The German Legacy in East Central Europe as Recorded in Recent German-Language Literature (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

The German Legacy in East Central Europe

This study focuses on the complex legacy of the German and Austrian political and cultural presence in East Central Europe in the twentieth century. It contributes to the discussion of “German” identity in eastern Europe, and has important implications for German, Austrian, and East European studies. It addresses the specific situations of the former Habsburg regions of Bukovina (the Ukraine/Romania), Moravia (the Czech Republic), and Banat (Romania) as illustrated in contemporary literature by German-speaking authors, such as Herta Müller, Erica Pedretti, Gregor von Rezzori, and Edgar Hilsenrath. The works of these authors constitute contrastive historiographic narratives of the multiethnic regions of East-Central Europe under a series of oppressive regimes: first Austrian imperialism, and then German and Romanian fascism in Bukovina; National Socialism in Moravia, and Communism in Romania. Valentina Glajar investigates these narratives as representations of multicultural East Central Europe in German-language literature that show the political and ethnic tensions between Germans and local peoples that marked these regions throughout the twentieth century, often with tragic consequences. The study thus expands and diversifies the understanding of German literature and challenges the concept of a homogeneous German identity reaching far beyond the borders of the German-speaking countries. Valentina Glajar is assistant professor of German at Texas State University–San Marcos.

Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture Edited by James Hardin (South Carolina)


     
   




 



 
 



CAMDEN HOUSE

Copyright © 2004 Valentina Glajar All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2004 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.camden-house.com and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydell.co.uk ISBN: 1–57113–256–2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Glajar, Valentina. The German legacy in East Central Europe as recorded in recent German-language literature / Valentina Glajar. p. cm. — (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–57113–256–2 (alk. paper) 1. German literature — 20th century — Europe, Eastern — History and criticism. 2. Europe, Eastern — Civilization — German influences. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture (Unnumbered) PT3895.E852G53 2004 803.9'947—dc22 2003023873 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

For my mother

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

1: After Empire: “Postcolonial” Bukovina in Gregor von Rezzori’s Blumen im Schnee (1989)

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2: Transnistria and the Bukovinian Holocaust in Edgar Hilsenrath’s Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski (1999)

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3: Narrating History and Subjectivity: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Erica Pedretti’s Engste Heimat (1995)

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4: The Discourse of Discontent: Politics and Dictatorship in Herta Müller’s Herztier (1994) 115 Conclusion

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Works Cited

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Index

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Acknowledgments

I

WOULD LIKE to express my appreciation to the following for their contributions: Nina Berman for her encouragement and support throughout this project, which began as a dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin. Words are not sufficient to thank her for reading every draft of every chapter at least once and for her enthusiasm and friendship. Peter Jelavich, who took an interest in this project after Andre Lefevere’s untimely death, for his commitment and valuable comments and suggestions. Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Ferdinand Seibt, and Alexander Stephan for their careful reading and helpful suggestions. Dagmar Lorenz for her critique and for drawing my attention to contemporary Jewish writers and their relationship to East Central Europe. My sister for following this project from afar and for her insightful comments on Romanian history and politics, as well as for funding part of this project. Last but certainly not least, my thanks and love go to my husband, my son, and my nephews for being such a fun and supportive team. Portions of this book have been previously published in earlier forms. Part of chapter 4 originally appeared as “Banat-Swabian, German, and Romanian: Conflicting Identities in Herta Müller’s Herztier,” Monatshefte 89.4 (Winter 1997): 521–40 and “Politics and the Discourse of Discontent: Female Representations in Herta Müller’s The Land of Green Plums.” Women’s Voices in Postcommunist Eastern Europe, ed. M
d
lina Nicolaescu and Maria-Sabina Draga-Alexandru (Bucharest: U of Bucharest P, 2003). Part of chapter 1 was first published as “From Halb-Asien to Europe: Contrasting Representations of Bukovina,” Modern Austrian Literature 34.1/2 (2001): 15–35. I thank The University of Wisconsin Press, the journals, and the editors for permission to revise and reprint my work. V. G. September 2003

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1945, 15,000,000 ETHNIC GERMANS from East Europe entered Germany. The successive stages of immigration included, first, ethnic Germans who were expelled by Czechoslovakia and Poland because of their collaboration with Nazi Germany. Later, when the Communists came to power, many Germans left to escape the oppressive regimes and to overcome economic hardship.1 After 1989, when democracies were established in the East European countries, the flood of emigration did not stop. On the contrary, in 1990 alone almost 400,000 ethnic Germans entered Germany. Considered an ethnic minority in their homelands, these ethnic Germans arrived in the Federal Republic only to realize that they had acquired another minority status — that of semi-foreigners in the country of their ancestors. In their former countries of residence they were called Germans; in Germany they are called Aussiedler (emigrants), Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans), or fremde Deutsche (alien Germans), terms that more or less function as alternatives to the term Ausländer (foreigners). The term Volksdeutsche not only reflects the inherent issue of conflicting definitions of “Germanness” but also brings up memories of the Third Reich, when Hitler granted German citizenship to many ethnic Germans under the Nazi politics regarding ethnic Germans living outside the German Reich (NS-Volkstumspolitik).2 During the Nazi era the existence of German minorities beyond the Reich was used as an excuse for military expansion, and many ethnic Germans served in Hitler’s armies.3 After 1945, during the Cold War, the Federal Republic of Germany continued to recognize the Germans of Eastern Europe as compatriots. After the collapse of the Iron Curtain, however, when large numbers of Volksdeutsche immigrated to the Federal Republic, they were no longer greeted as long-lost siblings but were looked down on as “Eastern Europeans.” This massive migration from East to West also included Germanspeaking writers who tried to establish themselves in German-speaking or other West European countries. Although these authors have often been marginalized by mainstream criticism as Easterners and foreigners to Western realities, minority criticism has rarely included or analyzed literature written by German-speaking authors from East Central Europe. Many German critics do not wholeheartedly consider this literature German, because its “Germanness” is defined within the Eastern European cultural and political context; nor is minority criticism addressing the “foreignness” of these authors appropriate, given that their ethnic heritage is German. FTER

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Furthermore, the complex situation of the German-speaking Jewish writers from Eastern Europe who had to redefine their relationship with Germans and Germany after the Second World War is best reflected in the life and work of Paul Celan (1920–1970) and Rose Ausländer (1901–1988). Celan was never able to reconcile Heimat and his mother tongue with postwar Germany; and he chose to live in France rather than in any German-speaking country, although he continued to write poetry in German. Ausländer had to struggle with the same dilemma of “Muttersprache, Mördersprache.”4 After living in the United States for many years, however, she moved to Germany in 1965, and for the last eighteen years of her life she resided in the Nelly-Sachs-Haus in Düsseldorf. Similarly, Edgar Hilsenrath (b. 1926), whose Wahlheimat was Bukovina, was reluctant to return to his native Germany until he realized that he needed a German-speaking context for his writing. In 1975 he left the United States and moved permanently to Berlin. Literary texts by non-German authors were first categorized as Gastarbeiter- or Ausländerliteratur and reflected mostly the social changes in Germany. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, new debates were initiated that challenged the ethnically defined German literature (Suhr 1989; Teraoka 1987; Adelson 1990) and that articulated a new definition for German literature and a new canon that would include German-language literature by native and nonnative authors (Jankowsky 1997; Lorenz and Posthofen 1998; Fachinger 2001).5 For a long time nonnative authors had participated in literary contests for “foreigners” (such as the Adalbert von Chamisso Prize). In 1991, however, for the first time a nonnative female writer, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Three years later Herta Müller became the first German-speaking author from Romania to win the Kleist Literary Award. Faced with this change, German critics have been forced to acknowledge the cultural diversity of writers in German. The resistance to the inclusion and integration of these authors of multicultural backgrounds into the canon of German literature becomes obvious in the way critics approach and analyze their texts. As Karen Jankowsky points out in “‘German’ Literature Contested,” “critics have failed, for example, to connect Özdamar’s text with modern society and literature in Turkey, as well as with the author’s own experiences in Turkey and the two Germanies” (262). In other words, critics reduce the historical, cultural, and political context in Özdamar’s novel to a timeless “Oriental” Turkey, further perpetuating the cliché of oriental fairy tales and storytelling. Likewise, the cultural and historical dimensions, as well as the political context of East European German-speaking authors such as Herta Müller are often marginalized. For example, the German critic Norbert Otto Eke argues that Müller can only be considered a German author if critics ignore her cultural heritage.6 Eke’s statement clearly implies a valorization of the dominant literature at the expense of minority literature, because he views Müller’s link to the Banat-

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Swabian minority as an impediment to her status. While Eke’s intentions seem positive — after all, he does propose Müller’s inclusion in German literature — his vision of German literature remains monocultural and hegemonic. Yet, if critics are expected to address bicultural or multicultural influences in a way that will not just valorize culture from Germany but acknowledge the values and distinct histories of other cultures, what would be the “right” methodology with which to approach multicultural contexts and origins? According to the methodological debate initiated by Ülker Gökberk in her 1997 article “Culture Studies und die Türken” and to Leslie A. Adelson’s response to Gökberk’s argument, German Studies scholars are faced with an ongoing dilemma regarding how to analyze multicultural texts.7 Although both scholars agree on including Turkish politics and history in their analyses of texts written by Turkish-German authors or about Turkey, such as Sten Nadolny’s novel Selim oder die Gabe der Rede (1990), they disagree on how to proceed in their investigations (Adelson 281). Adelson articulates an eclectic and goal-oriented approach in her response, arguing: “In any event, I am far less interested in loyalty to a single methodology (be it culture studies, intercultural hermeneutics, or something else altogether) than I am in exploring complex cultural and historical questions that different methodologies allow us to pose and probe with varying — hopefully increasing — degree of sophistication” (278). Jankowsky also suggests “reading Özdamar for ‘intersections’ of cultural influences from Turkey and Germany” (263). Nina Berman discusses the term germanophone, which refers to texts written in German by authors of diverse backgrounds and “requires the critic to consider the importance of different cultural settings for the literary text.”8 In spite of disagreements and open-ended methodological questions, what comes across most evidently when considering Jankowsky’s, Gökberk’s, Adelson’s, and Berman’s positions is their emphasis on the importance of investigating cultural and historical questions when dealing with multicultural contexts. In this study I raise historical and cultural questions regarding the complex legacy of the German and Austrian presence in East Central Europe, as illustrated in works by Gregor von Rezzori (1914–1998), Edgar Hilsenrath (b. 1926), Erica Pedretti (b. 1930), and Herta Müller (b. 1953). In choosing these authors and their specific texts I considered aspects of their lives and works that unify this study, which deals with various multicultural regions (Bukovina, Moravia, and Banat), German-speaking communities (Austro-Germans, German-speaking Eastern Jews, Sudeten Germans, and Banat-Swabians), and time frames (1918; 1938–44; 1945; the 1980s). First, these authors and their writings represent and reflect the cultural diversity of East Central Europe, as well as the traumatic events of twentieth-century Europe. The authors were all witnesses to major historical events and felt compelled to write about them in their autobiographical and essayistic texts.

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Rezzori experienced the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire and the transition of the former Austrian crown land Bukovina to the Romanian kingdom. Hilsenrath documents the destruction of the Bukovinian Jewry during the Holocaust in Transnistria. Pedretti describes the expulsion of the German population of Czechoslovakia as a measure of retaliation for its collaboration with the Nazi regime. Müller re-creates the bleak atmosphere under the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauescu. I argue that ahistorical readings of these texts undercut the historical and political messages of the narratives and disregard the circumstances of their production. As by-products of the centuries-long Habsburg presence in this region, these texts express historical questions and constitute contrastive historiographic narratives of East Central European multiethnic regions under various oppressive regimes. The stereotypical depiction of Slavic and other Eastern peoples reflects not only the former Habsburg Germans’ belief in a “superior” German culture vis-à-vis the “barbaric” peoples of the East but also, to a large extent, contemporary attitudes toward Slavic and other Eastern European peoples. Analyzing the historical and autobiographical dimensions of the narratives allowed me to study representations of multicultural East Central Europe in German-language literature and to examine the portrayal of political and ethnic tensions between Germans and the local peoples that have marked these regions throughout the twentieth century, often with tragic consequences. Although this study may provide a fragmented picture of the Germanlanguage presence in Eastern Europe, it follows the events chronologically as a collage of narratives that transcend national and cultural borders. Analyzing the impact of political events on the expression of belonging and identification of these authors allows me to study the way their life stories intersect with the history of German-speaking communities in East Central Europe, which for centuries dominated the other local peoples under Habsburg rule. The dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 gave rise to new political and ethnic tensions in the emerging nation-states, since these German communities were faced with a new status that no longer entailed cultural and political dominance. As I show in my analysis, these Germans’ belief in a “superior” German culture and civilization shaped their relationship with the East Central European peoples for most of their common history. The ethnocentrism and intolerance of Sudeten Germans and Banat-Swabians, as portrayed in Pedretti’s and Müller’s texts, are in part consequences of the privileged positions they enjoyed during the Habsburg Empire until 1918. Rezzori’s memoirs also illustrate a clear hierarchy among the nationalities as well as anti-Semitic attitudes that existed before the rise of fascism in Romania, which is best exemplified in Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel. These four authors’ representations of the multicultural regions of Bukovina, Banat, and Moravia suggest a hierarchical relationship among

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privileged and less privileged or underprivileged nationalities within AustriaHungary that outlasted the demise of the empire. While some historians argued for years that the eastern regions of the Habsburg Empire functioned as colonies for Austro-Germans and, in part, for Hungarians, postcolonial criticism has hardly acknowledged the situation of Austria-Hungary.9 Russell Berman, Katherine Arens, and Marcia Klotz have raised questions regarding the situation of East European countries in the context of empires such as the Habsburg, German, Russian, and Ottoman empires, suggesting that discussions of German colonialism should include these regions.10 The paradigms developed for the French and British empires might not be entirely applicable to the Habsburg Empire, but they are also defined in terms of East versus West, which were at the core of the Habsburg expansion to the East. Unlike the British and French rule in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the Habsburgs’ rule was not characterized by massacres, nor was the conflict of colonizer versus colonized always spelled out in racial differences. Just as with the British and the French colonizers, however, the Habsburgs had a mission civilisatrice in the “barbaric” East.11 The Habsburgs’ belief in a “superior” German culture and civilization was employed to justify their political, cultural, and economic mission in East Europe. Habsburg rule not only allowed for an economic exploitation of the eastern regions but also engraved the colonialist idea of a “superior” German civilization into the minds of the subject peoples. In recent publications scholars have tried to address the distinct features of German colonialism vis-à-vis the British or the French models.12 For the most part, though, they have ignored the Austro-Germans and their legacy in East Central Europe. Suzanne Zantop, for example, limits her study to colonial fantasies and the colonial imagination, which prefigured the Germans’ involvement in Africa.13 As Nina Berman points out, however, the Habsburg Empire was engaged in expansionist politics long before the founding of the German colonial empire;14 both Banat and Bukovina, for example, were acquired and colonized in the 1770s. Berman refers to economic and political developments and coins the term “non-occupational colonialism” to describe political and economic domination not involving an occupying army or administrative bureaucracy, especially in Middle Eastern and North African countries.15 Few scholars of East European Studies have engaged in the postcolonial debate regarding the relationship between regions in East Central Europe and empires such as the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman. As David Chioni Moore argues in his study of post-Soviet postcolonialism, “It is difficult to theorize a silence — that is, this lack of dialogue between current postcolonial critique and scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.”16 In her remarkable Imagining the Balkans Maria Todorova rejects the idea of employing categories such as colonialism and

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imperialism in the discussion of the Balkans. She contends that “the Balkans are Europe, are part of Europe, although, admittedly, for the past several centuries its provincial part or periphery” and that the Balkan peoples never perceived themselves as being colonial or subaltern.17 While it is true that their self-perception might have differed from the way Westerners regarded them, they experienced many times in their histories that the gap between them and “Europe” was quite daunting. More recently, as Roumiana Deltcheva explains, “A decade after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the cultural discourse of Central and East Europe continues to be permeated by one dominant metaphor of intent, namely the road to Europe.”18 The Habsburg Empire, like the Russian and Ottoman empires, was a dynastic one that acquired its vast areas by expanding its borders — often competing for the same lands with its counterparts to the east, rather than conquering territories overseas.19 The difficulty of discussing the Habsburg Empire in colonial terms arises also from its geographical position and the constituency of its subjects. Vesna Goldsworthy argues that the Ottoman Empire represents a mirror image to its Western European colonial counterparts as an Eastern, alien, and Islamic empire that dominated parts of Europe. The relationship of the Habsburg Empire to its eastern provinces bears similarities to that of Britain to Ireland, as in each case both the “colonizer” and the “colonized” were European and predominantly Christian. By creating “colonizing narratives” that describe the “colonized” as nonEuropean, “Asiatic,” “Balkanic,” “oriental,” and/or “barbaric,” the Austrians could find a justification for their takeover by emphasizing the importance and necessity of their civilizing mission in this backward region that geographically belongs to Europe but is culturally affiliated with Asia or the Orient. And as Goldsworthy eloquently remarks, “The take-over of the intellectual domain, the exploitation of the raw sources of history can be similarly lucrative and — precisely because it often appears frivolous — more insidious in its consequences” (x). In chapter 1, I discuss the case of Bukovina in the context of internal colonialism. Michael Hechter introduced the term internal colonialism in 1975.20 In a later article, coauthored with Margaret Levi, Hechter extends his definition of internal colonies of Western Europe to “relatively backward ‘nations without history.’”21 Hechter and Levi explain that “Peripheries such as Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Corsica, Galicia, and Friesland were annexed outright by their respective cores. Although annexation did tend to strip these peripheries of their most culturally distinctive governmental institutions, some aspects of peripheral culture could, under specific conditions, persist none the less” (186). Galicia is the only example Hechter and Levi offer as an internal colony of the Habsburg Empire, but as I show in this chapter, Bukovina lends itself as a case study for internal colonialism as well, especially because for part of its Austrian history it was a circuit of Galicia.

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While Müller’s and Pedretti’s texts also raise questions regarding a colonial relationship between Germans or Austro-Germans and East Central European peoples, Rezzori’s texts address this issue most centrally. To illustrate aspects of the Austro-German colonial discourse in Bukovina I focus on Rezzori’s representation of Bukovina in his Blumen im Schnee (1989). I argue that Rezzori’s autobiographical text cannot be read simply as a nostalgic memoir of the author’s childhood and youth in Bukovina, because it raises important historical questions about the Austrian rule in Bukovina and the status of Bukovina in the Habsburg Empire. Rezzori describes the Austrian colonial rule in Bukovina by means of the personal stories of his family members and his extraordinary gift for storytelling that weaves autobiographical, biographical, fictional, and historical aspects of this period and his life into the narrative. To investigate Rezzori’s claim that Bukovina was a colony of the Habsburg Empire I draw on historical sources that argue that the historical annexation of Bukovina in 1775 was an imperialist act that disregarded any former political agreements between the principality of Moldavia and the Ottoman Porte. The economic exploitation of raw materials in Bukovina and its financial dependence on Viennese banks, which redirected their profits to the German regions of the empire, are further examples of the AustroGermans’ colonial practice in Eastern Europe. In chapter 2, I treat Edgar Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski (1999), which sheds new light on the German-language presence in the East as it portrays the German-speaking Jews of Bukovina who remained loyal to the Habsburgs to the end. On the one hand, scholars have depicted this region as a tolerant oasis of German culture in which all nationalities lived peacefully side by side. On the other hand, anti-Semitism led to the deportation of most Jews from Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Moldavia to Transnistria. Studies of German-language literature from Bukovina focus mostly on the writings of Paul Celan and Rose Ausländer (Colin; Felstiner; Bower).22 Hilsenrath’s situation is unique, as he was born in Germany and fled to Bukovina in 1938 to escape Hitler’s persecution. Three years later he was deported together with the Bukovinian Jews. Hilsenrath’s survival narrative contributes to the cultural history of this region as it draws attention to the fate of the Eastern Jews from the Bukovinian town of Siret/Sereth and provides insights into historical questions regarding the Holocaust in Transnistria. Whereas both Rezzori and Hilsenrath are known in the United States — Rezzori for his controversial Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (1981) and Hilsenrath for his first ghetto novel, Nacht (1964) — Erica Pedretti, the subject of chapter 3, is a less celebrated writer outside of Switzerland. Although she has lived there for much of her life, critics still call her “die Tschechin am Bielersee.” Like Rezzori’s and Hilsenrath’s texts, Pedretti’s novel Engste Heimat (1995) is rooted in a specific historical, cultural, and geographical context and reflects

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the multicultural and multilayered society of East Central Europe. By focusing on National Socialism and its impact on her homeland of Moravia, Pedretti creates two strings of narration to juxtapose different perspectives on the events of 1945, when about 3,000,000 Sudeten Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia. Pedretti’s narrative addresses the complicated history of Sudeten Germans and Czechs and challenges the legitimacy of the expulsion of many innocent Sudeten Germans, while uncovering nationalism and chauvinism on both the Czech and the Sudeten sides. Pedretti’s provocative work gains even more importance because the bilateral accord on wartime abuses was signed by Germany and the Czech Republic in December 1996 and because the Czech-German-Slovak Historikerkommission was appointed in 1990 to discuss and further investigate the common history of these two peoples. Not only do Czechs and Germans apologize for the crimes committed during and after the war, but Czechs also acknowledge officially that many Sudeten Germans were killed during the transfer. Because the Sudeten German topic was dominated for a long time by the right-wing Sudeten German Landsmannschaft, which actually represents just a fraction of the Sudeten Germans living in Germany, the image of Sudeten Germans has been decidedly one-sided. Politically supported by the Christlich Demokratische Union and the Christlich Soziale Union, they did not engage in any constructive dialogue with the Czechs and overshadowed research institutions such as the Collegium Carolinum in Munich, which clearly distances itself from the organization’s political agenda. In chapter 4, I discuss the characters in Müller’s novel Herztier (1994) and investigate her portrayal of the ethnocentrism and intolerance of BanatSwabians toward other minorities, as well as toward the Romanian majority — attitudes that led to their collaboration with National Socialism during the Third Reich. The focus in Müller’s writings is, however, the oppressive Communist regime of Ceauescu, which she experienced until 1987, when she immigrated to Germany. Müller’s poignant discourse of discontent, as well as her personal history as a political dissident writer, allow for a more sophisticated perspective on Communist life in Romania, which reaches a wider audience than most historical texts could achieve. I show that Müller, unlike other German-Romanian writers, does not single out GermanRomanians as sole victims of this regime but differentiates between victims and “graveyard-makers,” regardless of their ethnicity. In addition to being aesthetically innovative, her texts are first and foremost literary documents of political persecution, of suffering and fear under Communist dictatorial regimes. Most of Müller’s ethnic German characters leave Communist Romania and “return” to the homeland of their ancestors. Their arrival, however, turns out to be a new displacement and illustrates the closing of a cycle that began centuries ago, when the first German settlers left the German lands for better prospects in Eastern Europe. Their “return” constitutes the last chapter in the history of the German presence in the East.

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In a sense, the four writers are chroniclers of the histories of different regions and of a German presence that no longer exists in these areas. What Rezzori, Hilsenrath, Pedretti, and Müller have in common is the language in which they write and the German and Habsburg cultures that were preserved — with regional variations — for centuries in East Central Europe. Their writings document a German past in these regions that ties and opens German literature and culture to cultural settings influenced by Slavs, Romanians, Turks, Jews, Greeks, and other non-German peoples. This study seeks to contribute to the discussion of German identity in East Central Europe and encourages a more differentiated understanding of literature in German — one that takes into consideration the German presence in East Central Europe and opens German-language cultural history to Eastern texts and contexts.

Notes 1

See Klaus J. Bade, ed., Deutsche im Ausland — Fremde in Deutschland (Munich: Beck, 1992), 405.

2

Following the motto Heim ins Reich, the Nazis used a considerable number of Volksdeutsche to “germanize” occupied territories such as Poland. In 1943 Hitler granted German citizenship to all foreigners who served in the German army, the Waffen-SS, or the Organisation Todt. For more information on the involvement of East Central European Germans with National Socialism, see Anthony Komjathy and Rebecca Stockwell, German Minorities and the Third Reich (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980). See also the more recent work of Vladis O. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1993). 3

According to Komjathy and Stockwell, who refer to Theodor Schieder’s Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa (Bonn: Bundesministerium für Vertriebene und Kriegsgeschädigte, 1956), there had been about 54,000 German-Romanians in the Waffen-SS and 15,000 in the German army and the Organisation Todt, which, combined, equaled 10 percent of Banat-Swabians and Transylvanian Saxons (123–24).

4

See the book of the exhibit on German-speaking Jewish authors from Bukovina edited by Ernest Wichner and Herbert Wiesner, In der Sprache der Mörder: Ausstellungsbuch (Berlin: Literaturhaus Berlin, 1995). 5

Heidrun Suhr, “Ausländerliteratur: Minority Literature in the Federal Republic of Germany,” New German Critique 46 (Winter 1989): 71–103; Arlene Akiko Teraoka, “Gastarbeiterliteratur: The Other Speaks Back,” Cultural Critique 7 (Fall 1987): 77–101; Leslie A. Adelson, “Migrants’ Literature or German Literature? TORKAN’s Tufan: Brief an einen islamischen Bruder,” The German Quarterly 63.3/4 (1990): 382–89; Karen Jankowsky, “‘German’ Literature Contested,” The German Quarterly 70.3 (Summer 1997): 261–76; Jankowski and Carla Love, eds., Other Germanies (Albany: State U of New York P, 1997); Dagmar C. G. Lorenz and Renate S. Posthofen, eds., Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins (Columbia, SC:

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Camden House, 1998); Petra Fachinger, Rewriting Germany from the Margins (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2001). 6

Norbert Otto Eke, ed., Die erfundene Wahrnehmung: Annäherung an Herta Müller (Paderborn: Insel, 1991), 125–26. 7 Ülker Gökberk, “Culture Studies und die Türken: Sten Nadolnys Selim oder die Gabe der Rede im Lichte einer Methodendiskussion,” The German Quarterly 70.2 (Spring 1997): 97–122. Leslie A. Adelson, “Response to Ülker Gökberk, ‘Culture Studies und die Türken,’” The German Quarterly 70.3 (Summer 1997): 277–82. 8

Nina Berman, “German and Middle Eastern Literary Traditions in a Novel by Salim Alafenisch: Thoughts on a Germanophone Beduin Author from the Negev,” The German Quarterly 71.3 (Summer 1998): 271–83. Berman acknowledges Katherine Arens for coining the term germanophone. See also Arens’s article “For Want of a Word . . .: The Case for Germanophone,” Die Unterrichtspraxis 32.2 (Fall 1999): 130–42. 9

See especially Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1929).

10

Russell Berman, “German Colonialism: Another Sonderweg?” European Studies Journal 16.2 (Fall 1999): 25–36; Marcia Klotz, “Global Visions: From the Colonial to the National Socialist World,” European Studies Journal 16.2 (Fall 1999): 37–68; Katherine Arens, “Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm,” Center for Austrian Studies, working paper (March 1996). 11

Marcia Klotz uses the term civilisationism to define “the larger understanding of a globe marked by unequally developed cultures that made the civilizing mission into an imperative for European nations” (50). Klotz, however, uses the term European loosely, as in her work it only refers to west Europeans and certainly excludes east Europeans. 12

Sara Friedrichsmeyer et al., eds., The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1998); Russell A. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1998). 13

Suzanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham: Duke UP, 1997). 14

Nina Berman, “K.u.K. Colonialism: Hofmannsthal in North Africa,” New German Critique 75 (Fall 1998): 7. 15

Nina Berman, Orientalism, Kolonialism und Moderne: Zum Bild des Orients in der deutschsprachigen Kultur um 1900 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996).

16

David Chioni Moore, “Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique,” PMLA 116.1 (January 2001): 117. 17 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford UP, 1997), 17. 18

Roumiana Deltcheva, “Comparative Central European Culture: Displacements and Peripheralities,” Comparative Central European Culture, ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2002), 149. 19

Edward W. Said offers this explanation in Culture and Imperialism ([New York: Vintage, 1993], 10) in regard to excluding Russia from his discussion. David Chioni Moore characterizes Said’s “excuses” as “puzzling,” considering it odd that Said grants “primacy to water” (119).

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Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975). 21

Michael Hechter and Margaret Levi, “Ethnoregional Movements in the West,” Nationalism, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994), 186. 22

Amy Colin, Paul Celan: Holograms of Darkness (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991); John Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (New Haven: Yale UP, 1995); Kathrin Bower, Ethics and Remembrance in the Poetry of Nelly Sachs and Rose Ausländer (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000).

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

This monument near the village of Merghindeal, Transylvania, was established by Transylvanian Saxons in memory of Emperor Franz Josef I, who made a visit near here in 1858. As both Rezzori and Hilsenrath mention in their works, Franz Joseph was beloved by most nationalities. The Jews of Bukovina were especially loyal to him, as he granted them full rights in 1867. (Photograph by Valentina Glajar 2001)

1: After Empire: “Postcolonial” Bukovina in Gregor von Rezzori’s Blumen im Schnee (1989)

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collapses when confronted with Gregor von Rezzori’s multiethnic, multicultural, and multinational background. He was born in 1914 in the Habsburg Empire, lived in Romania until 1937, experienced the Anschluß in Vienna, and lived in Berlin during the war and then in Hamburg. He spent the last part of his life in Italy and New York. He was married three times: first to a German, then to a Jewish woman, and last to an Italian aristocrat; in addition, he had a muchpublicized affair with a French model while in Paris. Despite the fact that his first language was German and that he wrote almost exclusively in German, Rezzori never considered himself a German writer: “Ich schreibe (unter anderem, aber hauptsächlich) auf deutsch, weil das die Sprache ist, die ich liebe und am besten beherrsche. Ich weiß, daß ich mich ihrer bediene wie einer Fremdsprache. Meine Mentalität ist undeutsch. Aus mir wird niemals ein populärer deutscher Autor werden.”1 He never felt at home in Germany. On the contrary, Rezzori regarded Romania as his first homeland and Italy as his second. After being stateless for forty years, however, Rezzori chose Austrian citizenship for practical purposes. Rezzori liked to call himself an anachronism engaged in a continuous “Epochenverschleppung.” Born into an empire ready to dissolve and a crown land soon to disappear from the European map, he lived in a bygone world nostalgically remembered by his parents, former Habsburg aristocrats. His father descended from Sicilian nobility, and his mother could trace her lineage to the Cantacuzinos, once rulers of Moldavia. The family resided at the edge of empires in a time of social and political turmoil, strongly defending Western (Austrian/German) civilization against Eastern (Balkan) “barbarism.” Living in a multilingual region, they preserved the language and culture of the old empire. In a time when Romanian was the official language, the Rezzori children were educated in the Western tradition in German schools in Kronstadt/Braov (Transylvania, Romania) and Vienna. In Blumen im Schnee, which documents his life in Bukovina, Rezzori creates five portrait studies of the most influential people in his early life: his Bukovinian wet-nurse, Kassandra; his mother, father, and sister; and Straußerl, his Austrian governess. The narrative entails five occasionally NY CONCEPT OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

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overlapping formal dimensions. Each chapter captures the story of one character; taken together, they complete the narrative whole and render the finality of a historical and personal period in the lives of the characters. The book’s design has more than a few things in common with that of a fivepetaled flower. Rezzori’s technique is metaphorically illustrated in the first chapter, in which he describes how Kassandra first created these flowers in the snow to take Gregor’s mind off the cold winter: Sie stellt den Boden der Milchkanne so in den Schnee, daß der überhöhte Rand sich darin in einem klaren Kreis einzeichnet. Kreuzweis daneben, darüber und darunter und den mittleren in schmalen sphärischen Zweiecken überschneidend, setzt sie vier weitere Kreise hinzu — und so steht mit einemmal eine Blume im Schnee. . . . Auch ich dränge auf solche ornamentale Wiederholung, über deren Hervorzauberung ich den schnürenden Frost vergesse. Ich werde nicht müde, Kassandra anzutreiben, daß sie unseren Weg mit einer Borte solcher Blumenzeichen säume, ein Zierrat [sic] unserer Spur, den ich mir umso lückenloser wünsche, als ich mir ja sagen muß, daß diese Spur doch bald vom Wind verweht und wieder eingeschneit, schließlich aber von der Schneeschmelze im Frühjahr gänzlich aufgelöst und zum verschwinden gebracht sein würde. (61)

Rezzori not only alludes to his “flowerlike” narrative technique but also addresses the ornamental style of his text; his detailed descriptions of people, places, landscapes, smells, and sounds abound with adjectives and seem to be written, as the author himself suggests, in “a nineteenth-century German, with which I write twentieth-century novels.”2 By relating the stories of these characters and their formative influence on the protagonist’s life, Rezzori renders his perspective on Bukovina’s transition from the Austrian Empire to the Romanian monarchy. The author thematized the changes in the former Austrian crown land in an earlier novel, Ein Hermelin in Tschernopol (1958). In reviewing the novel Claudio Magris remarked, “Übrigens mythisiert Rezzoris Heimweh die verlorene Welt von gestern nicht, auch erträumt er keine unmögliche Rückkehr; durch seine, im ganzen gesehen realistische Wertung der Habsburgischen Verwaltung hält er vielmehr eine objektive geschichtliche Gegebenheit fest.”3 In Blumen im Schnee Rezzori not only describes the effect the dissolution of the empire had on the members of his family living in the most eastern Austrian crown land but also addresses the colonial character of the Austrian rule in Bukovina. Unlike the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, for example, who thematizes and deplores the decline of the Habsburg aristocracy, Rezzori realistically assesses the situation of his family and ironically exposes its role as former colonizers.4

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Although the characters in Blumen im Schnee are based on real people, the author warns the reader in the book’s subtitle that his text is an unusual autobiography: Portraitstudien zu einer Autobiographie, die ich nie schreiben werde; auch: Versuch der Erzählweise eines gleicherweise nie geschriebenen Bildungsromans (3). The text is, therefore, an autobiographical Bildungsroman, “an account of the youthful development of the hero or heroine.”5 Gregor, the hero of the novel, is not a simple reflection of the author Gregor von Rezzori, although the author confessed that “In telling my story in my last book, The Snows of Yesteryear, I was as honest as I could be. That is, as honest as anyone who writes fiction can be.”6 Nor can Rezzori’s Bukovina be substituted for the historical Bukovina, since his perspective is based on personal experience and focuses on a limited historical period, 1914 to 1937. It is, however, the representation of Bukovina and its people that matters in this analysis of the novel. The Saidian understanding of representation as construction is the focus of this project: “The things to look at are style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original.”7 By focusing on Rezzori’s representation of Bukovina and the Austrian colonial rule in this eastern region, this chapter investigates the relationship between Austrian Germans and the subject peoples of the region as reflected in Blumen im Schnee. The chapter adds an important dimension to the discussion of German identity in East Central Europe, since Rezzori claims that the Habsburg Empire was a colonial empire with its colonies on the same continent. By investigating his claim in the example of Bukovina, the colonization of East Central Europe by Germans and Austrians and the concept of a “superior” German culture and civilization versus the “barbarism” of the East prove to be crucial in understanding the relationship between the Germans and the East Central European peoples, even after the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire and the emergence of the new nation-states in 1918. By documenting the period of transition from the empire to the Romanian monarchy Rezzori highlights specific political and historical events that bear directly on his characters in the new nation-state. Through the analysis of Rezzori’s characters in the political and social context of postimperial Bukovina, this chapter examines the complexity of the German presence in this remote region. Bukovina provides fascinating and challenging notions of “Germanness.” Unlike the German-Romanians and Sudeten Germans who claim German ethnic and cultural heritage and who represent the emblematic Volksdeutschen, Germans in Bukovina belong to different Germanspeaking minorities, and not all can claim German ethnicity: they include former Habsburg Austrians, Bukovina Swabians, and German-speaking Jews. The analysis of the characters in Rezzori’s book reveals various aspects of “Germanness”: the father is a fanatical Austro-German nationalist and a pathological anti-Semite but also a convinced monarchist and clearly not a

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Nazi. Gregor’s overbearing mother experiences the privileges and limitations of being a Habsburg aristocrat. Gregor and his sister represent two different epochs: the sister still lives in the “heile Welt” into which she was born, with strong ties to Vienna; Gregor, on the other hand, is torn between the cultural world he inherited from his parents and his life in Romanian Bukovina. The portrayal of Kassandra, however, is the most intriguing, because it exemplifies the imperialist and colonial attitude of cultural and ethnic superiority Austrian Germans exhibited toward the subject peoples of the Habsburg Empire, and it challenges the concept of a supranational Habsburg identity in the case of lower-class non-Germans.

Bukovina: An Internal Colony of the Habsburg Empire In his autobiographical Blumen im Schnee Rezzori often refers to Bukovina as a colony of the Habsburg Empire: “Die k. u. k. Monarchie reichte weit in den europäischen Südosten: ein Kolonialreich, dessen Kolonien auf demselben Kontinent lagen” (164). The concept of an internal colonialism in the case of the Habsburg Empire is shared by an increasing number of scholars interested in Central and East Central Europe. Katherine Arens, for example, criticizes the postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha who base their theories on the British or French Empires but ignore the case of Austria-Hungary. As Arens points out, “the history of AustriaHungary is too complex to be exhausted in terms of a single, simple metaphor, such as the “East versus West” dichotomies that organize expositions of the French and British empires.”8 The paradigms developed for the French and British empires might not be identical to the Habsburg Empire, however; as shown in the following example, Rezzori also portrays postcolonial Bukovina in terms of East versus West and colonized versus colonizers. At stake is, as Russell Berman suggests, “whether ‘colonialism’ should be taken to refer solely to the overseas acquisition of non-European territories or whether there are meaningful fields of study within Europe itself (in which case the whole dubious logic of ‘Europe’ and the ‘Other’ becomes quite fragile). . . . What about the Austro-Hungarian Empire?”9 As with the British and French empires, the Habsburgs had a self-attributed mission: to colonize and civilize the occupied territories in the East. The Habsburgs’ belief in a “superior” German culture and civilization was employed to justify their political, cultural, and economic mission in eastern Europe. While the Habsburg Empire was credited for its multinational character under the umbrella of a supranational Habsburg authority, there is little doubt that the German-inhabited regions enjoyed a preferred status at the expense of the eastern parts of the empire.

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In his dissertation, “The ‘Post’ in Postcolonial and Postmodern: The Case of Central Europe,” Nikola Petkovic also argues for the existence of a Central European culture that was always postcolonial, just as the region was always dominated politically by one external power or other: Although the mechanisms used to colonize Central European peoples from the times of the Romans to date cannot be compared with the “mainstream” views of colonialism offered by scholars of British and French literatures, the social, cultural, ideological and economical effects of cultural colonization in Central Europe are strikingly similar to those of India, Africa, and Latin America.10

While Great Britain, France, and later Germany conquered territories overseas and made them into colonies, Austria-Hungary occupied the eastern and central parts of the European continent. Today’s East Central European regions were colonized and exploited by various empires: the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, and, last but not least, the Soviet Union. The Habsburgs acquired Bukovina from an ailing and disintegrating Ottoman Empire in 1775 after the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War (1769–74). The Habsburgs had various reasons for claiming Bukovina, in spite of its alleged poverty and backwardness — aspects that were used to justify the Habsburg intervention in the region. Bukovina formed the northern part of the Romanian principality of Moldavia, which was tributary to the Porte prior to the Habsburg annexation. Geographically positioned among the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, Bukovina became a cause of disagreement for all three. As the Historical Section of the British Foreign Office explained in 1919, the Habsburgs’ claim “was based on (1) the need for settlement of the old disputes concerning the frontier, (2) the desire for a ‘cordon sanitaire’ against the plague, and (3) the assertion that the territory had been originally usurped by Turkey.”11 For Moldavians (Romanians), the liberation from the Turks resulted in the military occupation of the Habsburgs. In their mission to stop the Orient from advancing, the Habsburgs intervened to implement the values of Western civilization. Romanian historians argue that Bukovina never existed as a separate region; it always belonged to Moldavia and was named Bukovina only after the Austrian occupation.12 In a reassessment of Bukovina’s history from a Romanian perspective, the Romanian historian Mircea Grigorovi
explains the annexation of Bukovina as an abusive imperialist act. Grigorovi
argues that Moldavia was, indeed, tributary to the Porte; but that it enjoyed a special autonomy that did not allow the Ottomans to cede the northern part of Moldavia to the Habsburgs, since Moldavia was not part of the Ottoman Empire but a vassal state to the Porte. Moreover, according to the Historical Section of the British Foreign Office, the Austrian imperial troops occupied various points in northern Moldavia “simultaneously with the diplomatic

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introduction of the claim” on Bukovina.13 Geographically, the region claimed by the Habsburgs included sites important to the history and culture of Moldavia: Suceava, for example, was the former capital of Moldavia and the court of Stephen the Great (1457–1504), who successfully defended Moldavia against the Turks and the Tartars and regained its independence. Many centuries-old monasteries, including Putna, the burial ground of Stephen the Great, also became part of Habsburg Bukovina. Moldavians, therefore, strongly opposed the Habsburg occupation of this region. In their negotiations with the Porte the Habsburgs relied on less than honorable means: a fabricated map described the claimed territory as a “strip of land with ‘three or four market towns and eleven villages, the rest consisting of forest and rugged land.’”14 According to Benedict Anderson, maps, along with censuses and museums, are institutions of power that shaped “the way in which the colonial state imagined its dominion — the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry.”15 The strip of land that, according to the Habsburgs, facilitated the communication between Transylvania and Galicia in fact comprised 4,035 square miles of territory and thirty more villages. Grigore Ghica, the Moldavian prince at that time, unsuccessfully voiced his protest by providing the Porte with realistic maps of the territory claimed by the Habsburgs; the Turks beheaded him in 1777. According to Grigorovi
and others, the documents of that time attest that Habsburg bribing corrupted influential officials on the Russian, Turkish, and Moldavian sides.16 In Bukowina, Bessarabien, Moldawien: Vergessenes Land zwischen Westeuropa, Rußland und der Türkei Hannes Hofbauer and Viorel Roman summarize a list of bribes that were recorded in Austrian financial documents: Demnach erhielt Dragoman Constantin Moruzi 10.312 Piaster, der türkische Offizier Tahir-Aga 3.100 Piaster usw. Insgesamt wurden 15.012 Piaster in das Bestechungsunternehmen investiert. Der russische Feldmarschall Graf Peter Alexandrowitsch Rumianzew erhielt für seine Kooperationsbereitschaft und Gefügigkeit 5.000 Golddukaten und eine mit Brillanten geschmückte Goldtabatière.17

Even Empress Maria Theresa expressed regret about the way Bukovina was annexed: “Wir sind vollständig ungerecht in bezug auf die moldawische Angelegenheit. Ich muss bekennen, dass ich nicht weiss, wie wir uns entwiren werden, aber schwerlich auf eine ehrliche Weise, und das betrübt mich unendlich viel.”18 In 1777 Austria officially entered into possession of the already occupied territory; the small principality of Moldavia had virtually no chance to overturn the Porte’s decision. According to Said, “At some very basic level, imperialism means thinking about, settling on, controlling land that you do not possess, that is distant, that is lived on and owned by others.”19 Under

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the new military administration Bukovina’s ties with Romanian Moldavia were severed, and the province became autonomous. Romanian nobles resented the introduction of the Austrian bureaucracy, which was the first step in the Austrianization and Germanization of the region. German was introduced as the official internal language, Romanian was limited to external contacts, and Ruthenian was neglected altogether. Some of the Romanian leaders, boyars,20 and teachers had left Bukovina in protest and settled in Jassy/Iai, the Moldavian capital. Many remaining boyars soon became Austrians, “won over to the administration by a lavish distribution of titles, while their children were educated in the German schools and became willing functionaries of the new Government.”21 While Romanians inhabited the southern part of Bukovina bordering on Moldavia, the northern Bukovina was populated by Ruthenians (Ukrainians). In retrospect and based on nationalistic assumptions, both Romanian and Ukrainian historians argue about who were the first and more numerous settlers of Bukovina prior to the Austrian occupation. As Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny explain the complex history of East Central Europe and its regional differences in their introduction to Becoming National, the case of Bukovina does not seem exceptional, but rather common practice in Central and Eastern Europe. By manipulating specific historical aspects, different nationalities create “rival versions of the past” and “a myth of origins which is meant to establish and legitimate the claim to cultural autonomy and eventually political independence.”22 The Ukrainian historians I. M. Nowosiwskyj and Basil Kolotylo, for example, claim that Austrians reported that 75 percent of the population of Bukovina was Ruthenian in 1781 and conclude: “Diese Tatsache ist zugleich auch der beste Beweis dafür, daß die Bukowina seit eh und je die Heimat der Ruthenen (Ukrainer) war.”23 Moreover, the historian Orest Subtelny denies that any Moldavians lived in Bukovina at the time of the Austrian occupation of the region. He claims that “Bukovyna [was] a small Ukrainian-inhabited area that Vienna snatched away from the faltering Ottoman Empire.”24 The Romanian historian Ion Nistor of the University of Czernowitz, on the other hand, argued in 1909 that according to a census conducted by the imperial general Gabriel Baron Splény de Miháldy, the first military governor of Bukovina, 80 percent of the population was Moldavian versus just 18 percent Ruthenian.25 Splény recorded 72,000 people: 11,100 Moldavian/Romanian, 1,261 Ruthenian/Ukrainian, 526 Jewish, 294 Gypsy, and 58 Armenian families.26 According to Robert Kann and Zdenek David, in 1804 Romanians still constituted the majority of the population; of 190,000 people living in Bukovina, 141,000 were estimated to be Romanians.27 Mostly peasants, the Ruthenians lacked any political leadership and were, therefore, politically and socially disadvantaged compared with the

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Moldavians of the region.28 Nowosiwsky and Kolotylo describe the situation of the Ruthenian population in the 1770s: Es bestand nur eine unterdrückte, amorphe Masse ohne kulturelle Führungsschicht, die am politisch-nationalen Leben der Volksgruppe nicht teilhaben konnte, eine Masse, die leicht von der herrschenden Nation assimiliert wurde und sich nur auf das konservative Bauerntum stützte, ja aus diesem bestand, da Adel, Bürgertum und Intelligenzschicht bereits längst entnationalisiert waren und im fremden Lager standen. Was blieb, waren die ohne Recht auf Besitz und persönliche Freiheit dahinsiechenden Leibeigenen der polnischen Schlachta und der moldauischen Bojaren.29

During the first part of the Austrian era (1775 to 1786) the situation of the Ruthenians changed little, because Bukovina was under military administration. The new administration sought to attract the Romanian nobility into the service of the state. Soon Romanian nobles became state functionaries, and in 1779 they were required to pledge the oath of allegiance to the emperor.30 Paradoxically, Bukovina’s time under the military administration has been described by both supporters and opponents of Austrian rule in the East as highly beneficial to Bukovinians. The Romanian writer Ion Budai-Deleanu commends the Austrians for getting rid of — or at least controlling — the corruption that had ruled the region prior to the Austrian occupation.31 The admiration for the military administration has to be juxtaposed to the Galician period in Bukovina’s history. According to Kann and David, Bukovina’s subordination to Galicia was unpopular with both Romanians and Ruthenians.32 In 1787 Bukovina was incorporated into Galicia; it remained administratively a circuit (Kreis) of Galicia until 1790, when it was declared an autonomous province. In 1817 Bukovina became part of Galicia once more. In 1849 it received the status of an independent Austrian duchy, which it maintained until 1918; from April 1860 to March 1861, however, Bukovina’s status once more reverted to that of a Galician circuit. In 1815, while Bukovina was part of Galicia, Catholic Poles assumed control of the school system. Polish was introduced in schools, and soon many Ruthenian villages found themselves Polonized. Romanians strongly opposed the Polonization of schools on religious, as well as linguistic, grounds, since Romanians and Ruthenians shared the Greek Orthodox faith. Not until 1844 were provisions made for Romanian to be spoken in elementary schools in most Orthodox areas. The year 1848 constituted a turning point in the history of Bukovina’s peoples. The Bukovina-German historian Rudolf Wagner, a representative of the Bukovinian Landsmannschaft in Augsburg, Germany, downplays the importance of the revolution in Bukovina, which he claims was simply the presentation of a petition to the emperor in 1848. But this so-called revolu-

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tion effected important changes in the lives of the non-German nationalities of Bukovina. Interestingly enough, most “Austrian” achievements in Bukovina date back to the period following 1848, when an intense national awakening on the side of the Romanians and, later, the Ruthenians took place. In 1849 and 1852, respectively, Romanian and Ruthenian were introduced in the curriculum of the German Gymnasium in Czernowitz; a Bukovinian museum, a permanent theater, and a library with a Romanian section were also founded. Historian Emanuel Turczynski calls these developments a “Bildungsexplosion,” which was visible in the increase in both student enrollments and newspaper publications33 (139). Regaining Bukovina’s autonomy from Galicia was clearly a crucial political and administrative accomplishment for the Bukovinians. Whether imposed or welcomed, the coexistence of the many nationalities in Bukovina under Austrian rule favored the development of a specific regional identity vis-à-vis the neighboring regions.34 This identity was not based on historical continuity, as was the case with other Austrian provinces such as Tyrol or Salzburg. Bukovina was artificially constructed in 1775, when Austrians drew the borders around their new acquisition, baptized the land, and encouraged immigration from German and non-German lands. Moldavians, Ruthenians, Jews, Germans, and many other nationalities became Bukovinians — an identity that survived the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. In Blumen im Schnee Rezzori highlights distinct layers of identity in the multiethnic Bukovinian population: Ich liebte das Land und seine Schönheit, seine Weite und Ursprünglichkeit, und ich liebte das Volk, das dort lebte —: das vielgestalte Volk nicht nur einer, sondern gleich eines halben Dutzends von Nationalitäten; nicht nur eines einzigen, sondern eines halben Dutzends von Glaubensbekenntnissen; nicht nur einer, sondern eines halben Dutzends von Sprachen; das aber doch ein Volk von ganz bestimmter und besonderer gemeinsamer Prägung war. (42; my emphasis)

While they developed a regional identity as Bukovinians, they strived to preserve their ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities, which were not always strictly separable. By the same token, the implementation of German, the centralized bureaucratic apparatus, and the Viennese cultural influence in the Bukovinian cities changed the face of Bukovina by inscribing onto it an Austrian model, recognizable in many parts of the monarchy. Rezzori claims that Bukovina was “eine hauptsächlich österreichisch geprägte Provinz” (41). The centralization and Austrianization of Bukovina and other eastern regions imposed changes on all spheres of life and thereby created pseudoViennese models in places such as Bukovina, Galicia, and Slovenia. The Galician-born writer Joseph Roth (1894–1939) addresses this phenomenon

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in his novel Die Kapuzinergruft, nostalgically describing the allegedly unifying spirit of the old supranational empire: Viel später also erst sollte ich einsehen, daß sogar Landschaften, Äcker, Nationen, Rassen, Hütten und Kaffeehäuser verschiedenster Art und verschiedenster Abkunft dem durchaus natürlichen Gesetz eines starken Geistes unterliegen müssen, der imstande ist, das Entlegene nahezubringen, das Fremde verwandt werden zu lassen und das scheinbar Auseinanderstrebende zu einigen. Ich spreche vom mißverstandenen und auch mißbrauchten Geist der alten Monarchie, der da bewirkte, daß ich in Zlotograd ebenso zu Hause war wie in Skolpje, wie in Wien.35

Roth’s narrator welcomes the centralization and Austrianization of the various regions of the monarchy, which brought some degree of tolerance to the eastern peoples of the empire. Roth’s categorization of races and nations that must succumb to a more powerful spirit, however, certainly does not assuage the misunderstandings surrounding the Habsburg Empire; rather, it raises questions about the status of these nationalities within the empire. Roth’s perspective on the eastern peoples resonates with some historians’ classification of the submerged peoples. Otto Bauer was the first historian to differentiate between the “historic” nationalities and the nationalities “without history” within the Habsburg Empire. On the one side the Germans, the Magyars, and the Italians; on the other side the Slavic peoples and the Romanians — the “master races” versus the “submerged peoples,” as A. J. P. Taylor defines the nationalities of the empire.36 Gerald Stourzh, however, characterizes the two groups as the dominant and privileged versus the nondominant and less privileged or even underprivileged, arguing against previous distinctions that disregard, for example, the religious unity and continuity of certain peoples.37 These classifications were also based on the economic situations of the eastern and southeastern regions of the empire, as was the case in Bukovina. According to Oscar Jászi’s The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, Austrians were less interested in building up Bukovina’s economy, which was one of the most underdeveloped among Austria’s provinces, than in exploiting the country’s raw materials. Though the Habsburgs did not acquire colonies overseas in the manner of most Western countries, the empire’s expansion to the east and southeast assured them its own profits. Not only did Austrian capitalism exploit “the almost virgin resources of the younger states” (172); it also redirected all the profits to the German regions of the empire. The most developed economic parts of Austria-Hungary were the regions inhabited by the Austrian Germans, the Alpine provinces, and Bohemia-Moravia. The eastern and southern parts of the monarchy “were nothing else than colonies of an agrarian character which bought industrial products of the Austro-German regions” (202). When industrial development began in

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these eastern regions in the 1890s, Austro-German capitalists did invest in them — but only because labor and raw materials were cheaper and the profits higher. “Almost every plant, factory, or mine in Galicia, Bukovina, or in the Austrian southern Slav territories was the property of the AustroGerman capitalists or at least controlled by them” (203). As Jászi concludes, the Austro-German monopoly on industry and the financial system hindered the economic development of the eastern regions, whereas the profits made at the expense of the eastern peoples’ well-being were directed to the Austro-German territories (206). In 1915 Raimund Friedrich Kaindl invoked similar reasons for continuing the “German War” in the East. He deplored the fact that Germans wasted time and energy to acquire colonies overseas and ignored the easily attainable eastern and southeastern regions of Europe.38 According to Kaindl, economic exploitation of raw material was one of the main reasons for colonizing these eastern regions and for continuing the war to maintain them: “Reicher Erwerb floß ihnen zu; die Erzeugnisse ihres Gewerbefleißes fanden im Osten lohnenden Absatz, und unerschöpfliche Massen von Rohprodukten führten sie in die Mutterländer zurück” (8; my emphasis). Furthermore, Kaindl is concerned with preserving the German Vorposten in the East, which included German communities in the Carpathian lands, Transylvania, Croatia, and Bosnia, that secured their access to these regions. In the forty pages of his political pamphlet Kaindl is, above all, interested in motivating Germans and Austrians to maintain and fight for their colonial interests in the East. In 1984 David F. Good claimed that the more extreme views of Jászi and Ferenc Eckhart — who argues that even Hungary endured colonial status under the Habsburgs — were discredited by the 1950s.39 The uneven development of the west and the east of the empire remains an uncontested reality, however. In 1997 Hofbauer and Roman still claim that Bukovina was an agrarian internal colony of Austria until 1918 (34). Historian István Deák, however, commends Austrians for having modernized the various regions of the Empire: “the successor states took over a number of imposing wrought-iron railroad stations, soaring viaducts and suspension bridges, municipal parks, eclectic theater buildings, grandiose opera houses, splendid museums, baroque churches, mauresque synagogues, ostentatious parliament buildings, neo-Gothic or neoclassical city halls.”40 Deák is not specific about the location of these impressive “Austrian” accomplishments that were actually significantly more modest in the eastern regions. He acknowledges, however, that “As one moved east within the monarchy [. . .] one did, it is true, inevitably meet with less and less prosperity, education, and efficiency” (130). Part of the Austrian mission was the cultural colonization of Eastern Europe, including Bukovina — especially the urban areas. Although historical and cultural sites such as museums, theaters, and schools are part of the

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Austrian legacy in Bukovina and can still be seen in towns such as Czernowitz in Ukraine and R
d
ui in Romania, German is mostly absent from the cultural landscape of this former Habsburg duchy. The introduction of German in the administrative sector and the school system, however, had once been instrumental in changing this Moldavian region into an Austrian province and in producing German-language authors of varied ethnic backgrounds.41 As with Rezzori, their cultural backgrounds exemplify aspects of the multicultural and multilayered society of Eastern Europe, whereas their writings provide contrasting depictions of the Austro-German presence and cultural legacy in this outermost eastern Habsburg duchy.

