Hey Friends, Family

We’re supposed to write our final essay for German Women Writers in the form of a pretend email to a friend or family member who has inquired about the class. But instead of pretending, I thought I would use this as an opportunity to email my mom, update my blog, and do homework all at once! This way, I can feel super productive and anyone who’s interested can hear about the books I read and things I learned.

Anyways, German Women Writers was a cultural history class, so we spent some time on the first day talking about how to uncover historical events in literary works. The teacher suggested that we consider the following seven questions while we were reading:
1. What behaviors and practices does this work enforce?
2. Why might readers from a particular time and place find this work compelling?
3. What differences and similarities exist between my values and those implicit in the work?
4. Upon what social understandings does this work depend?
5. Does this work have the potential to constrain any person or group’s freedom of thought or movement? Whose? How?
6. What are the larger social structures with which this work is concerned?
7. And, What are the inherent power relationships in this work?
I thought they were good questions, so included them for my fellow liberal arts majors. We spent the next few classes after that learning condensed German History from 500 to the 1930’s, a period of time in which Hildegard von Bingen (the earliest famous German woman writer) was born and died, Geschlechtscharakter (or characteristics of each gender) were labeled and thereby solidified, industrialization and urbanization took place, romance novels (have you read any? they’re delightful) appeared, and women gained the right to vote. It was refreshing to look at German history from the time before Germany became fused with the Third Reich.

Of course, that was a pretty important time period in Germany history, and when the first books we read took place. Still Alive, by Ruth Kluger, is the memoir of a Holocaust Survivor but it offers a uniquely analytic and complex approach in telling this story, because it was written decades after Kluger escaped the concentration camps. I especially appreciated Kluger’s honesty and bravery in criticizing injustice no matter who was perpetrating it- Nazi’s, Jews, and others. Her comments on unfairly gendered practices within Judaism (for example that women are not encouraged to learn Torah in its entirety) were relevant and remain relevant today, and I respect Kluger’s courageous decision to discuss these problems against the background of the Holocaust. A Woman in Berlin, author unknown, also explored less acknowledged aspects of the war. The book is actually the diary of a German woman, written in the two months following Berlin’s surrender to the Russian army, and it exposes the frequent rapes, near starvation, and other horrors that German civilians (especially women) faced in the aftermath of the war. I found it interesting to think about who had chosen to engage in warfare (politicians, soldiers, men) and who else suffered from the consequences of their decision (Jews, women, the young and the elderly). It’s also worth contemplating how the realities of the war had the potential to compromise Germany’s image (can “good”, white, Christian, Hausfrau/homemaker be reconciled with rape victim?) and how this predicament might be connected to the fact that you haven’t heard about these issues before.

After the war books, we read some post-war books. These illustrated how Germany’s silence following the war constituted a failure to address major issues like racism and prejudice. Although they were educational, the writing style of most of the books was one I particularly don’t enjoy, and because of that I’m skipping them.

The next book we read was my favorite of the entire semester. Verena Stefan’s Shedding is all around awesome. In it, she discusses, questions, and redefines her role in society as a woman, a sexual being, and a feminist. And damn near every experience she’s had, is one I’ve had, so I bet you’ve been through some too. The following things were both reassuring and frustrating, because they show I’m not alone and that not enough has changed in the decades since Shedding was published.
• Other women don’t think being honked or whistled at is “a compliment” either
• Losing your virginity is not necessarily going to be at all like you thought, and that’s not necessarily bad
• Good birth control can be hard to find
• Vaginas are even cooler than this book!
• Women are supposed to do too many things that aren’t worth doing, and it is ok to stop doing them
• It’s also ok to say no. It’s ok to feel like you ought to know that, but sometimes need reminders. It’s ok to do even when it makes you feel impolite, ungracious, unladylike or otherwise uncomfortable.
• Exploring your sexuality, with men, women, toys, yourself, and without regard for the expectations of society is a worthwhile pursuit

I hope these are things you are thinking and talking about, because I think they are things that can improve if we do. Unlike Stefan, I want to address this to all of my friends (male and female) because I know some of these issues do apply to all of us, and the rest are affecting your girlfriends.

A few other interesting themes appeared in Shedding, Christa Wolf’s Self-Experiment, and Helga Königsdorf’s Fission. First, the inadequacy of language to address issues of oppressed and marginalized groups. In Self-Experiment, this dearth of words becomes apparent as the protagonist attempts to report on her experience as the test subject of a sex-change drug. Trapped between her female history and male body, the main character struggles to converse with others, wondering “should I answer as a women? As a man? And if as a man, how, for heaven’s sake?” (Wolf 208). Another complicated subject the texts address is the intersectionality (academic word for meeting places) of race, gender, class, sexuality and other traits. This means that while all women may struggle with some of the same issues, black women will also face others that white women don’t, as will lesbians, etc. A third theme was technology and its dual nature, as seen in Fission, a story that revolves around women scientists, medication, and the atom bomb. While these are all German texts, their relevancy to each of us is apparent in the fact that we’re using technology right now to discuss them, extending a dialogue that has the potential to create missing words and increase understanding.

The challenges of realizing an understanding society was the focus of the last few works we studied. Partly because of Germany’s avoidance of subjects like race and difference after the war, misconceptions about Afro-Germans were a major problem in the latter half of the 20th century. Many white Germans failed to understand Black Germans as fellow citizens (in part because of a failure of language- there was no word for Afro-German until the 80’s), and asked them question like “where are you from?” or “when are you going home?” which located them outside of German society. May Ayim, a German poet of African descent addresses the feelings of displacement and homelessness this caused in many Afro-German in her writing (I’ll pass along examples soon). Understanding diversity in terms of both minorities within Germany and immigrant populations remains a significant challenge for the nation today.

I hope my lengthy email/really lengthy post about German Women Writers and the cultural history their stories reflect proved to be interesting or at least informative. I appreciate you taking the time to read it and I’m looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Love, Jessi