Germans, Jews, and Turks in Maxim Biller's Novel Esra

Abstract

There can be little doubt that German-Jewish authors are a significant presence the literary landscape of the Berlin Republic. Yet this is a relatively recent development-as Karen Remmler points out, it was not until the mid-1980s that such writers began write about their lives present-day Germany1-which might be said to have started with the publications of Barbara Honigmann's Roman von einem Kind (1986), Esther Dischereit's Joetnis Tisch (1988), and Rafael Seligmann's Rubensteins Versteigerung (1989). Indeed, Hartmut Steinecke argues that these novels initiated a new phase German-Jewish fiction which has been consolidated since 1990.2 Thomas Nolden, accordingly, adds a lengthy list of names to those just mentioned, including Katja Behrens, Robert Schindel, Valentin Senger, Henryk Broder, Robert Menasse and Maxim Biller, and describes the emergence of a third generation (after Auschwitz) of German-Jewish writers the Federal Republic,3 a trend identified by Remmler as well. Monika Maron, whose Pavcels Briefe (1999) reconstructs the story of her murdered grandfather, might also be mentioned here,4 as might Lothar Schone, although this author tends to resist to posit his work as German-Jewish. Much of contemporary German-Jewish writing has typically revolved around two key themes. On the one hand, we have the uncanny disjuncture between an anxiously unrelenting official discourse of reconciliation and the persistence of anti-Semitism, and racism more generally. On the other hand, we are presented with the simultaneity of Jews' feelings of alienation, marginalization and even exclusion theLandder Tater with a contemporary exoticization of Jews. With reference both to anti-Semitic outrages and attacks on asylum seekers Hoyerswerda, Lubeck, Molln, and Solingen, for example, Valentin Senger, who survived the war with false papers, declared his memoirs Der Heimkehrer (1995) : Funfzig Jahre danach habe ich wieder Angst.5 In a similar vein, writer Inge Deutschkron, who evaded deportation with the help of Aryan neighbors, spoke of her fears for the future of a country in dem es wieder eine Bewegung junger Menschen gibt, die auf brutalste Weise gegen andere, ihnen nicht genehme Menschen vorgeht.6 Alluding to the way which she is seen as exotic, alternatively, the protagonist of Esther Dischereit's Merryn (1992), states that she is an integrierter Fremdkorper.7 And even as author and academic Ruth Kluger, whose wetter leben (1992) was one of a wave of survivor accounts to appear the early 1990s,8 attempts to reclaim her personal cultural and linguistic links with Germany,9 the words of Carmel Finnan, she is nonetheless aware that she writes die, die finden, das ich eine Fremdheit ausstrahle, die unuberwindlich ist. Anders gesagt, ich schreibe fur Deutsche.10 The same is true of Barbara Honigmann who, as well as exploring the different Jewish traditions texts such as Eine liebe aus Nichts (1991), Soharas Reise (1996), Am Sonntag spielt der Rabbi Fusball (1998), Damais, dann unddanach (1999) and Alles, Alles liebe (2000), time and again emphasizes her rootedness German traditions -in einer sehr starken Bindung an die deutsche Sprache, kehre ich immer wieder zuruck11-and the uncanniness of post-Holocaust Jewish life Germany. In fact, Honigmann, who left the GDR 1984, currently lives and writes France.12 In recent years, though, Rafael Seligmann and Maxim Biller particular have begun to interrogate the psychological and political necessity of accepting Jewish life Germany as a lasting reality rather than seeing it as an unnatural, counterintuitive and always provisional condition. Durch die Macht des Faktischen ist ihnen [Juden] Deutschland wieder zur Heimat geworden, insisted Seligmann a newspaper article of 1999.13 In parallel, the post-unification discourse of normalization which has led non-Jewish Germans to reflect anew on the Nazi past and, correspondingly, on their relationship to the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants has also provoked a questioning amongst German-Jewish writers of the standard tropes both of German philo-Semitism and of their own highly critical attitude towards the Federal Republic. …