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Long Memories: The German Student Movement in Recent Fiction
Author(s) -
Cornils Ingo
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0483.00245
Subject(s) - german , honesty , movement (music) , erasmus+ , relation (database) , dream , art history , representation (politics) , art , aesthetics , humanities , history , literature , philosophy , theology , psychology , political science , law , the renaissance , politics , computer science , database , neuroscience , archaeology
This article examines three novels about the German Student Movement published in 2001. While ‘1968’ continues to divide the nation, Leander Scholz's Rosenfest , Erasmus Schoöfer's Ein Frühling irrer Hoffnung , and Uwe Timm's Rot supply the reader with a sensitive ‘Innenansicht’ of the movement. They portray the definitive moments of individual or collective experience at the time, but they also set those experiences in relation to the present. As the process of literary representation is slowly being replaced by one of remembering and re–evaluation, temporal distance paradoxically allows for greater honesty and authenticity when dealing with problematic aspects of the movement such as violence, ‘open’ relationships, and idealism. It becomes clear that these three novels are less nostalgic than the ‘literarisierte Revolte’ is commonly perceived to be. The counter–cultural nature of the movement has certainly left its mark on Scholz, Schöfer and Timm: while consciously contributing to a cultural memory, they assert the continuing relevance of the students’ utopian dream. Ist es tatsächlich schon 30 Jahre her, daß wir die Revolution machen wollten. Käme es heute zur Revolution, die Leute würden denken, es sei eine Werbeveranstaltung.