Facing Fascism and Confronting the Past

Elke P. Frederiksen is Professor of German Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the coeditor, with Elizabeth Ametsbichler, of Women Writers in German-Speaking Countries and is author of Women Writers of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: An Annotated Bio-Bibliographical Guide. Martha Kaarsberg Wallach is Professor of German and Chair of the Modern Language Department at Central Connecticut State University.

"By dealing with the issues of representation, gender, and fascism and carefully analyzing their interrelationship with regards to well-known and hardly known attempts by women to deal with unprecedented experiences, the ensuing moral dilemmas, and the concomitant difficulties of expression/representation, this volume adds considerably to continuing and continuously necessary investigations into 'The Past.'" — Monatshefte"This book brings together many different voices of women writers, who had radically different experiences with National Socialism, which is reflected in the diversity of their literary works. The editors document not only the complexity of experiences of women under National Socialism, but also the complex questions this era poses for scholars. The book presents the depth and range of scholarship in the field of women writers and fascism and acquaints the reader with many of the important feminist scholars working in this field." — Marie-Luise Gaettens, Southern Methodist University"This book focuses on an important and highly neglected area of research, and thus responds to a real need. It advances the discussion on the role of German women before, during, and after fascism, providing information and raising issues for further discussion." — Sabine I. Golz, author of The Split Scene of Reading: Nietzsche/Derrida/Kafka/Bachmann

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments IntroductionElke P. Frederiksen and Martha Kaarsberg Wallacch Part I. Experiencing the Holocaust 1. Growing Up in the Eye of the Firestorm: A Jewish Childhood under the NazisRuth Kluger Part II. From Weimar to National Socialism 2. The Primitive and the Modern: Gottfried Benna and Else Lasker-SchülerGisela Brinker-Gabler 3. "This Number Is Not in Service:" Destabilizing Identities in Irmgard Keun's Novels from Weimar and ExileRitta Jo Horsley 4. Victims or Perpetrators? Literary Responces to Women's Roles in National SocialismElaine Martin Part III. Individual Women's Voices against Fascism 5. Literary Antifascim: Anna Seghers's Exile Writings 1936 to1949Gertraud Gutzmann 6. Turning the Gaze Inward: Gertrud Kolmar's Briefe an die Schwester Hilde 1938-1943Monika Shafi 7. Reconstructing Mother—The Myth and the Real: Autobiographical Texts by Elisabeth Langgässer and Cordelia EdvardsonHelga Kraft 8. At Home in Exile—Nelly Sachs: Flight and MetamorphosisRuth Dinesen Part IV. Exile and the Holocaust 9. Echoes of Exile: The Literary Response to the Exiles by American Women WritersGuy Stern 10. The Interchange between Experience and Literature: German-Jewish Women Writers of the HolocaustDagmar C. G. Lorenz Part V. Women's Voices after 1945 11. Luise Rinser: Dialogues with the Past? The Problem of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Coming to Terms with the Past)Elke P. Frederiksen 12. Ingeborg Drewitz: Three Generations of Women Respond to FascismMargaret E. Ward 13. Fact, Fantasy, and Female Subjectivity: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Christa Wolf's Patterns of ChildhoodRobert C. Holub 14. Grete Weil: A Jewish AntigoneElke Liebs 15. Gender, Film, and German History: Filmmaking by German Women Directors from Weimar to the PresentRichard W. McCormick Part VI. German Women after Unification (1989) 16. A Look at the Current Situation of Women in GermanyRenate Möhrmann Part VII. Conclusion 17. New Scholarly PerspectivesSara Lennox Selected BibliographyList of ContributorsIndex