Grenz-Erfahrungen im Werk der Lenka Reinerová
Borderline experiences in the works of Lenka Reinerová

Summary/Abstract: Lenka REINEROVÁ (1916-2008) is considered to be the last representative of the so-called “Prague German Literature”. The Jewish journalist and writer was born in Prague, where she grew up bilingual. From 1936 onwards she worked for the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia she fled to France. At the beginning of the Second World War she was arrested, then interned. In 1941 she emigrated to Mexico with the help of F. C. WEISKOPF. There, she wrote among others for the antifascist newspapers Freies Deutschland and Demokratische Post and met Anna SEGHERS, Egon Erwin KISCH and other exiles. After the end of the War, she returned to her home-town via Belgrade with her husband, the Yugoslavian doctor and writer Theodor BALK. In 1952 she was imprisoned for 15 months in the course of STALIN´s purge; at the beginning of the 1960s she was rehabilitated. She became editor-in-chief of the monthly journal Im Herzen Europas. After the quelling of the Prague Spring, she was prevented from publishing. Her books in German were published by Neues Leben and Aufbau. In these writings ‘border’ and ‘borderlines’ play an important role in three respects: ‘linguistically-cultural’ ‘historically-political’ and psychically: The narratives Der Ausflug zum Schwanensee (1965) and Das Traumcafé einer Pragerin (1996) clearly show that REINEROVÁ reappraises the traumatisms she underwent through her writing. Whereas in her earlier works the individual traumatisms are more likely to appear separately, the connecting elements are to the fore in her last two books, Närrisches Prag. Ein Bekenntnis (2005) and Das Geheimnis der nächsten Minuten (2007). In the process of writing the narrator organizes her memories and thus her view of the world.

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