Irmgard Keun. Zeit und Zitat. Narrative Verfahren und literarische Autorschaft im Gesamtwerk by Beate Kennedy (review)

When surveying the literature produced during the Weimar Republic, especially in regards to female authors, one would be remiss to not mention two books by the same author, namely Gilgi and Das kunstseidene Mädchen by Irmgard Keun. Over the past two decades, these works have steadily garnered ever-more scholarly attention and have become widely accepted members of the literary canon, making Keun a household name within literary circles. Yet Keun’s later works, produced during the years of National Socialism and her exile, are rarely discussed in an academic setting. Nach Mitternacht, published in 1937, still fares best among her later books, but many of her other works have become relegated to obscurity, with few scholars engaging critically with them. Much of this could of course be read as a result of the rise in popularity of Weimar literature in general as opposed to exile literature, yet an imbalance of scholarship on the works of Keun undoubtedly exists. And it is precisely this imbalance that Beate Kennedy aims to correct. Noting that to date no other comprehensive study of the works of Irmgard Keun exists, she sets out to provide research that covers the entirety of Keun’s oeuvre, an especially important undertaking in regards to these often ignored later works. Interestingly, Kennedy’s scope extends beyond the usual inclusion of novels and stories, as she includes interviews, personal correspondence, and autobiographical texts under the rubric of literary works.

Kennedy’s book, written in German and currently not available in translation, primarily engages with scholarship conducted on Keun within Germany. Accordingly, she argues that the reception of Keun’s work has been overshadowed by Keun’s biography, with the two having become too intertwined in scholarship. She therefore provides a reading of Keun’s work that eschews biographical references in favor of a literary analysis that focuses solely on the text. Here it should be noted that her book would have benefited from a wider scope, as most research published on Keun within the English speaking academic community focuses solely on the texts opposed to biography, a fact which Kennedy seems to overlook. This shortcoming aside, Kennedy’s work is clearly the result of years of labor, drawing on primary texts, secondary sources, archival material, and correspondences she individually tracked down to provide a comprehensive overview.

Following an introduction and a brief theory section, the first half of the book is organized chronologically, providing analyses of Keun’s works from the period of the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and her exile, and the postwar years, respectively. Each of these periods is then further subdivided and follows a pattern of firstly providing information about the work’s creation, then discussing its reception, and lastly analyzing some key figures and themes in the texts. In the section on the Weimar Republic, she analyses Gilgi and Das kunstseidene Mädchen. For the section on National Socialism and her time in exile, she presents information on Das Mädchen, mit dem die Kinder nicht verkehren durften, Nach Mitternacht, D-Zug dritter Klasse, and Kind aller Länder. For the postwar period, the focus is on Ferdinand, der Mann mit dem freundlichen Herzen. Her readings of the texts maintain a neutral stance, avoiding literary interpretation in favor of character analysis and the charting of recurring themes in Keun’s work. Yet what makes these chapters shine is the sheer amount of research and background material provided, making Kennedy’s work an indispensible first point of reference for anyone interested in approaching her later works.

In the second half, Kennedy turns to what she calls hybride Textformen from the 1930s to 1970s, which includes an examination of Keun’s personal epistolary correspondences, autobiographical texts, and interviews given. Perhaps surprisingly, given her insistence on previous scholarship’s too-heavy reliance on autobiographical elements, Kennedy chooses to devote hundreds of pages to these highly personal texts, which...