The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust (review)

Book Reviews 157 theologians that the Americans who had the most fIrst-hand experience ofsuffering and oppression identify with the Jewish message of hope and justice while those who had the least proclaimed, whatever it might have meant, that God had "died." Clark Williamson Theology Department Christian Theological Seminary The Language ofSilence: West German Literature and the Holocaust, by Ernestine Schlant. New York & London: Routledge, 1999. 277 pp. $20.99. Ernestine Schlant'shighly focused study about West German fIctional narratives is a well written resource that raises signifIcant questions and challenges. Because she contextualizes authors and their narratives historically, culturally, sociologically, and psychologically, the reader gains a comprehensive image ofthe evolution ofthe central post-war issue in West German literature: the destruction ofthe European Jews and the always more or less defensive strategies authors employ over and against the horrendous crimes committed by their civilization. In covering the period from 1945 to 1990, Schlant demonstrates how German authors have reflected the collective consciousness of Germans in regard to the Holocaust while contributing through subtexts to the collective unconscious where Germany's atrocious history has by no means been "mastered."Auschwitz, as historical fact and as trope, remains for Germans botha point ofreference and a vanishing point. Schlant distinguishes the silence ofthe Holocaust-a silence over the horror of direct experience-from the silence about the Holocaust-the silence ofperpetrators and the succeeding generations that attempted to address that silence. Those attempts have been undermined for decades by Germany's "inability to mourn," even as our knowledge, interpretations, and understanding of Nazism and the Holocaust have increased since 1945. Schlant argues that "corning to terms" with the past is not equivalent to "working through," fOf "it leaves the victims and the crimes as unmourned as they have always been" (p. 14). She accepts Margarethe and Alexander Mitscherlichs' contention that Germans were unable to mourn the loss oftheir emotional investment in the Third Reich as they redefIned the Hitler era by perceiving themselves as deceived and victimized by the Nazis. This self-victimization is a major defense mechanism in post-war narratives and represses the victimization ofJews. Schlant argues that the ability ofauthors and their fIctional characters to connect affectively with the victims ofthe Holocaust is necessary for any genuine mourning that "works through" to an authentic "restitution ofpersonal identity." Some readers may take issue with this argument. It is very possible that private grief can eventually mature into the restitution of a mature personal identity, but I seriously doubt if such an ideal grieving process is ever effected by the collective 158 SHOFAR Winter 2001 Vol. 19, No.2 consciousness of an entire people, especially in mass societies. Schlant could have challenged the Mitscherlichs' paradigm ofmourning, useful as it has been since 1967 as a frictional device in our questioning of Germany's post-war attitudes towards Nazism and the Holocaust. As German narratives reveal through their rhetorical strategies, it is impossible to grieve over the Third Reich; the Holocaust, on the other hand, demands a mourning for which closure would be highly problematical. Schlant's discussion ofrepresentative German authors is most insightful when she discusses the subtexts, points ofambiguity, blanks, or over-determined narratives since 1945. The mythic Nul/punkt (zero hour) was no new beginning because "knowledge of the Nazi past was channeled into denial and repression" along with "the most heavily charged and tabooed word of all-'Jew'" (pp. 24-25). Even authors such as Boll and Grass rely on stereotypes and sentimentality towards Jews and Jewish suffering. This repression continues in the "generational discord" evident in the autobiographical fictions of the next generation which experienced itself as victimized by the fascist child-rearing of their politically and ethically compromised parents (p. 82). Her discussion ofHanns-JosefOrtheil's autobiographical novels about his parents reveals that by the late 1970s German authors, acutely aware ofthe complexities ofa corrupted language, had begun to probe more profoundly into the past of their parents. Although Schlant's discussion is chronological, each chapter traces the thematic progression from silence to articulation, from "ruptures and displacements" to the question of personal restitution. She sees Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld (1986) as an empathic attempt to...