Literackie interwencje przeciwko ksenofobii. Reprezentacje ruchu neonazistowskiego w najnowszej literaturze postenerdowskiej
Literary interventions against xenophobia. Representations of the neo-Nazi movement in the latest post-GDR literature

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the present study is to reconstruct the image of the neo-Nazi movement in East Germany in the years 1990-2015 on the basis of selected pieces of post-GDR literature. The analysis is based on two prose debuts from 2017 and 2018: 'Als ich mit Hitler Schnapskirschen aß' by Manja Präkels (born 1974), and 'Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen' by Lukas Rietzschel (born 1994). This material is supplemented by current sociological and political studies on the situation of the new Lands, and contemporary racism and xenophobia. The analysis presented here draws from the cultural paradigm in literature studies. The main thesis relates to the influence of the GDR as an authoritarian state and the resulting negative patterns of socialization on the development and strengthening of antidemocratic attitudes. This assumption finds confirmation in the constructed worlds of the analyzed novels and in the biographies of their main characters. Civic deficiency and the lack of inter-generational communication, resulting from, among others, the fear of historical responsibility, lead to the collapse of the world order and existence of the generations maturing after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This proves the high relevance of German unification problems even today, i.e. thirty years after the breakthrough of 1989/1990. The author makes an attempt to trace and analyze the above mentioned processes in literary narrative forms.

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