ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 deals with the meta-mnemonic engagement in the novel Flughunde (1995) by the German writer Marcel Beyer. Its central point of focus lies on how it takes on the perennial issue of the ‘incompatibility of guilt and suffering’ (Assmann), which continues to pervade the German cultural memory of World War II. The novel, so Lensen argues, addresses the question of how to imagine the German war victim alongside the German perpetrator in one inclusive narrative. To that end, it stages the possibility of such victimhood through a fictional rendition of Helga Goebbels, the eldest daughter of Joseph Goebbels, who was killed by her parents in the Hitlerbunker. Beyer’s fictional construction of this image, however, goes hand in hand with a troubling of this victim identity as a result of Helga’s mimetic and symbolic violence. While staging the possibility of German victimhood, Flughunde also demonstrates its inevitable complexity. The exploration of these identities has also, moreover, a diachronic dimension, as Beyer’s use of the camera-eye technique draws the readers into the perspectives of both perpetrators and victims, evoking questions about transgenerational implication and responsibility.
