
protagonists (Jewish and non-Jewish) struggling with their identities in Germany. But in the end,
Germany is a place where they can live with their partners, and become more integrated into
society both as individuals and German-Jewish couples. These literary imaginings of German-
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Jewish love usher in a taboo-breaking, new sense of normalcy in the German-Jewish
relationship.
Lothar Schöne’s novella Das jüdische Begräbnis (1996)
Lothar Schöne is a novelist whose recent texts include Der blaue Geschmack der Welt (2002)
and Die Sternenfischer (2004). He is the recipient of a number of literary prizes, the most recent
of which is the 2004 Literaturpreis der Stadt Erfurt. Also a screenwriter, he has written episodes
for the ZDF television crime series “Rosa Roth,” which occasionally have connections to Jewish
themes (such as the episode “Jerusalem oder Die Reise in den Tod”). A member of the second
generation, Schöne was born in 1949 in Herrnhut (Saxony) to parents of a mixed marriage and
now resides in Wiesbaden.
As the back cover of his novella Das jüdische Begräbnis informs the reader, the text is
autobiographical. Based on “ein authentischer Fall,” namely Schöne’s own difficulty in having
his Jewish mother buried next to his gentile father’s plot in a Christian cemetery, Schöne
considers his text “ein Geschenk an meine Mutter, eine Art Liebesbrief.” His Erzählung begins
with the protagonist’s mother, Rosa’s, death, and for the majority of the text the unnamed
protagonist tries to figure out how he can fulfill his mother’s burial instructions: she wants to be
buried according to Jewish funeral rituals but interred with her husband in the Christian
cemetery. Walter Hinck, a reviewer for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, praised the novella
as “das Beste, was ich bisher von Lothar Schöne gelesen habe,” and summarizes the text as
focusing on problematic German-Jewish relations:
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Die Geschichte dieses jüdischen Begräbnisses hat sich zur Parabel verdichtet, zum
Gleichnis für die nicht beigelegten Konflikte zwischen den Religionen, für die Macht
religiöser Orthodoxie und für einen weitreichenden Liberalismus in der lutherischen
Kirche, für immer noch schwelende Ressentiments im deutsch-jüdischen Verhältnis. (36)
Certainly Schöne’s text can be read as a parable of the difficulties and differences between
Judaism and Christianity. Yet it is also very much a story of German-Jewish love and
cooperation on the interpersonal level in the first generation as well as the second. In addition to
the love story between the protagonist’s parents, the protagonist “selbst ist mit einer deutschen
nichtjüdischen Frau offensichtlich glücklich verheiratet” (Schruff 178). Thus this novella does
not emphasize resentments between Germans and Jews on a personal level, but only the
difficulties on the religious-institutional level. Through its two German-Jewish love stories, it
presents positive relations through the two generations of Germans and Jews.
The unnamed protagonist relates his parents’ story of fidelity and love during the
Holocaust in a balanced way. Unlike the films of Chapter Three, Das jüdische Begräbnis tells
the story of a first generation German husband who refuses to divorce his Jewish wife Rosa and
abandon her to the Nazis. However, in doing so, the narrative does not privilege the first
generation German’s suffering over his Jewish partner’s but emphasizes both partners’ roles in
helping one another. 69 The protagonist introduces his parents’ love story, stating: “Es rettete ein
deutscher Christ einer deutschen Jüdin das Leben. Es rettete eine deutsche Jüdin einem
deutschen Christen das Leben. Und beide lebten in Freuden weiter” (31). The parallel
construction of this statement highlights their equal importance in saving one another, as does
another comment by the protagonist:
Papa mußte den Polen-Feldzug mitmachen, dann entließ man ihn wegen seiner Frau.
Falls die jüdisch versippten Männer fielen, sollten ihre Ehefrauen keinen Anspruch auf
69
On the contrary, much of what the protagonist relates about his mother is her mental illness (depression) and
survivor’s guilt in the decades after the war ended, both extensions of her suffering during the war.
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Rente haben. […] Dafür durfte seine Frau nicht in die Gaskammer, sondern nur ins Lager
Sakrau. (32)
Once again, he underscores how both parents’ loyalty to one another helped them survive under
the Nazis.
However, the presence of a loyal gentile husband in the first generation is significant in
two ways. First, it breaks the gendered ‘goodness’ of Germans found in heritage films of the
previous chapter. And unlike the gentile husband in the film Rosenstrasse who divorces his
Jewish wife during the Nazi era, “Papa” stays with his wife Rosa, despite Gestapo and familial
pressure to leave her: “Seine Halbschwester schrieb ihm Briefe mit immer der gleichen Frage:
Bist Du schon geschieden? Uns kann nichts passieren, schrieb er zurück, bis sie ihn selber
holten” (15). Arrested numerous times by the Gestapo, he loses his job, but never abandons his
wife: “Sich scheiden zu lassen, hat er immer abgelehnt. Obwohl er dann bei der Zigarrenfirma
Dürninger nicht rausgeschmissen worden wäre” (32). The protagonist refers to his father as “ein
Held” and relates stories that show his mother’s admiration for her husband as well:
Sie haben ihn nicht weich gekriegt bei der Gestapo, hatte mir Mama erzählt. Er mußte
neunmal zur Geheimen Staatspolizei, einmal holten sie ihn sogar ab, das mußte wie ein
Todesurteil wirken. ‘Lassen Sie sich scheiden! Wir nehmen Ihnen alle Ehrenrechte! Wir
sperren Sie ein!’ sagten sie. Sie drohten ihm mit Zwangarbeit. ‘Ich verrichte jede Arbeit,
die man mir zuweist,’ soll er geantwortet haben. […] Aber scheiden ließ er sich nicht,
später schon gar nicht mehr. (46)
At one point, Rosa even asks him to divorce her so that she can join her siblings at Auschwitz,
telling him he is crazy to stand by her during this time, but he refuses to abandon her to the Nazis
and certain death. He remains devoted to his marriage and his wife, and as a gentile, he was able
to help shield her from the worst of the Nazi anti-Semitic policies. As in Comedian Harmonists
and Rosenstrasse, a story of gentile German husband’s betrayal highlights a “good” German’s
fidelity: Rosa also relates the story of Jewish neighbor whose gentile husband divorced her, and
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was then was sent with her son to Auschwitz. The neighbor survived but her son did not, and
when she returned after her internment, she was insane, her ex-husband refused to help her, and
she was shuttled from one mental institute to another. This story contrasts starkly with Rosa’s
fate; since she was (and remained) married to a “good” German who stayed by her side (even
later, when she had her own bouts with depression and survivor’s guilt), she did not suffer this
fate. In contrast to the films of the late 1990s, this text paints an extremely positive picture of a
gentile German man who remained loyal to his wife during the war, and whose loyalty helped
save her life.
Secondly, this portrayal of a “good” German who is part of the German-Jewish narrator’s
own family paves the way for the positive contemporary German-Jewish relationship of the
novella. Helene Schruff points out that the protagonist’s “eigener Vater [ist] der erste
nichtjüdische Mensch, mit dem er zu tun hat. […] [und] dieser Mann hat sich in den Augen des
Sohnes vorbildlich verhalten. […] kann sich der Sohn mit diesem Nichtjuden ohne weiteres
identifizieren” (178). Though the protagonist struggles somewhat with his connection to his
mother and his Jewish heritage, he ultimately accepts his own mixed identity. He sees himself
neither as a Jew nor a Christian exclusively: “Was gehen mich die Juden an? Sie sind so gut und
so schlecht wie alle anderen. Es ist mir nie in den Sinn gekommen, mich als Jude, als Christ oder
sonstwie zu deklarieren” (154). His ‘mixed’ identity allows him to be more flexible and not
categorize himself or his partner as “Jewish” or “German” 70—that is, in categories that are
70
He is in fact annoyed by Jews who feel the need to make such categorizations. When a Jewish acquaintance calls
him “nur Halbjude,” this angers the narrator: “Ich entgegnete, daß ich mich für ihn freue, daß er Volljude sei, und
betrat nie wieder sein Haus. Den Halben hätte ich ihm verziehen, aber das Wörtchen ‘nur’ hätte er nicht verwenden
dürfen. Woher diese Überheblichkeit […]? War es der Hochmut der Auserwählten? Der Schmerz des ewig
Verfolgten?” (19) He also makes fun of such categorizations, saying that one way to solve the issue of his mother’s
burial would be for everyone in the family to become fully Jewish: “Du [Fred] wirst Doppeljude, ich Volljude,
Judith Spontanjude und Papa Posthumjude” (43). When his wife asks if a rabbi will come to perform the funeral
rites, he says no because “[s]ie finden es genauso verwerflich wie die Rassenfanatiker der Nazis. Mama hat schwer
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oppositional and incompatible. Because of his own mixed heritage and his positive familial
connection to a good German, Schruff argues, the protagonist does not divide “Germans” and
“Jews” into oppositional categories:
Schönes Protagonist schreibt aus der Perspektive eines Mannes, für den es keine klare
Unterscheidung zwischen ‘In-Group’ und ‘Out-Group’ gibt, wie es bei den jüdischen
Autoren der Fall ist, weil er selbst einem Zwischenbereich angehört, also mit keiner
Gruppe eindeutig identifiziert. Die Deutschen sind nie ‘die Gojim,’ seine Frau oder
andere nichtjüdische Frauen bezeichnet er nie als ‘Schickse.’ (178)
To expand upon this, I argue that because of his own positive family model, the protagonist is
able to see his wife Judith not as a stereotype and a member of an oppositional group to himself,
but as an individual. Thus what has often been the legacy of the Holocaust—the separation of
Germans and Jews into oppositional groups—does not happen in this text, and this is one factor
that contributes to the second ‘happy’ German-Jewish relationship of the text.
Judith, the protagonist’s wife, is a second generation gentile German who is a positive
partner in a number of ways. First, the connection between a German character and the label
“perpetrator” has disappeared here: unlike the gentile German partners in Rubinsteins
Versteigerung or “Die Beschneidung,” there is no mention of Judith’s family history, no
questions about what her parents did during the war, no objections to her on the grounds that she
might be related to Nazi perpetrators. Her relationship with the Jewish German protagonist is
based firmly in the present, not in the past or overshadowed by the Holocaust legacy. Judith is
also characterized as a “good” German by the fact that she is able to hear and talk about the
German past, in contrast to earlier German lovers in Eine Liebe aus nichts or Abschied von
Jerusalem. In addition, she does not become defensive or feel attacked like the German
characters of Andi and Karla in “Die Beschneidung” and Die Haut retten, respectively, but is
gesündigt. Sie hat den Mann geheiratet, den sie liebte” (44). He expresses his anger at the narrow understanding of
Judaism toward mixed marriages by comparing rabbis to Nazis.
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able to be deeply affected by the knowledge of the Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. When
Judith visits Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, with her husband,
she is overcome with emotion. When the protagonist reads aloud a newspaper story about a
brutal SS camp overseer, she has goose bumps and is crying; she and her husband then kiss to
comfort one another about the horrors. These scenes sympathetically characterize her as willing
to confront and be affected by the past, and also underscore that it does not divide them, but
rather that they are able to support and comfort one another when dealing with the past. Finally,
Judith plays a critical role in getting her mother-in-law buried with the Jewish rites but in the
Christian cemetery next to her husband: it is her suggestion to call the Protestant pastor who then
agrees to perform his best approximation of the Jewish burial ceremony. In this way, she helps
her Jewish mother-in-law be with her Christian husband after death, and contributes not only to
their ‘happy ending’ after death, but to the conciliatory ending to the entire novella.
Focus magazine recommends the text in its “Literatur-Tip” section, and is especially
complimentary of Schöne’s ending. Reviewer Kurt Ueding enjoys the story for its similarity to
Woody Allen films, for being “so leicht und zugleich doppeldeutig,” but in particular praises the
ending: “Zum Schluss sind wir auf unmerkliche Art klüger geworden: über uns, das ungereimte
Leben und wie menschlich es durch ein wenig Konzilianz werden kann” (88). Because of the
goodwill of a Protestant pastor—and even more importantly, as I have argued, “good” Germans
like Papa and Judith—the novel emphasizes gentile and Jewish Germans relating in positive
ways.
The contemporary German-Jewish love relationship is not the battleground for working
out or reconciling with the past or Jewish identity. Unlike earlier texts, the German-Jewish
narrator’s involvement with a gentile German woman is unproblematic. His relationship with
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Judith is neither a battleground for confronting the troubling aspects of the German past, nor a
source of conflict with his family. He explains that
[a]ls ich Mama vor Jahren erzählte, daß meine Freundin Judith heiße, zeigte sie Interesse.
Früher hatte sie mit Ablehnung oder Gleichgültigkeit auf Namen wie Christel oder Elfie,
Sabine oder Nina reagiert. Aber Judith, das gefiel ihr. Ich mußte sie enttäuschen. Judith
war auch keine Jüdin. Und ich weiß noch, wie ihr Fred einmal heftig erklärte: ‘Was
erwartest du? Ihr lebt nicht in Israel. Wo soll dein Sohn jüdische Frauen kennenlernen?
Soll er Tag und Nacht in der Jüdischen Gemeinde herumlungern?’ (124)
While his mother would prefer him to be with a Jewish woman, her pragmatic cousin Fred, a
Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Israel after the war, makes it clear there are few options
for her son to meet such a partner. The only familial rejection of a German partner has happened
in the past (“früher”) but not in the present of the story, and there is ‘even’ a Holocaust survivor
who takes a very pragmatic perspective on the narrator dating gentile Germans. Although she
may have been against her son dating a gentile German in the past, Rosa does not object to
Judith because she is a gentile.
To my knowledge, Schöne’s autobiographical novella Das jüdische Begräbnis is the first
German-language text written after 1945 to depict positive German-Jewish romantic
relationships. Like the films of Chapter Three, it returns to the setting of Nazi Germany to relate
a first generation couple’s struggle to stay together despite the anti-Semitism of the times. The
unnamed narrator’s parents, a gentile and a Jewish German, are in a so-called mixed marriage,
but despite familial and governmental pressure to split apart, they survive wartime together. This
first instance of German-Jewish cooperation paves the way for the positive relationship their
adult son, the narrator, and his gentile German wife, Judith, enjoy. The novella breaks two taboos
simultaneously: first, by portraying a “good” first generation man who stands by his Jewish wife
during the Nazi era (thus breaking the cinematic trend of the last chapter) and second, by
depicting a contemporary German-Jewish romantic relationship that is not broken apart by the
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legacy of the Holocaust. Both relationships do not hew to the negative symbiosis, but instead,
like the films of Chapter Three, show positive relations between Germans and Jews—but this
time, both in the past and the present.
