ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the global circulation of the memoir of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf through Adji Kamin’s critique of the idealization of queer subjects in Disturbing Attachments (2017). Specifically, the chapter analyzes how the life story of von Mahlsdorf, a self-identified transvestite who survived Nazism and East German socialism, was framed by powerful Western narratives surrounding the so-called transition of Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, and how that framing led to Western disenchantment when von Mahldorf’s secret police file was released in the mid-1990s. In order to provincialize this framing as distinctly Western, I compare the first Anglophone translation, in 1995, with the first Russian translation, in 1997. And then, in order to capture the process of deidealization that began in the late 1990s, I compare the first Anglophone edition of the translation with the second, which appeared in 2004, following the debut of Doug Wright’s award-winning play based on the memoir.
