Undoing the Myth of Childhood Innocence in Gisela Elsner’s Fliegeralarm

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Susanne Baackmann
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
Dialectical Tension

This article examines Gisela Elsner’s 1989 novel Fliegeralarm in light of Helmut Kohl’s politics of “normalization” and the Kriegskinder victimology that has recently gained traction. Fliegeralarm presents children as Hitler’s willing executioners and categorically refutes the notion of “liberation” (from fascism) as justification for normalizing German national identity. The text questions the entire edifice upon which West and now united Germany’s official memory culture is built. I argue that Elsner not only contests the concept of “historical innocence” but fundamentally refutes the possibility of an innocent historical subject position. Fliegeralarm provocatively casts remembering and childhood innocence as calculated performances that mirror the generational complicity of those born into a legacy of perpetration. It offers a prescient intervention in post-Wende discourses and rethinks childhood innocence along the lines of historical implication, that is, in dialectical tension with knowledge and denial, marked by the traffic between knowing and not knowing.

A REPLY TO JOSEPH MASSAD

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW SHRYOCK
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Geographic Origins ◽  
P 16 ◽  
Interpretive Method

In noting that Joseph Massad's identity as a Palestinian Jordanian should be central to any critical evaluation of Colonial Effects, I am taking seriously his claim that writing the book entailed, for him, a gradual “coming to terms” with this identity. I am also reapplying Massad's own interpretive method. “Throughout the book,” he tells us, “you will notice that I identify the geographic origins and the religious and ethnic backgrounds of people. This is done deliberately” (p. 16). Why? Because such specificity is needed to “interrogate” the claims people make about “Jordanian national identity and Jordanian national culture” (p. 16). I find it bizarre that Massad would cry “foul” when I conclude that his own (self-announced) “subject position” influenced his thinking on these topics.

Performing the New German Past: The People's Day of Mourning and 27 January as Postunification Commemorations

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Dead

The article sketches the ruptures in today's German memory culture, concentrating on the Volkstrauertag (People's Day of Mourning) and the Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Remembrance Day for the Victims of National Socialism) on 27 January. It starts with an overview of the history of the Volkstrauertag with its (outward) transformation from a commemoration day for dead German soldiers into one for “all victims of war and violence.” The inclusive model of commemoration that was typical for the Bonn Republic is disintegrating today. In united Germany, the Volkstrauertag and 27 January reflect antagonistic memory strands, that is a memory focussed on the war dead and German suffering or on the Holocaust and German guilt. In light of discussions about commemorating Bundeswehr dead, the article ends by describing a re-heroicizing of the Volkstrauertag and, in a more general way, tries to outline the shifting construction of German national identity.

scholarly journals National identity, ethnicity, (critical) memory culture

2006 ◽  
pp. 221-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Radenovic
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The Relationship

This article deals with the analysis of concepts of national identity and ethnicity (ethnic identity) as the "cluster of ideas" and/or concepts which have similar constitutive elements. This article intends to analyze the relationship between these concepts and the concept of (critical) memory culture. Finally, the author is attempting to discuss the concept of (critical) memory culture as the segment of cultural identity.

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