This autobiographical novella also introduces a protagonist who does not have to choose
sides nor reinforce the opposition between “German” and “Jewish.” Although Schöne’s
protagonist struggles to a small degree with the legacy of the past, it does not overshadow his
identity or his relationship to others. As a child, he railed against his connection to the horrors of
the Holocaust through his mother:
Warum mußte ich das Kind einer Frau sein, deren Geschwister verschwunden waren?
Warum sollte ich meine ersten und letzten Liebesreserven zusammenkratzen, um sie
meiner Mutter zu schenken? Ich wollte frei sein, frei von allem. Die Schatten der
Vergangenheit sollte jemand anders zusammenkehren und im Meer versenken. Mein
Ideal war Stinknormalität. (45)
But after his mother’s death, he reflects on his own identity and connection to Jewishness, and
decides that he does not need to choose a side. When confronted with his mother’s final wish that
he say Kaddish (Jewish prayer of mourning) at her funeral, however, he at first resists, but
ultimately does so. Schruff interprets this to mean that the protagonist “akzeptiert damit der
Mutter zuliebe auch ein religiöses Fragment in seiner vagen jüdischen Identität. Der Sohn einer
Jüdin und eines Christen kann und möchte sich nicht so klar für die jüdische und gegen die
christliche Religion entscheiden” (91). But Schruff’s interpretation still comes from the
perspective that he must choose a side, when in fact this text argues against such binary ideas of
identity and relationship. The protagonist does not have to choose for or against either identity,
but rather can have a more fluid relationship to his identity: he can say Kaddish, but continue to
live as he had previously, without declaring a particular identity.
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This is a new move. In contrast to the male Jewish protagonists of Chapter One, this
protagonist does not ally himself with a Jewish identity over a German one at the expense of his
romantic relationship to a gentile German. Schöne’s text rejects categories that separate, and
shifts away from a divisive legacy of the Holocaust and toward supportive relationships between
individuals rather than between “Germans” and “Jews.” With the creation of a protagonist who is
a gentile-Jewish-German, Schöne introduces a unique ‘mixed’ perspective on Jewish and
German identities after the Holocaust, and imagines less polarized ways of relating between
“Germans” and “Jews.” In addition, the Holocaust appears to overshadow neither the
protagonist’s life nor his marriage to a gentile German woman. Schöne’s autobiographical
novella—with its heroic first generation father and sensitive German wife with no connection to
perpetration—presents the most positive past and unproblematic present for German-Jewish
relations in this set of texts.
Rafael Seligmann’s novel Schalom meine Liebe (1998)
Rafael Seligmann’s novel is based on his screenplay he wrote for the television film of the same
name that aired on ARD in December 1998. The TV movie was criticized as a “Jüdische
Lindenstraße” by the Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung, 71 the same newspaper that took issue
with Seligmann’s “Nestbeschmutzung” in his earlier novel Rubinsteins Versteigerung. In an
article for the Welt am Sonntag, Seligmann responds to this criticism unperturbed, finding that
71
In general, the TV movie was not well received, and Seligmann himself criticized the way his screenplay was
filmed. For representative reviews of the movie, see Nikolaus von Festenberg’s “Fabeln hinterm Flammenkreis”
and Joachim Dechow’s “Zwei Länder, zwei Frauen, zwei Welten.” For Seligmann’s criticism of the movie, see
his article “Braucht Deutschland jüdische TV-Magazine? Von Musterjuden, Mut und Verstand - Warum mehr
Fernsehpräsenz helfen könnte.”
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“ein größeres Kompliment hätte sie dem Film und mir nicht machen können,” because he
purposefully created a very emotional and dramatic film (and novel) in order to rouse his
audience’s feelings rather than intellect (1). His goal is for his German audience to connect with
the Jewish characters and plot on a common human level: “Die deutschen Zuschauer bekommen
endlich Gelegenheit, ihre Juden zu erleben […] Mitzufühlen, daß die vielbeschworenen
‘jüdischen Mitbürger’ nichts anderes suchen als sie selbst. Liebe, Anerkennung” (ibid). With its
double German-Jewish love story, Seligmann’s work places the task of finding common ground
squarely on “Liebe,” that universal human theme, and presents his audience with positive love
stories between gentile and Jewish German partners in Germany after the war. As in Das
jüdische Begräbnis, the protagonist Ron Rosenbaum’s parents are the first positive GermanJewish relationship of the text. His Jewish father Kuba’s marriage to a gentile German woman
Edith provides the foundation for his own trust of a gentile German partner, Ingrid. In addition,
through the love stories, the partners change their identities in such ways as to tear down strict
distinctions between “Germans” and “Jews” and to meet in the middle: Ron accepts his identity
as a German Jew and Ingrid converts to Judaism to take on a hyphenated, dual identity.
In the first German-Jewish love story of the novel, Ron’s father Kuba rebels against the
taboo on German-Jewish love in 1950s Germany and against seeing Germans as perpetrators or
in opposition to him. His mother Hanna, a Holocaust survivor, protests Kuba’s romantic
involvement with Edith, a second generation gentile German woman who has been working at
the café she owns:
Hanna wiederum wollte ihr Kind vor ‘dem Schlimmsten’ bewahren. ‘Der Vater deiner
Schickse war Soldat. Wie alle Deutschen! Wahrscheinlich sogar ein SS-Mörder. Es kann
gut sein, dass er deinen Vater erschlagen hat. Willst du mit dieser Schickse Nazikinder
zeugen, du Unmensch?!’ (33)
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This is a familiar protest, one that also arose in Seligmann’s earlier novel, Rubinsteins
Versteigerung, but in this later novel Seligmann’s character of Kuba glides past it. Kuba “liebte
seine Edith” (ibid) and sees her as an individual he cares for, not as someone connected to the
Nazi crimes, and so remains involved with her despite his mother’s protest. When Hanna fires
Edith to distance her from her son, Kuba quits working at the café. Hanna is then forced to
recapitulate, as she does not wish to lose her son or her business, but demands that “Edith zum
Judentum übertrete und sich von ihrer deutschen Familie löse, ehe sie Kuba heiratete” (34).
Hanna’s demands show that she objects to Edith’s gentile status as well as her connection to
Nazi perpetration. (In fact, Edith’s father was a soldier in the war, but was declared missing after
the war’s end. In addition, Edith does not have a very close relationship to the rest of her family,
and both of these facts lessen her connection to Nazism.) Edith initially converts out of love for
Kuba, but then feels a genuine attraction to the religion: “die Klarheit und Ehrlichkeit der
jüdischen Religion nahmen Edith allmählich gefangen” (35) and she becomes Edith-Esther,
taking on a name from the Old Testament. Edith is a “good” German distanced from any Nazi
perpetration, and who is also willing to take on a Jewish and hyphenated identity that mirrors her
German-Jewish husband’s situation in Germany.
Kuba and Esther-Edith’s romance serves as a model for Ron and Ingrid’s, as Ron rebels
against his family’s objections just as his father did and Ingrid converts to Judaism. Although
Ron’s family protests his involvement with a gentile (German), he refuses to be swayed. He
places his own happiness and his love for Ingrid above that of his family’s wishes: “er wollte
sich offen zu Ingrid bekennen und seiner Familie den Rücken kehren. Seine Liebe zu Ingrid war
stärker als seine Feigheit gegenüber seiner Mischpoche” (153). Ron and Ingrid confront some
family resistance, as Ron’s parents did, but Ingrid’s “Germanness” and connection to Nazism are
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less the topic than the fact that she is a non-Jew. It also bears mentioning that Ingrid has very
little connection to familial Nazi perpetration: Like Edith-Esther, she is not especially close to
her family and neither they nor any possible connection between her and Nazi perpetrator family
members are ever mentioned. By the third generation, the Jewish partner’s family objects not to
the fact that Ingrid is German, but that she is not religiously Jewish. The family rabbi points out
the difference:
Sie wollen Jüdin werden–nicht, weil sie sich zu unserem Glauben hingezogen fühlen,
sondern weil sie ihrem Mann einen Gefallen erweisen wollen. Weil Sie besser dadurch
mit seiner jüdischen Familie zurechtzukommen hoffen. […] Aus diesem Grund, nur aus
diesem Grund, nicht weil sie aus Deutschland oder aus Honolulu kommen, darf ich sie
nicht zum Judentum führen. (261)
This signals a shift away from a connection between German identity and the Nazi past and
toward an emphasis on religious identity. The concern that Ingrid could be related to perpetrators
has faded away, and the objection that she is gentile could be made regardless of her nationality.
The German past is no longer a stumbling block to German-Jewish connection.
Unlike Hanna’s directive that Edith convert, however, neither Ron’s relatives (nor Ron
himself) insist that Ingrid convert; instead, the desire to convert comes from her, which mirrors
Edith-Esther’s (later) genuine attraction to Judaism. Ingrid at first wants to convert because she
wants to be integrated into Ron’s family and be closer to him: “Ingrid wusste, dass sie trotz ihrer
zivilen Ehe Rons Familie und damit teilweise auch ihm fernbleiben würde, wenn sie nicht zum
Judentum überträte” (260), but eventually also feels the pull toward Ron’s religion. Andi, the
gentile German protagonist of Bernhard Schlink’s story “Die Beschneidung,” has similar reasons
for wanting to convert, as he likewise hopes to close the gap between him and his Jewish lover,
but Ingrid’s conversion is genuine, compared to his surface attempt via the physical alteration of
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circumcision. The character of Andi contrasts sharply with Ingrid, whose newfound Judaism
leads to a blurring of oppositional categories and a stronger German-Jewish connection.
Ingrid admits that “sie wollte dazu gehören, als Rons Frau” but as she begins study of Judaism
on her own begins to feel a genuine desire for conversion “weil sie die Kraft des Judentums
erfuhr und Zuversicht daraus gewann” (262). This convinces the rabbi, who then helps her
convert, and gives her a new hyphenated name, just like her mother-in-law: Ingrid-Ruth.
Ron also takes on a dual identity in the course of the novel. Although he struggles with
being a German Jew, in the end he is at peace with this identity. Unlike the title character
Jonathan Rubinstein of Seligmann’s 1989 novel, Ron comes to terms with being a Jew in
Germany, as this later text does not end with Rubinstein’s despairing wail of “Ich bin ein
deutscher Jude!” but rather with Ron’s acceptance that as a Jew he has a place in Germany: “Ich
lebe in Deutschland, weil ich ein deutscher Jude bin. Basta!” (76). Schalom meine Liebe invokes
the familiar trope of the love triangle to portray his identity struggle. Prior to this statement, Ron
had spent part of his adult life in Israel, romantically involved with a Jewish Israeli named Yael
with whom he has a son Benni, trying to find his place in the country that is supposed to be
Jews’ proper homeland. However, he never feels that he fits in there, and also carries on a
relationship with the gentile German Ingrid when he is in Germany. Ron recognizes the
attraction of Yael and Israel for German Jews:
Ron würde um Yael beneidet werden – vor allem innerhalb der jüdischen Gemeinde. Die
deutschen Juden waren auf alles Israelische versessen, da sie das schlechte Gewissen
plagte, in Hitlers Land zu leben. Auch Ron wurde früher von solchen Gefühlen
beherrscht. Deshalb hatte er versucht, mit Gewalt Israeli zu werden. Doch er hatte lernen
müssen, dass sein Platz hier war, in Deutschland – und an Ingrids Seite. (153)
The two women represent the two countries and a choice for one is tantamount to a choice about
his identity, as Ron states: “‘Yael ist wie Israel,’ fuhr Ron fort – ‘Es …, sie zieht mich an – aber
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ich komme mit ihr und mit dem Land nicht zurecht. Und Ingrid – Ingrid ist wie Deutschland. Da
gehöre ich doch irgendwie hin’” (163). Yael also points out that Ron belongs to the category
Jewish German:
Du must dich entscheiden, was du sein willst, Israeli, der schon seit einem halben
Jahrhundert gegen die Araber kämpft […] oder ein Diasporajude, der sich mit dem Buch
gegen Nazis und andere Antisemiten verteidigt und gelegentlich Israel besucht. […] Du
gehörst einer dritten Kategorie an. Du bist ein Jecke. […] Ein deutscher Jude. (64-65)
Ron makes the choice to be a “Jecke,” choosing Ingrid and Germany—and even more than that,
for as a Jewish German he chooses a connection to a non-Jewish German. This contrasts sharply
to male Jewish German protagonists such as Rubinstein and Biller’s protagonist in “Aus Dresden
ein Brief”— although involved with gentile German women for a time, they ultimately choose to
be with a Jewish German woman, ruling out a close connection to non-Jewish Germans. Thus
Ron’s choice represents a shift toward a more normalized (i.e. trusting and positive) relationship
between “Germans” and “Jews.” As Stuart Taberner has commented about Schalom meine Liebe,
“it seems that Jews can have faith in the new German ‘normality’—and finally feel at home”
(Literature of the 1990s 181).
Another part of this normality is that the Holocaust is not a barrier to Jews making
Germany their home in the present or the future. In a conversation with his son Benni, 72 Ron
emphasizes that the past is over and that Jews can live in Germany:
[Ron] ‘Mir ist klar geworden, dass ich nicht dazugehöre [in Israel]. Ich bin zwar IsraelFan, aber ich spiele nicht aktiv mit.’
[Benni] ‘Und in Deutschland?’
[Ron] ‘Da mische ich voll mit.’
72
Benni eventually comes to live with Ron and Ingrid in Germany, and Ingrid gives him the book, Ein deutsches
Jahrhundert, signifying that she is cognizant of her country’s history. After paging through the book, Benni “fand
die entsprechenden Fotos – auch jene von KZ-Häftlingen. Die Deutschen drückten sich also nicht vor ihrer
Vergangenheit, wie er befürchtet hatte. Aber die Geschichte ging weiter. Die Bilder vom Fall der Mauer bewiesen,
dass die Deutschen aus ihrer Geschichte gelernt hatten” (165). Although the last line is cryptic, as Benni does not
explain how the fall of the wall shows that Germans have learned from their history, it does underscore a faith in the
new normality pushed for and thought possible after unification.
