Herta Müller sau Istoria ca istorii personale distruse
Herta Müller or History as Shattered Personal Histories

Summary/Abstract: Herta Müller’s writings occupy a prominent place in the European literature approaching the destinies of those who have been uprooted and who have been fighting against a totalitarian regime –which, among other reasons, lead to her literary work being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2009. Denouncing in her fiction horrors committed by the Romanian communist regime has become almost a mission for Herta Müller. Her ethical choice, stemming from a conflict with Ceausescu’s political police several decades ago, stands as a valuable testimony now, thirty years after most European communist regimes came to an end. Herta Müller’s Swabian family suffered because of both forms of totalitarianism dominating Europe throughout the 20th century: Nazism and Communism. Herta Müller’s (auto)fiction and essays are based on several personal histories – of her family members and mostly her own, as a young writer and member of the “Action Group from Banat”, harassed by the Secret Police and eventually driven to leave Romania for West Germany in 1987. In this article, we intend to analyze how History can shatter personal histories (of innocent individuals), as reflected in Herta Müller’s books. To this purpose, we make use of several concepts and ideas articulated by Hannah Aredt in her monumental Origins of Totalitarianism.

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