From Habsburg Austrians to Romanian Citizens In Blumen im Schnee the childhood and youth of the narrator, Gregor, are marked by political events that have a tremendous impact on his family and their stay in Bukovina. The chronological narrative, which mirrors Gregor von Rezzori’s life story, begins in Bukovina in 1914, the year of Gregor’s birth. While his father fights in the imperial army, Gregor, his mother, and his older sister flee from the advancing Russian army troops in 1914. They travel over the Carpathian Mountains to Triest and then to Lower Austria, where they find refuge until the end of the war. In 1918 the family returns to Bukovina and experiences the confusion and uncertainty associated with its transition from an Austrian crown land to a Romanian province. Four years later Gregor’s parents are divorced; the mother and children move to Vienna to live with her parents, while the father stays behind in Bukovina. Although Gregor’s sister remains in Vienna to pursue her studies, Gregor and his mother decide to return to Romania. Gregor spends the next year in Kronstadt/ Braov studying at the German-language Honterus Gymnasium. Homesick and alienated, he leaves Kronstadt and returns to Czernowitz, where he enjoys private lessons for the next three years. Gregor’s mother has remarried while Gregor was in Kronstadt; although her new husband, Philip, is a successful businessman, she feels that she married beneath her station, since he is a bourgeois Bukovina-German. Gregor’s parents decide that Gregor must go to a school in Vienna where he will receive the proper “Western” education; thus, he spends the next years in Austria, where he feels even more homesick and foreign. His classmates never treat him as an Austrian — or even as a former Austrian — but as an outsider, a “Tschusche” (234). Gregor manages, however, to pass the matura examination at sixteen. In 1931 Gregor’s sister becomes ill; she dies the following year at twenty-one. The event brings the mother to the brink of a nervous breakdown, and Gregor returns to Bukovina to be with her. After he returns home, however, Romanian officials withdraw his passport because he is due for military service in two years. Trapped in Czernowitz, Gregor is also faced with a new Romanian baccalaureate exami-

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nation, because Romanian schools do not accept his matura obtained in Vienna. At eighteen he realizes that his knowledge of Romanian is too limited to pass the examination. With the help of new Romanian friends, he studies Romanian history, literature, and culture for the first time in his life. After passing the exam, he moves to Bucharest and spends the next four years as a window decorator for perfume shops and an advertising manager at a factory. In 1937 he leaves Romania and continues his life journey to Vienna. While Gregor develops strong ties to Bukovina and Romania — partly because of Kassandra’s influence, as well as the childhood he spent in Romania — his parents and his older sister never feel at home in Bukovina; they consider themselves exiled to this eastern Balkan region. The family lives in nostalgic reminiscence of a time when they enjoyed the prestige and the wealth of Habsburg aristocrats. Gregor, the narrator, often goes back in time to identify with little Gregor, who was the product of his parents’ education and upbringing and only gradually distanced himself from their beliefs. Many reflective passages, however, are written from the perspective of the seventyfive-year-old Gregor, who looks back on history and his own story with the knowledge of a lifetime. Contradictions thus arise, because the reader has to distinguish between the different narrative voices and perceive the irony involved. Referring to the controversial content of some of his writings, especially Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, Rezzori explained: “Everything I write is ironical.”42 In Memoirs of an Anti-Semite he denounces the anti-Semitism of his characters and describes how a young person or a child is formed to become an anti-Semite. In Blumen im Schnee he depicts his own childhood in a dysfunctional family against the background of the political turmoil following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. Rezzori exposes the way of thinking in which he was brought up: the valorization of the Western/German culture and civilization at the expense of Eastern cultures — beliefs based on the political and cultural domination of the Austrians in Bukovina. As long as Bukovina belonged to Cisleithanian Austria, the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy, Gregor’s family enjoyed the privileges of being Austrian aristocrats in an Austrian crown land.43 As soon as the empire disintegrated, however, Gregor’s family lost not only a way of life but also a national identity. Officially, they were no longer Habsburg Austrians but citizens of the Romanian kingdom, and as such they shared the status of a national minority with all the ethnic Germans of the region: “Wir als deklarierte (und deklassierte) Ci-devant-Österreicher, waren — ob wir’s wollten oder nicht — den sogenannten Volksdeutschen zugeordnet” (73). The overwhelming political changes affected all areas of public life and effected identity negotiations on the part of all ethnic groups.44 Ethnic Germans and Austrian Germans lost their dominant position in the region, while Romanians, the subject people, gained power. The Ukrainians exchanged one oppressive system for another; and the Jews, for the most part German speakers, tried

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to immigrate to the Republic of Austria, while others waited to see what attitude the new political regime would adopt toward them. As former Austro-Germans, Gregor’s parents resented both their status as a minority and the association with the Bukovinian Germans.45 While the Bukovinian Germans came to the region as immigrants from German lands and considered themselves part of the local population (“bodenständig”), Gregor’s father came as an Austrian official for a temporary stay. “Wir fanden uns mit den Deutschen in einen Topf geworfen, darin aber von eben jenen Deutschen als zweitrangige Randsiedler behandelt” (251). Not only did Austrians lose their dominance; they also became a minority within the German minority. Although the Bukovina Germans had lived under Habsburg rule since 1777, they did not entirely identify with the Austro-Germans. Clear class distinctions were also at the core of the division between Austrians and Bukovinian Germans. Most Bukovinian Germans came as farmers from German territories and acquired land at the expense of the native population.46 The Austrian officials, on the other hand, were sent as k.u.k. Beamten from Vienna, and many of them, like Gregor’s father, possessed a title of nobility. Habsburg Austrians such as Gregor’s parents — and his maternal grandparents, who spent some time in Bukovina, as well — were fulfilling a higher cultural mission: they were acting in the name of the empire but also as members of an educated class, the aristocracy. In Claudio Magris’s words, they were chosen to participate in “die deutsch-mitteleuropäische Funktion des Habsburgerreiches, die kulturelle Kolonisation Osteuropas” (13). As aristocrats, Gregor’s parents felt that they were the embodiment of Western culture, as the author explains in his last autobiography: “In uns manifestierte sich die abendländische Kultur. Es war unsere Mission, sie aufrechtzuerhalten und zu verbreiten.”47 Once sent to culturally colonize and enlighten the “barbaric” peoples of Eastern Europe, they now felt abandoned by history and left behind as “Kulturdünger [. . .] Sendlinge der zivilisatorischen Verwaltung eines Imperiums, das nicht mehr bestand” (Blumen im Schnee 79–80). The narrator’s ancestors are, however, not German but Italian, Swiss, Irish, and Greek; their loyalty to the emperor entitled them to become Habsburg Austrians. The father’s ancestors, for example, came from Sicily, and they strongly emphasized their Italian origin. In Austria-Hungary, being of Italian origin did not contradict their Habsburg identity: Nachdem ein ebenso armer wie ambitiöser Sprößling namens Ambrogio 1750 [. . .] nach Wien gekommen war, ging freilich die Austriazisierung rasch vor sich: Ambrogios Sohn hieß noch Giovanni Battista; dessen Sohn bereits Johann Nepomuk. Wieder dessen Sohn war Wilhelm, mein Großvater. Obwohl er sich gelegentlich gerne Guglielmo nennen ließ und jeden freien Augenblick, den sein Dienst ihm gestattete, an der Adria verbrachte, war er bis in die Knochen habsburgisch. (Blumen im Schnee 163)

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Being Habsburgic did not preclude any ethnic identity, but it presupposed undergoing a process of cultural Germanization. Wilhelm, Gregor’s paternal grandfather, for example, has strong ties to the homeland of his ancestors and likes to be called Gugliemo. Nonetheless, regardless of his non-German origin, he is a faithful German Habsburg. “German was a class-name,” argues A. J. P. Taylor, rather than a race.48 People of different ethnicities who entered a town, for example, learned German and “forgot that they had ever been anything but Germans” (Taylor 25). From his mother’s side Gregor inherited an even more complicated ethnic ancestry: his maternal grandfather’s family came from Switzerland and moved to Vienna in the early eighteenth century. After making a fortune, American-style, his grandfather married the daughter of an Irish general and a Greek Romanian. Although Gregor’s parents cannot claim German ethnicity, they were raised and educated in the tradition of Habsburg values and German culture and always thought of themselves as Austrians. Although the grandparents are true believers in the emperor, however, Gregor’s father, Hugo, is depicted as a follower of Georg von Schönerer and a proponent of AustroGerman nationalism: Es kam zu unerquicklichen Auftritten. Daß er [Hugo] vom Tisch gewiesen wurde, weil er in der vorweggenommenen Ironie Musils vor Gästen behauptete, Franz Joseph I. sei nicht das Vorbild aller kaiserbärtigen Portiers, sondern eifere im Gegenteil als erster Diener des Staates jenen nach, gehörte zu den harmlosesten Anlässen für Zusammenstöße. Schlimmer war, daß er der Los-von-Rom-Bewegung beiund aus der katholischen Kirche austrat. Der Bruch war unvermeidlich, als er bei den Badeni-Krawallen mitmachte, verhaftet wurde und als glühender Bewunderer Georg von Schönerers einen hohen Polizeibeamten zum Duell forderte und mit ihm schoß. (164)

Hugo’s early stages of German nationalism as depicted in this passage translate into his contempt for the Slavic peoples of the empire, as well as his distinct feelings of superiority toward most non-Austro-German people. Although young Hugo rebels against the very authorities of the empire, Emperor Franz Joseph, and the Catholic Church, the older Hugo does not support the dissolution of the empire in 1918, nor has he any sympathy for Germans or Prussians. He likes to call Prussia a colony of the Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation: “Preußen, so pflegte er zu predigen, ist ein typischer Parvenü-Staat: Eine der ehemaligen Kolonien des Reichs auf diesem Kontinent, die vom Mutterland abgefallen und dank dessen Schwäche hochgekommen ist” (200). Paradoxically, as a young man he had joined the Pan-Germans, who called for the annexation of the Austrian German lands to Germany. The Austrian extremist politician Georg von Schönerer, the leader of the Pan-Germans, was responsible for the Los von Rom movement,

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which favored Lutheranism as a German religion in Austria, and also partly for the 1882 Linz Program. As Barbara Jelavich suggests, The Linz Program was designed to protect the German position, and it expressed the fears of those who felt that the Germans were drowning in a Slavic sea. It was proposed that the non-German areas of Galicia, Bukovina, and Dalmatia be detached from Austria and either be given to Hungary or made autonomous.49

Ironically, Hugo, once a follower of Schönerer, spends most of his adult life in non-German Bukovina, trying to preserve an Austrian lifestyle and a German cultural heritage. The nationalistic and anti-Semitic beliefs he developed as a young man associated with Schönerer’s party would, however, influence the rest of his life. The early anti-Slavic sentiment transforms itself into an anti-Balkan attitude toward the peoples living in Bukovina and, later, Romania. After 1918 the father’s discourse of superiority survives the dissolution of the empire: “Er machte kein Hehl daraus, daß er die Rumänen (im Gefolge der Ungarn und Tschechen) zu den Leichenfledderern am Kadaver der untergegangenen Doppelmonarchie zählte. Russen, Polen und Ruthenen waren Kolonialvölker” (176). Convinced of their superior culture and position among the many nationalities living in Romanian Bukovina,50 Gregor’s parents experience a deep identity crisis in the years following the dissolution of the empire: as Habsburg Austrians they have lost their empire and the privileged status of “Kolonialherren” in Bukovina, and as aristocrats they dissociate themselves from the democratic Republic of Austria.51 As the narrator describes it, “Der Monarchismus meines Vaters hat sich stärker erwiesen als sein austriazisches Nationalgefühl: Er zieht die fremdsprachige Monarchie der nur noch deutschsprachigen Republik des Schrumpfstaats Österreich vor. Meine Mutter dagegen fühlt sich einer minderwertigen Zivilisation ausgeliefert” (22). It becomes, therefore, evident that an important reason for deciding to remain in Bukovina was the father’s urge to preserve the aristocratic aspect of his identity, which would further legitimize his position of superiority in the Romanian kingdom. The political situation of “rump Austria,” however, was a deciding factor, as well. As Rogers Brubaker argues, the new Austrian republic “was not a diminished and transformed Habsburg Empire but rather a completely different state.”52 Once displaced, Gregor’s parents did not have a homeland to which to return, because the Habsburg Empire ceased to be a political or geographical reality. Nor were they particularly wanted by the Austrians, who considered them Easterners because of the time they had spent in Bukovina: “Daß wir dadurch auf zweifache Weise heimatlos wurden, sollten wir erfahren, als wir später in den Westen kamen und uns in vielerlei Weise als Östler fühlten” (56). As much as Gregor’s parents resented living among people of an “infe-

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rior” culture and civilization, Bukovina, the exile homeland and former Austrian crown land, was still the more sensible choice for the family in 1918. Other practical reasons came into consideration: their house and property were in Bukovina, and the cost of living in Bukovina was considerably lower than in Vienna. Postimperial Bukovina still fulfilled Albert Memmi’s definition of a colony, “a place where one earns more and spends less.”53 Above all, the fecund terrain of the Carpathian Mountains was most attractive to Gregor’s father, who was an avid hunter. In 1918 Gregor’s family returned, however, to a province in transition in which they are representatives of old Austria and, therefore, considered former oppressors and foreigners. The narrator sarcastically describes the fate of all former Austrian Germans, with whom he identified in the 1920s and who lost their hegemonic position in favor of their subject peoples:54 Wir waren verärgert über die Geringschätzung, die uns als Deutschsprachigen demonstrativ bei jeglicher Gelegenheit zu spüren gegeben wurde, als wäre die Herrschaft des alten Österreich die eines teutonischen Barbarentums über alte Kulturvölker wie Tschechen, Serben, Slowaken und Walachen gewesen und als hätten diese im Namen aller zivilisatorischen Ethik sich endlich aus einer drückender Knechtschaft befreit. (136)

Irony and sarcasm are trademarks of Rezzori’s style, which in this passage conveys his overt critique of the former Habsburg Germans’ inability to cope with their new political situation after the First World War. The narrator challenges the supremacy of culture and civilization as a justification for the Austrian rule in East Central Europe. By reversing the concepts of barbarism and culture, which serve as a variation of the East-West dichotomy, the narrator presents the hypothetical situation in which the “barbaric” Eastern peoples are characterized as “Kulturvölker,” whereas the German Kulturnation is depicted as a barbaric oppressor. Although the hypothetical subjunctive alienates the reader, it also performs the function of an eye-opening provocation in that it alludes to the historical perspective of an empire that oppressed the rights of the subject peoples in favor of the Germans and Hungarians in the empire and in the name of a “superior” culture and civilization.55 The portrait of the Germans as barbaric oppressors foreshadows the events of the 1930s and 1940s leading to the brutal persecution of the Jews. Faced with the pogroms against the Jews, however, Hugo, Gregor’s father, reacts with disbelief: “Zugegeben, in Rußland waren — und sind wahrscheinlich heute noch — Pogrome möglich. Aber die Deutschen sind ein Kulturvolk” (174). Later, in 1939, when he finally realizes that the German Kulturvolk is capable of barbaric atrocities, Hugo refuses a Nazi passport, which was issued to many ethnic Germans in Romania. As he did in 1918, he again chooses the Romanian Kingdom — this time over the German Reich.

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Following a policy of nationalization and centralization, Romanians take over the “Austrian” accomplishments in 1918, much to the resentment of the Germans in Bukovina. The Romanianization of cultural institutions poses a threat to preserving Germanness in this region:56 Es gab in Czernowitz ein Theater, in dem unter Mitwirkung bester Kräfte “aus dem Mutterland,” wie es hieß, deutschsprachige Stücke aufgeführt wurden bis rumänische Studenten mit einem demonstrativen Gewaltakt den Aufführungen ein Ende setzten. Diese Offenbarung des Chauvinismus genügte, daß unser Vater nie wieder seinen Fuß über die Theaterschwelle setzte. (74)

Rezzori is obviously referring to the 1922 incident in which Romanian students took over the theater in Czernowitz and renamed it “Teatrul Naional.”57 While the action taken by the Romanians was, indeed, condemnable, because they acted in the name of just one third of the Bukovinian population, the Austrian enforcement of German in Bukovina was an imperialist act that disregarded the rights of the local population and propagated the superiority of the German culture over any Eastern culture. For 143 years the dominant Austro-German minority living in Bukovina benefited from these German institutions and ignored many cultural claims of the subject peoples. In turn, Romanian nationalists arbitrarily disregarded many minority rights themselves, even though Romania signed the Minority Treaty of the League of Nations on 9 December 1919. As the old, Habsburg-shaped world “balkanizes” under the new state government, Gregor’s parents are unable to cope with what they feel is degradation and humiliation at the hands of the new ruling group, the Romanians. They retreat more and more into a make-believe world based on nostalgic reminiscence: “Wir faßten uns als dereinstige Österreicher in einer hauptsächlich österreichisch geprägten Provinz auf wie nach dem Ende des Raj in Indien verbliebene Briten” (41). Not willing to give up their status of privileged Austro-Germans, Gregor’s parents continue to live in the past, and to preserve those memories they isolate themselves from the now ominous outside world. While Hugo spends most of his time hunting or engaging in extramarital affairs, Gregor’s mother fulfills the role of guarding her children’s well-being — which, in her mind, means avoiding any contact with the world beyond their backyard: Wir waren in unserem Garten eingeschlossen wie in einem Gehege, gegen die Stadt so abgesperrt wie gegen jene Wiesen und Felder, die nicht uns gehörten und unserer Mutter gefährlich wild vorkamen. Wir lebten davon umgeben wie auf einer Insel. Festland war nur, was von den Eisenstangen unseres Gartenzauns umschlossen war. Außerhalb lag das Ungewisse, in dem abenteurliche Naturen sich zurechtfinden mochten, nicht wir Unerfahrenen. (211)

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In a desperate effort to keep up appearances and ignore the post-First World War reality, Gregor’s parents retreat from social life into loneliness and isolation. Gregor’s mother focuses all her energy on protecting her children from people, illnesses, and other dangers associated with the real world. As Gregor relates, she tries to be a perfect mother in the absence of the father and far from her own family in Vienna. Her methods, however, are extreme and grotesque: the children have hardly any contact with others their age; they live in a cocoon spun by the mother, who mostly hopes to keep them safe and alive. Following rare instances in which other children come to visit, the Rezzori children undergo thorough disinfections: “unsere Kindheit war verpestet von zwei Desinfektionsmittel: Permanganat und Formamint” (95). The reversal of power in Bukovina translates into the anxiety of reverse colonization for the Rezzoris. Stephen D. Arata explains this phenomenon: “the coloniser finds himself in the position of the colonised, the exploiter becomes exploited, the victimiser victimised. Such fears are linked to a perceived decline — racial, moral, spiritual — which makes the nation vulnerable to attack from more vigorous, ‘primitive’ peoples.”58 This fear is best illustrated in the weeks after the collapse of the empire before order was restored by the new Romanian government, a time of transition characterized by terror, looting, and, in many cases, murder. The Rezzoris felt doubly targeted: as aristocrats, the family feared the Bolsheviks since witnessing the fate of the Russian aristocracy; as well-to-do citizens, they had to defend themselves from looters and so learned how to use guns. Seit den Plünderzügen in den ersten Wochen nach dem Zusammenbruch von 1918 verdächtigte sie die gesamte Bevölkerung von Stadt und Land der lauernden Absicht, zu marodieren und allen besser gestellten Mitbürgern die Gurgeln durchzuschneiden, vor allem aber der Kinder aufzuspießen. (96)

It was the mother’s war experience that first instilled in her the overwhelming fear of failing to protect her children. As Gregor relates, he was just a few months old when the Rezzoris had to flee Bukovina in 1914. Owing to the harsh conditions of the flight through the mountains, Gregor developed pneumonia twice during the war years. After their return to Bukovina, the mother felt even more compelled to protect the children from adverse weather conditions and infection that may have resulted from their coming into contact with the local population. The exaggerated fear of the locals is illustrated by references to images of impaled children, which clearly allude to Vlad the Impaler (1431–1476), the Romanian prince who earned the name Dracula for his cruel practices. The fear of having her children impaled stems from the fact that the Rezzori family made scant effort to get to know the local population; their limited understanding created in their minds horrifying images that were mostly based on Balkan legends and generaliza-

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tions.59 In their imagination the locals became ominous representations of lurking danger, ranging from raging Bolsheviks to bloody impalers: Überdies erschien’s ihr offensichtlich, daß das zerlumpte, ungewaschene, hustende, spuckende, jeden Zaunpfahl anpischende Volk aus militanten Bazillenträgern bestand. Uns wurden folglich alle Möglichkeiten, mit Menschen in Berührung zu kommen, auf ein absurdes Mindestmaß beschränkt. (96)

The series of adjectives used to describe the local population change from static past participles (“zerlumpte, ungewaschene”) rendering the appearance of the poor to active present participles (“hustende, spuckende,” “anpischende”) conveying the ominous character of poverty. The visual and acoustic nuances not only create a live scene unfolding rapidly before the reader’s eyes but also summarize and represent socioeconomic problems in terms of health and sanitation problems.60 Gregor’s mother perceives the locals as bacteria incubators who can attack her children by means of bodily secretions. In 1932 the death of Gregor’s sister marks not only the mother’s worst nightmare but also the absolute end of an era. Gregor’s sister, who was about to marry an Austrian and reclaim the legitimacy of her Austrianness, dies at twenty-one without fulfilling her dream of “returning” home to the West. Her death is the first in a series of tragic events. Soon after her daughter’s death, the second marriage of the devastated mother breaks up. In 1937 the father leaves Bukovina and settles in the Transylvanian town of Hermannstadt/Sibiu, where he commits suicide a few years later after finding out that he is going blind. Also in 1937 Gregor moves to Vienna, where he experiences the Anschluß and the Nazi troops marching into the former capital of the Habsburg Empire. In 1940 the Russians occupy Bukovina, and Gregor’s mother is resettled, along with all Bukovina Germans, “heim ins Reich.”61

Kassandra In a highly critical article John-Paul Himka addresses the anti-Ukrainian prejudices in Rezzori’s Blumen im Schnee, especially the author’s portrait of his nursemaid, Kassandra.62 Although Himka considers Kassandra a derogatory stereotype of Ukrainians, he fails to interpret Kassandra’s character as a critique of the colonization of the region. Moreover, Rezzori clearly states: “Wir haben nie mit Sicherheit bestimmen können, von welcher Nationalität sie war. Nächstliegend war die Vermutung, daß sie Huzulin sei — also eine Tochter der ruthenisch sprechenden Berggoralen. . . . Aber sie konnte ebensogut auch Rumänin sein . . .” (49–50). Not only is Kassandra representative of her own “Sklavenrasse” (14), but she also stands for a disadvantaged social class: the oppressed peasants.

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By describing Kassandra and her relationship with his family, Rezzori’s narrator exposes and criticizes the colonialist thinking of the AustroGermans while acknowledging the impact such racist thinking had on his early life. Through Kassandra’s character the narrative challenges the very concept of the supranational Austrian identity that in the case of Bukovina was applied to German speakers of the middle and upper class. As Jacques Le Rider suggests, the principle of supranationality was “one of the finest deceptions of the official ideology, a cloak for the hegemony of the German and Hungarian nations and the tendency for nationalistic and racist feeling to intensify.”63 In Blumen im Schnee Kassandra is as far from being considered an Austrian as one can imagine. According to her own account as related in the first chapter of Blumen im Schnee, Kassandra was born into a poor family of mountain villagers. She was the oldest of twelve children, and after her mother’s death she assumed the responsibility of raising her siblings. They lived in unbearable poverty and near starvation. When Kassandra got pregnant by a man from the village, she was repeatedly beaten by her father and ostracized by the other villagers. In the end she was taken to a convent, where she gave birth to a boy whom she had to leave behind. It was in this convent that she was named Kassandra. While Rezzori’s character bears mythical connotations, she also fulfills the strong connection to the land of Bukovina and its people. Moreover, Stephen the Great had a daughter named Casandra. From the convent Kassandra came to work for the Rezzori family as Gregor’s wet-nurse. Kassandra’s story is hardly exceptional, since life in the rural areas was marked by a very low standard of living. In describing Kassandra’s village Rezzori’s narrator does point to the prevailing poverty and the lack of civilization as seen through Western eyes, but he also mythicizes and romanticizes his description: Das Karpatennest, aus dem sie stammte — sie wußte es zwar zu nennen, aber nicht mehr, wo es lag, “tief in den Wäldern,” jedenfalls —, bestand aus einer Handvoll Schindelhütten, in denen die Bewohner winters bei den Schafen schliefen; im Sommer verloren sich die schwermütigen Weisen ihrer Hirtenflöten in die fichtendurchrauschte Bergeinsamkeit. (8)

At one point, when describing the Carpathians the text resorts to the legend of Prince Dracula, who allegedly lived in a castle close to the Bârg
u Pass, which connects Transylvania with Moldavia. The unspecified location of Kassandra’s village “tief in den Wäldern” — somewhere in the wild Carpathian Mountains — paints a mystifying picture that creates an unbridgeable distance between the narrator’s world of Western civilization and Kassandra’s primitive and nature-bound way of life. The same villagers who sleep next to their sheep to keep warm during the hard winters give artistic expression to their harsh life

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during the summer by preserving a folklore tradition inherited from their ancestors. Kassandra’s world speaks of hardship and isolation, but also of freedom and of an artistic culture reflected in their melancholic songs. This romantic picture of life in the mountains becomes rather misleading, however, as the immediate reasons for the poverty and primitiveness are not addressed. According to historical sources, one cause of the economic backwardness in the rural parts of Austrian Bukovina was that Austrians made few investments that stood to benefit the local population. Since Bukovina was located at the very margin of the empire, Viennese businesses initially considered it unsafe to invest money in the region.64 As a result, the peasants, who constituted the majority of the population and who were oppressed by the local landowners, had to suffer because of the primitive ways they worked the land and raised animals.65 Though affectionate at times, Kassandra’s portrait reflects the colonialist thinking of Gregor’s class. People around Gregor refer to Kassandra as “ein Tier” (7), “die Wilde” (9), or “Gorillaweibchen” (9). Compared to the civilized Austro-Germans, Kassandra is depicted as a barbaric beast requiring domestication to function in an Austro-German household. Addressing the colonial process of domestication, David Spurr explains: “Members of a colonizing class will insist on their radical difference from the colonized as a way of legitimizing their own position in the colonial community. But at the same time they will insist, paradoxically, on the colonized people’s essential identity with them — both as preparation for the domestication of the colonized and as a moral and philosophical precondition for the civilizing mission.”66 On the first day of her employment Kassandra undergoes a transformation; she has to become acceptable for the standards of her Austrian masters, even if this transformation means erasing any trace of her inherited cultural identity: Als sie ins Haus kam, hieß es, sei sie nicht viel mehr gewesen als ein Tier. Man hatte sie aus ihrer bäuerlichen Tracht geschält, das Hemd, den Wickelrock, die ärmellose Schafpelzjacke, die Opanken sofort verbrannt. Aber in städtischen Kleidern wirkte sie so absurd, daß man vor ihr erschrecken konnte. . . . Sie wurde schleunigst wieder in Tracht gesteckt — eine sterilisierte Tracht allerdings, die sie dann zeitlebens trug: ohne die bunten Stickereien an Hemd und Jacke, die zinnoberrote Schärpe, das ginstergelbe Kopftuch, sondern in einem nonnenhaften Schwarz-Weiß-Grau. . . . Sie, jedenfalls, trug sie in würdevollem Stolz, wie ein Ordensgewand. (7–8)

As this passage illustrates, Kassandra undergoes a ritual of initiation into the life of the masters; she has to assume a new, “more dignified” identity while her old way of life is consumed by fire. Kassandra’s transformation from a Bukovinian peasant to an “Austrian” maid reflects not only a clash of cul-

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tures, races, and classes but also the attitude of absolute cultural, if not racial, superiority Austrians exhibited about the local population. Ironically, Kassandra does not feel humiliated but, rather, empowered by her uniform. The new appearance attests to a changed status: Kassandra rises above her class; she wears the mark of authority. Although Kassandra’s clothes are stripped of the original colors and the artful handmade embroidery, her speech remains a colorful mixture of many languages and regional dialects. Kassandra is mocked by her masters because she allegedly does not speak any language correctly, not even her own, but her linguistic amalgam reflects a creolization of tongues and cultures that was possible in Bukovina at the beginning of the twentieth century. “Kassandra [. . .] drückte sich in Brocken von Rumänisch, Ruthenisch, Polnisch, Ungarisch, auch Türkisch und Jiddisch aus, unterstützt von oft grotesk grimmasierender Mimik und mit einer primitiven Anschaulichkeit, die von jedermann belacht, aber begriffen wurde” (11). For her Western masters Kassandra’s lack of linguistic coherence is another sign of her barbaric nature. In The Rhetoric of Empire Spurr explains this colonial situation: For Western thought, one of the fundamental measures of a culture is the quality of its language. Language comes to be judged according to its richness and complexity, its refinement of mere cry and gesture, its capacity to make distinctions, its multiplicity of names, its range from particularity to abstraction, and its organization of time and space. (102)

According to Spurr’s model, Kassandra is the perfect barbarian: she does not master any of the languages of the region; many times she resorts to gestures and made-up words; she seems incapable of grasping abstractions; and she can hardly describe the location of her village. In the process of her domestication Kassandra acquires some German, the language of her civilized masters: “Unterwürfig versuchte sie, sich der Sprache ihrer Herren anzupassen. . . . Sie bediente sich der Sprachbrocken wie ein Bettler, der die Brosamen unter dem Tisch der Reichen aufsammelt” (51). The narrator clearly speaks from the position of a master who sympathizes with Kassandra as he would with his faithful dog, by deploring its unfortunate condition. From his perspective, however, the dog still belongs under the table. Many scholars believe that German was not imposed in the Habsburg Empire but was used as a lingua franca among the dozens of nationalities.67 Rezzori, however, argues that German was a means of social advancement and the language of the masters: “Deutsch war in österreichischen Zeiten die Sprache der Herren gewesen und weiterhin der Gebildeten geblieben” (51). Despite the claims of scholars such as Turczynski that Germanization was not enforced in Bukovina, the fact that knowledge of German was a premise for any non-German who wished to transcend his or her social and economic

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situation can hardly be contested.68 The Austrian historian Gerald Stourzh also affirms the dominant role German played in many parts of the empire: Es obliegt keinem Zweifel, daß (mit zeitlichen und auch erheblichen regionalen Änderungen) die deutsche, die italienische, die ungarische und die polnische Sprache Sprachen waren, die den Zugang zu sozialem und ökonomischem Aufstieg förderten. Es gab also einen “Assimilationssog” von ethnischen und sprachlichen Gruppen, die bessere Chancen für sozialen und ökonomischen Aufstieg boten.69

In Austrian Bukovina, German was the language of the administration and, more importantly, of higher education. German was a means to social advancement in a province in which just 9 percent of the population were Germans, and only 21 percent actually spoke German. Moreover, Stourzh refers to another ethnic group in Bukovina, the Jews, who used German as their vernacular language because of the role it played in public administration and in Bukovina’s school system.70 German also constituted a bridge to Western civilization — or, rather, a channel for spreading German culture.71 German valued culture and civilization over lack of culture and barbarism; it was an important means of fulfilling the Austrian mission of civilizing the East. The Habsburgs can be credited with founding many grade schools, several high schools, and one university over the 143 years of Austrian rule in Bukovina. While the lower schools for the most part used the native language of the children, the Gymnasien still employed German as the language of instruction. Romanian and Ukrainian were considered “relatively mandatory” subjects for non-German students. According to Wagner’s Das multinationale österreichische Schulwesen in der Bukowina, there were sixteen public Gymnasien in Bukovina at the beginning of the First World War: nine were purely German, four Romanian-German, two Ukrainian-German, and one purely Ukrainian.72 The high schools for girls were all private, and the language of instruction was German. The first public German high school, founded in Czernowitz in 1808, introduced Romanian and Ruthenian — as teaching subjects only — in 1856. For two hours a week non-German students could take “Landessprachen” (Romanian or Ruthenian) — subjects that were “relativ obligat.”73 A ministerial decree introduced special Romanian courses for non-Romanian students in 1904. And in 1900 “sogar Ruthenisch” (my emphasis) was introduced as an elective.74 These figures illustrate not only the importance German had in Bukovina’s school system and in its social and cultural life but also the marginalization of Romanian and Ukrainian — the native languages of at least 72 percent of the Bukovinian population. It is, therefore, not surprising that Erich Prokopowitsch calls the German university Francisco Josephina a “Zwangsanstalt zur Germanisierung.”75 Founded in 1875 as a gift from the emperor to the Bukovinians on the

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occasion of the 100-year anniversary of the Austrian occupation, the university included in addition to the many German classes a course on Romanian language and literature and one on Ukrainian language and literature. A theological seminar for Greek Orthodox Romanians and Ruthenians was also part of the curriculum. Although more than half the costs for this theological seminar were supported by the Romanian church fund, the language of instruction remained German. Constantin Tomoszczuk, a RomanianUkrainian educated in German who became the first rector of the university, tried to convince the Austrian Reichsrat that “‘die politische Nationalität des Österreichertums,’ die sich aufgrund des gemeinsamen Bildungsweges in den höheren Lehranstalten herausgebildet habe, [müsse] ‘nicht auf einer Sprache’ beruhen.”76 As Hannelore Burger suggests, the secretary of education, Karl von Stremayr, thought otherwise; he was convinced that instruction in German was more beneficial for the non-German nationalities and that the level of education achieved in German would be higher than that attainable in the respective native languages.77 Rezzori’s Kassandra is representative of thousands of Bukovinians who did not benefit from the Austrian “multinational” school system; Kassandra is illiterate. In 1910, for example, sources show that 53.9 percent of the Bukovinian population over ten years of age was illiterate.78 The high illiteracy rate among Romanians and Ukrainians in Austrian Bukovina was a reflection of the poor education they received, of the prevailing poverty, and of a failing German cultural mission. Although Czernowitz had many schools and a cultural life that earned the city the name “Klein-Wien,” the education of the masses remained an unsolved problem. Economic factors played an enormous role in the case of lower-class families, who could not afford to send their children to school or to do without the children’s help around the house or in the fields. The unsatisfactory economic situation also resulted in illnesses and epidemics, as well as a high infant mortality rate.79 It comes as no surprise, then, that the general cultural standard also was low. Considering the difference between the education of the lower class and that of the middle and upper classes, the Austrians’ cultural mission in the East could hardly be considered successful, unless it took into account strictly the middle and upper classes. By living in a German household, Kassandra receives her first form of instruction: she grows accustomed to the language and the lifestyle of the masters. Soon she realizes that knowing German means immediate access to power over her own people, “die Blöden in ihrem Karpatendorf” (38), and enables social advancement: “Daß sie in einem deutschsprachigen Haushalt leben, wirken, teilhaben durfte, daß sie sich dabei eines wenn auch noch so verdorbenen und oft bis zur Unkenntlichkeit mit Lehnwörtern gespickten Deutsch bedienen konnte, bedeutete für Kassandra die Aufnahme in eine höhere Welt und Lebensform” (51). Rezzori’s text illustrates the insur-

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mountable differences — of class, ethnicity, language, and culture — separating the masters and the servants. In the context of postcolonial Bukovina, Gregor’s family, who are former Austrian aristocrats sent to civilize this barbaric “oriental” region, still represent the values of the Habsburg Empire, whereas Kassandra, a “half-beast” Hutsul, Ruthenian/Ukrainian, or Moldavian/Romanian, stands for the local people, who are granted the favor of being domesticated. As the above passage conveys, Kassandra is permitted (“durfte”) to function in this German-speaking household. By allowing Kassandra to acquire bits and pieces of German and to get some access to the lifestyle of the masters, Kassandra’s Austrian German masters fulfill a mission: they make Kassandra aware of the Austrian Germans’ higher living standards and their superior culture. As Rezzori’s text sarcastically implies, however, Kassandra’s belief that she is now accepted into a higher world is, naturally, not shared by her masters. Kassandra’s portrait study is intended both to illustrate the unbridgeable differences between her world and that of the former Austro-German colonizers and to critique the class of “ci-devant Österreicher.” In contrast to Gregor’s aristocratic Austro-German family, which lives in almost complete physical and linguistic isolation from the other inhabitants of the region, Kassandra is able to communicate with the diverse peoples. Kassandra speaks a grammatically flawed mixture of dialects, whereas Gregor’s family relies only on “elevated” languages such as German or French; Kassandra’s intelligence, however, allows her to master critical situations in which her civilized masters fail. After Gregor’s birth in 1914 and the beginning of the First World War, Gregor, his mother, and his sister have to leave Czernowitz ahead of the advancing Russian troops. On their flight through the Carpathian Mountains, Kassandra proves to be a real lifesaver: “Sie sprach zu ihresgleichen als eine aus dem Volk zum Volk in dessen Sprache. Ihre sonderbare Tracht gab ihr eine gewisse Autorität” (11). Not only does Kassandra know how to relate to the people of the country; she also functions as a mediator between the folk and her German-speaking masters, whom she tries to protect. In this war situation Kassandra’s broken language proves to be more useful than the mother’s “Pensionatsfranzösisch” or her “Nursery-Englisch” (11). In spite of her ascribed mythical function as a “Schutzgeist” and a prophetess, Kassandra’s description bears similarities to imperial attitudes toward local inhabitants. The alleged primitiveness of Kassandra and her own people is exemplified by the animal metaphors associated with them. As mentioned earlier, Gregor’s family often questions her humanness, and even her protective quality is linked to the supposedly primitive instinct of female animals. Kassandra admires the imposing figure of the father, “den sie mit hündischer Ergebenheit verehrte” (15). She protects little Gregor like a female ape; once she is even compared to a sow (17). Often she is described as “die Wilde” (9) or “die Halbwilde” (15), and definitely as not completely

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human (17). Everyone in and outside the house is convinced of her “Unzivilisiertheit und unmenschliche Häßlichkeit” (15); that is, everyone except Gregor in his early childhood. The animal metaphor is even taken to the realm of insects when the narrator describes Kassandra’s fatalistic attitude: “die schwermütige Geduld ihrer alten Sklavenrasse, mit der sie sich in jede Fügung schickte (im Zustand einer seelischen Starre, wie physisch sie Käfer annehmen, die bei Gefahr sich totstellen)” (14). Not only is Kassandra perceived as half-savage and belonging to a race of slaves, she is also treated according to abusive colonial rules. In one instance she is struck by a governess in the house because she causes an intentional mix-up of Gregor’s and his sister’s chamber pots: “Die jeweilige Erzieherin [. . .] nahm den Anlaß wahr, einzugreifen und ‘der Wilden,’ die sie in Kassandra sah, eins am Zeug zu flicken” (34). Worlds and classes apart, the governess and Kassandra have little in common. The two exemplify, once again, the dichotomy of Eastern “barbarism” versus Western “civilization.” Because of her “Unzivilisiertheit” (15) and her simian ugliness, Kassandra becomes the savage in need of domestication by a Westerner. By striking Kassandra, the governess asserts the clear position of superiority that justifies her action. Rezzori’s narrator, however, has harsh words for the many Western governesses whom he describes as being more or less neurotic: “neurotisch, weil sie männerlos, unattraktiv, arm und anspruchsvoll waren und in der Überheblichkeit ihres halbgebildeten Westlertums sich in ein Balkanland verschlagen und zu Domestiken erniedrigt vorkamen” (35). It is important to note, however, that Gregor’s parents never physically abuse Kassandra. While the mother would readily get rid of the wet-nurse — she feels threatened by Kassandra, who seems to gain more and more space in Gregor’s life — the father allows Kassandra to work in his house even after his marriage to Gregor’s mother breaks up. The relationship between Kassandra and little Gregor provides a different picture, one that is too complex to be captured by an animal metaphor or the East-West dichotomy. East and West no longer preclude each other but form a hybrid union. Kassandra not only nurses baby Gregor, thereby establishing a physical bond between the two, but also allows Gregor to experience life through her own eyes by creating a perspective quite different from that of Gregor’s Western parents: Ich recke meine Arme zu Kassandra auf, damit sie mich hochhebe. Sie ist für mich die Weltvermittlerin, Inbegriff des Geborgenseins, der Sicherheit, mit der ich den Erlebnissen begegne. Alles Wunderbare der Weltentdeckung vollzieht sich unter ihrem Schutz, mit ihrer Förderung. Für jedermann sonst ist sie eine Halbwilde. Meine Mutter kam nie mit ihr zurecht, würde sie fortgeschickt haben, hätte sie nicht intuitiv begriffen, daß ich ohne Kassandra nicht existieren konnte. (15)

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As this passage illustrates, Kassandra functions foremost as Gregor’s mother figure: “Ich habe ihr [Kassandra] sämtliche Rechte williger eingeräumt als meiner leiblichen Mutter” (35). Symbolically, Kassandra, the Bukovinian, is more suited to play the role of the mother and “Weltvermittlerin” for Gregor than his Western mother, who detests Bukovina and feels abandoned by history in this uncivilized country. Kassandra initiates Gregor in discovering the world around him with the knowledge of an insider who is aware of the dangers and the miracles of her Eastern homeland. Most important, Kassandra brings laughter into Gregor’s house by mimicking and thereby exposing the vanity and idleness of the family’s conflicts, as well as the limitations of their socially predetermined clichéd way of acting and thinking: “Später habe ich eingesehen, daß Kassandra darin unser aller Bild im Zerrspiegel war” (15). The fact that Kassandra entertained the family by mimicking and ridiculing the moods or actions of its members speaks of her uninhibited humor but also of another colonial aspect that Homi K. Bhabha calls colonial mimicry, the ambivalence of “almost the same, but not quite.”80 In his essay “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” Bhabha defines colonial mimicry (and mockery): Mimicry is thus the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which “appropriates” the Other as it visualizes power. Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both “normalized” knowledges and disciplinary powers. (86)

While Kassandra undergoes a process of domestication and “appropriation,” the effects of her mimicking can hardly be characterized as “profound and disturbing” (Bhabha 86). Her parodying of the Austrian-German way of life is excused because she is perceived as a half-savage, not yet quite domesticated and, therefore, not taken seriously. Kassandra is a clown who mimics what she sees; she is not a figure of resistance who challenges the colonial power in any way. She remains reduced to an apelike human who is hardly responsible for her actions. Her clothes, language, and behavior reflect a refracted and grotesque image of her masters’ world: Indem sie alles ins Groteske steigerte, reduzierte sie die Nichtigkeiten, welche den meisten der Aufregungen zugrunde lagen, auf ihr wahres Maß, ließ, wie mein Vater sagte, “die Seifenblasen unseres Familiendramas platzen,” und öffnete somit unsere Augen für die Absurditäten der unreflektiert nach Schablonen gelebten Existenz. Sie, mehr als irgendwer anderer, lehrte uns die Heilkraft des Lachens. (18–19)

By mimicking the tensions in the house Kassandra exposes her masters as clowns in that they are the ones who create the absurd situations; Kassandra just mirrors their behavior in her comic exaggerations.

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Besides crediting Kassandra with teaching his family the power of laughter, the narrator also acknowledges her as his initiator into the folklore culture of Bukovina. Kassandra not only knows how to orchestrate humorous situations and tell anecdotes; she also inherited a wealth of fairy tales, which were transmitted to her orally from generation to generation: Während Straußerl meiner zwölfjährigen Schwester die Gedichte Michelangelos an Vittoria Colonna vorlas, erzählte Kassandra mir, dem Achtjährigen, immer noch Märchen — erzählte sie in ihrer Flickensprache, holte dazu die Wörter von überall her zu einem Decollagebild aus Sprachfetzen, zufälligen Wortfindungen, skurrilen Wortschöpfungen, Wortwechselbälgen, Sprachhomunkuli [. . .] verlieh ihnen dadurch eine Buntheit, Unmittelbarkeit und Lebendigkeit, die ich an ihnen nirgends mehr wiedergefunden habe. Denn sie, die Märchen, habe ich wiedergefunden: in preisgekrönten Anthologien, eines sogar bei Dostojewski: Kassandra wußte alle, die dort waren, und noch einige mehr dazu — und wußte sie zu erzählen, als geschähen sie vor meinen Augen. (55)

As he describes Kassandra’s extraordinary gift for storytelling, the narrator re-creates the liveliness of her language through parataxis and alliteration. The dramatic effect of Kassandra’s gift is realized by juxtaposing alliterated noun phrases describing the collage of her languages and word novelties that enlivened and enriched her fairy tales. Kassandra weaves her text from colorful linguistic threads that encompass and reflect the rich oral tradition of the array of peoples that make up the multicultural society of Bukovina. Kassandra becomes synonymous with Bukovina and Gregor’s ties with this aspect of the Eastern world: “Das Urtümliche des Landes, in dem wir lebten, verleiblicht in einer ausgewählten seiner Töchter” (26). Western values infiltrate Gregor’s life, however, and Kassandra’s formative influence fades away: “Ich liebte sie inniglich, und es geht aufs unablässige Hörensagen in und außer dem Haus zurück, wenn am Ende auch ich an ihre Unzivilisiertheit und unmenschliche Häßlichkeit glaubte” (15). As Gregor’s family tries to defend their “Westlertum” against the more pronounced Eastern character of the now Romanian Bukovina, Kassandra’s place in Gregor’s life is progressively taken over by Straußerl, the new Western-oriented governess from Pomerania. Kassandra marks the end of her era through a symbolic gesture: she cuts her long hair. Kassandra’s hair embodied the most intimate connection between her and little Gregor; it symbolized the shield behind which Gregor could hide, safe and protected against the outside reality. Once she loses her power as “Schutzgeist,” Kassandra performs this “symbolische Racheakt” (53) of physically removing the shield that is no longer desired. The East has succumbed to the West. Although Rezzori’s text renders an affectionate portrait of Kassandra, the narrator often identifies with the colonialist attitude of his family and his

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class. His nostalgia for Bukovina reflects not only his longing for a lost homeland but also for the way things used to be in Austrian Bukovina. Contradictions arise mainly because the perspective of the narrator often shifts from that of a child to that of a seventy-five-year-old man. As a child the narrator considers himself the product of his parents’ upbringing. He acknowledges, for example, that his view of Kassandra changed because of his parents’ influence; in his early years Gregor never thought of Kassandra as a savage but as his mother. The older Gregor understands and appreciates the impact Kassandra had on his life and his writing. Her gift for storytelling, her colorful language, and the wealth of fairy tales that she passed on to Gregor marked his career as a writer and a storyteller. Gregor’s ties to Bukovina reflect his affection for Kassandra, his Bukovinian mother, but also his hybrid cultural background: Nur ein Achtel von meinem Blut hatte seinen Ursprung hier, sah ich ab von Kassandras Muttermilch. Aber es war meine Erde, stärker bindend als der von meinem Vater angestimmte wagnerianische Gesang in meinem Gemüt, stärker als die alldeutsche Aggressivität, die in meinen Jahren jedem Schulkind in Österreich durch den politisch emsigen “Deutschen Schulverein” eingepflanzt worden war, stärker auch als die verführerische Märchen- und Sagenwelt der deutschen Romantiker, die mit der Mystik von Kassandras Märchen sich nicht messen konnten. . . . Indes, es war doch meine unmittelbare Existenz, in die ich hier einging, mein Mutterland, gleichviel in welcher Sprache, in welcher Gefühlswelt, in welchen Mythen — Sagen — und Märchenkreis ich darin aufgezogen worden war. (234–35)

In the depths of a Bukovinian mine Gregor solves the riddle of his life, split between his Western/German education and Kassandra’s world of Eastern folklore. While he cherishes the “urdeutsche Poesie” (235), which is part of his cultural heritage, he dissociates himself from his father’s German nationalism and the Austrian nationalism he experienced as a “Tschusche” during his Austrian school years. Gregor does not consider himself an exile, as do his parents and his sister, but a legitimate heir of his Eastern ancestors. The multicultural Bukovina is simply Gregor’s home, as it was to many cultures and peoples. Although Rezzori’s text provides a compelling critique of the Austrian rule in Bukovina, it rarely questions the Austro-German belief in a “superior” culture and civilization that partly justified the Habsburg mission in the East. Rezzori’s portrayal of Kassandra questions, however, the supranational Austrian identity that was officially awarded to all citizens of Cisleithania but was not recognized by Austro-Germans since language, culture, and class were important barriers. Shocking and unpredictable, Rezzori’s Blumen im Schnee portrays and exposes the world of colonialism, nationalism, and anti-Semitism into which he was born and that contributed to his formation as a person and

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a writer. By confronting his story and the history of Bukovina, Rezzori’s text scrutinizes the beliefs and actions of his family and suggests that the relationship between the Habsburg power and its Eastern territories resembles less the beneficence that has been often suggested than a colonial exploitation.