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[Benni] ‘Trotz Hitler?’ […]
[Ron] ‘Ja. Hitler ist tot. Wir Juden leben wieder in Deutschland.’ (197)
With this conversation, Ingrid Kühl points out in a section of her dissertation entitled “Traum
einer Normalität,” the character of Ron “verkörpert das von Seligmann propagierte, normalisierte
Selbstverständnis eines jungen Juden im heutigen Deutschland” (174). The birth and bris of
Ingrid and Ron’s son Chaim concludes the novel, ending the text with a final image of
reconciliation with the past and a focus on the German-Jewish future. Ron’s own birth helped his
grandmother Hanna to accept her German daughter-in-law, Esther-Edith, and Ron’s son Chaim
now makes it possible for Hanna to find peace with the past:
[Hanna] dankte dem Ewigen für die Gnade, dass er sie in ihrem neunten Jahrzehnt die
Geburt dieses Kindes erleben liess. Nun war es Zeit, mit dem eigenen Leben Frieden zu
machen. Es hatte sie von Polen nach Deutschland geführt. In diese Stadt. Frankfurt war
endlich ihre Heimat geworden. (271)
The child’s name means “life” and “[d]er Säugling war ein lebendes Andenken an ihren
ermordeten Mann Chaim,” and so in him the murdered first generation Jew lives on (ibid).
Young Chaim represents the triumph of (German) Jews over the Holocaust, for he is part of a
new German-Jewish generation in Germany, one that can help remember the past but is the
future. The birth of a child to a contemporary German-Jewish couple is a new development in
the German-Jewish love story, as previous Jewish protagonists such as the unnamed female
narrator in Barbara Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus nichts could only conceive of a misshapen child
as the result of a German-Jewish union. The final scene is of Ron holding his circumcised son,
wishing the child and his family “Schalom.” The word not only provides the title of this novel,
but in its multiple meanings of goodbye, hello, and peace provides a summary of its major
themes: taking leave of the past and the negative symbiosis, greeting a German-Jewish future,
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and making peace with the difficult situation between Germans and Jews since the Holocaust
through positive German-Jewish love stories.
Rafael Seligmann’s novel Schalom meine Liebe (1998), like Schöne’s text, contains a
double love story in which the earlier gentile-Jewish German romantic relationship influences
the later one. Although Ron’s later contemporary relationship has to deal with some lingering
familial objections to a gentile-Jewish German romance, his parents’ earlier one bore the brunt of
dealing with the Holocaust past. In both love stories, the German partner is willing to change her
identity by converting to Judaism, which helps make the German-Jewish relationship
sustainable, and the Jewish partner’s love allows him to see his gentile German partner as an
individual, not a member of an oppositional group. The familial connection to perpetration which
has played such a large role in other texts is not the same kind of stumbling block in this novel.
Both of the German-Jewish love stories in Schalom meine Liebe downplay the German partner’s
connection to Nazi perpetration, and in general shift the emphasis away from the negative legacy
of the German past and toward a positive connection between German and Jewish characters
after the Holocaust.
The connection between “German” and “perpetrator” lessens considerably (even from
second to third generation), and the association between once polarized identities of “German”
and “Jewish” becomes stronger. Both Ron and Ingrid find common ground in dual identities that
link the two: Ron embraces his German-Jewish identity, while Ingrid converts to Judaism and
hyphenates her name, symbolically linking the two identities of German (Ingrid) and her new
Jewish identity (Ruth). The Holocaust legacy is not the divisive force it once was in Seligmann’s
earlier novel, Rubinsteins Versteigerung. Instead, Seligmann’s most recent literary portrayals of
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German-Jewish relations represent movement across the Holocaust rift and between formerly
oppositional identities.
Peter Schneider’s novel Eduards Heimkehr (1999)
Unlike the previous two authors, Peter Schneider (b. 1940) is a non-Jewish German author of an
earlier generation, that of the so-called “68er.” One of the leaders of the student movement in the
1960s, his texts often thematize the concerns of his generation. In his 1987 novel Vati, Schneider
addresses the topic of German guilt within the protagonist’s own family, namely the father of the
book’s title: the protagonist is Josef Mengele’s son and the novel chronicles his struggle to deal
with being related to a major Nazi perpetrator. 73 A little over a decade later, Peter Schneider’s
novel Eduards Heimkehr (1999) again takes up the topic of the legacy of the Nazi past, but with
a more positive twist. After the fall of the Wall, the protagonist Eduard inherits a building from
his grandfather Egon, and spends the majority of the novel trying to determine if Egon was a
Nazi who purchased the property by taking advantage of a Jewish family. Although worried that
he may be related to a perpetrator, Eduard’s mind is put to rest when it turns out his grandfather
actually helped save the Jewish family in question. 74 Stuart Taberner notes that in Schneider’s
Berlin novel Eduards Heimkehr he not only “depicted post-unification debates on the restitution
of ‘Aryanised’ Jewish property [but] went on to critique the automatic presumption of German
73
For more on the subject of German guilt in this novel, see Birgit A. Jensen’s article “Peter Schneider's ‘Vati’:
Contesting a German Taboo.”
74
This novel also deals with theme of the Berlin Wall like Schneider’s novels Der Mauerspringer and Paarungen.
The character of Eduard reprises the “Biochemiker und orientierungslosen Casanova” from Schneider’s latter novel,
as reviewer Gerrit Bartels notes “mit Eduards Heimkehr hat er jetzt eine Art Fortsetzung von Paarungen
geschrieben und den Eduard zu neuem Leben erweckt” (2).
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guilt” (“Representations” 169). Like the texts of this chapter and the films of the last, Eduards
Heimkehr dissociates German identity from “German guilt,” normalizing the past and GermanJewish relationships.
The revelation about Eduard’s grandfather also brings to light a first generation GermanJewish romantic relationship in the novel: Egon was intimately involved with the daughter of the
family, one of the reasons he aided them in escaping Nazi Germany. The present day GermanJewish relationship of the novel involves the non-Jewish German Eduard and his American
Jewish wife Jenny, the American daughter of Holocaust survivors. Eduard’s potentially Nazi
family past and a return to live in Germany cause problems for the couple, and brings the
Holocaust legacy to the forefront in a way not seen in the previous two works under discussion.
Yet the revelation of a positive family past in the form of Eduard’s “good” grandfather, like the
family models in Das jüdische Begräbnis and Schalom meine Liebe, makes the contemporary
German-Jewish connection viable.
Set mainly in post-unification Berlin, Schneider’s novel begins with the fall of the Wall,
the impetus for Eduard to return to Germany from the U.S. Unification and access to East
German buildings unearth property claims from the Nazi era, and Eduard must investigate his
own family’s past to determine how his grandfather came to own Jewish property. In doing so,
he visits culturally and historically significant sites around Berlin. Carol Anne Costabile-Heming
analyzes Eduard’s “engagement with the city’s geographic spaces as [he] confronts the impact
that Berlin’s past legacies continue to have on [his] life” (349), arguing that in particular having
to confront this inherited building means dealing with his own family’s and nation’s Nazism.
These familial and national legacies particularly impact Eduard’s marriage to his Jewish wife, a
connection that Costabile-Heming does not discuss. Eduard’s inheritance prompts the
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“homecoming” of the novel’s title, but no sooner does he return to Berlin than marital problems
crop up. Early on in their marriage, Eduard and Jenny thought that they had dealt with the past
and the effect that it could have on their relationship, yet as Eduard’s stay in Germany lengthens
and the family considers moving to Germany, the past begins to loom large over their
relationship.
At the outset of the novel, it seems that the Jewish American Jenny and the gentile
German Eduard have successfully dealt both with the outer and inner pressures of being a
German-Jewish couple. Jenny’s family, like Jewish families in Rubinsteins Versteigerung and
Die Haut retten, object to her relationship with a German because of the Holocaust. The fact that
Jenny “ausgerechnet ins Land der Täter studieren ging und dort eine Familie gründete, hatte ihre
Eltern geschmerzt und endlose Briefdebatten ausgelöst” (76). Jenny is especially worried about
how to tell her German-Jewish émigré mother about the German-Jewish child she is carrying:
Als es sich in ihrem Bauch zu regen began, hatte sie verzweifelt darüber nachgedacht wie
sie ihrer Mutter die Mitteilung ersparen könnte, daß das Kind auch einen Vater hatte—
einen Deutschen. […] Doch nach Ilarias Geburt war es ihr dann rasch gelungen, sie von
der Unschuld des neuen Erdenwesens zu überzeugen. Der Umstand, daß das Kind kaum
Ähnlichkeiten mit dem Vater aufwies, habe vermutlich zu dieser glücklichen
Entwicklung beigetragen, spottete sie. (78)
Little resemblance to the German father notwithstanding, as in Schalom meine Liebe, the birth of
a grandchild placates any family members who objected to the German-Jewish relationship.
After Ilaria’s birth, neither Jenny’s parents nor any familial objections are mentioned again in the
novel.
While Jenny and Eduard are both cognizant of the fact that they come from groups that
are often conceived of as oppositional, they decide that the German past would not negatively
influence their relationship because they relate as individuals, not as group members:
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zwischen ihnen selbst hatte die Schuld der Nazigeneration nie, auch nicht beim
schlimmsten Streit, zu einem sichtbaren Konflikt geführt. Eduard und Jenny trafen sich in
der Meinung, es sei das erste und vornehmste Recht von zwei Liebenden, der
Kollektivgeschichte eine lange Nase zu zeigen. (76-77)
Yet during her first pregnancy, Jenny is haunted by her mother’s past 75 and feels “zum ersten
Mal die ganze Last der Familiengeschichte auf ihrem Bauch” (77). While the knowledge of her
mother’s narrow escape from the Nazis and the fact that many of her relatives died in the
Holocaust is difficult for Jenny to bear, these inner protests against a German-Jewish child and
marriage do not resurface:
Während der nachfolgenden beiden Schwangerschaften hatten sich die inneren Warnund Proteststimmen nicht mehr gemeldet; sie wären wohl auch von Ilarias pünktlich alle
vier Stunden ertönendem Geschrei übertönt worden. Was immer Eduard und Jenny in
den Jahren ständigen Unterschlafs an Auseinandersetzungen zu bestehen hatten, er
konnte sich an keine einzige erinnern, die sich durch das Konfliktmodell ‘Täter versus
Opferkind’–oder andersherum—hätte erklären lassen. Hinweise dieser Art hätten zur
Klärung der Frage, wer nachts aufzustehen hatte […] nicht viel beigetragen. (77-78)
This text suggests then that a German-Jewish couple can simply decide that the past will not
overshadow their relationship, whereas in earlier texts the couple seemed to be at the mercy of
the past, helpless to change the fact that the Holocaust legacy was negatively connecting them.
At the beginning of the novel, Eduard is characterized as a sensitive second generation
German aware of his country’s past, but also having chosen to engage with that past in a
distanced manner—literally and figuratively. He admits that “durch die Ehe mit Jenny und die
zweite Heimat in Kalifornien” he has chosen “Abstand zu ‘den Deutschen’” and the problematic
past of his country of origin (341). He knows that many people of his generation have avoided
75
The text includes the following information about Jenny’s mother’s experience during the Holocaust: “In der Linie
der Mutter war der größere Teil der Verwandtschaft von den Nazis abtransportiert und ermordet worden. In der Zeit
vor ihrer Niederkunft war Jenny von neuem die Szene vor Augen getreten, von der sie Eduart zu Beginn ihrer Liebe
einmal erzählt, die sie aber danach nie mehr erwähnt hatte: wie die Gestapo ihre Mutter und andere jüdische
Hausbewohner im Innenhof des Mietshauses zusammengetrieben hatte. Der blutjunge Offizier hatte einen der
Hausbewohner gleich ‘auf der Flucht’ erschossen, die anderen mit Schäferhunden und dem Ruf ‘Schnell, schnell,
schnell!’ in einem Lastwagen gehetzt. Durch eine List und einen Flirt mit einem Wachsoldaten war es der Mutter
gelungen, aus der Sammelstelle wieder herauszukommen” (77-78).
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looking too closely at their own family’s involvement during the Nazi era: “ein erwachsener
Vertreter seiner Generation […] sei eben nicht darauf versessen gewesen, das Vorleben der
Eltern und Großeltern zu erforschen. Er mußte fürchten, auf unangenehme Details zu stoßen, die
sich für Gutenachtgeschichten gar nicht eigneten” (105). Reflecting critically on his generation’s
way of dealing with the past, Eduard observes that
[d]ie ‘Abrechnung’ mit der Generation der Väter […] war keineswegs aus Versehen
‘strukturell’ ausgefallen. Man hatte Plurale gebildet, man scheute den Singular. Man
reimte Väter auf Täter, 76 sprach von ‘der Generation, die für den Nazifaschismus
verantwortlich war,’ aber selten vom eigenen Vater oder Großvater; man fixierte sich auf
die sozialen und psychologischen Voraussetzungen des Megaverbrechens, interessierte
sich nicht für die kleinen Feigheiten, die unerzwungenen Denunziationen und
Gemeinheiten der Verwandten, die alle zusammen den Holocaust ermöglicht hatten. Man
hatte auch keine Geduld für die kleinen Gesten von Anstand dieser oder jener Tante oder
Großmutter, die, wenn sie nur häufig genug gewesen wären, den Völkermord womöglich
verhindert hätten. 77 Die strukturelle Analyse hatte neben den anderen Verdiensten den
Vorteil, daß sie den Anklägern die Recherche der eigenen Familiengeschichte ersparte.
