Chapter 25 - Holocaust

Summary

The essay discusses the theme of the Holocaust in Sebald’s texts, though not in the pre-established framework of ‘Holocaust literature’. Its aim is rather to explore a different set of questions: Whom did Sebald choose to write about? What determined his choice and what stories do his characters tell? The two examples examined in this context are the painter Max Ferber and the architectural historian Jacques Austerlitz. The essay argues that the protagonists mirror Sebald’s biographic quests to come to terms with the Nazi past and the legacy of the Holocaust. This explains, for instance, why the Jewish characters Sebald invented had hazy, all-but-forgotten Jewish origins and could know no more about themselves than Sebald knew about them: when he grew up, there was no memory of the Jews in post-war Germany.