The father/daughter relationship between Musbach and Katja is unusually close and is marked by oedipal overtones. When Musbach greets Katja, his words are “wie eine Liebkosung” (UB 16), and a fellow resident in the
retirement home teases him about his closeness to his daughter, saying
“Wenn ich nicht wüßte, daß die junge Dame wirklich Ihr Fräulein Tochter ist . . .” (UB 138). When they leave the retirement home together, father and
daughter sneak out the back door as though they were secret lovers (UB 148), and Katja cannot suppress the hint of an incestuous thought when she feels her father's stubbled cheek against her own (UB 254). The third person narrator underscores the point by noting: “Von weitem konnte man sie für ein
altvertrautes Ehepaar halten” (UB 253). Katja is jealous of any other woman
who has a relationship with her father and repeatedly stresses the primacy and exclusivity of her own relationship with him. In her eyes, the primary
relationship in her family was always between her and her father, to the
exclusion of her mother (UB 22; 153; 187), and she always viewed her mother as competition for her father's affections (UB 153 - 154). When Musbach begins to tell her about his romantic involvements with women as a young man, she feels threatened and experiences feelings of jealousy more appropriate in a cheated wife than a daughter. When she reads a letter written to her father by his childhood sweetheart, she cannot help denigrating the young woman's views and even her writing style (UB 191). Later, when she embraces her father after finding out about his love for the partisan Wera, she experiences the same emotions she felt when she discovered evidence of her husband's unfaithfulness (UB 242), and the rash she develops when her relationship with Musbach is strained is identical to the symptoms she
suffered when she uncovered Albert's adultery: “Doch da sah sie die Flecken.
Rote Flecken in Armbeuge und Achselhöhlen, in Leisten und Kniekehlen. Flecken, die sie schon einmal befallen hatten, damals, als sie die Briefe gefunden hatte” (UB 147).
Typically for Hahn's construction of the novel as a remarkably closed text, the reader is not left to draw his or her own conclusions on this score, with the oedipal nature of Katja's relationship with Musbach being specifically spelled out in the letter from her psychologist interpolated in the text (“Die Beziehung
zum Vater könnte psychogenetisch durch eine ödipale Fixierung an den Vater bestimmt sein” (UB 262)). There is no indication in the novel that Musbach
shares Katja's view of the special, exclusive nature of their relationship, and to the extent his relationship with his wife is mentioned at all, it appears to have been loving, supportive, and even exclusive of Katja on occasion (UB 64; 66;
153 – 154; 171). As with the use of a similar constellation in Der Vorleser, the oedipal overtones in the relationship between Musbach and Katja serve to heighten the level of tension and conflict in the parent/child relationship, throwing the discussion of the past which becomes the Zankapfel between them into stark relief.
The oedipal nature of Katja's relationship with her father meant that she had always idolised him: “Der Vater war schon immer ihr Held” (UB 22).
Combined with Musbach's exemplary attitude to Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Katja's idolisation of her father prevented her from participating in the
generational conflict of her peers. Her reservations about becoming involved in the rebellion of the 68ers against their father figures are highlighted in the novel by quotations interpolated from her diary from the “unruhigen Jahren
der Studentenbewegung” (UB 130), in which she is critical of her own
generation's treatment of their elders. In the diary entry, she describes the invasion of one of her lectures by student protesters, who accuse the lecturer of having written pro-Nazi material in the past. The confrontation is described by the young Katja as an “unangenehme Sache”, the protest as a “Krawall”, and the accusations of the protesters as unreliable (“So jedenfalls die K-ler”). The lecturer is depicted as being a well-liked and effective teacher, whose attempt to enter into a dialogue with the protesters is rejected. In this episode, the 68ers are portrayed solely in negative terms and criticised for being
unwilling to allow those they accuse to put their side of the story241.
241 Hahn’s third semi-autobiographical novel, Spiel der Zeit (Hahn, Ulla Spiel
der Zeit op cit) deals with the period of the 1968 student revolution and
includes a character called Katja Musbach, who is a university acquaintance of the main character (and Hahn’s alter ego), Hilla Palm. By contrast with the image of Katja presented in Unscharfe Bilder, Hilla (as first person narrator in
Katja’s trust in her dominant father figure (UB 262) appears to have prevented her from questioning his authority and uncovering his weakness during her adolescence and early adulthood. However, just as Michael’s discovery of Hanna’s crimes and her illiteracy allow him to assume a position of power in their oedipal relationship, so too Katja’s discovery of Musbach's “crime” in the photograph from the Wehrmachtsausstellung gives her the belated
opportunity to turn apostate and tear down her idol. Katja shows some inkling of this connection when she determines to turn the tables on her father and complete their unfinished generational business:
“Warum hatte der Vater nie vom Krieg, von seiner Zeit bei den
Partisanen erzählt? Daß erst der Katalog einer Ausstellung ihn dazu gebracht hatte! Nun war ihr klar: sie mußte die Rollen umkehren. Sie war eine erwachsene Frau . . . Warum hatte sie nicht schon damals in ihrer Studentenzeit auf klaren Antworten bestanden? Und auch
danach nie wieder?” (UB 255)
Katja recognises that her father’s culpability has the potential to allow her to gain the upper hand in their relationship and the bulk of the novel is made up of the ensuing “Zweikampf zwischen Tochter und Vater”. Katja’s bid for power centres on wresting a confession of guilt from her father and
Musbach’s desire to remain in control relies on the maintenance of his own
Spiel der Zeit) depicts Katja as a student radical (at 48 – 49; 127 – 128; 233;
405 – 406; 415; 544; 568 – 570; 575). According to Hilla, Katja was involved in attacks on lecturers (at 337 – 341) and became a Marxist and an activist as a reaction against her father (at 405; 553). Although Spiel der Zeit is a
different work, the comparisons highlight some of the themes also present in
Unscharfe Bilder, such as the problems of using eyewitness memory as a
source, the contingency of historical sources (such as diaries) generally, and the difficulties in gaining an accurate or objective view of the past.
blameless image, leading to the instrumentalisation of the categories of
perpetrator and victim for the purposes of their intergenerational power play242.