(105-106)
Eduard thus admits that the euphemistic “dealing with the past” happened on a more abstract and
distanced level, rather than a particular one, and that he knows very little about his family’s
past. 78 But in his own marriage he has always tried to be sensitive to his Jewish wife’s familial
past and the way in which certain words associated with Nazis and the Holocaust affect her:
Manchmal, wenn er gewisse Wörter aus dringendem Anlaß rief oder brüllte, sah er Jenny
zusammenzucken und lernte es, sie zu vermeiden. Er verbot sich den Ruf ‘Halt’, selbst
wenn eines der Kinder gerade dabei war, bei Rot eine Kreuzung zu überqueren. Andere
Imperativ-Formen wie ‘Stehenbleiben!’, ‘Achtung!’, ‘Schnell, schnell!’ strich er ganz aus
seinem Wortschatz und ersetzte sie durch ‘Stop!’, ‘Hey!’, ‘Mach schon!’ Wenn andere
die fatalen Wörter benutzten, ging er rasch weiter oder wechselte die Straßenseite; er
hörte diese Laute mit Jennys Ohren, auch wenn sie selber gar nicht in der Nähe war.
76
While Eduard refers here to dealing with the ‘father generation,’ this novel takes the generational remove further,
focusing on the grandfather, with no mention of Eduard’s father anywhere.
77
Through Eduard’s inner monologue, this novel points out how gendered the ‘good’ exceptions to Nazism have
been, as seen in the films of the last chapter. However, he also suggests that there is little tolerance for finding such
positive figures, despite the fact that this is exactly what this novel later does, by unearthing a ‘good’ (and male)
exception in Eduard’s family.
78
This contradicts many of the Väterliteratur works, including Schneider’s own novel Vati, which take a highly
personalized approach to the subject.
162
Manchmal, wenn ihm eines der verbannten Wörter dennoch unterlief und er den hellen
Schreck in Jennys Augen sah, fragte er sich, wie es bloß kam, daß es seinen mörderischen
Klang über Jahrzehnte hinweg bewahren konnte. (77)
He is committed to not hurting Jenny by using such words, and although he wonders how they
could have retained such a deadly connotation over so many years, Eduard’s above statement
indicates he is aware of the fact that the past casts a shadow over the present, but is doing all he
can to prevent it from negatively affecting his relationship with his wife. Despite his best efforts,
the past is nonetheless a presence in their marriage.
While it seems at the outset of the novel that Jenny and Eduard have dealt with the past in
such a way that it does not unduly influence their German-Jewish relationship, German
unification once again brings up the past. Unification deals a blow to Eduard’s safe distance to
Germany and the past, as well as to the happiness of his marriage. Eduard is at first unable to
comprehend that unification and an inheritance are causing so many problems in his life and his
marriage:
Ungläubig hatte sich Eduard gefragt, was ein welthistorisches Ereignis [die Wende], dem
zweifellos eine fette Überschrift in den Geschichtsbüchern gebührte, in seinem Eheleben
zu suchen haben könnte. Schon den Gedanken an eine solche Möglichkeit hätte er bis
dahin als politischen Kitsch abgetan. (76)
Yet he is forced to confront the fact that it does when Jenny expresses to him that she has never
had an orgasm with him in twelve years of marriage. This revelation calls into question Eduard’s
ability to connect with his wife on many levels, as well as causes the reader to wonder what else
he may have been unaware of in their relationship’s dynamic; from there it is only a short jump
to understand that he has also underestimated the role that the past plays in their marriage. As
soon as he makes plans to return to Berlin, she begins to question him more closely about his
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family, 79 which she had never done before. Both the prospect of living in Germany and his
problematic inheritance cause problems for/with his wife, as the past rears its head in his
relationship with her: “seit seiner Rückkehr nach Berlin [hatte er] gleich zwei Probleme. Er hatte
ein Erbe angetreten, […] von dem nicht einmal sicher war, ob es ihm zustand, und er führte eine
Ehe, die zwar mit drei Kindern gesegnet war, aber dennoch die letzte Zustimmung der Natur
entbehrte” (141). Eduard begins to wonder: “Was war los mit Jenny? Warum regte sie sich so
auf? Das alles war doch zigmal erklärt und zwischen ihnen abgehandelt worden” (105).
Jenny is never able to explain to Eduard what he is doing wrong in their sexual
relationship, but Eduard speculates that it has to do with the past and the fact that he is German:
“war der Betriebsschaden in seiner Ehe doch eine Folge von Jennys nie beruhigtem Mißtrauen
gegen die Deutschen und einen selbstmißtrauischen Vertreter namens Eduard?” (341). The
timing of their marital problems and Jenny’s confrontations with Eduard are significant. She
never expressed any dissatisfaction in their relationship prior to Eduard going to Berlin and the
possibility of their family moving there. While she insists at the end of the novel that there is no
connection between the Eduard’s family’s past or his identity as a German and their marital
difficulties, it is not until Eduard discovers that Egon was a “good” German that things are
righted between them.
Eduard finally resolves the mysterious circumstances surrounding Egon’s acquisition of
the Marwitz building by meeting with his grandfather’s former lover, Editha Marwitz. She
explains that Egon was not a Nazi who unjustly acquired her family’s building, but rather that
Egon was friends with her father and bought the building from him above market price, allowing
79
Jenny is dissatisfied with Eduard’s vague answers about his family and their role during the Nazi era, and becomes
upset with Eduard’s insistence that second and third generation Germans have dealt at least on a general level with
the past: “ ‘Mit wem habt ihr abgerechnet,’ fuhr Jenny auf, ‘mit Aliens, die sich nach Deutschland verirrt hatten?
Und wie seid ihr selber unter die Deutschen geraten? […] Am Ende könnt ihr euren Kindern nicht einmal erzählen,
von wem sie den roten Schopf, das Talent für Musik oder die Anlage für Diabetes haben!’ ”(105).
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the Marwitz family to use the funds to flee to New York. Although people “fragten sich
manchmal, was bei Egon eigentlich echt und was Tarnung war: sein öffentliches Auftreten als Pg
und überzeugter Nazi oder sein privat geäußerter Abscheu gegen das ‘braune Banausentum’”
(361), Editha clears up any confusion, saying that “[b]ei der Verhandlung über den Kaufpreis
habe Egon endgültig bewiesen, wo er ‘mit dem Herzen’ war” (362). Ulrich Baer in his article on
Peter Schneider and German guilt after 1989 remarks that “[i]n Schneider’s post-wall fantasy,
the possibility of a German-Jewish dialogue across not only generations but also across the
chasm of the Shoah is postulated […] by this romantic bond” (66). Like the cinematic GermanJewish relationships as well as the family models of Schöne’s and Seligmann’s texts, Egon and
Editha’s affair offers a German-Jewish connection despite the Holocaust. It normalizes the past
by providing a positive point of identification among the horrors of the time, once again
presenting the readers with a “good” German through a German-Jewish love story.
As in Das jüdische Begräbnis and Schalom meine Liebe, the earlier generation GermanJewish relationship appears to aid the contemporary one. While Editha does present a complex
picture of Egon in which she does not gloss over his more negative attributes, the discovery of a
non-perpetrator German in Eduard’s family past apparently resolves his and Jenny’s marital
troubles. Editha paints Egon as an “Angeber” and “ein Spieler, ein unverbesserlicher
Schürzenjäger” and that “[a]ls Ehemann und Vater war Egon wahrscheinlich eine Katastrophe”
(360). However, she also compares him favorably to other Germans of the time:
Aber ist es nicht etwas seltsam, wenn ein Mann, der nicht treu sein konnte, deswegen
auch noch von seinen Kindeskindern mit Nichtachtung gestraft wird? Viele treue
deutsche Ehemänner seiner Generation haben sich ganz andere Dinge zuschulden
kommen lassen, sind Denunzianten, Rassisten, Mörder geworden. Sind sie deswegen von
ihren Familienangehörigen zur Rede gestellt oder gar verleugnet worden? Nach getaner
Arbeit wurden sie von ihren treuen Ehefrauen und lieben Kinderchen in die Arme
geschlossen. Egon, der schlimme Egon, hatte etwas, was rar in Deutschland ist. (360361)
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Eduard, who previously knew nothing about his grandfather, 80 adopts this view of his
grandfather as a complex hero, later referring to him as one of the “kleinen und befleckten
Helden, Zwischengrößen wie seinen Großvater, Leute, die sich nicht opfern wollten und dennoch
für ihre verfolgten Nachbarn, Freunde oder Mitbürger ein gewisses Risiko eingingen” (315).
Ulrich Baer is critical of Schneider’s use of a first generation German-Jewish romantic
relationship to make the German-Jewish dialogue possible across the chasm of the Holocaust,
and also takes issue with the easy reconciliation that happens between Eduard and his
grandfather’s former lover, calling “Schneider’s rendition of German-Jewish reconciliation either
[…] refreshingly unburdened or flippant” (67). Their encounter is indeed refreshingly free of the
weight of the past, but the revelation of Egon as a complicated “hero” rather than a wholly
“good” exception to Nazism makes their meeting more realistic than superficial.
This same reconciliation also makes a more “normal” relationship possible for Jenny and
Eduard. Shortly after Eduard’s grandfather is revealed to be a good German (albeit with a
checkered past) and the inherited building is sold, Eduard is able to provide Jenny with the longawaited orgasm. As Matthias Schreiber’s Spiegel review observes, the revelation of a “good”
grandfather “befördert diese Geschichte dann in ein halbwegs glückliches Ende” and Eduard is
“endlich ‘auf dem Weg der Versöhnung’: der skeptischen Versöhnung mit dem eigenen Erbe,
[…] mit Deutschland, mit Jenny, mit sich selbst” (240). Siegfried Mews also observes that
“Eduard’s reconciliation with the country of his birth and its history serves as a kind of
prerequisite for a happy ending of sorts in the domestic realm” (279). The timing of the
emergence of their marital problems and Eduard’s problematic, possibly Nazi inheritance, and
80
Eduard’s grandmother apparently never spoke about her husband Egon because she was so angry about his
infidelity throughout their marriage.
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the concurrent resolution of both, suggests that there is indeed a connection between a German
past disassociated with Nazism and a positive contemporary German-Jewish relationship.
Through the first generation German-Jewish love story, “German” is uncoupled from
“Nazi perpetrator” and once again, the first generation love story recasts the past in a positive
light so that the Holocaust legacy does not overshadow the present. In Schneider’s novel, as in
the previous two texts, the meaning of the Holocaust shifts in the sense that it no longer is an
unbridgeable chasm: it can be bridged by “good” Germans in the past and also by their
descendants in the present. As Siegfried Mews summarizes:
In granting his protagonist Eduard […] a modicum of domestic bliss in a marriage that
seems to hold the promise of complete reconciliation between Germans and Jews—at
least in the private realm—as well as enabling him to settle the inheritance matter
amicably and to restore his good name, Schneider opts for portraying a state of—albeit
fragile—normality. (ibid)
While the text ends on a positive note, Eduards Heimkehr, more so than in the other two texts,
grapples with the effects of the German past on the contemporary German-Jewish couple’s lives.
But the final gesture of the novel tries to shift the Holocaust legacy yet again out of the center of
their lives by stating that Eduard and Jenny’s problems should be considered more personal than
connected to the larger political past. Eduard remarks to Jenny that her problems with him must
relate to something other than the German past and group/perpetrator identity:
Es muß etwas ganz Einfaches sein, etwas Elementares: der falsche Geruch, die falsche
Augenfarbe, die falsche Haut, die falsche Bewegung! Etwas viel Banaleres jedenfalls als
all die edlen, großmächtigen Verhinderungs- und Abhaltungsgründe, an denen ich mich
abgearbeitet habe. Deine Schwierigkeiten mit den Deutschen und ihrer kalten Stadt, das
Urmißtrauen gegen den Mann aus dem Mördervolk, die Kosten einer multikulterellen
Ehe—alles Quatsch, Vorwände, vertane Zeit. (402-403)
After all of his other deliberations, it turns out that risking his life is the key to pleasing Jenny.
After Eduard mistakenly tries to leave the room via the balcony door, and tumbles onto the roof,
she admits that “als [Eduard] so plötzlich vor meinen Augen über die Dächer verschwunden ist,
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da ist irgend etwas bei mir gerissen” (407); after he has recovered, they have sex and she
climaxes. The ending reprises their sentiments from the beginning that their relationship is
individual and personal rather than affected by politics or the past; according to the final scene,
the Holocaust and the legacy of the German past are not what came between them, even though
Eduard operated on this assumption for the majority of the novel’s plot and the timing of other
key events would suggest otherwise. In this way, Schneider’s text is able to play it both ways: it
pays appropriate attention to the German past and its legacy, but by making the contemporary
German-Jewish couple’s problems more idiosyncratic and intimate, it shifts the Holocaust out of
the center of their relationship.
Conclusion
The purpose of the literature of the Berlin Republic after 1990 “has been said to be to normalize
and reinterpret the German past—so that the Holocaust might relinquish its stature as the
defining aspect of German identity” (Michels 59). Both the publication dates and content of
Schöne’s Das jüdische Begräbnis, Seligmann’s Schalom meine Liebe and Schneider’s Eduards
Heimkehr indicate that they can be grouped into such a conception of the literature of the Berlin
Republic. After unification, there has been an increased interest in normalizing German national
identity and shifting the focus away from German guilt. Like the films of Chapter Three, these
texts’ German-Jewish love stories place the emphasis on “good” Germans who help their Jewish
partners and who are disassociated from perpetration; these texts even allow for German men to
be such helpful and sympathetic characters. Schöne’s, Seligmann’s and Schneider’s texts
represent the most positive literary German-Jewish love stories to date. All contain double
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romantic relationships in which the earlier generation makes the later contemporary relationships
possible, by providing models of love and trust between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans.
They walk a fine line in doing so: because they present individual love stories and
exceptional partners, they do not claim that all gentile Germans were or are “good,” yet at the
same time, they normalize relations between Germans and Jews by minimizing the German role
in the Holocaust. Schneider has been criticized for this novel, as well as for other non-fiction
works, because of his emphasis on Germans as non-perpetrators. Andreas Michel, in his article
“Heroes and Taboos: The Expansion of Memory in Contemporary Germany,” summarizes these
discussions:
By the spring of 2002, critics employed by well-regarded German and
Swiss daily newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and
Süddeutsche Zeitung, accused Grass and Schneider of participating in what the
German news magazine Der Spiegel cited as a creeping ‘transformation of a perpetrator
society into a society of victims.’ Grass's novella [Im Krebsgang] and Schneider's
historical account [Und wenn wir nur eine Stunde gewinnen], together with writings by
W.G. Sebald, Bernhard Schlink, and Dieter Forte, were considered suspicious because
they strayed from the accepted norms within which 20th century German history ought to
be portrayed. (59)
One of the accepted norms is that Germans are perpetrators or descended from them. Yet similar
criticism could be leveled at the other two texts by Jewish German authors Schöne and
Seligmann, which also disassociate Germans from these roles and so potentially minimize
German guilt for the Holocaust. Ulrich Baer criticizes Peter Schneider as prophesying the
disappearance of the view, most prominently promoted by Grass, that German history will
forever bear the mark of the nation’s crime:
Considering Schneider’s postwall fantasy [in Eduards Heimkehr] of a ‘we’ where
descendants of killers and victims become indistinguishable in mutually comforting
amnesia and victims forget as quickly as perpetrators, Grass’s deliberate insistence on
Germany’s shame as intractable, despite its flaws, still looks preferable to those who
remember lived history rather than let unrepressed intellectuals tell them how to forget.