Notes 1

Gregor von Rezzori, Mir auf der Spur (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1997), 368. André A. Aciman, “Conversations with Gregor von Rezzori,” Salmagundi 90–91 (Spring-Summer 1991): 26.

2

3

Claudio Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos in der österreichischen Literatur (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1966), 305. 4

See especially Hofmannsthal’s drama Der Schwierige.

5

J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms (London: Penguin, 1979), 79.

6

Aciman 15. The Snows of Yesteryear (New York: Knopf, 1989) is the English translation of Blumen im Schnee. 7

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1994), 21.

8

Arens 1.

9

Russell Berman, “German Colonialism: Another Sonderweg?” European Studies Journal 16.2 (Fall 1999): 35. See also Klotz, “Global Visions.” Klotz suggests that investigating the role Germans played in Eastern Europe before 1914 is relevant to the discussion of German colonialism. 10

Nikola Petkovic, “The ‘Post’ in Postcolonial and Postmodern: The Case of Central Europe,” diss., U of Texas at Austin, 1996, 19. 11 Historical Section of the Foreign Office, Bukovina (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1919), 12. I will continue to refer to this source from 1919 to explain some antebellum events since, as the general editor and former director of the Historical Section, G. W. Prothero, claims, this handbook was prepared for the British Delegates to the Peace Conference of Versailles, and “the historical information was compiled by trained writers on historical subjects, who (in most cases) gave their services without any remuneration” (Peace Handbooks Issued by the Historical Section of the Foreign Office, Austria-Hungary, Editorial Note). 12

Romanian scholars argue that the name Bukovina was derived from the Romanian bucoave, or “beech tree,” while Ukrainians claim that it was derived from the Ukrainian buk, which also means “beech tree.” Mariana Hausleitner argues, however, that the name derives from Polish and was first used in the fifteenth century. Mariana Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina (Munich: Oldeburg, 2001).

13 14

Bukovina 12.

Bukovina 13. Benedict Anderson, “Census, Map, Museum,” Becoming National, ed. Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (New York: Oxford UP, 1996), 243–58. On strategies of colonizing countries, see also John K. Noyes, Colonial Space: Spatiality in the Discourse of German South West Africa 1884–1915 (Chur: Harwood Academic 15

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Publishers, 1992) and Marie Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). See Mircea Grigorovi
, Din istoria coloniz
rii Bucovinei (Bucharest: Editura Didactic si Pedagogic, 1996), 25. For a more detailed description of Bucovina’s annexation, the Moldavian protest, and the negotiations between Austria and the Porte, see Ioan Cpreanu, Bucovina: Istorie i cultur
 
(1775–1918) (Iai: Editura Moldova, 1995), 10–36. For documents referring to these historical events, see Eudoxiu Hurmuzachi, Documente privitoare la Istoria Românilor (Bucharest, 1876). 17 Hannes Hofbauer and Viorel Roman, Bukowina, Bessarabien, Moldawien: Vergessenes Land zwischen Westeuropa, Rußland und der Türkei (Vienna: Promedia, 1997), 27. 16

18

Quoted in Hofbauer and Roman 28.

19

Said, Culture and Imperialism 7. Boyars (Romanian boieri) were members of the Romanian nobility.

20 21

Bukovina 14.

22

Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, Becoming National (New York: Oxford UP, 1996), 8. 23 I. M. Nowosiwsky and Basil Kolotylo, “Die Ukrainistik an der Universität Czernowitz,” Alma Mater Francisco Josephina: Die deutschsprachige NationalitätenUniversität in Czernowitz. Festschrift zum 100. Jahrestag ihrer Eröffnung 1875, ed. Rudolf Wagner (Munich: Meschendörfer, 1975), 189. 24

Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1994), 213.

25

Ion Nistor, Der nationale Kampf in der Bukovina: Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rumänen und Ruthenen (Bucharest: Institut de Arte Grafice, 1918), 90–106. 26

See also Hofbauer and Roman 29.

27

Robert A. Kann and Zdenek V. David, The Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526–1918 (Seattle: U of Washington P, 1984), 288.

28

See also John Mason, The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1867–1918 (London: Longman, 1985), 14.

29

Nowosiwsky and Kolotylo 190.

30

See Kann and David 287.

31

See Ion Nistor, Istoria Bucovinei (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1991), 67. See also Hofbauer and Roman: “Es war die beste Zeit, die die ansässigen Rumänen unter österreichischer Herrschaft erlebten. Korruption wurde streng bestraft, Plünderung untersagt” (28).

32

Kann and David 288–89. See also Rudolf Wagner, Vom Moldauwappen zum Doppeladler (Augsburg: Hofmann, 1991). Wagner also claims that “62 Jahre wurde die Bukowina als selbständiger Kreis gegen den Willen ihrer Bevölkerung von Lemberg aus regiert” (8). 33 See Emanuel Turczynski, Geschichte der Bukowina in der Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993), 139. 34

Turczynski, especially “Gewachsener Regionalismus im Widerstreit mit importiertem Nationalismus” (168–208): “Im Verlaufe eines Jahrhunderts war ein Zusammengehörigkeitsbewußtsein entstanden, daß sich in einem Regionalstolz und Lokalpatriotismus äußerte, der viele Wurzeln besaß” (168).

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45

Joseph Roth, Werke, vol. 6 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1991), 252.

36

See A. J. P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809–1918: A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 31.

37

See Gerald Stourzh, “Die Idee der nationalen Gleichberechtigung,” Nationale Vielfalt und gemeinsames Erbe, ed. Erhard Busek and Gerald Stourzh (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik/Munich: Oldenbourg, 1990), 39–48. 38

Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, “Deutsche Siedlung im Osten,” Der deutsche Krieg, ed. Ernst Jäckh (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1915), 9–10. 39 David F. Good, The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750–1914 (Berkeley: U of California P, 1984), 125. 40

István Deák, “The Habsburg Empire,” After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building. The Soviet Union and Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, ed. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 130. 41

The Romanian brothers Janko Lupul (1836–1922) and Theodor Lupul (1838– 1958), for example, wrote in German. For a comprehensive collection of poems by Bukovinian authors, see Amy Colin and Alfred Kittner, eds., Versunkene Dichtung der Bukowina (Munich: Fink, 1994). 42

Aciman 31.

43

According to Erich Prokopowitsch’s sources, the von Rezori family received the title of nobility on 1 August 1889. Hugo von Rezori was “Oberbaurat Ingenieur” in Czernowitz. “Der Adel in der Bukowina,” Spuren der deutschen Einwanderung in die Bukowina vor 200 Jahren — Grenzschutz und Adel in österreichischer Zeit, ed. Rudolf Wagner (Munich: Verlag des Südostdeutschen Kulturwerks, 1983), 138. 44

According to the 1910 census, there were 168,851 Germans, 21 percent of the population. Included in these numbers are 102,919 Jews, since they were considered Germans. Romanians numbered 273,254, or 34 percent, and 305,100, or 38 percent, were Ruthenians. Magyars, Poles, Lipovans, Gypsies, and Armenians were present in smaller percentages. See Handbooks Prepared Under the Direction of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office No. 5, Bukovina (February 1919), 7. According to Klaus Bade’s Deutsche im Ausland — Fremde in Deutschland, there were 73,000 Germans in Bukovina, amounting to 9 percent of the population (47), which obviously excludes the German-speaking Jews. 45

The first German settlers came to Bukovina at the request of Maria Theresa, who intended to populate the region by encouraging immigration. The ancestors of the Bukovina Swabians came mainly from the southwestern German lands of Hessen, Pfalz, Baden, and Württemberg, and settled in northern and central Bukovina. A second group of German settlers followed in the nineteenth century, the Bohemian-Germans, who came from Bavaria and Moravia. They settled south of the Swabians in southern Bukovina. From Zips, Slovakia, came the “Zipser,” who settled in southwestern Bukovina. Most of the German settlers were farmers, with the exception of the Zipser who were miners. The last group, the German-Austrians, were craftsmen, merchants, as well as officials and civil servants; they settled in the Bukovinian towns. 46

The German settlers received land that was taken from the local landowners (boieri) and the Orthodox Church. See Hofbauer and Roman 32.

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Mir auf der Spur 27.

48

A. J. P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809–1918: A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary 24. 49

Barbara Jelavich, Modern Austria: Empire and Republic, 1815–1986 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987), 82. 50

See also the report of the British Foreign Office: “They have an influence out of proportion to their numbers, as it was they who colonized and civilized the country. German is still the language of culture and the official tongue. The Austrian occupation has resulted in a large influx of soldiers and officials, with the result that there is now hardly a village which does not contain a German. . . . In the country districts the Germans preserve an attitude of racial superiority, holding aloof from the Rumanians; but in the towns they tend to drift with the tide, using Ruthenian or Rumanian for business purposes” (Bukovina 7–8). 51

Historically, however, many former imperial civil servants and military personnel did migrate back to Vienna. See Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), 162. 52

Rogers Brubaker, “Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples,” Barkey and Hagen, eds. 165. 53

Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfield (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), 4. 54 See also István Deák: “Liberation from the Habsburg yoke, it was commonly felt, would mark the dawn of a new era, the start of social reform and of a glorious national future. In this respect, there was barely a difference between Czechoslovakia, the new South Slav state, and emerging Greater Romania, on the one hand, and German Austria and Hungary, on the other hand” (131). 55

See also Solomon Wank, “The Habsburg Empire,” Barkey and Hagen, eds. 51.

56

See Georg Drozdowski, Damals in Czernowitz und rundum: Erinnerungen eines Altösterreichers (Klagenfurt: Verlag der Kleinen Zeitung, 1984). 57 See Peter Rychlo, “Der ‘Mythos Wien’ in der deutschsprachigen Literatur der Bukowina,” Modern Austrian Literature 30.3/4 (1997): 13–23. 58

Stephen D. Arata, “The Anxiety of Reverse Colonisation,” Dracula, ed. Glennis Byron (New York: St. Martin’s P, 1999), 121. 59

For an excellent discussion of Balkan stereotypes, see Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven: Yale UP, 1998). 60

See also David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire (Durham: Duke UP, 1993), especially “Debasement: Filth and Defilement,” 76–91. 61

Interestingly enough, Gregor’s mother is resettled in Bohemia and is expelled in 1945 along with the Sudeten Germans, who were considered Nazi collaborators and traitors to the Czechoslovak Republic. For a detailed discussion of the resettlement, see Dirk Jachomowski, Die Umsiedlung der Bessarabien-, Bukovina- und Dobrudschadeutschen: Von der Volksgruppe in Rumänien zur “Siedlungsbrücke” an der Reichsgrenze (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1984). 62

John-Paul Himka, “The Snows of Yesteryear,” Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture 10 (1991): 67–72.

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63

Jacques Le Rider, “Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Central Europe,” The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1994), 125.

64

See Turczynski 187. See also Mason 23–26.

65

See Grigorovi
 47–48.

66

Spurr 7.

67

See Jászi 138.

68

In his Geschichte der Bukowina in der Neuzeit Turczynski argues that Germanization was never a Habsburg policy in Bukovina: “Dieser aus Angst und Minderwertigkeitskomplexen geborene “Germanisierungsmythos” ist von eindrucksvoller Langlebigkeit und zeigt, wie zählebig alte nationalistische Klischees sein können” (4).

69

Gerald Stourzh, “Der nationale Ausgleich in der Bukowina 1909/1910,” Die Bukowina: Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Ilona Slawinski (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 37. 70

Stourzh 43.

71

See also Jászi 139.

72

Rudolf Wagner, Das multinationale österreichische Schulwesen in der Bukowina, volume 2 (Munich: Verlag des Südostdeutschen Kulturwerks, 1986), 102. 73

Wagner 24.

74

Wagner 102.

75

Erich Prokopowitsch, Das Ende der österreichischen Herrschaft in der Bukowina (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1959), 9. 76

Hannelore Burger, “Mehrsprachigkeit und Unterrichtswesen in der Bukowina,” Die Bukowina: Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Ilona Slawinski and Joseph P. Strelka (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 104. 77

Burger 103–4.

78

The only higher illiteracy rate (82.9 percent) in the Austrian part of the Dual Monarchy belonged to Bosnia-Herzegovina. See Jászi 232. 79

According to Jászi, most villages of Bukovina were infected with pellagra in 1909, and the infant mortality rate in Austria-Hungary ranged among the highest in Europe (232).

80

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 86.

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

The oldest Jewish cemetery in Hilsenrath’s Sereth is also one of the oldest in Europe. Gravestones dating back to the sixteenth century attest to a long Jewish tradition in southern Bukovina. (Photograph by Valentina Glajar, 2001)

2: Transnistria and the Bukovinian Holocaust in Edgar Hilsenrath’s Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski (1999) In gewisser Weise schützt der Antisemitismus vor der Konfrontation mit der Überlebensschuld und vor der unerträglichen Frage nach einem Sinn des Lebens nach dem Überleben. Wie unerträglich es sein kann, sich diese Frage zu stellen, zeigt, daß Überlebende, die sich ihr nicht entziehen konnten und wollten, keine lebenswerte Antwort fanden und einige von ihnen — Paul Celan, Jean Amery, Primo Levi — ihrem Leben viele Jahre später ein Ende bereiteten.1

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DGAR HILSENRATH’S LITERARY WORK has seldom been discussed in the context of German-language authors from Bukovina, although Hilsenrath has written one of the few literary representations of the forgotten Holocaust that occurred in Transnistria. Hilsenrath was born in 1926 in Leipzig. In 1938, as the Nazi threat became imminent in Germany, his father sent him, his mother, and his younger brother to Romania. The Bukovinian town of Sereth/Siret seemed a safe haven for his family at the time. Three years later, however, they shared the fate of Bukovinian Jews who were deported by Germans and Romanians to the thirteen camps in Transnistria. Hilsenrath calls Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski (1999) an autobiographical novel, signaling thereby the authenticity of the facts as well as the fictitious aspects of the narrative.2 In “Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions: History in Holocaust Literature” Lawrence L. Langer asserts that in the case of Holocaust literature readers and critics impose limitations on the flexibility of artistic license:

We are confronted by the perplexing challenge of the reversal of normal creative procedure: instead of Holocaust fictions liberating the facts and expanding the range of their implications, Holocaust facts enclose the fictions, drawing the reader into an ever narrower area of association, where history and art stand guard over their respective territories, wary of abuses that either may commit upon the other. (118)3

Fact and fiction are undoubtedly intertwined in Hilsenrath’s autobiographical narrative as his fictitious first-person narrator refers to historical facts and

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persons. Langer’s concern about the difficulty of finding equilibrium between fact and literary fiction in Holocaust literature is further complicated by the use of humor in works such as Jurek Becker’s Jakob der Lügner (1969), Imre Kertesz’s Sorstalansag (1975; translated as Fateless, 1992), Hilsenrath’s novel Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr (1995), and in the motion pictures La vita e bella (1997) and Divided We Fall (2000). Black humor has found its place in these cultural representations in which suffering and laughter have shaped the dualistic depiction of life in the ghetto.4 Reviewing autobiographical writings by other Holocaust survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, Saul Friedländer, and Samuel Pisar, Joseph Sungolowsky claims that autobiography written as a result of experiences lived during the Holocaust is an integral part of Holocaust literature (131).5 Referring to studies by Georges May and Philippe Lejeune,6 Sungolowsky also distinguishes various characteristics of autobiographies by Holocaust survivors, some of which apply to Hilsenrath’s autobiography, as well. According to Sungolowsky, recapturing the past and coming to terms with oneself are common to most autobiographies (133). In Hilsenrath’s novel the firstperson narrator acknowledges the haunting presence of past events in his later life: “Andererseits, ist das Ghetto, ich meine das Leben im Ghetto, noch so lebendig, dass ich gar nichts erfinden brauche. Ich sehe noch jeden Tag vor mir mit allem Schrecken, und ich sehe die hungrigen Menschen. Als wäre all das gestern gewesen” (263). Hilsenrath’s narrator illustrates the challenge of the Holocaust survivors to talk about this unspeakable trauma. As in the case of Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel, the passing of time enables the survivors to talk and write about their experiences. In writing an autobiographical novel Hilsenrath comes face to face with his nightmares, but he also creates one of the rare literary documents of Transnistria. As Dietrich Dopheide aptly explains in his study of Hilsenrath’s novels, Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski presents a subjective, a collective, and a historical narrative: Hilsenrath’s Roman erzählt aber nicht nur eine individuelle Lebensgeschichte, sondern auch von den kollektiven Erfahrungen der Überlebenden des Holocausts in den ersten Jahren nach 1945. Dem Roman liegt die Darstellungsintention zugrunde, im Nachschreiben und Nacherzählen eigenen Erlebens historische Wirklichkeit aufzuarbeiten und mitzuteilen.7

Like Rezzori’s Blumen im Schnee, Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel has a distinct historical component. While Rezzori’s text addresses interwar Bukovina and the loss of an empire for old Austrians, Hilsenrath’s novel turns the readers’ attention to Jewish life in Bukovina and documents the rise of fascism in Romania in the 1930s, the deportations to Transnistria in 1941, life in the ghetto of Moghilev-Podolsk, and the liberation by the Red Army in 1944. The ghetto experience and other autobiographical aspects are also pres-

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ent in his earlier novels, especially Nacht (1964) and Bronskys Geständnis (1980). Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel, however, claims authenticity as it refers to actual historical places, exact dates, and historical figures that were directly involved in the deportations to Transnistria. Bianca Rosenthal identifies Hilsenrath’s realistic description as chiefly responsible for making his texts resemble documentaries: “Everything is authentic, genuine, and one hundred percent realistic, from the names of places and people to the streets, houses, and landscapes.”8 By rendering his personal experiences in fascist Romania, Hilsenrath focuses on the individual experience of history creating a “poetics of insignificance,” as Anne Fuchs defines Hilsenrath’s approach to history.9 Fuchs discusses Hilsenrath’s texts within the tradition of German-Jewish ghetto writing and contends that his poetics of insignificance “poses an alternative to historiography and its tendency to adopt a top-down perspective” (189). Autobiography is also written as a testimony and serves to educate readers, as the author hopes they might learn from his or her experiences (Sungalowsky 134). For Hilsenrath, as he acknowledged in an interview with Thomas Feibel, writing has a therapeutic role: Schreiben war für mich immer Therapie. Ich litt an Depressionen. Mit zwölf aus der Schule raus, die Welt, die während des Krieges für uns still stand [. . .], da konnten die meisten den Anschluß nicht mehr finden. Mit zwanzig hatte ich viele Identitätskrisen. Das lag an der unterbrochenen Entwicklung. Ich war wie aus der Bahn geworfen, wußte nicht was ich machen sollte, wußte nicht, wozu ich überhaupt hier war. Das Schreiben hat viel gelöst. Nach den zehn bis zwölf Seiten von “Nacht” war ich wie befreit. Ich hatte mein Ziel gefunden. Ab da hatte ich keine Depressionen mehr.10

Hilsenrath addresses in this interview the survivors’ difficulty of leaving behind the horrors of the ghettos or the concentration camps and readjusting to the postwar world. Hilsenrath’s goal, like that of many survivors, is, indeed, to document the events through his testimony of the Holocaust in Transnistria. Sungolowsky also asserts that “An autobiography is deemed authentic when there is identity between the name of the author appearing on the title page and the narrator of the story” (132). Although Hilsenrath contends that his novel is autobiographical, the main character (and first-person narrator) is not Hilsenrath himself but Ruben Jablonski. Hilsenrath takes the liberty of narrating the story of a fictitious character that closely resembles his own. In choosing a fictitious first-person narrator the author distances himself from the events of Transnistria, while infusing the story with a sense of objectivity. Moreover, Hilsenrath describes Ruben Jablonski’s life as a string of adventures that resembles a Bildungsroman. Although scholars of Holocaust studies have often dismissed literary accounts of Holocaust experiences written significantly after the actual events,

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Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel can be considered survival literature, as it is based on memories of his experiences. Hilsenrath’s representation of Transnistria was, indeed, written in 1999, more than fifty years after the fact, and his memory has, no doubt, been affected by outside elements. Are we as readers entitled to question the reliability of Hilsenrath’s account and the accuracy of his memories? Or are we to understand his hiding behind a fictional character as a literary device that resolves the questions regarding selective memory or memory lapses? In his study of memory after Auschwitz, Dominick LaCapra discusses the relationship between history and memory and distinguishes between primary and secondary memory: Primary memory is that of a person who has lived through events and remembers them in a certain manner. This memory almost invariably involves lapses relating to forms of denial, repression, suppression, and evasion, but it also has an immediacy and power that may be compelling. Secondary memory is the result of critical work on primary memory, whether by the person who initially had the relevant experiences or, more typically, by an analyst, observer, or secondary witness such as the historian.11

Hilsenrath’s account is a representation of Transnistria in narrative form and is certainly based on primary and secondary memory. As LaCapra also states, “No memory is purely primary. It has always already been affected by elements not deriving from the experience itself” (21). More important, Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel achieves what history may never capture: in LaCapra’s words, “the feel of an experience, the intensity of joy and suffering, the quality of an experience” (20). As a survivor, Hilsenrath feels the necessity of writing about these events, since writing and telling the story performs the role of keeping history alive. As James E. Young tells us in Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust, “When survival and the need to bear witness become one and the same longing, this desperate urge to testify in narrative cannot be underestimated.”12 The memories of Hilsenrath’s narrator are undoubtedly and visibly influenced by experiences and information acquired after the war, and they are modified by narrative strategy. According to Young, “the survivor-memoirist begins his testimony with full knowledge of the end, which inevitably contextualizes early experiences in terms of later ones” (30). Ruben’s story is, indeed, framed by an italicized text in the form of a diary entry describing the day of liberation by the Russians: “20. März 1944. Die Russen sind da!” (5). In this prologue the reader is immediately introduced to the protagonist of the novel and his story of survival. Ruben, the first-person narrator, describes the first Russian in the Red Army humorously, setting thereby the tone for the entire novel: “Der erste Russe, den ich sah, war ein schlitzäugiger Kirgise. Er war leicht besoffen und drosch wie verrückt auf das kleine

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Panjepferd ein, schwang mit der einen Hand seine Maschinenpistole, blickte auf die Zuschauer am Strassenrand und schrie: ‘Berlin! Berlin!’” (5). As Ruben informs the reader, the liberation, in fact, took place the previous day, after the Germans and Romanians had left and the Russians were still to arrive. During this day of transition between regimes, Ruben marked his newly acquired freedom by looting stores and getting what was denied to him for three years: food — especially chocolate: “Das war der erste Geschmack der Freiheit” (7). The prologue asserts that the protagonist’s story is an affirmation of life, of survival, and at the same time it expresses Ruben’s need to narrate the indescribable from the perspective of a survivor. This chapter focuses on Hilsenrath’s representation of Bukovina as an important contribution to the cultural and political history of the region. His autobiographical text elucidates regional Jewish life and culture, as well as its destruction during the Second World War. The description of the narrator’s childhood and his ghetto experiences in Transnistria illustrates how young Ruben negotiates between a Western (German) identity, into which he was born, and an ancestral, newly discovered Eastern (Bukovinian) heritage, into which history has forced him. Hilsenrath’s novel draws attention to the traumatic experiences of the Bukovinian Jews during the Holocaust in Romania — a topic that requires further research by historians and literary scholars alike.13 In the midst of the Romanian debates that discuss the role Romania and the Antonescu regime played in the deaths of 250,000 Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jews, Hilsenrath’s text raises more questions as to who was responsible for the Holocaust in Romania.

The Romanian Bukovina In 1918 Bukovina became part of the Romanian kingdom. Romania acquired not only a large territory but also an ethnically diverse population after the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. While former Austrians and ethnic Germans were affected by the changes as, for the most part, they lost their dominant position in matters cultural and political, the Jews of Bukovina were to suffer most after the collapse of the Dual Monarchy and the Romanian takeover. They were about to lose most of the rights they had enjoyed since 1867 under the Austrian regime and, ultimately, their freedom and lives in the ghettos and camps of Transnistria. The Jewish population of Greater Romania was as diverse as the different regions that Romania acquired at the end of the First World War. In 1918 roughly 800,000 Jews were living in Greater Romania, of which 30 percent were autochthones from the historical principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia and 70 percent from the newly acquired territories. Transylvanian Jews were, for the most part, Magyarized and supported the nationalistic efforts of Hun-

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garians in their claim of Transylvania. Bukovinians considered themselves kaisertreue Austrians. In The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars Ezra Mendelsohn explains that Jews in Bukovina spoke German, but their first language remained Yiddish — unlike the Jews of Prague, whose Germanization was more intense given their proximity to Germany. The Wallachian Jews, most of whom lived in Bucharest and spoke Romanian, were to a large degree acculturated and represented a more “Western” type, whereas the Moldavian and Bessarabian Jews were of an “Eastern” type.14 In a process of Romanianization and centralization the Romanian regime initially brought on Bukovina and the other new regions a process of change ranging from language policy to administration and the school system. As Irina Livezeanu shows in her Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, the implementation of the changes at first was not necessarily directed against the Jewish population of Bukovina but was part of the centralizing effort of the Romanian government in Bucharest. German-language schools were reduced according to a numerus clausus, more Romanian-language schools were founded, and the new Romanianized school system was implemented in Bukovina in a similar way to those in the other Romanian principalities.15 “Romanian authorities hoped to separate the Jews from their German/Austrian identity to give them a Romanian orientation, setting a transition period of ten years, after which all instruction would be only in Romanian or Hebrew” (Livezeanu 71). Livezeanu’s statement exemplifies a perplexing combination of anti-Semitic and nationalistic directives. The Romanian regime sought not only to Romanianize the Jews from the newly acquired territories but also to prescribe or image a certain acceptable Jewish identity in Greater Romania. To implement Romanian in schools and administration, many nonRomanians were sent to the southern Romanian-inhabited regions. This measure was taken as a form of reeducation so that non-Romanians could perfect their Romanian before fitting into the new Romanianized system. The Jewish community protested this measure on religious grounds, as they felt that young Jews could not benefit from religious services in a completely gentile environment. As Livezeanu explains, “Jewish teachers who made the effort to learn Romanian and take the proper exams were occasionally replaced by gentiles anyway” (72). Baccalaureate examinations in Romanian were introduced, and many non-Romanian students failed. Data from 1926 shows that for many nonRomanian students it was their first time to learn about — and be tested on — Romanian culture and history. In Blumen im Schnee Rezzori also described his experiences with the Romanian baccalaureate that he had to take, since Romanians did not accept his Austrian Matura. Romanian became the official language, although German remained the language of culture for many Jews in Bukovina. The tumultuous transition period entailed many protests and even deaths. One of the most publicized murders

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was that of the Jewish student David Fallick, who was killed by the Romanian Neculai Totu. Fallick had protested the fact that many Jewish students failed to pass the first baccalaureate examination in Romanian. Totu was not only acquitted but also embraced by ultranationalists as a Romanian hero.16 The attitude of the Romanian authorities toward Jews living in Greater Romania was twofold and reflects a paradox. The Bucharest regime treated the Jews living in the historical principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia differently from the Jews of the new regions. All Jews were granted citizenship in 1920, but many from the newly acquired territories lost it in 1924. According to the citizenship law of 1924, only Jews who lived in Romania and the attached territories before 1918 and had proof of residency could obtain Romanian citizenship. Mariana Hausleitner claims that by 1939 one third of the Jews in Romania had lost their citizenship.17 During the war Germans and Romanians killed 250,000 Jews from Bukovina and Bessarabia. In Iasi, for example, 4,000 to 8,000 Jews were executed during the pogrom of 1941. More than 50,000 Jews were murdered in Odessa, Bessarabia, in the same year. Of the 160,000 deportees, only about 50,000 survived the Transnistrian ghettos.18 Although about 97 percent of Romania’s Jews in the old kingdom were saved, 50 percent of the Jews in the new territories died. In her Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt claims that “Romania was the most anti-Semitic country of pre-war Europe”19 and that it was also “a country with an inordinately high percentage of plain murderers.”20 In addressing the many facets of Romanian anti-Semitism, Stephen FischerGalai wrote a rebuttal to Arendt’s statement that offers a more complex and varied picture of the political and socioeconomic situation and is grounded in the specific histories of the old Romanian kingdom and the newly acquired regions that once were part of the Russian and Habsburg Empires. Fischer-Galai claims that “the Jewish question is subordinated to other minority questions such as the Hungarian and Gypsy.”21 Furthermore, he asserts that the masses were apolitical and that the majority of the Romanian people never contemplated the physical extermination of Romanian Jews. It was, rather, the Christian and nationalist populism on the side of a fraction of extremists such as the Iron Guard22 or the Legion of Archangel Michael that preached and acted on a “primitive brand of Romanianism characterized by virulent anti-Semitism” (16). Fischer-Galai concludes his article by saying that “if the ultimate test of what constituted extreme and fanatical antiSemitism was the Holocaust, Romania cannot be classified as ‘the most antiSemitic country in interwar Europe’” (23). Indeed, Romania did not kill millions of Jews and did not build death camps like Auschwitz or Birkenau, but in the end it killed or facilitated the deaths of 250,000 Jews. It is also evident that anti-Semitism was present in Bukovina even before Romanians came to power. It was not imported from the old kingdom; Bukovina had its own anti-Semitic attitudes. Scholars have

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argued that one reason for anti-Semitism in Bukovina was the poverty of the peasants. Since many Jews were leaseholders, peasants perceived them as the main exploiters. In the 1930s the legionnaire movement appropriated the peasant problem and tried to instigate the peasants against their Jewish leaseholders by fueling already existing anti-Semitism. Furthermore, in the early 1930s Bukovinian German groups such as the “Nationalsozialistische Liga” and the “Selbsthilfe” supported National Socialist ideas.23 In 1991 the Center for the Study of the History of Romanian Jewry published documents and testimonies that reveal the process of growing persecution and the rapid changes effected by the “racial laws” implemented during the regimes of Octavian Goga and Alexandru C. Cuza, Ion Gigurtu, and Ion Antonescu from 1938 to 1940. The rights of Jewish artists, for example, were hardly touched during the Goga-Cuza regime. The Gigurtu regime, however, released Jewish artists who were state employees, while the Antonescu regime dismissed all Jewish artists. Similarly, teachers, students, lawyers, and other professionals gradually lost their rights by 1940.24 Furthermore, confiscations of real estate, agricultural properties, and Jewish community buildings became commonplace. As Ioanid explains, the Goga-Cuza government deprived at least 200,000 Jews of their civil rights, while Antonescu’s government abolished the rights of the remaining Jews.25 What had begun as a process of Romanianization gradually turned into an organized campaign of antiSemitism and culminated in the systematic persecution of Jews. Edgar Hilsenrath arrived in Romanian Bukovina in 1938, when the first Romanian “racial laws” were implemented under the Goga-Cuza regime. Paradoxically, little did he sense the effect of these changes on his arrival in Sereth (Romanian Siret). On the contrary, he initially felt safe from the Nazi threat and enjoyed a sheltered childhood among the Jews of Sereth until 1941.

German Jews or Jewish Germans: From Halle an der Saale to Sereth In her dissertation, “Writing as Revenge: Jewish German Identity in PostHolocaust German Literary Works: Reading Survivor Authors Jurek Becker, Edgar Hilsenrath and Ruth Klüger,” Jennifer Taylor contends that “In spite of (or because of) his [Hilsenrath’s] incarceration during the Nazi period in the Romanian ghetto of Moghilev-Podelsk [sic], he identifies himself as a German, a Jew, and as a German writer, all of which are very complex identities with many sides to them.”26 While Taylor focuses her discussion of Hilsenrath mostly on his position in post-Second World War German literature, she distracts attention from the author’s encounter and gradual identification with Eastern Bukovinian Jews from Sereth. In many interviews, including the one given to Taylor, Hilsenrath claims that the time spent in Bukovina was the best time of his life (Taylor 268). His statement is based on various rationales: the

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lack of Nazi threats as experienced in Germany before his move to Sereth in 1938, the joyous and free childhood years, and living among Jews and connecting with his grandparents’ world of Eastern Jewish tradition. In describing Ruben Jablonski’s childhood Hilsenrath’s narrator juxtaposes two images that play an important role in his identity formation and that aptly represent the East-West dichotomy. On the one side there is Germany, where he was born, went to school, and learned about German culture. The rise of the Nazis there forces him to acknowledge foremost his Jewish heritage, while the German identity is denied to him and his family. The consequences of the Nazis coming to power become evident in the public and private spheres. The Reichstag burning, the SS troops marching through Halle an der Saale, the speeches of the teachers at school become the Nazi reality outside of the home. Privately, the father is about to lose his furniture shop. Also, young Ruben has to distinguish between two conflicting interpretations of reality. While the maid and the teacher, for example, adopt the Nazi discourse against Jews and Communists, the family understands the real perpetrators behind the burning of the Reichstag and recognizes the immediate threat. As a young boy, Ruben, the first-person narrator and the author’s alter ego, attempts to make sense of the political situation as he explains to his younger brother words such as “arisiert” and “ruiniert”: “Ich glaube es bedeutet, daß die Nazis den Juden alles wegnehmen. Auch unserem Papa” (14). It is also the first time that his brother learns about his family’s Jewish heritage: “‘Ist unser Papa ein Jude?’ ‘Klar.’ ‘Bin ich auch einer?’ ‘Du auch’” (14–15). His association is simple and accurate: if he is a Jew, that means that the Nazis will take his teddy bear away just as they took his father’s store. On the other side there is Sereth, an East European shtetl inhabited by more Jews than he has ever seen in his life (30). Ruben, the German boy of Jewish descent, becomes the Jewish boy from Germany, who assumes Sereth in Bukovina as his Wahlheimat and shares the tragic fate of the Bukovinian Jews. Sereth acquires a special place in Ruben’s life, one that overshadows even the young boy’s dream of seeing Berlin, the Nazi-proclaimed capital of the world. While he is excluded from Berlin and a German identity by Nazi racial laws, young Ruben transfers the fairy-tale characteristics of Berlin (as he imagines it) to the little shtetl in East Europe. Sereth is not likely to become the capital of the world or of any other place; it is, however, enchanting for what it can offer to a seven-year-old boy who left Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution. On the long train ride from Germany to Bukovina, Ruben’s mother provides a historical background of Bukovina under Austrian and Romanian regimes. She describes the Jews of Bukovina as Austrian German-speaking Jews sent by the Habsburgs to Germanize this land. Historically, however, most of the Bukovinian Jews came from Galicia and adopted the German language for social, political, and educational reasons and for its similarities to Yiddish. The irony created by this statement in the text renders Hitler’s

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plans to annihilate the Jews of Bukovina utterly senseless, since the Bukovinian Jews were the preservers of German culture in the region. Ruben and his family arrive in Sereth as Germans and representatives of German culture. Their arrival exemplifies also the political changes and the effects of those changes on Jewish life, as well as the complexity of being German and Jewish in Nazi Germany. “Alle bestaunten uns: die Gäste aus dem Westen, die Invasion aus Hitlerdeutschland in Gestalt meiner Mutter, meines kleinen Bruders und mir. Also so sehen die Deutschen aus” (22). Although his mother was born in Bukovina, she is now viewed as a Westerner: “Wir waren jetzt Westeuropäer” (21). What makes her a Westerner for the Sereth Jews is not only her appearance but also, and foremost, the language she speaks: “richtiges Deutsch” as opposed to “Balkandeutsch.” The Jews of Sereth consider the German spoken in Saxony superior to the regional variation spoken in Bukovina. Moreover, Germany embodies for them, as the narrator emphasizes repeatedly throughout the novel, cultural icons, and, therefore, Germans have to be differentiated from Nazis. As Gregor von Rezzori also conveys in Blumen im Schnee, the Jews of Sereth reject the idea that Hitler could realistically transform Germany and the culture for which it stands into a country ruled by Nazi laws: “Das mit dem Hitler und den Nazis sind doch sicher bloß Gerüchte. Sowas gibt es doch gar nicht. Die Deutschen sind ein edles Kulturvolk. Jeder Deutsche ist ein kleiner Schiller, Goethe oder Beethoven” (22). Bukovinians attribute to Ruben Jablonski and his family a cultural superiority based on their national and cultural ties to Germany. Ruben, his mother, and his brother receive, indeed, a welcome fit for state dignitaries. The grandfather picks them up in a Fiaker and parades them through the small town as a true sensation. The Jablonskis have to assume the identity imagined by the Jews of Sereth: they are Germans, West Europeans, and Großstädter. And, of course, they hail not from Halle an der Saale, since nobody ever heard of it, but from a metropolis like Berlin — “Berlin ist ein Begriff” (22). The association of German and Jewish is insinuated with conflict: to Bukovinians they are Germans, while to the Nazis they are Jews. The narrator is foregrounding the views of East European Jews and their understanding of the political situation in Germany, which seem naïve and, certainly, distorted. While the Jablonskis never express their understanding of the political situation in Germany, the narrator allows the inhabitants of Sereth, as outsiders, to express their opinions on Germans, Hitler, and Germany. The characters of Hilsenrath’s novel are not portrayed in any detail; they come to life through dialogue mainly as voices that express disbelief regarding the anti-Semitic persecution at the hands of the Nazis. How could it be, since Germans, as the voices continue, have paved country roads and brought electricity to every house? In other words, an accomplished, civilized people such as the Germans could not be capable of atroci-

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ties. The clash between culture and politics precludes a more realistic assessment of the situation in Nazi Germany, as Bukovinians have constructed an image of Germany based solely on cultural and technological achievements. Their understanding of the German culture is grounded in the long domination of Austro-Germans in Bukovina and their valorization of German language and culture at the expense of the local cultures. Interestingly enough, and reminiscent of Ruth Klüger’s assessment of Hilsenrath’s representation of the Jewish victims in his earlier novel Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr, a certain “Herablassung” toward the Jews from Sereth becomes evident in Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski. While exposing their naïve perceptions does, indeed, heighten the irony and absurdity of the persecution of these people, it also treats them like a uniform mass of ignorant voices by playing on existing stereotypes associated with Eastern Jews. As Sander Gilman explains in Jewish Self-Hatred, the invention of the Eastern Jew in German-language literature has vacillated between adoration and rejection among authors of Jewish descent. On the one hand, he says, they labeled Eastern Jews with all the anti-Semitic stereotypes: filthy, barbaric, and uneducated.27 On the other hand, Eastern Jews were regarded as the pure and spiritual Jews. Rather than dwelling on this tension, Hilsenrath’s representation of Sereth and its Eastern inhabitants reverses the focus, as it also reflects the picture that Eastern Jews have of the assimilated Western Jews of Germany. Their image of the West is a reflection of differences and similarities between Western German and Eastern Bukovinian Jews.28 As Mendelsohn explains in The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, “Aside from a certain degree of German acculturation, Bukovinian Jewry was typically East European, although less steeped in traditional Jewish learning than the Jewries of Galicia and Lithuania. Outside the capital most Jews spoke Yiddish, and retained Orthodox, and in many cases Hasidic, traditions” (176). Likewise, Hilsenrath’s narrator describes linguistic variations among the Jewish population of Sereth. For the most part, these variations reflect the social status and education of the speaker: Im Hause meines Großvaters konnte man drei sprachliche Variationen hören. Wenn man unter sich war, sprach man Kauderwelsch, eben ein Durcheinander von Jiddisch und Deutsch; mit einfachen Leuten, zum Beispiel dem Sattlermeister von nebenan oder den Straßenhändlern, die zu uns in die Küche kamen, um einen Schnaps oder Kaffee zu trinken, sprach man Jiddisch, mit vornehmem Besuch, zum Beispiel dem Herrn Apotheker oder dem Herrn Doktor, sprach man Hochdeutsch. (38)

German was, indeed, the language of Austrian administration and of higher education and, as Rezzori also claimed, remained the language of the educated even after 1918, when Bukovina became part of the Romanian kingdom.29 Bukovina was, however, not German, nor were all Bukovinian Jews

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speakers of German. Bukovina cannot be equated with its capital, Czernowitz, a more cosmopolitan town where the Jews were more assimilated and more resembled the Western Jews. As Hilsenrath’s text suggests, considerable variations of language corresponded to the degree of assimilation and education, as well as to various social and religious functions. During his stay in Sereth, Ruben connects with the Bukovinian Jewish identity and discovers the Zionist movement. He recounts Jewish traditions such as the Sabbath and the preparations for the Sabbathmahl and the involved role of his mother and his grandfather Schloime in religious rituals. He has his bar mitzvah in Sereth. The narrator often switches from the past tense to the present when relating his story and thereby actualizes significant episodes in his life: “Ich habe gerade meine Bar Mitzwa gefeiert und bin dreizehn Jahre alt” (29). As if time stood still, Ruben is back in the synagogue of Sereth (see illustration below) praying next to his grandfather and reliving his youth. Ruben’s coming of age, which he experiences in this East European shtetl, is also closely connected to his involvement with two Zionist groups located in Sereth. At fourteen he is already a leader in the leftist Zionist group of Hanoar-Hazioni (35). While his Western German accent assures him an audience among the Zionists and a leading position in the movement, his connection to Germany constitutes knowledge and firsthand information that the Zionists of Sereth appreciate.

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

The synagogue in Sereth, which functioned as a Jewish museum at the time of Hilsenrath’s visit to Romania in the 1980s, is now deserted because there are no longer any Jews in the town. (Photograph by Valentina Glajar, 2001)

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As Ruben’s mother promised during their long trip from Germany to Bukovina, Sereth held a fairy-tale attraction for young Ruben. “Hier in der Bukowina, in diesem kleinen osteuropäischen Ort, fühlte ich mich zum ersten Mal frei von der täglichen Bedrohung der Nazis. Die Tatsache, daß nirgendwo Hakenkreuzfahnen wehten, daß ich keine SA- und SS-Leute sah, keine Litfaßsäulen mit antisemitischen Hetzplakaten, empfand ich als beglückend” (23). Ruben and his brother enjoy simple pleasures such as swimming in the river, taking pony rides, and playing soccer. As a “real” Westerner, Ruben becomes the captain of the soccer team. While Sereth does not seem to be tainted by the dangers of National Socialism, Czernowitz had already felt the effects of anti-Semitism. In 1934 Paul Celan wrote to his Aunt Minna in Palestine about the anti-Semitism he encountered in high school: “Ja, was den Antisemitismus in unserer Schule betrifft, da könnte ich ein 300 Seiten starkes Buch darüber schreiben. Als Beispiel diene Dir nur die Tatsache, daß mein Geografieprofessor, Zoppa nennt sich das Übel, schon zwei Monate ‘sitzt,’ wo, kannst Du Dir schon denken.”30 As Israel Chalfen explains in his biography of Celan, Zoppa was the leader of the pro-Nazi “Iron Guard” in Czernowitz. From the perspective of the twelve-year-old Ruben, however, everything in Sereth looks safer and more pleasant than what he experienced in Germany. Moreover, Ruben recounts that in 1937 and 1938 things were peaceful in Sereth: “Juden, Ukrainer, Rumänen und die anderen Volksgruppen lebten friedlich zusammen” (39).31 But the idyllic childhood is a short-lived dream that is interrupted by news from Nazi Germany that casts ominous clouds over Sereth, as well. The shadow of the swastika that Ruben believed he had left behind is quickly overtaking this East European town. It is not surprising that the Jews of Sereth cannot reconcile their picture of Germans as a culture nation with Nazis killing Jews during the Kristallnacht.32 Readily, they find an excuse to justify their beliefs and dispel imminent fears and worries: “‘Das haben die Nazis gemacht,’ sagten die Juden in Sereth. ‘Das waren nicht die Deutschen’” (24). The Jablonskis do not share the beliefs of the Jews in Sereth, but they do not attempt to explain the situation, either. Rather, they seem to enjoy their special treatment by the inhabitants of Sereth, the atmosphere of the old empire with a Balkan Hauch and a diverse Jewish population. Serethers stroll in the evening, taste the unique Cremeschnitten, and drink “Mokka mit Sahne” just “wie in Kaisers Zeiten” (37).

Surviving in Moghilev-Podolsk Hilsenrath presents young Ruben’s story against the political and historical background of the Bukovinian Holocaust and draws attention to less documented aspects of the destruction of East European Jewry. The lack of historical information, which was in part unavailable until 1989, allowed for

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inaccuracy in scholarly writings. In regard to Hilsenrath’s deportation to Transnistria, a variety of erroneous dates were published that reflect a limited access to the events that took place in East Europe. In his “Hilsenrath and Grass Redivivus” Sander L. Gilman claims that Hilsenrath and his family were deported to the ghetto of Moghilev-Podolsk in 1943.33 Yet, the last transports from Bukovina to Transnistria actually took place in 1942, and in 1943 Antonescu allowed the first deportees to return: orphans, who were sent to Palestine, and widows of First World War veterans. Karin Bauer gives the same incorrect information in her recent article on Hilsenrath’s Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr.34 In 1993 K. H. Kramberg reviewed Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and claimed that Hilsenrath was deported to a ghetto in 1944.35 Needless to say, there were no transports from Bukovina in 1944. In March 1944 the Red Army liberated the ghetto of Moghilev-Podolsk. On the basis of the research of scholars such as Ioanid, Braham, and Ancel, one can say that the historical information provided in Hilsenrath’s autobiographical novel is to a large extent factual. While he might be criticized for his simple and somewhat detached style, which does not allow for the reader’s immediate identification with the tragic events but follows the life of Ruben Jablonski as a series of adventures, Hilsenrath’s text offers unique insights into historical questions regarding the Holocaust in Transnistria. In Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski the narrator re-creates the atmosphere of this period as a rapid succession of events that lead to the deportations of 1941: Und dann kam der Krieg zu uns. Rumänien wurde faschistisch. Kolonnen der eisernen Garde, auch Grünhemden genannt, marschierten durch die Stadt. In Bukarest fand ein Pogrom statt. Juden wurden ins Schlachthaus getrieben und aufgehängt. Bald standen deutsche Truppen im Land. Sie kamen als Verbündete des Marschalls Antonescu. Am 22. Juni 1941 marschierten rumänische Truppen mit der deutschen Wehrmacht über die russische Grenze. (42)

In a period of three years Bukovina changed forever, and the Jews from Greater Romania had to face a fate similar to that of the German Jews. During the Bucharest pogrom of 21–23 January 1941, 120 Jews lost their lives. The narrator refers to one of the bloodiest and cruelest incidents during the Bucharest pogroms when 13 Jews were killed in a slaughterhouse, hung on meathooks, and labeled “Kosher meat.”36 On 5 July 1941, 8 Jews were killed in Siret. As the gravestone in one of the three Jewish cemeteries indicates, three couples died, including the rabbi and his wife and a father and daughter. The year 1940 was an important one for Bukovina; it is known as the Russian year, because it was when Russian troops occupied the region and pushed back the Romanian army, which suffered defeat and humiliation.

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The Romanian newspapers reported stories of humiliated soldiers and of tortures and unusually cruel deaths allegedly performed by pro-Communist Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina. These articles fueled Romanian nationalist and anti-Semitic feelings and served as justification for Antonescu’s actions regarding the “evacuation” of Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jewry. Antonescu never recognized the role he played in the deportations. During his trial in 1945 he repeatedly affirmed that he had to evacuate those regions because of their proximity to the fighting and claimed that he acted as any military person in charge would have in a wartime situation.37 Documents clearly show, however, that Antonescu himself gave the orders for the deportations in 1941. After regaining Bukovina and Bessarabia from the Russians in 1941, Antonescu ordered retaliations for the Romanian soldiers who were killed during their retreat in 1940. According to this order, 50 Communist Jews had to be killed for the death of every Romanian soldier and 100 for the death of each Romanian officer. In Iasi approximately 4,000 Jews were executed because they allegedly shot at Romanian and German soldiers. During his trial Antonescu claimed that he was not responsible for the massacres in Iasi and, later, in Odessa, even though the prosecutors presented evidence for his involvement. Finally, on 4 October 1941 Antonescu ordered the deportation of all Bukovinian Jews within ten days. A week later the first transport left for Transnistria. Whereas Hilsenrath described life in the ghetto in more detail in his first novel, Nacht, he returns to Moghilev-Podolsk fifty-four years after the events by focusing on his literary alter ego, Ruben Jablonski. As Hilsenrath’s narrator relates, his family was evacuated from Sereth before Romanian and German troops crossed the Russian border on 22 June 1941.38 The Jablonskis were taken to southern Romania and never came back home; they were brought back to R
d
ui, a town eighteen kilometers from Sereth, and then deported to Transnistria on 14 October 1941. Few Jews from Bukovina escaped the deportations: 4,000 owed their lives to Traian Popovici, the mayor of Czernowitz in 1941;39 15,600 were saved by papers from Governor Calotescu, who, unlike Popovici, received money for these life-saving documents.40 The “Popovici-passports” were gifts of life; they assured the owners their stay in Czernowitz as specialists who allowed the city to function. Hilsenrath’s text alludes to this historical fact when the narrator suggests that Ruben’s aunt in Czernowitz was one of Popovici’s saved Jews. In 1942, however, Popovici fell in disgrace, and the last transport of 2,000 of Popovici’s Jews left for Transnistria. For his efforts to save as many Jews from Czernowitz as he could, Traian Popovici was awarded the medal “Yad Vashem” by the state of Israel in 1969. The Ukrainian region of Transnistria stretches between the river Dniester in the west and the river Bug in the east; Moghilev-Podolsk was one of the ghettos on the east side of the Dniester. Romanian soldiers controlled

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the region with the consent of the Germans, who had occupied the area and were positioned on the east shore of the Bug. Both Romanians and Germans were responsible for the deportations of Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jews. The chances of survival, however, were considerably higher on the Romanian side. Ioanid explains: “In the district of Moghilev, close to the Dniester, more Jews survived than in the others. German involvement was less frequent here, so the Jewish community was better able to organize itself. Romanian officials did not manifest the same cruelty here as in Golta and Odessa” (200). In December 1941 roughly 70,000 Jews were living in Moghilev; by April 1942 the population had shrunk to 54,504; in March 1943 34,974 were still alive; and in November 1943 the population rose to 35,826.41 Testimonies of survival reveal that being moved to the German side of the Bug meant certain death, as the Germans would simply execute all the Jews. As Hilsenrath’s narrator also suggests, “Wer Glück hatte, blieb bei den Rumänen” (81). Life in the Romanian-controlled Transnistria meant starvation, typhus, and unbearable cold but also a chance of survival. The inhabitants of the ghetto were a diverse group: some came from Bukovina; a few from southern Romania; and still others from the Ukraine and Bessarabia. Hilsenrath’s narrator acknowledges the differences among the Jewish inmates: Wir deutschsprachigen Bukowiner Juden unterschieden uns ganz wesentlich von den einheimischen und den bassarabischen, nicht nur sprachlich, wir hatten auch eine andere Mentalität. Die Bukowiner empfanden sich als Österreicher, das heißt K.u.K.-Österreich, das es ja längst nicht mehr gab. Die Bukowiner sprachen immer noch vom schönen alten Wien, das so ähnlich war wie Czernowitz. (53)

Not only was the mentality of the Jews different; their economic means and connections played a role in their survival, as well. Since the inhabitants were not allowed to receive any food or medical supplies until 1942, the poor were the first to die, usually of starvation.42 Moreover, in December 1941, months after their arrival, a typhus epidemic began to kill Jewish inmates by the thousands. “Wer nicht an Typhus starb, den raffte der Hunger und die Kälte weg. Das große Massensterben began” (Jablonski, 46). Ioanid’s and Ancel’s studies corroborate Hilsenrath’s claim. Ioanid states that 4,491 cases of typhus were recorded in Moghilev alone, of which 1,254 were deadly (206).43 Ancel’s sources, however, indicate that 3,410 Jews, 267 of whom were children, died in Moghilev of typhus.44 One of the most important organizations aiding the ghetto inhabitants of Moghilev was founded with the help of the engineer Siegfried Jägendorf, who played a similar role to that of Oskar Schindler in Moravia. Jägendorf was able to save about 10,000 Jews from being deported to the river Bug by organizing them in construction crews that helped with the reconstruction

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of the heavily bombed Moghilev. Jägendorf’s foundry was the Turnatoria, which employed architects, engineers, mechanics, electricians, and thousands more skilled workers. While these workers were never paid, they had a secured existence, which meant a lot compared to the other starving Jews.45 In Hilsenrath’s text Ruben’s family is saved by a paper from the city commander, a Romanian who was acquainted with Ruben’s uncle, Lonju Abraham. This document attests that the uncle, his family, and his friends are allowed to stay in a deserted Russian school on Poltawska Street. The narrator does not mention any bribing of the Romanian commander, which speaks of a humane gesture in an abjectly dangerous situation. Survival is, however, associated with guilt, especially when thousands of other Jewish inmates were deported to the German side. Since the ghetto became overpopulated, transports of deportees were moved to the German side of the river Bug, where most of them were executed. The Jewish community accused the Romanians of complicity in these deaths because they handed thousands of Jews over to the Germans, knowing full well that they were being sent to their deaths.46 The scenes of desperation are still present in the narrator’s mind: “Ich erinnere mich noch an das Gebrüll und Wehklagen der Leute, die abtransportiert wurden. Das Heulen durchdrang die Nacht und die Kälte. Inzwischen saßen wir im Warmen” (47). By juxtaposing the situation of his family with that of the “homeless” (Obdachlosen), the narrator exposes the fight for survival that differentiates between privileged inmates and those sentenced to death. The contrast between a warm place and no roof above one’s head renders the labile difference between life and death in the ghetto of Moghilev. Though they knew that the fate of the “homeless” was certain death, the Jablonskis denied them entry into their safe haven: Vor unserer Schule standen oft Schlangen Obdachloser, aber wir wollten niemandem Quartier geben, aus Angst vor Typhus. Die Obdachlosen waren verlaust, und wer eine Laus erwischte, der war verloren. Wir konnten nur überleben, wenn wir uns vor der Seuche in acht nahmen. Trotzdem taten wir viel für die Armen. Aus Resten und Abfällen wurde Suppe gekocht und verteilt. Es beruhigte unser schlechtes Gewissen. (48)

The survival of Ruben’s family can be attributed to many factors. The document of the Romanian city commander played an important role in their stay in the city and partly shielded them from poverty, filth, and starvation. The corrupted Romanian soldiers who allowed Ukrainian peasants to sell their produce on the black market at outrageous prices were instrumental in the school residents’ survival and that of the “Obdachlosen” who were able to receive some help. The Jewish organizations that were eventually allowed to introduce medical and food supplies into the ghettos in 1942 saved many lives and contributed to the curtailing of the typhus epidemic. The laxer atmosphere on the side of the Romanians after the massive German loss at Stalingrad, as

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well as the interventions of Romania’s queen mother and Western politicians, contributed to a higher survival rate after 1943. Finally, the advance of the Red Army to the west assured the liberation of the ghettos in March 1944.

