Caroline Schaumann: Memory Matters. Generational Responses to Germany’s Nazi Past in Recent Women’s Literature, de Gruyter, Berlin 2008.

• Friederike Eigler

“Memory Matters” is a well-conceived and lucidly written study of a topic that continues to garner much attention in public and academic discourses, and especially in literary texts and in literary studies: memories and post-memories of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust. Caroline Schaumann’s contribution to this ongoing discussion focuses on literary texts by women authors in an attempt to balance the disproportionate attention given to male authors even in some of the most recent scholarly studies on contemporary literature (she mentions books by Stuart Taberner and Helmut Schmitz, among others, see p. 9). The focus on women authors turns out to be highly productive as Schaumann’s attention to issues of gender extends to the textual analyses themselves, revealing the centrality of female genealogies and inter-generational relationships between mothers and daughters for working through the memories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Looking at social and political implications of everyday life, the study also highlights the role of gender in the contexts of discrimination and persecution and thus explores the ways in which “sexism intersects with racism and fascism”.

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