Autobiographische Darstellungen von Identitätskrisen im Exil: Frederic Mortons und Ruth Klügers Suche nach Brücken in einer neuen Heimat by Dominik Hofmann-Wellenhof

Abstract

Reviewed by: Autobiographische Darstellungen von Identitätskrisen im Exil: Frederic Mortons und Ruth Klügers Suche nach Brücken in einer neuen Heimat by Dominik Hofmann-Wellenhof Margarete Landwehr Dominik Hofmann-Wellenhof, Autobiographische Darstellungen von Identitätskrisen im Exil: Frederic Mortons und Ruth Klügers Suche nach Brücken in einer neuen Heimat. Transatlantica 9. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2016. 178 pp. In this slim volume, Hofmann-Wellenhof discusses key topics of exile literature such as the search for a new identity and the confrontation (or suppression) of trauma through autobiography in his analysis of Frederic Morton’s Runaway Waltz and Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben. After the Anschluss, Morton was able to escape Austria with his family via London to New York. Ruth Klüger did not escape Austria and was interred in concentration camps, along with her mother Alma. Ruth and Alma survived; Klüger’s father and brother did not. Both women managed to escape during a “death march” in 1945. After a year of study in Bavaria, Klüger settled with her mother in New York and later moved to California, where she lives today; like Morton, who died in 2015, she has retained her dual Austrian/American citizenship. In the initial chapter, the author discusses such aspects of autobiography as writing as a process of self-creation, the impossibility of attaining a truly “objective” perspective because of the unreliability of memory and bias, and the interrelationship between the authorial narrator and the former self, the protagonist. He also contrasts the “classical” form of autobiography that, like the Bildungsroman, implicitly assumes the protagonist’s progression from innocence to wisdom and its “modern” variation that presents the author’s life as simply a series of disconnected events that might not lead to profound insights or maturation. This study’s focus is on the inevitable question of identity, rooted in the shared values of a community, and the disruption of those ties. As Erik Erikson notes, the successful creation of a stable self or ego is developed through the confrontation and resolution of these crises. The abrupt or violent displacement from a Heimat to an unfamiliar country constitutes a trauma that can lead to the repression of memories or the creation of one’s identity through narrative. Frederic Morton, like Joseph Roth, viewed storytelling as therapy, as a home in the wilderness in which one finds one’s moral compass by surmounting crises: “At the end of a good story, the reader has a roof over his head” (33). In his essay “Exile: The Modern Heritage” Morton considers the immigrant’s crisis, “the mobility of fragmentation,” as a modern phenomenon. The exile’s struggle between past and present, old and new values, and loss of [End Page 181] Heimat embodies, for him, the destiny of his contemporaries. The role of language in the creation of a new identity is particularly interesting. Like his idol Fred Astaire (in early life Fritz Austerlitz), Morton’s Americanization of his name Fritz Mandelbaum and his mastery of English helped him to assimilate into his new country and establish a new identity. He despised America’s unbridled capitalism and consumerism, yet sought refuge in its language: “Me, the chronic gringo, perennially at odds with the new land, who’s rooted himself doubly deep in its language, perhaps because he cannot be comfortable with its culture” (55). Klüger’s autobiography portrays a feminist sensibility and religion as two sources of identity formation. Klüger blames her mother’s decision not to allow her to go on a Kindertransport to Palestine on her ignorance of political developments: “Politik galt als ‘unweibliches Interessengebiet’” (72). She discusses Nazism as a masculine ideology but also considers the patriarchal social order of the twentieth century in which she is not viewed as a “valid” witness of her time because of her gender (70). This criticism is extended to her evaluation of Judaism: she believes that the Torah justifies the oppression and degradation of women (76). Particularly heartbreaking for Klüger is that she is not allowed to say the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for her father as she is female. Thus, she feels as if her...