“Die Stadt ohne Seele” Ruben’s return to Czernowitz and then to Sereth is at once adventurous, joyous, and somber. On their way back Ruben and two girls from the ghetto stop at peasants’ houses, where they are offered shelter and food. Most important, the peasants exchange information with the former ghetto inhabitants, who have been isolated from the outside world for almost three years. Hilsenrath’s narrative device may be characterized as a transparent questionanswer dialogue that is meant to inform the reader. Nonetheless, these dialogues express complex topics, such as prejudice, indoctrination, and justifications for persecution, in simple words and brief sentences. “Uns Bauern sagten sie: Alle Juden sind Kommunisten. Deshalb müssen sie sterben. Einer hat mal gefragt: Auch die kleinen Kinder? Die auch, hatte der Soldat gesagt: Die Kinder lernen von ihren Vätern und werden später noch schlimmere Kommunisten” (70). One peasant’s story corroborates Antonescu’s claim that Jews were killed because they supported the Soviets during the Russian year. It also illustrates the intention of exterminating the entire Jewish people and of eliminating any Jewish future, as illustrated in the killing of Jewish children. Ruben’s story, as well as his family’s, is intertwined with the history of Bukovina and its Jews. For Ruben, Sereth had become a point of reference; it was a Bukovinian shtetl imbued with Eastern Jewish tradition that offered him a home safe from the Nazi threat. Sereth in 1944 is a changed town with a new population of Romanians and Ukrainians that has taken over the Jewish housing. In his grandfather’s house Ruben finds two families: an ethnic German one known for its anti-Semitism and a Romanian one. Later, Ruben’s family throws the German family out but let the Romanians stay. One has to assume that the Romanian family was less (or not at all) anti-Semitic. The striking contrast between prewar Sereth and what remained of the town is rendered in a dialogue between Ruben and Blumenthal, another survivor. “Es hat sich im Grunde nichts geändert,” sagte ich. “Das alte Bahnhofsgelände steht noch so wie einst, auch der Fluß ist noch da, und doch ist alles fremd.” “Weil die Menschen nicht mehr da sind,” sagte Blumenthal. “Auch die Stimmung ist weg.” “Unlängst hab ich zu mir gesagt: Es ist wie eine Stadt ohne Seele.” “Ja,” sagte Blumenthal. “Sie haben uns die Seele genommen.” (100)

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The culture, traditions, and atmosphere of the town were erased with the deportation and extermination of the Jewish population. The outer reality does not match Ruben’s inner image of the town and its inhabitants. Ruben does not return to the home he left in 1941 — or, rather, the home he found in 1938. Everything has shifted to the realm of memory and reminiscing about people and places. “Gähnende Leere” (98) is all that remains. Yet, Hilsenrath writes against this void and silence by filling the space with his depiction of Sereth and Jewish life in prewar Bukovina, as well as the Holocaust in Transnistria. The reader is allowed rare access to a world that no longer exists, into the story of a town and its inhabitants who can be remembered now only by the survivors of these tragic events. Hilsenrath’s text is an autobiographical novel but also an important cultural document that illustrates a fascinating world that was brutally wiped out during the Second World War. His narrative presents overwhelming historical facts intertwined with individual stories. As we have seen, Hilsenrath’s text highlights the East-West divide in Jewish history, as well as the diverse cultural and linguistic identity of Bukovinian Jews, in particular. German culture was an important aspect of Jewish life in Bukovina, especially in its capital, Czernowitz. Yet, Eastern Jewish traditions played an equally important role in Sereth and other Bukovinian towns. As Rezzori also suggests in his representation of Bukovina, the German language and culture were valorized at the expense of local cultures, whether Yiddish, Romanian, or Ukrainian. It is, therefore, not surprising that Hilsenrath addresses the tragic irony of the Bukovinian preservers of German who had to die at the hands of the Germans. More important, Hilsenrath’s narrative addresses also the complicity of ethnic Germans and Romanians with the Nazis. As we will see in the next two chapters, Pedretti and Müller focus on the involvement of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and Romania with National Socialism and the consequences these Germans had to face at the end of the Second World War. Marianne Hirsch’s assessment of postwar Europe comes to mind when comparing the fates of these peoples: I believe that the violent destruction of the Jewish communities and Jewish cultures of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe — the destruction not only of the people but of the records and memories of their existence — is of a different order than the displacements other Europeans had to suffer because of the two wars, painful though they must have been for many.47

In today’s Sereth, the last Jewish inhabitant has died. During a trip back to Romania and Sereth before the collapse of Communism, Hilsenrath met Hermann Groper, as related in his short story “Das verschwundene Schtetl.”48 Herr Groper was the guard of memories and sites of remembrance — in Pierre Nora’s words, lieux de memoire — that document the Jewish presence in

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Sereth.49 Now the old synagogue is empty; some glass panes are broken; and hardly any echo of the old Jewish life can be heard in today’s Sereth. A Romanian woman takes interested tourists to the three Jewish cemeteries for a voluntary fee. “Es ist so, als hätte sich alles, was einmal war, in Luft aufgelöst.”50

Notes 1

Ruth Beckermann, Unzugehörig: Österreicher und Juden nach 1945 (Vienna: Loecker, 1989), 127. 2

See Philippe Lejeune, On Autobiography (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989), especially “The Autobiographical Pact,” 3–30.

3

Lawrence L. Langer, “Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions: History in Holocaust Literature,” Reflections of the Holocaust in Art and Literature, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York: Columbia UP, 1990), 117–29. 4

While praising Jurek Becker’s style, Ruth Klüger sharply criticizes Hilsenrath’s effort in her review of Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “Doch bei Hilsenrath ist die Herausforderung gewagter und grenzt an eine Verspottung der Opfer” (1 June 1993: 56). For a discussion on black humor in Hilsenrath’s work, see Dietrich Dopheide, Das Groteske und der schwarze Humor in den Romanen Edgar Hilsenraths (Berlin: Weissensee, 2000). 5 Joseph Sungolowsky, “Holocaust and Autobiography: Wiesel, Friedländer, Pisar,” Reflections of the Holocaust in Art and Literature, 131–46. 6 Georges May, L’Autobiographie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979); Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975). 7

Dopheide 257.

8

Bianca Rosenthal, “Autobiography and the Fiction of the I: Edgar Hilsenrath,” The Fiction of the I: Contemporary Austrian Writers and Autobiography, ed. Nicholas J. Meyerhofer (Riverside, CA: Ariadne P, 1999), 107–8. 9

Anne Fuchs, “Edgar Hilsenrath’s Poetics of Insignificance and the Tradition of Humour in German-Jewish Ghetto Writing,” Ghetto Writing: Traditional and Eastern Jewry in German-Jewish Literature from Heine to Hilsenrath, ed. Fuchs and Florian Krobb (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 1999), 180–94. 10

Thomas Feibel, “Ich habe die Philosemiten erschreckt, ich bin Aussenseiter: Aus einem Gespräch mit dem Schriftsteller Edgar Hilsenrath,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 15 September 1990. 11

Dominick LaCapra, Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1998), 20–21.

12

James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988), 17. 13

In the last few years some important historical studies have been published that give more insight into these events: Mariana Hausleitner et al., eds., Rumänien und der Holocaust (Berlin: Metropol, 2001); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000); Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (New York: Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center/City

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U of New York; Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs; New York: Distributed by Columbia UP, 1994). Also, important compilations of documents and testimonies were published in Romania: Centrul pentru Studiul Evreilor din Romania, Martiriul evreilor din România, 1940–1944: Documente i m
rturii (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1991) and Jean Ancel, Transnistria (Bucharest: Atlas, 1998). Controversial studies of Marshal Antonescu and his role in the deportations to Transnistria and of the history of the legionnaires and the Iron Guard appeared, as well. The goal of these books was mostly the rehabilitation of Antonescu in post-Communist Romania. See, for example, Centrul European de Cercetari Istorice, Antonescu: Marealul Romniei si rasboaiele de reintregire (Venetia: Sestiero Canaregio, 1990). 14

Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983), 173–74. See also Raphael Vargo, “Romanian Jewry during the Interwar Period,” The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, ed. Braham 29–56. 15

Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1995), especially “Bukovina: An Austrian Heritage in Greater Romania” 49–87. 16

See Livezeanu, “A Violent Baccalaureate” (79–87) and Hausleitner (166–67) for more details and implications of Fallick’s death. 17

Mariana Hausleitner, “Grossverbrechen im rumänischen Transnistrien 1941– 1944,” Rumänien und der Holocaust: Zu den Massenverbrechen in Transnistrien, ed. Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, and Juliana Wetzel (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), 15. 18 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 791. 19

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Penguin, 1963), 190.

20

Arendt 193. Stephen Fischer-Gala
i, “The Legacy of Anti-Semitism,” The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, ed. Braham 25. 21

22

“Garda de Fier” was a fascist party founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in 1927.

23

See Hausleitner 281–82. Martiriul evreilor din România, 3–13.

24 25

The Holocaust in Romania, xx.

26

Jennifer L. Taylor, “Writing as Revenge: Jewish German Identity in PostHolocaust German Literary Works. Reading Survivor Authors Jurek Becker, Edgar Hilsenrath and Ruth Klüger,” diss., Cornell U, 1995, 67. 27

For example, Karl Emil Franzos, a Galician educated in Bukovina and Germany, was a staunch advocate of assimilation and acculturation. In his view, adopting the German language and culture would allow any Eastern Jew to transcend barbarism and opt for civilization. See my discussion of Franzos in “From Halb-Asien to Europe: Contrasting Representations of Austrian Bukovina” Modern Austrian Literature 34.1/2 (2001): 15–35, and see Colin, Paul Celan: Holograms of Darkness, 12–14. 28 As preservers of German culture in Bukovina, the Jews from Bukovina were familiar with German literature, and the writers among them looked up to and even tried to imitate canonical German authors. As Hartmut Merkt points out, Bukovinian writers of the Austrian period read German literature and attempted to write their own literary pieces by imitating Goethe and Schiller. Merkt, however, also establishes a

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strong tie between Germany and Bukovina, even though Bukovinians looked, in fact, to Vienna rather than to Berlin. Hartmut Merkt, Poesie in der Isolation: Deutschsprachige jüdische Dichter in Enklave und Exil am Beispiel von Bukowiner Autoren seit dem 19. Jahrhundert. Zu Gedichten von Rose Ausländer, Paul Celan und Immanuel Weißglas (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999). 29

The most famous example is undoubtedly Paul Celan, who was born in Romanian Bukovina in 1920 but grew up in the German language and culture, among other linguistic and cultural influences.

30

Israel Chalfen, Paul Celan: Eine Biographie seiner Jugend (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1979), 51.

31

Some contradictions regarding this depiction of the political situation in Bukovina of the late 1930s also arise in Hilsenrath’s interviews in which he talks about antiSemitism in Romania; but, at the same time, he rectifies his statement by insisting that there had been basically no anti-Semitic actions until the rise of fascism in Romania. According to Mariana Hausleitner’s discussion of the Romanianization and centralization efforts of the Bucharest regimes in Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina, the reality must have been closer to Celan’s account, especially in 1937 and 1938. 32 According to Imanuel Geiss’s Geschichte des Rassismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 7,000 Jewish stores and 29 storage places were looted, 171 Jewish houses and apartments were burned and another 76 destroyed in other ways, at least 30,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps, at least 91 were murdered, and at least as many committed suicide during the Reichskristallnacht (285). 33

Sander L. Gilman, “Hilsenrath und Grass Redivivus,” Edgar Hilsenrath: Das Unerzählbare erzählen, ed. Thomas Kraft (Munich: Piper, 1996), 119. 34

Karin Bauer, “Erzählen im Augenblick höchster Gefahr: Zu Benjamins Begriff der Geschichte in Edgar Hilsenraths Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr,” The German Quarterly 71.4 (Fall 1998): 343–52. 35 K. H. Kramberg, “Wo Kaiser Franz Joseph Salzhering aß: ‘Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr’ — ein Epitaph von Edgar Hilsenrath,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8/9 May 1993. 36

See Ioanid 52–60.

See Antonescu: Marealul Romniei si r
sboaiele de reintregire 427–46. The Jews of Sereth shared the fate of Jews from Dorohoi who were initially taken to Craiova or other places in the southern part of Romania. In his remarkable study of the Romanian Holocaust, Radu Ioanid explains that in the summer of 1941 Jews from Dorohoi in southern Bukovina were transported to Craiova and Tîrgu Jiu in the south of Romania and were later brought back. Ioanid claims, however, that these 4,000 to 5,000 Jews from Dorohoi actually escaped the deportation to Transnistria, and that with their exception the entire Jewish population of southern Bukovina was deported (Ioanid 111–13). 37 38

39

Ioanid mentions that Popovici managed to win the approval of Antonescu himself to retain these Jews in Czernowitz (159).

40

While Ioanid does not allude to any bribing, Hausleitner contends that Calotescu received large sums of money for his services. “Der Gouverneur und seine Gehilfen vom

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Militärkabinett erhielten in jenen Tagen hohe Geldsummen, um bestimmte Personen auf die Liste der Privilegierten zu setzen” (Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina 396). 41

See Ioanid 201. According to a document published in Jean Ancel’s Transnistria, there were 8,000–9,000 deported Jews and 4,000–5,000 local Jews in the city of Moghilev in 1941 (333).

42

According to Hausleitner, the first medical supplies arrived in Transnistria in March 1942. Clothes and food soon followed, thanks to donations from abroad and the Jewish Organization in Bucharest. (Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina 411). 43

Two Romanian army medical officers, Chirila and Stuparu, were responsible for stopping the epidemic (Ioanid 206). 44

Transnistria 43.

45

For more details on Jägendorf’s contributions to the survival of many Jews, see Aron Hirt-Manheimer, ed., Jagendorf’s Foundry: Memoir of the Romanian Holocaust, 1941–1944 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). 46

See Jean Ancel, “The Romanian Campaigns of Mass Murder in Transnistria, 1941– 1942,” The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Antonescu Era, ed. Randolph L. Braham (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs; New York: Distributed by Columbia UP, 1997): “In Transnistria, genocide was carried out in stages, first by units of Einsatzgruppe D under the command of Colonel Otto Ohlendorf. These units came together with the soldiers of the Eleventh German Army and the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies, and both German and Romanian soldiers took part in the killings. While the exact number of Jews slaughtered at the hands of the Einsatzgruppe is unknown, according to Ohlendorf the number was in the tens of thousands” (97). 47

Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), 242. 48 Edgar Hilsenrath, “Das verschwundene Schtetl,” Edgar Hilsenrath: Das Unerzählbare erzählen 19–37. 49

Herr Groper’s wit and sense of humor were immortalized in Ruth Beckermann’s documentary Die papierene Brücke (1987). See Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1997). 50

“Das verschwundene Schtetl” 25.

3: Narrating History and Subjectivity: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Erica Pedretti’s Engste Heimat (1995) Instead of giving all those who betrayed this state a proper trial, we drove them out of the country and punished them with the kind of retribution that went beyond the rule of law. That was not punishment. It was revenge. Moreover, we did not expel these people on the basis of demonstrable individual guilt, but simply because they belonged to a certain nation. And thus, on the assumption that we were clearing the way for historical justice, we hurt many innocent people, most of all women and children.1

I

N DECEMBER 1996, more than half a century after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the expulsion of 3.5 million Sudeten Germans2 in 1945, Czechs and Germans finally agreed on a bilateral pact on wartime abuses.3 Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Václav Havel endorsed a joint declaration in which Germans apologized for Hitler’s invasion and the subsequent crimes Nazis committed in Czechoslovakia; in turn, Czechs expressed regret for the expulsion and expropriation of many innocent Sudeten Germans. But the declaration provided the expelled with no claim to compensation, an omission that the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, headquartered in Bavaria, harshly criticized: “The expulsion as such is not unambiguously condemned as injustice, but regretted in ambiguous formulations. Practical steps for compensation for injustice are not even touched upon.”4 In turn, Czechs view Hitler’s invasion as a cataclysmic tragedy for their country and, as stated in the document, the Nazi violence toward Czechs as causing the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. According to the German-language author Erica Pedretti (b. 1930, Moravia, Czechoslovakia), the story of her homeland had been written and also falsified several times in works on Sudeten German and Czech history. Different political regimes and their discourses of power rearranged history according to new ideologies: “Jedes Regime hat die Ereignisse zu eigenen Gunsten interpretiert oder verfälscht.”5 Considering Moravia her homeland, Pedretti experienced the region initially as part of the First Czechoslovak

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Republic, then as a Nazi German protectorate, and again as part of Czechoslovakia after the Second World War. Following the end of the Communist era in 1989 a new perspective on the history of Sudeten Germans once again emerged. It is, therefore, not surprising that Pedretti decided to write about her own experiences and give her own view of historical events. According to the author, the war that devastated Yugoslavia in the 1990s was another crucial factor in her decision to write Engste Heimat. Pedretti associates the war in Yugoslavia and the tragic ethnic conflict among Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats with her own memories of expulsion and with the ethnic division between Czechs and Sudeten Germans. Similarly, in 1994 the Austrian foreign minister Alois Mock went so far as to equate the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia with the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia — a statement that the Prague government criticized vehemently.6 By writing the novel Pedretti forces herself to relive and confront her painful past in an attempt to come to terms with it fifty years later. Engste Heimat revisits and narrates history by focusing on Anna, the author’s alter ego, and her Moravian German family; though fictional by definition, the novel is also autobiographical and historical: it renders history and claims authenticity. Whereas the author thematized her personal trauma in Harmloses, bitte (1970), a collection of earlier short prose, Engste Heimat addresses the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from the perspective of 1990, after the fall of Communism, by evaluating and questioning the Czech decision to expel the German minority in light of the failed Czech Communist era. Pedretti follows the lead of generations of writers and filmmakers who tried to cope with their German heritage, Germany’s Nazi past, their own Nazi experiences, and the involvement of their parents with National Socialism.7 The historian Timothy Garton Ash remarks that the complexity of dealing with the German past is reflected in the many terms describing the relevant politics: Geschichtspolitik (the politics of history), Erinnerungspolitik (the politics of memory), and Vergangenheitspolitik (the politics of the past), as well as more-common but less-translatable terms such as Geschichtsaufarbeitung and Vergangenheitsbewältigung.8 Since 1945 “overcoming the past” has been on the agenda of politicians, historians, writers, filmmakers, artists, and many German debates or discussions initiated in German-speaking countries, as well as others on the topic of German Nazism.9 After the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic and the reunification of Germany, dealing with the Nazi past in the two Germanies and overcoming Communism resulted in a comprehensive redefinition of the post-1945 terms of “Stunde Null” and Vergangenheitsbewältigung.10 In the larger context of literary Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Pedretti’s novel could be associated with Günter Grass’s Danziger Trilogie, Heinrich Böll’s Billard um halbzehn, Siegfried Lenz’s Deutschstunde, and Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster.11 In light of the novel’s main character and his story

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of exile and flight from the Nazis, Engste Heimat is reminiscent of Anna Segher’s Transit and could be considered exile literature. But most important, the novel contributes to literature confronting the past of East Central European Germans, former Habsburg Germans, who lived outside Germany or the Third Reich but were, nevertheless, deeply influenced by National Socialist politics. Like Rezzori’s memoirs, Pedretti’s novel asks questions regarding German identity in East Central Europe; the specific geopolitical and historical context of the novel associates Engste Heimat with the work of Rezzori or Herta Müller, for example, rather than with writings of (West) German authors who try to cope with Germany’s National Socialist past. The complex situation of ethnic Germans who constituted a national minority and became citizens of nation-states in Eastern Europe after the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire uncovers aspects of the Nazi past specific to the different regions. In a way similar to Herta Müller’s writings, Pedretti’s novel depicts the impact of National Socialism on ethnic Germans outside the Reich, as well as the tragic consequences they suffer at the end of the Second World War. But whereas Müller accuses the entire Banat-Swabian community for its involvement with Nazi Germany, Pedretti focuses on the small fraction of Sudeten German antifascists. Although critical of the ethnocentrism of her community, the author fails to explain the Moravian Germans’ ethnocentrism and feeling of superiority to Czechs in light of the overwhelming involvement of Sudeten Germans with National Socialism. Pedretti’s novel documents the dilemma of innocent individuals who have to suffer for the crimes of the majority. The narrative renders the story of an antifascist family and questions the legitimacy of the expulsion from the perspective of these innocent victims. By focusing exclusively on innocent Sudeten Germans the novel uncovers the human tragedy of the expulsion, though perhaps at the exclusion of establishing the larger context of the events preceding the transfer of the Sudeten Germans. Engste Heimat takes on the difficult task of defending Sudeten Germans but fails to render a proportionate picture of their involvement with Nazi Germany, as well as their crimes against Czechs during the Nazi protectorate. The Nazi oppression is totally ignored under the shield of isolation and escapism. Ultimately, the antifascist Sudeten Germans share the fate of their countrymen who became involved with the Third Reich and paid dearly for betraying their country.

Historical Overview The Sudetenfrage is generally related to the troubled relationship between Czechs and Sudeten Germans after 1918, when Czechoslovakia was declared an independent nation-state and Sudeten Germans became an ethnic minority within the territory. Sudeten Germans did not want to accept this status

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and argued for their right to self-determination, which was never granted to them as it was to most other ethnic groups after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. But the complex relationship and the conflicts between Czechs and Germans reach far back into their common history. Czechs and Germans lived for 800 years in the territory of today’s Czech Republic (that is, in the regions of Bohemia and Moravia). While the Premyslids in the High Middle Ages consolidated the Bohemian state, the first German settlers did not reach these regions until the twelfth century, at the invitation of Czech rulers of the Bohemian kingdom. The German settlers were mainly farmers and miners. In cities such as Prague, however, German patrician families also contributed to cultural and political life. This cooperation between Czechs and Germans and their peaceful coexistence ended during the religious war between Catholics and Hussites from 1419 to 1436. While most Germans remained Catholic, many Czechs supported Jan Hus (John Huss). According to Elizabeth Wiskemann, some Germans in Bohemia were as eager to support the Hussite Reform as were the Czechs: “Gradually, however, the Reform Movement became a Czech revolt against German priest and burgher [. . .] Hussitism became Czech national defiance of the world.”12 Despite a safe-conduct letter from the emperor Sigismund, Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 after defending his new Reformed church before the Church Council in Constance. Czechs consider Hus a national hero and claim that he represented the Czech national aspirations vis-à-vis the Germans in Bohemia; the modern Czech church continues this tradition. While it is arguable whether one should employ such charged terms as “nation” or “national” to this period, it becomes clear, nevertheless, that two versions of Bohemian history exist — a German and a Czech version — each national group writing its own history along the lines of a nationalist agenda.13 According to Robert A. Kann and Zdenek V. David, Czech (and Bohemian-German) history following the Habsburg accession in 1526 can be divided into four periods. The first lasted from 1526 to 1620, the year of the Battle of the White Mountain, when Czechs lost most of their liberties to the Habsburgs. The second, from 1620 to the 1740s, was a period of political and cultural submission to Habsburg rule. The third phase is characterized by centralism and extensive Germanization under Maria Theresa and Joseph II, which triggered a Czech Slavic Renaissance. The fourth and final phase began with the Revolution of 1848 and ended with the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918.14 Although Czech remained the official language in the Bohemian Crown at the beginning of the Habsburg era, in the first phase of the CzechGerman relationship Germanization advanced progressively. This advance happened, in part, owing to German peasants and artisans settling increasingly in towns or in the countryside. The Habsburgs used German almost

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exclusively as their administrative language, and the use of Czech as the only official language of Bohemia decreased dramatically. Furthermore, after the Battle of the White Mountain on 8 November 1620, when the imperial forces were successful in defending Catholicism against Protestantism, the decline in the public use of Czech grew even more drastic. In 1621 Czech Protestants were expatriated, while others emigrated in protest; in 1627 the suppression of Protestantism was legalized. The expulsion of Protestants resulted in the gradual immigration of Germans, who acquired estates of banished Protestants. According to Kann and David, the remaining Czech noble families were basically Germanized by the beginning of the eighteenth century.15 They also note that Czech historians such as Frantisek Palacky, Josef Pekar, and Kamil Krofta have interpreted the consequences of the Battle of the White Mountain as a political disaster for Czech national survival. Other historians, however, suggest that a Protestant victory would have caused an even more pervasive Germanization.16 The centralization and Germanization policies of Maria Theresa and her successor, Josef II, triggered a reaction on the side of the Czechs that led to a Czech national revival. Language and culture were central issues in this Renaissance that emphasized the ethnic origin of the Czech people, their Slavdom. The school system, however, was completely Germanized under the reigns of Maria Theresa and Josef II. Although the ratio of Czechs to Germans was 60 percent to 40 percent in Bohemia and 70 percent to 30 percent in Moravia, the Czech majority was politically and socially disadvantaged compared to the German minority.17 Up to 1865 Czechs comprised a minority in the diets. Trying to oppose the Czechs’ aspirations of a national revival, in 1848 some Germans in Bohemia broached the idea of unifying Bohemia with Germany — an idea that was, obviously, rejected by the Czechs. The division of Bohemia into Czech and German sections was also proposed for the first time in 1848. Following the example of Hungary, which became autonomous in 1867, Bohemia asked for the same favor — the autonomy of the Bohemian Crown. None of the above happened, so Czechs and Germans continued to live together under the Habsburgs. The division along ethnic and linguistic lines was, however, clearly defined. In spite of German opposition, in 1881–82 the first Czech university emerged when the University of Prague was divided into Czech and German sections. The number of Czech Mittelschulen also increased in Bohemia and Moravia. In 1897 the Austrian prime minister, Kazimir Badeni, tried to solve the national-language conflict between Czechs and Germans by implementing two language ordinances that provided that both Czech and German be employed to conduct business in Bohemia and Moravia. German nationalists strongly opposed Badeni’s reform, since few German officials spoke Czech, which most Germans considered to be “the inferior language of a small

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people.”18 The Badeni decrees provoked open violence in the Parliament, as well as riots in the streets of Vienna, Graz, and the German towns in Bohemia; consequently, the emperor was forced to dismiss Badeni. By 1899 the Badeni reform was almost completely reversed. At the end of the First World War, on 28 October 1918, the Národní Výbor (National Assembly) declared Czechoslovakia an independent national state in accordance with the postwar peace settlement, disregarding the claim of Sudeten Germans to a referendum. In turn, on 29 October 1918 Sudeten Germans declared German-speaking Bohemia and Moravia part of German Austria. Czechs refused to negotiate with the Sudeten Germans and carried out a military occupation of the German regions in November and December 1918. The historian R. W. Seton-Watson analyzed the Czechoslovak case: “Even put at its lowest, the Czech contention is that there is more injustice in placing nine million Czecho-Slovaks — in this case the whole race — under alien rule, than in placing two, or even two-and-ahalf million out of seventy million Germans under Czech rule.”19 Germans in Bohemia and Moravia did not easily give up their status as a politically and socially dominant minority for that of just one minority among many (Magyars, Rusyns, Jews, Poles, Roma, Romanians, Serbs, and Croats) in a Czechoslovak national state. Radomír Lua argues that the Sudeten Germans’ “world had disintegrated, and they looked for a new scale of values that would help them against what they believed to be national humiliation and injustice.”20 The Sudeten Germans’ frustration with the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire and the outcome of the peace treaties resulted in violent demonstrations. On 4 March 1919 Czech soldiers shot fifty-four Sudeten German demonstrators in various Bohemian and Moravian towns. While Lua claims that the demonstrators were shot in direct reprisal for the Sudeten Germans’ repeated attacks on the Czechoslovak Army barracks,21 Ferdinand Seibt explains that the newly founded Czech government considered any type of German resistance illegal and that many Sudeten Germans felt at this point that reconciliation between Czechs and Germans had become nearly impossible.22 In the 1930s the new nationalist political orientation in Germany found fertile ground in the Sudetenland, deepening the division between Czechs and Sudeten Germans. In addition, the economic depression of the 1930s had a direct impact on Germans, since they were mostly in charge of light industry, such as textiles or glass. The nationalist propaganda combined with the economic crisis caused the German working class to vote for the extreme German nationalists led by Konrad Henlein.23 As a result, in 1935 Henlein’s Sudeten German Party won the second largest vote in the Czechoslovak Republic. The Munich Agreement of 193824 and Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia ended any hope of reconciliation between Czechs and Sudeten Germans.25 Henlein’s Sudeten German party took 86 percent of the

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German vote in local elections in 1938.26 Many Sudeten Germans had embraced Henlein’s party because they felt that their “Germanness” was threatened in the Czech nation-state, and they were unwilling to accept being ruled by Czechs, who, for so long, had been the underprivileged majority. Hitler, of course, could conveniently apply his theory of Lebensraum in the Czech case, since he believed that Sudeten Germans had been denied the right of self-determination in 1918.27 Taking on the role of their savior, Hitler decided to solve the political and historical situation in Bohemia and Moravia by giving the Sudetenland to the Sudeten Germans.28 The Nazi terror that followed ranged from plans to Germanize or evacuate and destroy the Czech population to the actual extermination of the entire village of Lidice in retaliation for the Czech assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.29 In 1945 the Czechs reversed Hitler’s plans of evacuation; the Czech post-Second World War government expelled more than three million Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately for the Sudeten German antifascists, there was little attempt on the Czech side to differentiate between Germans and Nazis.

Narrating Memories In her novel Engste Heimat, Erica Pedretti attempts not only to reconstruct memories of the Second World War and the period preceding Hitler’s annexation of Bohemia and Moravia but also to present a personal story of displacement. The novel focuses on Anna, a Moravian-German from Czechoslovakia who had experienced the trauma of persecution and expulsion at the end of the Second World War. On two trips back to her lost homeland in 1976 and 1990 Anna revisits places and people that were once vital parts of the life she was forced to leave behind. Anna’s story, stripped of all artistic and narrative devices, would read as follows: at the beginning Anna is a young ethnic German girl from the Czech region of Moravia. She lives with her mother, a governess, and is close to her grandparents. Her father and one of her uncles fight in the Second World War but oppose the Nazis and end up in a camp in Germany. The Allies set them free at the end of the war; but when they get home, having walked across half of Germany and Czechoslovakia, they are captured again by the Russians and Czechs and deported to the East. The women in the family lose their house, which becomes headquarters for the Russians, and they try to survive by hiding in the attic. A Czech family shelters Anna and her cousin for a while. The grandparents lose their house, as well, and are resettled in Vienna after experiencing hunger, persecution, and deportation. Anna’s other uncle, Gregor, an artist, fights in the Czech army at the beginning of the war and is, therefore, persecuted by Germans as a traitor. Later he continues to fight in the French resistance. Gregor and his Jewish French wife spend the war years

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trying to escape the Germans by moving from place to place and taking on different identities. A Red Cross transport takes Anna to Switzerland, where most of her family is reunited. After more than thirty years Anna decides, against her father’s wishes, to go back and visit her lost homeland. She is, however, not permitted to see everything she wants, since the Communist regime shows little sympathy for citizens of capitalist countries. Fourteen years later, after the fall of Communism, Anna goes back again and has a less restrictive visit. She realizes that although the Czech region of Moravia is where she belongs, she no longer wants to live there. To create an emotional distance from the memories of war and expulsion Pedretti juxtaposes two levels of narration — a text within a text — by employing two narrators. The first-person narrator also plays the role of a character; she is an artist and an author in the text that frames the main story, Anna’s story, which is related by a third-person narrator. The reader is constantly moving in and out of past events by following the narrative accounts of two time periods: the time of the actual writing and of Anna’s two visits to Czechoslovakia in 1976 and 1990 and the time of the Second World War. On the one hand, the third-person narrator draws the reader into Anna’s story, allowing identification with her. On the other hand, by breaking up the narrative flow and introducing a second string of narration, which brings the reader into the time of the actual writing, the narrative creates alienation and a space for critical distance. Often the first-person narrator identifies with Anna, when the “I” takes over Anna’s remembering; for example: “sag ich, nein, ich laß es Anna sagen” (70). This example illustrates the constructed, fictional nature of Anna, who plays a role determined by the first-person narrator — the author in the novel and the real protagonist. The first-person narrator thematizes the fact that she controls Anna; she puts Anna in situations that Anna or the first-person narrator are not comfortable facing. The fictional character Anna functions as a psychological buffer, absorbing emotions that are unbearable for the first-person narrator. At times, however, Anna develops a mind of her own; she refuses, for example, to go to certain places, and she voices her complaints in an imaginary dialogue with the narrator. “Was fällt dir ein! Das kannst du mir nicht zumuten,” sagt, nein, schreit Anna nach vier Tagen. So geht’s nicht, das seh ich ein, es ist zum Davonlaufen. Also gut, ich schicke sie nach
ternberk und von dort auf die Suche nach Gregors im Land zurückgelassenen, verschollenen Bildern. (55)

The imaginary dialog between Anna and the first-person narrator expresses the constructed and conscious nature of the narratives. For practical purposes, I will call the two narratives, the one relating Anna’s story and the other addressing the time of actual writing, the past and the present narrative, respec-

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tively. To avoid a direct confrontation with her own past, the first-person narrator creates Anna. Anna’s character reenacts the life story of the firstperson narrator, whose lost past and heritage are thematized in the past narrative as Anna’s story. Anna, the fictional character, is the protagonist of the past narrative that is embedded in the present narrative. As the dialogue in the passage above demonstrates, both Anna and the first-person narrator are familiar with the past events that are related in the novel, which explains Anna’s unwillingness to cooperate with the narrator’s decisions. While Anna is a vehicle manipulated by the narrator to uncover the narrator’s own painful memories, she exists only in the first-person narrator’s mind; she is, ultimately, an inner voice of the narrator. Therefore, Anna hardly expresses herself in her own voice; her feelings, her memories, and the narrator, who has complete access to Anna’s mind, relate her thoughts in a free, indirect style. By creating two levels of narration with pairs of characters mirroring themselves (for example, Anna and the first-person narrator; Gregor and K. G., the first-person narrator’s uncle), the text not only effects a critical and emotional distance from the historical events; it also expresses the emotional strain and difficulty of relating personal tragic memories of war and expulsion. Pedretti thus develops a narrative device that would allow a critical engagement with past events. For the most part, however, the first-person narrator fails to confront the circumstances that led to the expulsion in 1945. The representation of the historical and political events that affected the first-person narrator’s/Anna’s life is not a flowing narrative of the past but a fragmented psychological collage of subjective memories and perceptions: Unzählige Wahrnehmungen in so schneller Abfolge, daß es nicht oder noch nicht gelingt, die Dinge, alle Einzelheiten in Beziehungen zueinander oder in bezug zur Zeit zu setzen. So daß sie wie verstreut im Leeren herumzufliegen scheinen oder wie liegengeblieben. Und auch im nachhinein ist keine Ordnung mehr herzustellen, die möglichen verbindenden Zwischenglieder sind inzwischen nicht mehr aufzutreiben, verlorengegangen. (179)

The present narrative primarily focuses on the difficulty of relating such a story, as well as on the psychological impact these memories still have on the characters of the novel. By pointing out the fragmented nature of both the present and the past narratives, which consist of many loose perceptions, the first-person narrator acknowledges the fact that a reference to the historical and political events of the time is missing. While the past narrative relates Anna’s childhood from the limited perspective of a young girl, the present narrative ought to offer a broader perspective by filling in the missing links that are so crucial to the reception of the novel. To address the difficulty of coping with her past, the first-person narrator thematizes the process of writing or stalling throughout the novel, creating

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thereby a metanarrative. In the expressionist tradition, the text indicates the narrator’s emotions when describing memories in a concrete way. Interrupted lines signal pauses to show, for example, overwhelming emotions — these are points in the narrative at which both the narrator and the reader have to stop to overcome their own feelings of pain, anger, or disappointment: und flieht über die Zohsedecke nach Rudolfstal “um Gotteswillen, was fällt dir ein, fort, weg von diesem Ort,” rennt atemlos die Straße bergauf nach Skalice, und weiter, weiter, nur laufen, wahnsinnig schnell, daß jemand, der sie hätte begleiten wollen, ihr nie hätte folgen können, so lange soll sie weitergehen, gehen, laufen, bis es nicht mehr schmerzt oder sie den Schmerz aushalten kann. (55)

In this passage the breaks in the narrative flow not only express an overlapping between Erzählzeit and erzählte Zeit but also indicate the process of remembering. Anna runs away from her past and tries to avoid reliving the memories associated with the places of her childhood. Physical pain and exhaustion are supposed to alleviate the unbearable emotional distress Anna experiences when revisiting her lost homeland. The memories do not surface in a constant flow, but rather at intervals concretized in the interrupted lines. The first-person narrator seems to find pretexts not to address particularly painful memories of her past; she postpones Anna’s visits to the places that the narrator associates with such memories. Reflexive or descriptive passages in the present narrative, therefore, interrupt Anna’s story. “Und auch ich bin wieder aus meiner Geschichte geflüchtet” (182). The interventions of the first-person narrator have an alienating effect when sectioning the flow of the past narrative; not only is the differentiating line between Anna and the narrator often blurred and transgressed but at times a third admonishing voice interferes: “es ist längst Oktober, und du bist weg, weit weg vom Thema” (24). Describing Anna’s past (or the first-person narrator’s) is, however, the goal of the narrative — a goal that can only be attained at the expense of revived emotional turmoil: Wie läßt sich ein bestimmtes, ein längst festgelegtes Vorhaben auf Papier bringen? Ohne weitere Abschweifungen. Wie ließe sich unser Vorbild ohne allzu große Verfälschungen aus meinen Gedanken, den Vorstellungen, auch was das Schreiben oder Beschreiben betrifft, raus aus dem Kopf und zum Wort bringen? (24)

The rhetorical questions of the first-person narrator cast a new light on the authenticity of the memories. The subjective factor (“my” thoughts and ideas) and the time elapsed are problematized as interfering with the veracity of the story. In this example of personal narrative, the first-person narrator confides in the reader her aim to relate a real story, unadorned or trans-

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formed, and her obvious difficulty in describing persons or events of the past accurately. The voice is not that of “I as witness”30 but belongs to the author in the present narrative who thematizes both the writing process and the narration process. At the same time, the reader is signaled clearly that the story will be no chronological and linear narrative, as it involves various elements of Verfremdung: foreshadowing, flashbacks, author interventions, and metanarratives. The first-person narrator’s voice and those of the other characters in the novel represent different times, generations, and cultures. In the Bakhtinian sense, the voices of the novel express different discourses and ideological positions. In The Dialogic Imagination Michael Bakhtin refers to the multivoiced character of a novel as follows: Authorial speech, the speeches of the narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those fundamental compositional features with whose help heteroglossia (raznorecie) can enter the novel; each of them permits a multiplicity of social voices and a wide variety of their links and interrelationships[. . . .] These distinctive links and interrelationships between utterances and languages, this movement of the theme through different languages and speech types, its dispersion into the rivulets and droplets of social heteroglossia, its dialogization — this is the basic distinguishing feature of the stylistic novel.31

In the tradition of the polyphonic novel, heteroglossia is present in Engste Heimat on various levels: narrative voices; social, political, and ideological positions; ethnic and national identities; and languages. Apart from the author/first-person narrator who relates and thematizes the writing process, as well as the doubts about how to relate Anna’s and Gregor’s stories, and the third-person narrator who recounts Anna’s experiences of expulsion, at least one other narrative voice is present in the novel: Jacqueline’s account of her husband, Gregor’s, life and persecution by the Nazis. The multicultural and multivoiced cast of the novel secures the presence of different languages: German, Czech, French, and English. German, and at times MoravianGerman, is the main language of the novel, and it reflects the cultural identity of the main characters: Anna, her family, and her uncle Gregor. The difference between German and Moravian-German is illustrated through the example of the words Stiege and Treppe: “‘Deine Stiege,’ korrigiert mich Wolfgang, ‘ist eine Treppe,’ er meint, eine Stiege sei doch eng und steil. ‘Kann schon sein, aber für mich, für meine in Mähren angesiedelte Muttersprache, gilt das Gegenteil’” (142). The linguistic and cultural distinctions and influences are, however, not absolute. While Anna’s parents and others of that generation request that their children speak only German, without a Bohemian accent, Anna feels attracted to the Czech language and its melodic rhythm.

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Anna’s hero Gregor, however, distances himself from the nationalistic and political premises of his German identity; he flees to France, where he fights in the resistance against the Nazis. In turn, the Czech characters are representative of various political, social, and ideological positions: some characters fall into the category of stereotypical German haters; others, however, give shelter to the hunted Sudeten Germans at the end of the Second World War. And still others, the opportunists, change positions to their advantage and become blind followers of whichever regime happens to be in power. The English language reflects primarily the education that bourgeois Sudeten German children such as Anna received, in contrast to that given the socially less privileged Czech children, but the novel also describes the failure of this education to prepare the children for their immediate future. The orchestration of these various voices in the novel creates a narrative texture and collage entailing memories, dreams, and self-reflexive metanarratives.

A Bourgeois Moravian-German Family: Ethnocentrism, Isolation, and Escapism As the title Engste Heimat suggests, the narrative focuses on the story of Anna’s Moravian-German family, the very essence of her homeland. Unlike Rezzori’s Austro-German aristocrats, the protagonists of Pedretti’s novel belong to the well-to-do bourgeoisie. The attitude of Sudeten Germans toward their neighbors, the Czechs, is, however, strikingly similar to the Austro-Germans’ relationship of superiority to the locals of Bukovina. The bourgeois background of Anna’s family leads the reader to interpret it as an affirmation of the stereotypical Czech picture of Germans as a privileged and exploiting class vis-à-vis the Czechs, who are portrayed as the lower peasant class. The first-person narrator does not negate this picture, but eventually she depicts Anna’s personal relationship to Czechs and their language as different from that of her parents. At the beginning of the novel the family lives in a big house with an imposing stairwell that becomes a kindergarten after the war. Next to the house stands a small laundry house, which is later transformed into an apartment. In Engste Heimat the conflict between Sudeten Germans and Czechs is clearly illustrated in the Germans’ refusal to speak Czech. Anna, for example, enjoys the privilege of having a governess and of being tutored in both English and French. She has, however, no knowledge of Czech, the national language of the First Czechoslovak Republic.32 “Die Sprache, die ihre Eltern abstoßend fanden, so daß sie den Kindern jede Annäherung, den kleinsten Akzent abzugewöhnen versuchten. Ablehnung, die Anna, auch wenn sie in ihrem Gegenteil verkehrt, doch immer als erstes, als Forderung in sich spürt” (34). The attitude of repulsion Anna’s parents express toward the Czech

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language reflects their relationship to the speakers of that language, the Czech people, which is systematically enforced in the education of ethnic German children, as well. In a manner similar to young Gregor’s evolution as depicted in Rezzori’s Blumen im Schnee, Anna distances herself from the ethnocentrism and nationalism of her parents. The narrator reveals the father’s intolerant attitude toward Czechs but also toward German-speaking Jews. As a Moravian, the first-person narrator sympathizes with the Prague author Franz Kafka — whose “Brief an den Vater” is quoted in the novel — by pointing out generational differences in dealing with the multicultural environment of the regions of Bohemia and Moravia: Der Vater konnte zum Beispiel auf die Tschechen schimpfen, dann auf die Deutschen, dann auf die Juden, und zwar nicht nur in Auswahl, sondern in jeder Hinsicht, und schließlich blieb niemand mehr übrig,’ schreibt Kafka über seinen Vater. “Verschone mich mit deinem Kafka,” hört Anna ihren Vater, “dieser Kafka mit seinem böhmischen Deutsch!”33 (34)

Intolerance toward any ethnic group, even one’s own, and an unselective critical spirit characterize Kafka’s father, as this quotation illustrates. The fact that Kafka is the most celebrated German-speaking Jewish Prague author does not impress Anna’s father in the least, since Kafka’s German is not pure enough; it is merely Bohemian German. While Kafka’s father criticizes all ethnic groups of the region out of his own exaggerated self-confidence, Anna’s father dismisses Kafka for ethnocentric and anti-Semitic reasons.34 As depicted in her fictional memories, Anna lives isolated and shielded from the outside — not only from the Czechs but also from the political reality of war. Her personal world includes family, plants, pictures, and German literatures that are all connected to her memories of her grandfather, who initiates her into the world of botany and German classics. The grandfather symbolizes Anna’s link to a cultural tradition affiliated with Germany and at the same time exemplifies the apolitical attitude of those who ignored the danger of the upcoming war. The escapist attitude of the grandfather, however, could also be interpreted as a reaction to the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire and to the marginalization of the German element in the new nation-state of Czechoslovakia. While a garden wall physically separates the “safe” family environment from the political reality of the outside, the grandfather’s world of German high culture symbolizes a spiritual retreat that builds yet another wall between Sudeten Germans and Czechs. As Radomír Lua argues, the Sudeten German bourgeois classes found refuge from their post-First World War humiliation in a glorious mythical past entailing symbols of success and prestige (30). Furthermore, according to Lua, many Sudeten Germans “regarded themselves as mission-

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aries of a higher culture and a German salient thrust at the Slav-German border” (45). In Pedretti’s novel Anna’s grandfather is portrayed as apolitical and without any missionary agenda but clearly as a preserver of German culture. Even as a soldier during the First World War he was able to pursue his passion for plants and literature and to ignore the cruelty of the war: he collected plants with his soldiers and wrote postcards describing the beautiful city of Krakow (Engste Heimat 182). The grandfather’s love for the German classics is illustrated in the long passages from Goethe’s Faust that Pedretti includes in her text. In the hours that Anna spends with her grandfather she learns by heart entire parts that resurface as well-inscribed memories of a cultural identity cherished by Anna. Anna’s journey in time follows her childhood memories of her grandfather and the peaceful time in the middle of a romanticized nature reminiscent of Fontane’s nineteenth-century novels. These idyllic scenes are, however, juxtaposed with the more painful experiences of persecution. Long descriptive passages on how to care for plants, specific names of various flowers, and even the grandmother’s recipes contrast with the fragmented thoughts and memories of negative experiences, which are subtly foreshadowed in the first part of the narrative. As Anna revisits certain places, memories come back slowly and hesitantly. Family pictures are the only proof of a past existence in a world Anna can only imagine and now remember. These portraits trigger specific memories associated with places, voices, and faces from the past. Anna remembers special events in idyllic settings, such as big family gatherings on the occasion of a new family member’s baptism: Der Großvater steht ungewohnt steif in einem an ihm ungewohnten Anzug, ein etwa Sechzigjähriger, der blauäugig in die Luft schaut, sein kurzer grauer Spitzbart verdeckt das Kinn. Daneben lächelt stolz die Großmutter, sich am Stock aufrichtend, mit ihren sanften, aus Como stammenden Augen, die sonst dunkel und aufs Unheil gerichtet in die Zukunft blicken, dem unausweichlichen auf sie Zukommenden entgegensehen. (138)

The grandfather who likes to work outside taking care of his plants and reciting German poetry seems to find refuge in the blue sky from his uncomfortable suit and the constraining setting of a family portrait. By contrast, the grandmother rises to this occasion, where she finds pride and joy in being surrounded by her family. The happy gathering is, however, darkened by the onset of tragic events. The beginning of the ordeal is signaled by Grandmother’s eyes, which intuitively express a destiny that her family cannot escape. The connection to Hitler’s rise to power and his popularity and support in Moravia is unmistakably realized by the priest’s remark: “Heuer werden die meisten Buben Adolf getauft” (139).

