Trauma, Resilience, and Narrative Constructions of Identity in Germans Born of Wartime Rape

The paper offers an analysis of narratives (published materials and interviews) by older adults who were born to German mothers raped by Red Army soldiers at the end of WWII. The author focuses on how these now older adults narrate their experiences of growing up with stigmatization and rejection, how they construct their identity through the narrative process, and where we can locate their resilience. The acting out of trauma is expressed in parallel to working through it, a process in which the construction of a meaningful self and of an acceptable image of the unknown father plays an important role. The paper also reflects on what these very personal narratives can tell us about the political culture and discourses of their national community, how they deconstruct homogenous national identity, and how they complicate narratives of war and violence.