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The article presents variants of the story of the final phase of World War II in the eastern provinces of the Third Reich exemplified in the novels Wenn die Damme brechen... by Edwin Erich Dwinger (1950), Engel , Menschen und Damonen by Hanna Stephan (1951), Jenseits der Schleuse by Werner Klose (1953), and Feuer im Schnee by Jens Rehn (1956). The basis of the discussion are works outside the contemporary canon of literature devoted to World War II depicting forced evacuation of German civilian population and the retreat of Wehrmacht forces in the face of an offensive by the Red Army. The analysis shows the diversity in which the catastrophe of the “German East” was handled in works of fiction of the 1950s. Thus, the article disputes the theses of the German researcher Louis Ferdinand Helbig concerning the subject of “exodus and dislocation” in German writing. Helbig differentiates three successive phases of literary development devoted to the German exodus from central and eastern Europe and ties them to the predominance of specific genres (documentaries, quasi-documentaries, memoirs, and fiction). The present article, on the other hand, shows the diversity of narrative techniques in the period which Helbig considers as the realm of witness literature. The article examines different ways of discerning purpose in Germany’s defeat and the suffering of the civilian population: heroic and military (Dwinger, Klose), mythical-demonic and religious (Stephan), as well as existential (Klose). Contrasted with such interpretations is a novel which rejects attempts to aggrandize tragic events by invoking ideology, metaphysics, or literary tradition (Rehn).

„Wie eine feurige Sage“. Narrationen vom Untergang des „deutschen Ostens“ in einigen Romanen der 1950er Jahre