Language:
German
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
German Life and Letters
Angaben zur Quelle:
60,3 (2007) 365-382
Keywords:
German poetry History and criticism 20th century
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Jews in literature
;
Judaism in literature
Abstract:
Using Karl Mannheim's concept of the "natürliche Weltbild", that differentiates between the generations according to their experiences in childhood and youth, traces changes in non-Jewish German-language Holocaust poetry over the years. After the war, in the 1940s-50s, the older generation, those who had been in "inner emigration" during the war, continued to write nature poetry as though nothing had happened. Those who had been socialized during the Nazi period, in the Hitlerjugend and in the Wehrmacht, at first left the subject of the Holocaust almost entirely to Jewish writers. But in the late 1950s the German poets began to deal with the subject - angrily, sarcastically, without aestheticization. The poetry of the 1968 generation expressed indictment of their parents and a show of identification with the victims. More recent poetry has satirized the growing ritualization that hides an inner indifference to memory of the Holocaust.
DOI:
10.1111/j.1468-0483.2007.00393.x
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink