Die Konstruktion des Zeitzeugenstatus in den verschiedenen Fassungen von weiter leben

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the concept of testimony and to promote reflections that support the understanding of this linguistic act through the lens of the concept of Zeitzeuge/Zeitzeugenschaft. Our analyses aim to observe how the value of the witness is constructed in the paratext of Ruth Klüger’s work weiter leben, from the German original and its paperback version (1992; 1997) to the later versions in French (1997), English (2001) and Portuguese (2005). In addition to drawing on the work of various scholars on the notion of testimony, this paper is based on the principles of dialogic discourse theory in conjunction with the category of paratext proposed by Genette (2009). Among other things, this study shows how discourse in the testimony is directly influenced by the valorisation of the role of the witness, which in the case analysed leads to different ways of reading the “same work”.

Keywords

• witness
• testimony
• weiter leben
• Klüger (Ruth)
• paratext