A Wende in representing the Holocaust in German literature? From Jurek Becker to W. G. Sebald

Abstract

This article examines Jurek Becker's 1976 novel Der Boxer and W. G. Sebald's critical essay on Becker “Ich möchte zu ihnen hinabsteigen und finde den Weg nicht. Zu den Romanen Jurek Beckers” (posthumously published in 2010) to show how they reflect the changing norms of Holocaust testimony in German literature. Becker's well-received novel narrates the refusal of a traumatized Jewish survivor to conform to the normative expectations of Holocaust testimony in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Sebald's essay, written in the early 1990s, however, accuses the novel of being inauthentic and by implication unethical. The polemic demonstrates Sebald's attempt to establish norms of Holocaust representation in the period following the Wende. Becker's novel and Sebald's response to it shed light on restrictive norms and expectations that surrounded Jewish survivor testimony to the Holocaust, both in the GDR during the 1970s and in post-unification Germany of the early 1990s.