(67)
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But neither Schneider’s text, nor Seligmann’s or Schöne’s for that matter, claim that a handful of
German exceptions and sympathetic partners erase German guilt for the Holocaust—if anything,
they underscore the fact that more Germans did not choose to help Jews. As Siegfried Mews
points out:
acknowledging and honoring the courage and decency of ordinary citizens is not
intended, as Schneider emphasizes […] in the novel, to ‘neutralize German guilt’; rather,
‘the story of one relatively decent individual magnifies the guilt of innumerable
conformists and accomplices rather than minimizing it’ (EH 288). (272)
Instead, these authors’ texts offer ways around the impasse of the negative symbiosis witnessed
in the texts of Chapter One and Two. The texts do not gloss over or “forget” the past, but rather
show that there were also exceptions that can then positively influence some contemporary
German-Jewish relationships.
These texts represent the opposite end of the spectrum: they imagine an unbroken and
sustainable German-Jewish connection during and after the Holocaust through their positive
gentile German characters and normalized German-Jewish love relationships. AsSiegfried Mews
argues, Schneider is a
critical—if pragmatic—intellectual who offers constructive solutions for dealing with the
past by proposing the emulation of positive role models rather than the continual
indulgence in demonizing the villains of recent German history. It is then not so much
Schneider’s intent, as has been remarked, to engage in a re-visioning of the recent
German past; rather, he intends to shift the focus to a more productive, less inhibiting and
paralyzing approach (280).
Schöne’s and Seligmann’s texts join Schneider’s in this shift in focus, as their contemporary
German-Jewish lovers emulate the positive family models in their lines of vision. Their GermanJewish couples see past labels of “German” and “Jew,” “perpetrator” and “victim” to individuals
with whom they can marry and have children, and become integrated into German society. These
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texts indicate a desire for closure about the past, and that the time has come to relate in ways that
do not reference the Holocaust past as the central issue between them. They suggest that the case
is closed, and that Germans and Jews can have “normal” relationships with one another after the
Holocaust. The texts of the next chapter, however, re-open the case.
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Chapter Five:
Female German Bodies as Sites of Manipulation and “Reconciliation”:
The Unfinished Business of the Past in 1990s Satire
Introduction
Contemporary German-Jewish love stories break a number of taboos. Their very existence
disrupts the prohibition on descendants of the perpetrators and victims having intimate
relationships with one another after the Holocaust. While it has been common to view second
and third generation non-Jewish Germans as part of the “collective of perpetrators,” as Dan
Diner termed it, literary works challenge that connection, as the analyses of the texts in Chapter
Two revealed. In those texts, the non-Jewish German characters (Andi and Karla) expressed
frustration with being bound to inherited roles, thus violating the taboo on contemporary
Germans who unquestioningly accept the burden of the past. The films of Chapter Three
followed up on this by portraying first generation German exceptions to anti-Semitism that cease
the connection between “German” and “perpetrator”–at least in individual, and female, cases. By
Chapter Four, texts by both Jewish and non-Jewish authors create “good” German characters,
both male and female, and in the first generation as well as those following it, thereby
acknowledging the negative connection between Germans and the Holocaust past but also
containing it. The once-estranged bedfellows appear to have become amicable partners.
However, it would be facile to make two assumptions at this point: one, that German
literature and film no longer depict fraught relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans
and two, that there are no taboos left to break. The problematic interactions between Jews and
non-Jewish Germans in Maxim Biller’s short stories “Harlem Holocaust” (1990) and
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“Finkelsteins Finger” (1994) and Joachim Lottmann’s novel Deutsche Einheit: ein historischer
Roman aus dem Jahr 1995 (1999) refute the first supposition. In Biller’s short story “Harlem
Holocaust,” American Jew Gary Warszawski uses the non-Jewish German Ina for sex,
manipulating her German guilt for the Holocaust whenever possible; Ina is only too happy to
submit in order to prove her philo-Semitism and so ally herself with the accepted stance toward
Jews after the Holocaust. 81 In his story “Finkelsteins Finger,” Biller presents another GermanJewish interaction in which the non-Jewish German Anita seductively convinces a GermanJewish writer (who bears a strong resemblance to Maxim Biller) to help her write a paper on a
Jewish subject, and “Biller” happily agrees to use his Jewish ‘credibility’ in order to sleep with
her. (Anita is writing the paper for a Jewish American professor Finkelstein who is making his
class more difficult for her because she is German; “Finkelsteins Finger” also includes his
sadistic fantasy of tying Anita up in order to have sex with her.) Similar to “Harlem Holocaust,”
Lottmann’s novel presents the figure of Rafael Seligmann (an author already familiar due to his
texts’ inclusion in this project) explaining how easily he can get gentile German women to go to
bed with him: once they find out he is Jewish, they clamber for the chance to ‘prove’ their philoSemitism by sleeping with him. While the German-Jewish love stories of Chapter Four in
particular create the impression that the Holocaust no longer plays such a divisive role between
Jews and non-Jews in contemporary Germany, their positive portrayals are joined by a number
of satirical texts from throughout that decade that indicate there is still unfinished business
between the two groups.
81
Philo-Semitism has been the official and socially acceptable stance for Germans toward Jews after the Holocaust.
For a history of philo-Semitism in Germany since 1945, see Frank Stern’s The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge:
Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany. Stuart Taberner has addressed the role of this stance by
Germans toward Jews in his article, “Philo-Semitism in Recent German Film: Aimée und Jaguar, Rosenstrasse and
Das Wunder von Bern.”
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In addition, Biller’s and Lottmann’s texts under discussion break both a thematic and a
stylistic taboo. Although intimate relations are certainly a component in many of the other
German-Jewish love stories, these texts’ overt sexual encounters are a breach of the usual
depiction of German-Jewish relations. As Morris and Remmler point out in their introduction to
Contemporary Jewish writing in Germany, Biller’s explicit descriptions in “Harlem Holocaust”
are “a startling reminder of how sex has often been removed from the telling of the story of the
Shoah and from its remembrance” (23). These “sex stories” function similarly to the other
German-Jewish love stories, imagining relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans that
comment on the ways the Holocaust reverberates in German culture. However, they also
introduce a new stylistic approach to the subject: satire. This contrasts with the earnest style of
other works such as Eine Liebe aus nichts, Abschied von Jerusalem, Das jüdische Begräbnis or
Eduards Heimkehr, and with the melodramatic tone of Die Haut retten and many of the films
discussed in Chapter Three. Biller’s “Harlem Holocaust” and “Finkelsteins Finger” and
Lottmann’s Deutsche Einheit parody German-Jewish sexual encounters for not leading to any
kind of exchange or discussion, but merely representing each partners’ manipulations of the
other for personal gain.
Yet through their shocking scenes and sarcasm, these texts make way for productive
dialogue about German-Jewish relations today. As Norbert Otto Eke writes about Biller: “[he]
opens up chambers of memory that are blocked by stereotypes, clichés, taboos and prejudices.
Biller’s provocations enable his German readers to conduct a real discussion with the German
past and the problematic relationship between non-Jewish Germans and German Jews” (155).
The same could be said of Lottmann’s text as well. There are (American and German) Jewish
characters that are not victims nor mourning the Holocaust but rather actively using it to their
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advantage, and German characters engaged in clearly self-serving philo-Semitism; none of the
partners are portrayed in a flattering light. This evenly balanced treatment shifts the focus away
from “good” or “guilty” characters on either side, and toward criticism of unproductive roles the
Holocaust legacy has spawned. As Eke summarizes about Biller’s two collections of short
stories:
these stories clear the stereotypical separation of (German) perpetrator and (Jewish)
victim, thus advancing beyond the exonerating myth of evil and its counterpart, the pure
or sacred victim. Biller’s texts disperse the set concepts and standardized perspectives of
German Jews and non-Jews dealing with each other. (155-6)
In Biller’s and Lottmann’s satirical texts, there is a greater flexibility in depicting Jewish and
non-Jewish German interactions, which indicates a broadening of the discussion and a new
approach, both stylistically and content-wise, to German-Jewish relations. Although at first
glance these unsympathetic characters and negative interactions would seem to indicate
otherwise, they in fact are an indication of a kind of normalization in the larger German-Jewish
relationship.
My discussion of Biller’s and Lottmann’s texts traces the ways in which the partners
involved in these “sex stories” are portrayed, pointing out their exaggerated stereotypical
characterizations and satirical interactions. The German-Jewish sexual encounters in “Harlem
Holocaust” and Deutsche Einheit foreground the fact that switching the inherited roles of
victim/perpetrator only inverts the expected paradigm, but does not lead to an improved GermanJewish relationship. Likewise, the post-war philo-Semitism of German characters toward Jews is
also exposed as little more than an ineffectual reversal of anti-Semitism. Philo-Semitism is an
attitude that has been adopted to ease Germans’ guilty feelings about the past, but that does not
lead to any real connection with contemporary Jews. Both of these texts satirize Jews and nonJewish Germans’ intimate interactions as manipulative and falsely reconciled. They point out the
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fact that relations have become stymied by the fact there are such set roles for German-Jewish
dealings: there is no communication, only manipulation. However, discussion of this dynamic
hardly prevents it: in “Finkelsteins Finger” a Jewish and a non-Jewish German character briefly
bond over the ways in which the Holocaust legacy can be manipulated— even as they exploit it
for their own gain in relationship to one another. All of these texts present Jewish and nonJewish German characters as trapped within a negative symbiosis, connected yet divided by roles
related to the Holocaust legacy, but with a satirical twist.
While other scholars have addressed this exploitation, dubbing it “Shoah Business,” 82
none have addressed the role of gender in these mutually exploitative relationships and the
unfinished business they represent. Non-Jewish German female characters once again play a
crucial role in these stories. In her article “Engendering Bodies of Memory,” Karen Remmler
asserts that in texts by Esther Dischereit, Barbara Honigmann and Irene Dische, second
generation Jewish female characters’ bodies are “sites of mourning” of the Holocaust in a way
that male and/or German figures are not (188). Similarly, non-Jewish German women’s bodies in
Biller’s and Lottmann’s works are the site for enacting opportunistic fantasies (by Jewish men)
and displays of submissive philo-Semitism (by German women), both of which are related to the
Holocaust past. Once again, as was the case in the films of Chapter Three and the texts of
Chapter Four, non-Jewish German female partners are the preferred partners for relating to the
Holocaust past. But in Biller’s and Lottmann’s satires, there is not a desire to close the Holocaust
rift, but rather only parodies of reconciliation via sex between a Jewish man and a non-Jewish
woman. Non-Jewish German women’s bodies are not sites of mourning, but rather of
manipulation of the Holocaust legacy, in a way that German men’s are not.
82
Most notably Jefferson Chase. See his article “Shoah Business: Maxim Biller and the Problem of Contemporary
German-Jewish Literature.”
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Maxim Biller’s short story “Harlem Holocaust” (1990)
Maxim Biller is a journalist and fiction writer known for his provocative texts dealing with the
German-Jewish relationship after the Holocaust. 83 Biller’s short story “Harlem Holocaust” was
first published in 1990 in his collection Wenn ich einmal reich und tot bin, and was republished
on its own in 1998, 84 and Morris and Remmler state that his “sacrilegious tone” in this work
counters the expectation of non-Jewish German readers that stories about Holocaust should be
pious, respectful and “above all, devoid of references to sex” (Contemporary Jewish Writing 4).
The Holocaust legacy plays a role in this short story in two main ways: Efraim Rosenhain, the
second generation non-Jewish German protagonist, feels guilty for being German and related to
Nazi perpetration during Holocaust. In addition, he is paranoid that his ex-girlfriend Ina left him
for a Jewish author named Gary Warszawski in order to try and make amends for the past. Both
Efraim and Ina are characterized as philo-Semitic, caught up in trying to prove their goodwill
toward Jews through intimate relationships with them.
Karen Remmler notes the narrator’s philo-Semitism and that he is “obsessed with his
own inner struggle to enter the world of the Jews, even as he is unable to overcome his
resentment at being excluded” (Yale Companion 802). In order to ease the guilt he feels as a
descendant of perpetrators, Efraim tries to enter the Jewish world through his relationship with
Eve, a Jewish Israeli, but their brief love affair ends, reinforcing his tortured association with
83
As the author Maxim Biller has already been introduced in Chapter One, information about him has not been
included here.
84
I reference the earlier volume in which it was included.
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German history. The first difficulty their relationship encounters is Efraim’s family’s antiSemitism, both in the past and the present. While Efraim knows that there was some anti-Nazi
resistance on his mother’s side during the war, 85 he has a connection to perpetration on his
father’s side. After bringing Eve home for dinner to meet his family, he is unable to defend her
when family members make racist comments; he excuses his cowardice with the explanation
“daß mir Widerstand, aufgrund meiner familiären Herkunft, nur halb in die Wiege gelegt worden
sei, und an diesem Abend wäre eben die miese Hälfte am Zug gewesen” (80). This makes fun of
the idea that his negative behavior is determined by his inherited family history, and is also a
send-up of the now-familiar trope of a good female German (his mother) being associated with
Nazi resistance, as both downplay Efraim’s own ability to make moral, responsible choices. He
is further ensnared by the past when Eve ends their relationship, declaring: “weil sie […] mit so
einem materialisierten Stück deutscher Geschichte wie mir auf Dauer nicht leben, schlafen und
essen konnte” (78).
