Reviewed by: Contested Selves: Life Writing and German Culture ed. by Katja Herges and Elisabeth Krimmer Karin Baumgartner Contested Selves: Life Writing and German Culture. Edited by Katja Herges and Elisabeth Krimmer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2021. Pp. 280. Hardcover $110.00. ISBN 978-1640141056. Since 2000, the popularity of life writing has exploded. Prince Harry’s memoir Spare certainly confirms that memoir has become a central form of culture. It is just one very public example of trauma narratives mixed with historical recollections ostensibly presented by a non-professional writer (but in fact, ghostwritten). Spare exemplifies what editors Katja Herges and Elisabeth Krimmer argue in their introduction: today, the genre is so broad as to be almost meaningless, and yet, here we are. Life writing, the term settled on by the editors, includes memoirs and autobiography (the editors use these two terms interchangeably), letters, diaries (including calendars and date books), blogs and Twitter messages, and comics. These varied expressions of life writing are united by the twin focus on the subject and its truth claims, which are often contested, if not entirely fictionalized. Let us not forget that Buckingham Palace responded to Prince Harry’s memories with the terse comment, “recollections may vary.” In the end, the editors of this collection settle on a broad definition following Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (1996). The goal of the volume, the reader learns, is to “elucidate the theoretical contours and historical roots of the subgenres of life writing” (3). The introduction sketches the outlines of three categories—memoirs, diaries, and letters, and gives readers an overview of recent theory and the major contributors to the genre. In addition to Smith and Watson, the introduction touches on Nancy K. Miller, Phillippe Leujeune, and Liz Stanley and argues that the great success of the memoir is based on the low hurdle to entry (anybody with a good story might write a memoir), our era’s focus on authenticity, and the elasticity of the genre. The same might be said about letters and diaries, which are, however, not generally intended for publication. This genre allows minorities, women writers, and other non-professional writers to enter the literary sphere, as the first article in the volume—Laura Deiulio’s investigation of Rahel Levin Varnhagen—shows. [End Page 333] The remainder of the volume is not divided according to the editors’ initial criteria (memoir, letter, diaries); rather, the twelve essays focus on the genre as a way to a means; or in other words, the genre is used to convey agency and subjectivity (part 1), aesthetics (part 2), the processing of trauma (parts 3), and intergenerational and transnational history (part 4). The majority of the twelve essays focus on women writers, with only four essays dedicated to male writers. Many of the articles bring new voices onto the literary stage, reframe more known authors in light of their life writings, and investigate new media such as cartoons. The first part of the volume features the range of life writing. The volume begins with an essay on Rahel Varnhagen, perhaps the most famous letter writer in the German literary pantheon. Deiulio argues that Rahel’s letters, ostensibly written to an absent interlocutor, signify a form of autobiography. Letters fix a moment in time and space, and in conversation with the other, the self emerges over time. The second essay brings to light the work of Poet-Queen Carmen Sylva (Elisabeth, princess of Wied and queen of Romania), an underappreciated writer at the end of the nineteenth century, who used her memoir to create a collective female history centered on her person. The third article in this section addresses interview literature, one of the most collaborative genres. Shoults reveals how GDR authors Maxie Wander and Sarah Kirsch employed carefully crafted interviews to supplement the GDR’s official history with cultural memories that were perceived as authentic and individual. The next section examines two authors who wrote autofiction (autobiographical writing that includes fictional elements) avant la lettre. Müller looks at the friction between Döblin’s autobiographical practice and his theoretical misgivings about the genre. For Döblin, fictional and life writing were intricately related in that they...
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May 8, 2023
Fatima Jaffer 
Open Access
