Matters of historiographical criticism, including the problems inherent in constructing history in narrative form, are explicitly thematised in the novel, particularly by means of Michael’s profession as a legal historian (DV 171). Reflecting on his work, Michael rejects the idea that the historian can make observations on past events without being influenced by the concerns of the present:
“Es ist auch nicht so, wie der Außenstehende vielleicht annehmen möchte, daß man die vergangene Lebensfülle nur beobachtet, während man an der gegenwärtigen teilnimmt. Geschichte treiben heißt Brücken zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart schlagen und beide Ufer beobachten und an beiden tätig werden.” (DV 172)189
Michael notes that this is particularly true when dealing with the history of the Third Reich: “Eines meiner Forschungsgebiete wurde das Recht im Dritten
Reich, und hier ist besonders augenfällig, wie Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in eine Lebenswirklichkeit zusammenschießen.” (DV 172)
188 Nünning, Ansgar Von historischer Fiktion zu historiographischer
Metafiktion op cit at 282 – 291.
189 Schlink has made a similar point about the unavoidable presence of the
present in the past in historical fiction: “Die Gestalten historischer Romane
sind heutige Gestalten in gestrigem Gewand”:Schlink, Bernhard Gedanken über das Schreiben Zurich: Diogenes, 2011 at 7.
These reflections express scepticism towards the possibility of rendering an objective view of the past untainted by the present perspectives of the
historian creating the historical narrative. This scepticism about the ability to reconstruct the past, particularly the Nazi past, independently of the present perspective of the historian is also emphasised by several instances in which Michael reflects on the way in which the presence of mediated images of the past in the present cause those attempting to imagine the past from a present perspective to fill in gaps in their historical knowledge with ideas and images familiar from a variety of media. In Michael’s view, this problem is
exacerbated in the case of reconstructing the history of the Holocaust. Images and narratives relating to the Holocaust have been repeated in German and international media so frequently that they have become such a steady part of Germany’s (and the world’s) cultural memory that they run the risk of degenerating into “Klischees” (DV 143). These mediated images are so pervasive that they influence the representation of historical people, places, events, and even eyewitness memory190. Michael points out that, when
considering the Holocaust from a present perspective, incorporating these well known cultural images is almost unavoidable, and they are frequently used as a basis for an imaginative filling of gaps which the narrator is not otherwise able to close:
190 These images even affect the telling of family history narratives,
particularly those featuring “Germans as victims”. This phenomenon has been noted by Welzer, who has remarked on the way in which Germans telling these types of narratives about the past often transfer iconic Holocaust
images and tropes onto their stories of victimhood and make them part of their historical narrative: Welzer, Harald, Moller, Sabine and Tschuggnall, Karoline
“Heute sind so viele Bücher und Filme vorhanden, daß die Welt der Lager ein Teil der gemeinsamen vorgestellten Welt ist, die die
gemeinsame wirkliche vervollständigt. Die Phantasie kennt sich in ihr aus, und seit der Fernsehserie Holocaust und Spielfilmen wie Sophies Wahl und besonders Schindlers Liste bewegt sie sich auch in ihr, nimmt nicht nur wahr, sondern ergänzt und schmückt aus.” (DV 142 – 143)191
Michael’s reflections here are reminiscent of Hirsch’s ideas about the role of imagination in the creation of postmemory from fragments of the past192. However, Michael elsewhere expresses doubts about our ability to recreate the past, even with the assistance of media-inspired imagination. When visiting the Struthof concentration camp for the second time at around the time of the narrative present, Michael reflects on his previous visit to the camp several decades earlier at around the time of Hanna’s trial. During that earlier visit, he had tried to gain an understanding of the past by imagining what life in the camp must have been like during the Nazi period. However, his imaginative endeavours failed (DV 148 – 150). Although this failure is partly due to what Michael identifies as a lack of images of the camps in circulation
191 Schlink has elsewhere expressed similar ideas about the role of iconic
images and imagination in recreating the past: “Wenn Sie ein KZ besuchen,
erfahren Sie, dass dort eigentlich nichts zu sehen ist – außer Baracken, Bäumen, Zäunen. Und doch ist man hinterher völlig erschöpft. Warum? Weil der eigene Kopf hinzuphantasiert hat, was er aus Büchern, Filmen und natürlich auch aus der Wissenschaft kennt“ (Hage, Volker “Ich lebe in
Geschichten” op cit); “[on visiting Auschwitz] You don’t see much that looks
like the pictures from 1945. It’s only by using what you see as a trigger for remembering that makes it an experience – what you have heard, what you have read, what you have seen in the photographs and films” (Wachtel,
Eleanor, op cit). See also Schlink, Bernhard Liebesfluchten op cit at 225.
192 Anton sees the novel as fictionalising Hirsch’s work on postmemory: Anton,
Christine op cit at 54. For a discussion of Hirsch, see the Introduction at 32- 34.
at that particular period in German postwar history (DV 142), when combined with his reflections on the role of media in historical narratives, it leaves the impression that either the past cannot be reached at all, or that it ends up being composed of a pastiche of contemporary tropes. It also provides a negative critique of the ability of memorial locations to provide insight into the past.
3.2 Use of metafictional elements to thematise historiographical