‘Der Brunnen der Vergangenheit’: Historical Narration in Uwe Johnson’s Heute Neunzig Jahr and Thomas Mann’s Joseph und Seine Brüder

Abstract

Uwe Johnson’s work contains many references to Thomas Mann, both overt and covert. This article examines in detail one such reference. Heute Neunzig Jahr is Johnson’s most important unfinished work, published posthumously in 1996. It begins by alluding to the opening lines of Mann’s Joseph und seine Brüder: Tief ist der Brunnen der Vergangenheit. Sollte man ihn nicht unergründlich nennen?’ In Heute Neunzig Jahr Johnson’s narrator, Gesine Cress‐pahl, relates the story of her father’s life, about which she knows very little. The ‘Brunnen der Vergangenheit’ seems to be bottomless. Whereas Mann’s gently ironic narrator claims to be able to reinstate tradition by flaunting his divine gift of story‐telling, Gesine Cresspahl is able to narrate history only by facing the appalling break in tradition in the latter half of the twentieth century. By assessing the nature of historical narrative in Heute Neunzig Jahr and in Johnson’s major novel, Jahrestage, and by tracing links to Mann’s tetralogy in each work, this article contributes to a fuller understanding of a central dilemma of Johnson’s poetics of historical narration.