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  • Unredeemed Past: Themes of War and Womanhood in the Works of Post–World War II Austrian Women by Kirsten A. Krick-Aigner
  • Traci S. O’Brien
Kirsten A. Krick-Aigner, Unredeemed Past: Themes of War and Womanhood in the Works of Post–World War II Austrian Women. Riverside: Ariadne, 2011. 277 pp.

With this volume, Kirsten Krick-Aigner aims to provide a sociocultural reading of Austrian women’s writing about the war and postwar eras. Her discussion of texts, written by a broad range of writers and in a variety of genres, is diligently contextualized with historical detail and incorporates some theoretical perspectives on Holocaust literature. In addition, the author intends to enlarge the boundaries of traditional scholarship, which, according to Krick-Aigner, has marginalized women’s voices. At times, however, her overemphasis on sociocultural features leads the author to miss opportunities to discuss other important aspects of her chosen texts.

This volume’s structure is certainly one of its strengths. In chapter 1, [End Page 140] Krick-Aigner lays the groundwork with secondary literature about war as well as specifically gendered experiences of war, such as rape. Chapters 2 through 7 are devoted to a specific theme in the work of one or more authors. They are: memoirs by Elizabeth Welt Trahan, a Jewish-Austrian refugee to the United States (ch. 2); themes of “war trauma and memory” in Hertha Kräftner’s poetry and prose (ch. 3); the “older woman” in postwar novels by Ilse Aichinger, Elisabeth Reichart, Eva Anna Welles, and Johanna Nowak (ch. 4); memoirs of the Kindertransport to Great Britain by Martha Blend, Lore Segal, Helen Hilsenrad, and Mona Golabek (ch. 5); memoirs and novels about the Jewish refugee experience in Shanghai (ch. 6); and contemporary novels for children about the war and postwar periods by Christine Nöstlinger, Käthe Recheis, and Renate Welsh (ch. 7), followed by a short conclusion.

As is evident in the chapter titles, Krick-Aigner includes firsthand accounts written by survivors and refugees of the war period as well as fictionalized representations by second- and third-generation authors. The latter uses interviews and diaries of actual witnesses and family members in order to write, according to Krick-Aigner, authentically about war and postwar experiences. The hope to reclaim a part of Austria’s past generates two recurring themes that bring coherence throughout. The volume focuses mostly on lesser-known women authors who address the experiences of women and girls during the war and postwar era. In addition, Krick-Aigner sees in all of the works an attempt to “bear witness to the past”—a phrase that contains, in this context, an especially ethical imperative—in order to reveal the impact of the past on the present and to create the hope for a more peaceful future (191).

The promises—whether explicitly or implicitly given by the author of this volume—are considerable. She promises that these authors have something of value to say to readers today and that life-affirming meaning is to be found in their work. As literary texts and memoirs are her objects of study, Krick-Aigner does not seriously question the idea that language is essential in constructing meaning. Moreover, underpinning the volume is the assertion that there were specifically gendered ways of experiencing and thus gendered ways of “reconstructing meaning” after the destruction caused by the Nazis and by World War II. With her particular approach, she suggests that one can write about war and postwar literature without the heavily theoretical language of those who followed in the wake of Theodor Adorno’s famous dictum about the impossibility of poetry after Auschwitz. The inclusion of fictionalized texts and memoirs from those who are not actual survivors lends [End Page 141] credence to the idea that one can aspire to authenticity somewhat independent of documentary or historicist “truth,” that one can “give voice” to stories of survival in order to reclaim the past.

This is an exercise of considerable hope, but the disappointment of this volume is that its reach exceeds its grasp, and Krick-Aigner follows through on very few of these promises. The areas she touches on in her introduction, such...

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