Täterkonstruktionen im deutschen Roman nach 1989. Eine sozialpsychologisch fundierte Analyse am Beispiel von Hanna Schmitz und Hermann Karnau
Perpetrator constructions in the German novel after 1989. A socio-psychological analysis based on the example of Hanna Schmitz and Hermann Karnau

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the shift towards the portrayal of Nazi perpetrators in the German novel after 1989 in the context of the public debate over Vergangenheitsbewältigung ('reckoning with the Nazipast'). It focuses on two well-known novels published in 1995, Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlinkand Flughunde by Marcel Beyer, which offer an ambivalent picture of Nazi protagonists. Hanna Schmitz and Hermann Karnau are depicted as normal people who become perpetrators under certain sociohistorical conditions that the novels seek to investigate. I base my comparative analysis of the factors contributing to this deeply unsettling process on the social psychological perpetrator model offered by the Holocaust and Genocide Studies professor James E. Waller, while also discussing the implications of the fictionally constructed perpetratorship for the contemporary memory culture in Germany.

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