From Vergangenheitsbewältigung to Living with Ghosts: Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster and Leibhaftig

Publisher： Rodopi

ISSN： 0927-1910

Source： German Monitor, Vol.75, Iss.1, 2012-12, pp. : 123-143

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Abstract

This chapter examines two works of Christa Wolf that engage with Germany's history at different points in the author's life: Kindheitsmuster (1976) explores the country's fascist past with a view to conducting Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a project that ultimately fails. Leibhaftig (2002) re-engages with memory of fascism, but places it in relation to how the GDR and its demise are to be remembered from a post-unification perspective. A complex memory text that probes the material as well as the psychological foundations on which East German society rested, Leibhaftig portrays East Berlin as an uncanny underground world of unacknowledged and repressed memories. Pervaded by imagery of human pain and suffering, the narrative re-constructs GDR history as a 'Krankheitsfall', confronting the reader with questions about the denials, displacements, and deformations that contributed to the state's demise.