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The adults’ attitude toward the war is apolitical in the beginning; they do not seem to see the danger of a war led by Germany, nor do they fully realize their problematic situation as ethnic Germans in hostile territory. Anna’s father, for example, comforts Anna at the beginning of the war: “Der Krieg wird nur ein paar Monate dauern” (14). When the situation worsens, however, the adults surrounding Anna become more cautious and try to shield her from the reality of a war that affects her uncle’s life directly. Now they often whisper and employ French when relating news about the war and Gregor’s whereabouts: “Paris est occupé” (13). Anna’s childhood is, nevertheless, penetrated and ultimately affected by the war: “Der Krieg ist hinter der Mauer, im Glashaus ist Marshall ein weiblicher Name, eine Teerose” (12). Her artificial refuge is equated with a greenhouse, which symbolizes a fragile separation from the outside. The threatening reality of war, however, transgresses the thin glass walls of the greenhouse; it is transferred to the name of a flower: Maréchal Niel. The male warrior taints and touches the female world, showing that the separation between the two worlds — one representing violent war, the other peaceful beauty and fragility — is a precarious one. When relating political events, the first-person narrator expresses different perspectives: Anna’s view as a nine-year-old and that of the narrator herself, who many years after the war has an overview of politicians and events. In Anna’s world Hitler’s annexation of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939 has a direct impact on instruction in schools as history has to be rewritten. In “Heimatkunde” students have to experience the various political phases of Moravia, which in 1918 became part of the First Czechoslovak Republic and in 1939 was annexed by Germany: “Meine engste Heimat ist die Stadt Hohenstadt. Meine engere Heimat ist der Kreis Schönberg. Meine weitere Heimat ist der Schönhengstgau,” einstimmig die ganze Klasse! Und noch einmal und morgen auswendig: “der Schönhengstgau,” und übermorgen: “über alles in der Welt, Deutsch-land, Deu-eutschland” und sieh da, das gibt es wieder. “Kde domov mj, kde domov mj,”35 “wo ist mein Heim, mein Heimatland,” das hatten wir vorher gelernt und als unsere Staatshymne jahrelang gesungen. Kde domov mj, kde domov mj, wo bist du geblieben? (155)

This passage illustrates the artificial nature of political boundaries and their impact on the culturally diverse regions of a country. While names, ideologies, and national languages change, regions remain the same. The core of the homeland remains the constant value in a world of variables. And still, the first-person narrator questions the knowledge acquired in school, since, in her case, it proved to be false. Not only does the first-person narrator take over Anna’s role by completely identifying with the schoolgirl Anna; she also speaks

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for a group of people by changing the perspective from “ich” to “wir” and “unsere.” While she had lost her homeland, so did her schoolmates and other ethnic German children, who nobody could claim to have betrayed their homeland in any way; Anna and her generation represent the victims of the war who lost the homeland of their childhood. By reiterating the question “kde domov mj” the first-person narrator takes a side — the Czech one, which her uncle Gregor had taken before, as well. The narrator relates to Czechoslovakia as her homeland, rather than to the construct of a Greater Germany including most ethnic Germans. Her Moravia is not German but a multicultural region in which the majority of the population is Czech. Besides being ethnic Germans, Sudeten Germans are also citizens of Czechoslovakia. Gregor, as well as the narrator, affirm their German cultural heritage rooted in Czechoslovakia but reject any political affiliation to Nazi Germany. Both identify with victims of Nazism in Czechoslovakia: Czech and German antifascists. Therefore, Anna’s later perspective on the Anschluß is the same as that expressed by the Czechs at the time: Als sich die politischen Verhältnisse zuspitzten, Henleins Parteigänger immer lauter nach dem Anschluß schrien, wurden Gregors eindringliche Warnungen vor dem Irrsinn, der da so fanatisch herbeigewünscht wurde, nicht mehr verlacht, sondern mit Haß quittiert: Du Verräter! Und als am Ende das Land, von nun an nur noch Sudetenland genannt, von England und Frankreich in München an Hitler verhandelt verkauft wurde, ging Gregor endgültig, flüchtete er nach Paris. (27)

Although the first-person narrator anachronistically relates strips of memories from Anna’s childhood by emphasizing personal experiences, rather than creating a historical picture of the events, she chooses to refer directly to the political maneuvers of the time in this passage. The text implies initiated readers, however, since the narrator provides no explanatory information about Henlein and his pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party or about the Munich Agreement. By employing words such as “fanatisch,” “Haß,” and “Irrsinn” the narrator captures the Nazi attitudes of Henlein’s Sudeten Germans, who readily embraced Hitler’s idea of German supremacy because they hoped to reverse the political decisions of 1918. Although the narrative refers to Henlein’s historical party that welcomed the Munich Agreement, when Hitler convinced England and France that the annexation of German Bohemia and areas of Moravia was an imperative,36 the text has to be confronted with the historical fact that the majority of Sudeten Germans — even members the Social Democratic Party of Sudeten Germans — joined Henlein’s party. The few remaining Social Democrats, led by Walter Jaksch, opposed annexation but favored an autonomous Sudetenland.37 More important, Pedretti addresses the situation of Sudeten Germans who opposed the annexation and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia and

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who were considered traitors by their own countrymen, as well as by the Reich Germans. Through Gregor, Anna’s antifascist uncle, Pedretti raises the question of how individual stories of suffering are to be reconciled with the metahistories of entire peoples.

Gregor, the Involuntary Hero: German, Czech-German, or Stateless? Based on the story of the first-person narrator’s uncle, K. G., the character Gregor is created from Anna’s memories, her family’s accounts, and the letters of Gregor’s French wife, Jacqueline. The first-person narrator thematizes the creation of Gregor even more openly than that of Anna’s character: “Und jetzt fürcht ich, mein lieber Held könnte mir verlorengehen und eine künstliche Figur an seine, K. G.s, Stelle treten, meine Gedanken könnten weniger ihn meinen als die Arbeit, die Mühe einen wie ihn herzustellen” (72–73). The first-person narrator clearly differentiates between K. G., the model, and Gregor, the character. The narrator’s fear that her endeavor “ihn oder jemanden wie ihn darzustellen” (72) might result in failure is exemplified in the contrast between the model — her hero — and the “artificial figure,” between portraying and manufacturing (herstellen). By reflecting on her goal of creating a character such as K. G. the first-person narrator addresses the very theme of the novel: in the confusing political and emotional controversy among Sudeten Germans and Czechs the story of those Sudeten Germans who opposed the Nazis remained untold. The narrative, therefore, creates a voice for the forgotten ones (like Gregor) who have to share the burden of the Nazi crimes with the real perpetrators. Ultimately, from the 1945 Czech perspective Gregor’s guilt lies in his German ethnicity, since Czechs equated Sudeten Germans and Nazis on account of the complicity of many Sudeten Germans in the Nazi crimes. As the narrative of Engste Heimat unfolds, a summary of Gregor’s story emerges from various accounts that reflect Gregor’s struggle to cope with the political events of the time and their impact on his life and art. Anna painstakingly reconstructs the story of Gregor, the uncle she barely knows because he left home when she was eight. In remembering Gregor the participants focus on different facets of Gregor’s life (he was born in 1905 and died around 1950), reflecting on the various roles of this character: Anna’s hero, the grandparents’ “Wunderkind,” Jacqueline’s husband, and the Czech historian’s perception of him as a German-Czech artist. As promising student, Gregor studies art at the Dresden Academy and then moves to Paris to pursue his career as a painter. In Paris he meets and marries Jacqueline, a French Jewish woman “non practicante” (77). Occasionally, he returns to Moravia to see his family and get financial help from his father, who owns a textile mill.

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In 1938, however, Gregor decides to return to Paris for good, since his compatriots in Moravia, consider him a traitor for openly opposing Henlein’s Sudeten German Party. Ironically, the Czechoslovak consulate in Paris rejects Gregor’s application for an extension of his Czechoslovak passport, explaining that he is German and, therefore, must clear his stay in Paris with the German consulate. Eventually, Gregor receives a “Nansen passport” for stateless persons from the Préfecture de Police in Paris. Interestingly enough, a few months later Gregor receives a notice from the Czechoslovak consulate urging him to join the Czechoslovak army.38 In the novel Gregor is the only Sudeten German in the Czechoslovak legion; since the Czechoslovak army is rapidly dispersed by the advancing Nazi troops, he finds himself fighting side by side with soldiers from Morocco, who do not care whether he is a Sudeten German or a Czech. Discharged by the Czechoslovak army, which in the meantime has been divided into Czechs, Slovaks, and Jews, Gregor flees to Marseilles, hoping to escape with Jacqueline to North Africa. In 1942 all of France is under Nazi occupation, and Gregor and Jacqueline have to leave Marseilles. Gregor survives with the help of false papers and assumed identities during the ensuing war years. Finally, he and Jacqueline return to Paris in October 1945. Counting on his continued loyalty to Czechoslovakia and his support of Czechs during the war, Gregor appeals to the Czechoslovak government to prevent his parents’ expulsion, but his plea is rejected on account of his German ethnicity. For the same reason, Gregor cannot recover the paintings he left in Moravia, since Sudeten German property was confiscated by the Czechoslovak state; nor is he allowed to return home to Moravia. He commits suicide in his Paris apartment after a final visit to his mother and sister. By creating Gregor, Pedretti offers an alternative to the stereotypical picture of Sudeten Germans as Nazi supporters and traitors to the First Czechoslovak Republic. Not only does Gregor not participate in the fanatical euphoria of Henlein’s supporters; he also warns against the danger of annexation by the Third Reich. Furthermore, Gregor fights in both the Czech army and the French Resistance. He is, therefore, considered a traitor and a deserter by his own compatriots, and like Czech antifascists he becomes a victim of the Nazis. Since Pedretti’s novel primarily focuses on Gregor’s story and his political position, as well as on the situation of other antifascist Sudeten Germans, the reader can easily be misled into thinking that most Sudeten Germans opposed the Nazis and were unfairly expelled in 1945. Pedretti does, however, acknowledge that Gregor was the only Sudeten German fighting in the Czech army. While Gregor’s story is valid and tragic, he represents only a small fraction of Sudeten Germans. Gregor’s unique and problematic situation is also reflected in his identity as an artist. Years after Gregor’s death a Czech art historian from Olomouc wants to dedicate all his energy to Gregor’s rehabilitation in Czechoslovakia.

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Jacqueline, Gregor’s widow, does not welcome the art historian’s endeavor and disagrees with him in many respects. In a letter to him, she states: “Es ist mir unangenehm [. . .] daß Sie in Ihrem Artikel zu verstehen geben, unsre definitive Rückkehr nach Paris 1938 sei unumgänglich geworden, weil ich Jüdin bin. Denn jüdisch oder nicht, wären wir fortgegangen. Doch war ich mit meinem französischen Paß weniger gefährdet als mein arischer Mann, dessen politische Überzeugung bekannt und der bei seinen Kompatrioten wegen seiner Anti-Nazi Gesinnung verrufen war. Er hatte keine Lust, Deutscher zu werden, und im Falle eines Krieges wollten wir in Frankreich sein.” (73)

Jacqueline differentiates among the various implications of ethnic identity, national citizenship, and political orientation. Both Jacqueline and Gregor are members of certain ethnic groups that constitute minorities in the nation-states to which they belong. In this narrative, however, the roles of the oppressed Jew and the German oppressor are reinvented: surprisingly for the Nazi era, the Jewish Jacqueline can save her husband, who is an ethnic German: even though Jacqueline is Jewish, she finds herself in 1938 in a “safer” situation than Gregor, because she is a French citizen and, therefore, possesses a French passport. Gregor, the German, becomes both stateless and homeless despite his “Aryan” ethnicity: he does not want a German passport and cannot renew his Czechoslovak passport; his only option is a passport for stateless persons. It is, however, important to note that historically the “Protectorate Jews” were persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis in Czechoslovakia.39 The death toll ranges from 63,000 to 77,000, according to Lua’s sources; but Paul Robert Mogacsi cites sources in which the estimated number of deaths climbs to 270,000.40 In Engste Heimat Jacqueline tries to emphasize that Gregor’s persecution was a political one and that, given his German ethnicity, he was hated by Czechs because of the Sudeten Germans’ collaboration with the Nazis and the Nazi annexation of Moravia and Bohemia and was persecuted by both Sudeten Germans and Reich Germans for his anti-Nazi political convictions. Although Gregor might seem to be an extreme example of Sudeten German anti-Nazism, his life elucidates the Czechs’ undifferentiated treatment of Sudeten Germans at the end of the Second World War, regardless of their actions in favor of the Czechoslovak Republic and despite their own persecution by Germans. Moreover, Gregor’s situation exemplifies his double loss as an artist: he is deprived of his homeland and of his art, which, left behind in Czechoslovakia, does not survive. In the novel Anna looks in vain for Gregor’s pictures in the Czech museum. “Nein, ich erhebe keinen Anspruch auf die Bilder, wie käme ich dazu, ich möchte nur feststellen, daß sie überdauert haben,” beteuert sie dem Direktor. Ob das Werk den Maler überleben konnte. Oder ob dieses

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Land nicht nur sein Leben zerstört hat, sondern auch sein Werk: Das allerdings getraut sie sich vor dem Mann hier nicht auszusprechen. (58)

The museum director represents the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia, and he also expresses the deep-rooted hate of Czechs toward Sudeten Germans. As Engste Heimat illustrates on the occasion of Anna’s 1976 visit to Communist Czechoslovakia, Sudeten Germans are regarded in retrospect as the exploiters and the privileged representatives of the hated bourgeoisie. For the museum director art symbolizes “bourgeois” values; art is a hobby for “good-for-nothing people” and for “social misfits.” His disrespect for art and artists is evident: “Tím se zabejvají jenom lenoi a asociálové” (Only lazy people and social misfits care about things like that) (61).41 During this visit Anna is in a doubly contested position: she represents both the bourgeois world of Sudeten Germans and the capitalist world of Western Europe. Anger and frustration are present in Anna’s thoughts, which she does not dare to express publicly. By equating an ideology or a government with the people of a country, as Anna does by blaming Czechoslovakia for Gregor’s fate, however, the text contradicts its very goal: while the narrative attempts to give a voice to innocent Sudeten Germans who were declared guilty by the Czech government on account of their “Germanness,” in this passage Anna also blames a whole country for Gregor’s tragedy. Anna generalizes much as Czechs supposedly did in 1945, not taking into account the different political positions of Czechs and Sudeten Germans. Finally, Anna finds out that the director himself burned Gregor’s pictures and sketches, together with her grandfather’s books and manuscripts, at the end of the war: “Die hab ich doch alle verbrannt! Berge von Büchern, ja, auch Bilder, das hab ich selber alles verbrannt, ganz allein, eine Mordsarbeit. Hier in diesem Ofen” (61). It was, indeed, “eine Mordsarbeit” in that it effectively destroyed a culture without considering its historical and educational values. The oppressed become the oppressors, as one of the novel’s leitmotifs implies: “Was ist’s, das geschehen ist? Eben das hernach geschehen wird. Was ist’s, das man getan hat? Eben das man hernach wieder tun wird; und geschieht nichts Neues unter der Sonne” (179). Some of the pictures, however, were saved by korpil, a less talented and resentful Czech artist who appropriated Gregor’s pictures, altered them slightly, and sold them as his own. In view of the Sudeten German-Czech history and its impact on his personal and professional life, Gregor rejects a national identity based on ethnicity or citizenship. Feeling betrayed by both Germans and Czechs, he distances himself from “home” in life and art by searching for a new kind of homeland in the realm of Parisian art. Therefore, it becomes evident that Jacqueline does not agree with the Czech art historian who labels Gregor “nemecko-ceská” (German-Czech): “‘Mais non, ni tchèque, ni allemand,’ meine Pariser Tante besteht darauf: ‘Il était français’” (17). Jacqueline rejects Gregor’s origins and

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also denounces any association of Gregor’s art with that of contemporary German, Austrian, or Czech artists who in the Czech art historian’s view might have influenced Gregor. While the art historian tries to anchor Gregor’s art in the historical and cultural background of Gregor’s original homeland, Jacqueline rejects Gregor’s heritage and his connections to German or Czech influences, since she feels that this German-Czech combination proved to be fatal for her husband. By contrast, she emphasizes Gregor’s life in his new homeland of choice, France, and the French landscapes reflected in his paintings. In her argument Jacqueline underlines the fact that Gregor left Moravia at the age of twenty-one and that he was either not familiar with the work of artists mentioned by the Czech art historian or deeply disliked any artistic association with them. Both Jacqueline and the art historian focus on only one dimension of Gregor’s art and cultural heritage. His goals as an artist were to express ambiguity (70), “Wahrnehmung von bisher Unbeachtetem, Mißachtetem, Übersehenem” (68), and to defamiliarize the old and familiar (70). He distanced himself from other emigrant artists and art lovers who found refuge from the new foreign environment in their old familiar collection of paintings (69–70). Gregor did not want to renounce experiences outside of art, nor did he intend to live in the past. And yet, victimized by both Germans and Czechs, Gregor could never resolve the trauma of losing his homeland, Moravia, before 1938; the disillusions at the end of the war impacted his life and his art. Gregor’s advice to Anna, when she expressed the wish to become a painter, is one of the leitmotifs of the novel: Gregors wiederholte Mahnungen, am eindrücklichsten im Brief, in dem er Anna seinen Tod ankündigte: “Werdet um Gottes willen nur ja keine Künstler!” Als könnte eine Künstlerexistenz nur enttäuschen, nur elend sein, so als sei nicht nur sein Unglück die Folge vergeblicher oder scheinbar vergeblicher Bemühungen. (31)

Surprisingly, Gregor’s attempt to find a new homeland in his art was successful in the war years, when the Nazis hunted him. Jacqueline relates that from 1943 to 1945 he enjoyed the friendship of résistants, a group of educated people who made it possible for him to begin painting again (79). During this period Gregor experienced what it means to live in an exile community — among people brought together by political persecution and resistance to Nazi occupation. In the midst of war Gregor could submerge himself in his art and the beauty of the landscape and ignore politics. As his father had taken refuge in books and plants, Gregor found new friends and art lovers who enabled him to dedicate himself to his paintings and forget about the violent reality of war. After the war, however, Gregor lost this feeling of belonging; his isolation from the world deepened, as did his depression. His hope of reclaiming his lost homeland and his paintings was met

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with rejection and resulted in further depression. Gregor’s existence as an artist is closely connected to the political and historical context of his life: he is a victim of the political power play of the time that ultimately impacts his life and the survival of his art. As an ethnic German, he loses the support of Czechoslovakia, despite his continuous loyalty to the country; as an antiNazi, he rejects any association with Sudeten Germans or Reich Germans; as an artist, he sees part of his work destroyed and the rest of his paintings accessible only to his wife, Jacqueline. In her journey the narrator tries to rediscover the various dimensions of Gregor’s art and identity that lie at a specific juncture of politics, history, and culture. Various accounts reveal various parts of Gregor’s personality, but the narrator’s attempt to re-create this character’s life remains fragmented. Anna’s and the narrator’s endeavors to construct the character Gregor as a hero ultimately result in creating an antihero — or, rather, a victim with strong moral and ethical convictions. As the first-person narrator warns the reader early in the novel, her (or Anna’s) hero does not have the qualities normally associated with a hero: “Zumindest ein Anna ähnliches Kind wollte seinen eigenen Helden und keinen dieser marktschreierisch menschenopfernden und selbstmörderischen, keinen dieser ihr tatsächlich unbegreiflich gehorsamen Männer” (19). The most evident characteristic of Anna’s hero is disobedience. He lacks a loud appearance; he is not responsible for human sacrifices but opposes them. In a time when many of Gregor’s compatriots excuse their war crimes as acts of obedience to their superiors, Gregor stands out as one of the few who did not obey orders but risked his life for his beliefs. He disassociates himself from the Sudeten German community when this community embraces Nazism. After the war, Gregor’s physical appearance bears no resemblance to that of a hero: “Schäbig gekleidet, mit kaputten Zähnen, auch etwas umständlich und nervös, sah er kaum aus wie ein Held” (29). Reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s characters, Gregor’s portrait signals both physical and psychological damage. His teeth are a sign of inner decay and illness. Gregor’s appearance is not firm and self-confident, as one would expect from a hero who was victorious in his fight against Nazism; he appears shy, awkward, and nervous, like a broken man who cannot find his role and place in the postwar era. Anna’s role model is portrayed as a man who resisted the Nazis not out of a heroic urge to save humanity but because of his humane qualities: Ihre leise Ahnung, wahrscheinlich schon damals nicht zum ersten Mal, daß es unfreiwillige Helden, oder genauer: daß es auch unfreiwilligen Widerstand gibt. Daß es Menschen gibt, die nicht so sehr aus heldenhafter Willensanstrengung Widerstand leisten, sondern die etwas, dessen Sinn sie nicht einsehen, gar nicht tun können, geschweige denn etwas, daß sie als falsch, sogar als kriminell erkennen, die nicht imstande

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sind, unsinnige Befehle auszuführen, selbst wenn sie das zum eigenen Nutzen unbedingt sollten, und auch dann nicht gehorchen, wenn sie sich damit in größte Gefahr bringen. (29)

Gregor’s portrayal reveals an “involuntary” hero who stands up for his beliefs even in the face of extreme danger. Gregor might be an unconventional hero, but he is, nevertheless, the embodiment of a new definition of hero. Among literature’s unconventional heroes, Gregor is a tragic figure, as opposed to the comic sly soldier Svejk.42 Gregor follows his beliefs even if it means fighting windmills; his involvement in the war is conscious and motivated and not a matter of hazard. History does, however, intrude on Gregor’s life, just as history invaded the life of his Central European compatriot of another war, Josef Svejk; and Gregor, like Svejk, becomes a hero in spite of himself.43 In spite of Gregor’s story and its validity, Pedretti’s text grows more and more problematic. Not only does the narrative omit important historical facts; it also leads to generalizations. How are uninitiated readers to understand the significance of this unrepresentative hero? While readers will appreciate Gregor’s fight against Nazism, they will hardly assess Gregor’s situation as being unique, since Pedretti’s text fails to emphasize in what ways Gregor is atypical. Sudeten Germans appear, therefore, in a favorable light that greatly distorts the historical past, given their involvement with Nazism and the crimes they committed against Jews and Czechs.

Expulsion and Expropriation Many Czechs vowed that when their day should come, they would have no mercy for any German. (Lu
a 209)

In 1945 Czechs officially justified the expulsion or transfer of Sudeten Germans by applying the collective-guilt principle to the entire German minority living in Czech territory — a decision that was later questioned even by Czechs. The Czech historian Bohumil erný explains his position on the expulsion: Nach der Niederlage Deutschlands wurde die Aussiedlung des nahezu gesamten deutschen Bevölkerungsanteils beschlossen. Zur Rechtfertigung diente die These von der Kollektivschuld der Sudetendeutschen an der Zerstörung der ersten CSR, wobei man nicht darüber hinwegsehen sollte, daß das Prinzip der Kollektivschuld, auf ein ganzes Volk bezogen, sicherlich fragwürdig und mehr von Emotionen als von realen Überlegungen getragen ist. Kann man wirklich ein ganzes Volk für die Untaten von diktatorischen Regierungen verantwortlich machen?44 erný’s article was published in Germany in 1969, after a conference organized by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde that took place in the

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summer of 1968. As the editors, Eugen Lemberg and Gotthold Rhode, state, Germans and Czechs, including Communist Czechs, discussed German-Czech relations “openly” and “objectively” a year earlier in Baden-Würtemberg. After Soviet troops invaded Prague in 1968, and in light of Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, the Czechs tried to reach out to the Western world, especially to the Germans, to create a new basis for German-Czech relations.45 For the Sudeten Germans, however, erný’s interpretation of Nazi history, which blames a dictator or dictatorship for all the Nazi crimes committed against Czechs during the Second World War, is convenient, to say the least. Radomír Lua, a Czech historian, attempted to explain the expulsion of Sudeten Germans in terms of this ethnic minority’s involvement with National Socialism and the crimes against Czechs committed by Sudeten Germans along with Reich Germans during the protectorate years. Even today, however, Sudeten Germans, especially their most vocal rightist representatives, do not accept any of the collective guilt ascribed to them in 1945; on the contrary, they view themselves as victims of Czech revenge and of the political constellation at the end of the Second World War. In Fritz Peter Habel’s brochure The Sudeten Question readers can discover the selective discourse that the leaders of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft still use today. Habel, the Sudeten German advocate, claims: Similarly, in a statement issued by the headquarters of the Nazi Party in Germany (NSDAP) in 1939 it was said that the objectives of the SdP had been solely to safeguard the interests of the Germans in Czechoslovakia, and that it had not engaged in an ideological and racist struggle comparable to that of the Nazis in Germany and Austria.46

How Habel can quote such a statement without commentary in 1984, when he knows about the Nazi atrocities committed against Czechs — not to mention the disaster of Lidice — is incomprehensible. Moreover, according to various historians, Henlein clearly stated his anti-Semitic agenda in 1933 when he declared himself the leader of all the Sudeten German people who wanted to embrace the idea of Volksgemeinschaft and Christianity.47 In an attempt further to portray Sudeten Germans as victims, Habel explains: “It is not the fault of the Sudeten Germans that the world did not take any notice of their plight before Hitler arrived on the scene” (9). Habel not only regards the annexation of the Sudetenland as justifiable (disregarding the fact that there were no Czechoslovak representatives at the Munich Agreement, where the fate of Czechoslovakia was decided) but also minimizes and excuses the means by which Bohemia and Moravia were annexed and the tragic consequences of the German Nazi invasion for the Czech population. In recent years interpretations such as Habel’s have allowed little room for political negotiations between Sudeten Germans and Czechs, which explains Prague’s initial negative response to the German request to include two

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Sudeten Germans in the supervising committee of the Fund for Nazi Victims. The Czech response was prompted by the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft’s rejection of the bilateral accord signed by Chancellor Kohl and President Havel in 1996 regarding crimes committed by Germans and Czechs. The Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft criticized the joint declaration because it provided no compensation for the expelled Sudeten Germans. The Prague government, therefore, considered the request of the Sudeten Germans to be represented in the committee supervising the distribution of the fund inappropriate. The fund was established by Germany in 1997, and it is dedicated to Czech survivors and victims of the Nazi regime, as well as to future relations between the two countries. After political pressure from the Christlich Soziale Union (CSU), three Sudeten German members were accepted on the committee of eight. Volkmar Gabert, a former SPD representative in the Bundestag, belongs to a family of Bohemian-German antifascists who remained loyal to Czechoslovakia during the Second World War but were, nevertheless, expelled after 1945. Former Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU) representative Herbert Werner is the other Sudeten German on the committee; there are two other German members, one from the CSU and one from the FDP. The committee also includes four Czech members, one of whom represents Czech Jews.48 In the midst of continuing controversies between Czechs and Sudeten Germans, Pedretti’s novel reminds her readers that the common history of the two peoples cannot be portrayed in black-and-white terms; rather, one has to acknowledge that Sudeten Germans cannot be equated with Nazis, since not all Czech Germans supported the Nazi regime. Peter Becher, a Sudeten German of a younger generation, explains the role of Sudeten Germans in the Germans’ attempt to cope with the Nazi past: Der selbstkritischen Verarbeitung des NS steht das Schicksal der Vertriebenen im Weg. Je negativer ihr Bild erscheint, um so leichter fällt es, sie abzulehnen oder ihr Schicksal als zwangsläufige Folge der Naziverbrechen darzustellen. Auf gewisse Weise wird das Leid der Vertriebenen als Sühneopfer betrachtet, das sie stellvertretend für alle Deutschen bringen. Ihre Sündenbockrolle wird gebraucht, um die Ernsthaftigkeit der Vergangenheitsbewältigung zu demonstrieren.49

Becher’s position differs from that of older generations of Sudeten Germans who, like Habel, view Munich 1938 as a logical consequence of the allegedly unfair Treaty of Versailles. Becher does not exclude the guilt and involvement of many Sudeten Germans with National Socialism, but he points out the fate of ethnic Germans outside the Reich. The expulsion of 3,000,000 Sudeten Germans and 5,100,000 Germans from the “Recovered Lands” in Poland and the deportation of an estimated 408,000 East-Central European Germans to Siberian forced labor camps are examples of “scapegoat roles”

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played by minority Germans.50 As I discuss in the following chapter, German-Romanians, for example, were deported to Siberia in 1945; the last ones returned home in 1954. The punishment for East Central European Germans who might or might not have been involved with Nazi Germany was far more inhumane, severe, and longer lasting than that given Reich Germans in any of the four-power occupied zones. Pedretti portrays the expulsion as the result of a long-troubled relationship between Czechs and Sudeten Germans, rather than as the consequence of the Sudeten Germans’ collaboration with the Nazis: “Chauvinismus, Nationalismus, der jahrelang schwelende, dann explodierende Haß, Verachtung und mörderischer Haß auf allen Seiten, von einer Generation zur anderen, von einem Regime zum nächsten Regime weitergegeben” (156). The complex relationship between Czechs and Sudeten Germans is represented in the larger historical and political context. Transmitted from generation to generation and activated by various regimes, the hatred between Sudeten Germans and Czechs found its last concrete expression in the expulsion of the German minority population from the Czech territory. As drastic as the Czech measure might seem today, the Czech post-Second World War regime of Edvard Bene saw the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as the ultimate answer to the Sudetenfrage, to what Czechs felt was a continuous German threat to the Czech national survival. The question remains, however: why expel all Sudeten Germans? While one can argue that the majority were supporters of the Nazi regime, there was still a minority, including Gregor and Anna’s family, who opposed the Nazis and remained loyal to the Czech Republic. Historically, the Bene regime allegedly tried to differentiate between Nazis and anti-Nazis. Drawing on various sources, both Lua and Tomá Stan k repeatedly state that in 1945 ethnic Germans who could prove that they remained loyal to the Czech people and had not been involved with the Nazis could avoid being expelled. According to several decrees of May and June 1945, those Germans who had either participated actively in the struggle against Nazism or suffered under Nazi terror could apply for Czechoslovak citizenship.51 Regaining Czechoslovak citizenship also implied exemption from expulsion and expropriation. Historians Hugh and Christopher Seton-Watson argue, however, that Bene sacrificed his antifascist German friends (Jaksch’s Social Democrats) to win the support of Czech Communists and the Soviet government: “In 1945, when the Bohemian Germans were expelled in their millions from Czechoslovakia, little if any attempt was made in reality — despite previous promises — to treat those Germans who had resisted Hitler differently from their Nazi oppressors.”52 Moreover, as Stan k argues, even German-speaking Jews were included in the deportations (42). In Engste Heimat Pedretti exposes practices of the postwar Czechoslovak regime that contradict the “official” Czech version of the transfer.

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Anna’s father and uncle, for example, are not given a chance to prove their loyalty to Czechoslovakia in 1945. They are freed by the Allies from a German prisoner camp, but when they arrive home proudly showing “Die Farben ihres Heimatlands, Rot-Weiß mit kleinem blauen Dreieck, am Revers” (44), they are taken prisoner by the Russians and transferred to a Czech camp for Nazi supporters. Historically, however, the appeal of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to the Czech people explains the situation of the two characters. On 13 May 1945 Rudé právo, the daily newspaper of the Communist Party, warned against traitors and Nazi collaborators: “gnadenlos und sofort muss insbesondere mit allen Kriegs- und politischen Verbrechern, ihren Helfershelfern und mit Verrätern abgerechnet werden.”53 According to Pedretti’s novel, the chances of the Sudeten German antifascists to prove their loyalty to the Czechs in the face of unfavorable public opinion and negative Communist propaganda were almost nonexistent. In spite of all of his actions in favor of the Czech Republic, Gregor receives no help from the new Czech government, either: Er war so schnell wie möglich aus Südfrankreich nach Paris gereist, um vom tschechischen Konsulat nach Sternberk telegrafisch bestätigen zu lassen, daß er in der tschechoslowakischen Armee in Frankreich gekämpft habe, dann in der französischen Résistance, und daß man bitte seine Eltern entsprechend behandle. Da stand er vor Tschechen, die er von Marseille und Agde her kannte, Kameraden, die ihn duzten: “Nein, Gregor,” sagten die, “wir können dir nicht helfen, wir können nichts tun für dich, du bist Deutscher.” (90; my emphasis)

Gregor’s case draws attention to the antifascist Sudeten Germans who were persecuted along with the Nazis and Nazi supporters. While Gregor’s political position and actions are politically correct, his ethnic heritage is the determining factor in his persecution at the end of the war. Although the change of political power and its consequences are strongly addressed in Pedretti’s novel, the reasons for the Czech revenge are not clearly stated. Her story has to be confronted with the oppression of Czechs at the hands of the National Socialists. Considering the political agenda of the Nazi regime, which aimed at the national destruction of Czechoslovakia, and the fact that 85 percent of the Sudeten German population supported the Nazis’ endeavors, Pedretti’s novel becomes vulnerable to considerable criticism. While portraying antifascist Sudeten Germans is justifiable, ignoring the Nazi crimes that led to the expulsion of Sudeten Germans is problematic. Czechs could hardly forget the Nazi terror of the protectorate years: arrests, deportations to concentration camps, and executions.54 According to Lua, the Sudeten Germans’ deep-rooted hate was evident, for example, in their willingness to watch Czechs being executed: Germans could purchase tickets to attend the executions for just RM 3.55

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How willing were Sudeten Germans and Reich Germans to crush Czechs and Jews in Czechoslovakia during the protectorate years? If Daniel Goldhagen’s question were applied in the case of Sudeten Germans and their crimes against Czechs and Czech Jews, the answer would be rather overwhelming.56 Furthermore, the supreme head of the SS Police, which was responsible for most Nazi atrocities in Czechoslovakia, was not a Reich German but a Sudeten German: Karl Hermann Frank (1898–1946). Historian Ronald M. Smelser characterizes Frank as “a ‘torn, ambitious man,’ a lone wolf who was imbued with a kind of mystical enthusiasm for things oldGermanic, an intellectually primitive man who harbored strong hatreds, especially for the Czechs whom he considered inferior, but also a man who had a strong bent for conspiracy.”57 Frank represented for the Czechs the embodiment of “an arrogant and ruthless Sudeten German,”58 and he “came to symbolize the hated German repression of the war years.”59 Pedretti’s novel does, however, focus on victims of the Nazi regime, regardless of their ethnicity. During her visit to Czechoslovakia in 1990 Anna states her perspective on the historical events preceding the expulsion: “Sie weiß, was Tschechen von Deutschen angetan wurde. Kadlec weiß nicht, daß sie das, im Gegensatz zu vielen Landsleuten, sehr gut weiß. Weiß er, daß dasselbe wie den Tschechen auch manchen Deutschen von Deutschen angetan wurde?” (99). Anna’s remark shifts the conflict from an ethnic antagonism to a political one: it is no longer Czechs against Germans but antiNazis against Nazis. At the same time, Anna distances herself from the ideas propagated by the Sudeten German Organization, which hardly acknowledges any persecution of the Czechs during the Nazi occupation but considers itself the sole victim.60 Moreover, the first-person narrator designates Jacqueline, Gregor’s French-Jewish wife, to raise legitimate questions regarding the Sudeten Germans’ position and their role in the Nazi persecution of the Czech Jews: Die [Jacquelines Stimme] behaupte, es habe vor dieser Vertreibung andere Vertreibungen gegeben, man habe andere Menschen auf eben diesen Plätzen zusammengetrieben und verladen, auf ebenso grausame Weise, nein, noch weit grausamer, im Einverständnis mit der Bevölkerung, zum Teil derselben, die das nächste Opfer darstellte. Woran sich aber niemand mehr zu erinnern scheine. [. . .] Jeder, der damals gefühllos zugeschaut hatte, diese früheren Treibjagden betrachtet hatte, als handle es sich um Ungeziefer, um die, leider, notwendige Vernichtung von sowas wie Ratten, betrachtete sich, als es ihm dann, nur wenige Jahre später, selber an den Kragen ging, als erstes und gänzlich unschuldiges Opfer. (95)

Jacqueline explains the fate of the Sudeten Germans as the result of their collaboration with the Nazis in the persecution of Czech Jews. The Sudeten

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Germans’ active or passive involvement in the deportation and extermination of the Czech Jews earns them, according to Jacqueline, their own expulsion — a rather uncomfortable perspective for Sudeten Germans who consider themselves innocent victims. Although Czechs could easily justify the expulsion of Sudeten Germans, explaining the brutality involved in this transfer was another story. Victims or perpetrators, Sudeten Germans were collectively considered traitors and punished accordingly. In the first chaotic and brutal months of the transfer, prior to the Potsdam Agreement, Czechs blindly accused every Sudeten German of having collaborated with the Nazis in their attempt to destroy the Czech nation. The plan for the expulsion was designed by President Edvard Bene in exile and was executed by Czechs and Russians with the agreement of the Allies.61 Engste Heimat focuses on the cruelty of what was supposed to be a “humane and orderly” transfer of Sudeten Germans at the end of the Second World War.62 As Anna’s story unfolds, troublesome memories of the first months following Nazi Germany’s defeat emerge. The cold reality behind the Gartenmauer catches up suddenly and violently with Anna. She and her mother are advised to leave their house immediately, but they are reluctant to do so, knowing that they should not have anything to fear: “Die Mutter meint, woanders kennt man uns nicht, hier weiß jeder, daß der Vater im Lager ist. Sie will nicht, wir wollen nicht weg” (48). Trying to protect the bourgeois Sudeten German girl Anna, Jirko, the Czech farmworker, advises her to run away because she is in danger regardless of her father’s political situation. On a human level, Jirko relates to Anna as to a frightened girl who has been swept away by tragic historical events. Jirko is not the only Czech who transcends politically motivated ethnic barriers; the Brzobohatýs offer Anna and her cousin shelter for a night at a time when their fear and hunger are unbearable. Disregarding possible repercussions, the family of farmer Musil takes Anna into its home and treats her like a daughter. Anna spends the most dangerous months — May to October 1945, the first phase of the expulsion — on the erotínov, Musil’s farm. She returns to see the Musils thirty years later, and then again after another fourteen years. In spite of her rare visits, Anna is still regarded as a family member: “Wann immer du kommst, hier bist du zu Hause” (128). According to Pedretti’s novel, those who carried out the expulsion were people who could profit from the change, who had often changed sides before, and who wanted to secure an advantageous position for themselves in the new political system: “Es sind gar nicht die, die am meisten gelitten haben, die sich rächen, keineswegs,” sagte Gregor, und er mußte es wissen: “Es waren und sind weiterhin die stillen Anpasser, die eifrigen Profiteure und aktiven Kollaborateure, die am lautesten hetzen, sobald sich die Umstände än-

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dern, die dann am mörderischsten zuschlagen. Sie wollen doch ihre gute Gesinnung, sie müssen die jetzt gefragte Überzeugung demonstrieren und sich so im neuen Regime legitimieren.” (100–101)

To give legitimacy to Gregor’s rather audacious statement denouncing the zealous collaborators of the Národní Výbor the first-person narrator reminds the reader indirectly that Gregor is a victim himself and, therefore, a trustworthy witness. The narrator’s reassuring remark (“und er mußte es wissen”) underscores Gregor’s credibility by implying that Gregor, the victim, has not sought revenge but, nevertheless, witnesses “die stillen Anpasser” taking it upon themselves to restore “justice” by agitating the Czech population against all Sudeten Germans. The narrative’s example of such an opportunist is korpil, a painter who not only steals some of Gregor’s paintings at the end of the war but also documents the expulsion by painting an extremely accurate and detailed picture of his hometown’s Sudeten Germans, driven out of their houses into the town square: Ein großartiges Bild, in den kleinsten Details genau, die Figuren für jedermann gut kenntlich, ja, die einzelnen Personen wiederzuerkennen, ein bewegendes Dokument: Zusammengedrängt auf diesem Platz Tausende, meist Frauen, frierende, weinende Alte und Kranke, Schwangere und kleine Kinder, Säuglinge und Kriegsinvalide, mit ihren Pinkeln, Koffern und Körben, den Resten ihrer Habe, beim Warten aufs Verladen in die Eisenbahnwaggons, meist Viehwaggons, zwecks Vertreibung von ihrem Ort, aus ihrem Land. Sein, korpils, Meisterwerk. (93)

The bitter irony in the narrator’s description evokes not only the tragic circumstances under which the expulsion was carried out but also a deep disrespect for korpil’s lack of morality and for his overtly zealous sense of duty. The Národní Výbor instructed and commissioned korpil to paint the picture, and korpil readily accepted the job. korpil’s masterwork was proudly exhibited in the town hall as “triumphales Zeugnis geglückter Rache” (93). korpil’s painting, however, presents a picture of the enemy that clashes with the official Czech line: not arrogant and well-to-do Sudeten Germans but weak, frightened women, children, and old people who are driven out of their country, as the first-person narrator emphasizes. korpil does not portray them as a mass of suffering people but individualizes each of his involuntary “models” to the point of recognition. The opportunist korpil changes sides again years later, when he explains that his real reason for painting the picture was to document the suffering, the inhumane treatment, and the heartbreaking sorrow of the expelled. After all, his own relatives were among the persecuted, and they did not shy away from calling him “opportune Windfahne” (92). When relating scenes of expulsion and persecution, the first-person narrator draws a parallel to the persecution of the Jews during the Third Reich. Governed by rage and revenge, Czechs and Russians treat the ethnic Germans

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in a way not unlike that in which the Nazis had treated the Jews. By comparing the persecution of Sudeten Germans with the persecution of the Jews, Pedretti’s novel situates itself in the danger zone of the German Historikerstreit.63 Pedretti not only thematizes the victimization of Germans but also associates it with the Holocaust. Pedretti probably never intended to minimize the uniqueness of the Holocaust; her novel contributes to the new French Historikerstreit rather than the German historians’ debate of 1985–86. The French debate on Nazism and Communism was initiated by the appearance of Le Livre noir du Communisme in 1997.64 Comparing the number of victims under Nazism and Communism, the authors uncover startling facts: 25 million victims of Nazism versus 100 million victims of Communism. The French book does not equate Nazism with Communism or the victims of the Holocaust with those of Stalinism and Communism but differentiates between race genocide and class genocide.65 In Pedretti’s novel characters are victims of both Nazism and Stalinism; Gregor, for example, is persecuted by the Nazis for his antifascist political convictions; then, at the end of the war, Czechs and Russians persecute him and his family of antifascists on account of both ethnic identity and social status. In Engste Heimat the practices of Czechs and Russians show striking similarities to those of the Nazis. Driven out of their homes, old people, women, and children are loaded onto cattle trains or left to walk to the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany. To mark the Sudeten Germans and isolate them from the rest, they are forced to wear badges with the letter N, which stands for n
mec (German).66 Pedretti’s depiction of the expulsion again grows problematic because she compares the fate of the Jews during the Second World War with that of the Sudeten Germans in 1945. Although the story of Anna’s family and those of innocent Sudeten German children deserve empathy, many Sudeten Germans were guilty of serious crimes that were the main reason for their expulsion. More important, Jews were taken to extermination camps, while Sudeten Germans could, for better or for worse, begin a new life in the German-speaking countries. By omitting the historical events that led to the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, Pedretti’s text risks minimizing the Holocaust. Anna, like other victims of the expulsion, associates it with rape and the brutality of soldiers: “Wir kennen das schon, jedes Kind kennt doch das entsetzliche Kreischen, nicht nur nachts und nicht nur aus den Häusern, Straßenecken, Gebüsch, allerorts, wenn die Soldaten ohne Liebe hungrig gierig gewaltsam über die verschleppten Frauen herfallen” (143). The narrator gives powerful expression to the scenes of rape, viewed from the perspective of the children who witness the soldiers attacking their mothers.67 The contrast between the active subjects and the passive objects of rape is expressed through the choice of adjectives. The absence of commas in the description of the soldiers, “ohne Liebe hungrig gierig gewaltsam” intensifies and increases the effect of coerced action. In sharp contrast with the

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soldiers, women are characterized by the static past participle “verschleppt,” which implies not only helplessness but also lack of freedom. The only resistance is the women’s “Kreischen,” which children can hear from everywhere like a horrifying chorus. It is, therefore, not surprising that the trauma of expulsion has left deep psychological and emotional scars on Anna, as well as on her family. The first-person narrator is troubled by Kafkaesque dreams of guilt that are staged in remote, unknown settings such as Turkey. In her dream the narrator is confronted with questions, doubts, and memories she tries to avoid during the day: what right or responsibility does she have to relate Gregor’s story? Does she write this story to come to terms with her past, as in undergoing therapy? Why does she want to go back to Moravia for a second time? Why not give up her dream of Heimat? And why Turkey? Although some questions do not have definite answers, it becomes evident that the narrator’s intentions are to speak of Gregor as a representative of Sudeten German victims. Gregor and his story become a vehicle for uncovering overlooked aspects of history regarding the expulsion of the German minority from Czechoslovakia; in turn, Anna’s journey becomes a quest for Gregor’s life and his lost paintings, since they symbolize and document a culture that no longer exists. It is also a journey in time and history; it is a way to cope with loss and painful memories — literature as therapy, Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The first-person narrator is trying to come to terms with the consequences of the Nazi regime in her homeland, Moravia. Anna’s journey leads back to places that seem as remote as Turkey and yet so familiar: Turkey is a threshold between cultures and nations, just as Moravia used to be; and both are at the intersection of Western and Eastern influences — German and Slavic for Moravia, European and Asian for Turkey. The turmoil the first-person narrator experiences on her first real trip to Turkey brings back memories of her past experiences. In her dream the narrator is suddenly transposed into postwar Moravia and is reliving her memories, thereby attempting to cope with the past she tries to suppress during the day. For her alleged offences the narrator has to report to a court somewhere in the eastern part of Turkey. Feelings of uncertainty and helplessness characterize her state of mind: Wie entgehe ich den Verkleideten, diesen Häschern? Keine Unschuld. Nichts zu beweisen. Wie komm ich zu einem Gericht? Gibt es überhaupt ein gerechtes Gericht? Hoffentlich beweg ich mich in die richtige Richtung. Obwohl ich mir auch in dieser Hinsicht nicht so sicher bin. (88)

The deep-rooted fear of soldiers, officials, and policemen surfaces again in her dream as a postwar legacy that the narrator has yet to overcome. The impossibility of proving her innocence speaks not only for the narrator as an ethnic German from Moravia but also for the innocent Sudeten Germans

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who either chose not to or were never allowed to speak up and prove their innocence. A higher court had decided their unequivocal collective guilt — a decision that disregarded individual cases and allowed the persecution of innocent people along with the perpetrators on account of their common German ethnicity. Pedretti’s project is to draw attention to the innocent victims of the expulsion; since she largely neglects to mention the overwhelming collaboration of the Sudeten Germans with the Nazis, however, Pedretti produces a revisionist text. An uninitiated audience will be moved by the scenes of rape and brutality seen through the eyes of a child. The sympathy Pedretti evokes, however, has to be challenged by the important facts the author chooses to avoid. Gregor’s unique story has to be confronted with those of Sudeten Germans who were involved with Nazi Germany and were guilty of the Nazi crimes committed in Czechoslovakia. Pedretti’s text has to be read against the historical and political background of the First Czechoslovak Republic to achieve a balanced representation of the events leading to the expulsion.

Czech Epilogue In diesem marxistischen Land wäre Marx, als Deutscher vertrieben, als Bürgerlicher kaltgestellt und als Jude verfemt, dreifach verfolgt worden. (Engste Heimat 136)

In 1990 Czech president Václav Havel visited East and West Germany in an attempt to foster the relationship between democratic Czechoslovakia and the two Germanies. In the light of tragic historical events that affected Czechs and Sudeten Germans during and after the Second World War, Havel reminded his audience of the political implications of a unified Germany: “We need not fear a peaceful and democratic [German] state no matter how large it is. . . . Much of Czechoslovakia borders on East and West Germany. Germany virtually surrounds us. It must free its neighbors from fear, especially the fear of a Greater Germany.”68 Havel expressed the thoughts and fears of most European countries regarding the prospect of a “Greater Germany” — a statement that echoes Willy Brandt’s remark: “I do not ever forget that it was Hitler’s ‘Greater Germany’ above all that brought so much unspeakable suffering to Eastern Europe.”69 Havel also refers to Nazi Germany and the disastrous consequences a state encompassing most Germans had on Czechoslovakia. Ahead of his time, Havel acknowledged the unfair persecution of many innocent Sudeten Germans by the Czech post-Second World War regime — a statement that was highly criticized by his countrymen. Six years later Germany and the Czech Republic did, however, sign an agreement in which they both recognized their crimes and their guilt.

