The Language of Silence

Much as certain German writers and historians may have hoped throughout the past five decades that there would be an end to the controversies involving the Nazi past, particularly the Holocaust, there is no end in sight to these debates, neither in post-unification Germany nor world-wide. There have always been reminders, issued for the most part by survivors and exiles and their children that justice has not been done and that historical and literary accounts ignore or fail to adequately represent the Shoah and the destroyed pre-Shoah Jewish culture. However, Ernestine Schlant concludes her examination of the representation of Jews in West German prose fiction on a positive note. She comes to the conclusion that West German authors did address the Holocaust, over time achieving new levels of engagement and honesty, and that post-unification writers continue to do so. Schlant argues that after the initial period of “private silences,” “public debates” have ensued, taking the Holocaust debates to new levels of sophistication and a deeper understanding of the Shoah victims through empathy. She traces a gradual moving away from the notion that the average German, the “little guy,” and German veterans were the primary Nazi victims, arguing that in later works German writers depicted Holocaust victims as individuals.

Schlant’s declared focus is West Germany, however, in contradistinction to her references to the GDR, she fails to draw clear distinctions between authors from the Federal Republic of Germany and Austrian writers. To be sure, most of the latter have published in West German, Handke, Henisch, and Schwaiger (missp. Schweiger). Yet, the historical and cultural dimensions they bring to their works differ significantly from those of their West German colleagues, as Schlant reveals herself in the theoretical segments surveying historical changes of the literary and intellectual landscape. Linking these authors with the discussion of West Germany does affect Schlant’s otherwise straightforward and consistently constructed critical framework.

In chronological order, mindful of generational and biographical considerations, Schlant examines prose fiction by prominent writers in a historical and social context. The study begins with the first postwar decade and ends with the post-unification period. The topics and issues explored within this larger framework include “documentary literature,” “the war on the Eastern Front,” “Restitution of Personal Identity” in conjunction with two or three individual authors in each section, all of them male. Women authors are referred to in the general discussion but not a single work by a woman author is foregrounded and discussed in depth. In keeping with conventional views on women and genre women figure most prominently in the section on autobiographical writing.

From Schlant’s selection of authors it appears that only half of the West German population, men, have serious insights into the Holocaust, that only men are able to represent the point of view of perpetrators and victims, and that only they must (this is in fact Schlant’s theme) come to terms and develop empathy with the experience of the victims. Yet, one does not have to look far to find prominent women writers in every period highlighted in The Language of Silence. A critical examination of prose works such as Elisabeth Langgässer’s Märkische Argonautenfahrt or Luise Rinser’s Jan Lobl aus Warschau, Ingeborg Drewitz’s Gestern war heute and of the social critical work of women writers including Gabriele Wohmann and Marie Luise Kaschnitz would contribute crucially and qualitatively by gendering and further problematizing the literary representation or non-representation of Shoah victims by West German non-Jews. Beyond this obvious shortcoming, Schlant’s particular selection of authors and individual works is debatable, but that is to be expected in a book whose survey format implies closure and completeness that it is not able to deliver—why Böll and Koeppen, and not Goes, why no mention of the controversy involving autobiography of Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank, entitled Der Vater: eine Abrechnung, why not include him in the section devoted to...