Shadows in Parallel: Collective Memory and Literary Representation: Life in the German Democratic Republic and Francoist Spain

Abstract

This thesis explores collective memory of the German Democratic Republic and the Franco dictatorship by comparing a novel written during each regime with one written recently, decades after each regime ended. These novels are Franziska Linkerhand by Brigitte Reimann (1974), La colmena by Camilo Jose Cela (1951), Der Turm by Uwe Tellkamp (2008) and La sombra del viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2001). Building on Maurice Halbwachs' theory that collective memory channels present concerns when describing the past, the thesis explores within the chosen texts three key themes associated with collective memory; family relationships, urban environments and the role of literature. An analysis of the first two themes allows an understanding of the day-to-day life that each novel depicts. The role-of-literature inquiry allows an insight into the authors' potential motivations for the works that they have produced. The discussion of each novel is embedded in its political and historical context. This analysis discloses instructive differences between the novels contemporaneous with their respective regime and those recently written. Franziska Linkerhand deals primarily with the conflict between middle-class values and socialist ideology in the German Democratic Republic, and the difficulty of realizing socialist utopian dreams. Conversely, written thirty-four years later, Der Turm depicts a complete withdrawal from society and a distrust of the state, heightened by the actions of several characters bringing them into conflict with the authorities. Similarly, the dominating concern of the characters in La colmena is that of surviving the post-Civil-War period in Spain, enduring hunger and persecution, whereas La sombra del viento focuses on a quest to uncover unpalatable historical truths in a mythologized setting, far removed from the realism contained in La colmena. These differences, demonstrable in the literature of both Germany and Spain, are arguably indicative of the way in which the traumatic past is presently conceptualized. They can be shown to be representative of how certain aspects of the past are distorted by the concerns of the present and aspirations for the future. However, as this thesis demonstrates, such distortions allow access to a past that may otherwise prove too painful to remember.