Transferential Memory Spaces in Gisela Heidenreich’s Das endlose Jahr

Amila Becirbegovic

doi:10.3390/h7010026

Abstract

What does it mean to be German after Hitler and National Socialism? Gisela Heidenreich’s memoir Das endlose Jahr: Die langsame Entdeckung der eigenen Biographie—ein Lebensborn Schicksal (The Endless Year: The Slow Discovery of My Own Biography—A Lebensborn Destiny, 2002), highlights the dependence on physical markers and monuments in understanding one’s place in history. Heidenreich discovers her origin as a Lebensborn child through family secrets, but it is not until she traverses the landscape of her past that she truly begins to understand her place within history. I argue that, along with family photographs and narratives, places play an integral role in the identity process through the metaphor of the palimpsest. In Heidenreich’s memoir, the German notion of Heimat reveals itself as a process, rather than a static and immovable space. Das endlose Jahr addresses the interplay between memory, places, and space through Heidenreich’s complex relationship with her mother, and her ambivalent sense of belonging through the palimpsest markers that remain. At its core, Das endlose Jahr is a memoir about the search for Heimat in all the wrong places.

Highlights

What does it mean to be German after Hitler and National Socialism? Gisela Heidenreich’s memoir Das endlose Jahr: Die langsame Entdeckung der eigenen Biographie—ein Lebensborn Schicksal (The Endless Year: The Slow Discovery of My Own Biography—A Lebensborn Destiny, 2002), highlights the dependence on physical markers and monuments in understanding one’s place in history
In his 1969 essay, Adorno famously scrutinizes the question “What is German?”, rejecting a presupposed and simplistic notion of “Germanness” (Adorno and Levin 1985, p. 121)1. This question, though at first glance simplistic in its formulation, encapsulates a key investigation in a contentious debate that has been raging in Germany since the end of WWII. What does it mean to be German after Hitler and National Socialism? Being proud to be a German was deeply problematic because of the signification of Heimat, or homeland, during the Third Reich
Das endlose Jahr is a memoir about the search for Heimat in all the wrong places

Summary

The Genealogy of Place

In my reading of Das endlose Jahr, I analyze Heimat as more than solely an emotional experience and a backward-looking model. Heidenreich relies on history and family memory to reconstruct the past It is only through Heidenreich’s deep longing for Heimat, her nostalgia for a place and time, that those memories are affectively made real.. Present discourses and institutions influence the perception of the past, resulting in a memory that is often reshaped by the sites and objects deemed to be historically relevant In his introduction to Between Memory and History, See Alexander Kluge’s 1979 film, Die Patriotin (The Patriotic Woman). For Klüger, this futile reanimation of specific sites of the past is in direct relation to her own experience as a Holocaust survivor, and her connection with the timescape of a place is solely in relation to the concentration camps. Das endlose Jahr problematizes space through an futile search for an originary past

Mothers and Daughters

Das Endlose Jahr

Gisela

Conclusions