Germans as Victims in the Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic

STUART TABERNER is Professor of German at the University of Leeds, UK. He is Research Associate in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French at the University of the Free State, South Africa. CAROLINE SCHAUMANN is Professor and Chairperson of German Studies at Emory College, GA. DAVID CLARKE is Professor of Modern German Studies at Cardiff University, UK. HELEN FINCH is Professor of German Literature at the University of Leeds. Mary Cosgrove is Professor in German at Trinity College Dublin. Her research and teaching foci include Holocaust memory and representation in literature and culture; German Jewish writing; the cultural history and theory of melancholia and boredom in European letters; and literaryand narrative economics. Key publications include Born under Auschwitz: Melancholy Traditions in Postwar German Literature (Camden House,2014); German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990 (Camden House, 2006; paperback 2010). STEPHEN BROCKMANN is Professor of German with courtesy appointments in English and History at Carnegie Mellon University. STUART TABERNER is Professor of German at the University of Leeds, UK. He is Research Associate in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

• Introduction - Stuart Taberner and Karina BergerW. G. Sebald and German Wartime Suffering - Stephen BrockmannThe Natural History of Destruction: W. G. Sebald, Gert Ledig, and the Allied Bombings - Colette LawsonExpulsion Novels of the 1950s: More than Meets the Eye? - Karina Berger"In this prison of the guard room": Heinrich Böll's Briefe aus dem Krieg 1939-1945 in the Context of Contemporary Debates - Frank FinlayFamily, Heritage, and German Wartime Suffering in Hanns-Josef Ortheil, Stephan Wackwitz, Thomas Medicus, Dagmar Leupold, and Uwe Timm - Helmut SchmitzLost Heimat in Generational Novels by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein, and Angelika Overath - Elizabeth Boa"A Different Family Story": German Wartime Suffering in Women's Writing by Wibke Bruhns, Ute Scheub, and Christina von Braun - Caroline SchaumannThe Place of German Wartime Suffering in Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Family Text - David Clarke"Why only now?": The Representation of German Wartime Suffering as a "Memory Taboo" in Günter Grass's Novella Im Krebsgang - Katharina HallRereading Der Vorleser, Remembering the Perpetrator - Rick CrownshawNarrating German Suffering in the Shadow of Holocaust Victimology: W. G. Sebald, Contemporary Trauma Theory, and Dieter Forte's Air Raids Epic - Mary CosgroveGünter Grass's Account of German Wartime Suffering in Beim Häuten der Zwiebel:Mind in Mourning or Boy Adventurer? - Helen FinchJackboots and Jeans: The Private and the Political in Uwe Timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders - Frank FinlayMemory-Work in Recent German Novels: What (if Any) Limits Remain on Empathy with the "German Experience" of the Second World War? - Stuart Taberner"Secondary Suffering" and Victimhood: The "Other" of German Identity in Bernhard Schlink's "Die Beschneidung" and Maxim Biller's "Harlem Holocaust" - Kathrin Schodel

[A]n impressive testament to collaborative research. The . . . essays . . . all offer highly stimulating discussions of individual texts and topics, and can be read as self-contained pieces, but the book is far more than the sum of its parts: the coherence of its argument suggests not only masterly editing, but also the real benefits of scholars with related interests working together over an extended period. [This book] will be of interest to students, specialists, and general readers alike, and given the implications of the topic, deserves the widest possible audience.