Memory between Locality and Mobility: Diaspora, Holocaust and Exile as Reflected in Contemporary German-Jewish Literature

Abstract

Memory is not only a biological capability but also a social practice of constructing the past, which is carried out by social communities (e.g., the nation state, the family, and the church). Since the 1980s, memory studies has intertwined the concept of cultural memory with national narratives of the past that are to legitimize the connection between state, territory, and people. In the present time of growing migratory movements, memory studies has abandoned this “methodological nationalism” and turned its attention towards dynamic constructions of cultural memory. Indeed, memories cross national and cultural borderlines in various ways. The cultural memory of the Jewish people, ever since its beginning, has been defined by mobility. As the exile and forty years of wandering in the wilderness preceded the Conquest of Canaan and the building of the temple, the cultural memory of the Jewish people has always been based on the principle of extraterritoriality. The caesura of the Holocaust altered this ancient form of mobility into a superimposed rediasporization of the assimilated Jews that turned the eternal longing for Jerusalem into a secularized longing for the fatherland. This article presents examples of German-Jewish literature that is concerned with the intersection between the original diaspora memory, rediasporization and longing for a return to the fatherland. I will analyze literary writings by Barbara Honigmann and Vladimir Verlib that in a paradigmatic manner navigate between memory of the Holocaust, exile and the mythological past of Judaism, and negotiate the question of belonging to diverse territorial and mobile mnemonic communities.