Memory Matters juxtaposes in tripartite structure texts by a child of German bystanders (Wolf), an Austrian-Jewish child-survivor (Klüger), a daughter of Jewish émigrés (Honigmann), a daughter of an officer involved in the German resistance (Bruhns), a granddaughter of a baptized Polish Jew (Maron), and a granddaughter of German refuges from East Prussia (Dückers). Placed outside of the distorting victim-perpetrator, Jewish-German, man-woman, and war-postwar binary, it becomes visible that the texts neither complete nor contradict each other, but respond to one another by means of inspiration
Pt. 1. Remembering childhood in Nazi Germany. War children and child survivors -- Memories and mourning: Christa Wolf's Patterns of childhood -- Trauma and testimony: Ruth Klüger's weiter leben -- pt. 2. Postmemory and the reconstruction of the past. The children of survivors and bystanders -- Barbara Honigmann's belated appropriation of her Jewish heritage: from Roman von einem Kinde (Novel by a child) to Ein Kapitel ans meinem Leben (A chapter of my life) -- Wibke Bruhns's father-portrait: My father's country: the story of a German family -- pt. 3. In search of grandparents. The grandchildren of Nazi victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and bystanders -- Images and imagination: Monika Maron's Pavel's letters -- Tanja Dücker's "sensual historiography": Himmelskörper (Celestial bodies) -- Epilogue
