Asia in the Austrian Imaginary: Anna Kim's German Transcription of Korean History in Die große Heimkehr

Abstract

This article explores how in Die große Heimkehr (2017) Anna Kim provides her German-speaking public entrance into stories situated geographically in Asia (the Korean Peninsula and Japan) and during the early to mid-twentieth century. It highlights how Kim complicates notions of home, belonging, and generational trauma across time and transnational spaces. The article also explains how she intertwines literary practice with historiography in engaging with the politics of memory culture, that is, with concepts of "cultural memory," "entanglement," and "witnessing by adoption." Taking Michael Rothberg's notion of "multidirectional memory of trauma" as a point of departure, the article examines how Kim's aesthetic of "ethical storytelling" brings Korean historical trauma into proximity with the history of European trauma. Moreover, in drawing on Michael Rothberg's concept of "implication," the article probes how the engagement with Kim's historiography can potentially encourage her German-speaking readers to reflect on their own implication in troubling historical legacies, for example that of colonialism and the Cold War, that impact the contemporary West as well as Korea.