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From Luther to Hitler?‘Ordinary Germans’, National Socialism and Germany's Cultural Heritage in F. C. Delius's Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau
Author(s) -
Taberner Stuart
Publication year - 2008
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/j.1468-0483.2008.00431.x
Subject(s) - nazism , ideology , german , relation (database) , barbarism , psychoanalysis , philosophy , literature , religious studies , sociology , history , politics , psychology , art , civilization , linguistics , database , political science , computer science , law , archaeology
F. C. Delius's Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau (2006) is one of a number of ‘family narratives’ focused on the Nazi past which have appeared in the course of the last decade responding to, and often tempering via a more empathetic perspective, the typically condemnatory tone of the ‘Väterliteratur’ of the 1970s and 1980s. What makes this short text stand out from other contemporary texts of this kind, however, is the intriguing contrast between its protagonist's evident limitations with regard to her knowledge of the world and experience and the allusive richness of the philosophical, theological and cultural markers which fill the mental universe she inhabits and which she strives to bring to bear on her daily reality in order to make sense of ideology, propaganda and war. This article explores the ways in which Delius offers a subtle exploration, in fiction, of the perspective that one ‘ordinary’ German – the author's mother – derived from the traditions into which she was born and of how she positioned herself in relation to the events of her time. In doing this, it neither relativises her passivity, or indeed her prejudices, nor denies her a degree of empathetic understanding.