Eve is similarly defined by the past, and is just as sarcastically portrayed. Eve explains to
Efraim that her mother was in a concentration camp, and that everywhere she looks in Germany
there are reminders of the horrific past, as Efraim bitterly relates: “Diese Eve […] erklärte mir
doch dreimal am Tag, sie habe, als sie nach Deutschland kam, sofort den ganzen Horror gespürt,
und wenn in einem Straßenschild oder einer Ladeninschrift ein K als Versal auftauchte, habe sie
sich das Z sogleich dazu gedacht” (80). The Jewish character of Eve is only able to view
Germany and Germans in terms of the Holocaust, and her and Efraim’s brief romantic
entanglement serves to mock how defined Jews and non-Jewish Germans are by the past.
85
“Immerhin stammte sie [seine Mutter] aus einer Familie mit Oppositionsgeist: Großvater Glückler fand Hitler
vulgär und rettete vor Göring eine größere Expressionisten-Sammlung. Zu mehr Widerstand hatte es zwar nicht
gereicht, man versteckte keine Juden und druckte keine Flugblätter” (77).
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The text also parodies these entrenched roles by showing how self-serving and
exploitative second generation German-Jewish relationships are. Efraim is interested in Eve only
because she is Jewish, and he hopes that an intimate connection with a Jew will ease his guilt
about the past and keep his insanity at bay, while Eve appears to take a perverse pleasure in
reinforcing Efraim’s Germanness to punish him for the past. Stuart Taberner exposes Efraim’s
feelings for Eve as “fake philo-Semitism” and explores how he is trying to normalize German
history through a German-Jewish relationship:
[a]t the core of this fake philo-Semitism is the desire to enlist the Jew in his
mythologization of a pre-Holocaust productive interaction of German and Jewish culture.
This would be a ‘longitudinal normality’ designed to erase the Nazi past and to glorify a
German-Jewish relationship that was, in truth, always already fraught. If Jews would only
reciprocate the affection shown them by Germans, the likes of Rosenhain might be
released from the burden of the Nazi past. (165)
Eve is not portrayed any more positively than Efraim, as her character throws the past in her
German lover’s face at every turn, and this equally negative treatment of both members of the
German-Jewish couple satirizes both approaches toward the past.
The second German-Jewish relationship in“Harlem Holocaust” parodies the idea that
intimate German-Jewish relationships could be the site of reconciliation and normalization. The
other German-Jewish couple of the text, as seen through Efraim’s paranoid eyes, is Ina Polarker
and Gary Warszawski. After Eve, Efraim dates Ina, a gentile German, only to become involved
with a love triangle with her and the American Jew Gary Warszawski. After his rejection by Eve,
however, Efraim’s headaches and delusions become increasingly worse, and a post-script to the
story reveals the rest of the narration to be Efraim’s fear-based fantasies about his ex-girlfriend
Ina and Warszawski, not “actual” events. Nonetheless, these fantasies serve to expose GermanJewish relations after the Holocaust as so entrenched and proscribed as to have become easy to
manipulate for self-serving ends. Stuart Taberner refers to Efraim as being obsessed by the “the
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paranoid idea that Jews are more astute and sexually potent” than he is (German Literature of the
1990s 165), the latter because Efraim imagines that the Jewish American Gary Warszawski has
stolen his girlfriend Ina away from him. When Ina leaves him for Warszawski, he believes it is
not only because Warszawski is more “sexually potent” (ibid), but also because Ina is attracted to
Jewishness and the possibility of making amends for the past through a philo-Semitic
relationship.
Efraim views Ina as making the same mistake that he did: thinking that her relationship
with a Jew can prove her philo-Semitism and ease her guilt about the past. Efraim recounts how
Ina explains her relationship with Gary to him and:
warum sie vor dem amerikanisch-jüdischen Schriftsteller deutscher Herkunft, Gerhard ‘Gary’
Warszawski, so schnell die Waffen gestreckt hatte. Immer wieder mußte ich mir diese
Litanei anhören, in der Worte wie ‘Angst’ und ‘Reue’ und ‘Todeserotik’ vorkamen, und
einmal habe ich sogar […] zu weinen angefangen, aber nicht aus Trauer, sondern weil ich
vor so viel Unsinn verzweifelte, einem Unsinn, der aus der Geschichte heraus direct in mein
heutiges, gegenwärtiges Leben hineinragte. ‘Ich habe mit dem Tausendjährigen Reich nichts
zu tun!’ schrie ich […] ‘Und du auch nicht! Du darfst dich nicht von ihm erpressen lassen!
Ihr Druck wird so nie nachlassen, niemals!’ (90)
Efraim now insists on his, and Ina’s, lack of connection to the past, framing them not as (related
to) perpetrators but as the victims of Jews who are focused on using the past to punish Germans.
This inversion of the victim-perpetrator roles is a bold move, but does not make the relationship
any more productive.
Efraim’s central fantasy about Ina and Warszawski also underscores Jews as
“perpetrators” and Germans as their (willing) “victims.” Efraim imagines Warszawski as
interested only in punishing Ina, because she belongs to the group “German” which is in
opposition to “Jews”:
Er legte seine freie Hand auf Inas rechte Brust und drückte zu. Sie schrie auf, aber er wies
sie zurecht: ‘Halten Sie den Mund! Sie sind ein deutsches Miststück, Fräulein Polarker,
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spielen Sie hier nicht auf Mitleid! Ich weiß, was ich von euch halten soll. Ihr seid mit uns
ebensowenig fertig wie wir mit euch.’ (107)
This mutual need of one another is similar to the concept of the negative symbiosis, in which
both Germans and Jews derive their identities in opposition to one another. But their roles have
been reversed, as now in this scenario a Jewish character is the perpetrator and his German
partner the victim. However, this inversion again does not effectually change their relationship to
one another: they are still bound together negatively by their shared connections to the past. Yet
this reads like a sadomasochistic take on the negative symbiosis, as both need one another, and
derive pleasure from their connection, although it is painful. Warszawski taunts her, then
commands Ina to have sex with him, which she is only too willing to do in order to express her
philo-Semitism (in Yiddish, no less) and apologize for the past:
‘Sie müssen mich verstehen…’ ‘Ja, natürlich,’ erwiderte Ina. ‘Sie wollen mich
verstehen?’ ‘Ja.’ ‘Das können Sie doch gar nicht.’ ‘Nein...’ ‘Haben Sie mit Juden schon
geschlafen?’ ‘Nein.’ ‘Bereuen Sie das?’ ‘Ja.’ ‘Was gibt es daran zu bereuen?’ ‘Ich…
weiß nicht.’ ‘Sie werden jetzt gleich mit mir schlafen.’ ‘Ja.’ ‘Aber vorher […] werde ich
ein bißchen Ihre faschistische Schicksenmuschi lecken.’ […] es dauerte nicht lange, bis
sie vollkommen das Denken vergaß, und so hörte sie sich, auf einmal, mit einem fremden
Akzent sage: ‘Oj, as ich hob sej lib, reb Warszawski!’ Und dann, immer noch in Trance,
fügte sie in einem wilden, besinnungslosen, archaischen Schrei auf Hochdeutsch hinzu:
‘Ihr Volk tut mir ja so schrecklich leid!’ (107-108)
While their sexual encounter is the forum in which Ina can express her guilt and apology for the
past, this is, of course, a parody of German-Jewish reconciliation. Their sexual encounter serves
only for them to both use one another, and remain in roles that are connected to the Holocaust.
Germans and Jews are trapped in a sadomasochistic twist on the negative symbiosis that does not
represent any kind of normality. The difference is that they both enjoy this relationship in this
form, as they both get something out of it. This new approach to the subject satirizes the set
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roles, even in their inversion, for Jews and non-Jews which have become too comfortable, even
pleasurable—and do nothing to facilitate any kind of real exchange between the two.
In her article “Comic Vision and ‘Negative Symbiosis’ in Maxim Biller’s Harlem
Holocaust and Rafael Seligmann’s Der Musterjude,” Rita Bashaw examines how Biller’s work
“transgresses and unexpectedly broadens conventional wisdom regarding German and Jewish
identity and relationships” by parodying the ritualized remembrance of Auschwitz and “upsetting
the ‘German perpetrator vs. Jewish victim’ equation” (264). She also points out that Ina and
Efraim are characterized in stereotypically gendered ways:
Ina’s masochistic tendencies displace her from the public to the private sphere, where she
submits to Warszawski’s sexual aggression and domestic needs at the cost of her own
self-determination and independence. Efraim, meanwhile, channels his hatred and
competitive jealousy into his vitriolic narrative and eventual suicide. (269)
It is interesting to note that there is no depiction of a sexual relationship between Efraim and
Eve, but only between Ina and Gary. This same gender configuration is present in the other two
satirical texts, where the relationships are between Jewish men and non-Jewish German women.
Eve rejects Efraim as too connected to German history, whereas non-Jewish German women are
associated enough with the past to be a partner in engaging in roles related to the past, but not so
much as to be rejected as partners outright. They act as a middle ground where Germans and
Jews can connect, but only on a surface, bodily level, to be the site on which these parodied
connections and reconciliations take place.
In contrast to the love triangles of Chapter One in which male Jewish German
protagonists chooses a fellow Jew over a non-Jewish German, here a gentile German woman
selects a Jew in order to prove her philo-Semitism and welcomes the chance to be punished by
him sexually for the German past. Her body is the site of a fake reconciliation which is
predicated on each partner’s self-serving motives. While the end of the story exposes Efraim as
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insane, revealing the entire narrative as a story he wrote in a hallucinatory fever before killing
himself, it nonetheless leaves the reader with a picture of sexualized relations between Germans
and Jews that negatively reflect the Holocaust legacy. 86 There is no normalization, no
understanding or reconciliation between members of opposing groups: Eve and Efraim, Ina and
Warszawski remain on separate sides of the Holocaust divide. However, because it presents both
partners in an unflattering light, it does not privilege either partner as the “good” character or
absolve German guilt for the past. As Hartmut Steinecke comments on Biller’s text:
Durch seine satirische Übertreibung ermöglicht er dem Leser, sich aus der Zwangslage
moralischer Beurteilung zu lösen; und das nicht etwa, um sich der Schuldfrage zu
entziehen, sondern, um ihm den Blick freizumachen auf die literarischen Eigenheiten und
Qualitäten des Textes und der […] Funktionalisierungen des Holocaust.” (“Shoah” 142)
Biller’s satires, like Lottmann’s, point out the fact that the Holocaust legacy is being manipulated
by both Jews and non-Jewish Germans, in a sadomasochistic, gendered dance between male
Jews and female non-Jews.
Maxim Biller’s short story “Finkelsteins Finger” from Land der Väter und Verräter (1994)
This second short story by Maxim Biller, although not discussed as frequently in secondary
literature as the first, 87 shares a number of similar characteristics: an unreliable narrator, sexual
encounters between Jewish men and gentile German women, and an awareness of the ways the
Holocaust legacy is manipulated for personal gain. This time the narrator is unreliable not
86
Furthermore, it is a German male fantasy of German-Jewish relations; Efraim is not just afraid that Jewish men
are more sexually potent than he, as Taberner pointed out, but that they have more to offer a German woman: a
chance to make up for the past (which Efraim has been obsessed with from the start).
87
There is very little secondary literature on this story, in contrast to the scholarly research on “Harlem Holocaust.”
Stuart Taberner’s German Literature of the 1990s mainly summarizes the confusing levels of narration and the plot.
Jefferson Chase’s article “Shoah Business: Maxim Biller and the Problem of Contemporary German-Jewish
Literature” focuses on the role of the character of “Biller” in the story.
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because of insanity, but because the identity of the narrator is again called into question at the
end of the story. This strategy, found in both “Harlem Holocaust” and “Finkelsteins Finger,”
causes uncertainty about how to judge and categorize the various characters, breaking down easy
assumptions about Jewish and German characters. Biller thus creates a productive gray area in
which the reader cannot rely on accepted beliefs about Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, but
instead must question roles and stereotypes of both. It at first seems that a German Jewish writer
who bears a striking resemblance to Biller himself helps the gentile German Anita write a story
about a Jewish poet murdered by the Nazis for her creative writing course at Columbia
University. He does so in exchange for sex with her, and to help Anita get revenge on the
American Jewish professor Finkelstein who assigned the story to punish Anita for being German.
“Biller” later is quite surprised when he reads an article in a German newspaper in which Anita
recounts her wonderful relationship with Finkelstein and how through his course and his
friendship she was able to come to terms with the German past. At the end of the short story, the
reader is privy to Finkelstein’s sexual fantasies about Anita as well as his thoughts about her
composition, the latter of which imply that the entire preceding narrative comprises her
assignment for his course. Yet regardless of whose fantasies or fictions the story/stories are,
gentile German-Jewish relations are portrayed as sexualized, with the male Jewish characters
using or fantasizing about using Anita for sex and/or to punish her sexually because she is
German.
While Efraim points out that Gary is using Ina’s German guilt about the Holocaust to
have sex with her, in this text, “Biller” and Anita first bond over the fact that the Jewish
American character Finkelstein lords the Holocaust over her in a form of “Shoah Business.”
Their shared understanding suggests recognition by both Jewish and non-Jewish German
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characters of the ways in which the Holocaust legacy is instrumentalized for personal gain, even
as they ironically both do the same: Anita needs “Biller’s” clout as a Jew to make her story
beyond reproof, while “Biller” barters this power for sex with Anita. Again, none of the
characters, neither Jewish nor non-Jewish German, is portrayed sympathetically. As Morris and
Remmler comment, Biller’s “short stories and essays are biting satires of the present-day
relationships between Jews and Germans. Biller exposes the distinction between victim and
perpetrator status as complex and ambiguous while showing how this distinction is etched into
the very fabric of German culture” (“Contemporary Jewish Writing” 21). By creating characters
focused on their personal profit from the Holocaust, Biller blurs the post-Holocaust roles of
victim and perpetrator, and satirizes the ways in which the Holocaust past is exploited by all
involved in contemporary times.
Finkelstein’s creative writing assignment sets the stage for the bonding between Anita
and “Biller.” She needs “Biller” to help her write her composition about a Jewish writer who
died during Holocaust. She makes him guess what the topic of her composition is to be, and they
bond over the fact that they both think it is wrong Finkelstein should single her as a German out
to write about the Holocaust:
‘Thema?’ sagte ich. [“Biller”]
‘Raten Sie!’ [Anita]
‘Sex, Liebe, Verrat?’
