Sich-Erinnern als (Über-)Leben oder Wie sich Biografien in Literatur verwandelten. Zu den ‚Initiationsromanen‘ von Armin Müller, Günter Grass und Wieland Förster

Abstract

Armin Müller’s “Der Puppenkönig und ich” (1986), Günter Grass’ “Beim Häuten der Zwiebel” (2006) and Wieland Förster’s “Tamaschito” (2017) are more than just initiation stories – or should one restictively speak of autobiographical records? They are a form of settling accounts with an inhuman past, of giving account of life, a report of own faults, a hard self-questioning. Only with these – partly authentic, partly fictitious – confessional books have the authors written down a tormenting chapter of their life story, which is at the same time an unresolved chapter in the history of the Germans, and freed themselves from a nightmare which burdens them – their lives. The article analyzes these three works and characterizes their youthful protagonists. How does the author relate to his 16 or 17 year old alter ego in the respective work? It is pointed out how Müller combines his theme – the loss of the homeland – with this of a painful farewell to the past and his protagonist’s increasing understanding of the real historical present. For Grass, on the other hand, it can be said that the secret engine for his writing was probably always the subjectively perceived guilt – is former involvement in National Socialism. Finally, Wieland Förster’s “novel of a captivity” is described as an continuum events and reflection on inhumanity that can hardly be surpassed in intensity; as one-sidedness, as a monstrous concentration on one thing, on one thought, on one sense – somehow to survive.

Keywords

• Remembrance literature
• initiation novel
• autobiography
• first-person narrator
• authenticity and fiction