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‘DAS BÖSE MUSS RAUS’: WITNESSING AND TESTIMONY IN GÜNTER GRASS'S IM KREBSGANG
Author(s) -
Henebury Anja
Publication year - 2015
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/glal.12070
Subject(s) - novella , german , narrative , taboo , metanarrative , literature , the holocaust , history , philosophy , psychoanalysis , art , political science , law , theology , psychology , archaeology
Günter Grass's 2002 novella Im Krebsgang has been widely discussed as one of the central texts of a new literary discourse on German victimhood during World War II that has emerged in the 2000s. At the heart of the novella is the notion of a taboo on the suffering endured by Germans during the expulsions, the repressed narratives of which supposedly resurface now in disfigured shape as right‐wing extremism. While the existence of this taboo has been disputed, little attention has been paid to the fact that the ethical foundation for the story about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and its afterlife in German memory is gained through a problematic appropriation of narrative tropes of witnessing that can be traced back to the testimonies of the survivors of the Holocaust. By framing the suffering of German civilians in 1944–45 in this manner, Grass gives legitimacy to a claim for public recognition and commemoration that previously had been the domain of the far right. In this way the novella participates in a process of historical de‐contextualisation in which the Holocaust is invoked for strategic purposes.