Chapter Four - Expanding East German Holocaust Discourse: Peter Edel and Fred Wander

Summary

In this chapter, we examine and compare two autobiographical novels by East German Holocaust survivors, Die Bilder des Zeugen Schattmann (The pictures of witness Schattmann, 1969) by Peter Edel and Der siebente Brunnen (The Seventh Well, 1973) by Fred Wander. Written within just a few years of each other, the two novels, along with Jurek Becker's novel Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, 1969), demonstrate the range of possibility for attempted depictions of the Holocaust in East Germany. The survivor status of the two authors lent their writing a certain impermeable authenticity and authority, even though both authors characterized their books as novels and Wander in particular emphasized how much fiction his account contains. Both authors publicly proclaimed the East German state as the better Germany; and, despite the sensitive topics involved, that state welcomed their works accordingly, rewarding both authors with important prizes.

The similarities end here, however, and the two novels possess little else in common. Ranging over seven hundred pages and written in a Socialist Realist style, Edel's novel provides a full-throated and combative plaidoyer for the East German state with which he identified so closely. Not surprisingly, the East Germans also made a film version of it as a four-part television documentary. Wander's slim novel, by contrast, features a loose structure and an elusive, poetically tinged parabolic language, and attempts to make film versions of it were blocked by the government. Edel's novel hammers at its political agenda with the grace of a sledgehammer; Wander's book, while political, remains more elusive, subtle, and reserved. Nonetheless, the latter book presented a radical reshaping of Holocaust writing in East Germany. Although it was translated into English, it received little international attention after its initial release, and a West German review was both dismissive and damning. After German reunification, however, and republication by Wallstein in 1995, Wander's novel has seen a steady increase in scholarly attention and respect, often mentioned in the same breath with works by Primo Levi or Ruth Klüger. Edel's novel, on the other hand, has remained in literary obscurity. Nonetheless, as we shall see, even this most orthodox, state-supporting novel finds itself riven by tensions born of history and trauma, and at key moments it swerves from the Party line to which it so conscientiously, even desperately, attempts to adhere.