{"id":165,"date":"2016-07-03T23:35:10","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T23:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=165"},"modified":"2022-06-27T12:35:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T16:35:58","slug":"kirstin-gwyer-encrypting-the-past-the-german-jewish-holocaust-novel-of-the-first-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2016\/07\/03\/kirstin-gwyer-encrypting-the-past-the-german-jewish-holocaust-novel-of-the-first-generation\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirstin Gwyer, Encrypting the Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust Novel of the First Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kirstin Gwyer. Encrypting the Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust Novel of the First Generation<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. x, 246 p. ISBN 9780198709930. \u00a365.00 (hardcover).<\/p>\n

This superbly researched monograph re-investigates (and in some cases, re-discovers) works of fiction written in the aftermath of the Holocaust experience. Critics at the time of publication often found such narratives by \u201cfirst generation\u201d German-Jewish writers incomprehensible; some branded them unethical, immoral, or worse. They were narrative attempts to \u201cexpress the ineffable\u201d (20), after all. It was better, some believed, to allow preterition to be the better part of disclosure. Author Kirstin Gwyer successfully debunks such biases, a process she calls \u201cmapping the blind spot\u201d (18). The narratives of H. G. Adler (1910-1988), Jenny Rosenbaum Aloni (1917-1993), Elisabeth Augustin (1903-2001), Erich Fried (1921-1988), and Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1916-1991) constitute her primary focus. Gwyer then makes a surprising turn in a concluding chapter on W. G. Sebald (1944-2001), who unlike the others, had no direct contact with the Holocaust and was not Jewish.<\/p>\n

Among Gwyer\u2019s most valuable observations is exposure of Theodor Wiesengrund Adrono\u2019s self-warranted postulation, \u201cTo write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, eroding the recognition as to why it has become impossible to write poetry today,\u201d as oxymoronic. The enthusiastic critical response accorded has led to constructions such as thinking the unthinkable<\/em>, imagining the unimaginable<\/em>, or speaking the ineffable<\/em>. The problem with such fantasies, Gwyer notes, is the relegation of the Holocaust to someplace outside any possible exegesis. Many regarded the novels of H. G. Adler, who spent two years at Theresienstadt and another two in Auschwitz, merely as \u201cmonuments to the author\u2019s survival, not as texts in their own right\u201d (62). Gwyer squelches comparable analyses by probing characters in novels by Adler, Augustin, and Aloni, who exist in an \u201cunhoused past, meandering through a realm suffused with images of both the recent and the distant past\u201d (93). Everything seems insurmountable to them, because exile and psychological disruption have resulted in the \u201ctraumatic persistence\u201d (30) of loss.<\/p>\n

Finding oneself in an unhoused past is nothing new; Dante\u2019s Guelphs and Ghibellines suffered similar relegation, both in the Fifth and the Sixth Circles of Hell. Characters in Aloni\u2019s Der Wartesaal<\/em> [The Waiting Room<\/em>] lurch likewise between bewilderment and perplexity, as they do in Augustin\u2019s Auswege<\/em> (the original title of which was Labyrint<\/em>). Complicating the sense of dislocation in Aloni\u2019s narrator is her experience as a Jewish survivor who collaborated with the Nazis. Having successfully disguised her Jewish identity, she got a job with the SS typing up deportation lists; one of these lists contained the name of her own mother. Because time seems to be stretching behind her and also in front of her, she narrates her memories to an imaginary daughter. Navigating this kind of labyrinth is difficult, and Gwyer\u2019s work is exemplary for \u201cdecrypting\u201d the significance of such episodes. Erich Fried\u2019s Ein Soldat und ein M\u00e4dchen<\/em> [A Soldier and a Girl<\/em>] dislocates \u201cmeaning\u201d throughout, creating an atmosphere encrypted in what Freud termed das Unheimliche<\/em>, best understood in English, Gwyer believes, as \u201cuncanny.\u201d Her treatment of Hildesheimer\u2019s Tynset<\/em> (1965) and Masante<\/em> (1973) recalls a recent analysis by Mary Cosgrove. Both novels contain numerous \u201cmicronarratives,\u201d but the atmosphere in both is, instead of \u201cuncanniness,\u201d one encrypted in pervasive Schrecken<\/em>, or terror.<\/p>\n

The case of W. G. Sebald is altogether different, and its inclusion in this volume is as surprising as it is altogether welcome and convincing. How does a non-Jewish writer with no direct connection to the Holocaust figure in an analysis of encryption? By creating work which is \u201cin a category unto itself\u201d (207), venturing into \u201cwholly uncharted territory\u201d (208). The result is \u201can eloquent spokesman of the Holocaust and an effective guardian of its traumatic memory\u201d (208). He was barely one-year old when the war ended and grew up largely ignorant of its consequences. Family photographs, documentary films, and newsreels from the period, however, began to have a cumulative effect. He fell under the shadows of nicht erlebten Schrecknissen<\/em> [unperceived horrors], never able to emerge from underneath them.<\/p>\n

In Sebald\u2019s Austerlitz<\/em> (2001), the narrator encounters Jacques Austerlitz, whose Czech parents sent him as a tiny child to Wales. In his sixties, Austerlitz returns to Prague, seeking to find traces of the family left behind. There are very few left, and he suffers a nervous breakdown after visiting the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Sebald\u2019s writing features the digressions, sudden revelations, illogical conclusions, and other strategems characteristic of authors in this volume. Sebald\u2019s accessibility sets him apart from the others. His prose is not tortured but almost transparent; his narrator listens empathically and responds to Austerlitz\u2019s account. While the narrator cannot overcome a sense of \u201cbelatedness\u201d (222), he nevertheless becomes a \u201cpostmemorial witness\u201d (217) committed enough to Austerlitz and his search for scattered memories, but \u201cbelated enough to preserve what minuscule traces of Austerlitz\u2019s ineffectual life are left\u201d (217).<\/p>\n

Sebald\u2019s strategy of breaking through the unrepresentability of the Holocaust conflicts with the insistence among some scholars that any attempt to \u201cnormalize\u201d Hitler would be tantamount to rehabilitation. Kirstin Gwyer\u2019s book neither normalizes nor demonizes; it decrypts perceptions which to date have often remained inchoate and even impenetrable.<\/p>\n

William Grange<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 University of Nebraska<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kirstin Gwyer. Encrypting the Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust Novel of the First Generation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. x, 246 p. ISBN 9780198709930. \u00a365.00 (hardcover). This superbly researched monograph re-investigates (and in some cases, re-discovers) works of fiction written in the aftermath of the Holocaust experience. Critics at the time of publication often found such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}