Sie lächelte, sie wurde nun wieder so schön und besonders wie am Anfang, und dann
lächelte ich auch, und wir sagten im Chor: ‘Ho-lo-caust!’ (155)
This satirical exchange parodies of the predictability with which the Holocaust can be wielded
and instrumentalized. In addition to her sex appeal during this bonding moment, Anita flirts with
him and kisses him, until he is finally swayed and agrees to help her: “Also gut, Anita, […]
deinem Finkelstein werden wir es zeigen” (159). Anita uses sex to manipulate Biller into helping
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her, and he willingly uses his position as a Jew to exploit her sexually. Even though a paragraph
prior he mocks another Jewish characters manipulation of the Holocaust to punish a German, he
has no qualms about using the Holocaust for his own (sexual) gain. “Biller” agrees to help Anita,
and this brief moment of bonding is followed by a sexual consummation of their relationship. As
Jefferson Chase points out in his article “Shoah Business: Maxim Biller and the Problem of
Contemporary German-Jewish Literature,” the relationships between men and women in Biller’s
first and second collections of short stories, from which “Harlem Holocaust” and “Finkelsteins
Finger” respectively hail, are “more often about exploitative sex than love. There are no mutual
relationships, only people fucking and fucking each other over” (124).
This is also clear in the other sexualized relationship of the story, between Finkelstein
and Anita, in which the Jewish American professor imagines using the gentile German woman
for sex. He fantasizes about meeting her to discuss her composition, and luring her back to his
place in order to tie her up and have sex with her: “Er fand sie nicht attraktiv und zu alt, und daß
er einige Male daran gedacht hatte, sie mit den Hand- und Fußgelenken an ein schmutziges,
wackliges Hotelbett zu fesseln, tat er als eine ganz besondere Verirrung seiner Nazi-Phantasien
ab” (163-4). Anita is attractive only because of her connection to Nazism due to her German
identity, and because he could use her to act out his aggression about the past symbolically on
her body. Chase relates Finkelstein’s fantasy as well as “Biller’s” encounter with Anita to a
critique of the culture industry around marketing German-Jewish literature and the Holocaust:
[t]he crude, almost cruel language that both ‘Maxim Biller’ and Finkelstein use for their
past/planned sexual encounters with the Gentile not only communicate their contempt for
her as a person but also reflect the exploitation of human beings to satisfy momentary
needs and desires, the situation of the cultural industry itself. (125)
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While it is true that they use her, it seems that it is more than just in order to satisfy fleeting
desires. Rather, a non-Jewish German female character is once again the site here of (ab)use by
Jewish men eager to manipulate her because she is German.
Joachim Lottmann’s novel Deutsche Einheit (1999)
This theme continues in Joachim Lottmann’s novel Deutsche Einheit, as the German Jewish
character Rafael Seligmann (a literary representation of the actual author) uses non-Jewish
German women for sex by manipulating their philo-Semitism and desire to physically act out
German-Jewish reconciliation. As Ulf Zimmermann remarks in his review of Lottmann’s novel,
“the German-Jewish relationship is one of two representative ones that Lottmann explores”
(638): the other one is East German-West German, which the West German narrator investigates
by staging his own (sexual) Wiedervereinigung with a woman from the former GDR. From these
brief examples, it is easy to observe that sex serves as the metaphor for satirical ‘reconciliations’
between members of different groups in Lottmann’s novel. Thomas Gross, in his review of the
novel for die tageszeitung, touches upon the fact that Lottmann’s protagonist is a macho man
who “inszeniert sich - gern im Schulterschluss mit deutschen Juden männlichen Geschlechts - als
freundlicher Sexist” (2), but does not elaborate on this sexism. This satirical text joins Biller’s
two aforementioned short stories in staging sexual relations between Jewish men and non-Jewish
German women in a sadomasochistic way, but takes it even a step further, by having “Rafael
Seligmann” broadcast his annoyance at the way German women attempt to reconcile with him as
a Jew and with their own familial pasts — even as he enthusiastically participates in this pseudoreconciliatory sex.
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Lottmann (b. 1956) is a non-Jewish German pop literature writer and journalist from
Hamburg. His other works include his debut novel, Mai, Juni, Juli (1987), Die Jugend von heute
(2004), Zombie Nation (2006) and Auf der Borderline nachts um halb eins (2007).
Eberhard Rathgeb in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung criticized this novel for its attempt to
comment on the desire for a Wenderoman after unification, writing that Lottmann
[hat] keinen ernsten oder gar einen ironischen Roman über die deutsche Einheit
geschrieben, sondern einen krampfig-lockeren und völlig verplauderten Roman über das
Nicht-Schreiben eines Romans über die deutsche Einheit was in seinen an einen doch
engen Horizont gewöhnten Augen die Frage nun endlich und offensichtlich klärt, ob die
deutsche Einheit in so etwas wie in einen Roman Eingang finden wird. Da kann man
nach vierhundert Seiten nur noch anmerken: Locker vom Hocker ist nunmal auch
daneben. (2)
Thomas Gross’ review is more positive, as he enjoys the fact that Deutsche Einheit disrupts the
expectation that a novel could explain recent events like unification. Heinz Drügh’s article
“Verhandlungen mit der Massenkultur-Die neueste Literatur(-wissenschaft) und die soziale
Realität,” on the other hand, deals with the pop culture references in Lottmann’s novel, and the
ways in which it “dives into the discourses of mass culture” (173). This analysis focuses on the
the German-Jewish encounters between the character of Rafael Seligmann and Friederike, which
none of the aforementioned articles deal with more than in passing.
Lottmann’s novel is a satire about East and West German relations, as well as Jewish and
German affairs after unification. Like in Biller’s Harlem Holocaust, German women in particular
are eager to prove their philo-Semitism by sleeping with Jewish men. The character of Rafael
Seligmann takes full advantage of this willingness. These sexual encounters are enabled by the
Holocaust legacy: second generation German women are eager to set themselves apart from the
Nazi past, telling him their family stories of saving Jews as further proof of their philo-Semitism.
This attempt to dissociate German identity from perpetration through exceptional behavior
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during the war is familiar at this point: it is a strategy found in the films of Chapter Three and the
texts of Chapter Four. Lottmann, however, criticizes it through the character of Seligmann.
Friederike, a woman Seligmann is flirting with in a bar, is a case in point. As soon as it is
mentioned that “Professor Seligmann ist deutscher Jude” (144), Friederike is quite willing to go
out to a dinner date with him. Her response to finding out that he is Jewish is “Mein Gott, das ist
ja… (sie wollte sagen phantastisch),” and the parenthetical remarks sarcastically highlight her
enthusiasm about interacting with a Jew. She goes on to exclaim that “Ihre Eltern oder
Großeltern hatten Juden im Keller versteckt!” (145). The narrator makes fun of her insistence on
her family’s heroic efforts during the war, and also informs the reader that Seligmann is quite
tired of hearing such stories of exceptional Germans during the Holocaust:
Rafael, der trotz allem durchaus nett und gut erzogen auftrat, verzog das Gesicht. Alle
würden ihm in letzter Zeit weismachen, sie hätten Juden gerettet. Er könne das nicht
mehr hören, ihn langweile das. Wenn wirklich jeder Deutsche einen Juden im Keller
gehabt habe, müßte es achtzig Millionen geretteter Juden gegeben haben. (ibid)
Seligmann is exasperated the number of German women who try to claim such valorous family
histories, yet he does not hesitate to use their motivation to his advantage. He makes frequent,
sarcastic remarks to the narrator about how easy it is to manipulate German women’s guilt and
desire to prove their (and their families’) philo-Semitism. In the most telling aside to the narrator,
he remarks: “Schade, dass es heute verboten ist, den Judenstern zu tragen – damit würde alles
noch viel schneller gehen” (ibid). Seligmann willingly admits and uses the fact that as a Jew he
has the upper hand sexually when dealing with German women.
Seligmann’s Jewishness enables him to have sex with Friederike, and many others like
her intent on showing him just how philo-Semitic they are. Their attraction has nothing to do
with him as an individual—he is in fact quite unattractive by his own testimony—but as a
member of the group “Jew.” The character of Seligmann is aware of this dynamic, and happily
189
manipulates it to his advantage in order to have sex. When the narrator bemoans that he is too
ugly to find a sex partner, Seligmann tells him: “es gehe nicht um Häßlichkeit, er selbst sei
häßlich und habe schon Tausende von Frauen glücklich gemacht. ‘Aber du bist auch Jude!’ sagte
ich und weinte fast. Immer diese Ungerechtigkeiten! Er sah das ein und tröstete mich” (383).
Shortly after this satirical exchange, Seligmann encourages the narrator to pretend to be Jewish
to get women. This further parodies the fact that non-Jewish Germans are not interacting with
individuals who are Jewish, but rather with the role of a “Jew” after the Holocaust. Lottmann’s
novel presents a Jewish male character who takes advantage of German guilt in order to satisfy
his sexual desires, while gentile German women sex with a Jew in a self-serving way to reinforce
their concept of themselves as philo-Semitic, “good” Germans with no ties to Nazi perpetration.
German-Jewish sexual encounters in this novel stage fake reconciliation, for they connect only
on a physical level, using one another for self-serving ends.
Conclusion
Maxim Biller’s short stories “Harlem Holocaust” (1990) and “Finkelsteins Finger” (1994) from
his collections Wenn ich einmal reich und tot bin and Land der Väter und Verräter, respectively,
and Joachim Lottmann’s novel Deutsche Einheit (1999) once again confront the reader with
problematic relationships between polarized Jewish and non-Jewish German characters. While
the texts of Chapter Four indicate a desire to gain closure about the past and for German-Jewish
couples to relate in ways less affected by the Holocaust legacy, Biller’s and Lottmann’s texts
reinforce the Holocaust’s negative legacy as central to German-Jewish relations. Their literary
190
imaginings of the German-Jewish symbiosis paint a darker and more lingering picture of the
past’s unfinished business: stereotypes, self-serving manipulation, and false reconciliation
abound in sexual (not romantic) encounters between Germans and Jews. As Karen Remmler
comments on Biller’s prose in her article “Maxim Biller: Das Schreiben als ‘Counter-Memory’”:
Immer wieder begegnen sich deutsche und jüdische Figuren durch misslungene oder
unbefriedigte sexuelle Begegnungen und Fantasien. Die Bilder der Shoah und die damit
verbundene Unfähigkeit der Figuren sich als Menschen und nicht nur als Stereotypen zu
begegnen, lassen die Beziehungen zu Grunde gehen. […] Es gibt keinen Versuch, die
Risse zu schließen, sondern sie erst zu entdecken. (315)
Remmler’s observation describes Biller’s two texts under discussion and Joachim Lottmann’s
novel as well, which make no attempt to close the rifts of the past through their intimate GermanJewish relationships. Instead, they satirize the idea that intimate German-Jewish encounters are
anything more than self-serving and exploitative.
The gulf between Germans and Jews is a familiar subject at this point. The texts of
Chapter One and Two reinforced the idea of a negative symbiosis in which German-Jewish
couples were connected yet divided by the past, but the romantic relationships in their narratives
were earnest attempts at finding common ground. The twist in Biller’s and Lottmann’s GermanJewish pairings however is twofold: they concentrate on sexual relationships rather than
romantic ones, and are satirical send-ups of the serious endeavors at creating a bridge between
Germans and Jews through a love relationship in other literary works. Their second and third
generation characters are still enmeshed in the negative symbiosis—connected by the negative
legacy of the past—but have decided to manipulate that fact to their advantage. The one brief
moment of connection between a Jewish and a non-Jewish German character occurs in
“Finkelsteins Finger” when “Biller” and Anita mutually recognize the fact that the Holocaust
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legacy has taken on a life of its own, as a kind of “Shoah business” in which the past can be
exploited for personal gain.
Biller’s and Lottmann’s satires ridicule Jewish and non-Jewish Germans alike. German
philo-Semitism is exposed as an attempt for Germans to feel better about themselves and their
inherited national past, rather than any kind of appreciation of Jews or things Jewish. But it is not
just Germans who are criticized here; these parodies of German-Jewish relations also mock
Jewish partners who use the power of their position as descendants of victims to take advantage
of gentile German women. In a reversal of the victim/perpetrator paradigm, Jewish men become
unsympathetic, callous “perpetrators” out to sexually possess gentile German women, who are
their willing submissive “victims.” Their “sex stories” show gentile Germans and Jews using one
another to further their own needs: Germans sleep with Jews to prove their philo-Semitism
and/or accept punishment for the Holocaust; Jews manipulate German guilt for their own sexual
pleasure, and/or use their German partners sexually out of a desire for retribution for the
Holocaust. Neither gentile German nor Jewish characters are portrayed positively in these texts,
as they are all intent on using one another for their own gain, and their sexual encounters indicate
no reconciliation or understanding between Germans and Jews after the Holocaust.
Non-Jewish German women with Jewish (American/German) men are the preferred
constellation in these texts. In often sadomasochistic encounters, they submit to Jewish men in
order to disassociate themselves from German guilt for the past. It is possible that Jewish
relationships with gentile German men are still too taboo, as they are still more closely connected
with perpetration than women. Or it may be that in this way Biller’s and Lottmann’s satires
parody the general trend in other German-language literature and film of staging German-Jewish
intimate relationships as sites of reconciliation and normalization, and specifically the role that
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German women play as the partners in these conciliatory relations. But in another sense, the fact
that these texts are parodies of German-Jewish relations indicates, if not normalization, then at
least a broadening in the approach toward the legacy of the past.
