German Narratives of Belonging: Writing Generation and Place in the Twenty-First Century by Linda Shortt (review)

In this slim and rich volume, Linda Shortt analyzes narratives of belonging in post-Wende German literature that represent a variety of generations, attitudes towards belonging (e.g., longing or anxiety), and relationships with German-speaking regions. When Shortt speaks of belonging, she means a connection “to a physical or imagined place, a real or imagined group, or a cultural practice or tradition” or even to “a remembered or prospective time in space” (1). This broadly defined sense of belonging is one that is fluid, performative, in process: never a static state, and in only one of the literary works considered here is it a currently achieved state. Shortt argues that the quest for belonging is also “the quest for attachment as a way of recuperating a stable identity in a globalized and yet fractured world” (1). She points in particular to the caesura years in German history: 1945, 1968, and 1989/1990. But she also speaks of mobility, migration, supermodernity (a term coined by Marc Augé), and increased communication as contemporary phenomena that both impede and facilitate a sense of belonging. Drawing on “humanist geography […]; migration, memory, and cultural studies; psychology; feminist theory; and German and Anglo-American literary scholarship” for her analysis, Shortt’s consideration of belonging is satisfyingly complex, as evident, for example, in her statement that “home” is now “a multidimensional and mobile construct that can involve more than one location” (3). Drawing on Sara Ahmed, Shortt argues that home can be “a place of origin,” “a place of residence,” or “a lived experience” (4). Shortt’s insistence on allowing fluidity, multiplicity, and simultaneity in the theorization of home and belonging gives her analysis richness and depth.

The book is organized in four chapters, including an illuminating introduction that lays out the theoretical approach and socio-cultural context for the study. Chapter One focuses on narratives of expulsion, from both an East German and West German perspective, and analyzes works by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein, and Angelika Overath. The trauma of expulsion (or, in some narratives, the trauma of arrival) of ethnic Germans at the end of World War II is an example of the complexities of national, ethnic, and cultural identities, and evidence that these categories don’t always align with place. The narratives analyzed in this chapter ultimately conclude that it is not possible to feel settled in the new place, even if the lost Heimat is just as impossible to re-attain. Shortt summarizes: “Longing to return to their lost home, […] these expellees developed an anxiety about belonging that defined their relationship to place for several generations” (22), thus pointing to the long-term effects that belonging can have on family.

Whereas Chapter One focuses on belonging and place, Chapter Two focuses on belonging and generation, centered on the 1968 generation. Belonging based on generation is a “psychological mode of belonging” that “relies heavily on stories, rituals, language, objects, and souvenirs” (55). This is “a bond that […] is ‘not wholly “invented” but still crafted on some sense of belonging and togetherness which may be contested, but never fully fixed’” (55). Shortt characterizes “the 1968ers as a generation with a desperate longing to belong” (59), a desire perhaps attributable to their parents’ psychological damage from the war and their consequent inability to provide a Zuhause for the children (60). Such is the analysis of Peter Schneider in his memoir Rebellion und Wahn, although Uwe Timm’s novel Rot points out that the belonging that his generation sought in the student movement proved unstable and transitory anyway. Stephan Wackwitz, in his memoir Ein unsichtbares Land, sees none of the positive aspects of the student movement that Schneider and Timm, despite their critiques, are drawn to. Rather, Wackwitz links the student movement to his grandfather’s support of totalitarianism, condemning both generations, yet still connected to his own, even as he disavows it.

Chapter Three considers belonging in light...