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In Engste Heimat Pedretti creates characters who experienced persecution and have to live with the psychological consequences of their lost past and the trauma of expulsion. These characters’ “guilt” lies basically in their ethnic association with the actual perpetrators. The first-person narrator relates personal stories of people who can find little comfort in recent political agreements, such as Anna’s aunt, who refuses even to look at pictures of her Moravian home taken by Anna in 1976 and 1990. The political changes in Czechoslovakia cannot reverse the historical events; these victims can at most achieve the recognition of their persecution in the face of history — which, of course, is simultaneously tainted by the outrageous guilt of many countrymen who collaborated with the Nazis. Historically, the towns formerly inhabited by Sudeten Germans were left to deteriorate or were populated by Czechs, Slovaks, or Roma.70 According to Alfred Bohmann, who focuses on the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from the region of Aussig (Ústí), the Prague government ordered about half a million Slovaks to the Sudeten German areas to repopulate these places in Aussig. Most of the Slovaks took over the agricultural zones. Czechs had the hardest task: they had to fill in for the many skilled German workers and specialists and to revive their industries. According to Bohmann, Gypsies inhabited regions of the towns, but integrating them into the work process turned out to be quite difficult.71 Bohumil erný also points out the economic, social, and cultural consequences the massive expulsion of Sudeten Germans had on Czechoslovakia.72 By juxtaposing scenes from the trips and memories of expulsion, the narrator of Pedretti’s novel refers to three points in history — 1945, 1976, and 1990 — to address the demographic changes and their impact on people, cities, villages, and buildings. Anna’s internalized pictures of her lost homeland, which she has carried with her for decades, undergo significant transformations. Faced with the Moravia of 1976 and then of 1990, her memories fail the reality check: Schönberg. Die Plätze und Gassen von
umperk und die Häuser, je nobler einst, um so verkommener heute. Kehr dich nicht um, Anna, geh weiter! Du hast doch alles, es ist alles in dir drin, die Zimmer, zwei Gärten, Blumen, Blumen, die Müh, manchmal Qual beim Bergsteigen, Spieglitzer, Roter Berg, Altvater. [. . .] Wer wollte das jetzt ruinieren, den Anfang und ein schönes Stück weit Leben, vollständige, dir liebe Bilder mutwillig zerstören. (155)

This passage points not only to the physical and demographic changes of the former German areas but also to the psychological impact these changes have on Anna. By deciding to return to her hometown, Anna faces the prospect of altering her internalized memories. New memories replace the old ones, and from this point onward it becomes impossible for Anna to

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think of her homeland without associating it with the new pictures she gains during her visits. The admonishing voice (155) points out the danger of replacing those old memories and thereby influencing and forcing a new perspective on the past. In Anna’s quest for her homeland the narrator uncovers aspects of continuity but also of rupture; everything seems to be the way Anna left it many years ago, and still: “[Man] fühlt sich daheim [. . .] und ist gleichzeitig ganz fremd” (33). During her visit to Communist Czechoslovakia in 1976 Anna is not welcome and hardly tolerated: she not is only a Sudeten German who might claim lost properties but she also represents the “archenemy” of Communists, the “dreadful” Western capitalists. The first-person narrator is not allowed to see her grandfather’s house; the gates and doors are locked. Old inhabitants have been replaced by new ones, whom she does not recognize. The towns have Czech names; German names sound antiquated, since they evoke an uncomfortable time long since past. By superimposing memories of Anna’s last months in post-Second World War Czechoslovakia onto the time of Anna’s trips back to Moravia, the first-person narrator creates alienating images in which the new and the old mingle and contrast in the narrative texture. When Anna revisits her house in 1990, she is forced to acknowledge the passing of time; she feels like an intruder in the house of her parents: Auf der großen Sandsteinstiege, die wöchentlich von Stufe zu Stufe auf den Knien geschrubbt und mit Tonwasser geweichselt worden war, liegt jetzt ein Kunststoffbelag, oben sind statt der hohen doppelflügigen Eichentüren cremeweiß lackierte Normtüren. [. . .] Befremdend. Als wäre die Zeit stehengeblieben. Mir ist alles am befremdlichsten, fast unheimlich erschienen, was gleichgeblieben ist und zugleich alt, uralt geworden. Die Zeit vergeht nicht zum Schein, die Zeit ist nicht stehengeblieben. (176–77)

By contrasting the old and known with the new and strange, the first-person narrator differentiates between two perceptions of time: the personal and the official. The narrator’s personal sense of time stood still in 1945 and is reified through familiar objects such as the stairwell of the house, still in place in 1990. At the same time, the narrator realizes that outside of her memories time has taken its course, replacing or altering the world of 1945. The house of her memories has adapted; the modernized version of the house, which now functions as a school, excludes the narrator, the owner of the past. Houses, places, and people that Anna has not seen in thirty or forty-five years trigger positive and negative associations in her mind and in the narrative. For the most part, she associates her homeland with fear: “Eine heute unbegründete, aber sehr tief sitzende, in dieser heimatlichen Gegend lauernde, bald lebenslange Angst” (102). The notion of Heimat, which is traditionally

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defined by security, safety, and belonging, undergoes a drastic transformation in Anna’s case. Based on her previous traumatic experiences, Anna’s engste Heimat is also the Heimat der Ängste: the place of fear, persecution, and suffering. While the first-person narrator can rationally assess her present situation, emotionally she constantly relates to the nightmares of the past, to Anna’s childhood memories. Fear represents the constant reminder, the axis of continuity, the link between past and present in Anna’s/the narrator’s life. Anna’s visits to the places of persecution force her to relive painful memories of her childhood. Describing a scene in which the fifteen-year-old Anna is about to be raped by a Russian soldier but escapes when her mother and her aunt offer their wedding rings and a golden watch in exchange, the first-person narrator completely identifies with Anna: Grade erst konfirmiert, vorzeitig, den Zeitläufen, dem täglich näherrückenden Frontverlauf entsprechend, und schon wieder konfirmiert im Glauben an des Himmlischen Unzurechnungsfähigkeit. Die kleinen Geschwister starren sie an, mit offenen Mündern, tonlos. Die Zeit ist stehengeblieben, ist entsetzlich stehengeblieben in mir, immer noch bin ich in dem engen Raum eingezwängt zwischen Bett und Wand, starr unter dem schmerzenden Zugriff. (103)

The sudden changes of tense from past to present, of narrators from thirdperson to first-person, and of subjects from Anna to I illustrate once again that Anna and the first-person narrator are one and the same character. The firstperson narrator manipulates and guides Anna (as I have shown in a previous section); she sends Anna places; she creates Anna to distance herself emotionally from the past. In extremely painful scenes, like the one described in the passage just quoted, the first-person narrator cannot hide behind Anna’s protective shield any longer; she falls back into her role as the main character and experiencer of the narrated story. It is evident that the narrator has not come to terms with her past. Being trapped and cornered by the Russian soldier exemplifies her inability to escape the past; by revisiting these locations she triggers overwhelming feelings of helplessness and fear. The narrator is once more petrified in a motionless and soundless tableau of terror, surrounded by her younger siblings paralyzed with fear, staring at the scene unfolding in front of their eyes, as if time stood still. This highly expressive picture allows the reader to enter and experience it sensually and emotionally. In an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung Pedretti emphasizes the sensory rather than reflective impact she hopes her writing has on the reader: she wants the reader to comprehend and reconstruct history by seeing, hearing, and smelling.73 As part of her attempt to come to terms with the past, Anna visits Czechoslovakia for a second time in 1990, months after the “Velvet Revolution.” She is now faced with political and economic changes that reversed most previous Communist laws. Old Communists suddenly become “sanfte

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Revolutionäre,” and history is rearranged once more, according to new ideological and political needs (98). Since the political game and the players have changed, or at least changed sides again, capitalists who had lost their factories to the state and were driven out of the country are now welcomed back: “Davon wird in den Zeitungen wie von einem Staatsbesuch berichtet” (136). As the narrator remarks, Czech people expect these “Fabrikanten” to claim their nationalized property and invest the capital necessary to make the factories viable (136). The most striking example of change, however, is that German songs can be heard in Prague again — certainly, something unheard of since the protectorate: “das können, das dürfen hier mitten in Prag, doch keine Schnulzen, keine deutschen Volkslieder sein!” (97). Because of these political changes, Anna is able to visit places and talk to people openly, without jeopardizing their freedom. On the one hand, she sees people who reject or opportunistically modify their past and their past actions, as the painter korpil does. On the other hand, however, she recognizes people who remained loyal to their beliefs in spite of the persecution they had to suffer, as illustrated in the case of the Musils. During the Communist era the Musils are branded as antipatriotic because of their religious beliefs; they lose their farm, the Zerotínov, and have to witness its destruction under the supervision of what Musil calls “Bürolisten,” employees “ohne Verstand, ohne Liebe” (129). Persecution on various levels does, however, continue even in the recently achieved democracy. While religious persecution seems to calm down after the fall of Communism and the end of the atheistic era, and people such as the Musils are free to practice their religion openly, other ethnic discriminations are revived. As Herta Müller addresses the situation of the Roma in Romania, Erica Pedretti uncovers a similar kind of persecution of Romanis in Czechoslovakia — a persecution that flared up more intensely after 1989 in the former East Bloc. In Bury Me Standing Isabel Fonseca illustrates the racial discrimination of “Gypsies” in Czechoslovakia through an example: In Czechoslovakia, twenty-eight Gypsies had been killed in racial attacks since the Velvet Revolution which returned that country to democracy. The attitude of the whole region towards the Roma was expressed by Magdalena Babicka, a contestant in a 1993 Czech beauty pageant from the industrial city of Ústí nad Labem. Asked what she’d like to be when she grew up, Magdalena won an ovation for sharing her dream of becoming a public prosecutor — “so I might cleanse our town of all the dark-skinned people.”74

Pedretti describes the continued discrimination and persecution as an essential characteristic of this epoch: “Und wo sollte die ganze spezifische Grausamkeit dieser Epoche hin sein? Einfach aus der Welt, für immer verschwunden?” (125).

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According to Pedretti’s novel, hate is at the core of all persecutions: at one point, Czechs were persecuted, then Germans, and now the Roma: “Man hat sie gerade in diese Häuser gewiesen, in den früher von den Deutschen bewohnten, nach deren Vertreibung fast leergeräumten Gegenden wurden die Roma angesiedelt,” wendet Slávka ein, und als auch Anna etwas sagen will, unterbricht sie der Mann: “Sie stehlen und drücken sich vor jeder Arbeit und rauben uns aus, das Pack wird von jedem ordentlichen Bürger gehaßt,” er selber tönt jetzt drohend: “Die kriegen sieben, acht oder gar neun Kinder, eine Plage, alle stehlen, die ganze Stadt, die Dörfer rundum, die ganze Gegend ist voller Zigeuner, vertreiben muß man das Gesindel, totschlagen sollte man die!” (135)

The derogatory terms “eine Plage” and “das Pack,” which are employed by the Czech interpreter to describe the Roma, reveal a vocabulary used to refer to animals rather than to people. All the stereotypes associated with “Gypsies” are present: stealing, robbing, having large families, and avoiding honest work. Historically, Roma were used to repopulate German areas after the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. After 1989 “Gypsies” are subjected to racial discrimination and even murder. In Pedretti’s novel the expulsion of Sudeten Germans in 1945/46 and the persecution of the “Gypsies” today are linked by ethnic hatred and an ethnonational ideology. According to Engste Heimat, the prejudices associated with the “Gypsies” become excuses and cover-ups for a Czech nationalistic agenda that does not tolerate ethnic diversity. In 1997 The New York Times reported that Canada’s decision to cancel visa requirements for Czech citizens prompted “an exodus of Gypsies from Prague.”75 Their reason for asylum claims in Canada is racial discrimination. By comparing the discrimination against the Roma people in 1990 with the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in 1945, Pedretti draws an antiCzech picture that ultimately depicts Sudeten Germans and Roma alike as innocent victims persecuted by Czech nationalists. Although the relationship between Czechs and Germans was officially reestablished in 1997, fear and mistrust still exist on a personal level on both sides. According to the late Libue Moníková, a Czech-born writer of German literature, the historical wounds have yet to heal: Deutsche und Tschechen, die wunde Naht der Grenze. Die Atavismen des Mißtrauens, der Angst voneinander reichen weit zurück; jeder historische Zusammenstoß hat sie bestärkt und weitergetragen, an die nächste Generation weitergereicht. Jede Chance, sich näherzukommen, voneinander zu profitieren, wurde durch eingefleischte Feindbilder vertan.76

Moníková understands the troubled relationship between Czechs and Germans in the historical context of their centuries-long coexistence. Czechs and Germans alike perpetuate the images of hate from one generation to

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another. Their lingering fear of one another explains the remark of a Czech student visiting Germany in 1997: “Es gibt im Unterbewußtsein ein bißchen Angst vor den Deutschen.”77

Notes 1

Václav Havel, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice (New York: Knopf, 1997), 23. 2

“Sudeten Germans” is a collective term for Germans who once lived in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. It was, however, only after the First World War that the term Sudetendeutsche was commonly used to refer to Germans living in the territory of the First Czechoslovak Republic. 3

In 1990 a German-Czech-Slovak Committee of Historians was founded so that historians on all three sides could discuss and prepare the documentation for the bilateral pact on wartime abuses. 4

Alan Cowell, “Germans and Czechs Agree To Pact on Wartime Abuses,” New York Times, 11 December 1996, A12. 5

Erica Pedretti, “Schauen/Schreiben; Wie kommt das Bild zur Sprache,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9 March 1996: Literatur und Kunst, 65. 6

Karl-Peter Schwarz, “Tschechische Republik: Prager Protest gegen Ehrung für Alois Mock,” Die Presse 19 May 1994, online, Lexis-Nexis (source: Reuter Textline). 7

For excellent discussions of films and literature on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, see Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992). 8

Timothy Garton Ash, “The Truth about Dictatorship,” The New York Review of Books (19 February 1998): 35. 9

For the positions of East and West German politicians (Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt, Bundespräsident Richard von Weizsäcker, East German president Erich Honecker, etc.) on how to deal with the Nazi past, see the thorough analyses by Jeffrey Herf in his Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997). On the controversy surrounding President Reagan’s visit to the military cemetery at Bitburg that includes graves of SS soldiers, see Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986). On the historians’ debate of 1986, see Rudolf Augstein et al., “Historikerstreit”: Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung (1987; Munich: Piper, 1995). In literature the phases of Vergangenheitsbewältigung range from Trümmerliteratur after 1945 (Wolfgang Weyrauch, Günter Eich, Wolfdietrich Schnurre, and Wolfgang Borchert) to works of the 1950s and 1960s (Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Siegfried Lenz) to Väterliteratur and Elternliteratur of the 1970s and 1980s entailing autobiographic accounts of childhoods impacted by the parents’ involvement with National Socialism (Christa Wolf, Thomas Brasch, Karin Struck, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Härtling, Peter Schneider, and Herta Müller). 10

See Christa Hoffmann, Stunden Null? Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Deutschland 1945 und 1989 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1992); see also Herf’s Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys.

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11

For a discussion of National Socialism seen through the perspective of children, see Debbie Pinfold, The Child’s View of the Third Reich in German Literature: The Eye among the Blind (Oxford: Clarendon P, 2001). 12

Elizabeth Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans: A Study of the Struggle in the Historic Provinces of Bohemia and Moravia (London: Oxford UP, 1938), 8.

13

See also Eugen Lemberg, “Wandlungen im deutsch-tschechischen Verhältnis,” Deutsche und Tschechen, ed. the Adalbert-Stifter-Verein (Munich: Delp, 1971): “Erst das nationale Erwachen des 19. Jahrhunderts, das Tschechen und Deutsche [. . .] nach sprachlich-völkischen Merkmalen voneinander trennte, veranlaßte sie [Sudetendeutsche und Tschechen], sich in ihrer modernen Gestalt in die Geschichte zurückzuprojizieren und moderne Nationsbegriffe auf Epochen zu übertragen, in denen sie nicht galten” (9). 14

Kann and David 325.

15

Kann and David 105.

16

Kann and David 107.

17

I use Kann and David’s data on these ratios (196). Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526–1918 (Berkeley: U of California P, 1974), 441. 18

19

Hugh Seton-Watson and Christopher Seton-Watson, The Making of a New Europe: R. W. Seton-Watson and the Last Years of Austria-Hungary (Seattle: U of Washington P, 1981), 355. Radomír Lua, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans (New York: New York UP, 1964), 29. 20

21

See also Lua 34.

22

Ferdinand Seibt, Deutschland und die Tschechen: Geschichte einer Nachbarschaft in der Mitte Europas (Munich: Piper, 1998), 255.

23

Konrad Henlein (1898–1945) was the leader of the Sudeten German Party, the SSGruppenführer, and the Reichsstatthalter of the Sudetengau in the Nazi era. In 1945 he was captured by the Americans and committed suicide. Ironically, one of Henlein’s grandmothers was of Czech nationality. For a comprehensive study of Henlein see Ralf Gebel, “Heim ins Reich!” Konrad Henlein und der Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000). 24 In 1938 Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain decided that Czechoslovakia should cede the Sudetenland to Germany. 25

For an extensive and detailed analysis of these events, see Peter Glotz, ed., München 1938: Das Ende des alten Europa (Essen: Hobbing, 1990). 26

See Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998), 221. As Radomír Lua argues, the Sudeten Germans felt deprived of the right of selfdetermination, which was their strongest argument. The Sudeten Germans were, however, the ones who consistently denied this right to all Slav nationalities (30). 28 According to Lua’s sources, Hitler viewed the Czechs as the very type of the Slav “Untermenschen” (49). 27

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29

Lidice provoked an immediate international reaction: Nicholas G. Balint, Lidice Lives Forever (New York: Europa, 1942); P.E.N., ed. Lidice: A Tribute by the Members of the International P.E.N. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1944); Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Murder of Lidice (New York & London: Harper, 1942). See also Heinrich Mann, Lidice (Mexico City: Editorial El Libro libre, 1943). 30

See Hans-Werner Ludwig, ed., Arbeitsbuch Romananalyse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), 89. 31

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Holquist and Caryl Emerson (Austin: U of Texas P, 1981), 263. 32

The issue of language use had been a problem throughout the history of Bohemia and Moravia. For example, according to Kann and David, in 1898 “all educated Czechs knew German but relatively few Germans knew Czech and perhaps even fewer wanted to learn it” (308). 33

Pedretti employs Kafka’s passage as a quote; she does, however, edit it: Kafka’s text reads “Du konntest z. B. auf die Tschechen schimpfen . . .” (123). Pedretti also inserts commas that are missing in the original. 34

In the lines preceding the quotation chosen by Pedretti, Kafka addresses the tyrannical nature of his father, which explains the quotation: “In deinem Lehnstuhl regiertest du die Welt. Deine Meinung war richtig, jede andere war verrückt, überspannt, meschugge, nicht normal. Dabei war dein Selbstvertrauen so gross, dass du gar nicht konsequent sein musstest und doch nicht aufhörtest Recht zu haben. Es konnte auch vorkommen, dass du in einer Sache überhaupt keine Meinung hattest und infolgedessen alle Meinungen, die hinsichtlich der Sache überhaupt möglich waren, ohne Ausnahme falsch sein mussten” (123). Franz Kafka, Brief an den Vater: Faksimile (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1994). 35

Since 1918 “Where Is My Homeland?” has been the national anthem of Czechoslovakia and now of the Czech Republic. 36

Without representatives of Czechoslovakia, the prime ministers of Britain and France met with Hitler and Mussolini and decided to cede the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in order to secure peace in Europe. Czechs felt betrayed and humiliated by France and Britain. See Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe (New York: Oxford UP, 1996), 209–10. 37

See Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Anmerkungen zur Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1987), 41.

In 1940 Edvard Bene organized a Czechoslovak government in exile that was recognized by Great Britain. The Czechoslovak army was constituted in France and took part in the battles of June 1940. See Lua 224.

38

Interestingly enough, according to Radomír Lua, Germans who reviewed the losses during the Nazi period falsely accused Czechs of causing the deaths of about 20,500 Germans, who were actually German Jews exterminated by the Nazis. An estimated 30.3 percent of the Jews in Czechoslovakia declared themselves Germans, and their deaths were erroneously considered by Germans to be Czech crimes against Sudeten Germans (298).

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E 113

40

According to Mogacsi, 85 percent of the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia was killed by 1945. Paul Robert Magocsi, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993), 164.

41

Translated from the Czech by Martin Humpal, Charles University, Prague.

42

Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War, trans. Cecil Parrott (New York: Crowell, 1974). 43

For an extended discussion of Svejk in relation to Central European identity and history, see Nikola Petkovic, “The ‘Post’ in Postcolonial and Postmodern: The Case of Central Europe,” diss., U of Texas at Austin, 1996, 20–102. See also Peter Demetz, “Die Literaturgeschichte Svejks,” Literarische Symbolfiguren, ed. Werner Wunderlich (Bern: Haupt, 1989), 189–207. Bohumil erný, “Die deutsche Frage in der CSR (1918–1938),” Das deutschtschechische Verhältnis seit 1918, ed. Eugen Lemberg and Gotthold Rhode (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969), 58. 44

45

See Willy Brandt, Friedenspolitik in Europa (1968; Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1971); Lemberg and Rhode 7. 46

Fritz Peter Habel, The Sudeten Question (Munich: Sudeten German Council, 1984), 8. 47 See Lua 71. 48

“Zwei Sudetendeutsche im Zukunftsfonds,” taz (27 January 1998): 6.

49

Karl-Peter Schwarz, “Mit Vollgas in die Sackgasse” Die Woche 13 April 1995: Ausland 25. 50 See Magocsi 167. 51

Lua 271; Stank 38–41.

52

Hugh and Christopher Seton-Watson 437.

53

Quoted in Stank 96.

54

See also Vojtech Mastny, The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942 (New York: Columbia UP, 1971), especially the chapter “Czech Nationalism — Resurgence and Repression” 105–22. Also, for a collection of photographs representing Prague during the Nazi regime, see Callum MacDonald and Jan Kaplan, Prague in the Shadow of the Swastika: A History of the German Occupation, 1939–1945 (Vienna: WUV Universitätsverlag, 2001). According to Radomír Lua’s sources, German women were particularly fond of watching these executions (209). 55

56

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996).

57

Ronald M. Smelser, The Sudeten Problem 1933–1938: Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1975), 85. 58

Lua 203.

59

Smelser 84–85.

See Lua’s critical commentaries on German historians and their perspectives on the protectorate years. He quotes Erich Kern, who claims that Czech autonomy was

60

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almost complete during the Nazi occupation, and Eugen Lemberg, who enumerates “advantages” Czechs had under Hitler’s regime (222, footnote 70). 61

Czechoslovak officials asked Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union to discuss the transfer at the Potsdam conference in July-August 1945. 62 According to article XIII of the Potsdam Agreement of 2 August 1945, the transfer was supposed to be conducted in a humane and orderly manner (Stanek 45–46). 63

See Augstein et al., “Historikerstreit.”

64

Stephane Courtois, ed., Le livre noir du Communisme (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1997). 65

See also the book review by Ulrike Ackermann, “Das schwarze Buch des Kommunismus,” taz (1 December 1997): 12.

Tomá Stank explains that Sudeten Germans were forced to wear the N, while active Nazis had a swastika painted on their backs (78). The Czech movie Divided We Fall (2000) depicts this procedure. 66

Stank relates that Czech and Russian soldiers frequently raped women and girls in front of children and siblings: “Zu zahlreichen Selbstmorden — manchmal auch ganzer Familien — führte die brutale und vielfach wiederholte Vergewaltigung von Frauen und Mädchen ohne Rücksicht auf deren Alter, Gesundheitszustand oder die Anwesenheit nächster Verwandter und kleiner Kinder” (69).

67

68

“Czech President Visits Two Germanies,” World News Digest, 5 January 1990: Europe 5 B1. 69

Brandt 148.

Radomír Lua mentions only Czech and Slovak families who took over the Sudeten German properties. The German industrial property and the banks were nationalized (271).

70

71

Alfred Bohmann, Die Ausweisung der Sudetendeutschen (Marburg: Elwert, 1955, 101.

72

Lemberg and Rhode 58.

73

Erica Pedretti, “Schauen/Schreiben; Wie kommt das Bild zur Sprache,” 65. Fonseca 145.

74 75

Jane Perlez, “Boxed in by Bias, Czech Gypsies Look to Canada,” The New York Times, 31 August 1997: International 3. Libue Moníková, “Über eine schwierige Nachbarschaft,” Die Zeit, 14 March 1997: Feuilleton, 13–14. 76

77

“Statt Gespräch nur Geschwafel,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 August 1997: Munich.

4: The Discourse of Discontent: Politics and Dictatorship in Herta Müller’s Herztier (1994)

A

GERMAN-ROMANIAN writers who tried to start a new life and career in the Federal Republic of Germany, Herta Müller is currently the most successful but also the most controversial. In 1987 she left Romania after she and her husband at the time, the poet Richard Wagner, had endured persecution under Ceauescu’s totalitarian regime. In Germany, as she stated in many interviews, she and Wagner wanted to be accepted as political refugees, not as ethnic Germans. Müller and Wagner’s application for political asylum complicated and delayed the process of establishing their status in Germany, since German immigration officials were looking for proof of German ethnicity — even if it meant a family member’s collaboration with Nazi Germany or looking up the old Volkslisten records. As disturbing as it might seem, checking Nazi lists was still a common procedure for proving German ethnicity. Both Müller and Wagner could prove easily that they were ethnic Germans; indeed, Müller’s father and uncle had been in the SS during the Second World War. Not only did Müller irritate German immigration officials; she confused German critics, as well. In Germany she continued to write novels and essays on Romanian topics, seemingly shying away from German realities after a first, much criticized attempt in 1989, when Rotbuch published Reisende auf einem Bein, a novel based on the experiences of an Eastern European immigrant in Germany. German critics approached her work hesitantly, revealing a limited insight into the Romanian or German-Romanian context. In a public discussion in Marburg, Wagner expressed his frustration with the ignorance of many Germans regarding East Central European Germans and their historical background: MONG THE

Ich bin seit zweieinhalb Jahren hier und erkläre immer wieder, woher ich komme [. . .] und wenn ich sage, ich komme aus dem Banat, dann muß ich selbstverständlich anfangen zu erklären, was das Banat ist, wo das liegt. [. . .] Ich muß dann erklären, daß das zum Habsburgerreich gehörte. Ich wundere mich auch nicht, daß man nicht weiß, wie das mit dem Habsburgerreich war. Dann fange ich an zu erklären, wie das mit dem Habsburgerreich war. Dann fange ich an zu erklären, daß im 18. Jahrhundert aus dem südwestdeutschen Raum die Leute dorthin

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verschifft worden sind. [. . .] Die Leute sind sehr freundlich und hören mir zu, und nächste Woche bin ich dann bei einer Veranstaltung, und dort werde ich wiederum gefragt, wieso ich aus dem Banat komme.1

As John J. White also suggests, “the reader is expected to bring considerable background knowledge to bear on Müller’s fictions.”2 The various dimensions of Müller’s writings — Banat-Swabian, Romanian, and German — are reflected in her work and have to be acknowledged as such if we are to achieve a better understanding of her writings. None of these cultural dimensions should be overlooked; all should be viewed in their specific historical and geopolitical contexts. Müller’s writings and her constant political engagement must be seen in the historical and political contexts of Romania and Germany. Her characters are fictional, but their stories spring from the author’s experience and are deeply rooted in the specific framework of Banat, Romania, and, later, (West) Germany. This chapter seeks to discuss the particular situation and dilemma of these ethnic Germans from Banat who struggled to keep their historical German identity alive for more than 200 years in today’s Romanian territory and their “return” to Germany, where they were regarded as foreigners. In her fictional work, as well as in her autobiographical and political essays, Müller draws attention to the cultural and political history of the BanatSwabians. The author’s portrayal of these ethnic Germans reveals her critique of their ethnocentrism, patriarchal hierarchy, and collaboration with Nazi Germany. Furthermore, the political dimension of Müller’s work addresses the dictatorial regime of Nicolae Ceauescu, which is central to her “Romanian” novels. Müller re-creates the bleak atmosphere of fear and addresses the devastating consequences the regime continues to have, even for those who left Romania and now live in Germany or elsewhere.

German-Romanians under Ceauúescu’s Regime Historically, the region of Banat became part of Romania only after the collapse of Austria-Hungary when Banat, Transylvania, and Bukovina formed a union with the “motherland” Romania in 1918.3 Although parts of these three regions had dense German populations, the majority was Romanian. On 9 December 1919 Romania signed a treaty that would secure the rights of the national minorities living in its territory, giving them full autonomy in questions concerning religion and schools.4 It was only after this unification that the term rumäniendeutsch (German-Romanian) was invented. It defined and still defines, in a general way, the various German minorities living in Greater Romania. The term did not then and does not now differentiate among Banater Schwaben (Banat-Swabians), Siebenbürger Sachsen (Transylvanian Saxons), and Buchenwälder (Bukovina Germans),

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even though they had little or nothing in common before unification, and even though each of these ethnic minorities had a separate history. While the Transylvanian Saxons can look back at an 800-year history, the Banat-Swabians came to this region at the borders of today’s Romania, Serbia, and Hungary only in the eighteenth century. In 1716 the Austrians captured the Banat from the Turks, and in 1721 they began colonizing the sparsely inhabited region. The first colonizers came from western and southwestern parts of the German territory and were mainly farmers who were supposed to turn this land into productive agricultural land, which also meant increased tax revenue for the empire. Roger Bartlett and Bruce Mitchell argue that the Habsburgs acquired the region of Banat for strategic and economic reasons: “Crown domain status, with its subordination to Vienna, [. . .] allowed the Banat to be exploited systematically on mercantilist and populationist principles.”5 According to Bartlett and Mitchell, Austria suffered a shortage of precious minerals as compared to the Habsburgs’ colonial rivals.6 In 1779 the region of Banat became part of Hungary. In the second third of the nineteenth century the Banat-Swabians, along with the Romanians and the Transylvanian Saxons, resisted Hungary’s increasingly strong politics of Magyarization; this opposition also accelerated the conscious emergence of national identities.7 Although Romanians and Transylvanian Saxons were united in their efforts to resist Magyarization, Banat-Swabians only reluctantly joined Greater Romania in 1918. According to Holm Sundhausen, in 1938 Berlin interfered with the affairs of the German-Romanians. In 1940, under the pressure of the Third Reich, the German-Romanians had to organize themselves in the NSDAP der Deutschen Volksgruppe in Rumänien.8 Walter Engel argues, however, that periodicals such as Banater Monatshefte (1933–39) were influenced by the ideology of National Socialism even before 1938: Der politische Teil, in geringerem Maße der literarische, war mitgeprägt von nationalsozialistischem Ideengut, das im politischen Leben der Rumäniendeutschen in den dreißiger Jahren einen unheilvollen Einfluß ausübte. Diese unleugbare Tatsache sollte uns aber nicht davon abhalten, das kulturelle Leben der Banater Schwaben jenes Jahrzehnts aus heutiger Sicht zu beurteilen, sie sollte uns nicht dazu verleiten, sämtliche kulturell-literarischen Leistungen pauschal abzulehnen. (156)

Engel’s perspective is too apologetic, taking into account the fact that this ideology was not purely theoretical, since many Banat-Swabians fought in the Waffen-SS. Unlike Engel or Eduard Eisenburger, who in 1979 rationalized the adherence of the Deutsche Volkspartei in Rumänien (German People’s Party of Romania) to National Socialism by explaining it as a way to strengthen the national identity of this minority group,9 Herta Müller openly condemns the Banat-Swabians’ involvement with National Socialism during

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the Third Reich. From 1938 onward the Banat-Swabians generally supported the Nazi regime; they had to face the consequences of this collaboration after 23 August 1944, when Romania entered the anti-Hitler coalition. About 80,000 German-Romanian men and women were deported to labor camps in Siberia, others never returned home after the war, and still others had been resettled following the policy of heim ins Reich. The German-Romanian population shrank from 745,421 in 1930 to 343,913 in 1948.10 It was not until the 1950s that German-Romanians were granted the same political rights as the other minorities in the state of Romania. In socialist Romania the term minority was not used, since it implied a form of inferiority or inequality, and in a Communist country the principle of equality characterized the relations among the citizens. Therefore, the term coinhabiting nationality was chosen to refer to non-Romanian ethnic groups.11 Religion and schools were less affected in Communist Romania than in the other Eastern European countries. The German-Romanians’ collective rights as a minority experienced significant alteration in 1966, however, when Ceauescu declared the country a unified Romanian national state, as opposed to a multinational state. Romania’s future after the Second World War was decided by the defeat of Nazi Germany and subsequently by the Yalta conference of 1945, which remapped Europe by drawing an “iron curtain” between East and West. Soviet politics thereby created and surveilled the socalled Eastern Bloc. As the former West German president Richard von Weizsäcker said in a memorable speech in 1985, Hitler’s Germany was the reason not only for the disastrous situation in Germany and Western Europe but also for the change of history in Eastern Europe, where Communist totalitarian regimes came to power.12 The lives of the ethnic Germans in the “East Bloc” were dramatically affected because of their overwhelming support of the Nazi regime. They were exposed to public persecution, which resulted in expulsion, deportation, and in many cases, death. Up to 1965, when Nicolae Ceauescu came to power after the demise of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, successive waves of persecution had affected the Romanian citizens in general and the ethnic Germans in particular. Starting in 1945, most German-Romanian women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five and most men between the ages of seventeen and forty-five were deported to Siberia. According to the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, about 80,000 German-Romanians were affected by this deportation to the Siberian labor camps.13 The only exceptions were pregnant women and mothers of children under one. Ten years later, when the last German-Romanians returned home from Siberia, their houses and land were nationalized. This was an open persecution against Germans as a consequence of their involvement in the war that Nazi Germany had lost. Germans who had enlisted in the Romanian army, however, were not considered “enemies of the people,” and their lands were not expropriated.14 It is im-

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portant to recall that Romania was Germany’s ally until 1944, when it changed sides and fought on the Russian side. Romania’s initial interest in fighting against the Russians was to regain northern Bukovina and Bessarabia (Moldova), territories that Russia had captured from Romania in 1940, and to prevent any Russian expansion to the West. The Germans in Romania who fought with the Nazi Waffen-SS never changed sides; they were trapped in the Nazi ideology and their own ethnicity. A new wave of persecution followed when the German-Romanians, particularly the Banat-Swabians who survived the Siberian labor camps, returned home. They were forced to move once again, this time to Baragan, a dry, steppelike region in southern Romania. The political reason for this new deportation was their proximity to the Hungarian and Yugoslavian borders; they could not be trusted by the new Communist regime, given their past Nazi involvement. In 1954, after years of forced labor, the Banat-Swabians were allowed to return home, thereby regaining their political rights. Following this public persecution of ethnic Germans, the newly installed Securitate (State Security), formed by the Russian KGB, began the harassment of anti-Communist individuals and groups, who were incarcerated and often executed for espionage or treason — accusations that in many cases proved to be false. In 1958 a series of Romanian university professors, researchers, and writers were accused of opposing the “democratic” regime in Romania. In a huge show trial they were found guilty of reactionary activities such as keeping in contact with writers who had fled to France, distributing those authors’ writings, and criticizing the lack of freedom under the new regime.15 In 1959 five German-Romanian writers were imprisoned after a controversial trial in Braov/Kronstadt.16 The period of Communist takeover was a time of fear and insecurity for all Romanians. In the 1950s the number of political prisoners in Romania was estimated to be about 150,000 to 250,000, which meant that 1 to 2 percent of the entire population was imprisoned for political reasons.17 In 1964 a national amnesty allowed most of the political prisoners who had survived the inhuman conditions in jails to return to their homes. This did not necessarily mean a return to freedom, since the Securitate closely watched most of them. One year later a new era began — Ceauescu’s “golden epoch,” as he liked to call it. The promising measures he implemented after becoming general secretary of the Communist Party were allegedly intended to keep Soviet influence away from Romania. He won the sympathy of the West when he openly opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. According to Silviu Brucan, a former Romanian ambassador to Washington, however, Ceauescu’s intentions were less laudable than generally assumed.18 For a long time Romania formed a mediating bridge in East-West politics.19 But internally, more and more members of Ceauescu’s large family were given important positions in the state apparatus in order to strengthen his totalitarian regime, which by the 1980s affected all levels of society.20

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The 1980s were marked by economic and cultural disaster. Economically, Romania was exporting everything possible to pay off its international debt.21 The only acceptable goods available for the population were those refused by the Western importing companies. Food was rationed and obtained after hours of waiting in line. “Food dependency” was one of Ceauescu’s strategies to keep people’s minds busy; worried about basic survival, they had no opportunity to think about overturning his regime. Culture became a secondary matter. People were channeling their energies toward providing their families with food and clothes, leaving little time for cultural events. After her arrival in Germany in 1987, Herta Müller was asked about the situation in Romania — whether the material shortage or the cultural disaster was more serious. She replied, “Ich glaube, das Schlimmste ist die materielle Not. Wenn ein Staat so verarmt ist, daß nichts mehr da ist außer einem sinnlosen Gerüst von Staat, scheint es fast schon grotesk, über Kultur zu reden.”22 Censorship was strongly enforced in literature, film, and other arts; yet, most people thought it a waste of time to read a novel or watch a movie. Watching television was especially worthless, since broadcasting was limited to two hours a day and was entirely dedicated to the pseudo-royal family — Ceauescu and his wife. A so-called substitute culture developed that followed the party’s and Ceauescu’s personal directives.23 Its sole reason for existence was to praise the reigning couple. Unfortunately, accomplished writers and artists chose the perquisites of an opulent life over their moral or ethical beliefs.24 Alina Mungiu contends that the fear instilled by the perfect network of the Securitate did not allow the formation of a real opposition.25 Katherine Verdery, however, argues that the cultural opposition of a group of Romanian historians, writers, and philosophers won them moral authority after 1989, because they filled important administrative posts in the first postCeauescu government.26 Verdery also criticizes Westerners for moralizing about “the failure of Romanian intellectuals to prepare the ground for a ‘civil society,’” because for most Romanian intellectuals “the situation in their country was such that to do anything more than they did would have been pure self-destruction” (310). She also points out that the West was not interested in supporting any opposition in Romania: “To the degree that political positions in Romania have always been defined by the intersection of more powerful forces from without (as I believe to be the case), the inefficacy of a Romanian opposition simply reflects the West’s lesser interest in Romania’s internal political diversity than in that of ‘more important’ countries like ‘entrepreneurial’ Hungary or ‘brave’ Poland” (311). Vlad Georgescu explains that opposition existed mostly at an individual level and that most dissidents were ethnic Romanians. In his opinion, the fragmentation of the opposition according to ethnicity and minority groups, rather than national interests, resulted in failure. Each ethnic group had its own

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reasons to act or not to act, and, according to Georgescu, most ethnic Germans and Jews chose not to be involved in political opposition because they did not want to jeopardize their chances for emigration. Ethnic Hungarians looked after their own interests as a national minority and neglected the common interests of the entire population.27 Therefore, various individual attempts failed for lack of a larger unified support. Opponents of the regime ended up in jail, in mental institutions, or dead. The Securitate worked so well because of its network of informers.28 These more or less willing informers existed at all levels of society.29 Considering the disastrous situation of Ceauescu’s Romania, it is hard to single out the Germans as a persecuted minority. As mentioned previously, they were granted the same constitutional rights as other Romanian citizens. Their rights were legally and practically recognized by the state, as well as by the Romanian population. But in a dictatorial state laws exist only on paper; they can be applied or not, and they can be bent or broken. Beleaguered in a Communist ghetto, German-Romanians “enjoyed” the same “rights” as the rest of the Romanian population. For example, both ethnic Germans and ethnic Romanians had the right to emigrate after Ceauescu signed the Helsinki Treaty in 1975; and granting the right to emigration was an essential condition for gaining “Most Favored Nation” trading status, which Romania enjoyed for most of Ceauescu’s era. It was, however, a different matter when people asked for these rights. The process of emigrating involved many steps and hurdles; it was long, difficult, dangerous, and — in many cases — impossible. William Totok, a German-Romanian writer who now lives in Germany, addresses the issue of discrimination against Germans in Romania in his essay “Rumänisierung: Die Nationalitätenpolitik von 1918 bis 1990.”30 Instead of seeing this minority in the larger Romanian context, Totok singles out the ethnic Germans and their economic and cultural situation. In his separatist approach, Totok acknowledges that Germans in Romania had schools (kindergarten through high school), theaters, publications, and television programs in their native language. But he also notes that “teaching in the minority schools worsened considerably” (126). He does not mention that this situation was not peculiar to the German minority schools; all schools in Romania deteriorated at the time. And schools were but one example. Totok deplores the fact that German-language television programs were cut in the 1980s but fails to mention that Romanian television was broadcast for only two hours daily and served only to praise the “Conduc
tor” (Ceauescu).31 Not only does Totok mislead his German readers; he also promotes the image of German-Romanians as victims.32 The situation of the German-Romanians following the Second World War was worse than that of Germans in postwar West Germany. While minority Germans in Eastern Europe faced Stalinist persecution for crimes they did or

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did not commit along with and in the name of their fellow Germans from the Third Reich, West Germans cleared the rubble and began reconstructing their country, their economy, and their lives. Some ethnic Germans faced warrelated consequences for a decade. And after all those years of forced labor and hand-to-mouth survival, there remained no real chance for rebuilding their lives, given the general austerity of Communism. Yet, if we consider the years after their rehabilitation and the beginning of immigration to Germany, it is no longer accurate to consider them more persecuted than the average Romanian citizen. Unlike Totok, Richard Wagner recognizes the benefit of schools for minorities: for better or for worse, they kept the groups’ languages alive. But ideological pollution permeated language in general — German, as well as Romanian and Hungarian. The discourse of Communist totalitarian power was imposed on all levels and in all languages.

The Germanness of the Banat-Swabians I’m drunk, but you speak German. You’re 33 not drunk, how come you speak German.

Although the Banat-Swabians have lived in the multicultural region of the Romanian Banat with Romanians, Hungarians, and Serbs for more than 200 years, they resisted integration and assimilation. They enjoyed the privilege of speaking their own language under the Habsburg Empire because German was not only their native language but the official language of the empire as well. Their highest aspiration throughout their 200-year history was to preserve their German identity, entailing the language, the tradition, and the culture. Herta Müller’s career as a writer began with her portrayal of the BanatSwabian village of her childhood. She became known in Germany for her first collection of short stories, Niederungen (1984). It was an instant success, and the same year she was awarded the Aspekte literary award. Two years later she published Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt (1986), which met with even more enthusiasm. West German critics had ignored GermanRomanian literature for a long time, reproaching it with accusations of regionalism, provincialism, and lack of quality. Publishers predicted no interest on the part of the readers. In the 1980s, which also coincides with the publication of Herta Müller’s first two very provincial books (Niederungen and Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt), German scholars found a new interest in studying this literature, which transcended the geographical and political borders of the region of Banat and of the totalitarian Romanian state. What was actually so fascinating and controversial about these books and about this young unknown author from Romania? A number of different elements may explain the phenomenon: the older, more “pristine” German preserved in this linguistic island; her critical redefinition of Heimat- or Dorfli-

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teratur; her shocking honesty and brutality in depicting aspects of everyday life in this remote region; the uncensored and unidealized picture of Banat; and her compelling technique of reinventing perception (“sich erfindende Wahrnehmung”). The narratives of both Niederungen and Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt unfold in the Banat-Swabian rural environment and could be regarded as Dorfgeschichten. But one can hardly recognize the defining characteristics of this genre in Müller’s writings. The idyllic harmony of village life and unspoiled nature turn into a world of alienated relationships.34 The village in Niederungen is, as Friedrich Christian Delius argues, “die Hölle auf Erden.”35 The first-person child narrator sees alcoholism, abuse, cruelty, and hate in her own family, as well as in the relationships of other villagers. This Banat-Swabian environment penetrates Müller’s autobiographical writings, which reflect the style she calls “sich erfindende Wahrnehmung”: Auch wenn ich Wahrnehmung beschreibe, muß ich die Spanne von dieser Wahrnehmung zur erfundenen Wahrnehmung vollziehen. Ich muß die poetische Abweichung ins Unmaß an jeden Punkt der Erfahrung, die ich jemals gemacht habe, ansetzen. So kommt es, daß selbst Autobiographisches, Eigenes im engsten Sinne des Wortes, nur noch vermittelt, nur noch im weitesten Sinne des Wortes mit meiner Autobiographie zu tun hat.36

Müller poetically deviates from the facts of her own experiences. As a writer, her function is to mediate between perception and invented perception, the latter of which is a refraction of the first. Although scholars such as Karin Bauer consider Müller “eine exemplarische deutschrumänische Schriftstellerin,”37 Müller distanced herself from the Banat-Swabian community and wrote against the tradition of German-Romanian literature and under the influence of the Aktionsgruppe Banat.38 Moreover, Müller feels that she has a responsibility to write against the realities of the Banat-Swabian village. The Banat-Swabian community was offended by the brutal and often grotesque realities rendered in Müller’s work, especially the short story “Das schwäbische Bad.” One Saturday night a family takes a bath. After the baby is bathed in warm, clean water, the rest use the same water, from youngest to oldest — mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather: Das Wasser ist noch heiß, ruft die Großmutter dem Großvater zu. Der Großvater steigt in die Badewanne. Das Wasser ist eiskalt. Die Seife schäumt. Der Großvater reibt graue Nudeln von seinen Ellbogen. Die Nudeln des Großvaters schwimmen mit den Nudeln der Mutter, des Vaters und der Großmutter auf der Oberfläche. (Niederungen 13–14)

The ultimate irony is expressed at the end of the story when the “freshly bathed” family sits in front of the television set and waits for the Saturday-

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night series that were the most awaited television programs in the 1970s and early 1980s: American shows such as Dallas, Kojak, and Columbo. The nauseating image of the family bath hurt the feelings of many and aroused protest. Banat-Swabians in both Germany and Romania sharply criticized Niederungen. In Romania, they argued that the new generation of writers had distanced themselves too far from their traditions, “eine totale Entwurzelung.” Banat-Swabians in Germany stigmatized Müller’s writings as “Ketzerei oder totale Verantwortungslosigkeit.”39 Müller’s texts expressed not merely a conflict between generations but also one of traditional versus modern values in life and in art. Asked how her identity was reflected in her writings about the Banat-Swabian village, Müller explained: “Ich weiß, sie [meine Identität] hat damit zu tun, aber es war ein Schreiben gegen diese Identität, auch gegen dieses Banat-Schwäbische Dorf, gegen diese sprachlose Kindheit, die alles unterdrückte.”40 Though Müller tries to undermine the descriptive aspect of her writing, she raised a great deal of interest in this forgotten region and its population living under a Communist dictatorship. The image of “the German frog,” which Müller created as a reflection of her feelings toward the Banat-Swabians’ continued attempts to preserve their Germanness, symbolizes the first dictatorship in the author’s life: Der deutsche Frosch aus den Niederungen ist der Versuch, eine Formulierung zu finden, für ein Gefühl — das Gefühl, überwacht zu werden. Auf dem Lande war der deutsche Frosch der Aufpasser, der Ethnozentrismus, die öffentliche Meinung. Der deutsche Frosch legitimierte diese Kontrolle des einzelnen mit einem Vorwand. Der Vorwand hieß: Bewahren der Identität. Im Sprachgebrauch der Minderheit hieß das “Deutschtum.”41

Public opinion, which controlled everything and everyone, was a form of censorship. Frederick Barth argues that the continuity of ethnic units depends on the maintenance of a boundary or “border guards,” which could be overt signals and signs (language, dress, house form, general style of life, etc.) but could also be basic value orientations (the standards of morality by which members judge and are judged).42 Müller addresses directly the limitations and narrow-mindedness of these standards and their impact on the individual members. As Rogers Brubaker points out, tradition is a constructed rather than a purely objective property, and “the longevity of a practice alone does not establish its ‘traditional quality.’”43 In this sense, Müller contests and challenges the tradition of “the German frog,” the set of beliefs and practices that was supposed to preserve the identity of this minority against all odds. In “Identity: Cultural, Transcultural, and Multicultural” Peter Caws refers to this inherited identity as “imposed from without” and “not something one has freely chosen.”44 The consequence of this extreme ethnocentrism was social intolerance on various levels. Individually,

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people had to obey some unwritten rules or risk being labeled “abnormal.” Müller writes: “Es kam der öffentlichen Meinung nie darauf an, was hinter dem Schein des ‘Normalen’ würgt und frisst. Sondern nur darauf, dass der Schein auch und gerade um den Preis jedes Unglücks gewahrt wird.”45 To be normal meant to belong to the community, show few traits of individuality, and surrender to the judgment of public opinion.46 On the communal level, this intolerance translated into exclusive German villages, where the relationships between ethnic Germans and “intruding” ethnic Romanians or Roma were less than positive.47 Interethnic marriages were hardly acceptable: “Gottbehüt, dass du mir eines Tages einen Walachen vorstellst und sagst: Das ist mein Mann” (Herztier 175). The mother writes this warning to her only daughter, the first-person narrator of the novel Herztier and the alter ego of Herta Müller. It illustrates the disrespect of ethnic Germans for ethnic Romanians, because German-Romanians employ the term Walach (Wallachian) as an insult.48 This warning also reflects the fear of discontinuity, of loss of control, of an undesirable hybridization that would endanger their German “purity,” and, above all, of public scorn and disapproval. By reflecting on the Banat-Swabian village, Müller also depicts an extreme patriarchal society deeply influenced by National Socialism. The childhood of the first-person narrator of Herztier begins with an alcoholic, abusive father who is a former Nazi and a submissive mother obsessed with cleaning in a community governed by the imperative of “the German frog.” As was the case with many ethnic German marriages after the Second World War, the narrator’s parents married out of necessity. The marriage is represented as having been based not on mutual affection but on the narrow choice of men and women returning from the Siberian labor camps. “Sie [die Einsamkeit] trieb den Vater rasch an die warme Haut einer Frau. Er wärmte sich. Er hatte Friedhöfe gemacht und machte der Frau schnell ein Kind.” In describing her parents the narrator never uses possessive adjectives such as my; they are always merely father and mother.49 By reducing them to their quintessential function of reproduction, the narrator takes away any semblance of familial warmth and love. The temporal and causal connection between the crimes of the father and her procreation is a recurrent agonizing thought in the narrator’s mind: murdering, yet giving life. Loneliness brought the father close to a woman, who just happened to become her mother. It was a simple unromantic story, like many others after the war, when people tried to escape not only hardship and loneliness but also the memories of war and the Siberian labor camps.50 But most of all, the generation of the narrator’s parents tried to escape the growing feeling of guilt. “Der Vater weiß was vom Leben. Denn Vater steckt sein schlechtes Gewissen in die dümmsten Pflanzen und hackt sie ab. Kurz davor hat das Kind sich gewünscht, daß die dümmsten Pflanzen vor der Hacke fliehen und den Sommer überleben” (Herztier 21). From the

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child’s perspective the father tries to transpose his bad conscience into the weed, the thistles, which he can then hack off. By transferring it to the material world he can deal with his bad conscience in a concrete way, giving him the illusion that he can resolve his past. The story of the narrator’s father is to a large extent that of Herta Müller’s actual father. In an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau (8 August 1987) she described her father’s influence on her writing. Since history textbooks in Romania barely touched on the Holocaust when presenting information on the Third Reich, the author learned about the concentration camps and the persecution of the Jews only as a college student. Literature and magazines from West Germany opened her eyes to the crimes of the Nazi era and, moreover, to the possibility of her father’s being a murderer. This change of perspective enabled the author to investigate her father’s life and conduct for the first time. It then occurred to Müller that her father’s heavy drinking might have been connected to his Waffen-SS years; it was a way to suppress his criminal past. Müller’s father, as well as her grandfather, who did not fight in the Second World War, often lamented having lost the war. They wanted Banat to belong to Germany, which might have been the case had Germany won the war. After the death of her father, Müller began a diary as a therapeutic way to document the history of this community. By investigating her father’s past, she realized the daunting involvement of the whole community with Nazi Germany and its beliefs: “es war eine Minderheit, die irgendwo in der Geschichte [. . .] steckengeblieben war.”51 These moral investigations resulted in Niederungen, her collection of short stories about the rural Banat-Swabian minority. In the story “Überall, wo man den Tod gesehen hat. Eine Reise in die Maramuresch” in her anthology Barfüßiger Februar (1987)52 Müller faces the monument for the 38,000 Jews who were deported from the region of Maramuresch to Auschwitz in May 1944.53 She feels betrayed twice: first by her father and his involvement and second by Romanian history, which does not acknowledge the fate of the Transylvanian Jews as the tour guides do not direct tourists toward this monument:54 Da steh ich vor dem weißen, fangarmigen Kerzenleuchter, der nicht zucken kann. Meine Finger sind schwarz von den Heidelbeeren. Und, wenn ich jetzt sterben müßte, wär mein Haar keine Bürste, meine Knochen kein Mehl. Mein Tod wäre deutsch wie der meines Vaters. Er ist in der SS gewesen, nach dem Krieg ins Dorf zurückgekehrt, hat geheiratet und mich gezeugt. [. . .] Zehn Jahre vor seinem Tod ist der Dichter Paul Celan mit dem Judenschmerz der Bukowina ins Wasser gegangen. Der Tod meines Vaters war der Tod einer Krankheit. (105)

The burden of her father’s past weighs so heavily on her that she feels responsible for the crimes her father committed. Her black fingers illustrate

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her inherited guilt and unwanted complicity. She has to live knowing about her father’s past and coming to terms with her heritage. Her pain intensifies when she thinks of Paul Celan, the most accomplished German-speaking Jewish poet from Romanian Bukovina, whose parents died in Transnistria in 1945. If National Socialism was an illness without a cure, then the death of her father also meant the extinction of this illness, which is another form of “the German frog” — the Nazi frog. This problematic father figure and the burden of guilt are present in most of Müller’s work — for example, in Herztier. Often this trope seems repetitive and overemphasized, as if entailing overlapping approaches to the same story. The Niederungen father resembles the Herztier father, and both are inspired by Müller’s father: Die Friedhöfe hält der Vater unten im Hals, wo zwischen Hemdkragen und Kinn der Kehlkopf steht. Der Kehlkopf ist spitz und verriegelt. So können die Friedhöfe nie hinauf über seine Lippen gehen. Sein Mund trinkt Schnaps aus den dunkelsten Pflaumen, und seine Lieder sind schwer und besoffen für den Führer. (Herztier 21)

Like Germans in postwar Germany, Banat-Swabians tried to suppress their Nazi past, rather than come to terms with it. Little information was passed on from the war generation to the postwar generation in Banat.55 As the narrator describes in the passage above, the guilt of the father is closely linked to his heavy drinking. The pointed larynx is portrayed as a lock keeping the information or confessions from coming up. Between the father and the “maker of graveyards” is a chain of association: father — SS — responsible for deporting Jews from Romania — murderer — Jew killer — possible involvement in concentration camps — possibly responsible for mass graves — graveyards. Since certain information is missing, every association with the Nazis and specifically the SS is a possible and probable association with the father’s activity during his SS time, as well. “Maker of graveyards” encompasses all the consequences of the atrocities committed during the Second World War. While the father is the immediate focus of the narrator’s investigation in Herztier, Müller’s alter ego draws attention to the involvement of the whole community of Banat-Swabians. Some survived the war and came back home; others found homes elsewhere. The narrator illustrates this collaboration through the revealing example of Edgar’s two uncles, who chose not to return home after the war. Yet, their lives were not much different from those of the home-comers: Edgars Onkel waren ferngebliebene SS-Soldaten. Der verlorene Krieg trieb sie in fremde Richtungen. Sie hatten bei den Totenkopfverbänden Friedhöfe gemacht und trennten sich nach dem Krieg. Sie trugen im Schädel die gleiche Fracht. Sie suchten einander nie wieder. Sie griffen

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nach einer Frau aus der Gegend und bauten mit ihr in Österreich und Brasilien ein spitzes Dach, einen spitzen Giebel, vier Fenster mit grasgrünene Fensterkreuzen, einen Zaun aus grasgrünen Latten. Sie kamen der fremden Gegend bei und bauten zwei schwäbische Häuser. So schwäbisch wie ihre Schädel, an zwei fremden Orten, wo alles anders war. Und als die Häuser fertig waren, machten sie ihren Frauen zwei schwäbische Kinder. Nur die Bäume vor dem Haus, die sie jedes Jahr schnitten wie zu Hause vor dem Krieg, wuchsen über das schwäbische Muster hinaus, dem anderen Himmel, Boden und Wetter nach. (65–66)

