Language:
English
Year of publication:
1997
Titel der Quelle:
New German Critique
Angaben zur Quelle:
70 (1997) 141-160
Keywords:
Langgässer, Elisabeth,
Abstract:
Discusses the dilemma of identity of the German writer Elisabeth Langgässer (1899-1950), the daughter of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father who converted to Catholicism, and its effect on her writing. Under the Nazi regime, she was designated as a first-degree "Mischling". She internalized and accepted the negative, racial model of the hybrid, but she was not recognized as an Aryan. Her novel "Gang durch das Ried" was banned soon after its publication in 1936. Its French Arab protagonist presents negative features of a "Mischling". This novel resembles Nazi literature in its fascist view of the German Volk. Postwar criticism of Langgässer was often implicitly antisemitic. Her later novels continued to reflect antisemitic stereotypes, with her self-presentation, even when positive about "Semitic" aspects, leaving anti-Jewish stereotypes intact. This suggests Jewish self-hatred. Her last novel also associated Jewishness with destructive hybridity.
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