Railway platform and cattle wagon as topoi of deportation and expulsion in contemporary German literature: REINHARD JIRGL’S Die Unvollendeten, SABRINA JANESCH’S Katzenberge and JULIA FRANCK’S Mittagsfrau

Abstract

In the 2000s, flight and expulsion have once again become a topic in contemporary German-language literature. REINHARD JIRGL'S Die Unvollendeten (2003), JULIA FRANCK'S Mittagsfrau (2007) and SABRINA JANESCH'S Katzenberge (2010) are examples of this. In their autofictional novels, or forms of literary “postmemory” (HIRSCH 2012), the authors deal with the often traumatic experiences of their parents and grandparents in the years just before and after 1945. The article shows how the novels open up “multidirectional” (ROTHBERG 2010; 2011; 2021) perspectives on places, events and objects that have predominantly been assigned to competing victim and perpetrator narratives after 1945. It examines the functions of motifs such as the train station, the train journey and the cattle wagon – collective symbols of competing memory discourses – in the examined texts, and asks whether and how these motifs are interlinked, without equating different experiences.