Silence and Acts of Memory: A Postwar Discourse on Literature, History, Anna Seghers, and Women in the Third Reich (review)

This book is well researched, lucidly written, and ultimately accomplishes what it sets out to do by demonstrating how two of Anna Seghers's exile texts serve as "socially formative documents" that "preserve a voice of the past" (19). The bulk of the work is less a resource on Seghers in particular than a comprehensive summary of, and reflection on, postwar silence and research into everyday life for women under fascism. In the context of such discussions, the final chapter provides solid analysis of the female characters in Seghers's novel The Seventh Cross and novella The Excursion of the Dead Girls.

In the introduction Maier-Katkin outlines her approach of combining socio-historical literary analysis with contemporary discourse about daily life in the Nazi era. Seghers is an appropriate author on whom to focus for such a project, given that she, as Maier-Katkin notes, "aims to illuminate particular aspects of the past where the historical record is incomplete" (18). The first chapter provides informative background on Seghers and her literary and essayistic writing, albeit while omitting an important detail about the origin of the Excursion novella—namely that it was begun during Seghers's recovery from a serious accident in Mexico, a fact that finds reflection in the story's dreamlike narration. The second chapter relates the contemporary reception of Seghers's exile works to Louise Rosenblatt's theory of reading as a transactional, cross-generational process. This method makes sense and could be enhanced further by a consideration of Theory of Mind in line with current developments in literary-cognitive studies; in essence, Maier-Katkin contends that Seghers was anticipating and writing for the mind of the postwar reader. The third chapter outlines the phenomenon of pervasive silence in West German discourse about the past, while the fourth chapter traces the relatively recent emergence of historical inquiry into the daily lives of "ordinary" people during the Third Reich, particularly women. This chapter serves well as a transition into the fifth and final chapter, which examines a variety of women in two of Seghers's exile texts in order to "illustrate the power of literature to complement the historical record" (88). From Liesel Röder in The Seventh Cross, who "draws attention to the living rooms and family lives of Hitler's Germany" (105), to the nurse Ida in Excursion, who exemplifies "how questionable ethical behavior can become routine and ordinary" (137), Maier-Katkin's readings shed light on Seghers's literary contributions to the Alltagsgeschichte of the Nazi era.

One question that arises with Maier-Katkin's approach is why she chooses to concentrate only on the West German postwar discussions of the Nazi past, especially since Seghers herself resided in East Germany as of 1947. The monograph is not particularly lengthy (150 pp. excluding the notes); thus it seems that another chapter or section addressing the East German perspective on this issue could have been included. This criticism aside, the considerable amount of ground that Maier-Katkin does cover within a short span is impressive. She makes a strong case for renewed consideration of Seghers's texts, which "can be read again and analyzed with new sociohistorical interests in mind" (87), and reveals her familiarity with literary scholarship on Seghers as well as with both prominent and lesser-known pertinent historical references. Maier Katkin's incorporation of the prolific writer's essays on the function of art in society is especially important, demonstrating Seghers's additional role as a keenly perceptive cultural critic.

The topic of this book is timely and by no means relevant only for literary scholarship, given wide-reaching debates in recent decades on issues of silence, culpability, and complicity (whether active or passive) of civilian Germans during Hitler's reign. The arguments presented here contribute to a growing understanding of how the...