Wounds of Memory
The Politics of War in Germany

This book studies memories of the Second World War articulated in novels to raise important political questions.

Maja Zehfuss (Author)

9780521174466, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 March 2011

312 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

Review of the hardback: 'This is a strong addition to the growing literature on historical remembrance in contemporary Germany. Zehfuss focuses on war novels, and in particular on those which show the suffering of ordinary soldiers, civilians, refugees, and children. This fictional repertoire is selective. 'A cruel but normal war' is what fiction records as a form of historical remembrance. The author aims at a Derridean 'overturning', reversing the previous eclipse of the Holocaust by the Resistance, and facing squarely what the Second World War looks like when it is not eclipsed by the Holocaust. She then returns to the Holocaust, to see what this new deconstructed geometry looks like. The result is a powerful account of the fluidity of historical narratives, carried by the readers and writers of fiction in Germany, and of their implications for discussions of a range of social and political issues today.' Jay Winter, Charles J. Stille Professor of History, Yale University

German memories of the Second World War are controversial, and they are used to justify different positions on the use of military force. In this book, Maja Zehfuss studies the articulation of memories in novels in order to discuss and challenge arguments deployed in political and public debate. She explores memories that have generated considerable controversy, such as the flight and expulsion of Germans from the East, the bombing of German cities and the 'liberation' of Germany in 1945. She shows how memory retrospectively produces a past while claiming merely to invoke it, drawing attention to the complexities and contradictions within how truth, ethics, emotion, subjectivity and time are conceptualised. Zehfuss argues that the tensions and uncertainties revealed raise political questions that must be confronted, beyond the safety net of knowledge. This is a compelling book which pursues an original approach in exploring the politics of invocations of memory.

Preface
1. Speaking of war and memory
2. Forgetting to remember?
3. Wounds of memory
4. The truth of memory
5. Times of memory
6. Memory, uncertainty, responsibility.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Social theory [JHBA], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]