Transgenerational Trauma in the Novels of Julia Franck and Tanja Dückers

This study examines the interplay between history, memory and trauma in 21st-century German literature in novels, which thematize the Second World War and the Holocaust. Julia Franck and Tanja Dückers are members of the so-called third generation and write novels that highlight familial and generational issues of memory and trauma. Both authors critically examine the consequences of trauma and thematize the family’s influential role in identity formation in the four novels I discuss in-depth, Franck’s Lagerfeuer (2002), and Die Mittagsfrau (2007) and Dückers’ Himmelskörper (2004) and Der längste Tag des Jahres (2006). In these novels, characters are consumed by their family’s past and the way the past influences the present and the way the present (re)constructs the past. The manner in which Franck and Dückers present the effects of memory and trauma mirrors the way psychologists and others working in the field of memory and therapy describe transgenerational trauma. This dissertation highlights the way third generation writers draw attention to the potential of trauma to be transmitted to future generation and influence contemporary society. More importantly, Franck and Dückers do not write novels to remind Germans of their historical legacy, but rather point to the continuing presence of the past in German society.