from Part II - The Legacy of Perpetration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
A fascinating, pure ideological regime like that of the Nazis, covering up undiscussable crimes of ordinary men (Browning, 1992), could elicit fantasies in almost any mind, especially when born long after its collapse into a regime which went on silencing and covering up these issues […] As almost every adult was emotionally involved in one way or another in something (fascination, bystanding or evil making) during the Nazi era, it was much more difficult to create a fresh and distinct comprehensive authority which the children could lean on. With the help of such an authority they could perhaps have developed a clear demarcation between those Nazi crimes and other, more ordinary, family life events and secrets.
— Dan Bar-On, The Indescribable and the Undiscussable: Reconstructing Human Discourse after TraumaSeeking the Mother in Väterliteratur
In the previous chapter I explored the discourse that defines Väterliteratur, citing in particular Michael Schneider, whom I term the “father” of Väterliteratur. Michael Schneider claims that the father texts represent a particular historical problem of the “generation damaged by its fathers” (“Fathers and Sons,” 4), a group of rebellious adult children (mostly sons) who question their fathers' participation in Germany's fascist past. Although this rebellion and challenge on the part of the sons fall under the general concept of generational conflict, Schneider stresses the unique historical position of this particular nexus of texts.
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