„Linie ucieczki ciągnie się za sobą przez całe życie”

Abstract

“Lines of flight are dragged behind you all your life.” Post-Memory, Old Age, and Forgetting in Ulrike Draesner’s Novel Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt (2014) In contemporary German literature, particularly in the family novels that are key to the post-memory discourse of the past, there is a marked interest in the dysfunctions and deformations of memory associated with ageing processes. Demographic changes lead researchers to consider the determinants and the existing dominant themes and categories of interdisciplinary memory studies. Ulrike Draesner’s 2014 novel, Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt, the subject of this paper, probes the meanders of memory and forgetting, examining their configurations in intergenerational relations. I am interested here in the threads that have been marginalized in the popular discourse on the flight and resettlement of millions of Germans from the eastern provinces of the Reich, which emerge along with the progressive dementia of one of the novel’s main characters.

Keywords

• flight and expulsion
• post-memory
• old age
• forgetting
• Ulrike Draesner