Romans de la Shoah des années 1945-1965

Abstract

Because so few German novels were written about the Holocaust between 1945 and 1965 (in both East and West Germany and in various countries of exile), it is impossible to classify them. Each of the four novels analyzed here (Heinrich Boll’s Wo Warst Du, Adam?, H.G. Adler’s Eine Reise, Bruno Apitz’s Nackt Unter Wolfen and Edgar Hilsenrath’s Nacht) constitutes a special case. They reflect four different literary approaches and come from four different countries: the Federal Republic of Germany in the case of Heinrich Boll, exile in London in the case of H.G. Adler, the German Democratic Republic in the case of Bruno Apitz and exile in New York in the case of Edgar Hilsenrath. The only one these writers who was not persecuted or imprisoned in a camp or ghetto was Heinrich Boll, who served as a soldier in the Wehrmacht.This article analyzes the widely divergent representations of the univers concentrationnaire in these four novels and examines the conditions under which these texts were published and received during the post-war years in East and West Germany.