Memory in Contemporary German Prose by Jenny Erpenbeck and Judith Schalansky.

Abstract

Within the past twenty years, Jenny Erpenbeck and Judith Schalansky have emerged as leading voices in contemporary German literature. Memories of everyday life under East German socialism that prioritize individual and subjective understandings of the past are commonly dismissed as Ostalgie (neologism meaning nostalgia for the East) by those who are invested in remembering East Germany only as a dictatorship. However, Erpenbeck and Schalansky offer a more sophisticated and nuanced reading of the East German past in order to trouble contemporary understandings of the present. Erpenbeck and Schalansky are central to understanding the role of material culture in the dynamic and emotionally charged memory contests surrounding the discussion on how the East German is being remembered at the personal, collective, and historical levels.