The simplified life story of Edgar’s two unnamed uncles and former SS soldiers is peripheral to the main narrative, but it is of major importance in defining the ethnocentrism of this minority. Their “Swabian Germanness” remained the same even when applied to Austria or Brazil. Living abroad did not change the patriarchal structure of the Banat-Swabian family. The Austrian and Brazilian wives alike had to ensure the preservation of this identity, which was not theirs. Coldly and without feeling, Edgar’s uncles built their Swabian houses, founded their Swabian families, and assured the perpetuation of their inherited values through their Swabian children. The role of a Swabian wife corresponds to the patriarchal structure of this rural community. Women are mothers, housewives, and their husbands’ helpers around the house as well as in the fields.56 Although the narrator’s mother is portrayed in more detail in Herztier, her life seems much the same as that of the grandmother. The only difference is the historical and political time frames of their lives. Both married for reasons other than love. The grandmother married the grandfather for his land; but when the land was nationalized after the Communists took over in 1945, she saw her dreams and ambitions fall to pieces. The marriage of the mother was determined by the postwar conditions. In the absence of love, the unromantic story led to an alienated relationship. Nevertheless, this mother figure plays the traditionally predetermined role of a Swabian wife: Die Mutter sagt: Wenn du das Leben nicht aushältst, räume den Schrank auf. Dann gehen die Sorgen durch deine Hände, und der Kopf macht sich frei. Aber die Mutter hat leicht reden. Sie hat fünf Schränke und fünf Truhen im Haus. Und wenn die Mutter drei Tage nacheinander die Schränke und Truhen aufräumt, sieht es immer noch wie Arbeit aus. (34)

Unable to communicate with those around her, the mother buries herself in familiar tasks. By passing her worries through her hands like rearranging the clothes in a closet, she can release her anger and disappointment in a productive way. After three days of obsessive cleaning, her head is clear again, ready to face the upcoming challenges. It is a special space created by and for the mother, to which nobody else has access. It is a special time to think things over and find her peace again. It is a sanctuary in her conscience, out

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of the reach of the other family members, a place where she can negotiate her emotional, mental, and spiritual stability by doing what she knows best — what she had been brought up to do as a good Swabian wife. The narrator, however, realizes that the mother does not resolve her problems but avoids facing them. Ultimately, in her rented room in the city, the narrator cannot follow the mother’s advice, since she does not have the physical and psychological space to isolate herself from the outside world. Overwork, unhappiness, and spousal abuse are the characteristics of the average Swabian wife’s life in Herta Müller’s writings. In Niederungen women’s lives are reflected in the few photos taken at special events: An den Wänden hängen ihre Hochzeitsbilder. Sie haben schwere Kränze auf der flachen Bluse und im Haar. Sie haben schöne schlanke Hände überm Bauch und haben junge traurige Gesichter. Und auf den Bildern, die daneben sind, haben sie Kinder an der Hand und runde Brüste unter ihren Blusen, und hinter ihnen steht ein Wagen, darauf aufgetürmt das Heu. [. . .] Ihre Schnurrbärte wachsen mit dem Alter, aus den Nasenlöchern und Warzen stehen Haare hervor. Sie sind behaart und haben keine Brüste mehr. Und wenn sie mit dem Alter fertig sind, dann gleichen sie den Männern und entschließen sich zu sterben. (33–34)

Their life stories can be reduced to marriage, children, and the physical changes in a woman’s body. In fact, their sad faces already tell the story of the life they knew they could expect after marriage. The image of the heavy wreaths young women have to wear on their wedding day illustrates the burden of future sacrifices, which, unable to decide for themselves, they accept with humble resignation. It is a life silenced by never-ending toil and spousal abuse, which make them age before their time. They pose in front of a hay cart, a popular background for photos at the time, showing pride in their occupation as farmers. The child narrator of Niederungen cruelly but accurately portrays the transformations in a woman’s body. With no emotional involvement and in a few short sentences she presents the reader with a minimalistic and poignant description of the aging process. The women enact the same lives their mothers did; they follow the same tradition, enduring a life they believe they were born to lead. Parents and socioeconomic circumstances determine the girls’ marriages. The mother figure in Niederungen tells of the impossibility of changing her mind, which she knew would affect her entire life: Dein Vater hat mich auch beim Kirschenpflücken im großen menschenleeren Weingarten nicht angerührt. Er stand wie ein Pfahl vor mir und spuckte ununterbrochen nasse glitschige Kirschkerne aus, und ich wußte damals, daß er mich im Leben oft verprügeln wird. [. . .] Ich ging auf den Dachboden weinen, damit mich niemand sieht, damit niemand erfährt, daß ich keine glückliche Braut bin. Ich wollte damals

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sagen, ich will nicht heiraten, aber ich sah das geschlachtete Rind, und Großvater hätte mich umgebracht. (19–20)

The woman’s position in this society is clearly one of subordination. In her relationship to her father or husband, the woman is supposed to listen and endure. Conforming to the opinion of the community is more important than her happiness. Even though she is aware of the character of her future husband and of their incompatibility, sexual or otherwise, she cannot withdraw from the engagement. The slaughtered cow stands for the public announcement and preparation for the wedding, and withdrawing would mean a disgrace in the eyes of the community. It would also mean an economic loss. The social, economic, and moral consequences are reason enough for her knowingly to enter a life of spousal abuse, equating herself with the sacrificed animal. Müller addresses the rigidity of the Banat-Swabian tradition, a set of norms and beliefs that functions as a form of dictatorship in the villages. This compulsive rigidity translates also into everyday situations: Aber auch jene, die ihre Häuser anders strichen, ihr Haar anders kämmten oder ihre Männer oder Frauen verlassen hatten, weil die Liebe zu Ende und die Beziehung entwürdigend geworden war, auch sie wurden in Frage gestellt. Es kam der öffentlichen Meinung nie darauf an, was hinter dem Schein des “Normalen” würgt und frißt. Sondern nur darauf, daß der Schein auch und gerade um den Preis jedes Unglücks gewahrt wird.57

Normality or the norm in this community is determined by public opinion, which tries to prevent any deviation from the known and accepted.58 New ideas or new fashions endanger the established laws — the traditional, conservative values of these people. A new hair fashion or new house paint is a deviation from normality. It reflects a distance from the known, from a tradition that does not allow for individuality but imposes conformity. As Bernhard Waldenfels explains in his thoughts on the crisis of the European modernity and modernism, traditionalism is one form of avoiding a total loss of order: “Traditionalismus, ob in religiöser, politischer, gesellschaftlicher oder allgemein kultureller Gestalt, [wird] als Heilmittel gegen den Ordnungsschwund aufgeboten.”59 The Banat-Swabians tried to maintain order by exerting control over this community’s way of life, which had to be German or what they remembered to be German. Loss of order would mean endangering the existence of this minority as such, a hybridization of the identity of these individuals. Their exaggerated regulations remained stuck in a premodern phase, unable to adjust to the changes coming in from the outside. Modern ideas such as education begin penetrating the existing system, causing a clash between traditional and modern values, because getting an

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education implies leaving the village for a university city. The mother figures — such as the narrator’s mother in Herztier — play a significant role in keeping their children bound to the family and to the life they wanted to leave behind. In letters to their sons or daughters the mothers mention their various illnesses in order to play on the children’s emotional ties to the family and to manipulate their feelings. “Diese Krankheiten, dachten sich die Mütter, sind eine Schlinge für die Kinder. Sie bleiben in der Ferne angebunden” (Herztier 54). This binding love, the mothers hope, will encourage their grown children to return to their villages and show their faces more often. The mothers are constant active reminders of who their children are and whence they come: Ein Gesicht sehen, dachten sich die Mütter, in dem die angebundene Liebe eine Wange oder eine Stirn ist. Und hier und da die ersten Falten sehen, die ihnen sagen, daß es uns im Leben schlechter geht als in der Kindheit. Aber sie vergaßen dabei, daß sie dieses Gesicht nicht mehr streicheln und nicht mehr schlagen durften. Daß es ihnen nicht mehr möglich war, es zu berühren. Die Krankheiten der Mütter spürten, daß Losbinden für uns ein schönes Wort war. (54)

These ties speak of both love and abuse. The alienation and unhappiness in the relationship between the parents is transmitted to the children. Habitual activities such as fingernail trimming are performed with an element of coercion. The narrator of Herztier remembers her mother tying her to a chair to trim her fingernails or cut her hair. When referring to herself as a child, the narrator creates an ironic distance. She narrates these incidents in the present tense, giving them immediacy but also acknowledging the different position of enunciation. She is now the observing narrator, detached from these past experiences, no longer the abused object. In this way she can distance herself emotionally and render the story in a manner that creates an even greater impact on the reader. The imagination of a horrified child turns its glimpse of blood into a surrealistic dissolution: the mother does not just trim the nails; she cuts the child’s fingers and intends to eat them. And bleeding means dying: “Die Mutter liebt das Kind. Sie liebt es wie eine Sucht und kann sich nicht halten, weil ihr Verstand genauso an die Liebe angebunden ist, wie das Kind an den Stuhl. Das Kind weiß: Die Mutter muß in ihrer angebundenen Liebe die Hände zerschneiden” (14). In Herztier, as well as in Niederungen and Reisende auf einem Bein, Müller presents a pattern of abuse: parents who claim to love their children while physically and psychologically abusing them in the name of that very love.60 Niederungen is the story of a silent childhood unfolding in a cruel, often grotesque environment. The observations of the first-person narrator penetrate the real essence of her parents’ marriage, an absence of love, and the consequence: a child caught between an alcoholic father and a suffering mother.

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Irene, the protagonist of Reisende auf einem Bein, recalls: “Ich wurde aus Liebe geschlagen” (152). Physical punishment and blind obedience are characteristics of the child-parent relationship. Their understanding, which they inherited from their own parents, is that punishment builds character; they believe that by abusing their children they actually do them a favor.61 Transcending this culture, which allowed for spouse and child abuse but denied the individual the right to happiness or to fulfillment through education, is a bittersweet experience for the narrator of Herztier. It means leaving behind the village in which she grew up, her parents, and her silenced childhood. By transgressing her inherited culture, however, she can not only free herself from the system but can also look at this restrictive community from outside and measure its values against others. In the process of redefining herself, the narrator feels that she is not quite separated from what she left behind; and yet, she does not entirely belong to the new physical and cultural environment of the city, either: “Wir gehörten ganz zu denen, die Maulbeerbäume mitbrachten und zählten uns in den Gesprächen nur halb dazu. Wir suchten Unterschiede, weil wir Bücher lasen. Während wir haarfeine Unterschiede fanden, stellten wir die mitgebrachten Säcke wie all die anderen hinter unsere Türen” (54–55). In this novel mulberry trees function as symbols for people who came from villages and now live in cities. I partly disagree with Ricarda Schmidt’s interpretation of the mulberry trees as “Metapher für Träume von einem besseren Leben.”62 While it is true that these villagers came to the cities to make better lives for themselves and their children, Müller’s concern is to represent their in-between identities — physically, they live in the cities, but mentally, they are still villagers. Moreover, the trees speak of the people’s ties to an inherited identity that they left behind in their villages and that they cannot escape: “Aber in den Büchern stand zu lesen, daß diese Türen kein Versteck waren. Was wir anlehnen, aufreißen oder zuschlagen konnten, war nur die Stirn. Dahinter waren wir selber mit Müttern, die uns ihre Krankheiten in Briefen schickten und Vätern, die ihr schlechtes Gewissen in die dümmsten Pflanzen steckten” (Herztier 55). The narrator’s newly acquired position is determined by education and by the physical, social, and cultural environment of the city. Leaving the villages also meant integration into the multicultural society of Timioara/Temeswar. The narrator negotiates her position in the city, where she identifies with the mulberry-tree people. The sacks represent the narratives of the past, the village life, the childhood, the tradition. In the process of constructing a new identity, the old one is only apparently erased; it remains inscribed on a deeper stratum of the subconscious — in Homi K. Bhabha’s words, it becomes a palimpsest identity.63 The Banat-Swabian presence cannot be erased; behind her forehead it embodies aspects of her life left behind: mothers manipulating the children’s feelings of guilt and fathers with their Nazi past. The Banat-Swabian Ger-

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manness remains a presence in the narrator’s life. It entails a tradition that, as Bernhard Waldenfels points out, “ist das, wovon wir wohl oder übel ausgehen in allem, was wir sagen, tun und empfinden.”64

Fear as a State of Mind Müller’s novel Herztier unfolds against the background of misery and fear in Communist Romania. The four friends — Edgar, Kurt, Georg, and the firstperson narrator — do not necessarily represent the Banat-Swabian minority, because they had already distanced themselves from this community. Extreme ethnocentrism and Nazi values were determining factors leading to the young people’s detachment from tradition. In the city, however, they encounter a new form of dictatorship, which ultimately forces them to leave Romania and immigrate to Germany. Unlike Windisch, the protagonist of Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt, who followed the path of German-Romanians who left Romania for economic reasons and for a life as Germans among Germans, the four friends in Herztier feel driven out of the country because they oppose the dictatorial regime. Their stories become documents of political persecution in an atmosphere of extreme fear and abandonment. Müller’s text uncovers a variety of aspects of Communist Romania that illustrate the physical and psychological consequences of Ceauescu’s dictatorship. On the one hand, the labile difference between villages and towns and the poor economy caused a shift in the demographics, as peasants moved to the cities to build the socialist industry after being promised better jobs and improved living conditions. On the other hand, the constant surveillance by the Securitate caused fear to become an everyday reality. To control every move in the country, new sociopolitically determined classes such as Wächter (guards) and Mitmacher (passive collaborators) emerged as a result of corruption and hypocrisy. For many Romanian citizens, regardless of their ethnicity, legal or illegal escape from Communist Romania seemed the only solution, as people risked their lives or wasted time, energy, and money to accomplish their goals. The life in the city reflected the changes wrought by the socialist revolution in the urban, as well as the rural, regions. Müller’s text illustrates this failed experiment by portraying the new Communist social class of villagers turned factory workers — das Proletariat der Blechschafe und Holzmelonen: Die Männer wußten, daß ihr Eisen, ihr Holz, ihr Waschpulver nichts zählten. Deshalb blieben ihre Hände klobig, sie machten Klötze und Klumpen statt Industrie. Alles, was groß und eckig sein sollte, wurde in ihren Händen ein Schaf aus Blech. Was klein und rund sein sollte, wurde in ihren Händen eine Melone aus Holz. (37)

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Working the land and raising sheep were traditional activities in preCommunist Romania. The very essence of the Romanian cultural identity finds its origin in ballads, legends, and songs about shepherds and peasants. After 1945, when the Communists took over, the new peasant resembled the serf of decades before: degraded in reality but represented as a more or less convincing socialist agricultural worker. Expropriation and nationalization meant taking away the peasants’ very reason for existence. The late Marin Niescu, a Romanian dissident, saw the expropriation and the transformation of the entire Romanian people into a mass of proletarians as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party. By becoming the sole owner of the entire national patrimony, the party consolidated permanent power. Niescu recognized that the party and the state became interchangeable, so that the party, representing the state, became the absolute owner of the Romanian patrimony. In his opinion, a permanent dictatorship is not possible if people have the right to property, which allows them to be independent. Otherwise, they are totally dependent on the party/state, and the party/state can manipulate them as it wishes.65 Müller’s narrative deconstructs the image of the successful “socialist worker” who is determined to achieve and surpass every goal set by the fiveyear plans. The proletarians depicted in Herztier are peasants who came to the cities because working the nationalized land in collectives did not ensure a secure existence for their families. Wages were minimal, and nostalgia for the times when the peasants had worked their own land — when they had not been forced to give most of the products to the state — prevailed. They are not peasants any more, nor are they proletarians; they are dislocated persons, forced into jobs they are not qualified to do. Müller’s text adds a new political dimension to the comparison between villages and cities; it suggests that the difference of physical proportion between villages and towns is erased in the case of dictatorships. Big cities can act as small villages. Surveillance and control open any area to scrutiny. As Müller’s narrator explains, “Alle bleiben hier Dörfler. Wir sind mit dem Kopf von zu Hause weggegangen, aber mit den Füßen stehen wir in einem anderen Dorf. In einer Diktatur kann es keine Städte geben, weil alles klein ist, wenn es bewacht wird” (52). The dilemma for Edgar, Kurt, Georg, and the narrator remains the impossibility of escaping dictatorship. When they left their villages, they tried to leave the dictatorship of “the German frog” behind. Coming to the city, they realize that they have traded one form of dictatorship for another — extreme ethnocentrism for Communism. According to Müller’s novel, people had three options in this totalitarian society: to become guards, passive collaborators, or lunatics. The guards are the dictator’s watchdogs, the plum-suckers (die Pflaumenfresser).66 Denn Pflaumenfresser war ein Schimpfwort. Emporkömmlinge, Selbstverleugner, aus dem Nichts gekrochene Gewissenlose und über Leichen

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gehende Gestalten nannte man so. Auch den Diktator nannte man so. [. . .] Die Pflaumenfresser waren Bauern. Die grünen Pflaumen vernarrten sie. Sie fraßen sich weg von der Dienstpflicht. Sie schlüpften ins Stehlen der Kinder unter Dorfbäumen. Sie aßen nicht vor Hunger, sie gierten nur nach dem sauren Geschmack der Armut, in der sie noch vor einem Jahr wie vor der Hand des Vaters die Augen niederschlugen und den Nacken einzogen. (59–60)

For the plum-suckers, the urge to escape poverty and their fathers’ authority is stronger than any moral beliefs. Coming from nowhere, these parvenus suddenly realize the opportunity to become somebody by controlling everyone else. The plums are not the only sign that betrays their heritage and their newly acquired functions: their suits never fit and can be recognized all over the city. As watchdogs, their duty is to instill fear. People’s lives, minds, and feelings are controlled by this generalized, ever-present fear.67 Fear also disperses and isolates people. Each individual lives with his or her share of this collective fear; he or she is not able to connect, since fear and doubt are two sides of the same coin.68 Passive collaborators and lunatics, the two other categories of people in the dictatorial state portrayed in Herztier, represent nonopponents and opponents of the regime. If fear prevents people from acting according to their beliefs, they become participants in the dictator’s plan. The alternative is open opposition, which leads to incarceration or death.69 Fear not only prevents people from speaking up but also transforms them into a herd of passive collaborators. The herd metaphor symbolizes the oppression of this population, which the narrator recognizes in many aspects of everyday life. The expectations of the working class, for example, are low, and opportunities are scarce. Like programmed robots, they go to work in the morning and return in packs in the afternoon, heading straight for their meals in bodegas, Romania’s “greasy spoon” restaurants: Auf den Tischen dampfte der Fraß. Da lagen Hände und Löffel, nie Messer und Gabel. Zerren und Abreißen mit dem Mund, so aßen alle, wenn die Kleinigkeiten geschlachteter Tiere auf dem Teller lagen. Auch die Bodega war gelogen, die Tischtücher und Pflanzen, die Flaschen und weinroten Kellneruniformen. Hier war niemand ein Gast, sondern ein Zugelaufener des sinnlosen Nachmittags. (37)

“When one speaks of restaurants,” Pasca Harsanyi explains in “Women in Romania,” “we enter the realm of linguistics” (43). She considers the total disrespect for the consumer as one of the main differences between restaurants in Romania and those in the West. Similarly, these workers in Herztier are presented and treated like a huge uniform mass; they show no individual traits.70 They travel in hordes and eat like animals. They are denied the right to uniqueness, the right to choose for themselves. They find a temporary

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refuge from their pointless lives in these restaurants — which are actually traps, as waiters have to report any political word expressed. Ears are everywhere. Owing to constant and threatening surveillance by the Securitate and its informers, fear is rooted so deeply in people’s minds and souls that it constantly monitors their thoughts. Pondering and brooding over every word, people replay in their minds each scene from the night before, trying to fill the dangerous gaps between words and thoughts. They are afraid of having said too much: “Aber der Suff schützt den Schädel vor dem Unerlaubten, und der Fraß schützt den Mund. Wenn auch die Zunge nur noch lallen kann, verläßt die Gewöhnung der Angst die Stimme nicht. Sie waren in der Angst zu Hause” (39). Instead of freeing their tongues, alcohol has a soporific, mindnumbing effect on the forbidden thoughts; it becomes yet another element of personal censorship meant to keep people safe in spite of the collective fear spread all over the town and country by the dictator’s watchdogs. Economic misery and political terror are present in all areas of Romanian society. Edgar, Georg, Kurt, and the narrator leave their villages to find a new life in a university city. But what does this new academic life offer? The rooms in a student dormitory are too small to accommodate the six students assigned to them; they provide no privacy or space for studying. The cafeterias never offer enough food, which is, in any case, neither nutritional nor tasty. “Alle sind hungrig in der Kantine, schreibt Lola in ihr Heft, ein drükkender, schmatzender Haufen. Und jeder für sich genommen ein störrisches Schaf. Alle zusammen ein Rudel gefräßiger Hunde” (24). The narrator equates students with animals by transferring the herd metaphor to academia. Any refractory individual impulse gets lost in the sprawling horde of hungry animals. In Ceauescu’s Romania hunger was an effective way to control people, to keep them in the dark and prevent them from realizing the lack of freedom and the misery they shared.71 At the University of Timioara in the Romanian Banat, the student body reflects the multicultural character of the region. The four protagonists in Herztier come into contact with students from other parts of the country, other ethnic groups, and other cultures. The students’ economic backgrounds are also different, as are the living standards in the various regions of the country. While the four Herztier protagonists are ethnic Germans from villages around the university town, Lola comes from the poor southern region, which is mostly inhabited by ethnic Romanians. Her goal, like that of other students, is education not for its own sake but as a means to escape her parents’ life, a life of hard work that never paid off: Unter den Kissen der Betten lagen sechs Schachteln mit Wimperntusche. Sechs Mädchen spuckten in die Schachteln und rührten den Ruß mit Zahnstochern um, bis der schwarze Teig daran klebte. Dann schlugen sie groß die Augen auf. Der Zahnstocher kratzte am Lid, die Wim-

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pern wurden schwarz und dicht. Doch eine Stunde später brachen in die Wimpern graue Lücken ein. Die Spucke war trocken, und der Ruß fiel auf die Wangen. Die Mädchen wollten Ruß auf den Wangen, Wimpernruß im Gesicht, aber nie mehr Ruß von Fabriken. (12–13)

The improvised mascara reflects the shortage of cosmetics in Romania and also the desire of these young women to transcend their mothers’ situation and move toward a new position for women living in a society still regulated by men. They want to become educated and to better their social status. New horizons and opportunities open up for them; they are about to belong to the privileged circle of college graduates.72 Young women also open up to the idea that enhancing their beauty is not as devilish as the church has taught them. These are just small steps challenging their upbringing, but the women are determined not to share the typical life of female factory workers or that of their mothers. Lola, however, is representative of a different kind of opportunism. Her desire to improve her life led her to the Communist Party. And was not the role of the party to help people of low-income families to get an education and a better life? “Lola kam aus dem Süden des Landes, und man sah ihr eine armgebliebene Gegend an” (9). Lola is faceless; the narrator never describes her features other than as a reflection of the poor region in which she grew up. She is also faceless in that her story could be the story of many: Aber nicht die dürre Gegend trieb Lola in die Stadt. Was ich lerne, ist der Dürre egal, schreibt Lola in ihr Heft. Die Dürre merkt nicht, wieviel ich weiß. Nur was ich bin, also wer. Etwas werden in der Stadt, schreibt Lola, und nach vier Jahren zurückkehren ins Dorf. Aber nicht unten auf dem staubigen Weg, sondern oben, durch die Äste der Maulbeerbäume. (9)

The change in Lola’s social status could only happen through a diploma and a title, which would earn her respect in the village. By creating Lola and her story Müller addresses the implications of becoming a member of the Communist Party, which include power and connections but also alienation from friends and roommates. Lola’s only dilemma after becoming a member of the party is to reconcile her religious upbringing with the atheist party ideology: Jemand sagte, du gehst doch in die Kirche. Und Lola sagte, das tun die anderen auch. Man darf es nur nicht zeigen, daß man den anderen kennt. Jemand sagte, Gott sorgt für dich oben und die Partei sorgt unten. Neben Lolas Bett stapelten sich die Parteibroschüren. Jemand flüsterte im kleinen Viereck, und jemand schwieg. Die Mädchen flüsterten und schwiegen schon lange, wenn Lola im Viereck war. (27–28)

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When Lola becomes a party member, the other five girls in the room — “the small square” — suspect her of reporting to the Securitate. For them, Lola has become a potential danger. She is no longer simply Lola, the poor student from the south, who constantly borrows their clothes or stockings. She has become a new, politically oriented Lola, who reads and highlights party brochures. John J. White interprets Lola’s ritual cleaning of the glass where the dictator’s empty and predictable speeches are showcased as “an institutional chore rather than as some token of political conviction” (White 78). Her interest is, however, not in the institutional chore per se, as she repeatedly performs this ritual. Her political conviction might be questioned and challenged, but she certainly believes that her actions will not remain unnoticed. Furthermore, she is blinded by the new attention gained at the university and by the prospect that her goals are finally within reach. Lola never gave up the religious beliefs that reconnected her with her mother, as she remembers in her diary. She did not have to give up the Greek Orthodox confession, since other Christians had joined the party before her and paved the path of compromise for her. Pretending that she does not know or recognize anybody in the church during the service is an easy way out of the conflict. Lola has goals, not wishes. She looks for a man who wears white shirts, a man above her class. Her ultimate goal and challenge are to take this man back to her village and keep his white collars clean. Lola wants to be a somebody and to be married to one. But Lola’s men cannot fulfill goals or wishes. They are just instruments in satiating Lola’s strong sexual and masochistic needs. Her escapades begin on streetcars, where she awaits the chosen one for a meaningless sexual encounter in the park. Lola’s men are tired workers coming from the night shift: Sie steigen aus der Nacht ins Licht des Wagens, schreibt Lola, und ich sehe einen Mann, der so müde ist vom Tag, daß in seinen Kleidern nur ein Schatten steht. Und in seinem Kopf längst keine Liebe, in seiner Tasche kein Geld. Nur gestohlenes Waschpulver oder die Kleinigkeiten geschlachteter Tiere: Rinderzungen, Schweinenieren oder die Leber eines Kalbs. (19)

Lola tempts these men into the park. Sadly, she finds neither love nor money, nor does she desire the men. They can only offer her their emptied lives and the stolen goods that Lola stores in the refrigerator.73 Lola compares these men to greedy dogs who follow her to the park. They never speak — there is nothing to talk about; the range of their interaction is limited to an animalistic consumption of sex. There is a strange and distorted parallel between Lola’s childhood and her search for men. Leaves become the symbols that link Lola’s early life in the village to her nightly ventures:

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Und Blätter haben wir alle. Blätter fallen ab, wenn man nicht mehr wächst, weil die Kindheit vorbei ist. Und Blätter kommen wieder, wenn man schrumpelt, weil die Liebe vorbei ist. Blätter wachsen, wie sie wollen, schreibt Lola, wie das tiefe Gras. Zwei, drei Kinder im Dorf haben keine Blätter, und sie haben eine große Kindheit. Es sind Einzelkinder, weil sie Vater und Mutter haben, die geschulte Leute sind. (14)

Leaves symbolize poverty and a “small” childhood such as the one Lola, as the sixth, unwanted child in a poor family, had to share with five siblings. Lola’s search for a man becomes a search for the love she never fully experienced in her childhood: Die Nacht jagte Wind, und Lola warf stumm den Kopf hin und her und den Bauch. Es raschelten Blätter über ihr Gesicht, solche wie damals vor Jahren einem halbjährigen, von niemandem als von der Armut gewollten, sechsten Kind. Und wie damals waren Lolas Beine zerkratzt vom Geäst. Aber nie ihr Gesicht. (20)

Lola the young woman invokes the image of her as a baby, since the circumstances of her life never really changed. Her childhood lacked love but had an abundance of leaves. The young woman cannot escape her predicament; she is always driven back to the leaves and the twigs that scratched her legs. Lola tries to satisfy her need for love through these men who become mere sex objects. In striking contrast to Lola’s midnight men, the narrative introduces the gym instructor — the first of her men to wear white shirts and the first who can help her to transcend her social class. He does not have to take streetcars or follow Lola into the park; he has his own car and chauffeur.74 The gym instructor exemplifies the life of the nomenklatura, the active collaborators under the Communist regime. As a political activist or securist (member of the Securitate) he has free access to the cafeteria of the Party College, where standards are incomparably higher than in bodegas or student cafeterias. He does not belong to the horde but to a privileged social class, that of corrupt and hypocrite horde leaders. The last entry in Lola’s diary discloses the reasons for her suicide: Lola schreibt: Der Turnlehrer hat mich abends in die Turnhalle gerufen und von innen zugesperrt. Nur die dicken Lederbälle schauten zu. Einmal hätte ihm gereicht. Ich aber bin ihm heimlich nachgegangen und hab sein Haus gefunden. Es wird unmöglich sein, seine Hemden weiß zu halten. Er hat mich beim Lehrstuhl angezeigt. Ich werde die Dürre nicht los. Was ich tun muß, wird Gott nicht verzeihen. Aber mein Kind wird niemals Schafe mit roten Füßen treiben. (31)

Death is not just an easy solution to her problems; it is also a gesture of liberation for herself and, most importantly, for her baby. Death is a way to

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escape poverty and shattered dreams but also a decision she makes for her unborn child, who would have had the same fate as its mother. Lola’s story was seemingly inspired by that of an actual student, which Müller relates in her autobiographical essay “Hunger und Seide: Männer und Frauen im Alltag”: Eine Medizinstudentin im letzten Studienjahr war schwanger. Sie nahm an sich selbst eine Abtreibung vor. Sie bekam in den Tagen danach hohes Fieber. Sie hätte ins Krankenhaus müssen. Aus Angst vor dem Krankenhaus und aus Angst vor Gefängnisstrafe erhängte sie sich im Zimmer eines Studentenheims. Nach der Beerdigung fand eine Sitzung der Hochschulleitung statt. Die Studentin wurde im Beisein anderer Studenten post mortem aus der Partei ausgeschlossen und aus der Hochschule exmatrikuliert. In der Halle des Studentenheims, in dem sie sich erhängt hatte, wurde ein Foto von ihr ausgehängt. Dazu ein Text, der die Tote als “negatives Beispiel” darstellte. (Hunger und Seide 79–80)

Müller’s example reflects the status of a single mother in Communist Romania: she was a disgrace to her family and condemned by society, the church, and even the party, since the glorified image of the socialist woman was the working mother, not the unmarried one. A child born out of wedlock was stigmatized as fatherless, chuckled about, and treated differently from legitimate children; and the mother was considered a person of questionable character and morality, which meant that her chances of succeeding in society were minimal. Self-induced abortion was an alternative for many women in Romania, though the law prohibited it.75 In a brutal effort to instrumentalize women’s bodies, Hausleitner explains, gynecological examinations were conducted to detect and immediately register an early pregnancy.76 In Herztier it is not clear whether Lola tried to abort the child. The story of the medical student, however, offers possible explanations for Lola’s death. From the final entry in her diary it is obvious that she was under imminent danger stemming from the instructor’s report to the department and the party. The better future Lola had tried to build for herself had suddenly collapsed, and she was faced with the realization that she could never escape the aridity of the life she had left behind. Lola’s death results in her posthumous expulsion from university and the Communist Party. Her profile has ended in suicide and, therefore, does not correspond ideologically or morally to the party’s image of its members and the example they are supposed to uphold for the rest of the country. No one in authority investigates her death or its immediate causes. The police never ask any questions — because, the narrator assumes, they already know the answers. In the auditorium where students and faculty vote for Lola’s postmortem expulsion, fear decides the outcome:

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Weil es allen zum Weinen war, klatschten sie zu lange. Niemand hat sich getraut, als erster aufzuhören. Jeder schaute beim Klatschen auf die Hände der anderen. Einige hatten kurz aufgehört und erschraken und klatschten wieder. Dann hätte die Mehrheit gerne aufgehört, man hörte, wie das Klatschen im Raum den Takt verlor, aber weil diese wenigen mit dem Klatschen ein zweites Mal begonnen hatten und feste Takte hielten, klatschte auch die Mehrheit weiter. Erst als in der ganzen Aula ein einziger Takt wie ein großer Schuh an den Wänden hinauf polterte, gab der Redner mit der Hand das Zeichen zum Aufhören. (32–33)

The rhythm of authority and power suppresses any individual thought of rebellion. Fear of standing out or not clapping zealously enough transforms these people into an obedient and submissive mass of collaborators. But clapping is better than showing weakness; nor is crying for a person who “did not deserve to be a student or a member of the Communist Party” a wise or safe thing to do. Nobody wants to be suspected of disagreeing with the party’s decision. All raise their hands higher than necessary to let the gym instructor — of all people — count the votes for Lola’s expulsion.77 The narrator, as well as the other four “somebodies” — Lola’s roommates from the dorm — raise their hands to vote for Lola’s disgrace: “Nur die Irregewordenen hätten in der Großen Aula nicht mehr die Hand gehoben. Sie hatten die Angst vertauscht mit dem Wahn” (49). Trying to escape the status of passive collaborators, Edgar, Kurt, Georg, and the narrator take the risk of investigating Lola’s death because they have doubts about the circumstances of her suicide. The three men include the female narrator in their group and try to stick together as friends in the face of the inevitable encounter with the Securitate: Weil wir Angst hatten, waren Edgar, Kurt, Georg und ich täglich zusammen. Wir saßen zusammen am Tisch, aber die Angst blieb so einzeln in jedem Kopf, wie wir sie mitbrachten, wenn wir uns trafen. Wir lachten viel, um sie voreinander zu verstecken. Doch Angst schert aus. Wenn man sein Gesicht beherrscht, schlüpft sie in die Stimme. Wenn es gelingt, Gesicht und Stimme wie ein abgestorbenes Stück im Griff zu halten, verläßt sie sogar die Finger. Sie legt sich außerhalb der Haut hin. Sie liegt frei herum, man sieht sie auf den Gegenständen, die in der Nähe sind. (83)

Müller describes how fear acquires a life of its own; it becomes independent of the subject’s will. It transcends the realm of feelings and projects itself onto surrounding things. Fear surfaces in facial expressions, vibrates through vocal cords, whispers through trembling fingers. The group cannot resolve the individual fears of the four friends; together they experience only a precarious feeling of safety. Fear seizes everything; it becomes for these people a state of mind.

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The protagonists’ fear of the Securitate finds plenty of justification in Müller’s novel: the friends have to face interrogations, stalkings, and death threats. The point of departure for the Securitate is Lola’s diary, which she left in the narrator’s suitcase before she hanged herself with the narrator’s belt. The diary is also what Edgar, Kurt, and Georg are looking for, since the firsthand information in it could elucidate Lola’s death. There is no safe place where the narrator can hide the diary, so she memorizes it. The search of their dorm rooms follows, and the watchdogs look for any compromising thing: “Die Jungen drohten Edgar, Kurt und Georg mit Schlägen. Drei Männer waren gerade gegangen. Sie hatten die Zimmer durchsucht und zu den Jungen gesagt: Wenn euch dieser Besuch nicht gefällt, dann redet mit dem, der nicht da ist. Redet, hatten die Männer gesagt und die Faust gezeigt” (61). The implication of such a search is not only to let Edgar, Kurt, and Georg know that from now on they face danger but also to turn their roommates against them. The roommates do not want Securitate members interfering with their lives, and so they ostracize Edgar, Kurt, and Georg. Their first concern is their safety. Often that means becoming informers: “Verlaß dich nicht auf falsche Freundlichkeit, warnten mich Edgar, Kurt und Georg. Die Mädchen im Zimmer versuchen alles, sagten sie, genau wie die Jungen im Zimmer. Mit der Frage, wann kommst du wieder, meinen sie: Wie lange bleibst du weg” (87). The Securitate achieves its goal: it instills fear in the four friends and isolates them, as now they can only rely on themselves. Everything and everybody outside of their small, united group is a possible mole. A poem by the Romanian poet Gellu Naum becomes their motto: Jeder hatte einen Freund in jedem Stückchen Wolke so ist das halt mit Freunden wo die Welt voll Schrecken ist auch meine Mutter sagte das ist ganz normal Freunde kommen nicht in Frage denk an seriösere Dinge.78 The poem becomes a means of survival.79 Clouds in the sky are the only trustworthy friends; the persecuted cannot afford to confide in anyone about their endangered existence. Müller’s narrative describes how the Securitate never targeted just an individual; families had to suffer, as well. Anything could compromise their freedom, especially connections abroad: pictures from Brazil, cookbooks from Austria, or even letters from relatives living in the West — letters that had already been screened by the Securitate. The four friends face threats of imprisonment and death threats, as well: “Wißt ihr wie Streifen laufen, sagte der Alte, bald tragt ihr Gestreiftes” (64). The Securitate infiltrates ethnic communities in its search for informers; the driver for the two Securitate members

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searching the houses of the protagonists’ parents is a Banat-Swabian himself: “Der Schofför spricht Deutsch, nicht nur Hochdeutsch, sogar Schwäbisch. Er ist aus einem Nachbardorf, er wollte nicht sagen aus welchem” (77). Standard German could be learned in school, but speaking Swabian signaled belonging to the group and betraying the Banat-Swabian community. Plum-suckers are portrayed as having various ethnic backgrounds; they are not limited to ethnic Romanians. Therefore, Müller, unlike many of her German-Romanian compatriots, shifts the conflict from an ethnic one (majority Romanians versus minority Germans) to a political one of followers and “graveyard-makers” versus nonfollowers, or passive collaborators. Ethnicity is not the determining factor in this conflict; it is just a complementary attribute. The important and decisive aspect is complicity with a regime that affected everyone in Romania. Victims are persecuted regardless of their ethnicity. By trying to escape the status of Mitmacher, the four protagonists in Herztier do not bring about any change through action, as their enterprise has no immediate result. Their stories remain merely documents of individual persecution and endurance. The narrative shifts from trying to solve Lola’s death to describing the systematic persecution of the protagonists. Their lives turn into a living hell under the careful supervision of the Securitate. Against all odds, they stick together even after leaving the university. They use code when writing to each other, since the scrutiny of the Securitate is nearly perfect: Beim Schreiben das Datum nicht vergessen, und immer ein Haar in den Brief legen, sagte Edgar. Wenn keines mehr drin ist, weiß man, daß der Brief geöffnet worden ist. Einzelne Haare, dachte ich mir, in den Zügen durchs Land. Ein dunkles Haar von Edgar, ein helles von mir. Ein rotes von Kurt und Georg. [. . .] Ein Satz mit Nagelschere für Verhör, sagte Kurt, für Durchsuchung einen Satz mit Schuhe, für Beschattung einen mit erkältet. Hinter die Anrede immer ein Ausrufezeichen, bei Todesdrohung nur ein Komma. (90)

Afraid, isolated, and abandoned, the four friends establish a network of hope. The codes keep them in contact and allow them to transmit information about their real situation, about the dangers and fears they have to face alone. The persecution of the four protagonists in Herztier is representative of what might happen to any opponent of Ceauescu’s regime. As ethnic Germans, however, they become more vulnerable because of the language they speak, their relatives living in the West, and the option they had of leaving the country legally.80 But that vulnerability brings with it advantages, as well. As minority Germans, they have access to information that is denied to ethnic Romanians owing to censorship and language barriers. The four protagonists in Herztier have a collection of West German books, which they hide under the cover of a fountain in a summerhouse:

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Die Bücher aus dem Sommerhaus waren ins Land geschmuggelt. Geschrieben waren sie in der Muttersprache, in der sich der Wind legte. Keine Staatssprache wie hier im Land. Aber auch keine Kinderbettsprache aus den Dörfern. In den Büchern stand die Muttersprache, aber die dörfliche Stille, die das Denken verbietet, stand in den Büchern nicht drin. Dort, wo die Bücher herkommen, denken alle, dachten wir uns. Wir rochen an den Blättern und erwischten uns in der Gewohnheit, an unseren Händen zu riechen. Wir staunten, die Hände wurden beim Lesen nicht schwarz wie von der Druckerschwärze der Zeitungen und Bücher im Land. (56)

The language in the books is the minority Germans’ native language — a language like that in the villages but without the connotations of “the German frog”: ethnocentrism, dictatorship, censorship, and uniformity. The thoughts expressed in these books, as well as their appearance, create in these young readers an idea of what they imagine West Germany to be: an idealized, commercialized Romania with freedom of speech. They view the West through the eyes of their expectations and desires. In the emigration frenzy, which existed especially in the 1980s in Romania, ethnic Germans were in a strange way privileged: they had the opportunity to escape Ceauescu’s dictatorship, since Germany was willing to buy their freedom.81 Although minority Germans and West Germans shared a language and historical origin, they were strangers to each other; still, for most ethnic Germans the question was not whether to leave Romania but when their turn would come to do so. Ethnic Romanians who wanted to leave the country had to try to escape across the border into Yugoslavia or Hungary, which was illegal and, in many cases, fatal. The protagonists of Herztier do not fit into the traditional pattern of minority Germans. The four friends clearly state that they do not wish to leave the country: Wir wollten das Land nicht verlassen. Nicht in die Donau, nicht in die Luft, nicht in die Güterzüge steigen. Wir gingen in den struppigen Park. Edgar sagte: Wenn der Richtige gehen müßte, könnten alle anderen im Land bleiben. Er glaubte es selber nicht. Niemand glaubte, daß der Richtige gehen muß. Man hörte jeden Tag Gerüchte über die alten und neuen Krankheiten des Diktators. Auch ihnen glaubte niemand. Dennoch flüsterten alle in ein nächstes Ohr. Auch wir gaben die Gerüchte weiter, als wäre der Schleichvirus des Todes drin, der den Diktator zuletzt doch erreicht: Lungenkrebs, Rachenkrebs flüsterten wir, Darmkrebs, Gehirnschwund, Lähmung, Blutkrebs. (69)

In this passage the narrator gives poignant expression to a unanimous desire, undivided by ethnic borders: the dictator’s death seems to provide the only possibility for real change. For the protagonists the dictator’s death appears

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to be the solution to all their worries. As unreliable as they are, rumors provide hope and a reason to stay. Although expressing paradoxical realities, these rumors and the letters the four protagonists receive from their mothers serve the same function: the effect of binding fast. On the one hand, the letters, from mothers who try to keep the protagonists attached to their homes and families by mentioning their illnesses, are attempts to exert continued control. On the other hand, the rumors about the dictator’s death give rise to hope for an ardently desired liberation from oppression. Listening to rumors about how fatally ill the dictator supposedly is, the protagonists postpone their escape because they can still hope to survive Ceauescu’s Romania. In the end, both the rumors and the letters serve as manipulative devices that bind the protagonists in a transitional phase. “Immer nur Anbinden, weil Losbinden so lange brauchte, bis es ein Wort war” (42). Ironically, Ceauescu’s death did not solve Romania’s problems, and people continued to leave the country after December 1989. Finally, however, the four protagonists realize that their only chance for sanity and survival is emigration. Edgar, Kurt, Georg, and the narrator endure harassment, threats, interrogations, and false accusations. Securitate captain Pjele and his eponymous dog test the friends’ physical and psychological limits, as well as the limits of their friendship. Having proved unsuccessful in these attempts, the Securitate changes tactics and forces the protagonists to live as social outcasts — they become unemployed in a country in which it is illegal to be out of work. To avoid being convicted, the four friends have to accept Pjele’s proposal for emigration, which amounts to expulsion.

Heimat or Exile? Das Gesicht der Verkäuferin steht hinter mir im Spiegel. “Was für eine Landsmännin sind Sie,” fragt sie. “Sind Sie Französin.” Ich sage: “Ich komme aus Rumänien.” Sie hebt sich im Spiegel eine Haarsträhne vom Ohr. “Macht nichts,” sagt sie, “Hauptsache, es gefällt Ihnen hier bei uns.”82

In February 1987 Herta Müller left Ceauescu’s Romania. In Germany, however, she continues to write about dictatorship and its consequences. Most of her characters are immigrants or exiles in Germany: Irene, the protagonist of Reisende auf einem Bein; the first-person narrator of Herztier, her mother, Georg, and Edgar. Müller’s own experiences in Germany are reflected in the themes played out in the stories of these characters: culture shock and alienation. Faced with the reality of a Western society that is foreign to them, Müller’s characters also realize the necessity of reconsider-

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ing their cultural identity. In July 1991 Müller wrote in her column for the Swiss publication Du: Und da in der einen Schläfe liegt Rumänien, das zerbrochene mitgebrachte Land, aus dem ich komme. Menschen gehen durch dieses Land mit vor Hunger suchenden Augen. In der anderen Schläfe liegt Deutschland, das glatte Land, das mit dem Koffer begann. Menschen gehen durch dieses Land mit suchenden Augen. Ohne Hunger.83

Romania is a not a closed chapter for Müller. The country physically ended at the border when she immigrated to Germany, but it lives on through memories, perceptions, habits, and the language that Müller brought along to the new country. While she could understand and clearly assess the problems experienced by people in Romania, she had yet to decipher what people were searching for in the “smooth country.” The legacy of the Communist dictatorship that Eastern European Germans tried to leave behind in Müller’s novel has yet to be resolved. Their lives were already broken when they arrived in Germany. Georg commits suicide after just a few weeks in Frankfurt.84 The narrator continues to receive death threats in Berlin. Irene, the emigrant from Eastern Europe in Reisende auf einem Bein, has troubling dreams about the dictator, whom she cannot banish from her mind. In “Hunger und Seide: Männer und Frauen im Alltag” Müller explains the devastating impact Ceauescu had on people’s lives: Und mindestens so groß wie der Schrecken, der sich täglich fortsetzt, ist der Schrecken vor dem gewesenen Schrecken. Jeder, der in Rumänien lebt oder gelebt hat, jeder, der Ceauescu überlebt hat, hat ihn bloß um eine Spanne überlebt. Er ist gezeichnet. Er wird mit dem Schrecken unter der Schädeldecke über den gewesenen Schrecken nachdenken müssen, um zu begreifen. Um sich selbst zu begreifen. Für jeden wird das Land in zwei Teile zerfallen: in die Zeit Ceauescus und in die Zeit danach. (86)

The habit of living in a state of collective fear did not end for those who left Romania or for those who stayed and survived the dictator. The deep-seated fear of the Communist terror has yet to be overcome. Regardless of people’s choice to leave or to stay, the psychological damage has to be assessed and understood for a new beginning to take place. Like Müller’s characters, German-Romanians who immigrated to Germany have to undergo a double process of identity negotiation: on the one hand, they have to cope with the past and reevaluate their positions and the roles they played during Ceauescu’s dictatorship. According to Müller, Ceauescu’s victims were not divided from the “graveyard-makers” by ethnic borders. Other German-Romanians, however, such as William Totok, choose to single out ethnic Germans in Romania as a persecuted minority by portray-

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ing German-Romanians as victims and disregarding the disastrous situation of all Romanian citizens in the Ceauescu era. On the other hand, minority Germans in the Federal Republic have to adjust to the new Western realities. The help they receive in Germany is mainly financial, starting with the Begrüßungsgeld (money Aussiedler received on their arrival) in the transitional camp in Nuremberg. Minority Germans, however, arrived with a burden of Communist legacies that affected their lives and shaped their mentalities. These “Eastern Europeans” left their homes, friends, and a familiar way of life, which, along with the landscape, the common language, and tradition, defined their identity as individuals and as a community. In spite of the common origin of Western and East European Germans, their twentieth-century histories overlapped only briefly, though decisively, during the Third Reich. German-Romanians shared their history and homeland from colonization to emigration with Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, and other nationalities. They lived under the same circumstances as the other minorities of the region but followed a different tradition, that of “the German frog,” adhering to a historical identity that exists no more in today’s Germany. Herta Müller writes about the arrival in Germany in Reisende auf einem Bein. The author never mentions Romania in the novel; rather, she chooses the phrase “the other country” to distance herself from the autobiographical dimension that penetrated her previous writings: Ich wollte mit der Person Irene von mir selber weggehen und verallgemeinern. Aus diesem Grund habe ich beispielsweise vermieden, Rumänien im Buch zu nennen. Ihre Situation trifft auf viele zu, die etwa aus Ländern aus dem Osten herkommen. Ich hätte am liebsten auch die politischen Gründe des Weggehens von Irene ausgespart, aber das konnte ich nicht, ich habe gesehen, daß ich ohne diese politische Dimension nicht auskomme.85

Although ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe have distinct histories and traditions, they experience similar kinds of hardship in Germany, where they are grouped together under the category Aussiedler.86 Müller creates Irene to draw attention to the problems these people encounter as foreigners in the Federal Republic. Irene functions, therefore, as a reflector. The narrator follows her step by step like a camera, recording everything occurring in Irene’s life in this new world and documenting her reactions. The narrator has unlimited access to Irene’s inner world, which is often expressed in the form of erlebte Rede. As Irene lets the surrounding reality in and subjectively reflects on it, she offers a different perspective on Germany: Germany as seen by foreigners. Unlike the previous Banat-Swabian or Romanian settings of Müller’s writings, West Berlin appears as a collage of fragments. Irene’s own life has become like the collage she pins up on the kitchen wall: fragmentation,

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confusion, and alienation. The scenes in second-hand stores, post offices, and streets, as well as the strips of conversations she picks up while walking past strangers, are fragments that make up the collage of her new life. To get into a semblance of contact with the people she sees, Irene creates a play in her mind in which everybody plays a role: “Es war ein Bühnenbild für das Verbrechen. . . . Der Mann in Uniform war die erste Person des Stücks. Und Irene, sie zögerte sich mitzuzählen, war die zweite Person. Das Stück hieß wie die Haltestelle: Wilhelmsruh” (30). Even in her imagination, Irene hesitates to consider herself as belonging to the inhabitants of the city. Reflecting events in Irene’s life, various items play the role of the main character in her collage: sometimes it is a person, sometimes an object, sometimes the picture of a dead politician.87 When she cuts out the various characters, Irene brings them back to life: “Der Mann lag gekrümmt auf dem Wasser. Irene schnitt auch das Wasser ab. Der Mann fiel in Irene’s Hand” (45). The pictures and the pictured are so real and familiar to Irene that she blurs the existential limits. In her extreme alienation, the characters in the collage represent Irene’s only link to the outside world. In this novel Müller does not contrast immigrants with natives but travelers with inhabitants, allowing her to acknowledge Irene as a foreign German in a foreign environment: “Ausländerin im Ausland” (61). Irene’s experiences are reactions to otherness. She feels at home in trains or railway stations, even though she still associates traveling with freezing. Always in a situation of transition, she identifies with the hesitant travelers, her favorite role; she does not want to settle down, to assume the role of the inhabitant.88 For the inhabitants, Irene is an outsider, a foreigner. Inhabitants wear different clothes, have different body movements; they feel at home in every situation, whereas Irene needs to learn and catch up: Sie wußten sehr genau, was sie an jedem Ort tun sollten. Sie kauften sehr rasch ein. Bestellten sofort Kaffee. Berührten im Vorbeigehen Schaufenster, Wände und Zäune. In den Parks rissen sie vom ersten Strauch ein Blatt ab. Auf Brücken ließen sie Steine ins Wasser fallen. [. . .] Irene blieb einen Schritt hinter ihnen zurück. (138–39)

Irene is always the observer, always behind the inhabitants. Her life consists only of observations; she is unable to participate in any way. The narrator characterizes Irene as “von außen alt und von innen unmündig” (141). Irene’s age does not reflect her understanding of reality; she feels powerless, like a child that has yet to decipher the world around it and that has not reached the maturity to decide for itself nor the legal status to do so. The differences between East and West, as well as her hesitancy and shyness — often associated with foreigners — make communication with the inhabitants impossible for Irene. She seems able to connect only with people with whom she can identify, those who, like her, experience suffering and

