The Eastern Turn in Contemporary German, Swiss and Austrian Literature

Abstract

This paper notes that recent fiction in German by writers from eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia constitutes a new wave of migrant writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It suggests a provisional unity to these texts based on the snapshot they provide of late-stage communism and the post-communist transformation of eastern and western Europe, focusing on five common scenarios. Yet the considerable areas of overlap with trends in other German-language literatures indicate that this literature cannot be labelled “marginal”. Rather this emerging field is transforming German literatures from within and contributing to a post-Cold War remapping of Europe.

¹ This research was generously supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council under their Research Leave Scheme.

Notes

¹ This research was generously supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council under their Research Leave Scheme.

² A reference to Azade Seyhan's Writing Outside the Nation.

³ I use the Cold-War term “eastern Europe” deliberately to emphasise that for more than forty years these diverse countries, from the semi-Balkan Romania to the east-central-European Hungary to the northern European Poland, shared a common history. Yugoslavia, although geographically in eastern Europe, was not part of the Warsaw Pact but was in the Non-Aligned Movement.

⁴ Grouped by country of origin, some of the most visible younger writers, most of whom began publishing after the fall of communism, many very recently, are: Dimitré Dinev, Katerina Kroucheva, Ilija Trojanow (Bulgaria); Zdenka Becker, Maxim Biller, Jaromir Konecny, Milena Oda, Michael Stavarič (the Czech Republic); Terézia Mora, Zsuzsanna Gahse (Hungary); Artur Becker, Radek Knapp, Dariusz Muszer, Magdalena Felixa (Poland); Carmen Francesca Banciu, Florian Catalin Florescu, Herta Müller, Aglaja Veteranyi (1962–2002), Richard Wagner, Peter Rosenthal (Romania); Lena Gorelik, Eleonora Hummel, Wladimir Kaminer, Nadeschda Lazko, Vladimir Vertlib (Russia/former USSR); Irena Brežná, Magdalena Sadlon (Slovakia); Ana Bilic, Marica Bodrožić, Zoran Drvenkar, Alma Hadzibeganovic, Viktorija Kocman, Denis Mikan, Saša Stanišić (former Yugoslavia). Others, though not themselves born in eastern Europe, might usefully be considered part of this phenomenon insofar as they write of inherited memories, for example Zsuzsa Bánk (born in Germany of Hungarian parents), and Doron Rabinovici (born in Israel of a Romanian father and a Lithuanian mother, and resident in Austria). The list makes no claim to completeness. I am indebted to the Deutsches Literaturarchiv at Marbach for an initial list of names, to which I have added. These writers are often hard to identify and I am very much aware that to do so may be to attach a label that the writers themselves might reject. A fuller list, citing the authors’ main works and brief biographical notes, is accessible at <http://www.swan.ac.uk/german/docs/haines%20ee%20biblio.doc>.

⁵ 10 July 2007 <http://www.bosch-stiftung.de/content/language1/html/4595.asp>.

⁶ Where there is a published English translation, as with for example, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, I shall use it. All other translations, for example, The Tongues of Angels, are my own.

⁷ Poetry and drama lie outside the scope of this study.

⁸ Imran Ayata terms this a “Longing for migrant enrichment” (see Ayata in “Gespräch”).

⁹ Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 2007.

¹⁰ Awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, 2007.

¹¹ This marks a difference from Turkish German writers, many of whom are weary of the “burden of representation” (Cheesman “Juggling”). Yet in the interview quoted here even Zaimoğlu negotiates a fine line between being trapped by his otherness and trading on it. He acknowledges, for example, the inexhaustible desire on the part of the German reading public for exotic material, a desire his Anatolian Familienroman, Leyla fulfils, and admits agreeing to the somewhat clichéd blurb for the novel for sound commercial reasons.

¹² For a discussion of the debates around “neue Lesbarkeit” in Germany, see Taberner German Literature 1–33. For Austria, see Gollner.

¹³ Though Herta Müller continues to write of the trauma of Romanian life under Ceauşescu.

¹⁴ With co-author Olga Kaminer.

¹⁵ In terms of country of settlement, the same list of names outlined above (Note 4) divides differently, suggesting different commonalities of experience, as follows: Ana Bilic, Dimitré Dinev, Alma Hadzibeganovic, Radek Knapp, Viktorija Kocman, Denis Mikan, Doron Rabinovici, Magdalena Sadlon, Michael Stavarič, Vladimir Vertlib (Austria); Irena Brežná, Florian Catalin Florescu, Zsuzsanna Gahse, Aglaja Veteranyi (Switzerland); the rest, Germany, mostly Berlin, though Jaromir Konecny is strongly associated with Munich. Ilija Trojanow, always the exception, lives in Cape Town.

¹⁶ There are many family novels, for example, Zdenka Becker's Die Töchter der Roza Bukovska [Roza Bukovska's Daughters], and Florescu's Zaira.