Refractions of the Third Reich in German and Austrian Fiction and Film by Chloe Paver

Abstract

904 Reviews Von Lindeiner rightlyacknowledges that the range ofKlaus's interestswas broad and his concerns were surprisingly altruistic inone suspected of elitism. He tirelessly advocated co-operation between exiles of very different persuasions and was quick to acknowledge the need forgreater understanding between emigres and their host countries. In all this, the titlechosen forhiswartime journal, Sammlung, issignificant, implying both meditation and mediation, along with a rallying of resources. Yet the resulting product isultimately foundwanting: the journal remained 'wenig aktuell, wenig eindeutig, [... .]wenig tagespolitisch' (p. S7), itseditor providing 'kaummehr als DenkanstoBe' (p. 62), which turnout tobe 'zwangsweise vage' (p. 74). This book began life as a doctoral project, and it is perhaps unfair to expect the author to have progressed much beyond Marcel Reich-Ranicki's categoric assess ment: 'In keinem einzigen seinerWerke vermochte [Klaus Mann] die Diskrepanz zwischen seinen literarischen Moglichkeiten und seinen Absichten zu beseitigen' (ThomasMann und die Seinen (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, Iggo), p. I93). She has pro vided a solid investigation of individual texts but has not achieved a re-evaluation of the enigmatic figurebehind thework. Heavily reliant on secondary literature, as evidenced by 974 footnotes, this book bears thehallmarks of a competently executed D.Phil. thesis rather than those of a ground-breaking monograph. UNIVERSITY OF KENT OSMAN DURRANI Refractions of theThird Reich inGerman and Austrian Fiction and Film. By CHLOE PAVER. (Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture) Oxford: Oxford Univer sityPress. 2007. viii+ I74 PP. ?40. ISBN 978-O-I9-9266I i-i. What is itwe thinkwe are doing when we study representations of theThird Reich? This basic question provides the starting-point forChloe Paver's analysis of thepro ject of 'Vergangenheitsbewiltigung'. Rather than constructing yet another survey of post-war literature, Paver problematizes thewhole process of commemoration and mourning, seeking to deconstruct the standard critical approaches to the field. She contends in her introduction that 'there is a need for a study that keeps thewhole critical enterprise at arm's length' (p. 9); as she sees it, critical discourse is often locked into a hermeneutic circle,merely affirming the liberal consensus of post-war literature rather than questioning itsassumptions. Accordingly, she attempts to sug gest 'ways inwhich, faced with a self-evidently enlightening work about theNazi past, one might do more than simply reconstruct its moral meanings' (p. 28). The approaches Paver takes to her chosen texts, films, and memorial sites-she makes a particular issue of her interdisciplinarity, as a corrective to the academic ob session with high-brow 'literature'-follow a fairlyclear pattern: the critical consen sus is summarized, thenquestioned and subverted. The firstchapter,which analyses Michael Verhoeven's filmDas schreckliche Mddchen, sets the template. This satire of a small German town's attempts to suppress itsNazi past, based on the real-life story of the schoolgirl Anna Rosmus and her controversial research into her hometown's history, readily invitesmoral approval of itsmessage of resistance. Yet 'one needs to be at least a little suspicious of the psychological rewards' that thisprocess of identi fication offers,argues Paver (p. 21); accordingly she interpretsVerhoeven's film as a satire not only on small-town repression but also on the 'thirst forsensational stories about people who insiston telling the truthabout theThird Reich' (p. 25), and of the consumerist attitude towards a 'correct'way of viewing theNazi past. By question ing the far from transparent processes with which liberalmoralities are constructed, Paver seeks tobreak out of the circularity of 'affirmativereadings' (p. 28). The subsequent chapters follow largely the same pattern. Peter Schneider's Vati and Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser are deconstructed in terms of their (according MLR, I03.3, 2oo8 905 to Paver) only partially successful narrative structures, in terms of what they 'do' rather thanwhat they 'say': Schlink inparticular iscriticized forhis undifferentiated presentation of social class, forhis assumption thathis 'generation' all share his edu catedmiddle-class perspective on theNazi past. The thirdchapter, on theother hand, which examines one work of 'documentary literature' (Helga Schubert's Judasfrauen) and two documentary films (Helke Sander's BeFreier und BeFreite and Ruth Beck ermann's Jenseits des Krieges), explores theways inwhich gender shapes post-war memory of theThird Reich. Paver contends that these female film-makers are essen...