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alienation. Thomas, one of the three males with whom she has relationships, feels close to Irene when he confides his painful life as a homosexual to her. With Franz and Stefan the relationships are not reciprocal; Irene writes many cards to Franz, the student she met in “the other country,” but never receives an answer. Her relationship with Stefan consists of a series of personality differences Irene points out in their conversations — differences based on character but also on political background. The only time she receives significant mail is when her friend from “the other country,” Dana, writes to her; otherwise, the Bundespost brings her junk mail. Dana, Irene’s emotional link to “the other country,” represents her real homeland, the one in which her friends live. Exile and homeland are the two components of Irene’s split identity: Germany as her home in exile and “the other country” as the home she left behind. To be able to carry on in Germany, Irene has to suppress “the other country”; she does not allow herself to feel homesick. When she refers to Heimat, she is careful to differentiate between landscape and friends, which illustrate her definition of homeland, on the one hand, and state and officials — the dictator and his collaborators who forced her out of the country — on the other hand. Germany is not Irene’s new homeland. Unlike the Italian she meets, who still considers himself and his children foreigners — the second and third generations, respectively — Irene is not heimatlos, just “Ausländerin im Ausland” (61). She sympathizes and identifies with the foreigners in this country; she recognizes the fearful look in their eyes and the sad smile from the East, but she also experiences the stereotypes associated with being a foreigner: she is seen as being likely to steal. In a store Irene panics when she recognizes on a shelf a pair of shoes identical to the ones she is wearing. She realizes that she would not be able to deny having stolen the ones she is wearing, since her voice — that of a foreigner — would not be credible to the saleswoman: Irene ging auf die Tür zu. Ging langsam, um nicht aufzufallen. Sie wollte nicht weggehen. Sie wollte verschwinden, wie die Frau verschwunden war. Irene wartete auf die Stimme der Verkäuferin. Die haben Sie gestohlen, würde die Stimme sagen. Und auf Irenes Schuhe zeigen. Irene schwitzte. Sie wußte, sie würde diesen Satz nicht leugnen. Sie würde die Beschuldigung nicht zurückweisen. Sie würde schweigen. Sie würde der Verkäuferin glauben. Sich erinneren, daß sie von zuhause auf den Strümpfen weggegangen war. Daß der Gehsteig voller Sand und feucht war. Daß die Zigarettenkippen ein paar Schritte an den Strümpfen hingen. Irene fing zu laufen an. (54)

Müller’s text addresses the psychological harassment foreigners are exposed to in having to face predetermined stereotypes. Insecure and terrified, Irene plays out this scene in her mind as she is trying to leave the store unnoticed,

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all the while waiting for the saleswoman to accuse her of having stolen her shoes. Not only would Irene not be able to speak on her own behalf, denying the accusations; she would bring arguments to underscore the saleswoman’s claim. Irene, the foreigner, could and would not raise her voice against that of an inhabitant, because she feels that inhabitants deny her the moral status to do so. The picture of Irene walking barefoot to the store illustrates her extreme desperation and her inability to fit in as a foreigner; Irene wears the stigma of otherness and lives its consequences. As much as Irene tries to keep the two countries apart, she recognizes similarities between Germany and “the other country.” The official bureaus that she often has to visit to clarify her status in Germany seem to be the same as those everywhere. The German officials wearing dark suits remind her of the secret agents from “the other country.” Social workers come up in her troubling dreams, in which she reenacts the conflict between her native language and the official language of “the other country” and its implications for her situation in Germany:89 Der Sachbearbeiter hatte sich neben Irene gesetzt. Er hatte Irene eine Frage gestellt. Irene hatte in der Sprache des anderen Landes geantwortet. Es war ein anderer Traum in der gleichen Nacht. Der Sachbearbeiter hatte den teuren Hut auf sein Knie gelegt. Er hatte Irene an den Ellbogen gefaßt: So hab ich mirs gedacht. Deutsch sprechen Sie nur, wenn Sie zu mir ins Büro kommen. Irene hatte das Deutsche vergessen. Einen einzigen Satz hätte Irene auf Deutsch sagen können: Weshalb vergleichst du immer, es ist doch nicht deine Muttersprache. Diesen Satz hatte Thomas gesagt. Es wäre ein langer Satz gewesen. Er hätte bewiesen, daß Irene deutsch sprach. Doch er hätte mehr geschadet als genutzt. Das wußte Irene sogar im Traum. (97)

This scene evokes the real drama of Aussiedler, whose “Germanness” is scrutinized prior to their being granted German citizenship. These immigrants are expected to act and speak only German, and at the same time, they need to detach themselves from any cultural or linguistic Eastern European traits. Social workers have, therefore, the task of thoroughly investigating the ethnic descent of these minority Germans and their willingness to manifest only German cultural traits, which are premises for granting German citizenship. The administrative process that Irene’s papers undergo under the scrutiny of the German social workers becomes an obsession for her. Her recurrent dream of forgetting her German illustrates her fear of losing her identity. In her eagerness to prove to the social worker that she does speak German, Irene makes a fatal mistake in her dreams: she answers in the language of “the other country” — a language she is expected to forget. Helpless and desperate, Irene frantically searches for a long sentence that could prove that German is, indeed, her native language. Irene’s mother

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tongue, however, would not be helpful, since it is Minderheitendeutsch, a language she brought along from the old country — yet another element separating her from the inhabitants. In this novel Müller also draws a parallel between the Third Reich and Communism, a comparison she analyzes closely in her latest collection of essays, In der Falle, as well as in earlier fictional work. Irene experiences a feeling of regressing in time and perceives old German women as young Nazis during the Second World War: Dann fing Irene das Gefühl ein, es könnte alles anders werden in der Stadt. Die alten Frauen mit den weißen Dauerwellen, polierten Gehstöcken und Gesundschuhen könnten plötzlich wieder jung sein und in den Bund deutscher Mädchen marschieren. Es würden lange, fensterlose Wagen vor die Ladentüren fahren. Männer in Uniformen würden die Waren aus den Regalen beschlagnahmen. Und in den Zeitungen würden Gesetze erscheinen wie in dem anderen Land. (49)

This flashback to Germany’s history not only warns against the Nazi past and the possibility of new systematic discriminations but also describes a dictatorial Communist reality. The insecurity, fear, and helplessness Irene felt in “the other country” suddenly arise when she imagines recognizing former Nazis, softened by a new age and a new look. Nazi Germany is present in Irene’s mind when she thinks of the city and its beautiful houses, as well: she does not appreciate the architectural design of the houses but views them as places where people might have been tortured. Eventually, Irene grows accustomed to the streets and the city, even though she still fears cars that park too close behind her — they elicit memories of threats and political persecution in “the other country.” Her status in Germany is resolved in the last chapter of the book; she is notified that she may become a German citizen: “Irene freute sich nicht. Sie las weiter, als gehe es in dieser Mitteilung nicht um sie” (157). Irene realizes, however, that her new official identity does not resolve her personal dualism between home and “new home,” the conflict between identities, and her status as foreigner; she will remain a “Reisende auf einem Bein und auf dem anderen Verlorene” (92). Like Irene and other characters in Müller’s novels, German-Romanians cannot shed their Romanian past like an old, worn garment because it was, for better or worse, part of their lives, histories, and identities. For the same reason, German critics cannot ignore the Romanian dimension of most of the novels and essays that Müller wrote in Germany. In 1995 Müller explained her perspective on West German reality in the essay “Und noch erschrickt unser Herz”: Rumänien ist HINTERSINN für das, was in diesem Land vor meinen Augen gerade geschieht. Das Deutsche ist meine Muttersprache, aber ange-

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sichts des Hiesigen eine mitgebrachte Sprache. [. . .] Auch die gewöhnlichen Wörter Laden, Straße, Friseur, Polizist sagten im alltäglichen Gebrauch mit dem jeweils gleichen Wort etwas anderes, weil die Dinge, die sie gleich benannten, anders waren. Man kann eine Sprache jedoch nicht zweimal erlernen: Ich sag die alten Worte, ich spreche wie damals. Doch sehen muß ich darin etwas Neues. (Hunger und Seide 32)

Language is not a linguistic, but rather a cultural barrier; people in Germany express Western realities, which remotely correspond to those in Romania. Processing new information through the filter of the familiar Romanian experiences is part of the transitional period of adjusting to German society. The language is familiar, yet foreign. The Romanian HINTERSINN (deeper meaning) constitutes the deeper layer of Müller’s cultural identity, which positioned her in a specific historical and political Romanian context. To understand Herta Müller’s work, critics must accept and acknowledge all aspects of her cultural identity, because her uniqueness lies in the juncture of the Banat-Swabian, Romanian, and German presence and the style in which she imagines and gives expression to them.

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

The cemetery of Nitzkydorf, Banat, which reflects the ethnic and economic division between ethnic Germans and Romanians. A path leading to the chapel separates the German section from the Romanian one (left). Many photos on the German gravestones show men in their Nazi uniformss (even those who survived the war). The Romanian side is less organized and the gravestones fewer and smaller. (Photograph Valentina Glajar, 2001)

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Notes 1

Wilhelm Solms, ed., Nachruf auf die rumäniendeutsche Literatur (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1990), 227–28. 2

John J. White, “‘Die Einzelheiten und das Ganze’: Herta Müller and Totalitarianism,” Herta Müller, ed. Brigid Haines (Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1998), 76. 3

See Keith Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1994).

4

See Erich Kendi, “Völkerrechtliche Minderheitenschutzverpflichtungen aus der Zeit des Königreiches Rumänien,” Minderheitenschutz in Rumänien (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), 21–30. 5

Roger Bartlett and Bruce Mitchell, “State-Sponsored Immigration into Eastern Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The German Lands and Eastern Europe, ed. Bartlett and Karen Schönwälder (New York: St. Martin’s P, 1999), 96. 6

Bartlett and Mitchell 96.

7

Walter Engel addresses the issue of Magyarization in his book Deutsche Literatur im Banat (1840–1939) (Heidelberg: Julius Groos, 1982). 8 Holm Sundhausen, “Deutsche in Rumänien,” Deutsche im Ausland — Fremde in Deutschland: Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Klaus Bade (Munich: Beck, 1992), 36–54. 9

After Engel 156.

10

See Erich Kendi, Minderheitenschutz in Rumänien (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), 18–19. 11 Kendi’s Minderheitenschutz in Rumänien provides ample information on the juridical aspect of Ceauescu’s minority policy. 12

“Die Spaltung Europas in zwei verschiedene politische Systeme nahm ihren Lauf. Es war erst die Nachkriegsentwicklung, die sie befestigte. Aber ohne den von Hitler begonnenen Krieg wäre sie nicht gekommen. Daran denken die betroffenen Völker zuerst, wenn sie sich des von der deutschen Führung ausgelösten Krieges erinnern.” Richard von Weizsäcker, “Zum 40. Jahrestag der Beendigung des Krieges in Europa und der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft” (American Association of Teachers of German, Printed Material Center, 1987), 7. 13

Ernst Wagner, “Rumänien,” Informationen zur politischen Bildung 222 (reprint 1991): 41. On the deportation of German-Romanians see Georg Weber et al., eds., Die Deportation von Siebenbürger Sachsen in die Sowjetunion 1945–1949 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995). Though it focuses mainly on the deportation of Transylvanian Saxons, this comprehensive study includes extremely valuable historical and literary accounts, as well as political documents, regarding the deportation.

14

Katherine Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers (Berkeley: U of California P, 1983), 377.

15

See Fapte, Idei, Documente, Prigoana (Bucharest: Vremea, 1996).

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16

See Peter Motzan, ed., Worte als Gefahr und Gefährdung (Munich: Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1993). 17 After Cornelius R. Zach, “Der politische Prozeß im Kommunismus: Zweck, Methoden, Wirkung,” Worte als Gefahr und Gefährdung 19–29. 18

“Actually, his brave stance against the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia had not been motivated by the democratic spirit of Alexandru Dubcek’s reforms. His main concern was independence, which was threatened by Brezhnev’s doctrine: The Soviets might do to him what they had done to Dubcek.” Silviu Brucan, The Wasted Generation (Boulder, CO: Westview P, 1993), 114–15. 19

See Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1991), 249–56. See Daniel N. Nelson, Romanian Politics in the Ceauescu Era (New York: Gordon & Breach, 1988): “By the early 1980s, Elena Ceauescu chaired the National Council of Science and Technology, was a member of the Political Executive Committee of the Party, and was a deputy premier. Son “Nicu,” born in 1950, became a full member of the Central Committee in 1982 and was made head of the Union of Young Communists (UTC). Brother Ilie Ceauescu became a Lieutenant General (although much more junior than other candidates), and was made Deputy Minister of National Defense and Secretary of the Higher Political Council. Brother Ion Ceauescu, who had been a farmer in the mid 1960s, was (by the mid 1980s) the First Vice Chairman of the State Planning Commission. Nicolae Andru
a Ceauescu, also a brother, may have been a Securitate officer, and is now a Lieutenant General with responsibilities that may include that of rector of the Academy of the Ministry of the Interior” (xvi). Some of these family members committed suicide in 1989, Nicolae and Elena were shot after a mock trial on Christmas Day 1989, and Nicu died in 1996 of cirrhosis. Silviu Brucan points out even more relatives in Ceauescu’s empire: brother Florea Ceauescu (editor of Sc nteia), brother Marin Ceauescu (chief of the Economic Agency — Vienna), sister Elena Ceauescu (married Vasile Barbulescu, party secretary of agriculture), sister Maria Ceauescu (deputy chairman of the Red Cross), and brother-in-law Petrescu (deputy chairman of trade unions) (105). 20

Ironically, the debt was paid off in 1989, the year of Ceauescu’s death. See Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name (New York: Random House, 1993), 654. 21

22

Wilfried F. Schoeller, “Es wird alles erstickt: Ein Gespräch mit der rumäniendeutschen Autorin Herta Müller,” Süddeutsche Zeitung 9/10 May 1987: 1. 23

See Georgescu, “The Cult of Personality and Dynastic Socialism,” The Romanians 256–66. Daniel N. Nelson refers to Ceauescu’s cult of personality as to an “autocratic populism,” an “orchestrated adulation,” and an “extreme and enforced devotion” to Ceauescu that was later extended to his wife, Elena (158–60). 24 Adrian Punescu was called Ceauescu’s court poet because of his enthusiastic patriotic poems. In 1989 he had to take refuge in the American Embassy in Bucharest because people recognized him on the street and threatened to lynch him. After 1989, he became senator and vice-president of the Socialist Party, an organization of former communists. Today he has his own television show on a Romanian station. 25 26

See also Alina Mungiu, Românii dupa 1989 (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995).

Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauescu’s Romania (Berkeley: U of California P, 1995).

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27

This paragraph on the ethnic division can be only found in Istoria Românilor (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995), 300–301, the Romanian version of Georgescu’s The Romanians. Although the Romanian editor explains other alterations from the American edition, he does not mention the addition of this paragraph. 28

According to Brucan, there were about 700,000 informers and 10,000 street agents in Bucharest alone (158); since Bucharest had a population of 2,073,952 on 1 July 1995, this estimate would mean that more than one-third of the city’s inhabitants were informers. For further information on Romania, see Arhivele Na
ionale ale României, România: Evolu ie în timp si spa iu (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedic, 1996), 196.

29

One of the many Romanian jokes of the time addressed the issue of informers: A Romanian is a Romanian, two Romanians form a group, and three Romanians are a group and an informer. Many of these political jokes circulated in other Eastern Bloc countries, as well. The East German Stasi played a role similar to that of the Romanian Securitate. 30

William Totok, “Rumänisierung: Die Nationalitätenpolitik von 1918 bis 1990,” Der Sturz des Tyrannen, ed. Richard Wagner and Helmuth Frauendorfer (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990), 103–35. 31 The Romanian word conduc
tor is the equivalent for the English leader or the German Führer.

Seven years after Ceauescu’s fall, ethnic Germans acknowledged that they were, indeed, privileged in some ways. In an article in Die Zeit (6 December 1996) they boast about their newspaper Neuer Weg, which existed under Ceauescu: “In dieser Zeitung wurde manches nicht so eisern zensiert wie in anderen Blättern. Vor allem in der Kulturbeilage konnten Meinungen veröffentlicht werden, die in der rumänischsprachigen Presse undenkbar gewesen wären. Chefredakteur Reichrath berichtet, daß er als Kulturredakteur die ausdrückliche Weisung eines Chefs gehabt habe, regimekritische rumäniendeutsche Autoren wie Herta Müller oder Richard Wagner weitestmöglich zu unterstützen.” Gudrun Lingner, “Ein Blatt auf neuem Wege,” Die Zeit, 6 December 1996, 21. 32

33

Herta Müller, Traveling on One Leg, trans. Valentina Glajar and André Lefevere (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1998), 6. 34 On the issue of regionalism and the reception of German literature from Transylvania, see Anton Schwob and Brigitte Tontsch, eds., Die siebenbürgisch-deutsche Literatur als Beispiel einer Regionalliteratur (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993). 35

Friedrich Christian Delius, “Jeden Monat einen neuen Besen,” Der Spiegel (30 July 1984): 119–23. 36

Herta Müller, Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1991), 43.

37

Karin Bauer, “Tabus der Wahrnehmung: Reflexion und Geschichte in Herta Müller’s Prosa,” German Studies Review 9 (1996): 259. 38

Müller’s literary perspective shifted from German-Romanian literature to literature written in Germany. Under the influence of the literary society Aktionsgruppe Banat she distanced herself from the regional literature written in Romania by producing an anti-German-Romanian literature, which was meant to get recognition in Germany. Her models were not German-Romanian writers such as Müller-Guttenbrunn,

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Margul-Sperber, and Wittstock, but writers such as Bobrowski and canonized authors such as Celan. See Solms, ed., Nachruf auf die rumäniendeutsche Literatur 127. 39

See Franz Heinz, “Kosmos und Banater Provinz: Herta Müller und der unliterarische Streit über ein literarisches Debüt,” Beiträge zur deutschen Literatur in Rumänien seit 1918, ed. Anton Schwob (Munich: Verlag des Südostdeutschen Kulturwerks, 1985), 103–112. 40 “Schreiben im Land der Muttersprache,” Nachruf auf die rumäniendeutsche Literatur, ed. Solms 303. 41

Müller, Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel 20–21.

42

Frederick Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 14. 43 Rogers Brubaker, “Civic and Ethnic Nations in France and Germany,” Ethnicity, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), 169. 44

Peter Caws, “Identity: Cultural, Transcultural, and Multicultural,” Multiculturalism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 371. 45

Müller, Hunger und Seide 88.

46

Karin Bauer interprets “normality” in Michel Foucault’s terms by focusing on “normal” as “ein konstitutives Element des sogenannten rationalen Diskurses der westlichen Zivilisation” (261), which in the case of the Banat-Swabians only partly provides an explanation for their rigidity. It does not acknowledge the complexity of their status as an ethnic group in totalitarian Romania. 47

In Müller’s village, Nitzkydorf, the policeman was initially the only ethnic Romanian. Ethnic Germans had to sell their houses to the state in order to be allowed to emigrate prior to 1989, however, and Romanians and Roma moved into these houses. In the summer of 1996 only twenty-three ethnic Germans were still living in Nitzkydorf. They were all over sixty-five and believed that a new beginning in Germany would be too difficult for them. Their children had all immigrated to Germany. After 1990, ethnic Ukrainians from Moldavia moved into the German houses of Nitzkydorf and now constitute the majority of the village population; the remaining ethnic Germans joke that Nitzkydorf should be renamed “New Moldavia.” 48

This ethnic (and economic) division between ethnic Germans and ethnic Romanians is best illustrated in Nitzkydorf’s cemetery, which is divided according to ethnicity. Visitors are struck by the impressive gravestones of ethnic Germans, which constitute the main section; the gravestones of ethnic Romanians, on the other hand, are grouped together at the edge of the cemetery, where people who committed suicide are usually buried. The Romanians’ gravestones are small and appear to be “intruding” (see illustration page 152).

49

See also Marina Münkler, “Utopie vom Tod,” Die Zeit, 11 March 1988, 79. In “Der Einbruch eines staatlichen Auftrags in die Familie” Müller writes about her mother’s life and the condition of women in Romania in general. The story of the German-Romanians was simple: necessity decided their marriages after the war. “‘Ohne den Krieg hätte ich deinen Vater nie geheiratet,’ sagte meine Mutter. Sie erschrak nicht vor diesem Satz, denn bei vielen Vätern und Müttern in dieser Zeit war das so.” And “the German frog,” the norm that regulated their lives, governed this necessity. The alienated marriages of the parents affected the lives of the children, 50

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who were often abused. Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1992). 51

Klaus Hensel, “Alles, was ich tat, daß hieß jetzt: warten. Die ausgewanderte rumäniendeutsche Schriftstellerin Herta Müller im Gespräch mit Klaus Hensel,” Frankfurter Rundschau 8 August 1987: Zeit und Bild 2.

52

These stories were written in Romania but were published in Germany after Müller managed to leave Romania with her husband in February 1987. 53

The sources Erich Kendi uses in Minderheitenschutz in Rumänien show a dramatic decrease of the Jewish population living in Romania after the Second World War. In 1930 there were 728,115 Jews living in the Romanian territory, versus 138,795 in 1948. 54

These Transylvanian Jews were deported by the Hungarian Horthy regime right before the end of the war, when the Bukovinian Jews had already been released from the ghettos in Transnistria. It is surprising that Romanians do not acknowledge this monument, as they would readily accuse Hungarians of Jewish persecution, especially to emphasize Romania’s position of insubordination regarding the Nazi request of deporting Romanian Jews to concentration camps. 55 In the interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau (8 August 1987) Müller commented on the passing on of information about the war: “Von Vermittlung kann fast gar nicht die Rede sein. Es wurde eigentlich nicht direkt vom Krieg erzählt, es wurde von den Folgen des Krieges erzählt.” The only information conveyed about the war consisted of anecdotes. 56

Doina Pasca Harsanyi explains the role and the position of the women in the peasant culture in Romania: “Men’s and women’s roles and values in peasant culture are strictly defined. A woman moves from being the girl in her father’s house to wife and daughter-in-law, then mother, then mother-in-law and grandmother. She is always subordinate to at least one man, and as a daughter-in-law she submits to the mother-in-law’s authority as well. Men’s domination and women’s submissiveness are seen as rooted in a natural and religious order beyond human judgment.” “Women in Romania,” Gender Politics and Post-Communism, ed. Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller (New York: Routledge, 1993), 39. Although Harsanyi refers to Romanian women in general, the situation of the German-Romanian women is strikingly similar when compared to the picture Müller renders in her writings. Regarding family structures in Banat-Swabian villages up to the 1970s, see also Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann, ed., Zur Interethnik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), 340–65. See also Mariana Hausleitner’s “Women in Romania: Before and after the Collapse” in Gender Politics and Post-Communism 53–61. 57

Herta Müller, “Das Ticken der Norm,” Hunger und Seide (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1995), 89. 58

See Barth 10–19. Bernhard Waldenfels, Der Stachel des Fremden (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), 23. 59

60

Rozsika Parker, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, refers in her book Mother Hate/ Mother Love (New York: Basic Books, 1996) to ambivalence in the maternal feelings: love, on the one hand, and feelings of guilt because of hostile impulses, on the other hand.

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61

See also Friedrich Christian Delius, “Jeden Monat einen neuen Besen”: “Prügel sind in dieser archaischen Gesellschaft so selbstverständlich wie Brot. Erziehung ist Züchtigung. Zuneigung unüblich” (Der Spiegel [30 July 1984]: 119–23). 62

Ricarda Schmidt, “Metapher, Metonimie und Moral: Herta Müller’s Herztier,” Herta Müller, ed. Brigid Haines (Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1998), 67. 63

Homi Bhabha’s metaphor of the palimpsest identity only refers to the forceful process of inscribing the “Otherness” on the Self in the colonial context. I suggest, however, that identity is always a palimpsest — by choice or by force — since it is in a constant process of becoming. See Homi K. Bhabha, introduction to Black Skins, White Masks, by Frantz Fanon (London: Pluto, 1986). 64

Waldenfels 22.

See Marin Ni
escu, Sub zodia proletcultismului. Dialectica puterii (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995), 345–49.

65

66

I use Michael Kaufmann’s translation of Pflaumenfresser. Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums, trans. Michael Kaufmann (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996). Marin Ni
escu also talks of a collective fear and fear as a state of mind. People had many reasons to be afraid: the Securitate, whose members were omnipresent but not always seen; informers and electronic devices for surveillance; party activists; supervisors — known or unknown reasons, which were implanted deep in their souls (368). 67

68

See also Ilie Pintilie’s film The Oak (New York Films, 1994).

The largest uprising under Ceauescu took place in 1977, when 35,000 miners refused to enter the mines and asked for better working and living conditions. All the leaders of the strike disappeared one by one before the strike could spread. See Georgescu, The Romanians 264. 69

70

In an interview with Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler, Herta Müller comments on the topic of individualism in a dictatorship: “Der neue Mensch, der im Sozialismus geschaffen werden sollte, war ein Monstrum. Das Ich war nicht ein Bestandteil des Wir, sondern immer der Feind des Wir. Individualismus war das schlimmste Wort.” Herta Müller, ed. Haines, 22–23. 71

In 1981 rationing was introduced in Romania again because of the shortage of food. At the same time, Ceauescu instituted his new idea of a “Rational Eating Program,” which set limits for the population’s calorie intake. Each citizen had an allowance of a certain amount of vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, sugar, cooking oil, even soap (Georgescu, The Romanians 260). Georgescu does not mention the situation of students, which was even less fortunate, since they could not benefit from these allowances. To be eligible for the allocated food, people had to be permanent residents of a town; but most students came from other regions, so that their food intake was limited to the often questionable meals cafeterias had to offer or to the few items that were available over the counter. 72 In the Romanian school system students have to pass difficult specialized entrance examinations to fill a limited number of seats at the university level. 73

An Eastern European joke of the 1980s ironically explained the situation of the working class: “We pretend we work and they pretend they pay us.” People tried to compensate for their low salaries by stealing from the factories or plants where they worked. It

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was an entire underground black market that supplied every product imaginable. It was important to know the right people, since P.C.R., the initials of the Romanian Communist Party, as explained in another one of the many political jokes of the time, stood for “Pile, Cunos
in
e, Rela
ii” (connections, acquaintances, relationships). 74

Members of the nomenklatura, the privileged class of party activists, did not suffer any of the shortages during the Ceauescu era. They enjoyed benefits of all kinds: they had their own hospitals, special boutiques with all sorts of Western products, and high salaries. See Brucan 111, 123. 75 In “Women in Romania” Doina Pasca Harsanyi explains the causes and consequences of abortion in Romania: “The antiabortion law was passed in 1966 to ensure that the economy would not be short of workers during its intensive industrialization.” In 1986 Ceauescu declared the fetus “the socialist property of the whole society” and proclaimed giving birth “a patriotic duty.” Punishments for self-induced abortions ranged from six months to two years imprisonment. “If a woman refused to divulge the name of the abortionist, she risked being left to bleed to death, physicians being prevented from assisting her until she confessed the identity of the person who had helped her. [. . .] As a result, by 1989 there were 159 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (the highest figure in Europe) and around one million women became infertile due to unsafe self-induced abortions” (46). 76

Mariana Hausleitner, “Women in Romania: Before and after the Collapse” 54.

77

See also Nicolae Harsanyi and Michael D. Kennedy, “Between Utopia and Dystopia: The Labilities of Nationalism in Eastern Europe,” Envisioning Eastern Europe: Postcommunist Cultural Studies, ed. Michael D. Kennedy (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994): “The Romanian public sphere was appropriated by the Party/state, which controlled the media, public space, and associations. Every citizen was enrolled in some kind of organization, from the Front of Socialist Unity for adults to the Falcons of the Fatherland for children aged three to seven. The organizations all supposedly extended the mass basis of democracy, but in fact they served as means of implementing the official policies of the Communist Party. Any decision the Party leadership made was ‘unanimously, enthusiastically approved’ by these organizations” (154).

78

The poem was translated into German by Oskar Pastior; see Herztier 5.

79

In In der Falle (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1996) Müller explains the role poems written by other victims played in her life when she was politically persecuted in Romania: “In Rumänien haben sich viele Menschen an Gedichte gehalten. Durch sie hindurch gedacht, um eine Weile nur für sich zu sein: kurze Zeilen im Kopf, kurzer Atem im Mund, kurze Gesten im Körper. Gedichte passen zur Unsicherheit, man hat sich durch ihre Worte selber im Griff. Sie sind ein tragbares Stück im Kopf. Man kann sie ganz, wortgenau und lautlos aufsagen” (18).

Not only minority Germans were affected. Elena Ceauescu was in charge of ousting politicians who spoke foreign languages, as well. “Elena’s ‘cadre policy’ was the talk of the town. In 1985, she purged from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the basis of several criteria (bourgeois ‘unhealthy’ social origin, relatives abroad, and so on) most of the diplomats who spoke foreign languages. She had a theory: Someone who did not speak foreign languages would not defect to the West; he had to come back” (Brucan 118).

80

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81

According to Timothy Garton Ash, “Under an agreement reached between Chancellor Schmidt and President Ceauescu in 1978, the Romanian dictator agreed to allow out at least 12,000 Germans per year for the next five years. The Bonn government agreed to pay a well-rounded per capita sum for these emigrants, a sum increased, when the agreement was renewed for another five years in 1983, to nearly DM 8,000 per head” (238). 82 Müller, Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett 41. 83

Müller, Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett 49.

84

The character of Georg is to a large extent based on the real life of poet Rolf Bossert (1952–1986), who emigrated from communist Romania and committed suicide weeks after his arrival in Frankfurt. The characters of Edgar and Kurt are also based on real-life poets: Richard Wagner (born 1952, Romania), and Roland Kirsch (1960–1989), who supposedly committed suicide while waiting to immigrate to Germany.

85

Bruno Preisendörfer, “Die Weigerung, sich verfügbar zu machen: Herta Müller und Richard Wagner im Gespräch,” Zitty 26 (1989): 68. 86

According to migration historian Klaus Bade, fifteen million ethnic Germans migrated to West Germany after 1945. In 1990 alone 397,100 minority Germans from Eastern Europe immigrated to Germany. See Bade 405. 87

As Bernhard Doppler points out, German readers could clearly recognize the reference to former politician Uwe Barschel. “Die Heimat ist das Exil: Eine Entwicklungsgestalt ohne Entwicklung,” Die erfundene Wahrnehmung, ed. Norbert Otto Eke (Paderborn: Igel, 1991), 100. 88 See also Doppler: “Daß sie sich nicht entwickelt, daß sie erträgt, Fremde zu bleiben, macht ihre Autonomie, ihre Entwicklung aus” (105). 89

For a discussion of minority Germans from Eastern Europe and their social integration in Germany, see Edmund Spevack, “Ethnic Germans from the East: Aussiedler in Germany, 1970–1994,” German Politics and Society 13.4 (1995): 71–91.

Conclusion

M

still struggle when confronted with Germanlanguage literature from East Central Europe. For the most part, the political and historical events represented in these texts are marginalized or simply ignored. Moreover, the information on the dust jackets of books by authors from East European countries seek to attract readers by presenting prospects of exotic settings and oriental ambiance. Not only is the information misleading; it also reiterates existing stereotypes that describe East Europe as oriental and non-European. The dust jacket of Gregor von Rezzori’s Blumen im Schnee, for example, quotes the Berlin Tagesspiegel: “Rezzori portraitiert mit feinen Strichen. Und der Gewinn des Buches ist die exotische Welt, die dabei geschildert wird. Ein bunter orientalischer Teppich, dessen Leuchtkraft auch heute, und heute erst, fasziniert.” The result of transporting the text into an ahistorical realm of tales and ignoring the cultural and political dimensions of the book is that Rezzori’s valuable contribution to the cultural history of Bukovina is easily — and sadly — overlooked. Moreover, the information provided is often false. On the same dust jacket readers learn that Rezzori “erzählt von der Wiederbegegnung mit den vertrauten Ecken von Czernowitz, der fernen Welt der frühen Kindheit: von der Wiederbegegnung mit Czernowitz nach dem Fall des totalitären Ceauescu-Regime.” Although it is true that Ceauescu’s regime fell when he and his wife, Elena, were executed on Christmas Day 1989, Ceauescu had no connection to Czernowitz. By consulting a map of the region — which, incidentally, changed many times after 1989 — one can easily see that Czernowitz was not part of Romania but of northern Bukovina, which after 1945 was incorporated into the Soviet Union and is now part of Ukraine. Therefore, Ceauescu’s fall did not facilitate Rezzori’s return to his former hometown, Czernowitz. It did, however, make it possible for the author to revisit Bucharest, Romania’s capital, where he had spent a few years of his life. For the most part, East Central Europe is still viewed as a bloc, which allows for a perspective that disregards the multifarious history and culture of this “other Europe.” Rezzori, Hilsenrath, Pedretti, and Müller, however, write about the diversity of these regions, their multinational character, and their rich history and culture. The texts of these authors shed light on the German-language presence in a multicultural East Central Europe and show that historically and culturally that presence ties German-speaking countries to Eastern cultures and contexts. Although German is the native and literary ANY LITERARY CRITICS

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language of the four writers, most of their settings are East Central European: Rezzori constantly returned to his past in Czernowitz, which resurfaces in both his fictional and autobiographical writings; Hilsenrath puts the former Jewish shtetl Sereth on the map of German and Yiddish culture; Pedretti’s texts are marked by her childhood and the traumatic expulsion she experienced as a girl at the end of the Second World War; Müller writes almost exclusively about the Communist dictatorship she experienced in Romania and the collaboration of the Banat-Swabians with Nazi Germany. The writings of these authors require scholars of German studies to examine non-German cultural influences on German-language texts and to face German history from the perspective of East Central Europeans. On the other hand, in approaching these texts Romanian and Czech critics have to reevaluate their national past and their relationship to the German-speaking minorities. Müller’s books, for example, have been fervently translated into Romanian since 1990. In the new Romanian society, which is mostly concerned with political and economic aspects that fill the pages of both cultural journals and daily newspapers, however, Müller’s texts seem “out of sync” and spark few debates. Hilsenrath is largely unknown in Romania, although his texts would contribute to the debate revolving around Romania’s role under the Antonescu regime in the deportations of thousands of Jews to the Transnistrian camps. Pedretti’s text allows Czechs to face their common history with Sudeten Germans and reconsider the “official” version of the expulsion, which for so long was tainted by Communist ideology.1 These texts reflect multicultural influences and question the concept of a homogenous German, Czech, or Romanian literature based on ethnonational premises; they also challenge current definitions of minority literature. Concepts such as national, cultural, ethnic, and minority collapse when faced with the backgrounds of these four writers; they transcend their ethnic regional heritage, had different citizenships at different times, and embrace both Eastern and Western cultures. The work of these authors not only reflects their personal transformations but also highlights the complexity and heterogeneity of German culture, which reaches far beyond the borders of the German-speaking countries. Regardless of their national belonging, Rezzori, Hilsenrath, Pedretti, and Müller write literature in German on Eastern topics, and their work contributes to expanding and diversifying the understanding of national literatures in more inclusive European terms. As Dagmar C. G. Lorenz and Renate S. Posthofen emphasize in their Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins, the field of German studies is expanding and transforming as so-called marginal authors “call into question the very existence of one single center, or mainstream.”2 Moreover, texts by authors from East Central Europe attest to a multicultural literature in German that both challenges the understanding of a homogenous German literature and negotiates a position within a European tradition of

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diversity that reaches beyond Berlin or Vienna. To investigate further the role Germans and Austro-Germans played in East Central Europe, both minority and postcolonial criticism have to address the historical, political, and cultural ramifications of German-language culture in this region. The analysis of the historical and cultural dimensions in the works of East Central European German-language authors such as Paul Celan, Roda Roda, Rose Ausländer, Karl Emil Franzos, Ilse Tielsch, and Libue Moníková will offer further insights regarding the Austro-German and German presence in the East. Future research will need to explore the nexus of politics and culture in order to understand the multilayered meanings of both the production and the reception of German-language literature from East Central Europe.

Notes 1

New historical texts and cinematic representations of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the “transfer” of the Sudeten Germans are challenging the “official” version of the events. In 2000, for example, the Czech movie Divided We Fall, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the Foreign Film category, presented an attempt at reconciliation between Czechs, Germans, and Jews and portrayed the time of the German protectorate and the retaliation against Czech Germans in 1945. The divide between victims and perpetrators is often blurred in the movie, which suggests that Czechs and Germans helped each other in times of crisis. 2

Dagmar C. G. Lorenz and Renate S. Posthofen, “Introduction,” in Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins, 1–19.

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Index Aciman, Andre A., 43 n. 2, 165 Adelson, Leslie A., 2, 3, 9 n. 5, 10 n. 7, 165 Ancel, Jean, 62, 69 n. 13, 71 n. 46, 165 Anderson, Benedict, 18, 43 n. 15, 165 antifascism, Sudeten-German, 74, 78, 87–89, 96–98, 102 anti-Semitism: Austrian, 25, 28; Romanian, 54, 55–56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 66, 70 n. 31; Sudeten German, 84, 95 Antonescu, Ion, 53, 56, 62, 63, 66, 69 n. 13, 70 nn. 37, 39, 71 n. 46, 162 Arata, Stephen D., 31, 46 n. 58, 165 Arendt, Hannah, 55, 165 Arendt, Hannah, works by: Eichmann in Jerusalem, 55, 69 n. 19, 165 Arens, Katherine, 5, 10 nn. 9, 10, 16, 165 Ash, Timothy Garton, 73, 110 n. 9, 154 n. 21, 160 n. 81, 165 Ausländer, Rose, 2, 7, 163 Aussiedler, 1, 146–51 Bade, Klaus, 9 n. 1, 45 n. 44, 160 n. 86, 166 Barth, Frederick, 124, 156 n. 42, 157 n. 58, 166 Bartlett, Roger, 117, 153 nn. 5, 6, 166 Bauer, Karin, 62, 70 n. 34, 123, 155 n. 37, 156 n. 46, 166

Beckermann, Ruth, 68 n. 1, 71 n. 49, 166 Beneš, Edvard, 97, 100, 112 n. 38 Berman, Nina, ix, 3, 5, 10 nn. 8, 14, 15, 166 Berman, Russell, 5, 10 nn. 10, 12, 16, 43 n. 9, 166 Bhabha, Homi K., 16, 40, 47 n. 80, 132, 158 n. 63, 166 Bohmann, Alfred, 105, 114 n. 71, 167 Brandt, Willy, 95, 104, 110 n. 9, 113 n. 45, 114 n. 69, 167 Brubaker, Rogers, 28, 46 nn. 51, 52, 124, 156 n. 43, 167 Brucan, Silviu, 119, 154 nn. 18, 20, 155 n. 28, 159 nn. 74, 80, 167 Bukovina, 12–46; colonization of, 17–21; economic exploitation of, 22–23; German language in, 35–36, 37–38; population of, 19, 45 n. 44; schools in, 36–37, 47 n. 68; transition to Romanian kingdom of, 24–32 Burger, Hannelore, 37, 47 n. 76, 167 Caws, Peter, 124, 156 n. 44, 167 Ceauescu, Nicolae, 4, 8, 115, 116, 118, 119–21, 133, 136, 143–47, 153 n. 11, 154 nn. 20, 21, 23, 24, 155 n. 32, 158 nn. 69, 71, 159 nn. 74, 75, 80, 160 n. 81, 161; German-Romanians under Ceauescu’s regime, 116–22

182 E

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Celan, Paul, 2, 7, 11, 49, 69, 70, 126, 127, 156, 163, 168, 169, 174 erný, Bohumil, 94–95, 105, 113 n. 44, 168 Chalfen, Israel, 61, 70 n. 30, 168 Colin, Amy, 11 n. 22, 45 n. 41, 69 n. 27, 168 colonialism, 5–6; internal, 16–24, 38 colonization, cultural, 15, 17, 23; reverse, 31, 32, 147 Communism in East Central Europe, fall of (1989), 1, 61, 73, 108, 109, 110 n. 10, 115, 120, 145, 154 nn. 20, 21, 24, 25, 156 n. 47, 159 n. 75, 161, 172, 175; censorship, 120, 124, 136, 143, 144; Securitate, 136, 142–43; women’s life, 136–41 Czech-German relations: historical overview, 74–78; after 1945, 104–7; after 1990, 107– 10; bilateral accord on wartime abuses, 72, 96 Deák, István, 23, 45 n. 36, 46 n. 54, 168 Deltcheva, Roumiana, 6, 10 n. 18, 168 dictatorship, 115–60; communist, 124, 133, 144–46, 158 n. 70, 162; ethnocentric, 124, 130, 131, 144; Nazi, 95 Eke, Norbert Otto, 2–3, 10 n. 6, 168 Eley, Geoff, 19, 44 n. 22, 168 emigration, from German lands to eastern Europe, 21, 26, 45 n. 45, 76 Engel, Walter, 117, 153 nn. 7, 9, 169 ethnicity: Banat-Swabian, 8, 115, 119, 120, 122–33, 143, 156 n.

48; Bukovinian, 15–16; CzechGerman, 88–94, 99, 104; German, 1, 15, 30, 78, 91, 122, 124, 150; GermanRomanian, 116–17; persecution on basis of, 119, 121–22, 143 ethnocentrism, 4, 8, 74; Banat Swabian, 116, 122–34, 144; child abuse, 131–32; consequences of, 124–25, 130, 131; spousal abuse, 128–30; Sudeten German, 83–88; transcending of, 132–33 Fischer-Galai, Stephen, 55, 69 n. 21, 169 foreigners in Germany, 1, 2, 147– 50 Franzos, Karl Emil, 69 n. 27, 163, 169 Georgescu, Vlad, 120–21, 154 nn. 19, 23, 155 n. 27, 158 nn. 69, 71, 169 “Germanness,” 1, 15, 30, 78, 91, 122, 124, 128, 150; “BanatSwabian Germanness,” 122–33 Gilman, Sander L., 59, 62, 169 Glajar, Valentina, 69 n. 27, 155 n. 33, 170, 175 Goldsworthy, Vesna, 6, 46 n. 59, 170 Grigorovi
, Mircea, 17–18, 44 n. 16, 170 Habsburg Empire: and AustriaHungary, establishment of (1867), 12, 53, 76; and Badeni reforms (1897), 27, 76–77; dissolution of (1918), 3, 53, 55, 59, 74, 75, 77, 78, 86, 87, 112, 113 n. 44, 116, 117, 121, 155, 156, 168, 171, 173, 177; and Linz Program, 28; and Los

INDEX

von Rom movement, 27; rise of nationalism in, 20, 21, 75, 76 Hausleitner, Mariana, 43 n. 12, 68 n. 13, 69 n. 17, 70 nn. 31, 40, 71 n. 42, 140, 157 n. 56, 170 Havel, Václav, 72, 96, 104, 110 n. 1, 171 Hechter, Michael, 6, 11 nn. 20, 21, 171 Henlein, Konrad, 77, 78, 87, 89, 96, 111 n. 23, 169 Hilsenrath, Edgar, i, vii, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 48–68, 70 n. 34, 71 nn. 48, 50, 161, 162, 166, 168, 169, 171, 173, 178 Hilsenrath, Edgar, works by: Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonski, 49–68; Bronskys Geständnis, 51, 171; Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr, 59, 62, 70 n. 34, 171; Nacht, 51, 171; “Das verschwundene Schtetl,” 71 nn. 48, 50, 171 Hilsenrath’s work: autobiography and survival in, 49–53; black humor in, 50; German and Bukovinian Jewish identity in, 56–61; Jewish life in interwar Romania in, 53–56; the Transnistrian ghetto of Moghilev-Podolsk in, 63–66; Sereth after 1944 in, 66–68 Hirsch, Marianne, 67, 71 n. 47, 171 Historikerstreit, 102. See also Vergangenheitsbewältigung Hitchins, Keith, 153 n. 3, 171 Hitler, Adolf, 1, 7, 9 n. 2, 57, 58, 72, 78, 85, 86, 87, 95, 97, 104, 111 n. 28, 112 n. 36, 114 n. 60, 118, 153 n. 12 Hofbauer, Hannes, 18, 23, 44 n. 17, 45 n. 46, 172

E 183

Holocaust, the: in Czechoslovakia, 99–100, 112 n. 39, 113 n. 40; in Romania, 53, 62, 126; in Transnistria, 63–66 Holocaust deportations, from Bukovina, 62–64; from Transylvania, 157 n. 54 immigration, from eastern Europe to Germany, 1, 115, 122, 145– 52 Ioanid, Radu, 62, 64, 68 n. 13, 70 nn. 38, 39, 40, 71 nn. 41, 43, 172 Iron Guard/Garda de fier, 55, 61, 69 nn. 13, 22 Jägendorf, Siegfried, 64–65, 71 n. 45 Jaksch, Walter, 87, 97 Jankowsky, Karen, 2, 3, 9 n. 5, 172 Jászi, Oscar, 10 n. 9, 22–23, 47 nn. 78, 79, 172 Jelavich, Barbara, 28, 46 n. 49, 172 Jewish identity, 2, 19; Bukovinian, 50–53, 58–61; Eastern versus Western, 56–61; French, 88, 90, 99; Romanian, 53–56 Kafka, Franz, 84, 112 nn. 33, 34, 172 Kaindl, Raimund Friedrich, 23, 45 n. 38, 172 Kann, Robert, 19, 20, 44 nn. 27, 30, 32, 75, 76, 111 nn. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 112 n. 83, 172 Klotz, Marcia, 5, 10 nn. 10, 11, 43 n. 9, 173 Klüger, Ruth, 59, 68 n. 4, 173 LaCapra, Dominick, 52, 68 n. 11, 173

184 E

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Langer, Lawrence, 49–50, 68 n. 3, 173 Livezeanu, Irina, 54, 69 n. 16, 173 Lorenz, Dagmar C. G., ix, 2, 9 n. 5, 162, 163 n. 2, 173 Lua, Radomír, 77, 84, 90, 94, 95, 97, 98, 111 nn. 20, 21, 27, 28, 112 nn. 38, 39, 113 nn. 47, 51, 55, 58, 60, 114 n. 70, 174 Magocsi, Paul Robert, 90, 113 n. 40, 174 Magris, Claudio, 14, 26, 43 n. 3, 174 Maria Theresa, Empress of the Habsburg Empire, 18, 45 n. 45, 75, 76; immigration policy of, 21, 45 Mendelsohn, Ezra, 54, 59, 69 n. 14, 174 Moníková, Libuše, 109, 114 n. 76, 163, 174 Müller, Herta, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 67, 74, 108, 115–52, 155 n. 33, 159 n. 79, 161, 162, 174–75 Müller, Herta, works by: Barfüssiger Februar, 123; Herztier, 115–60; Hunger und Seide, 140, 146, 152; In der Falle, 151, 156–57 n. 50, 159 n. 79; Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt, 122, 123, 133; Niederungen, 122–24, 129–30; Reisende auf einem Bein, 147–51; Traveling on One Leg, 155 n. 33; Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett, 160 nn. 82, 83 Müller’s work: Banat-Swabian women in, 128–31; collaboration of Banat Swabians with Nazi Germany in, 117–18, 126–28; the dictatorship of Banat-Swabian ethnocentrism in, 122–33; exile in, 145–52;

fear and persecution under Ceauescu’s regime in, 133–45 Mungiu, Alina, 20, 154 n. 25, 175 Nelson, Daniel N., 154 nn. 20, 23, 175 1938: 3, 7, 49, 56, 57, 61, 67, 70, 77, 78, 89, 90, 92, 96, 111 nn. 23, 24, 25, 117, 118; Anschluss, 13, 61, 87; Kristallnacht, 61, 70 n. 32; Munich Treaty, 77, 87, 95, 96 Nistor, Ion, 19, 44 n. 25, 175 Niescu, Marin, 134, 158 nn. 65, 67, 175 Pasca Harsanyi, Doina, 135, 157 n. 56, 159 n. 75, 175 Pedretti, Erica, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 67, 72–110, 161, 162, 175–76; Pedretti, Erica, works by: Engste Heimat, 72–110; Harmloses bitte, 73; “Schauen/Schreiben; Wie kommt das Bild zur Sprache,” 114 n. 73, 176 Pedretti’s work: expulsion and expropriation in, 94–104; heteroglossia in, 82; narrating memories of expulsion in, 78– 83; Sudeten German antifascism in, 88–94 Petkovic, Nikola, 17, 43 n. 10, 113 n. 43, 175 Potsdam Agreement, 100, 114 nn. 61, 62 Prokopowitsch, Erich, 36, 45 nn. 43, 72, 176 Rezzori, Gregor von, 3, 4, 7, 9, 50, 67, 74, 83, 161, 162, 176 Rezzori, Gregor von, works by: Blumen im Schnee, 12–47; Ein Hermelin in Tschernopol, 14, 176; Mir auf der Spur, 43 n. 1,

INDEX

E 185

176; The Snows of Yesteryear, 15, 176. See also Bukovina Rezzori’s work: Germanization and Austrianization in, 32, 36– 37, 47 n. 68; local Bukovinians in, 32–43; supranationality in, 33; Western civilization versus Eastern way of life in, 33–34, 38–40, 41. See also Bukovina Roma people, Romani, or “Gypsies”: in Bukovina, 19; in Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic, 77, 105, 108–9; in Romania, 55, 125 Romania: Ceauescu’s, 133–45; kingdom of, 14, 15, 25, 28–29, 46 n. 54, 53, 59; rise of fascism in, 4, 50, 57, 70 n. 31 Romanian provinces: Banat, 117– 18, 122–33; Bukovina, 16, 24– 32, 41, 53–56; Moldavia, 17– 19 Romanianization, 54–55, 56, 70 n. 31 Rosenthal, Bianca, 51, 68 n. 8, 176 Roth, Joseph, 21–22, 45 n. 35, 176

Smelser, Ronald M., 99, 113 n. 57, 177 Spurr, David, 34, 35, 46 n. 60, 177 Stank, Tomáš, 97, 113 nn. 51, 96, 114 nn. 66, 67, 177 Stephen the Great, ruler of Moldavia, 18, 33 Stourzh, Gerald, 36, 45 n. 37, 47 n. 69, 177–78 Subtelny, Orest, 19, 44 n. 24, 178 Sudeten Germans, expulsion of (1945), 97–104; memories of, 78–83; rape, 102–3, 107, 114 n. 67 Sungalowsky, Joseph, 50, 51, 68 n. 5, 178

Said, Edward W., 10, 10 n. 19, 15, 16, 18, 43 n. 7, 176 Said, Edward W., works by: Culture and Imperialism, 10 n. 19, 176; Orientalism, 43 n. 7, 176 Sayer, Derek, 111 n. 26, 177 Schönerer, Georg von, 27, 28 Second World War, end of, 1, 3, 8, 46 n. 61, 50, 63, 68 n. 1, 72, 73, 78, 80, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 102, 105, 106, 109, 110 nn. 9, 10, 111 n. 23, 113 n. 40, 114 nn. 60, 62, 118, 127, 128, 134, 160 n. 86, 161, 163 n. 1, 166, 172, 177 Seibt, Ferdinand, ix, 77, 111 n. 22, 177

Verdery, Katherine, 120, 153 n. 14, 154 n. 26, 178 Vergangenheitsbewältigung, 72– 74, 96, 103, 104–10, 172; literature, 73–74 Vlad the Impaler/Prince Dracula, 31, 33

Todorova, Maria, 5–6, 10 n. 17, 178 Transnistria, vii, 4, 7, 49–53, 55, 62–64, 67, 69 n. 13, 70 n. 38, 71 nn. 41, 42, 46, 127, 157 n. 54, 162, 165 Turczynski, Emanuel, 21, 44 nn. 33, 34, 47 n. 68, 178

Wagner, Rudolf, 20, 36, 44 n. 32, 47 n. 72, 178 White, John J., 116, 138, 179 Wiskemann, Elizabeth, 75, 111 n. 12, 179 World War II. See Second World War Young, James E., 52, 68 n. 12, 179