Die ‚junge Generation’ im Krieg. Zur Funktionalisierung des Kriegsbildes für das Projekt ‚junge Generation’ in 'Die Geschlagenen'

Abstract

'Die Geschlagenen' by Hans Werner Richter written in 1949 was one of the first literary texts exploring the themes of WWII and the Nazi past. It was published in the time when the defi nitions and patterns of interpretation of the recent past had only started to take shape. It was addressed to former participants of the war and offered structural patterns of self-perception and auto interpretation. Experience, memory and narration are interrelated to create a literary image of the participation in the war, where the most essential mechanism here is the rules of selection and the combination of material from these three areas. These rules – which are what constitutes the thesis of this article – are a fictional transposition of the concept of the German “young generation” co-coined by H. W. Richter. As a consequence the image of war is constructed according to a traditional matrix foreclosing ideological, racial and political components. The rejection of diachrony and thinking in terms of cause and effect can however be understood as the price, which the author pays for the desire to stop the dissociation trend in German society, as well as maintaining the impetus to carry out the democratic transformation which was imposed on Germany after WWII.