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Conclusion: From (E)strange(d) Bedfellows to Complicated Companions
In the preface to their volume on the changing German-Jewish symbiosis, Unlikely History,
Leslie Morris and Jack Zipes state that “the relations between Germans and Jews since 1945
keep undergoing major shifts” (xii). They conceptualize the relationship between Jews and
Germans in the postwar period as having changed “from what Gershom Scholem called a onesided monologue to a dialogue about guilt and working through guilt and a reevaluation of
German culture” (xv). In taboo-breaking moves, cinematic and literary German-Jewish love
stories stage such dialogues and reevaluation. Their very existence disrupts the prohibition on
descendants of the perpetrators and victims having intimate relationships with one another after
the Holocaust. They also challenge the taboos on “Germans” and “Jews” interacting as members
of opposing groups, and the association between German identity and perpetration. The genre
boomed from the late 1980s onward as second generation Jews in Germany came of age and
struggled with how to live in the “land of the murderers.” This coincided with renewed debates
about how to deal with the German past, and with the sense that German unification was
ushering in a more “normalized” national identity. Both Jewish and non-Jewish German authors
and filmmakers took up the topic of German-Jewish romantic and sexual relationships, bringing
abstract historical concepts such as the legacy of the Holocaust to a more manageable, personal
level and providing insight into the ways in which history affects individuals.
Initially, the shared history appeared to connect yet divide German-Jewish couples, as
Dan Diner’s “negative symbiosis” aptly describes. The German-Jewish love stories of
Honigmann’s Eine Liebe aus nichts and Mitgutsch’s Abschied von Jerusalem function as first
attempts at connection with the descendants of the perpetrators, but these protagonists cannot
194
shake the sense that they are sleeping with the enemy. The female Jewish protagonists
experiment with Jewish lovers and living in different countries (France and Israel), but by the
end of Honigmann’s and Mitgutsch’s narratives, both women are alone and between countries
and identities. Because of the Holocaust past, no positive connection to Germans or Germany is
possible for these Jewish women. In Seligmann’s Rubinsteins Versteigerung and Biller’s “Aus
Dresden ein Brief” the male Jewish protagonists are confronted by concrete information about
their German lovers’ Nazi fathers. After these revelations, both men try nonetheless to remain
with their gentile German girlfriends, but ultimately resign themselves to choosing a Jewish
partner without such a disturbing history. Allying themselves with a fellow Jew seems to be the
only way for them to stay in Germany.
The texts of Chapter One indicate that the past can play an insurmountably negative role
in German-Jewish couplings. The Jewish protagonists choose either to be alone or with their
“own kind,” as it proves too difficult for them to not view Germans as part of what Diner termed
“the collective of perpetrators.” The non-Jewish German perpetrators in Schlink’s “Die
Beschneidung” and Tuckermann’s Die Haut retten challenge the association between second and
third generation German identity and perpetration, as the analyses of Chapter Two reveal. In
those texts, the non-Jewish German characters (Andi and Karla) expressed frustration with being
bound to inherited roles, thus violating the taboo on contemporary Germans accepting the burden
of the past. The films of Chapter Three followed up on this by portraying first generation
German exceptions to anti-Semitism that cease the connection between “German” and
“perpetrator”–at least in individual, and female, cases.
This is a significant shift in the Holocaust’s legacy for German-Jewish relationship. The
films of Chapter Three and texts of Chapter Four portray Germans who helped Jewish partners
195
during the war and/or downplay contemporary German partners’ familial connections to Nazism.
Like the German protagonists of Chapter Two who want to be seen as individuals by their Jewish
partners rather than as members of the group “German,” these works disassociate non-Jewish
German identity from Nazi perpetration. As such, these works (attempt to) move the Holocaust
legacy out of the foreground in German-Jewish relationships. By Chapter Four, texts by both
Jewish and non-Jewish authors create “good” German characters, both male and female, and in
the first generation as well as those following it, thereby reimagining the connections between
Germans and the Holocaust past. The once-estranged bedfellows appear to have become
amicable partners.
Another shift is an increased linkage between German and Jewish characters and
identities; where once it only seemed possible for the two to be on separate sides of the
Holocaust divide, an increasing number of texts link “German” and “Jewish” together. In the
earliest example, the Jewish title character of Rubinsteins Versteigerung, after falling in love
with a German, acknowledges a dual identity, exclaiming “Ich bin ein deutscher Jude!” In
Seligmann’s later novel, Schalom meine Liebe, two gentile German women’s conversion to
Judaism prompted by their marriages to Jewish German men are further examples: both women
adopt hyphenated names that link their German and Jewish identities. In addition to the greater
numbers of “successful” relationships seen in these chapters, there are also indications of a
budding German-Jewish future symbolized by the children of the German-Jewish couples in
Schalom meine Liebe and Schneider’s Eduards Heimkehr. Even in the texts of Chapter Five,
which at first glance seem antithetical to the more normalized relationships in Chapter Three and
Four, there is a greater flexibility in portraying German-Jewish relationships. Their satirical
depictions of sexual encounters between Jews and non-Jewish Germans take both partners to
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task for their self-serving manipulations of the Holocaust past, and this balanced treatment shifts
the focus away from “good” or “guilty” characters on either side, and toward criticism of the
unproductive roles the Holocaust legacy has spawned.
In the introduction to his edited volume Remembering the Holocaust in Germany, 19452000, Dan Michman summarizes two trends in contemporary Germany:
An unsolved tension between the will to be normal, which drives ‘to put this chapter
behind us’ [sic] and an awareness of responsibility combined with recurring, sometimes
sudden, manifestations of long-term results and implications of the past, exists in German
public life. (1)
I have identified two similar tendencies in German literature and film since the late 1980s. The
films of Chapter Three and the texts of Chapter Four fall into the first category: there is a desire
to lay the past to rest by finding good German exceptions to Nazism, to recover some sense of
normality, for it is surely not “normal” to murder Jews or be linked to perpetration. Other texts
explore the longer-term implications of the past, by creating narratives of second and third
generation German-Jewish couples who contend with familial connections to perpetration and
identities determined by a past they did not choose, but for which they still must bear the weight.
All of these cultural productions co-exist from the late 1980s to the present; but overall I identify
a trend toward a greater normality in imaginings of the German-Jewish relationship.
But this normality has specificity: it is mainly between female non-Jewish German
characters and male Jewish ones. This is most readily apparent in films of the 1990s and beyond
where “good” first generation gentile German women support their Jewish German partners
during Nazi rule. There are two such examples of first generation gentile German men in the
works of Chapter Four, namely the father in Das jüdische Begräbnis and the grandfather in
Eduards Heimkehr, and only one positive contemporary relationship between a German man and
a Jewish woman (in the latter text). In contrast, there are a number of portrayals of “happy”
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German-Jewish love stories between German women and Jewish men in the films and in the
novels Das jüdische Begräbnis and Schalom meine Liebe. Even in the more problematic “sex
stories” of Chapter Five, the German-Jewish (albeit fake) reconciliations and connections are
also in this gender configuration–and in fact, one can speculate that this may have become such a
prevalent theme that Biller and Lottmann decided to satirize it. It would seem, however, that it is
still challenging to depict non-Jewish German men as the other half of a German-Jewish pairing.
There are also relatively few homosexual German-Jewish relationships, 88 with the
exception of Aimée & Jaguar. In this sense, the German-Jewish love stories of the past three
decades may not only represent a “gendered normalization” but also what could be termed a
“hetero-normative normalization.” But the genre is opening up in other ways: Dani Levy recently
released the comedy Alles auf Zucker (2005), a film that chronicles the hapless German-Jewish
protagonist Jaeckie Zucker. In the GDR, Jaeckie had been a sportscaster and a non-practicing
Jew, married to a gentile German woman, Marlene. After unification, he is a gambler in major
debt whose wife has reached her limit with his irresponsible ways and wants a divorce. Their
troubles are related to the loss of Jaeckie’s comfortable position in the GDR, not to the legacy of
the Holocaust. When it is revealed that fulfilling Jaeckie’s dying mother’s wish will result in a
hefty inheritance, Jaeckie and Marlene decide to overlook their marital problems and pose as
observant Jews in order to reconcile with Jaeckie’s brother Samuel, an Orthodox Jew living in
Frankfurt am Main. As Stephen Holden, who reviewed this movie for the New York Times,
writes: “The movie suggests that those schisms, between East and West, between Germans and
Jews, are much ado about little when the stakes are a pot of gold. In its money-grubbing ethos,
naked greed in the shared pursuit of a windfall can resolve the stickiest cultural and religious
88
Jeffrey Peck made this observation while moderating the panel “Liebe nach Auschwitz II” at the annual German
Studies Association in 2007 in San Diego.
198
conflicts” (2). In its humorous treatment of the marital issues between Jaeckie and Marlene, as
well as conflicts completely unrelated to the Holocaust past, Alles auf Zucker takes contemporary
German-Jewish relations in a new direction of comedy and issues other than the Holocaust.
German Jews feature prominently in German-Jewish love stories, but statistically
speaking, they are outnumbered by the Russian Jews who have immigrated to Germany after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. 89 However, German language authors of Russian Jewish descent
such as Wladimir Kaminer have not taken up the subject of romantic relationships between
Russian Jews in Germany and gentile Germans. Zafer Şenocak, a Turkish German author,
complicates the German-Jewish binary in his novel Gefährliche Verwandtschaft (1998). The
protagonist Sascha has Jewish as well as gentile German grandparents, and is, as he says, “der
Enkel von Opfern und Tätern” (68), and furthermore, is of Turkish descent. Sascha’s identity is a
first indication that Şenocak wants to extend the discussion beyond “German” and “Jewish”
roles; a second is when the narrator expounds on how breaking free of the German-Jewish
dichotomy would help Germans, Jews and Turks:
The narrator suggests that dismantling the German-Jewish dichotomy could free both
groups from their traumatic experiences. This healing process could be initiated by
embracing a third party: the Turks. Turks in Germany, in turn, would have to treat
German Jews not only as part of German history, but as partners. Without the Jews, on
the other hand, Turks in Germany are doomed to live in a negative symbiosis with the
Germans. But Jews in Germany can come to terms with their Germanness only by
identifying with the Turks. (Fachinger 15-16)
Furthermore, Sascha is romantically involved with a gentile German woman, and this TurkishGerman-Jewish love story functions as a way to further complicate the binary. His girlfriend is
researching the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, and on one occasion compares it to the
Holocaust, and “by making a connection between the Armenian massacres [and] the Holocaust
89
According to the German Embassy’s website, over 170,000 Jews have immigrated to Germany from former
Soviet states since 1990, while the number of German Jews registered with the Jewish community is approximately
60,000 (www.germany.info).
199
[…] Şenocak disrupts the duality of the (negative) German-Jewish symbiosis and dismantles the
victim-perpetrator dichotomy” (Fachinger 14).
While Levy’s and Şenocak’s works introduce new impulses into the discussion of
German-Jewish relations, Elke Schmitter’s short story “Zu Gast in Berlin” (2001) once again
calls forth the “sometimes sudden manifestations of long-term results and implications of the
past” that Michman mentions. Her short story addresses a non-Jewish German woman’s
difficulty in relating to a possibly Jewish man. The unnamed female German protagonist meets a
Russian writer from New York, Michail Ganin, at a social gathering with international guests in
unified Berlin. The two are flirting and the protagonist is “auf eine sexuelle Überraschung
eingestellt” (236), when Michail asks her a question that abruptly changes the mood between
them. He comments that he cannot find anywhere to get his shirts washed properly in the city,
adding: “[d]afür waren hier eben die Juden zuständig” (237). This comment sends her into a
tailspin of paranoia that he is testing her to see her reaction to this oblique reference to the
Holocaust. When he states “also muß ich privat jemanden suchen. Und ich dachte mir, Sie
wissen bestimmt eine Adresse?” (237), he only furthers her discomfort because she believes
there is a subtext to his question. She wonders if he is trying to tell her that he is Jewish, and/or
refer to the fact that the Holocaust killed all of the Jews who used to practice this profession, in
order to see how she, as a German, will react. At first she thinks he might be making a joke, as
they have both previously shared a laugh about Germans’ shortcomings:
[sie] starrte in sein Gesicht, nach einem Grinsen, nach Belustigung in seiner Miene
suchend, nach irgendeinem Anzeichen dafür, daß er nur einen Witz machte, mit ihr oder
auch mit der Hauptstadt” , mit seiner leisen Verachtung der Deutschen, an der er sie
zuvor hatte Anteil nehmen lassen, der Verachtung für deren Unfähigkeit, in der
Konversation ein bestimmtes Niveau zu halten, ohne zudringlich oder polemisch zu
werden, oder überhaupt eine Geselligkeit wie diese auszurichten und unauffällig dafür zu
sorgen, daß alle sich wohlfühlten, daß niemand vor der Zeit betrunken wurde, daß es ein
gesittetes Ende nehme… (237)
200
Her mind races, as she tries to determine if he is Jewish, so that she can figure out the “proper”
way to react as a German. The following inner monologue illustrates her hasty considerations:
Nichts in seinem Namen deutete darauf hin, daß er Jude war, aber bei russischen Namen
konnte man es ja überhaupt nicht wissen—vom Alter her, überschlug sie hastig, war
jedenfalls ausgeschlossen, daß er noch hier geboren war, doch selbstverständlich konnte
er Familie haben, die sich vor der Revolution hierhergeflüchtet hatte und deren
Mitglieder irgendwo in Polen oder in einem deutschen Arbeitslager umgekommen waren.
(238)
In the end she is so unnerved by his comment, that she is neither able to carry on any further
conversation with him at the party, nor call him after he departs, giving her his card. Schmitter’s
narrative demonstrates the power of the Holocaust legacy to open up a rift between Germans and
Jews, in a more international and cosmopolitan context, and even to prevent a connection from
happening.
The power of literary and cinematic German-Jewish love stories lies in the fact that they
bring together members of these estranged groups to spin out the consequences and find points
of (both negative and positive) connection. As I have demonstrated, there are significant shifts in
the German-Jewish relationship and the Holocaust legacy in these works that indicate a desire for
a normalization of German-Jewish relations. While contemporary works like Alles auf Zucker or
Gefährliche Verwandtschaft show the German-Jewish relationship to be changing in other ways,
taking into account the collapse of the GDR and presence of Turkish Germans, “Zu Gast in
Berlin” implies that the Holocaust legacy continues to reverberate, however mutedly, in
international German-Jewish relations. While there are sure to be new configurations to follow,
this dissertation provides an extensive overview and analysis of German-Jewish love stories by
both Jewish and non-Jewish German authors from the late 1980s to the early 21st century. By
breaking taboos and introducing new relational dynamics, the German-Jewish love stories
201
surveyed in this project shift Jews and non-Jewish Germans from (e)strange(d) bedfellows to
complicated companions.
202
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