Geteiltes Gedächtnis. Die transkulturelle Kontaktzone Schlesien im deutschen und polnischen Generationenroman der Gegenwart
Shared Memory. Silesia as a Transcultural Contactzone in Contemporary German and Polish Generation Novels

Summary/Abstract: In contemporary German and Polish novels the social structure of the family serves as a key medium to track the national history and to unfold the collective past on the basis of a diverse range of individual conflicts of identity. This article analyses acts of transgenerational transmitting and remembering collective history in literary settings on the backdrop of the border region of Silesia as a contactzone of a common German and Polish history and memory culture. Based on the example of two novels, Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt (2014) by the German author Ulrike Draesner and Drach (2014) by the Polish author Szczepan Twardoch the aim is to show how effects of the European history of the 20th century are represented in contemporary literature and to what extent generational novels contribute to a transcultural approach in memory studies.

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