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Forum for Modern Language Studies 2007 43(3):301-315; doi:10.1093/fmls/cqm050
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved

Memories of Victimhood: Nazism and the Challenge of the Autobiographical

Joanne Sayner

Department of German Studies
University of Birmingham
Birmingham B15 2TT
United Kingdom


  Abstract

Responding to Aleida Assmann's recent claims about the compatibility of guilt and suffering within contemporary German memory debates, this article examines the autobiography of a former functionary in the Nazi Bund Deutscher Mädel. While acknowledging the significance of Assmann's synchronic approach, it argues that a diachronic examination of first-person narratives productively reassesses memories of suffering and avoids the problematic decontextualisation and dehistoricisation which threaten the normative hierarchy of memories of the Holocaust.

Key Words: Assmann, Aleida • German autobiography • Nazism • memory • literary historiography • Maschmann, Melita • victims • perpetrators


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